This Valentine’s Day, you may be wondering how to let your Valentine know how you really feel. Here are five pieces of orchestral music guaranteed to help send the right message.
Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
No list of romance-inducing classical music would be complete without Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, which contains the most famous love theme in history. Despite much use and abuse, this gorgeous melody continues to deliver after all these years. The first time it appears, it represents the balcony scene from Shakespeare’s play. The second time…well, let’s just say the pulsing winds, sighing horns and powerful climax don’t leave much to the imagination.
Gershwin’s An American In Paris
For those of you who like your romance on the jazzy side, Gershwin’s An American in Paris may be the piece for you. The main theme is downright sexy. Available on the Houston Symphony’s new Music of the Americas recording, this music has evoked images of an American’s Parisian fling in the minds of many listeners, including Gene Kelly, who choreographed it for the famous ballet sequence in the movie of the same name. The Houston Symphony performs the score of this cinema classic live to picture in our 2018-19 POPS Season.
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 has long been a favorite with hopeless romantics, and with good reason—the piece has a fascinating backstory filled with composer’s block, hypnosis and forbidden love. Get the full story here and here.
Sibelius’s Violin Concerto
Ah, the Sibelius Violin Concerto. It may have a chilly, snowy opening, but this Finnish composer’s arctic frost only makes its burning passion more intense. If this music has you seeing auroras, you can hear acclaimed violinist Augustin Hadelich perform it live with the Houston Symphony in May.
Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy
With its sinuous chromaticism and lush orchestrations, Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy is everything you’d expect it to be and more. American author Henry Miller described the experience of listening to it as “like a bath of ice, cocaine and rainbows.” Scriabin himself gave the following program notes at the premiere:
The Poem of Ecstasy is the Joy of Liberated Action. The Cosmos, i.e., Spirit, is Eternal Creation without External Motivation, a Divine Play of Worlds. The Creative Spirit, i.e., the Universe at Play, is not conscious of the Absoluteness of its creativeness, having subordinated itself to a Finality and made creativity a means toward an end. The stronger the pulse beat of life and the more rapid the precipitation of rhythms, the more clearly the awareness comes to the Spirit that it is consubstantial with creativity itself. When the Spirit has attained the supreme culmination of its activity and has been torn away from the embraces of teleology and relativity, when it has exhausted completely its substance and its liberated active energy, the Time of Ecstasy shall arrive.
It’s basically the orgasm of the universe. The Houston Symphony will perform it as part of our 2018-19 Classical Series next November; quite appropriately, the conductor has chosen to preface it with Strauss’s musical strip-tease, The Dance of the Seven Veils. Happy Valentine’s Day!
