Beyond the Forest, Into the Sky by the Alabama Symphony Orchestra
Prelude to Hänsel und Gretel (1893)
Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921)
Run time: Approx. 8 minutes
Engelbert Humperdinck is not a name that would appear today on a list of best-known composers. He did not cultivate a large compositional output, instead devoting much of his life to teaching, and as a result, Hänsel und Gretel stands somewhat alone in his legacy, making him a bit of a compositional one-hit wonder.
Though the majority of his small catalog missed out on lasting acclaim, Hänsel und Gretel has carved out a place as a beloved staple in the operatic repertoire. Its success and charm are perhaps a result of the unexpected combination of the whimsical fairytale and the very obvious influence of his idol and mentor, Richard Wagner.
If you’re not familiar with Wagner, there’s much to be said about his impact on theater and the scope of musical drama, but to keep this brief, let’s go with an image: conjure in your mind the most stereotypical picture of opera. Is it a robust woman wearing that quintessential horned helmet? Is she perhaps holding a spear? That unshakable image has come to caricaturize opera thanks to a costume from Wagner’s Ring Cycle. While grandeur is certainly a large part of the composer’s legacy, his most significant contribution lies in the craft of musical storytelling.
Wagner’s fingerprints are apparent in the shape of Humperdinck’s phrases—in the way they seem to go on forever, one connecting seamlessly to the next—the expansive layering of his textures, and, perhaps most importantly, in Humperdinck’s use of leitmotif, a technique Wagner invented to ensure thematic cohesion throughout his stories, even across multiple operas.
Leitmotif, which literally translates to “leading” or “guiding” motive, is a short musical idea that represents a person, place, or theme. One of the elements that makes the film scores of John Williams so effective, for example, is his use of leitmotif. Think of Darth Vader’s ominous march, or those menacing two notes that instantly signal Jaws, or the majestic Force theme that symbolizes Luke Skywalker’s destiny.
The prelude begins with one of the opera’s most significant leitmotifs, the evening prayer music. The wistful chorale appears throughout the opera, most prominently in the aria where the children say their bedtime prayers. It symbolizes the innocence of the children, protected by God.
The prayer is then interrupted by the witch’s theme, sounded in the trumpet with a cackling herald. Afterwards comes a gently meandering melody representing Hansel and Gretel’s journey through the woods and their accidental snacking on the witch’s candy house before they realize what trouble they’re in. Finally, there is the triumphant march heard when the children doom their evil captor to her broiled demise.
Humperdinck deftly weaves all of these themes together, at times layering all four atop one another and creating a delightfully complex musical palette—a masterful tribute to his mentor.
Symphony No. 40, K. 550, in G Minor (1788)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Run time: Approx. 27 minutes
Early in my research on Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, I stumbled upon two quotes that brought my exploration of this beloved work to a standstill. I found myself unable to think past these two diametrically opposed views. The first, from music critic Charles Rosen, aligns with the way I have always interpreted this symphony, calling it, “a work of passion, violence, and grief.” The second, the one that stopped me in my tracks, was from 19th-century composer Robert Schumann, who found the work to be full of “weightless, Hellenic grace.” I was rather puzzled—were we listening to the same piece?
I must admit, I became a bit obsessed. I couldn’t stop thinking about Schumann’s words. Hellenic? Where exactly was he getting classical Greek art from this very German symphony? And weightless? We were, after all, talking about a composer at one of the lowest points in his life.
1788 found Mozart in a difficult position. His public concerts were growing increasingly rare and demand for his music was waning. On top of that, he was in serious gambling debt. He needed money badly, so in the summer of 1788 he produced an astonishing amount of work. His final three symphonies, 39, 40, and 41, were written in quick succession between June and August of that year, likely for a series that would bring him only a small amount of income.
The symphony’s key provides another tick for Rosen’s column. Mozart often turned to G-minor for his most grief-stricken moments, like in The Magic Flute when a brokenhearted Pamina tries to speak to Tamino, whom she does not know has taken a vow of silence, or in Mitridate, re di Ponto, when Aspisia mournfully laments “my heart palpates and greaves within my chest.” Mozart’s only other minor-key symphony, No. 25 from 1773 is also in G-minor, as is his fourth string quintet about which Tchaikovsky later said, ”No one has ever known as well how to interpret so exquisitely in music the sense of resigned and inconsolable sorrow.”
I listened to the piece more times than I can count, searching for its feathers, and still I felt I was looking at the late-period Mozart I knew—the Mozart of Don Giovanni or the Requiem, whose emotional breadth at times borders on ferocity. But I did find a stoic restraint in the pathos of this symphony that did not burden those other works. That constraint is the symphonic form.
Mozart was, at heart, a true child of the Classical era, which means he was, by definition, firmly invested in formal perfection. The symphonic form governed everything from the number of movements and their tempos to the harmonic paths available from a given starting key—constraints, yes, but also a puzzle to be solved. As my father, music theorist Gordon Sly, put it when I called him amid my Schumann-induced distress, “Mozart’s concerns about form are different in absolute music (music without narrative) versus texted music. In opera, he has text, he has the story. In a symphony, coherence can only be created by things like proportion, symmetry, and self-reference. Repetition is an absolute requirement for coherence.”
Suddenly, I understood. Proportion, symmetry—the hallmarks of Greco-Roman art. This, I believe, was Schumann’s meaning: not what Mozart said, but how he said it. Symphony No. 40 is indeed exquisitely executed, not only in the way it adheres to traditional symphonic form, but in the elegance of its transitions, the way it transforms the opening three-note motif into the thematic material for the entire first movement, and the way it balances tension with moments of repose.
The more I reflect on the classicism of this work—Hellenic or otherwise—the more I find that listening to it feels akin to looking at a great Greek sculpture. These works are full of power, but their might stems from their formal perfection: the grace of their lines, the proportion and symmetry of their features. Schumann also said, “The Greeks gave to ‘The Thunderer’ a radiant expression, and radiantly does Mozart launch his lightnings.”
blue cathedral (2000)
Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962)
Run time: Approx. 12 minutes
In Jennifer Higdon’s mind, Blue Cathedral is a visceral journey through an otherworldly realm. She imagines a glass cathedral in the sky, clouds drifting by, visible through the transparent walls. “In my mind’s eye,” she says, “the listener would enter from the back of the sanctuary, floating along the corridor amongst giant crystal pillars, moving in a contemplative stance. The stained glass windows’ figures would start moving with song, singing a heavenly music. The listener would float down the aisle, slowly moving upward at first and then progressing at a quicker pace, rising towards an immense ceiling which would open to the sky … I wanted to create the sensation of contemplation and quiet peace at the beginning, moving towards the feeling of celebration and ecstatic expansion of the soul.”
Higdon’s search for such a feeling was born from a period of significant personal grief; when beginning work on Blue Cathedral, she had recently lost her younger brother, Andrew Blue Higdon, to skin cancer. In a 2005 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, she described the piece as being about “deciding if life was going to be about living or about death.” There are sections of real turbulence within the music. “I was kind of ticked off,” she explained. “Part of mourning is anger.”
As children, Higdon played the flute and Andrew the clarinet. The two instruments are featured prominently throughout the work. “In tribute to my brother,” she explains, “I feature solos for the clarinet and the flute . Because I am the older sibling, it is the flute that appears first in this dialog. At the end of the work, the two instruments continue their dialogue, but it is the flute that drops out and the clarinet that continues on in the upward progressing journey.”
Jennifer Higdon is one of today’s most widely performed and acclaimed living composers. Perhaps her ability to evoke such vivid imagery is one reason her music is so lauded. The percussion effects in the work’s opening glint and gleam like light reflecting from crystalline windows. Her textures sparkle with the suggestion of stained glass, and as the orchestra builds to an apex, it takes on the breadth of an organ at full tilt.
Suite from The Firebird (1919 version)
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Run Time: Approx. 22 minutes
Every young artist needs a big break—someone to take a chance on them, open the door, and put them on the map. For a young Igor Stravinsky, that person was Sergei Diaghilev.
In 1909, entrepreneur and arts patron Sergei Diagalev opened the Ballet Russes in Paris with the goal of introducing Russian art to the cultural centers of the broader world. Diagalev didn’t just want to put on Russian ballet, he wanted to create a convergence of modern art—to commission music from the best composers, sets from the greatest artists, and costumes from the most prominent designers—all to position Russian art at the highest echelon. At the height of its reign, the Ballet Russes boasted a roster of stars like Vaslav Nijinsky and Anna Pavlova dancing choreography by George Balanchine (later the founder of the New York City Ballet), wearing costumes by Coco Chanel adorned by sets from Pablo Picasso.
The Ballet’s first seasons featured existing music, mostly presenting well-established Russian composers like Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Borodin, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. But Diagalev’s ambition was to be at the cutting edge of contemporary art, and he itched to begin commissioning.
Diagalev and his advisors planned their first new piece for the 1911 season. It was to be Russian through and through, so they turned to folklore for their narrative, settling on tales of a bird whose magical feathers glow with a luminous red-orange light. The story, assembled by Diagalev and his creative team from multiple sources, centers on Prince Ivan who in his quest to defeat the evil sorcerer Kashchei and free the thirteen princesses he holds captive, comes upon a Firebird. He captures her, but then lets her go, receiving a magical feather in return. With the Firebird’s help, Ivan defeats Kashchei, falls in love with one of the princesses, and frees the prisoners by breaking the evil sorcerer’s spell.
For this new project, Diagalev first approached more established composers, including Alexander Glazunov and Anatoly Lyadov, both of whom ultimately withdrew. Eventually, with a recommendation from Glazunov and a bit of a leap of faith, Diagalev turned to the young, relatively unknown Igor Stravinsky. The gamble could not have turned out better. The Firebird became a huge success, launching Stravinsky’s international career and beginning a long and definitive collaboration with the Ballets Russes.
In his approach to the music, Stravinsky employs a striking juxtaposition of avant-garde, exotic sonorities mixed with more traditional harmony. These opposing aesthetics create a distinct contrast between the story’s principal characters: the supernatural creatures like the Firebird and Kashchei are represented by the unsettling, dissonant harmonies, while the human characters are colored by more typical, grounded ones. Stravinsky refers to this technique as leit-harmony, a cousin of the leitmotif used by Humperdinck in Hänsel und Gretel.
Listen to the stark shift, for example, that occurs when the scene changes from the eerie opening world of Kashchei’s garden, where Ivan first encounters the Firebird, to when he spots the princess. Introduced by the oboe following the fleetwinged episode of the Firebird’s capture, the music turns instantly from forward-looking 20th-century harmony to something altogether more Romantic, only to be mightily disrupted by the entrance of Kashchei and his men in the Infernal Dance.
The fevered bacchanal kicks off when the Firebird casts a spell forcing the evildoers to dance themselves into exhaustion. Even to adventurous Parisian ears, the abrasiveness of the Infernal Dance must have been startling. Of course, we now know this was but a hint of what was to come in The Rite of Spring. Nevertheless, the sting is soothed by a haunting lullaby as the solo bassoon rocks the Sorcerer to sleep, enabling Ivan to find and destroy the egg that holds his power.
From the embers of the Berceuse, a horn signals the rising sun, offering hope and renewal to the freed occupants of Kashchei’s prison. The grounded, folk-like melody of the finale is backed by a continually ascending harmony, suggesting liberation, renewal, and the triumph of light over darkness. At the finale’s climax, Stravinsky uses asymmetrical time signatures to interrupt the melody in unexpected places—a favorite technique of his and one that separates him from the masses. In the hands of a lesser composer, a melody such as this might be trite. But Stravinsky knew that even when offering an inevitable conclusion, there can still be moments of wonder.
—Notes by Valerie Sly, 2026