Die große Reihe – Staunen

Symphony concert of the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra in the Liederhalle

WAGNER | Overture to "The Flying Dutchman"
SIBELIUS | Violin Concerto
BRITTEN | Four Sea Interludes from "Peter Grimes"
DEBUSSY | La Mer

Dmitry Smirnov, violin
Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Holly Hyun Choe

THE VAST SEA

Immanuel Kant, whose 300th birthday the philosophical world celebrated in 2024, mentions the "boundless ocean" as an example of the "sublime" in his "Critique of Judgment", his main work on aesthetics and theology. In contrast to the beautiful, which appeals to us through its form - the grace of a melody, the line of a drawing - i.e. through the quality of a form that we perceive as a "feeling of the promotion of life", the sublime works through its immeasurable quantity, which overwhelms our sensory perception. At the sight of the vast, unmanageable ocean, we are unable to grasp its size. We cannot exhaust its threatening, overwhelming depth, its movements and its boundaries. And we realize that we are infinitesimally small compared to it. At the same time, however, as rational beings we are able to perceive this relationship, and this allows us to feel a spiritual and moral superiority. We can at least do this when we are standing on the safe shore, reading texts about the sublime or listening to sea music in concert. If, on the other hand, we were cursed sailors forced to sail the sea forever, like the title character in Richard Wagner's opera "The Flying Dutchman", we would neither be able to perceive the sublimity of the ocean nor the beauty of the music above it ... It's a good thing that they no longer exist and that we experience the story from the perspective of the concert hall!

The infinite, unpredictable variety and colorfulness of the waves and the wind on the surface of the sea is the great theme in Claude Debussy's and Benjamin Britten's musical exploration of the sea. Wonderful images of sublimity!