Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Joyful Noise! (12/02/17) PROGRAM NOTES by Steven Ledbetter
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Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Joyful Noise! (12/02/17) PROGRAM NOTES By Steven Ledbetter NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Capriccio espagnole, Opus 34 Nikolai Andreyevich RimskyKorsakov was born at Tikhvin, government of Novgorod, on March 18, 1844, and died at Lyubensk, government of St. Petersburg, on June 21, 1908. He composed Capriccio espagnol in the summer of 1887. The score cals for three flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes (one doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani plus five percussionists, harp, and strings. Duration is about 15 minutes. During the season of 18861887, Nikolai RimskyKorsakov became especially interested in problems of violin technique as part of his continuing study of the orchestral instruments and their possibilities. Having composed a Fantasy on two Russian themes for violin and orchestra, he decided to write a similar work on Spanish themes, though after sketching the work he laid it aside temporarily to take up his generous, selfimposed task of completing and orchestrating Borodin’s unfinished opera Prince Igor after that composer died suddenly in February 1887. While continuing his work on the Borodin opera in the summer of 1887, Rimsky interrupted work long enough to finish the previously sketched composition on Spanish themes, though now it became primarily an orchestral showpiece, though with a few passages for solo violin remaining as evidence of his original plan. Ever since its completion, listeners have rightly regarded the Capriccio as one of the great demonstrations of orchestral color. But the real significance of Rimsky’s achievement is that he accomplished these prodigies of timbral invention without greatly expanding the orchestra and without drawing on such modernists as Wagner. As he himself proudly pointed out, he had written his piece “within the limits of the usual makeup of Glinka’s orchestra.” The various sections of the Capriccio espagnole, played without break, are: 1. Alborada (Vivo e strepitoso), a brilliant 2/4 dance in A major that also returns, rondolike, to give an overall shape to the whole; 2. Variazioni (Andante con moto), in F major, highlighting the horn section; 3. Alborada, a repeat of the opening in Bflat with the first appearance of the solo violin that recalls the work’s genesis; 4. Scena e canto gitano (6/8, D minor), introduced by a series of solo cadenzas for different instruments; it runs directly into 5. Fandango asturiano (3/4, A major), with full orchestral forces in kaleidoscopic display, including stringed instruments strummed like guitars and lots of violin harmonics. This leads into the coda (2/4, A major), which is one last statement of the Alborada made as lively and brilliant as possible. CARL MARIA VON WEBER Invitation to the Dance (orchestrated by Hector Berlioz), Opus 65 (J.260) Carl Maria von Weber was born in Eutin, near Lübeck, apparently on November 18, 1786, and died in London on June 5, 1826. He composed Aufforderung zum Tanz (Invitation to the Dance) for piano solo on July 28, 1819. The orchestral version was made by Hector Berlioz in 1841. The score cals for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, timpani, two harps, and strings. Duration is about 9 minutes. In 1819 Weber was making plans to produce a German opera in Dresden to celebrate the marriage of the Prince Friedrich August to an archduchess from Austria. This would have been the first opera in German to be produce there, where the court was dominated by a taste for Italian opera (despite the fact that the King and the entire court and public spoke German). Weber’s friend Friedrich Kind was chosen and librettist and offered a choice of plots: historical, mythological, or fairy. The last was chosen and Kind quickly delivered a text for Alcindor, derived from a tale in the Thousand and One Nights. It was not to be. The pro-Italian forces at court mounted a cabal to convince the King that Weber’s opera was full of superstitions, and the commission was canceled. This was a severe blow to the composer, but rather than succumb to depression, he turned out a series of brilliant showpieces for piano over the space of a month. One of these became his best-known instrumental work, the first concert waltz. It appeals to the essential theatricality of Weber nature by telling, in its music, an entire little story. When he first played it to his wife, he provided this account: First approach of the dancer, to whom the lady gives an evasive answer. His more pressing invitation; her acceptance of his request. Now they converse in greater detail; he begins; she answers; he with heightened expression; she responds more warmly; now for the dance! His remarks concerning it; her answer; their coming together; their going forward; expectation of the beginning of the dance. The Dance. End: his thanks, her reply, and their parting. Silence. A entire little scene of flirtation, with the swirling waltz as its main point. It became even better known after Berlioz orchestrated it, making the “plot” even clearer, in 1841. It is that version that is the most frequently heard. In this one piece, Webern elevated the waltz to the list of short musical forms—including the polonaise and scherzo, later still the mazurka and polonaise—that became important genres for Chopin and Liszt. And the waltz quickly grew to be the social dance of the entire century. GEORGES BIZET L’Arlésienne, Suite No. 2 Georges Alexandre César Léopold Bizet was born in Paris on October 25, 1838, and died in Bougival, near Paris, on June 3, 1875. He composed the score of incidental music to Daudet’s drama L’Arlésienne in the summer of 1872. The score cals for two flutes, two oboes (with English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, alto saxophone, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, timpani and three percussionists, harp, and strings. Duration is about 18 minutes. During his alltoofew thirtyseven years, Bizet developed a mastery of the musical theater scarcely known in France before or since. His final score, Carmen, has never been off the stage since its premiere. Even his earlier works, in which he was clearly learning his craft, have that sense of color and timing that is crucial to a dramatic composer. (It is astonishing to realize that Bizet planned, sketched, or composed twentyfive operas, most of which were never got beyond preliminary planning, but they indicate how thoroughly bound up with the theater was his imagination.) L’Arlésienne (“The Woman of Arles”) was a play by Alphonse Daudet, better known as a novelist of the naturalist school, noted for his keen and observant portrayal of character. Bizet was commissioned to write a score of incidental music to accompany the play for an orchestra limited to twentysix instruments. During the summer of 1872 he rapidly composed a virtuosic and delicate score, which was realized in the performance by an ensemble of superb musicians. Unfortunately the audience was bored with the play and the music (they considered Bizet a “confounded Wagnerian”), and the show closed in three weeks. The type of music he had written—roughly corresponding to the background score accompanying a dramatic television program today—was in low estate, and none of the music critics even bothered to attend a performance. But the theater’s conductor, Louis Reyer, himself a composer, declared the music a masterpiece. Bizet quickly arranged four numbers from the score into a suite for full orchestra. The second suite was assembled after Bizet’s death by Ernest Guiraud, the composer who also adapted Carmen from an opéracomique (with spoken dialogue) to an opera purely sung, the version we hear most often today.) The play was set in Provence, and the music is full of Provençal color. Some of this comes from the use of traditional themes of the region, but Bizet assimilates them so perfectly that they might well come originally from his pen. The best-known number in the entire score is the Farandole that closes Suite No. 2, often heard separately with Christmas connotations as a march of the three kings. PIETRO MASCAGNI Intermezzo from Cavaleria rusticana Pietro Mascagni was born in Livorno on December 7, 1863, and died in Rome on August 2, 1945. He composed Cavalleria rusticana in 1890; it was premiered in Rome on May 17 that year. The Intermezzo cals for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two each of obose, clarinets, bassoons, and horns, harp, optional organ, and strings. Duration is about 3 minutes. By his midtwenties Mascagni had already written three unperformed fulllength operas. He composed Cavaleria Rusticana (Rustic Chivalry), based on a tale by the Sicilian author Giovanni Verga, in response to a publisher’s competition for a new oneact opera. It was one of the winners, and its first performance, in 1890, made the young man famous overnight. He never managed to repeat that success through a long career of operatic composition, but his stormy, passionate masterpiece of love, jealousy, and murder on a sunny Easter Sunday in a small Sicilian town is constantly with us. The Intermezzo provides a brief respite from the tensions of the plot between the two scenes of the single act. © Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com).