Oberon Overture
WEBER 1786-1826
Carl Maria von Weber’s opera, Oberon, has a unique history. Weber, a German national, was commissioned by Britain’s famed Covent Garden (the theater that later would be home to numerous premieres of Benjamin Britten) for a new opera in English. First, Weber had to learn to write and speak English to facilitate the collaboration among the various British artists and writers involved. Oberon is a mix of spoken dialogue and singing, much like Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The overture for the opera was finished in London, just a few months before its premiere in 1826.
The story of Oberon is fantastical, ambitious, and generally thought to be flawed. Once again, the work begs the comparison to the aforementioned Mozart work in this regard. The libretto weaves complex plot lines of exotic locales, pirates, harems, magical horns, fairies, and characters materializing from thin air to advance the story. As an opera, it is a silly affair, but the overture is often performed as a concert piece, like many of Weber’s more famous overtures.
It begins with a simple horn solo, completely exposed and accompanied by no other instruments. This is, of course, a direct reference to the importance of the “magical horn” that saves the day in the opera. The solo ushers in a slow opening section of music, where Weber often divides the orchestra in subsections. There are some very beautiful moments of brass writing answered by other subsections of the orchestra.
However, the slow music is just an introduction to the main focus of this overture. The fast section is a showpiece for the strings – the violin section in particular will earn a great deal of their paycheck in this piece! The gestures in the overture give one the feeling of leaping up constantly and then coming back down gingerly. Listen for the repetition of these leaping and falling gestures all through the fast section of the piece. A bit of slower music does interrupt the momentum to provide a short interjection, but this is not long lived. The strings take us right back to the flying figures and fast fingers of the opening, all to end with a raucous forte conclusion worthy of the fantastical plot it prefaces.
— Jim Keays
Concert Performance
Orchestration
2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, strings