Before the main event of the Debussy, which was pretty and cool in a multimedia way—there were projections on discontinuous curtains around the back of the bandstand sort of shielding the full choirs—, MTT conducted this Leoš Janáček piece called “Sinfonietta,” of which this video is the third movement. Not sure which movement I like the best, but I found this marching military revelry to be superior music to the Debussy “incidental” (full program notes) which was plenty pretty but altogether less interesting, even with all the mumbo jumbo of the screens and the vocal soloists and the narrator and all of that sideshow. That is, I found myself more interested in how the multimedia argument was working than how the score was being played, much less how it was written/constructed. I was also having a hard time wrapping my head around all the biblical/Christian implications of the story. In any case, check out Janáček. Here’s a crazy fan page and here’s his wiki and here’s the program notes from the SF Symphony. Did I mention that “Sinfonietta” was actually dedicated ‘To the Czechoslovak Armed Forces’ because dude was totally into his country? Don’t get me started on the poet behind the Debussy book, Gabriele d’Annunzio; though do read his wiki here and some of it—how he got this project going—in those program notes.
