Program Notes

Arturo Márquez

Danzón No. 2

Arturo Márquez was born in Álamos, Sonora, Mexico, on December 20, 1950. The score for Danzón No. 2 calls for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, and strings. The duration is approximately 10 minutes.

The danzón, the official dance of Cuba, probably originated in Haiti and is popular throughout the Caribbean and all along the gulf coast of Mexico, especially in the state of Veracruz. It has been an inspiration for Mexican composer Arturo Márquez, the son of a mariachi musician, since his childhood. Márquez is best known for his interdisciplinary works, blending music with theater, dance, cinema, and photography. His series of eight Danzónes composed in the 1990s explore popular 20th-century rhythms and melodies of urban music and social dance, incorporating them into Classical structures.

Márquez studied piano, violin, and trombone in Mexico, later studying composition privately in France. He came to California in 1990 on a Fulbright Fellowship, receiving an MFA in composition at the California Institute of the Arts. For 10 years he taught composition at Mexico’s Escuela Nacional de Música.

Danzón No. 2, composed in 1994 on a commission from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, gained instant popularity and is sometimes referred to humorously as Mexico’s second national anthem. The inspiration for the work came to Márquez after a visit to a ballroom in Veracruz. The composer writes: “I discovered that the apparent lightness of the danzón hides a music full of sensuality and rigor,” and added: “…it is a personal way of expressing my admiration and feelings towards real popular music.”

Like most Caribbean salsa and Afro-Cuban, music, danzón is based on a clave, a repeated rhythmic figure that is maintained for the entire piece, even as it progresses through a variety of moods and melodic themes.

Program Notes

Joaquín Rodrigo

Concierto de Aranjuez

Joaquín Rodrigo was born in Sagunto, Valencia, Spain on November 22, 1901, and died in Madrid, Spain on July 6, 1999. The score for Concierto de Aranjuez calls for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, strings, and solo guitar. The duration is approximately 24 minutes.

Like his fellow Spanish composers Enrique Granados and Manuel de Falla, Joaquín Rodrigo traveled to Paris to study composition and piano. Although he had lost his eyesight to a severe illness at age three, he became an accomplished pianist and a star composition student of Paul Dukas (composer of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice). In the early 1930s Rodrigo had to return to Spain when the family’s wine business went bankrupt, but he succeeded in obtaining a scholarship and returning to Paris for further studies. During the Spanish Civil War, he traveled extensively in Europe, especially through France and Germany, finally returning home in 1939 to settle in Madrid. The premiere in 1940 of his Concierto de Aranjuez catapulted him to world recognition. In 1947 the Manuel de Falla chair was created for him at Madrid University where he composed and taught for the rest of his long life.

Rodrigo’s style is far removed from the major currents of European musical development in the 20th century. Rather, it reflects Spain’s classical and folk music, art, and literature, frequently using old Spanish melodies as his themes. His harmonic language is so conservative that the 18th-century composer to the Spanish court, Domenico Scarlatti, beats him hands down in the use of dissonance and adventurous harmonies. Rodrigo composed about 170 works, including 11 concertos and 60 songs and music for the ballet, theater, and film.

The Concierto de Aranjuez has remained Rodrigo’s most popular work. While he maintained that there was no program implied, the title refers to a famous royal enclave on the road to Andalusia on the Tagus River near Madrid. According to the composer, the music “…seems to bring to life the essence of 18th-century court life, where aristocratic distinction blends with popular culture. …The concerto is meant to sound like the hidden breeze that stirs the treetops in the parks; it should only be as strong as a butterfly and as delicate as a veronica [a pass with the cape at a bullfight].”

The guitar solo that opens the concerto sets up a series of strummed chords that promise, but delay, the arrival of the principal theme. Only a full minute later, after the

Program Notes

orchestra has repeated the pattern, does the theme actually appear, played by the violins with the orchestra and soloist engaging in a musical dialogue.

The Adagio is truly the heart of the concerto, capturing for the concert hall the brooding Flamenco strains. Here, a mournful modal theme is introduced by that quintessentially melancholy instrument, the English horn. But it is the guitar that sinuously, even lovingly, embellishes the melody like an example of fine decorative Moorish calligraphy. The melody has morphed into everything from elevator music to the award-winning jazz recording for trumpet and flugelhorn by Miles Davis.

The final movement comes like a splash of cold water on a sunburn. Again, the guitar soloist begins the movement in accordance with the usual classical concerto structure. The movement is a series of free variations based on a lively 16th-century folksong. The transformations of the theme become the topic of discussion between the soloist and various members of the orchestra, as well as a vehicle for some charming orchestral color. Just as it had the first word, the lone voice of the guitar has the last one.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk in present day Udmurtia, Russia, on May 7, 1840, and died in St. Petersburg, Russia on November 6, 1893. The score for the Symphony No. 4 calls for three flutes, two piccolos, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, one tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. The duration is approximately 45 minutes.

Throughout Tchaikovsky’s creative career, his inspiration went through extreme cycles tied to his frequent bouts of deep depression and self-doubt. The composition of this symphony in 1877 was strongly influenced by the events in his life that year.

Things were actually looking up for Tchaikovsky during the early part of 1877. He had his first contact with Nadezhda von Meck, the wealthy widow of a railroad builder, who adored Tchaikovsky’s music and arranged to pay him a large annual stipend. The only stipulation she attached to her generous help was that they never meet in person, although they corresponded voluminously. In May he started work on the Fourth Symphony, but in July came his disastrous marriage to one of his students, Antonina Milyukova, who had fallen madly in love with him and had written to him confessing her devotion. Although Tchaikovsky, who was homosexual, didn’t even remember the girl,

Program Notes

he hoped the marriage would still the rumors about his sexual preference. Instead, he fled Antonina after two weeks. In total despair, he made a pathetic attempt at suicide (walking into the Moskva River, hoping to die of pneumonia) and ended up in complete mental collapse. To recuperate, his brother Modest took him to Switzerland and Italy, where he picked up work on the symphony, finishing it in January 1878.

Tchaikovsky dedicated the work to Mme. von Meck, expressing his confidence in the new work: “I feel in my heart that this work is the best I have ever written.” He did not return from abroad for the February 1878 premiere in Moscow, which was only a lukewarm success. Tchaikovsky himself contributed to the notion that the Symphony was programmatic. He wrote to his patroness:

Of course my symphony is programmatic, but this program is such that it cannot be formulated in words. That would excite ridicule and appear comic. Ought not a symphony – that is, the most lyrical of all forms – to be such a work? Should it not express everything for which there are no words, but which the soul wishes to express, and which requires to be expressed?

The Symphony opens with a sinister fanfare theme for the brass, which recurs several times as the movement unfolds, and which Tchaikovsky associated with the cruel exigencies of fate. The anxiety-laden main theme strives towards a resolution that continually seems to elude it. The relief comes with the second theme, one of Tchaikovsky’s inimitable melodies for solo clarinet, and a third played in counterpoint with the clarinet theme by the strings and timpani.

A plaintive melody on the oboe, accompanied by pizzicato strings, opens the second movement. The pace picks up in the middle section where the composer adds a dance-like melody that becomes increasingly intense until he returns to the gentle oboe theme now in the violins with the woodwinds adding feathery ornaments.

The third movement, Pizzicato ostinato, is a playful diversion. It is a typical scherzo and trio. Within the trio is a medley of tunes, the first for a pair of oboes, the second, a slightly mournful Russian folk tune, also for the upper winds, the third a playful staccato brass riff. The movement ends with a medley of the various themes and instrumental combinations.

The finale of the Fourth is the most “Russian” of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic movements. It is something of a musical battle between the festive and the melancholy, authentic Russian boisterousness set against the angst of the first movement. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that the movement is brought up short towards the end by the reappearance of the fanfare from the opening movement – the specter at the feast. An energetic coda, however, tips the balance into positive territory – or triumph over adversity.

Program notes by: Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn | Wordpros@mindspring.com | www.wordprosmusic.com