![]() ![]() ![]() A sea monster Wild Thing rears up from now turbulent waters but is quelled by Max, who eventually arrives at an island. The orchestral First Sea Interlude presents a “pageant of different lights and times of day,” suggesting the passage of much time. Water appears and a little boat, which Max enters and begins rowing. The orchestra depicts the transformation of his room into a forest, and then a jaunty ragtime clarinet introduces his second arietta in which he fantasizes about his revenge upon the Mama Wolf and catching the moon, with more “Vilda chai” cries. Sulking alone in his room in Scene 3, Max imagines himself as the wolf king waiting in his lair for nightfall, when the Wild Things would leap upon the moon, lulling himself with a gently repeated “And catch it and cook it and keep it hot,” accompanied by the Debussy reference in the flutes and clarinets. The scene ends with an orchestral transition, as Max wrestles the vacuum and is pushed into his bedroom. Max has been complaining about how hungry he is, but after continuing to act out, he is sent to bed without his supper. Max remains in his wolf king character, including his “Vilda chai” (wild thing) war cry, resisting his mother’s attempts to calm him. In the second scene (still in the hall), an ominous shadow falls over Max, which turns out to be cast by his mother and her old vacuum machine. Dressed in a white wolf suit, he menaces his toys and after hanging his teddy bear, bursts out with a howl of “Vilda chai, ah mi mah mee ooh,” a part Yiddish, part invented Maxian cry that will return. This Scherzino is a bravura entrance aria as Max identifies himself verbally and musically. It bursts with energy though, as it introduces the first scene, where Max is playing in the hall outside his room. The short Overture begins as a matter of expectant anticipation, a thing of shimmering, slowly swelling chords. Knussen uses tetrachords (“linked into octatonic chains,” for the technically inclined) as the basis of his taut harmonic organization, in which quotations or allusions to music by Mussorgsky, Debussy, Berg, Britten, Henze, Ravel, Stravinsky, Mahler, and others emerge vividly, as well as suggestions of ragtime, barbershop, and 12-tone techniques. Though colorfully scored and eminently lively, this “fantasy opera in nine scenes” is not “children’s music” in the sense of anything simplified in concept or execution. The final version was premiered by Glyndebourne Touring Opera at the National Theatre in London in 1984 with the composer conducting, and has since become almost a repertory work, with numerous international stagings and several recordings. The Opéra National in Brussels commissioned Where the Wild Things Are in 1979, UNESCO’s International Year of the Child, and premiered an early version of the opera the following year. (Where the Wild Things Are is dedicated to Marshall.) (He later returned as head of contemporary music activities from 1986 to 1993.) It was at Tanglewood that the illustrator Mike Marshall introduced Knussen to Maurice Sendak, sowing the seeds for Where the Wild Things Are and Higglety Pigglety Pop!, the two one-act operas Knussen composed in the 1980s based on books by Sendak, with librettos by the beloved American author and artist. In 1970, Oliver Knussen was awarded the first of three fellowships to the Tanglewood Music Center, where he spent several summers studying with Gunther Schuller. Orchestration: 3 flutes (3rd = piccolo), oboe, English horn, 3 clarinets (3rd = E-flat clarinet), bassoon, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trombones, percussion (anvils, balloon with pin, bass drum, claves, clogs, cowbells, flexatone, glockenspiel, gong, maracas, sizzle cymbals, spring coil, suspended cymbals, tambourine, tam-tam, temple blocks, tenor drum, tom-toms, triangles, tubular bells, vibraslap, vibraphone, whip, wind machine, and xylophone), piano (four-hands), harp, strings, and vocal soloistsįirst Los Angeles Philharmonic performances ![]()
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