Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season November-December 2017 | Page 22

ANDRÉ WATTS RETURNS FOR RACH 2
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OV E R T U R E / BSOmusic.org
Hal and his party turn the tables and
rob them!
Now comes one of Falstaff ’s greatest
passages, the “Dream Interlude,” in which
fragile music featuring a lovely violin
solo describes the old man’s dream of
long ago when he was a slender young
page in service to the Duke of Norfolk.
This beguiling music is suffused with the
tender, rueful nostalgia that is a signature
mood throughout Elgar’s music.
In Part III, to a feisty toy-soldier
march, Falstaff raises a ragtag “army”
and marches them off to support Prince
Hal in the war against usurping nobles.
After his mock triumph there, the march
theme is transformed into the gracious
string melody describing his return home
through Gloucestershire, neighboring
Elgar’s beloved Worcestershire.
In the second of Falstaff ’s lyrical
interludes, “Gloucestershire— Shallow’s
Orchard,” Elgar paints a charming
portrait of the bucolic countryside he
loved so well, with rustic woodwind
piping and lazy, slumbering string music
capturing a peaceful rural backwater.
Part IV: Suddenly this sleepy interlude
is shattered by Pistol’s arrival with the
stunning news that Henry IV has died
and Prince Hal is now the king. Falstaff’s
theme now becomes stretched out and
pompous in the low brass, as he expects to
become a very important man at the new
court. He and his followers gallop back to
London. As they wait near Westminster
Abbey, we hear the glittering ceremonial
music of the King’s coronation procession.
This music also contains a new, sterner
version of Hal’s theme rising proudly in
the violins. Using his rising cajoling theme
(cellos), Falstaff addresses the now King
Henry V, but with his new stern theme,
the King cruelly dismisses his old friend.
Falstaff’s would-be glorious career is
over, and now he is dying. Remembrances
of previous themes float by, among them
the lazy Gloucestershire music and gentle
reminders