Festival Coronation March (Coronation March for Alexander III) (1883) Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky born May 7, 1840, Kamsko-Votinsk, Viatka province, Russia died November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg, Russia
Premiered in Moscow at the Sokol’niki Park Coronation Festival concert May 23, 1883, conducted by Sergei Taneyev. Scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two cornets, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum and strings. Duration: approximately 5 minutes.
While in Paris where he was occupied with the instrumentation of his opera Mazepa, Tchaikovsky received a commission from the Mayor of the City of Moscow for the occasion of the coronation of Tsar Alexander III. Expressing his great displeasure at being forced to interrupt the opera, Tchaikovsky wrote to his patron Nadezhda von Meck. Tchaikovsky continued his complaints and protests to several others, including his publisher Petr Jurgenson and conductor Sergei Taneyev.
Begun in March, both the cantata and the Coronation March were completed in sketch form by mid-April. Writing in haste, Tchaikovsky commenced the orchestration of both works and finished the troublesome task in three weeks. Sergei Taneyev conducted the premiere of the Coronation March, as it was initially titled, that May. Subsequent performances listed the work as Festival March, and it was later cataloged as Festival Coronation March. In 1891, the piece took on yet another identity, as the Marche solennelle (“Solemn March”). Tchaikovsky himself conducted the march on his debut trip to America in a concert celebrating the opening of Carnegie Hall on May 5, 1891. Rather than composing something new, he attempted to pass off the work under a different title. Underestimating his popularity in America, the audience recognized the Festival Coronation March.
The short energetic march is full of pomp and pageantry, befitting its celebratory origins. As in the 1812 Overture, from 1880, Tchaikovsky uses a familiar quotation from the Russian national anthem, God Save the Tsar. The opening bars also recall the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Living up to its title, the Festival Coronation March is a triumphant, majestic celebration, full of bravado, pomp and shine.
Piano Concerto No. 1 in b-flat minor, Op. 23 (composed 1874-75; revised 1879, 1888) Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky born May 7, 1840, Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka, Russia died November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg, Russia Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso – Allegro con spirito Andantino semplice – Prestissimo Allegro con fuoco Premiere: October 25, 1875, Boston, Massachusetts with Hans von Bülow at the piano and Benjamin Johnson Lang conducting. The audience was enthusiastic, as was a second audience in New York a week later, demanding an encore of the final movement. The Concerto created such a sensation when it was first heard that Bülow played it on 139 of his 172 concerts that season.
Scored for solo piano, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. Duration: approximately 33 minutes.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky had a gift for writing beautiful, evocative melodies: the love theme of the Romeo and Juliet Overture, music of Swan Lake, Symphony Pathétique and the memorable opening of the First Piano Concerto have all become a part of the collective consciousness. Trying valiantly to make a living, in 1874 Tchaikovsky was teaching at the Moscow Conservatory and writing music criticism for a local journal. His real interest lay in composition yet bouts of depression exacerbated his self-doubts about the quality of his music. With the hope of having success great enough to allow him to leave his position at the Conservatory, Tchaikovsky began his first piano concerto. By late December, he had largely sketched out the work and sought the advice of his colleague Nikolai Rubinstein.
Rubinstein, the founder of the Moscow Conservatory, had served as both a mentor and first employer to the young composer. On Christmas Eve, Tchaikovsky played the entire piece for Rubinstein who pronounced the new work crude, ordinary, unplayable, and, but “two or three pages,” worthless. The composer was mortified but refused to change a note, making only one alteration in the score: he obliterated the name of the original dedicatee—Nikolai Rubinstein—and substituted that of the virtuoso pianist Hans von Bülow. Bülow gladly accepted the dedication and wrote a letter of praise to Tchaikovsky. After the scathing criticism from Rubinstein it was a personal triumph for Tchaikovsky when Bülow programmed the premiere on his upcoming American tour. Eventually Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky reconciled their differences and Tchaikovsky even incorporated some of his suggestions in the revision.
Certainly, Tchaikovsky’s First is a standard of the Romantic concerto: the solo part is extravagantly virtuosic and the interplay of solo and virtuosic orchestral forces is colorful, dramatic and sometimes confrontational. In a fresh and original approach the soloist is introduced by an extraordinary melody that is coincidentally never heard again throughout the work. This grandiose opening Andante, a sweeping introduction nobly sung by violins and cellos above crashing chords from the piano, has become so well known as to be recognizable even to people unfamiliar with classical music. Following a decrescendo and a pause, the piano presents a rhythmic figure as the exposition begins. Tchaikovsky supposedly heard a blind beggar sing this at a street fair, and this theme too is hardly touched on again. As if he were searching for just the exact melody to express his emotions, a bittersweet second theme enters in the winds with a corresponding third added by the strings. The passionate development concerns itself with these two final themes, including vast mood swings that flaunt the pianist’s technical prowess. An energetic cadenza and a coda derived from the second theme bring the splendid movement to an exciting close.
The gentle Andantino simplice offers a respite from these bold gyrations, with a gentle flute accompanied by muted strings that take turns with the solo piano. Instead of maintaining the tempo for the middle section, Tchaikovsky quixotically launches into a scherzo. Full of pianistic decorations, this tune is based on a French song, “Il faut s’amuser, danser et rire” (One must amuse one’s self by dancing and laughing), favored by the opera singer Désirée Artôt with whom Tchaikovsky had once been infatuated. The scoring is of uncommon sensitivity requiring of the performer a mastery of artistic and technical resources: rapid passages in octaves, abrupt changes in mood, delicate passages of arpeggiated filigree, grandiose crescendos and diminuendos, and whispered legato pianissimos.
Filled with brilliant syncopations, the opening theme for the final Allegro con fuoco is based on the crisp, rhythmic Ukrainian folk song, “Viydi, viydi Ivanku,” (Come, come Ivanku). The violins introduce a more lyrical romantic second motto that sweeps in above the virtuosic piano line. The two themes develop into a maestoso tutti in the spirit of a robust Cossack dance. As momentum builds, the violins slip in a hint of the main theme of the first movement while the dancing Cossacks repeatedly advance upon this fragment of tenderness. In place of a formal cadenza, an excited coda with sumptuous pianistic embellishments concludes this exhilarating Concerto.
Symphony No. 3 (1946) Aaron Copland born November 14, 1900, Brooklyn, New York died December 2, 1990, New York City, New York Molto moderato Allegro molto Andantino quasi allegretto Molto deliberato (Fanfare) - Allegro risoluto
Premiered on October 18, 1946 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Serge Koussevitzky. A slow and painstaking craftsman, Copland barely finished in time for the premiere.
Scored for three flutes with third doubling on piccolo, piccolo, three oboes with third doubling on English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, piccolo clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, piano, celesta and strings.
Duration: approximately 43 minutes.
Copland’s Third Symphony secured his symphonic mastery. In the 1940s, American composers were searching for “The Great American Symphony,” and this grand four- movement work, Copland’s longest and scored for the largest orchestral forces he ever used, fit the bill. Composed for Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the jubilant symphony arrived in time to celebrate the Allied victory, with its bold, affirmative tone ensuring success.
The conductor Serge Koussevitzky had a remarkably productive career in respect to the music he commissioned and introduced, both in Europe and in his 25-year tenure on the podium of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Through his commissions, performances, foundations he created, and his plan for the activities at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, Koussevitzky provided effectual service to American music, owing in large part to Copland’s guidance. While studying in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, Copland was taken by her to meet Koussevitzky. Later in Boston, Koussevitzky made Copland his adviser on American music, a commitment they both took very seriously.
Remaining as one of the most popular of American classical composers, Copland uncannily managed to create music that seems more quintessentially American than that of any of his peers. His Symphony No. 3 also completed a stunning trilogy of significant American “Third Symphonies,” all of which were commissioned and introduced by Koussevitzky; the two others are those of Roy Harris and William Schuman. All three of these “Thirds” proclaim themselves unmistakably and specifically American symphonies. None make use of folk tunes, hymns, patriotic airs or popular idioms such as jazz but are filled with the vitality, breadth and compassion associated with the American spirit in its most positive 20th-century aspect. Although Copland vehemently denied there was any program behind this work he did admit, “it was a wartime piece — or more accurately, an end-of-war piece — intended to reflect the euphoric spirit of the country at the time.” During the summer of 1944, Copland was in Tepotzlan, Mexico, far from the sweeping vistas of the American plains and his home in the bustle of New York City. Here, he began composing his last and most substantial symphony. Featuring the open fifths and fourths so characteristically Copland, he borrows only from himself by incorporating various fragments in the first three movements from his triumphant Fanfare for the Common Man and in toto in the final movement of this grand work.
Copland constructed the opening Molto moderato in the form of a musical arch, starting slowly and then growing more agitated as it builds. With utmost simplicity and gentleness, the movement features three themes, stated by strings, then violas and oboes, then trombones and horns. Broad and expressive, both the first and third themes are referred to again in later movements. The bolder material is worked into a powerful climax as the three themes are recapitulated into an even mightier outburst, followed by an ethereal coda.
The Allegro molto, a jovial scherzo, is clear-cut and direct, with episodes reminiscent of Copland’s ballet scores. The whole orchestra fills this dance-like music with great rhythmic energy. Horns and violas extend this idea into a true theme, accompanied by chugging strings and a tittering piccolo. Repeated three times, this theme evokes ever more exuberant bursts of orchestral merriment. The slower trio section offers a total contrast in mood, with a solo oboe singing a melancholy, romantic melody. Sparkling piano music leads back to the Scherzo with a transformed trio melody in a powerful full- orchestral statement.
The third movement, Andantino quasi allegretto, opens slowly and contemplatively, featuring Copland’s typically sparse and ambiguous harmonies in soft harmonics in the strings. This movement features mainly strings, with only a few woodwinds and almost no brass but a single horn and trumpet. Here the various sections emerge one from the other in the manner of a closely-knit series of variations. The body of the movement is the trombone theme of the first movement. With yet another extraordinary transformation a new and more tonal theme is introduced in the solo flute swaying gently in Copland’s signature Americana style. In an almost elegiac air, the variations glide through a wide range of moods recalling his Appalachian Spring.
The third movement segues directly into the fourth, and in the opening of the Molto deliberato Copland teases us with his Fanfare for the Common Man. Beginning as quietly as he left the previous movement, the famous melody is played pianissimo by clarinets and flutes. The brass and percussion then state the fanfare more firmly, until an improvisatory solo oboe leads the woodwinds and then full orchestra into the body of the movement. Copland then weaves together the main theme and the fanfare with the opening theme of the first movement. Copland’s heroic music for brass and percussion became probably his best-known piece, and he used it here to summon a full measure of optimism and splendor. This fanfare theme, subtly disguised, has gone through numerous joyous, menacing and pastoral transformations in the earlier movements. As if all of the Symphony’s noble aspirations were concentrated in the Fanfare’s rising motives, Copland closes his celebratory symphony with a grandeur that must have delighted Koussevitzky, just as it still delights audiences today.