Notes for Classics 9: Russian Virtuosity Saturday, April 13 and Sunday, April 14 Jayce Ogren, Music Director Finalist — István Várdai, Cello Samuel Barber Essay No 2 for Orchestra, Op. 17 THE VITAL STATS Composer: born March 9, 1910, West Chester, PA; died January 23, 1981, New York City. Work composed: 1942 World premiere: The Second Essay for Orchestra premiered on April 16, 1942 at Carnegie Hall with Bruno Walter and the New York Philharmonic, on the occasion of the orchestra’s centennial celebration. Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, tam-tam, and strings. Estimated duration: 11 minutes In the autumn of 1940, Samuel Barber’s uncle, composer Sydney Homer, urged his nephew to write a music drama “on the lines of [Beethoven’s] Fidelio, built on sympathy for suffering and with a voice of true eloquence.” Keenly aware of the threatening war in Europe, Homer continued, “They say insects could destroy the world if they were unchecked. Something like that is going on in civilization. Write the greatest thing you possibly can!” The Second Essay for Orchestra, Barber’s response to Homer’s letter, combines Barber’s interest in literature with the composer’s own concerns about the war. A lover of prose and poetry throughout his life, Barber was drawn to a diverse group of writers, including Percy Shelley, James Agee, Emily Dickinson, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pablo Neruda, and James Joyce. An essay, in Barber’s words (he used the Oxford English Dictionary definition), is “a composition of moderate length on any particular subject … more or less elaborate in style, though limited in range.” Barber’s Second Essay explores three themes, the first introduced by solo woodwinds, the second by the violas (parts of this theme suggest John Williams’ music from the blockbuster film Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone), and the third, a fugue for brasses and woodwinds. Barber completed the Second Essay on March 15, 1942. “I have been composing very hard,” he wrote to poet Katherine Garrison Chapin, “and my music has been going so well that it seems incongruous for times such as these. But I’ve taken the attitude that it is better to continue in one’s job tutta forza [full strength] until one’s draft board decides otherwise.” About the Second Essay itself, Barber said, “Although it has no program, one perhaps hears that it was written in war-time.” In a review of the Second Essay, a critic said of Barber, “In a short space he creates and sustains a mood … worked out with economy of knowledge and assurance … perhaps a shade too solemn, but a composer is entitled to his own thesis.” Noting Barber’s affinity for literature, another critic dubbed him the “musical American Shelley.” Sergei Prokofiev Symphonia Concertante in E minor for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 125 THE VITAL STATS Composer: born April 27, 1891, Sontsovka, Bakhmutsk region, Yekaterinoslav district, Ukraine; died March 5, 1953, Moscow. Work composed: Prokofiev adapted and expanded his earlier unsuccessful Cello Concerto, Op. 58, originally completed in 1938. He worked on what was first titled his Cello Concerto No. 2 Op. 125 in 1950- 51; after its 1952 premiere, he made revisions, including a new title. Written for and dedicated to cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. World premiere: Rostropovich gave the premiere in Moscow on February 18, 1952, with Sviatoslav Richter conducting. Instrumentation: solo cello, 2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, side drum, tambourine, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, celesta, and strings. Estimated duration: 37 minutes In January 1945, just days after the successful premiere of his Fifth Symphony, Sergei Prokofiev collapsed at home and suffered a major concussion. Two months later, the 54-year-old composer hovered near death. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with an enlarged heart, a condition caused by his untreated hypertension. Prokofiev eventually recovered enough to resume his compositional activities, but he continued to suffer from blinding headaches and nosebleeds for some time. This health scare began Prokofiev’s long physical decline, and he died eight years later, on the same day as Joseph Stalin. In 1949, Aleksandr Kholodilin, a Soviet cultural official, offered Prokofiev a 20,000-ruble commission for a new three-movement work. Prokofiev decided to repurpose his first cello concerto and offered the new work, then titled Cello Concerto No. 2, to 22-year-old cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who gave technical advice on the solo passages. After Op. 125’s premiere, Prokofiev made revisions, including a significant change of title from Cello Concerto No. 2 to Symphony-Concerto (also translated as Sinfonia-Concertante). The new name reflects the equal status of both soloist and orchestra, and also gives some indication of the technical challenges required by the orchestra, challenges that elevate the ensemble’s role beyond that of simple accompaniment. “In the Symphony-Concerto, just as in the Sixth Symphony and the last piano sonatas, the old and the new in Prokofiev stand side by side,” biographer Sergei Nestyev observed. “The old manifests itself chiefly in the harshness of timbre and harmony and in the deliberately disjointed character of certain passages … But these particular passages … must not be construed as the predominant stylistic elements of the work. On the contrary, it is the broad and idiomatic singing themes … that are the most prominent features of this composition.” The Andante strings these “broad and idiomatic singing themes” together like a sparkling row of gems, each one catching our attention with its particular shine. In the central Scherzo, the longest of the three movements, the soloist’s technical skills are on full display, particularly the passages of double-stops executed at lightning speed. The closing theme-and-variations features lyricism combined with incessant forward motion, and includes an ethereal passage for soloist and celeste. “The Sinfonia Concertante is an enormously appealing and powerful composition,” biographer Harlow Robinson observes, “and one of Prokofiev’s crowning achievements in the concerto form.” Modest Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at an Exhibition THE VITAL STATS Composer: born March 21, 1839, Karevo, Pskov district; died March 28, 1881, St. Petersburg. Work composed: June 2 – June 22, 1874. Maurice Ravel orchestrated it in the summer of 1922. World premiere: Serge Koussevitzky led the first performance of Ravel’s version on October 22, 1922, in Paris. Instrumentation: 3 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (1 doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, alto saxophone, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, side drum, bass drum, rattle, cymbals, tam-tam, whip, triangle, xylophone, glockenspiel, bells, celesta, two harps, and strings. Estimated duration: 33 minutes Modest Mussorgsky’s most popular composition owes its reputation to its orchestrator, Maurice Ravel. Before Ravel set this obscure piano suite for orchestra in 1922, it was virtually unknown. Pictures at an Exhibition is Mussorgsky’s musical portrayal of a memorial exhibit of artwork by Victor Hartmann, an artist, designer, architect, and close friend. In the spring of 1874, Russian critic Vladimir Stasov organized an exhibition of Hartmann’s work in St. Petersburg, which Mussorgsky attended. By June 22, Mussorgsky transformed ten of Hartmann’s works into music as a further tribute to his friend. Mussorgsky also inserted his own presence into Pictures through the music of the Promenade, which recurs periodically throughout. The Promenade’s irregular rhythm portrays Mussorgsky, a man of considerable size, ambling through the exhibit, sometimes pausing before a particular picture that caught his interest. It leads directly to the first picture, Gnomus (Gnome), Hartmann’s design for a nutcracker. Unlike the princely nutcracker of Tchaikovsky, however, Hartmann’s nutcracker is a macabre, wizened creature. The return of the Promenade, in shortened form, brings us to Il vecchio castello (The Old Castle), which Stasov says depicts a troubadour singing and strumming a guitar in front of a medieval castle. Ravel’s mournful saxophone sounds the troubadour’s song. The Promenade returns with the majestic brasses and winds of the opening, but stops abruptly in front of the next picture, Tuileries (Dispute d’enfants après jeux) (Tuileries-Dispute between children at play). Here in the famous Tuileries Gardens in Paris, children attended by nannies sing out the universal childhood taunt, “Nyah-nyah.” Bydlo (Cattle) portrays plodding oxen drawing a heavy cart. A brief Promenade leads us to the oddly named Balet nevylupivshikhsya ptentsov (Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells). Hartmann’s costume designs for a ballet called Trilby inspired this whimsical music, in which child dancers wear egg costumes with their legs sticking out. In “Samuel” Goldenberg und “Schmuÿle,” Mussorgsky combined two of Hartmann’s pictures of Jews in the Sandomierz ghetto of Poland. Samuel Goldenberg is a rich, self-important man (represented by measured phrases of the strings), while Schmuÿle, (characterized by insistent bleatings of a muted trumpet) is portrayed as a whining, cowering beggar. However, Mussorgsky’s title suggests the two men are really the same person (Samuel is the Germanized form of the Yiddish Schmuÿle), and the movement has been generally viewed as an anti-Semitic stereotype. In Limoges le marchè (La grande nouvelle) (The Market: The Big News), market women share the latest gossip. Abruptly we are plunged into the Catacombae (Sepulcrum romanum) (Catacombs: Roman sepulcher). This watercolor shows Hartmann and several others inspecting the Parisian catacombs by lantern light, which illuminates a cage full of skulls. Mussorgsky wrote of this piece, “The creative genius of Hartmann leads me to the skulls and invokes them; the skulls begin to glow.” Con mortuis in lingua morta (With the Dead in a Dead Language) follows, a mournful, eerie reworking of the Promenade.