OPENING NIGHT: October 27, 2007
John Adams: The Chairman Dances (Foxtrot for Orchestra)
John Adams was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1947. The Chairman Dances, commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra and the National Endowment for the Arts, was composed in 1985 and first performed the following year by the Milwaukee Symphony under the direction of Lukas Foss. The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 piccolos, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, assorted percussion, harp, piano, and strings.
With Nixon in China, John Adams managed to do the improbable: wed the lyric drama of opera with his unique brand of minimalism. With Adams' music, the libretto of Alice Goodman and the direction of Peter Sellars, the result became greater than the sum of its parts: here was a late twentieth century opera that was accessible, effective, and both mythic and subtle at the same time.
The opera presents in three acts the three days of President Nixon's historic trip to China in 1972 - the first such visit by an American official since the communist takeover in 1949. The cast includes the president, his wife Pat, Henry Kissinger, and Chairman and Madame Mao. The third act of the opera, given in one scene, represents an interminable banquet given by the Americans for the Chinese. It is intimate and nostalgic, with both couples, the Nixons and the Maos, reminiscing about the lives each led before they came to public prominence. In the opera, Madame Mao signals the orchestra to play, and begins to dance the foxtrot by herself. The Chairman joins her, and soon they are no longer at the banquet, but living in the Yenan of their youth and romance, dancing to the gramophone.
The opening music of The Chairman Dances is motoric and undulating; soon a long-lined string melody begins to coexist with it. Suddenly a wistful and nostalgic slower section intervenes, and the dancing couple are alone. As the rhythmic opening music gradually returns, it comes to be dominated by the long-lined melody. Eventually the orchestra seems to fade away and the piano begins to replace it. The music doesn't reach a conclusion so much as it runs out - as if the gramophone had wound down.
Maurice Ravel: Concerto for Piano Left Hand & Orchestra in D major
Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, France in 1875 and died in Paris in 1937. He composed this concerto in 1929-1930 on a commission from pianist Paul Wittgenstein, also the dedicatee. Wittgenstein gave the first performance in Vienna in 1932 with the Vienna Symphony under the direction of Robert Heger. The concerto is scored for solo piano, 3 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.
There is nothing ordinary about this piece. That it is for the left hand alone is among the least of its extraordinary qualities: it was unique for its time, unique for Ravel, and unique in the canon of Western music. The great pity is that it is heard so seldom.
At the outbreak of World War I, pianist Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961) enlisted in the Austrian army and was sent to the Russian front. Within a few months he was severely wounded in the right arm, taken prisoner by the Russians, and had his arm amputated while in captivity. After his repatriation in 1916 he was determined to proceed with his career despite his handicap.
His family’s wealth allowed him to commission some of the greatest living composers to write works for the left hand alone. These included Hindemith, Franz Schmidt, Korngold, Strauss, Prokofiev, Britten, and Ravel. Ravel relished the challenge of artificial restrictions - one could say he made a career out of it—and began to compose the Concerto for the Left Hand at once. Alas, when the work was finished Wittgenstein found it not much to his liking, and Ravel was relieved when Wittgenstein's exclusive use of the concerto ran out and he was able to find more sympathetic interpreters.
The concerto is in one movement with three distinct sections. The opening is simply extraordinary: rumbling basses and cellos set the darkest mood imaginable, whereupon we hear one of the greatest contrabassoon solos ever written. Magnificent! This lugubrious yet lyrical voice gives us the first theme of the piece, a melody that we will discover is the thematic basis for the entire work. This theme grows among the other instruments, building to a hair-raising climax and the amazing entrance of the solo piano in a powerful and wide-ranging cadenza. Already we must suspend disbelief: yes, this is just one hand playing. As the orchestra re-enters it carries on the main theme with much noise and fanfare, subsiding for a poignant and lyrical interlude with the piano.
Eventually the music gets busy again with the onset of a wildly demented march, incongruously full of blue notes and jazzy chords. A brief visit to a toy factory (in the woodwinds) introduces a solo bassoon, playing the blues in its best imitation of an alto saxophone; a bit later the trombone shows how it's done. Meanwhile the wacky march rolls along, becoming ever more fragmented, until the piano leads us (in a frankly astonishing passage) back to the opening material.
The piano cadenza that follows is nearly beyond belief: the one hand plays both the melody and its arpeggiated accompaniment. When a pianist brings this off it is jaw-dropping. The orchestra sneaks back in and soon lets a brief reminiscence of the march and a rude glissando from the trombones bring the work to an end.
Ravel did not compose a great concerto for the left hand - he composed a great concerto, period. At times it nearly crackles with electricity. At others it breathes the breath of life. There are places where it is darker -much darker - than anything Ravel ever composed, and yet it is also the most exuberant. It owns an expressiveness that Ravel usually kept well out of sight, and for that it is a gift.
Hector Berlioz:
Symphonie Fantastique, Op. 14
Hector Berlioz was born in La Côte-Saint-André, France, in 1803 and died in Paris in 1869. He completed his Symphony Fantastique in 1830, and it was performed in Paris the same year under the direction of François-Antoine Haberneck. The symphony is scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 ophicleides (usually substituted with 2 tubas), timpani, percussion, 2 harps, and strings.
“I am plunged in the anguish of an interminable and inextinguishable passion . . . all my remembrances awake and unite to wound me; I hear my heart beating, and its pulsations shake me as the piston strokes of a steam engine. Each muscle of my body shudders with pain. Useless! Frightening!”
With this hyperbolic prose Berlioz described his infatuation with Harriet Smithson, an Irish actress whom Berlioz had seen play Ophelia and Juliet in Paris. He had yet to meet the woman. He bombarded her with feverish love letters, which frankly scared her off. She returned to England; he, at age 26, composed his Symphonie Fantistique.
Berlioz subtitled his work “Episode in the life of an artist” and gave audiences the following scenario:
“A young musician of unhealthily sensitive nature and endowed with vivid imagination has poisoned himself with opium in a paroxysm of lovesick despair. The narcotic dose he had taken was too weak to cause death, but it has thrown him into a long sleep accompanied by extraordinary visions. In this condition his sensations, his feelings, and his memories find utterance in his sick brain in the form of musical imagery. Even the Beloved One takes the form of a melody in his mind, like a fixed idea which is ever returning and which he hears everywhere.”
This bit of melody, which Berlioz called an idée fixe, is first played by the violins in the Allegro of the first movement; it returns throughout the symphony to haunt the young musician.
I. Dreams, Passions. “The young musician sees for the first time a woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being of whom he has dreamed, and he falls helplessly in love with her . . . he thinks of his almost insane anxiety of mind, of his raging jealousy, of his reawakening love, of his religious consolation.”
II. A Ball. “In a ballroom, amidst the confusion of a brilliant festival, he finds the Beloved One again.”
III. Scene in the Fields. “Finding himself in the country at evening, he hears in the distance two shepherds piping the call to their flocks. He reflects on his isolation; he hopes that soon he will no longer be alone. His heart stops beating: what if she were deceiving him? At the end, one of the shepherds resumes his melody, but the other no longer replies . . . the distant sound of thunder . . . solitude . . . silence.”
IV. March to the Scaffold. “He dreams he has murdered his Beloved, has been condemned to death, and is being led to his execution. At last, the idée fixe returns, and for a moment a last thought of love is revived—only to be cut short by the deathblow.” We hear the chop of the guillotine, the plop of the head into the basket, and the cheer of the crowd.
V. Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath. “He dreams that he is present at a witches’ revel, surrounded by horrible spirits, amidst sorcerers and monsters in many fearful forms, who have come together for his funeral. The Beloved melody is heard again, but it has lost its shy and noble character; it has become a vulgar, trivial, grotesque dance tune.” A bell tolls for the dead and the witches’ round dance combines with the dies irae in the movement’s blazing rush to the end.
It is easy to make light of Berlioz’ histrionic emotional states, but the musical originality of Symphonie Fantastique—composed a mere three years after the death of Beethoven—is almost beyond comprehension. Program music had never before been carried to this extreme—we are a long way, here, from the nightingale, quail, and cuckoo of Beethoven’s Sixth—and there was no looking back. Likewise, the use of a recurring theme was not new, but never had such a theme driven a whole work, dramatically and musically, as did Berlioz’ idée fixe. And the whole sound of the work, with its orchestral color coming in infinite gradations between exquisite and grotesque, was nothing less than revolutionary. The “young musician of unhealthily sensitive nature and endowed with vivid imagination” had composed the most remarkable first symphony ever written.
WINTER SYMPHONY: January 20, 2008
Ludvig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn in 1770 and died in Vienna in 1827. He composed this symphony from 1811-1812 and led the first performance in Vienna in 1814. The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
It is powerfully tempting to associate “happiness” or “sadness” in music with the emotional state of the composer, or even to specific events in a composer’s life. Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony is a great example of why we should avoid the temptation.
The period just preceding the Eighth Symphony was one of the darkest and most painful in Beethoven’s life. It was a time of nearly complete deafness and growing ill health. His family troubles caused him daily irritation and, at times, despair. And he had an intense, failed love affair that led him to question his very ability to love.
Beethoven frequently sabotaged his own emotional life by pursuing relationships that were doomed to failure; whether deliberately or unconsciously he sought out women who were likely to spurn his advances or who were already married to other men. This time he had met and fallen hopelessly in love with a woman named Antonie Bretano. True to form, Antonie was already married and had children. What Beethoven was unprepared for was that she fell in love with him, too. Eventually she offered to leave her husband and children to join him. To his everlasting torment, Beethoven could not bring himself to allow her to do so.
Given all this heartache in Beethoven’s life it would not be unreasonable to expect music filled with drama and pathos. Yet in the Eighth Symphony the atmosphere is light-hearted, bright and witty: the byword here is humor, not gloom. The work breathes with the unexpected, the insistence upon the “wrong” note, the lost downbeat, the deceptive harmony.
The first movement dispenses with the usual slow-and-serious introduction, and it ends with unexpected quietness. The second movement was inspired in part by Johann Mälzel, an inventor who was one of Beethoven’s best friends. The constant “ticking” heard is a reproduction of the sound of the musical chronometer, an invention of Mälzel’s that was the precursor of the metronome. In lieu of a scherzo, Beethoven reverts to the older minuet for this symphony, lacing it with a few comically misplaced downbeats: dancers, beware! The fourth movement is a romp from beginning to end, with a coda as long as the sonata itself, leaving the listener in doubt as to just where the music is going to end.
It is clear that the abortive romance with Antonie had a profound effect on Beethoven: he would never again become so close to a woman. He might have used the Eighth Symphony to vent his mighty frustrations but instead he seems to have brewed it up as a tonic. After all, sometimes things get so bad that all you can do is laugh. Out of the darkness Beethoven gives us light—and a warning to armchair psychologists.
Richard Strauss: Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), Op. 24
Richard Strauss was born in Munich in 1864 and died in Garmisch, Germany in 1948. He composed this work in 1888 and 1889 and led the first performance in Eisenach, Germany the following year. The score calls for 3 flutes, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 harps, and strings.
Even as a young man, Strauss—being Strauss—was never shy of tackling huge themes, vast concepts or grandiose musical ideas. By the age of twenty-five Strauss had completed his first mature works, Don Juan, Op. 20, and Tod und Verklärung, Op. 24, both composed in 1888. At the time the world of intellectuals was alive with big, romantic thoughts. Freud, with his theories on sexuality and death-wish, was ascendant; at the same time, Wagner had shaken the musical world (and Strauss in particular) with Tristan und Isolde.
Strauss first heard Tristan in the opera’s first Italian production at Bologna in June of 1888. The event occasioned a complete transformation of his musical style, and even prompted him to seek a job as a rehearsal coach at Bayreuth even though he was already a well-known conductor. When Wagner conducted what we now know as the Prelude and Liebestod (Love-Death) from Tristan, he called them Liebestod und Verklärung; the title, theme and mode of expression of Strauss’ work are, then, no coincidence.
In 1894 Strauss wrote a letter giving the program of Tod und Verklärung: “It occurred to me to present in the form of a tone poem the dying hours of a man who had striven toward the highest idealistic aims, maybe indeed those of an artist. The sick man lies in bed, asleep, with heavy irregular breathing; friendly dreams conjure a smile on the features of the deeply suffering man; he wakes up; he is once more racked with horrible agonies; his limbs shake with fever; as the attack passes and the pains leave off, his thoughts wander through his past life; his childhood passes before him, the time of his youth with its strivings and passions and then, as the pains begin to return, there appear to him the fruit of his life’s path, the conception, the ideal which he has not been able to complete, since it is not for man to be able to accomplish such things. The hour of death approaches, the soul leaves the body in order to find gloriously achieved in everlasting space those things which could not be fulfilled here below.”
Strauss paints his pictures vividly, so much so that his program seems hardly necessary. From the opening gasps and heartbeats to the ascendancy of the soul at the end, Strauss creates a sound-world of astonishing veracity. The theme of the Ideal is introduced in the middle of the work; for the composer, it stands for Art. Its return at the end of the piece argues for the permanence of art even as its human creator passes away; we may forgive Strauss if he had himself in mind in this regard.
Johannes Brahms: Concerto for Violin, Cello, & Orchestra in A minor, Op. 102
Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833 and died in Vienna in 1897. He composed this concerto in 1887 and led the first performance by the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne the same year with soloists Joseph Joachim, violin, and Robert Hausmann, cello. The score calls for solo violin, solo cello, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Brahms’ decades-long friendship with virtuoso violinist Joseph Joachim was, in part, responsible for the composer’s masterful Violin Concerto. Brahms (who wasn’t a violinist) asked his friend to “supervise” the violin part he had written and ended up using many of Joachim’s suggestions. Their friendship was also responsible for Brahms’ Double Concerto (as it is commonly called)—but in a quite different way. For Brahms and Joachim were no longer on speaking terms.
Joachim was an obsessively jealous man, and had accused his wife Amalie of infidelity. She was probably innocent, and Brahms wrote her a warm letter expressing his dismay at her difficulties and, in essence, saying he believed her side of the story. Little did he know that Amalie would produce this letter in open court at her divorce proceedings! Joachim was incensed and would have nothing more to do with Brahms.
A few years into this non-communication Brahms had what he called “a strange notion.” He wrote his publisher: “I must inform you of my latest piece of folly, which is a concerto for violin and cello! Owing to the relations between myself and Joachim I tried to give up the job, but it was no use.” Despite his doubts, Brahms sent a note to Joachim telling him what he was up to and asking if he had any interest. He humbly asked if Joachim and cellist Robert Hausmann might look over the solo parts to see if they were playable. (Not coincidentally, Hausmann had been pestering Brahms for a cello concerto for years.)
It worked. Eventually Hausmann, Joachim, and Brahms (at the piano) read through the work, and before long the soloists appeared in several performances with Brahms conducting. Brahms’ relationship with Joachim dramatically improved, though it would never be quite the same again.
Brahms’ “folly” turns out to be a remarkable piece. It is also unique: no had tried a double concerto in the romantic era. As if to underline the point, Brahms’ first movement turns tradition upside-down. After a dramatic but very short introduction from the orchestra we hear the movement’s cadenzas at the start rather than at the end. Now we get the long orchestral passage we expected before, and as the soloists return they contribute both singly and together. Brahms keeps everything audible with his deft, chamber-music scoring.
A two-note horn call begins the much gentler Andante. Again this is chamber music—the orchestra is not so much a contrast to the soloists as a supporter and partner to them. Balance, color, and sentiment are all exquisitely handled, and worlds away from the stormy first movement.
The Finale opens with genteel folk-like music and a formal scheme that suggests but doesn’t quite constitute a rondo form. There’s more than a whiff of Hungarian Gypsy music here, and the tone is amiable rather than triumphant. As we reach the end of this, Brahms’ last orchestral work, we come to realize that despite all the sheer virtuosity of what we’ve heard, not one note has been for show. The virtuosity has come in the service of music—and perhaps friendship, too.
SPRING SYMPHONY: March 1, 2008
J. S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major, BWV 1049
J.S. Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany in 1685 and died in Leipzig in 1750. He likely composed his Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 between 1717 and 1721. There is no record of a first performance, but it is again likely that it was heard at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen during the same period. The score calls for solo violin, 2 solo flutes (original instrument ensembles usually use recorders), continuo, and strings.
In a strange twist, the Brandenburg concertos have come to be named after a man who didn’t especially want them, never heard them, and may not have liked them had he done so. Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, heard Bach play in 1718 and casually mentioned that he would like some concertos from Bach, if he cared to supply them. Christian Ludwig promptly forgot about his request, but with all those children, Bach was always on the lookout for work. So, two years later, Bach sent the now-famous set of six to the Margrave.
It turned out that the six concertos required a larger and more versatile orchestra than the Brandenburg court possessed. Christian Ludwig never had them performed, and they were forgotten until they were sold after the Margrave’s death.
There is little doubt that Bach himself heard them, even if Christian Ludwig did not. Scholars believe that all had been composed previously with specific performances in mind; Bach evidently just gathered them together and had them copied for presentation to the Margrave. The Fourth concerto was likely composed during his time at Köthen.
Like the others, the Fourth Brandenburg concerto is a concerto grosso, that is, a concerto for multiple soloists. But the truth is, the work is really a violin concerto in disguise: the flutes are frequently paired-off while the violin gives quite a virtuosic display. You can hear this grouping-within-a-grouping right away in the jaunty first movement. In the second the solo group acts more as a unit, while in the fugal third movement the violin takes flight once more.
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat Major for Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, & Orchestra, K. 297b K. Anh. C 14.01
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (he never used “Amadeus” except when making a joke) was born in Salzburg, Austria in 1756 and died in Vienna in 1791. He would have composed this piece - if he composed it at all -in 1778. (See below.) It seems never to have been performed in his lifetime. The score calls for solo oboe, solo clarinet, solo bassoon, solo horn, 2 oboes, 2 horns, and strings.
This Sinfonia Concertante may be one the greatest pieces Mozart never wrote. You see, scholars have never quite decided whether this work is an arrangement of a Mozart work, a work with Mozart’s solo parts but someone else’s orchestra parts, or if indeed Mozart had anything to do with it at all.
We know Mozart composed a wind Sinfonia Concertante for flute, oboe, bassoon, horn, and orchestra because he mentioned it in letters to his father. But after his death the score was missing and presumed lost. The next we hear of a wind sinfonia concertante is when a score turned up in the effects of the Mozart scholar Otto Jahn when he died in 1869. Was this the long-lost wind piece? Well, there were problems. One, the score was in Jahn’s copyist’s hand, not Mozart’s. And this wind concertante was for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, and orchestra. No one knows the provenance of this work. It may have been the piece Mozart mentioned in his letters with the instrumentation altered, or it may not.
For 80 years the work was generally assumed to be Mozart’s. But since 1950 or so scholar after scholar has weighed in, and the new consensus was that it was not by Mozart at all, or perhaps the solo parts were—with the flute substituted by clarinet—but the orchestral parts weren’t. A fine mess, with no definitive answer in sight.
But in the end, all this scholoarly debate avoids the one question of interest to music lovers: what’s the music like? Well, Mozart or not, it’s terrific. In fact, audiences have enjoyed this delightful music for generations without regard to who wrote it. And since we may never know the true answer, perhaps that is the best assessment we can make.
Dmitri Shostakovich: Concerto for Piano & Orchestra No. 1 in C-minor, Op. 35
Dmitri Shostakovich was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 1906 and died in Moscow in 1975. He composed this concerto in 1933 and was the soloist in the first performance by the Leningrad Philharmonic, Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting, also in 1933. The concerto calls for solo piano, trumpet, and strings.
As a teenager Shostakovich helped get his family through hard times by accompanying silent movies at the piano at the Bright Reel Theater in Leningrad. He hated the job, not least because he had to take his boss to court to get paid! He was a brilliant pianist: he wondered at the time whether he should become a composer when his school days were over or to continue pursuing the piano. But then came the debut of his First Symphony.
That was a watershed. After a brilliant performance by the Leningrad Philharmonic his name became well-known almost overnight, both in his homeland and abroad as conductors Leopold Stokowski and Bruno Walter introduced the symphony outside of the Soviet Union. Now everyone seemed to want a piece from Shostakovich; commissions poured in and he accepted every assignment he could. The decision was made for him.
His First Piano Concerto would have an unusual twist: it would be scored for piano and strings with trumpet obbligato. The piano begins the concerto with a couple of scales, while the muted trumpet plays a three-note figure that has a bit of sting to it—not the sort of sting that hurts but the kind that heightens awareness. The piano then gives out a kind of melancholy two-part invention. This is taken up by the orchestra but before it can have much impact the Allegro begins. Almost immediately we hear a superb musical joke: listen how the strings prepare the way for what simply has to be a slower, sumptuous melody for the piano. But instead the soloist takes off with fast, puckish music as Shostakovich grins: “Just kidding!”
There’s more of this to come. Whenever the music begins to get all serious and arty the trumpet will break in with a music-hall number that explodes the mood and our expectations. Sometimes the roles of the piano and trumpet are reversed, but either way the juxtapositions are breathtaking—and rousing good fun.
The dark, muted strings that open the second movement are as far away from this as can be. The piano enters with quiet, elegiac music and soon finds itself alone. As the orchestra re-enters the music grows to a big climax, then subsides in gorgeous string chords. At this point the trumpet—remember the trumpet?—takes over the lyrical music. The piano rejoins and together with the cellos brings the movement to a close that seems utterly devoid of hope.
The third movement is a kind of introduction to the last, its sweetness a foil for the Finale. This starts without pause, or warning, but no matter: nothing can prepare us for the musical mischief that follows. There is almost no describing it—this is high musical comedy with a degree of irony unimaginable before Shostakovich. Every so often you hear a snippet—wait, I know that piece!—but then it’s gone. The music is comical in and of itself, but also because of the goofy juxtapositions that just keep on coming.
What a thrill it must have been to hear this man—so shy and reticent as a youth and later so bitter, nervous, and oppressed—abandon himself to the madcap musical joy of this concerto. It was the most valuable gift he could give us, for it was the rarest.
SEASON FINALE: April 12, 2008
Giuseppe Verdi: Overture to La forza del destino
Giuseppe Verdi was born in 1813 in le Roncole, Italy, and died in 1901 in Milan. He composed the opera La forza del destino in 1861 on a commission from the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg, and it was first performed there the following year. Verdi revised the opera in 1869; part of this revision was to expand the original Prelude into a full-fledged Overture. This version of the opera had its first performance in 1869 at la Scala in Milan. The overture calls for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 harps, and strings.
La forza del destino (“The Force of Destiny”) is probably Verdi’s bloodiest opera. A cynic might sum up the plot in two words: everybody dies. The opera had a surprisingly cool reception in Italy when it was first staged, and some years later Verdi revised it with an eye toward making it a bit less depressing. All the major characters remain cursed and everybody still dies, but Verdi created more variety and took some of the bloody fighting off-stage. Both he and the public seemed happier with the result.
One of Verdi’s revisions was to replace the Prelude of the original with this Overture; it is one of the few stand-alone orchestral works by Verdi that may be heard in the concert hall. The Overture is not a microcosm of the plot but it does incorporate several themes from the opera. It begins with one of these, the trumpet blasts that represent Fate. It also features the music of a prayerful aria by Leonora, who is destined to be killed by her own brother. Verdi’s music is concise, dramatic, and powerful.
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op. 35
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov was born in Tikhvin, Russia in 1844 and died in Lyubensk in 1908. He composed Scheherazade in 1888, and it was first performed the following year in St. Petersburg. The score calls for 3 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.
The stories of the Arabian Nights were more than a thousand years old by the time Rimsky set down this work, yet the adventurous tales of Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba, and Aladdin held a popularity that continues to this day. According to the legend, the Sultan Schahriar is convinced of the faithlessness of women, and swears to kill every one of his wives the next day. But the Sultana Scheherazade comes to him and tells him these tales for a thousand and one nights; the Sultan, ever curious to hear more, puts off her death night after night, and eventually abandons his murderous plan.
The music of Scheherazade has two principal themes. The first is heard at the very beginning, in the bombastic, stentorian notes that no doubt represent the vengeful Sultan himself. The second theme arrives in short order. It is spoken softly by the solo violin, and represents the wily, sinuous voice of Scheherazade. Most of the other themes heard in the piece are in some way derived from these two. This gives them a surprising familiarity, and helps to bind the work together.
The two themes recur throughout Scheherazade, but their meanings change according to the context of the moment. The “Sultan’s theme,” for example, may be found scattered all over the work, clearly not always representing the Sultan. (Its return at the end of the piece, this time in a major key, may represent the Sultan finally appeased.) Similarly, the “Scheherazade theme” is always her voice when played by the solo violin, but it, too, is used to represent many other things along the way, according to the mood.
Although Rimsky gives descriptive titles for the four sections of his work, this isn’t really program music as such: it gives the flavor of the many stories without creating a true narrative of any one of them. Rimsky wondered if people would hear that in the music: “I meant these hints to direct but slightly the listener’s fancy on the same path that my own fancy traveled. All I desired was that the listener, if he liked my piece as symphonic music, should carry away the impression that it is beyond doubt an oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders, and not merely four pieces played one after the other and composed on the basis of themes common to all four movements.” He needn’t have worried: the sensuous voice of Sultana Scheherazade is irresistible.
Ravi Shankar: Concerto for Sitar & Orchestra
Ravi Shankar was born in 1920 in Varanasi, India. He composed this work in 1970 on a commission from the London Symphony Orchestra and was soloist in the first performance with the LSO under the direction of André Previn the following year. The concerto is scored for solo sitar, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, timpani, percussion, celeste, and strings.
Ravi Shankar is India’s best-known cultural ambassador, a prolific performer, composer, and author. At the age of ten he accompanied his brother’s dance troupe to Paris and had his early schooling there. Upon his return to India he began studying with his mentor, Ustad Allaudin Kahn. He was soon a household name in India and when he began his international touring he became an Indian artist known all over the world. Those of a Certain Age who remember the film “Monterey Pop” will also remember how, after all those heavy groups, Shankar stole both the show and the film with his mesmerizing performance. For many Americans this was their first encounter with authentic Indian classical music.
In addition to his stunning mastery of Indian classical forms, Shankar has written several works for sitar and Western instruments. The present concerto is the first of two; the second, “Raga-Mala,” was composed for the New York Philharmonic and Zubin Metha. He has composed numerous chamber works for sitar and Western instruments for himself and violinist Yehudi Menuhin, flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, and others; he has also composed numerous ballet and film scores.
Indian music is fantastically complex and subtle—to achieve a basic understanding of it takes a great deal of study. A good place to start would be Shankar’s autobiography, “My Music, My Life” (1969). But most Westerners find this dazzlingly different music immediately affecting and exciting despite its many intricacies.
The concerto is primarily Indian in style. Shankar writes: “The listener will not find much of the harmony, counterpoint or sound patterns he is used to, and which form the basis of Western classical music. I have consciously avoided these, using them minimally, because they are elements which, if emphasized, can spoil or even destroy the mood and spirit of the Raga.” The concerto is in four movements, each based on a different Raga. Extensive use is made of the percussion, largely to emulate the sounds and rhythms of the tabla, which are vital to this music. In a general sense each movement may be perceived, in Western terms, as a theme-and-variations.
© Mark Rohr
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