UCLA Philharmonia orchestra’s first concert of the season will be streamed live at 8 p.m. Oct. 22 (that’s Thursday). Neal Stulberg will conduct the group in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8 and Honegger’s Symphony No. 3, “Symphonie Liturgique.” The Honegger is a rarity and very much worth hearing. The work was completed in 1946, just after World War II. Here’s what Honegger said he had in mind:
“My intention in this work was to symbolize the reaction of modern man against the morass of barbarism, stupidity, suffering, machine-mindedness, and bureaucracy that has been besieging us…I have reproduced in musical terms the combat that is joined in man’s heart between yielding to the blind forces that enclose him and his instinct for happiness, his love of peace, his apprehension of a divine refuge. My symphony is, if you like, a drama played out between three characters, whether real or symbolic: misery, happiness, and man. These are everlasting themes. I have tried to give them new life.”
Go here to listen to the live performance Thursday.
