Program Notes

MIKHAIL GLINKA

born: June 1, 1804 in Novospasskoye, Russia died: February 15, 1857 in Berlin, Germany

Overture to Ruslán and Lyudmíla

premiere: December 9, 1842 in St. Petersburg

Mikhail Glinka is one of the great pioneers in the history of Russian music. After studying in St. Petersburg, Glinka traveled to Italy and Germany in the early 1830s. There, Glinka heard and studied the music of Beethoven, as well as the Italian bel canto opera composers Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini. Glinka himself wrote works based upon themes from popular Italian operas. But in his memoirs, Glinka recalled:

All the pieces that I wrote to please the Milan composers…only served to convince me that I had followed a path foreign to my own instincts and frankly, that I could never be an Italian myself. Feelings of homesickness led me to gradually find my own Russian form of expression.

Glinka’s search for a Russian “form of expression” culminated in triumph on December 9, 1836, in St. Petersburg. There, Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar premiered at the Imperial Theater. A Life for the Tsar, based upon an incident in Russian history, and featuring Russian folk melodies, immediately won the hearts of the St. Petersburg audience. Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar is universally recognized as the first Russian national opera.

Glinka’s second opera, Ruslán and Lyudmíla, premiered in St. Petersburg on December 9, 1842. Based upon a fantastic tale by Alexander Pushkin, Ruslán and Lyudmíla takes place in 9th century Russia. Lyudmíla, daughter of the Grand Prince of Kiev, is about to marry the knight Ruslán. When monsters kidnap Lyudmíla, Ruslán sets out to rescue his beloved, with (after much adventure) happy results.

While complete performances of Ruslán and Lyudmíla are rare outside of Russia, the opera’s Overture has become a concert hall favorite. The brief and sparkling orchestral work, featuring melodies from the opera, sprints to a brilliant close.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

born: December 17, 1770 in Bonn, Germany died: March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria

Concerto for Piano, Violin, Cello & Orchestra in C Major, Op. 56, “Triple” (1804)

composed: 1803-4 premiere: 1808 in Vienna, Austria

By the turn of the 18th century, Ludwig van Beethoven had established himself as one of Vienna’s most prominent musicians — a virtuoso pianist and composer of the first rank. Just as it seemed nothing could stand in the way of his continued rise to greatness, tragedy struck. In 1800, Beethoven, not yet thirty, began to realize that his hearing was deteriorating. The onset of deafness was only a matter of time. The irony was not lost on Beethoven; soon, he would be a composer unable to hear his own musical creations. On October 6, 1802, he wote the letter to his brothers known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, confessing that his hearing loss:

...almost made me despair, and I was on the point of putting an end to my life—The only thing that held me back was my art. For indeed it seemed to me impossible to leave this world before I had produced all the works I felt the urge to compose; and thus I have dragged on this miserable existence—a truly miserable existence.

Beethoven responded to his adversity by composing at a furious pace. Masterpieces from the first decade of the 19th century include his Symphonies Nos. 2-6, the “Razumovsky” String Quartets, the “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” Piano Sonatas, and his only opera, Fidelio. The Triple Concerto belongs to that same fruitful period. Beethoven began composition of the Concerto in late 1803, completing the work in the summer of 1804. The Triple Concerto is scored for a trio of soloists (violin, cello and piano) and orchestra. Beethoven composed the Triple Concerto around the same time as his path-breaking “Eroica” Symphony. However, the Concerto’s three movements present a far more genial and lyrical side of Beethoven’s craft. The opening Allegro is the most expansive of the work’s three movements. A hushed Largo leads, without pause, into the finale (Rondo alla Polacca), based upon a polonaise, a sparkling Polish dance.

HECTOR BERLIOZ

born: December 11, 1803 in La Côte-Saint-André, France died: March 8, 1869 in Paris, France

Symphonie fantastique

Opus 14 (1830)

premiere: December 5, 1830 in Paris

In September 1827, Hector Berlioz, then a 23-year-old student at the Paris Conservatory, attended productions by an English touring company of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. In the performances, Harriet Smithson, a beautiful and young Irish actress, portrayed the tragic heroines Ophelia and Juliet. Berlioz immediately fell in love with her.

Berlioz did everything within his power to try to get Smithson to take notice of him, but without success. In February of 1830, Berlioz wrote to his sister: “I am about to commence my grand symphony (Episode in the Life of An Artist), in which the development of my infernal passion will be depicted.” On April 16 of that same year, Berlioz announced that his Symphony was complete.

The premiere of the Symphonie fantastique took place at the Paris Conservatory on December 5, 1830, with François Antoine Habeneck conducting the Orchestra of the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire. The drama, innovation, and sheer audacity of the young composer’s vision stunned the audience. By the time Harriet Smithson returned to Paris in 1832 and attended a performance of the “Fantastic Symphony,” it seemed the actress was the only person in the entire city who didn’t realize she was the inspiration for the music. When Smithson discovered the truth, she finally agreed to meet Berlioz. After a brief courtship, the two wed on October 3, 1833. Franz Liszt and Heinrich Heine served as witnesses.

In the early 1840s, Smithson and Berlioz separated. Even after the acrimonious conclusion of their marriage, Berlioz acknowledged his artistic kinship with Harriet Smithson, and the profound influence she exercised upon his development as an artist. Toward the end of her life, Smithson suffered paralysis. After Harriet Smithson’s death in 1854, Liszt wrote to Berlioz: “She inspired you, you loved her and sang your love, her mission was fulfilled.”

The Irish actress Harriet Smithson (1800-1854), painted by English artist George Clint. Smithson was the inspiration for Berlioz’s Symphonyfantastique — and later, his wife.

Berlioz, a gifted and prolific writer himself, provided the following program notes for the 1845 published edition of his Symphonie fantastique.

A young musician of morbidly sensitive temperament and lively imagination poisons himself with opium in an attack of lovesick despair. The dose of the narcotic, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a deep slumber accompanied by the strangest visions, during which his feelings, his emotions, his memories are transformed in his sick mind into musical images. The Beloved herself becomes for him a melody, a cyclical theme (idée fixe) that he encounters and hears everywhere. (Note: The idée fixe is introduced approximately five minutes into the opening movement by the flute and first violins.)

I. Reveries — Passions

At first he recalls that sickness of the soul, those intimations of passion, the apparently groundless depression and intoxication he experienced before he met the woman he adores; then the volcanic love that she inspired in him, his delirious anguish, his furious jealousy, his return to tenderness, his religious consolation.

II. A Ball

He meets his beloved again in the midst of the tumult of a glittering fête.

III. Scene in the Country On a summer evening in the country, he hears two shepherds piping back and forth a ranz des vaches (the traditional melody of Swiss shepherds for summoning their flocks); this pastoral duet, the peaceful landscape, the rustling of the trees gently rocked by the wind, some prospects of hope he recently found—all combine to soothe his heart with unusual tranquility and brighten his thoughts. But she reappears, he feels his heart tighten, he is smitten with sad foreboding: what if she were to prove false?…One of the shepherds resumes his simple tune; the other no longer responds. The sun sets…distant roll of thunder…solitude…silence.

IV. March to the Scaffold

He dreams he has murdered his Beloved, that he has been condemned to death and is being led to the scaffold. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is now somber and agitated, now brilliant and solemn, in which the muffled sound of heavy steps is suddenly juxtaposed with the noisiest clamor. At the end, the idée fixe returns for a moment like a final thought of love, suddenly interrupted by the death blow.

V. Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath

He imagines himself at a Witches’ Sabbath, among a hideous throng of ghouls, sorcerers and monsters of every kind, assembled for his funeral. Ominous sounds, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries that other cries seem to answer. The Beloved’s melody reappears, but it has lost its noble and timid character; it has become a vulgar dance tune, unworthy, trite and grotesque: there she is, coming to join the Sabbath…A roar of joy greets her arrival… She takes part in the infernal orgy…The funeral knell, a burlesque parody of the Dies irae…the witches’ round… the dance and the Dies irae are heard together.

Portrait of a young Berlioz by Emile Signol, at the Académie de France, Villa Medici, where Berlioz spent some time as a Prix de Rome laureateduring his trip to Italy in 1831-1832.