Thursday, March 21, 2024

Boston Symphony Scriabin

Found in a press release from the BSO:

The first of these (April 4–6) is a program inspired by color: it opens with Anna Clyne’s Color Field, inspired in part by the vibrancy of a Mark Rothko painting, and concludes with Alexander Scriabin’s epic Prometheus, Poem of Fire, for piano, color organ, chorus, and orchestra. Scriabin’s spectacular vision for a color organ, which bathes the performance space in colored light corresponding to the music played, will be actualized for the first time in Symphony Hall by Tony-award winning lighting designer Justin Townsend in collaboration with researcher and musicologist Anna Gawboy, Ph.D. Esteemed pianist Yefim Bronfman and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus join to bring this synesthetic work to life. Also on the program are Franz Liszt's symphonic poem Prometheus, providing an additional musical interpretation of the Greek myth, and Richard Wagner’s ecstatic Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde, a work suffused with the sensual and one that helped expand ideas of musical time. 

So,  a color organ of some kind but no scents.

Note that this is part of a festival that also includes some Messiaen (Turangalila with Yuja Wang taking the piano part; Quartet for the End of Time with Garrick Ohlsson) and a bunch of other interesting works.

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