Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Suite – Sergiu Comissiona
This week we review Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Suite as performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sergiu Comissiona.
This recording can be found on the album Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3 “Scottish” & A Midsummer Night’s Dream under the Vox label.
Sergiu Comissiona’s 1975 recording of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream Suite with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra offers a striking and unique interpretation of this beloved work, one that rejects the theatrical excesses of earlier conductors in favor of a more naturalistic, understated approach. While other notable recordings lean into the dramatic, character-driven elements of the score, Comissiona’s reading focuses on individual instrumental voices and subtle orchestral textures, bringing out the strangeness and magic in a suite listeners might think they know well.
Comissiona’s decision to treat the score “straight,” without overemphasizing its theatricality, offers an intriguing contrast to Arturo Toscanini’s iconic version with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, considered by many to be the paradigmatic recording.1 Indeed, for modern listeners, Toscanini’s approach might feel familiar, almost cinematic, as it evokes vivid images of the fairy court, human lovers, and King Theseus walking across the stage. Comissiona avoids such overt dramatization, instead allowing the individual instruments to shine as the true “characters” of the music. This more restrained reading emphasizes the delicate balance between whimsy and refinement in Mendelssohn’s score, particularly in the Overture.
The Overture is, of course, one of the key challenges for any conductor tackling the Midsummer Night’s Dream Suite. Written when Mendelssohn was just 17 years old,2 the piece overflows with youthful exuberance and experimental energy. It plays with dissonance and harmony, and challenges listeners with dynamic extremes and musical “jokes.” Historically, the Overture was a first-of-its-kind creation: not simply an introduction to a dramatic work but a standalone piece that encapsulates the entire play. This innovation of Mendelssohn’s would later give rise to the mature forms of the “concert overture” and “tone poem,” but in the Overture to Midsummer Night’s Dream, the composer is still a young prodigy, joyfully toying with musical ideas.
Comissiona’s interpretation of the Overture underscores its experimental quality without tipping into theatricality. By emphasizing the voices of individual instruments rather than treating the music as a narrative-driven piece, he offers a glimpse of how the Overture might have sounded to its first listeners—a work that felt spontaneous and challenging. For example, consider the second movement, where the fairy-like strings run back and forth across the stage. Far from giving that ‘actor’ our undivided attention, Comissiona keeps the strings slightly muted, allowing swells of horn and fluttering flutes to bubble to the forefront of the orchestration. Where Toscanini’s interpretation fits neatly into the space of dramatic film music that modern ears are accustomed to, Comissiona’s approach brings out the piece’s subtle complexities and strangeness.
Comissiona’s restraint is even more evident when you turn to the suite’s later pieces, the incidental music that Mendelssohn composed two decades after the Overture. Here, the composer is no longer the exuberant prodigy, but a mature artist at the height of his powers. The Nocturne and Wedding March, written a year before Mendelssohn’s untimely death,3 reflect a profound mastery, and their measured beauty is worlds apart from the playful grandstanding of the Overture. Given this stylistic distance, a conductor faces the challenge of navigating the gap in time and artistic development. Should the suite feel like a unified whole, or should the audience hear the difference between the youthful energy of the Overture and the firmly yoked genius of the Incidental Music?
In Comissiona’s hands, the shift in tone is present but understated. He allows the natural evolution of Mendelssohn’s music to speak for itself, while holding the creative poles together with a unified vision for the orchestration. He stamps the recording as his own while subtly characterizing the person of Mendelssohn, a mind that, even at a twenty-year remove, possessed a singular artistic identity.
The great achievement of this recording is Comissiona’s treatment of the Baltimore Symphony’s string section. Although Mendelssohn’s score often centers on the horns and woodwinds, particularly in the grand moments of the Wedding March and Nocturne, Comissiona gives the strings unusual prominence. In the Nocturne, where the strings are typically relegated to a supporting role, shading the background for the horns, Comissiona brings out an unexpected precision and acrobatic verve from his favorite section of the orchestra. This preferential treatment will not surprise students of Comissiona’s other work. The conductor’s preference for strings is well-documented as arising from the influence of Romanian conductor Constantin Silvestri, a mentor whose attention to bow position and inflection Comissiona adopted with the Baltimore Symphony.4
However, this mastery of the string section may come at the cost of other elements. In the Wedding March, for example, some of the horns’ characteristic power and exuberance feel muted, and the dissonance that makes the piece so recognizable is somewhat softened. You might wonder, while listening to the latter moments of the Nocturne, whether Comissiona’s focus on the strings takes attention away from the spectacular and haunting brass that could otherwise become the centerpiece of the movement. This tradeoff is particularly stark when juxtaposing Comissiona’s recording with Claudio Abbado’s version featuring the Berlin Philharmonic. Neither recording is entirely complete: listening to Abbado, you occasionally miss Comissiona’s strings; listening to Comissiona, you can’t help but ache for those great Berliner horns.
Ultimately, Comissiona’s recording of the Midsummer Night’s Dream Suite feels like an essential, revelatory entry into the evolving interpretation of this piece. His focus on instrumental voices and the orchestra’s texture sheds new light on a score that has been performed countless times, showing that even the most familiar music still holds untapped potential. The suite was evolving when the 17-year-old Mendelssohn first sketched out the Overture; it was evolving again when the mature composer revisited the work in his later years; and it continues to evolve in the hands of conductors like Comissiona, who offer new and compelling visions of this two-century-old masterpiece.
– Matthew Young
For those interested in hearing Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream as conducted by Sergiu Comissiona, tune in tomorrow evening (10/16) at 7pm to 89.7 WCPE, TheClassicalStation.org or via our app where we’ll be playing the suite in its entirety!
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