London, 2025

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The Legend of Pandora is composer Frederick Paul Naftel’s most recent work, and is an orchestral suite which depicts various events in Pandora’s life and intended to be expanded into a full-length ballet. The legend of Pandora narrates the story of the first human woman created by the gods. Pandora would have opened a vessel which would have released all the evils into the world, capturing hope safely inside. Rather than focusing on the legend itself, Naftel decided to look at the life of Pandora, exploring her own adventures. The first performance of the suite, with an orchestra championing Holst’s The Planets’ one, took place at Huddersfield Town Hall in January 2025, and precedes a recorded version due to be released later this year. Once again with this work, Naftel demonstrates precise control of the orchestra.

 

Structured in seven movements, The Legend of Pandora begins with the birth of Pandora, emerging from the depths of the orchestra and its lower textures, with the addition of a powerful organ — which returns many times during the suite —, brightening and opening to a full, almost triumphal, orchestra. Pandora’s “Dance of Grace”, the second movement, is based on the Seikilos Epitaph — the most ancient known Greek melody—, embodying the delicacy and tenderness of Pandora’s personality. A triumphant brass fanfare — one of the composer’s favourite musical devices — opens up the “Festival of the Gods”, the third movement of the suite, which is all about celebrating. Almost midway through Naftel’s monumental work, the intentions become clearer and clearer; it is all about contrast and revealing both sides of the orchestra — and Pandora’s constant struggle with decisions—; the light and delicate one, and the loud and powerful one. The addition of the organ acts as an under layer unifying the brass, winds, strings and percussion sections of the orchestra. “The Opening of the Vessel” illustrates through contrasting harmonic choices Pandora’s indecision between her desire to open the jar — and her reason — defeated by her curiosity. Pandora’s “Lament”, the fifth movement, is dissonant, and like much of the music of the suite carries uncertain elements and moments of discomfort. The sixth movement, “Prelude to Dithyramb”, is captivating; balancing dissonance and eerie sounds with delicacy and beautiful melodic fragments. Finally, “Dithyramb” which closes the suite is rhythmically captivating, and reflects well some of the founding musical elements of The Legend of Pandora, from the leitmotivs to the many fanfares and powerful explosions of sound. 

 

A work like The Legend of Pandora, of such a large scale is impressive, particularly when one thinks that Naftel is quasi autodidact when it comes to composition, arranging and the art of orchestration. One can hear eclectic influences in this work, and it is certain that the rich and dense scale of American film scoring has had an impact on how Naftel scores. The composer’s background as a percussionist is also evident, particularly in the way he approaches non-percussive instruments, and achieves great rhythmical interest and textures. The Legend of Pandora is a work full of surprises and exciting musical ideas, some which reveal once more how eclectic Naftel is in his approach to composing music.