Music to Love
Beyond the modern scene of pop love songs lies the lush landscape of passionate classical music. It is filled with scores of romantic songs.
The Butler County Symphony Orchestra's conductor and concert mistress have each shared a list of their top five most romantic classical selections in honor of Valentine's Day, which is Feb. 14.
Matthew Kraemer, conductor and music director, said, “If you ask music lovers, you'll get different answers, but there are always a couple songs that will show up, always certain composers you can go to for the best romantic hits.”
In his fourth season with the Butler orchestra, Kraemer first named Puccini as a composer of romantic music, as in “Madame Butterfly” and “La Boheme,” which contains a song that translates from Italian to mean “your frozen little hand.”
“Just the whole opera 'La Boheme,'” Kraemer said. “I would just recommend opera in general.”
Kraemer also named Tchaikovsky's “Romeo and Juliet” as beautiful music.
“Any composer's 'Romeo and Juliet' really,” he said. “Berlioz, Gounod, Leonard Bernstein had a Romeo and Juliet called 'West Side Story' and there are about 15 others.”
“Rachmaninoff is another composer who wrote very beautiful music, but in particular his '18th Variation' from his 'Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,'” Kraemer said.
“In movies it's used all the time as love tunes,” he said. “You'd recognize it from the first three or four notes.”
Another of Kraemer's picks is the “5th Symphony” by Mahler called “The Adagietto,” an hourlong symphony just for strings and harp.
His fifth pick, he said, is “kind of out there.” It's by a composer named Janacek, his “String Quartet #2” called “Intimate Letters.”
“It tells a story, love letters to a young woman from a man at the end of his life knowing he can never have her. It's not for everyone's tastes, just for someone who wants to try listening to something new,” Kraemer said.
The conductor said that personally he loves Puccini compositions.
“I love opera, and his melodies are so familiar, but when you work with different singers, it's always a little bit different every time you come back to it,” he said. “I can't say enough about opera. It's full of passion, romance, some tragedy. That's opera.”
The orchestra will have some opera pieces in its concert Saturday.
It welcomes Marianne Cornetti, a county native who is one of the world's leading Verdi mezzo-sopranos. Cornetti will sing “Death of Cleopatra” and two arias in the second half of the performance.
Tanya Satteson, orchestra concert mistress, said choosing the top five most romantic classical pieces is difficult.
Satteson has that title as the principal, or first chair, in the first violin section. She said her duties include leading her section, tuning the orchestra, playing solos as indicated in the score and serving as the leader on stage for standing to acknowledge the audience.Satteson, who has been with the orchestra since the 2013-14 season, said there are “romantic 'sounding' pieces (i.e. pieces that are played at weddings, cliché pieces that represent love in movies etc.), pieces that tell a love story (i.e. Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet'), or pieces that have a romantic story behind them (i.e. dedicated to a spouse or mistress).”So she delved into each category and listed her personal favorites, heavily biased from her violinist's point of view, she happily noted.For her first romantic selection, Satteson chose J.S. Bach's “Ciaccona,” the final movement from “Partita No. 2 in D minor for Solo Violin,” saying it is “probably my favorite piece in the violin repertoire.”The longest and most difficult movement in Bach's set of six sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin was written by a grief-stricken Bach in dedication to his recently deceased wife, Maria Barbara, said Satteson.“It is a powerful work, full of raw emotion, while at the same time being incredibly ordered and controlled,” she said.“It evokes the gamut of emotions — everything from horror, to acceptance, to peace, and even joy. Loving, and risking the loss of that love, to me, is a big part of 'romance,' and I love this piece because it reminds me of the beautiful, unconditional and unending love a dedicated married couple can have.”Her next three choices are Brahms' “Sonata No. 1 in G Major, Opus 78 for Violin and Piano, First Movement”; Tchaikovsky's “Symphony No. 5, Second Movement”; and Rachmaninoff's “Second Piano Concerto, Second Movement.”“I choose these three pieces for their beauty and because they are pieces I enjoy playing and listening to with those I love,” Satteson said.“They are pieces that can easily be the focal point of the entertainment for an evening, or can provide a sophisticated backdrop for a lovely date with your significant other. Part of romance, in my estimation, is sharing beauty, sharing emotion, sharing experiences.”She said she never tires of listening to or playing these three pieces because they are “rich with emotion, passion and set the stage for an intimate experience.”Her final recommendation is Rimsky-Korsakov's “Scheherazade, Opus 35,” an orchestral piece that tells the story of the young bride of the sultan, loosely based on “Arabian Nights,” she said.“Ultimately, Scheherazade woos the sultan with all her storytelling, and he falls in love with her and decides he will not kill her,” Satteson said. “Scheherazade is represented by a solo violin that appears throughout the work.”Details about the orchestra's concert are available by calling 724-283-1402 or visiting butlersymphony.org.
