49 minute read
Concerts and CSO Program Notes
Ethel Smyth
Composed: 1903 Premiere: The opera was first performed November 11, 1906 in Leipzig, Richard Hagel conducting Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, crash cymbals, chimes, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, tenor drum, triangle, harp, strings CSO notable performances: These performances are the work’s CSO premiere. Duration: approx. 9 minutes
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*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organizations and its performances. msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel. ETHEL SMYTH Born: April 22, 1858, Sidcup, United Kingdom Died: May 8, 1944, Woking, United Kingdom
“On the Cliffs of Cornwall,” Prelude to Act II of The Wreckers
Ethel Smyth’s long-neglected The Wreckers is one of the most brilliant, and most disturbing, operas from the turn of the last century. Smyth herself was an utterly fascinating figure: the first woman to have an opera performed at a major venue (Covent Garden and The Met), she was also an active fighter for women’s suffrage and an incisive memoirist who openly discussed her lesbianism. She was the first female composer to receive the knighthood: she became Dame Ethel in 1922.
The richness of Smyth’s harmonic language and orchestration in The Wreckers betrays Richard Wagner’s influence, but she had a dramatic vision all her own, in which philosophy, religion and politics all played a part. Smyth and Henry Brewster (her only male lover, who wrote the libretto in French as Les naufrageurs) based their three-act opera on a Cornish myth. According to the myth, coastal populations lured ships to the rocks to cause them to founder; they would then plunder the ships and kill the crews. (A recent study claims that while the plundering of sunken vessels was common, there is little historical evidence for any intentional wrecking of ships.) In the opera, the very survival of the village depends on this criminal activity, which is condoned by their spiritual leader as the will of God. Anyone who tries to warn the ships away from danger is condemned to death as a traitor. To the spiritual leader’s horror, it turns out that the warning beacon was lit by his own wife and her lover, who must then pay for this deed with their lives.
The prelude “On the Cliffs of Cornwall” introduces Act II, in which the treason is committed. The music is ominous, full of dramatic tension that explodes in a climactic tutti before returning to the gloomy mysteries of the opening.
—Peter Laki
BENJAMIN BRITTEN Born: November 22, 1913, Lowestoft, United Kingdom Died: December 4, 1976, Aldeburgh, United Kingdom
Concerto No. 1 for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 15
The 1930s were an extraordinary decade for violin concertos. Within ten short years, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Schoenberg, Berg, Bartók, Szymanowski, Walton and Barber (and others) all wrote major concertos that brought a significant shift within the violin repertoire. And before the decade was out, a young Benjamin Britten added another masterpiece to this rich musical harvest—a composition that may have been overshadowed by some of its distinguished contemporaries and, in fact, by Britten’s own later music, but it fortunately has been heard more frequently in recent years.
Britten’s Concerto was written for a Catalan violinist named Antonio Brosa (1894–1979), who premiered it at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic under John Barbirolli on March 28, 1940. Britten and his professional and personal partner, the tenor Peter Pears, had been living in the United States since June 1939; they knew that war in Europe was imminent and, as committed pacifists and conscientious objectors, they
wanted to remove themselves from the dangerous scene. Yet if they were able to escape physically, they couldn’t help being emotionally affected by the tragic times. Britten had actually begun working on his Violin Concerto in England the year before, “with a somewhat dutiful air,” as biographer Humphrey Carpenter writes. By the time the work was finished after Britten’s move across the Atlantic, it certainly no longer had anything dutiful about it. It is a passionately dramatic, vibrant work, commonly interpreted as a requiem for the victims of the Spanish Civil War. In fact, Britten had just visited Spain in 1936, the year the war broke out, for a music festival in Barcelona. There Antonio Brosa performed Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, which demonstrably influenced Britten. Brosa and Britten also played Britten’s Suite for Violin and Piano at the same festival.
Britten’s Violin Concerto opens with a timpani solo playing a fundamental rhythmic motif that is subsequently used as counterpoint to the violin’s lyrical melody. The diabolical scherzo that follows the haunting first movement in some ways foreshadows Shostakovich’s First Concerto, written almost a decade later. Its middle section, which obsessively develops a relatively simple, almost folk-like, theme, culminates in a stunning trio for two piccolos and tuba, which in turn leads into the recapitulation. Britten inserted his cadenza before the finale (again anticipating Shostakovich); the cadenza is based on the rhythmic motif with which the whole work began. The final movement is written in the form of a passacaglia, a set of variations on a bass melody first presented by the three trombones. The variations grow more and more animated until, suddenly, the tempo broadens to largamente, preparing for the recitative-like lament that ends the work with the musical equivalent of a question mark.
—Peter Laki
JEAN SIBELIUS Born: December 8, 1865, Hämeenlinna, Finland Died: September 20, 1957, Ainola Järvenpää, Finland
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43
Jean Sibelius was much more than Finland’s most famous composer. For the Finns, he was, and still is, a national hero who expressed what was widely regarded as the essence of the Finnish character in music. In his symphonic poems, Sibelius drew on the rich tradition of the ancient Finnish epic, the Kalevala. And in his seven symphonies he developed a style that has come to be seen as profoundly Finnish and Nordic. It was a logical continuation of the late Romantic tradition inherited from Brahms, Grieg and Tchaikovsky, and, at the same time, a highly personal idiom to which he clung steadfastly in the midst of a musical world filled with an increasing multiplicity of new styles.
Each of Sibelius’s symphonies has its own personality. The Second is distinguished by a predilection for melodies that sound like folksong— although Sibelius insisted that he had not used any original folk melodies in the Symphony. We know, however, that he was interested in the traditional music of his country and, in 1892, he visited Karelia, the Eastern province of Finland known for the archaic style of its songs. It was perhaps this avowed interest in folksong that prompted commentators to suggest a patriotic, political program for the Symphony. None other than the conductor Georg Schnéevoigt, a close friend of Sibelius’s and one of the most prominent early performers of his music, claimed that the first movement depicted the quiet pastoral life of the Finnish people and that
Benjamin Britten, 1968 (London Records)
Composed: 1939 Premiere: March 29, 1940, New York, John Barbirolli conducting the New York Philharmonic, Antonio Brosa, violin Instrumentation: solo violin, 3 flutes (incl. 2 piccolos), 2 oboes (incl. English horn), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, crash cymbals, glockenspiel, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tenor drum, triangle, harp, strings CSO notable performances: First Performance: October 2006, Andrey Boreyko conducting and Hilary Hahn, violin. Most Recent Performance: May 2017 with Robert Treviño conducting and Midori, violin. Duration: approx. 34 minutes
Jean Sibelius
Composed: 1901 Premiere: March 8, 1902, Helsinki, Jean Sibelius conducting the Helsinki Orchestral Society Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, strings CSO notable performances: First Performance: February 1912, Leopold Stokowski conducting. Most Recent Performance: October 2013, Rafael Payare conducting. Other: The CSO released the Symphony No. 2 in 2002 on its Sibelius/Tubin CD, Paavo Järvi conducting. Duration: approx. 43 minutes subsequent movements represented, in turn, the Russian oppressors, the awakening of national resistance, and, finally, the triumph over foreign rule. These ideas were certainly timely at the turn of the century, when Finland was in fact ruled by the Czar, though Sibelius himself never claimed to have had an extra-musical program in mind. (But neither did he disavow Schnéevoigt’s interpretation.)
In the first movement, Sibelius “teases” the listener by introducing his musical material by bits and pieces and taking an unusually long time to establish connections among the various short motifs introduced. The gaps are filled in only gradually. Eventually, however, the outlines of a symphonic form become evident and by the end of the movement everything falls into place. In his 1935 book on Sibelius’s symphonies, British composer and critic Cecil Gray observed: …whereas in the symphony of Sibelius’s predecessors the thematic material is generally introduced in an exposition, taken to pieces, dissected, and analysed in a development section, and put together again in a recapitulation, Sibelius in the first movement of the Second
Symphony inverts the process, introducing thematic fragments in the exposition, building them up into an organic whole in the development section, then dispersing and dissolving the material back into its primary constituents in a brief recapitulation.
The second movement (Tempo andante, ma rubato) opens in an exceptional way: a timpani roll followed by an extended, unaccompanied pizzicato (plucked) passage played in turn by the double basses and the cellos. This gives rise to the first melody, marked lugubre (mournful) and played by the bassoons (note the exclusive use of low-pitched instruments). Slowly and hesitatingly, the higher woodwinds and strings enter. Little by little, both the pitch and the volume rise, and the tempo increases to poco allegro, with a climactic point marked by fortissimo chords in the brass. As a total contrast, a gentle violin melody, played triple pianissimo (ppp) and in a new key, starts a new section. The lugubre theme, its impassioned offshoots, and the new violin melody, dominate the rest of the movement. The movement ends with a closing motif derived from this last melody, made more resolute by a fuller orchestration.
The third movement (Vivacissimo) is a dashing scherzo with a short and languid trio section. The singularity of the trio theme, played first by the oboe, is that it begins with a single note repeated no less than nine times, yet it is immediately perceived as a melody. The rest of the theme is eminently melodic, with a graceful tag added by the two clarinets. After a recapitulation of the scherzo proper, the trio is heard another time, followed by a masterly transition that leads directly into the triumphant Finale.
The first theme of the Finale is simple and pithy; it is played by the strings, with forte (loud) dynamics, to a weighty accompaniment by low brass and timpani. The haunting second theme has a four-line structure found in many folksongs; it is played by the woodwinds, much more softly than the first theme, though eventually rising in volume. After a short development section, the triumphant first theme and the folksonglike second both return. Repeated several times with the participation of ever greater orchestral forces, the second theme builds up to a powerful climax. The first theme is then restated by the full orchestra as a concluding gesture.
—Peter Laki
©Camilla Jessel Panufnik
Daníel Bjarnason, ©Saga Sig
Composed: 2017 Premiere: August 22, 2017 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Pekka Kuusisto, violin Instrumentation: solo violin, 2 fl utes (incl. piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (incl. bass clarinet), 2 bassoons (incl. contrabassoon), 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, congas, glockenspiel, roto toms, snare drum, temple blocks, tom-toms, xylophone, piano, strings CSO notable performances: These performances are the work’s CSO premiere. Duration: approx. 20 minutes DANÍEL BJARNASON Born: February 26, 1979 in Iceland
Violin Concerto
Among Iceland’s leading musical fi gures is conductor, composer and curator Daníel Bjarnason, born in 1979 and trained in Reykjavík before taking his advanced studies in conducting at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany. Bjarnason’s compositions—works for chamber ensembles and for orchestra, songs, choruses, fi lm scores, music for dance, and the opera Brothers, based on Susanne Bier’s 2004 fi lm—have been performed by the major Scandinavian orchestras and in London, Paris, New York, Cincinnati, Detroit, Ottawa, Hamburg and other music centers across Europe and America. Bjarnason has had an especially close association with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, whose “Reykjavik Festival”—an eclectic, multi-disciplinary, 17-day event in which he was featured as conductor and composer—he curated in 2017.
Bjarnason composed his Violin Concerto in 2017 for the Finnish virtuoso Pekka Kuusisto; Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in its premiere at the Hollywood Bowl on August 22, 2017, during that very same “Reykjavík Festival.” Kuusisto performed the work widely in Europe and America thereafter and recorded it with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra under the composer’s direction in 2020. The Concerto was fi rst performed under the title Scordatura (from the Italian for “out-of-tune”), indicating a deliberate mistuning of one or more strings. The scordatura in Bjarnason’s work, now titled simply Violin Concerto, tunes the violin’s G string, the instrument’s lowest, down to D, the pitch that serves as a root, a reference point, throughout the work’s continuous, 25-minute duration.
The soloist begins alone, whistling along with a quiet tune plucked noteby-note on the instrument. Those lines diverge and the orchestra enters, hesitantly at fi rst but with slowly increasing challenge to the soloist. The violin reclaims prominence with a tiny solo cadenza, after which the orchestral strings ethereally echo the work’s opening tune. The brasses then draw more aggressive music from the ensemble, which the soloist again subdues into a quiet, icy passage that is reduced to a soft rumbling in the timpani. The bent, sliding notes and strange bowing eff ects of the partly improvised cadenza that follows off er other types of “scordatura.” The next section begins tentatively in pizzicato basses and regathers some energy, but gives way to another solo cadenza, this one recalling the glassy sounds and whistling of the opening. The orchestra tries to build to a vigorous close, but it is repeatedly overtaken by the soloist’s calming, repeated notes, and the Concerto evaporates into whisps of ascending sound, as though the music were being released from earthly restraints. —Dr. Richard E. Rodda
EDVARD GRIEG Born: June 15, 1843, Bergen, Norway Died: September 4, 1907, Bergen, Norway
Peer Gynt
Music by Edvard Grieg Written and directed by Bill Barclay Adapted from the play by Henrik Ibsen Produced by Concert Theatre Works Originally commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
CAST and Production Credits
Solveig: Camilla Tilling Hardanger violin: Pekka Kuusisto Peer Gynt: Caleb Mayo Åse: Bobbie Steinbach The Button Molder: Robert Walsh Ingrid, Anitra, Ensemble: Kortney Adams Aslak, Begriffenfeldt, Ensemble: Daniel Berger-Jones The Woman in Green, Ensemble: Caroline Lawton The Dovre King of the Trolls, Mads Moen, Ensemble: Risher Reddick Voice of the Boygen: Will Lyman Scenic Designer: Cristina Todesco Costume and Puppet Designer: Charles Schoonmaker Puppet Co-Designer and Puppet Realization: Maura Gahan Assistant Costume Designer: Rachel Padula-Shufelt Costume construction: Stephanie Macklin Dance Choreography: Nicole Pierce Sound Designer: David Reiffel Properties: Justin Seward and Cristina Todesco Stage Manager: Chaal Aydiner Associate Producer: Kimberly Schuette Production Manager: Justin Seward
In January 1874, Grieg received a letter from the playwright Henrik Ibsen asking him to provide incidental music for a revival in Oslo of Peer Gynt, a philosophical fantasy with moralistic overtones to which the composer was not immediately attracted. Grieg was, however, rather badly in need of money at the time, and Ibsen’s offer of a sizeable share of the proceeds from the production proved irresistible. Grieg thought at first that he would need to compose no more than a few short sections of music, but he failed to take into account the contemporary Norwegian taste in theatrical productions, which demanded an entertainment not unlike a modern musical comedy, with extended musical selections separated by spoken dialogue. Ibsen accordingly shortened the text of the original 1867 version of the play to accommodate the new music. As it turned out, Grieg’s score contained some 23 separate numbers and cost him nearly two years of work. His effort bore fruit. The music for Peer Gynt, in the form of two orchestral suites, won him international fame and personal economic security, and raised him to the highest position in Scandinavian music.
Peer Gynt (George Bernard Shaw suggested that “Pare Yoont” is about as close to the Norwegian pronunciation as it was possible to come in English) is the central character of Ibsen’s play. The work is ostensibly a fantasy, but Ibsen used the genre as a thinly veiled essay upon the apathy and vacillation that he felt were characteristic of the Norwegian people. Grieg at first disagreed with Ibsen’s thesis—the main reason for his initial reluctance to become involved with the project—but he later changed his opinion. “How shockingly true to life the poet sketched our national
Edvard Grieg, 1888. Photo: Elliot and Fry
Composed: Grieg composed the original work in 1874–75. Premiere: The original premiered on February 24, 1876 in Oslo, conducted by Johan Hennum. The Barclay adaptation premiered on October 19, 2017, Ken-David Masur conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Instrumentation: SAB vocal soloists, SATB chorus, solo Hardanger fiddle, 3 flutes (incl. 3 piccolos), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, chimes, crash cymbals, snare drum, tamtam, tambour de Basque, triangle, xylophone, harp, organ, piano, strings CSO notable performances: These performances are the CSO premiere of Bill Barclay’s adaptation of Peer Gynt. Duration: approx. 75 minutes
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*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organizations and its performances. msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel. character,” he wrote after Ibsen’s death. Most of the play’s characters assume allegorical functions: they are more Jungian archetypes than true individuals. The death of Åse, Peer’s mother, for example, represents not just the loss of a loved one but, on Ibsen’s allegorical plane, also evokes “the dying of nature in the autumn, far up in the North—the disappearance of the sun for months, leaving this globe in a ruddy darkness,” according to Henry T. Finck.
Grieg outlined the plot of the play in the preface to the score of the Second Suite, though it needs to be pointed out that, as with Åse, the episodes and characters he mentions have a deeper, symbolic signifi cance than is apparent from this brief précis:
Peer Gynt, the only son of poor peasants, is drawn by the poet as a character of morbidly developed fancy and a prey to megalomania.
In his youth, he has many wild adventures—comes, for instance, to a peasants’ wedding where he carries the bride up to the mountain peaks.
There he leaves her so that he may roam about with wild cowherd girls.
He then enters the land of the Mountain King, whose daughter falls in love with him and dances for him. But he laughs at the dance and its droll music, whereupon the enraged mountain folk wish to kill him.
But he succeeds in escaping and wanders to foreign countries, among others to Morocco, where he appears as a prophet and is greeted by
Arab girls. After many wonderful guidings of Fate, he at last returns as an old man, after suff ering shipwreck on his way to his home, which is as poor as he left it. There the sweetheart of his youth, Solvejg, who has stayed true to him for all these years, meets him, and his weary head at last fi nds rest in her lap.
—Dr. Richard E. Rodda
MAY 19-27 MUSIC HALL
BACH’S MAGNIFICAT MARIN ALSOP: AMERICAN VOICES MOZART’S REQUIEM MAHLER’S SYMPHONY OF A THOUSAND
A SEASON 150 YEARS IN THE MAKING
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A Note from the Writer/Director Henrik Ibsen’s sprawling verse play has always been intimidating to stage. His protagonist encounters a who’s who of Scandinavian folklore across three continents, 40 scenes and 60 years. As a contrast, Grieg’s original incidental score survives neatly in two concert suites, fashioned by the composer after the 1876 Oslo premiere. This new adaptation tonight tries to tame the story while going back to the wilder incidental score, mining for fresh bits of Grieg you’ve probably not heard before.
It’s hard to identify a more exuberant writer than Ibsen in 1867. In its grab bag of genres from fantasy to naturalism, Peer Gynt is said to anticipate the literary modernism of the First World War. I rather think it anticipates fi lm, cutting from place to place, exploring fantastical imagery, and using comedy to connect us to Peer the person (who many believed had actually lived). Those innovations still amaze readers today, and all this before he wrote his greatest plays: Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, Ghosts, The Wild Duck and The Master Builder.
Like the play that barely contains him, Peer has a foot in both romantic and modernist impulses. A dreamer and an opportunist, he pursues the world’s temptations in the mold of the self-made man, only to realize at death’s door the hollowing consequences of individualism. In all the translations I’ve read, the word “Self” reigns supreme in Peer Gynt. His simple aim is to be who he is above all else. After all, didn’t Shakespeare counsel us to be true to thyself “above all”? Peer dares us to criticize him for this. What is amazingly insightful is, in the decades since Ibsen wrote Peer Gynt, our global industrialized economy has only increasingly spun on this idea, as does our social media, celebritizing the Self one Instagram photo at a time. But where does compassion factor in? Where meaning? Is pleasure all? Peer’s cautionary tale of hedonism becomes more relevant with each passing day.
It is a joy to bring theatrical tools so fully into the concert hall with this iconic score. Too often, Peer Gynt is only known to us through Grieg’s greatest hits. I have labored to fi nd homes for as many unfamiliar movements from the original score as I could. To serve the music, the text had to be written from scratch, economizing the narrative while retaining the spirit of Ibsen’s many diff erent meters and rhyme schemes. We have committed to a rare fully staged presentation in the concert hall so that Grieg’s iconic music can reunite with the grandeur of the story and the caprice of its characters. Above all, we have stayed true to the spirit of equal partnership between Ibsen and Grieg in our “concert-theatre” approach. I hope we are honoring these legends most, however, in making something that feels true to us, too.
—Bill Barclay
—Bill Barclay
AUDITION
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KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI Born: November 23, 1933, Dębica, Poland Died: March 29, 2020, Kraków, Poland
Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio
Krzysztof Penderecki’s Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio represents an important milestone in his compositional development, both in terms of his chamber music oeuvre and his evolution away from the chaotic musical language of previous works. Commissioned by the SchleswigHolstein Music Festival and premiered in Lübeck in 1993, the Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio falls into the composer’s chronology at the point where his synthesis period was acquiescing to a more cohesive idiom. Of the final movement of the quartet, titled Abschied (“farewell”), the composer writes:
The question should be asked: a farewell to what? Maybe to some kinds of music, yet not necessarily the final farewell. There have been periods of time in my life when I would become interested in one type of music and then I would return to some other type. Recently, this mischievous goblin which has been always present somewhere in my music and my personality has calmed down, giving way to lyricism and concentration.
The time has come to retreat into privacy again, to leave the turmoil.
All four movements draw the listener toward the city of Vienna. A performance of Viennese composer Franz Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major (D. 956, Op. posth. 163) had left a deep impression on Penderecki and motivated him to conceive the first movement and the serenade. The restlessness of the cello line and the unison violin/cello melody in Schubert’s quintet are reflected in the opening and in the fourth movement of Penderecki’s composition. The second and fourth movements bear telltale signs of other successors of Vienna’s musical heritage: Arnold Schoenberg in the scherzo and Alban Berg in the Abschied.
Penderecki had originally conceived the Quartet as a work of seven movements, which accounts for the idiosyncrasies of proportion among the four movements that constitute the piece in its final form. Indeed, it is the Abschied that anchors the Quartet. Clocking in at eight minutes, it is as long as the other movements combined. In its opening 16 measures, the composer unifies the work by reiterating motives from the previous three movements. A lyrical clarinet line leads into a violin cadenza, followed by the barest outlines of a recapitulation. Finally, the composer permits an inkling of tonal resolution as the cello settles onto a low F pedal and the work draws to its sublime, ethereal “farewell.”
—Dr. Scot Buzza
JOHN HARBISON Born: December 20, 1938, Orange, New Jersey
Quintet for Winds
I regarded the writing of a quintet for woodwinds as challenging. It is not a naturally felicitous combination of instruments, such as a string quartet.—John Harbison With his 1979 Quintet, John Harbison clearly overcame the obstacles to the merging of five instruments distinct in their timbres, their ranges, their expressive possibilities, and their limitations. The resulting work is extremely challenging to play—its classical transparency notwithstanding.
Krzysztof Penderecki
Composed: 1993 Premiere: August 13, 1993 in Lübeck, Krzysztof Penderecki conducting Duration: approx. 15 minutes
John Harbison
Composed: 1979, commissioned by the Naumburg Foundation Premiere: April 15, 1979 in Boston’s Jordan Hall by the Aulos Quintet Duration: approx. 22 minutes
PENDERECKI: Duo concertante per violino e contrabasso
Composed: 2010 Premiere: March 9, 2011, Hanover, Germany; AnneSophie Mutter, violin, and Roman Patkoló, bass Duration: approx. 6 minutes
The piece opens with an Intrada structured on modulations of timbre and harmony. The upper registers of horn and bassoon give way to a melody in the upper winds, joined by the bassoon before the full quintet takes the movement to its conclusion. The Intermezzo second movement contains an asymmetrical, lilting tune that brings to mind the Intermezzo interrotto of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. The Romanza alternates lush, cantabile lines with an ironic, playful motive before winding down to a placid state of equilibrium. The structure of the Scherzo reveals its kinship to the symphonic scherzo of the 19th century: the only remaining vestige of its minuet origins are its two similar outer sections encasing a slower, contrasting middle trio. The Finale is a kaleidoscope of everchanging texture and character that invokes associations with a full range of musical idioms, from the wind quintets of Anton Reicha to George Gershwin’s An American in Paris.
The composer writes:
I was determined to deal in mixtures rather than counterpoints, and to strive for a classical simplicity of surface—to maximize what I felt to be the great strength of the combination, the ability to present things clearly. The piece especially emphasizes mixtures and doublings and maintains a classically simple surface. It is extremely challenging to play, and one of the principal rewards of the piece has been the opportunity to work with a number of resourceful, inquisitive, and fearless wind players in the mutually beneficial expansion of their repertory. —Dr. Scot Buzza
Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki was the most fêted composer of the 20th century by quite a large margin, boasting a ledger of honors and accolades unparalleled by any other composer of his century. Over the course of six decades, he collaborated with an impressive roster of international artists and often conceived works with specific performers in mind. At age 12, German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter began a lifelong collaboration with the composer that resulted in his tailoring many of his works to her talents, including his second violin concerto (Metamorphoses), his second violin sonata, and the Duo concertante per violino e contrabbasso.
Mutter describes how she believes Penderecki’s worldview is mirrored in his compositions:
I think the gentle impression which Krzysztof Penderecki’s music leaves is that he is a wonderful reminder of historic moments. Sadly, a lot of history is filled with drama, grief, and death, and that is why some of his greatest music actually relates to that […] For all of these very sorrowful and unique moments in all of their tragic color, he is able to find a musical language which is so personal and so true to that moment in history.
The Duo concertante was commissioned by the Anne-Sofie Mutter Stiftung for Highly Gifted Musicians and conceived for the violinist to perform with bassist Roman Patkoló. The Italian title draws on another piece for violin and double bass, Giovanni Bottesini’s 1880 Gran duo concertante, originally for two double basses with orchestra.
Penderecki’s work captivates the listener with mercurial moods, vacillating from brooding to playful, from to lush to manic. The work
opens with the indication Quasi una cadenza, and quickly unfolds into a five-note figure that volleys between the two players against a backdrop of virtuoso passages every bit as colorful as they are astonishing: Penderecki explores a full range of expressive possibilities in the span of five minutes, including scordatura (alternate string tuning), tremolo, glissandos, pizzicato, left-hand pizzicato, double stops, natural and artificial harmonics, striking the strings with the fist, percussive effects on the body of the instrument, and bowing on the back side of the bridge.
The technical challenges of the work are formidable. But in the hands of gifted performers who can thoughtfully engage their audience, the Duo concertante per violino e contrabbasso rewards the listener handsomely, indeed.
—Dr. Scot Buzza
JOHANNES BRAHMS Born: May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany Died: April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria
String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat Major, Op. 67
On a program of music by Krzysztof Penderecki (1933–2020) and John Harbison (b. 1938), how does the 19th-century Viennese composer Johannes Brahms fit?
Brahms, without renouncing beauty and emotion, proved to be a progressive in a field which had not been cultivated for half a century… progress in the direction toward an unrestricted musical language which was inaugurated by Brahms the Progressive.
The above statement from the oft-quoted article by Arnold Schoenberg, “Brahms the Progressive” from his 1950 book Style and Idea, provides at least a philosophic reason: Brahms is the composer who opened the door to a free musical language, which ushered in the age of the “emancipation of the dissonance” (Schoenberg’s term) and compositional techniques such as 12-tone, free atonality and extended tertian harmony. Within the context of our modern ears, the innovation of Brahms’ music is, perhaps, lost to us, but within the context of this program we can hear the progressiveness that Schoenberg did.
The compositional shadow of the 122 string quartets written by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven loomed over Brahms, and he painstakingly revised and edited his first two string quartets for nearly a decade before they were published in 1873 as Op. 51. Brahms would contribute only one additional quartet to the repertoire, Op. 67.
Brahms equally toiled over the symphonic genre. He started his first symphony in 1862 and it remained unfinished in 1875. He wrote to his friend Franz Wüllner in the summer of 1875, “I stay sitting here, and from time to time write highly useless pieces in order not to have to look into the stern face of a symphony.” One of these “useless pieces” was the Op. 67 string quartet.
The first two of Brahms’ string quartets are dark, dramatic, broody and often sentimental. In contrast, the third is witty, light-hearted and, as Clara Schumann wrote, “too delightful for words.” This change in character has not diminished the technical demands nor his compositional novelty. As James M. Keller wrote, “We find Brahms not less proficient in his mastery— Brahms always astonishes—but he seems to a large degree freed from his compositional demons.”
—Tyler M. Secor
Krzysztof Penderecki Composed: 1875, while on vacation in Ziegelhausen near Heidelberg Premiere: October 30, 1876 in Berlin by the Joachim Quartet Duration: approx. 34 minutes
JULIA PERRY Born: March 25, 1924, Lexington, Kentucky Died: April 24, 1979, Akron, Ohio
Homunculus C.F. for percussion ensemble, with harp and piano
Within the changing dynamics of the Post-World War II concert hall, composer/conductor Julia Perry emerged as one of a number of Black women composers whose music would point to new forms of experimentation. Unlike her peers Margaret Bonds, Undine Smith Moore, Hale Smith and George Walker, Julia Perry remains much of an enigma. But her musical activity and rich, diverse catalog frames a different perspective of how Black composers and musicians navigated the politics of the Post-World War II concert scene.
Julia Perry was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1924, but spent most of her formative years in Akron, Ohio. Her studies of violin, piano and voice prepared her for enrollment at Westminster Choir College after graduating high school. Perry expanded her musical studies to also include conducting and composition while at Westminster. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1947 and a master’s in 1948.
Soon thereafter, Perry moved to New York, where she studied composition at Juilliard. The 1950s marked a period in which Perry’s development as a composer and conductor progressed significantly. In 1951, she began what would prove to be a long and rewarding musical relationship with composer Luigi Dallapiccola. She studied with the composer first at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, but the financial support of a Guggenheim Fellowship led to her continuing this work in Florence a year later. It was also during this period that she studied with famed composer/conductor/pedagogue Nadia Boulanger in France.
Perry spent much of the decade following World War II in Europe, studying, concertizing and conducting. Like many Black musicians, she participated in concert tours and lectures sponsored by the United States Information Agency. Perry’s compositional voice soon displayed her mastery of modernist styles such as minimalism, atonality and serialism, along with the neo-Romantic aesthetic that flourished among Black composers during the height of the Harlem Renaissance.
Perry’s work during the 1960s included short-term teaching stints at Florida A&M University and Atlanta University, and the cultivation of a private studio offering piano instruction. She composed prolifically, producing a catalog that stretched across genres. Her oeuvre came to include symphonies, opera, chamber music, choral anthems, arrangements of spirituals, and art songs. Despite the prolific nature of her work, only a few of Perry’s compositions were recorded during her lifetime. One was the well-known chamber work Homunculus C.F.
The work was written during the summer of 1960, when Perry was living in an apartment that was located above her father’s medical practice in Akron. The clinical environment of the office drew Perry to the Faustian legend—more specifically Wagner, the central character’s apprentice, and his experiments that resulted in the creation of a small man, Homunculus. It is the organic nature of alchemy—combination, transformation, creation—that underscores the structure and form of Perry’s composition.
Homunculus C.F. is written for percussion instruments, harp, xylophone, vibraphone, celesta and piano. Although the piece is fairly short, its form is realized through four sections that center on the introduction of base
Julia Perry Composed: 1960 Premiere: January 28, 1965, for a recording by the Manhattan Percussion Ensemble, Paul Price conducting Instrumentation: timpani, bass drum, crash cymbals, snare drum, suspended cymbals, vibraphone, wood blocks, xylophone, harp, celeste, piano CSO notable performances: First Performance: November 2020 at a livestream-only concert, Louis Langrée conducting. Duration: approx. 6 minutes
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*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organizations and its performances. msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel. elements—rhythm, melody, harmony—that are then combined and varied in a systematic way, which can be viewed as a replication of the alchemical process that resulted in the creation of Homunculus. Melodic and harmonic elements are grounded in what Perry called the Chord of the Fifteenth (C.F.), the superimposition of two major seventh chords (E G# B D# F# A# C# E#). In the liner notes to the 1965 recording Perry wrote, “having selected percussion instruments for my formulae, then maneuvering and distilling them by means of the Chord of the Fifteenth, this musical test tube baby was brought to life.”
The work begins with rhythmic interplay between the non-pitched instruments (woodblocks, snare and bass drum, and cymbals). This exchange is amplified with the entrance of the timpani in what proves to be a transitional moment, introducing both melodic and harmonic elements that are varied in the next three sections. The second section is marked by the timpani establishing the foundational pitch of the C.F. (E-natural) as it engages with the harp.
The interplay between harp and timpani is soon interrupted by the entrance of the vibraphone and celesta, which introduces a new motive, further underscoring the harmonic aspects of the work. Having now established the elemental aspects of the work, Perry uses the last section of the work to bring them all together, culminating in the full articulation of her musical alchemy—her creation, the Chord of the Fifteenth.
In 1964, Perry received a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which financed a recording with the label Composers Recordings, Inc. (CRI). A year later, Homunculus C.F. was performed at the Manhattan School of Music. It worth noting that it is one of two works
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in Julia Perry’s catalog that references the Faust legend. The other is a play called Fisty M-E!
Despite the many health challenges that significantly affected her professional work during the 1970s, Perry continued to compose. She died on April 24, 1979, in Akron at age 55. Unfortunately, much of Perry’s personal writings and manuscripts was lost during the years that followed her death. These circumstances have contributed to her music falling into relative obscurity. However, renewed interest in the life and music of Julia Perry will hopefully not only rectify this, but also illuminate the true depth and diversity of her artistry.
—Dr. Tammy Kernodle
PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Born: May 7, 1840, Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia Died: November 6, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 35
There is certainly no shortage of great masterpieces that met with negative criticism at their premiere, but few have fared worse than Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. This may sound surprising, since this work, now one of the most popular of all concertos, has none of the revolutionary spirit of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, Wagner’s Ring cycle or Beethoven’s Eroica, to name just three works that generated heated controversies around the time of their premieres. Yet there were some distinct ways in which the Tchaikovsky concerto clashed with the expectations of people who had very strong opinions about what a violin concerto ought to be like. The great violinist and teacher, Leopold Auer, for whom the concerto was written, rejected it. And the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, a friend of Brahms and a fierce opponent of Wagner, uttered the immortal phrase after the 1881 premiere that the concerto “stank to the ear.” The harshness and vulgarity of these opinions could not help but exacerbate Tchaikovsky’s depressive tendencies that were never far from the surface. The composer never forgot Hanslick’s diatribe to the end of his days.
Why this unusually strong resistance to a work that did not attempt to challenge the existing world order but wanted “simply” to be what it was: a brilliant and beautiful violin concerto? In Hanslick’s case, the answer may lie in the critic’s inability to accept symphonic music that was not Germanic in spirit. The first great violin concerto to come from Russia, Tchaikovsky’s work certainly struck a chord that was disconcertingly foreign in Vienna. (It is ironic that Hanslick thought of Tchaikovsky as a Russian barbarian, while in Russia, the composer was considered a “Westernizer” who was not as truly and completely Russian as Balakirev and his circle, known as the “Mighty Five.”) As for Auer, the novel technical demands of the piece may have seemed to him insurmountable at first; yet, to his credit, he soon took a second look and changed his mind. He became a great advocate of the concerto, and taught it to many of his star students, whose list included Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz and Efrem Zimbalist.
The concerto was written in the spring of 1878. In order to recover from the recent trauma of his ill-fated and short-lived marriage to Antonina Milyukova, Tchaikovsky retreated to the Swiss village of Clarens, on the shores of Lake Geneva, accompanied by his brother Modest, and a 22-year-old violinist named Iosif Kotek, who assisted him in matters of violin technique. The composition progressed so effortlessly that the whole concerto was written in only three weeks, with an extra week taken
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Composed: March 17–April 11, 1878, at Clarens on Lake Geneva, Switzerland Premiere: December 4, 1881, Vienna, Hans Richter conducting; Adolf Brodsky, violin Instrumentation: solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings CSO notable performances: First Performance: January 1899, Frank Van der Stucken conducting with Willy Burmester, violin. Most Recent: November 2019, Louis Langrée conducting with Gil Shaham, violin. Other: November 1913, Ernst Kunwald conducting and Fritz Kreisler, violin; January 1919, Eugène Ysaÿe conducting and Mischa Elman, violin. Duration: approx. 36 minutes
SERGEI PROKOFIEV Born: April 23, 1891 (April 11, Old Style), Sontsovka, Russia (Ukraine) Died: March 5, 1953, Moscow, Russia
Symphony No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 44
Prokofi ev’s Third Symphony is based on thematic material from the opera The Fiery Angel, which the composer had been working on from 1919 to 1927. This work—one of Prokofi ev’s boldest creations—was never performed in its entirety during the composer’s lifetime. Despairing of seeing his opera produced, the composer used music from it in a symphony, which at least reached the concert hall in 1929.
One sign of the operatic origins of this music may be found at the very beginning of the fi rst movement, which unmistakably sounds like a musical “curtain.” The themes are subjected to an enormous range of transformations in harmony and orchestration, before the movement ends with a pianissimo version of the initial “curtain” motif.
In the second movement, Prokofi ev manages, as he so often does, to make the familiar appear unfamiliar. Through subtle changes of harmony and orchestration, he turns what would otherwise be fairly conventional melodic writing into an uncommon event, full of tension and mystery.
The third movement is, without a doubt, the most modern section of the Symphony. In this eerie scherzo, Prokofi ev divided each string section (except the basses) into three subsections and had them play elaborate interlocking rhythmic fi gures that are punctuated by the muted glissandos of the fi rst violins. This whole complex is constantly moving along a dynamic scale, from piano to forte and back again. The movement’s Trio is a much more conventional Allegretto section, after which the scherzo is repeated. The concluding solemn epilogue is nothing but a slower version of the fi rst movement’s “curtain” idea.
The Finale begins with an energetic Andante mosso for full orchestra, leading into a frenzied Allegro moderato. One of the themes from the second movement returns, played not softly this time but fortissimo by the full orchestra against a menacing background. There is a mysterious tranquillo episode, but it is not long before the Allegro moderato returns with even more “bite” than before.
—Peter Laki
Sergei Prokofiev, ca. 1918
Composed: 1928 Premiere: May 27, 1929, Paris, Pierre Monteux conducting the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris. Instrumentation: 2 fl utes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, campanelli, castanets, crash cymbals, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tamtam, tambour de Basque, 2 harps, strings CSO notable performances: First/Most Recent Performance: February 2008, Pietari Inkinen conducting Duration: approx. 34 minutes
OF NOTE Congratulations to Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra (CSYO) Concerto Competition winners Vivian Chang and Ari Peraza. Vivian Chang (a sophomore at Mason High School) will perform the first movement of Jean Sibelius’ Violin Concerto on the May 14 CSYO Philharmonic concert. Ari Peraza (a senior at Wyoming High School) will perform the first movement of Samuel Barber’s Cello Concerto on the CSYO/CSO Side by Side concert on April 23. cincinnatisymphony.org/csyo CSYO Concerto Competition winners Vivian Chang and Ari Peraza
Chen Qigang. Photo: Wang Hong
Composed: 1998–99, commissioned by Radio France Premiere: May 21, 1999, Paris, Didier Benetti conducting the Orchestre National de France Instrumentation: 3 flutes, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, harp, celeste, piano, strings CSO notable performances: These are the first CSO performances of The Five Elements. Duration: approx. 10 minutes
Franz Liszt, 1858 Composed: 1839–40 Premiere: January 7, 1857, Weimar, Franz Liszt conducting, Hans von Bronsart, piano Instrumentation: solo piano, 3 flutes (incl. piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, crash cymbals, strings CHEN QIGANG Born: August 28, 1951, Shanghai, China
Wu Xing (“The Five Elements”)
The “Five Elements” describes a system of thought originating in ancient Chinese Daoist philosophy. These elements represent five basic stages along the Yin-Yang developmental process: water, fire, metal, wood and earth. Ancient Chinese philosophers used this concept to explain the form of everything on earth and the mutually interdependent relationship between all objects and beings. This way of seeing the world emphasized unity and described the changeable quality of matter as well as the transformations it could undergo. This is China’s oldest theoretical system.
In this work, I wanted not only to express the individual character of each element, but also the logical series of transformations that connects them. I sought to use music to explore the interdependent evolution that connects human beings to the physical world. These two domains at times seem completely separate, while at other times they seem to complement one another. Finally, they coalesce into a unified vision of the world, boundless and encompassing both domains of existence.
I also decided to express my personal view of the relationship between these elements, to propose a musical interpretation of what I consider each element’s symbolic meaning, and thus to suggest an ordering of the five elements based on their successive generation. I decided on the order of water, wood, fire, earth and, finally, metal.
For me, water is the strongest element, but it is also characterized by tranquility. Wood is the richest element, and the most varied. Fire represents life and warmth, but it is not aggressive. Earth is the basic substance, a starting point, a generative principle. Metal refers to strength and light.
—Chen Qigang
FRANZ LISZT Born: October 22, 1811, Doborján, kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire (now Raiding, Austria) Died: July 31, 1886, Bayreuth, Germany
Concerto No. 2 in A Major for Piano and Orchestra
As pianist, Franz Liszt helped usher in an age of virtuosity, in which spectacular showmanship and transcendental technique merged on the stage in ways that irrevocably altered the dynamics of the concert experience. As composer, he developed new genres like the rhapsody and symphonic poem, while transforming traditional ones like the sonata and symphony. Born in Hungary, raised speaking German, living his formative years in Paris, and spending the last quarter of his life in Weimar, Rome and Budapest, Liszt projected a cosmopolitan orientation that ran counter to the increasingly militant strains of nationalism that sounded across Europe during his lifetime.
While Liszt’s earliest compositions show a deep debt to the works of Czerny (with whom he studied), Hummel, Moscheles, and Weber, drafts of his earliest extant music for piano and orchestra (1830s) are decidedly Romantic—confrontational with tradition, highly individualistic, esoterically referential, formally open-ended, and physically and mentally taxing.
Liszt likely avoided the genre of the piano concerto during his virtuoso years because he had found such wild success with his large-scale fantasies on popular operas of the day, arrangements of movements
of Beethoven’s symphonies and Schubert’s art songs, and extended improvisations. His retirement from the concert stage in the late 1840s gave him a long overdue opportunity to collect, reevaluate and revise the miscellany of sketches, drafts and published compositions he had produced over the last two decades. The Piano Concerto in A Major seems to have begun life in 1839, the same year as the Totentanz. Liszt returned to both works several times in the 1840s and 1850s before completing them in the 1860s.
The version of the Piano Concerto in A Major played today offers an excellent window into Liszt’s mid-century aesthetic. Most provocative is the Concerto’s casting in a single movement.
The A-major Concerto’s foundational musical idea comes right at the beginning, with clarinets and oboes playing a wistful, almost melancholy chromatic melody that is colored by an intimate group of bassoons and flutes. The solo piano inveigles its way into this small ensemble with a rich accompaniment, then pivots to a more truculent transformation of the theme. As the orchestra increases its activity, the piano responds in kind, with a massive, quasi-orchestral cadenza. Three thematic transformations quickly follow: a dramatic martial theme in D minor, a leaping half-step motive in D-flat major, and a frenzied figure in B-flat minor in the dancefriendly meter of 6/8.
All three of these transformations strongly conceal their connection to the Concerto’s opening theme, so it is a welcome relief when the piano’s arpeggiated accompaniment returns, this time to support a solo cello melody. Structurally, this appearance signals the beginning of the classical concerto’s slow movement, in which Liszt spins out several variations. A cadenza ends this section, after which the orchestra recalls earlier musical ideas—prominent among them, the martial theme—while the piano thunders up and down the keyboard.
Liszt saves his most ostentatious thematic transformation for the Concerto’s most important structural event: the return to the home key of A major, which in turn initiates a wholesale review of materials heard earlier in the work. Important, though, is that Liszt treats this structural mandate to recall as an opportunity to transform further. Thus, the first solo section that follows offers a different kind of arpeggiation that accompanies clarinets, bassoons and upper strings. Likewise, the piano’s forays into the instrument’s higher registers are not thick and bombastic as before, but light and playful, as if the day’s cannon fire had given way to the night’s fireflies. A frenzied coda provides one more opportunity to review and transform before bringing the work to the inevitably thunderous conclusion.
—Dr. Jonathan Kregor
ZHOU TIAN Born: 1981, Hangzhou, China
The Palace of Nine Perfections
The Palace of Nine Perfections was inspired by a painting under the same name by Yuan Jiang, believed to date from 1691. Though I learned about the painting growing up in China, it was not until 2003 when I first saw the real work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I was immediately moved by it—the sumptuous color on silk depicts a Daoist paradise, and yet, there is something mystical, dark, embedded underneath. Inspired, I wanted to create a musical reaction to Yuan’s vision, hoping we could see as well as hear The Palace of Nine Perfections. The work, consisting of three major parts, ranges from epic to extremely
LISZT, cont.
CSO notable performances: First Performance: March 1904, Frank Van der Stucken conducting with Alfred Reisenauer, piano. Most Recent: February 2015, Paavo Järvi conducting with Khatia Buniatishvili, piano. Other: February 1982, Michael Gielen conducting with pianist Alfred Brendel (including a performance at Carnegie Hall, February 22, 1982); November 1957, Thor Johnson conducting with pianist Claudio Arrau; February 1965, Max Rudolf conducting with pianist Jeanne-Marie Darré. Duration: approx. 24 minutes
Zhou Tian, ©Harley-Seeley Composed: 2004 Premiere: March 29, 2004, Field Concert Hall, Philadelphia, Benjamin Schwartz conducting the Curtis Symphony Orchestra Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, chimes, crotale, crash cymbals, glockenspiel, large bell, slapstick, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, harp, celeste, strings CSO notable performances: These are the first CSO performances of The Palace of Nine Perfections. Duration: approx. 9 minutes
Maurice Ravel
Composed: 1907–08 Premiere: March 15, 1908 in Paris, conducted by Édouard Colonne. Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 piccolos, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, sarrousophone, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, castanets, crash cymbals, snare drum, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, tambour de Basque, triangle, xylophone, 2 harps, celeste, strings CSO notable performances: First Performance: October 1926, Fritz Reiner conducting. Most Recent: September 2012, William Eddins conducting. Other: Jesús López Cobos and the CSO recorded the work on the 1988 Ravel: Boléro, Rapsodie espagnole, et al. CD. Duration: approx. 16 minutes
Check out our NEW DIGITAL PROGRAM! For even more enriching content including full-length biographies, digital content and more, text PROGRAM to 513.845.3024*, visit cincinnatisymphony. org/digital-program, or point your phone’s camera at the QR code.
*By texting to this number, you may receive messages that pertain to the organizations and its performances. msg & data rates may apply. Reply HELP to help, STOP to cancel. intimate. Through a lush orchestral palette, I sought to create a fusion of folky musical elements and fresh approaches to orchestration and timbre. —Zhou Tian
MAURICE RAVEL Born: March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, France Died: December 28, 1937, Paris, France
Rapsodie espagnole
“Ravel’s Spain was an ideal Spain inherited from his mother, a lady who used to delight me with her conversation, always in fluent Spanish, about the youthful years she had spent in Madrid. Then I could understand with what fascination her son must have heard the frequent retelling of these reminiscences, the songs and the dances associated with them. And that also explains not only the attraction Ravel felt for this country of his childhood dreams, but also why he had such a strong preference for the rhythm of the Habanera—the song form that was most in vogue during his mother’s day in Madrid.” Manuel de Falla, Spain’s greatest composer, wrote those words about his French colleague to explain the persistent Spanish strain in Ravel’s music. Not only this Spanish Rhapsody but also Boléro, Alborada del gracioso and L’heure espagnole attest to the Hispanic interests fostered by his mother’s stories and his Basque birthplace on the slopes of the Pyrenees.
In the years immediately following his failure to win the Prix de Rome in 1905, Ravel enjoyed a burst of creativity fueled by his freedom from academic restraints for the first time in his life. In the late summer of 1907, when he first took up the Rapsodie espagnole, he was bothered by the street noises bombarding his apartment in Paris, and some friends offered him the use of their yacht moored at Valvins. He gladly accepted, and soon took up the life of a recluse, seeing no one except the boat’s gruff but likable captain, with whom he shared his meals. Ravel worked quickly, and he was soon able to return to Paris with the finished score.
By 1908, when the Rapsodie espagnole was launched into the world, Ravel’s name was one of the most widely known in French music. The occasion of the premiere added yet another bit of notoriety to his reputation, since the audience received Ravel’s new work with a mixed reaction. The galleries, which held many of Ravel’s supporters, enthusiastically acclaimed the piece, but a certain murmuring rose from the lower levels of the Théâtre du Châtelet, where the more staid members of the audience congregated. Above the rustling, Florent Schmitt, Ravel’s close friend and fellow composer, called out, “Just once more, for the gentlemen below who haven’t been able to understand.” The Malagueña section was encored by the sympathetic performers, and, despite some critical carping, the work became a success.
Rather than a single span of music, the Rapsodie espagnole is really a miniature suite of three dances with a prelude. Ravel described the first section of the Rapsodie, Prélude à la nuit (“Prelude to the Night”), as “voluptuously drowsy and ecstatic.” The Malagueña was based on a genre that was initially a Spanish courting dance that had developed into a virtuoso vehicle for the café singers of the 19th century. The Habanera, whose rhythm is similar to that of the tango, is an orchestration of Ravel’s piano piece of 1895, subtitled in both versions Au pays parfumé que le soleil caresse (“In the fragrant land caressed by the sun”). The Feria (“Festival”) is an exhilarating depiction of an Iberian holiday. —Dr. Richard E. Rodda
