PROGRAM NOTES

Symphonies of Wind Instruments

Composed 1920 | Premiered 1921

Igor Stravinsky

B. June 17, Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), Russia

D. April 6, 1971, New York, New York

Scored for 3 flutes, 2 oboes, english horn, 3 clarinets, 3 bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, and tuba. (Approx. 9 minutes)

Likemany composers of his time, Igor Stravinsky’s compositional style shifted after the conclusion of World War I. This post-war period prompted a transition from late Romanticism to Neoclassicism, where the inflated musical ideas of Romanticism were contrasted, questioned, and distorted.

The concept of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments stemmed from a piece he initially wrote in memorium of Claude Debussy two years after his death upon request by La Revue Musicale. This piece was to appear in a tribute volume of the Revue magazine for Debussy alongside contributions by other prominent composers of the time. Stravinsky enthusiastically accepted this request, stating that “the musicians of my generation and I myself owe the most to Debussy.”

Stravinsky’s memorial piece was initially submitted as a chorale arranged for piano solo, which he re-orchestrated and expanded shortly after its submission into a larger body of work that consisted of a series of contrasting musical episodes. Some of these episodes were newly composed, and others were drawn from the composer’s previous compositional renderings. This expansion formulated the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, and the original chorale he wrote for Debussy’s memorial tribute can be heard at the end of this piece.

Although this piece is now widely referred to as the most important work for a large wind ensemble from the 20th century, its premiere in 1921 was very poorly received. Stravinsky’s intention for this composition was as follows: “The homage that I intended to pay to the memory of the great musician ought not to be inspired by his musical thought. On the contrary, I desired rather to express myself in a language essentially my own... [this work was] not meant ‘to please’ an audience or rouse its passions. I had hoped however, that it would appeal to those in whom a purely musical receptivity outweighed the desire to satisfy emotional cravings.” However, the London premiere led by conductor Serge Koussevitzky sparked disgust and disapproval from both the crowd and the critics—the audience laughed, complained, hissed, and sniffed at the phrases throughout the initial performance.

Although Stravinsky anticipated some backlash following this premiere, the strong reaction prompted him to re-orchestrate the initial scoring, substituting flute and clarinet with its original alto flute and basset horn instrumentation to enhance the effects of sharper articulations and “bitier” abrupt chords throughout. This updated instrumentation reflects a wind section that has been pulled from a symphony orchestra rather than that of a standard wind ensemble.

This piece consists of only three tempi with a precise relationship to one another: slow, medium, and fast presented in 2:3:4 ratios of speed increasing from mm. 72, to 104, to a final 144, indicative of Stravinsky’s meticulate and mathematical methodology in his compositions. As the musical episodes continue to alternate and evolve throughout the piece, the final chorale begins to trickle in, with a full-clarity presentation at the end, bringing the tribute to Debussy to a serene conclusion.

This performance marks the DSO premiere of Stravinsky’s Symphonies of Wind Instruments.

Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta

Composed 1936 | Premiered January 21, 1937

B La Bart K

B. March 25, 1881, Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary

D. September 26, 1945, New York, New York

Scored for piano, harp, timpani, percussion, xylophone, celesta, and strings.

(Approx. 32 minutes)

By the mid-1930s, Bartók had established himself as one of the most important composers of his time. He remained little known in his native Hungary, where his works were infrequently performed, but regularly attacked for their cosmopolitan modernity. (Surprisingly, Bartók, who often referred to Hungarian folk music in his compositions, was chided in his homeland for failing to produce “nationalist” music.) Elsewhere in Europe, however, the composer was winning admirers, particularly among other musicians.

One of these was Paul Sacher, conductor of the excellent chamber orchestra in Basle, Switzerland. Sacher, was—and remained for many years—a devoted advocate of modern music. He commissioned works from several of the century’s leading composers, including Bartók, who wrote his masterful Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta for the Basle Chamber Orchestra in 1936.

Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta combines the energy and rhythmic drive of Bartók’s early music with a bracing sense of compositional rigor and formal unity. Much of the work springs from a single germinal motif, and thematic cross-references bind together its four movements. In fashioning this score, Bartók dispensed with the variegated aural colors of the wind instruments in favor of the more homogeneous timbre offered by a double string orchestra; to this he added piano, harp, timpani, xylophone, celesta, and various percussion instruments. From this ensemble he extracted strikingly original aural colors.

The first of the work’s four movements opens with a sinuous theme given out by the violas. This subject is taken up by the other strings in turn, each entrance adding a strand to an increasingly dense and intricate web of echoic counterpoint. The music expands to a riveting central climax, whereupon Bartók quite literally reverses course. Inverting the theme— that is, reversing its contours, so that the melodic line falls where it formerly ascended, and vice versa—he leads the music back to its point of origin. Slowly the textures thin out, the dynamics levels fade toward silence, and the range of melody and counterpoint constrict at last to a single tone. The movement thus describes a broad formal arch, at once simple and beautiful in shape.

In contrast to the narrow thematic focus and austere contrapuntal discourse of this opening, the second movement presents an extraordinarily energetic and varied surface. Bartók calls forth seemingly all the instrumental colors and textures at his disposal and enlivens the proceedings with antiphonal statements and answers between the orchestra’s two string choirs.

The third movement provides an example of the atmospheric “night music” that Bartók occasionally composed. Here the nocturnal air seems mysterious, even eerie. And amid its clicks, rustling, and other unusual sonorities, we hear numerous recollections of the writhing theme that opened the work.

The finale begins as a lively and rhythmically complex peasant dance and climaxes with a reappearance of the theme from the first movement, which Bartók proceeds to clothe in rich chorale harmonies. Apart from this, the composer presents a generous succession of melodic ideas, most of them evoking the sound of the Hungarian folk dances he knew and loved so well.

The DSO most recently performed Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta in November 2003, conducted by Philippe Jordan. The DSO first performed the work in December 1956, conducted by Paul Paray.

Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15

Composed 1858 | Premiered January 22, 1859

Johannes Brahms

B. May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany

D. April 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria

Scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings. (Approx. 42 minutes)

LikeBrahms’s C minor Symphony, the D minor Concerto had an extended gestation period that involved a considerable metamorphosis. Brahms conceived the work as a symphony in 1854, but set himself the exercise of writing a preliminary draft for two pianos. (He followed the same procedure with the Haydn Variations nearly 20 years later.) However, he could not easily adapt the piano texture of the work to an orchestral style, so he decided to turn it into a concerto. In doing so, he set aside the funeral march he had composed for the work, using it later in the German Requiem, and wrote a vigorous new rondo as the concerto’s closing movement.

The concerto opens with a chilling timpani roll, introducing a strident, trillladen theme in the strings. Two subsidiary themes relieve some of the tension, but a more insistent return of the trill theme announces the second and more complete thematic exposition, this one featuring the piano in an even-flowing Bach-like theme set against the cutting orchestral trills. Once this thematic material has been worked out, the key changes to a sunnier F major and the piano blooms forth in a broad, expressive, and quite Romantic second theme.

The piano leads off the stormy development, thundering down the keyboard in leaping octaves. When this section has run its course, a series of loudly-hammered chords announces the recapitulation. With the thorough craftsmanship and unfailing invention that is a Brahmsian trait, all six themes presented in the two expositions are again heard, but in different relationships between the piano and orchestra.

The serene slow movement originally bore the inscription (in Latin): “Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord.” Brahms first met Robert and Clara Schumann in 1853, the year before he commenced work on the concerto, and some early writers associated the Latin inscription with Schumann, who was called “Dominus” (“Lord”) by his circle of admirers. However, modern scholars see it as a reference to the composer’s semi-suppressed love for Clara Schumann, citing Brahms’s statement in a letter to her: “I am also painting a lovely portrait of you; it is to be the Adagio.” Indeed, this movement is a very personal,