Behzod Abduraimov: Program Notes

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BEHZOD ABDURAIMOV

WAGNER/LISZT LISZT

Isoldens Liebestod: Schlußszene aus Tristan und Isolde, S.447

Piano Sonata in B Minor, S.178 Lento assai; Andante sostenuto; Allegro energico INTERMISSION

PROKOFIEV

Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Opus 75 Folk Dance Scene: The Street Awakens Minuet: Arrival of the Guests Juliet as a Young Girl Masques Montagues and Capulets Friar Laurence Mercutio Dance of the Girls with Lilies Romeo and Juliet before Parting

Isoldens Liebestod: Schlußszene aus Tristan und Isolde, S.447 RICHARD WAGNER Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig

Died February 13, 1883, Venice FRANZ LISZT Born October 22, 1811, Raiding Died July 31, 1886, Bayreuth Liszt and Wagner shared a long and–at times–difficult relationship. During his years as music director in Weimar, Liszt championed Wagner’s music and led a number of his operas, including the premiere of Lohengrin. But in 1865 Liszt’s daughter Cosima abandoned her husband Hans von Bülow, ran off with Wagner, and eventually married him. Liszt was furious with both Cosima and Wagner and remained estranged from them until a reconciliation was worked out in 1872.

If Liszt could disapprove of Wagner’s actions, he nevertheless admired his music, and he made piano transcriptions of music from eleven of Wagner’s operas. Liszt wrote a number of what have been called paraphrases or reminiscences of music from the operas of many composers–often these were completely original compositions in which the opera music served only as the starting point for Liszt’s own virtuosity. But Liszt’s transcriptions of excerpts from Wagner’s operas were much more respectful–they were almost always straightforward and literal.

Liszt made his transcription of Isoldens Liebestod in 1867, only two years after the premiere of Tristan und Isolde (and during his period of estrangement from Wagner and Cosima). Isolde’s final scene is of course best-known as the Liebestod (or “love-death”). At the end of the opera, as Tristan lies dead before her, Isolde sings her farewell to both Tristan and to life. This music has become familiar as one of the most famous orchestral excerpts from Wagner’s operas: as Isolde finds ecstatic fulfillment in death, Wagner surrounds her with a shimmering, glowing orchestral sound. Liszt’s transcription of this scene is remarkable for its fidelity to Wagner’s music and for his subtle approach to the sonority of the piano.

Piano Sonata in B Minor, S.178 FRANZ LISZT Liszt wrote his Sonata in B Minor in 1852-3 and dedicated it to Robert Schumann. The first public performance took place four years later in Berlin in 1857, when it was played by Liszt’s son-in-law Hans von Bülow. The Sonata in B Minor is in all senses of the word a

revolutionary work, for Liszt sets aside previous notions of sonata form and looks ahead to a new vision of what such a form might be. Schumann himself, then in serious mental decline, reportedly never heard the piece but could not have been especially comfortable with the dedication of a piece of music that flew so directly in the face of his own sense of what a sonata should be. Another figure in nineteenth-century music, however, reacted rapturously: Wagner wrote to Liszt to say, “The Sonata is beautiful beyond any conception, great, pleasing, profound and noble–it is sublime, just as you are yourself.”

The most immediately distinctive feature of the sonata is that it is in one continuous span rather than being divided into separate movements. Despite the single-span structure, Liszt achieves something of the effect of traditional three-movement sonata form by giving the work a general fast-slow-fast shape. The entire sonata is built on just four themes, all introduced in the opening moments: the slowly-descending scale heard at the very beginning, marked Lento assai; the jagged, leaping theme in octaves that follows immediately–this is marked Allegro energico; dove-tailed into this is a propulsive figure of repeated eighth-notes, played first deep in the left hand; and a powerful hymn-like theme marked Grandioso and stamped out over steady accompaniment. These themes undergo a gradual but extensive development–a process Liszt called “the transformation of themes”–and are often made to perform quite varied functions as they undergo these transformations. For example, the propulsive left-hand figure, which sounds so ominous on its first appearance, is later made to sing in unexpected ways, while the jagged Allegro energico theme becomes the subject for a fugue at the opening of the third “movement.”

At the end, Liszt winds all this energy down, and the sonata concludes on a quiet recall of the slowly-descending Lento assai from the very beginning. After so much energy, the sonata vanishes on a very quiet B deep in the pianist’s left hand.

Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Opus 75 SERGE PROKOFIEV Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovka Died March 5, 1953, Moscow In 1934 the Kirov Theater in Leningrad approached Prokofiev with the proposal that they collaborate on a ballet based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and Prokofiev agreed. He completed the score the following summer, but the project came to seem nearly as star-crossed as Shakespeare’s young lovers. The first plan had been to give the story a happy ending in which

Romeo would rescue Juliet before her suicide–Prokofiev’s explanation was that this was a dramatic necessity: “Living people can dance, the dying cannot.” Fortunately, this idea was scrapped, but when the Kirov finally saw Prokofiev’s score, they called it “undanceable” and refused to produce it. While Romeo and Juliet languished in limbo, Prokofiev began to pull out excerpts from the ballet’s 52 numbers: he assembled two orchestral suites and in 1937 he made a suite for piano of Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet. These were performed widely, so the music from the ballet was familiar before it was ever produced on the stage. The actual premiere of the ballet took place not in Russia but in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1938. The Russian premiere finally occurred in Leningrad on January 11, 1940, and was a triumph for all involved, though ballerina Galina Ulanova, who danced the part of Juliet, touched on the ballet’s difficult birth in her toast to the composer after the opening performance: Never was a tale of greater woe, Than Prokofiev’s music to Romeo.

The irony, of course, is that Romeo and Juliet has become Prokofiev’s most famous stage work and is widely regarded as one of the most successful creations of his Soviet period.

In contrast to the orchestral suites, which Prokofiev assembled as concert pieces, the Ten Pieces from Romeo and Juliet preserve the general sequence of Shakespeare’s play. This set opens with two introductory movements set on the streets of Verona: the jaunty Folk Dance (sometimes known as Street Scene) and the brief The Street Awakens (sometimes known simply as Scene). Arrival of the Guests is the minuet that greets the guests as they arrive for the ball at the Capulet mansion, while Juliet–the Young Girl captures the energy of the girl with racing sixteenth-notes; some wistful interludes along the way, one of them marked con eleganza, suggest a depth to her character. The witty–and very famous–Masques comes from Act I where Mercutio and Benvolio talk Romeo into crashing the ball at the Capulets. Prokofiev piles dissonance on top of dissonance at the beginning of The Montagues and the Capulets, and the music forges ahead brutally on the swagger of the rival families. Friar Laurence bustles along agreeably, while Mercutio, among the less-familiar movements from the ballet, is a portrait of one of the play’s most attractive characters. The lilting Dance of the Maids from the Antilles is danced by Juliet’s attendants as she falls asleep from Friar Laurence’s potion. Romeo and Juliet Before Parting is the painfully beautiful music that depicts the final parting of Romeo and Juliet at daybreak. The tender melody at the beginning sets the mood of love, but this music builds to a

mighty climax, then fades into delicate (if troubled) silence.

Program notes by Eric Bromberger