Program Notes: Porgy & Bess
PROGRAM NOTES: PORGY & BESS World Premiere: August 20, 1882 The 5,000 bells of Moscow’s steeples — whose Most Recent HSO Performance: July 4, 2014 thunderous combined tintinnabulation was Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 1 piccolo, 2 oboes, said to make conversation impossible — were English horn, 2 clarients, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, to chime in at the work’s climax. There is no 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, record, however, that this grandiose performance timpani, triangle, tambourine, side drum, ever happened. Seemingly never having heard cymbals, bass drum, bells, cannon, SATB chorus, the work, Tchaikovsky wrote to the conductor and strings: violin I, violin I, viola, violoncello, Eduard Nápravník in 1881, “Last winter, at double bass Nikolai Rubinstein’s request, I composed a Festival Duration: 16’ Overture for the concerts of the exhibition, entitled 1812. Could you possibly arrange to PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY have this played? It is not of great value, and I (Born May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia; shall not be at all surprised or hurt if you consider died November 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg) the style of the music unsuitable to a symphony concert.” Nápravník gave the apparent premiere 1812, Overture Solennelle, on August 20, 1882 in Moscow. The Overture represents the conflict — Op. 49 (1880) militarily and musically — of Russia and France, and the eventual Russian “victory” over The Russian penchant for myth-making the invaders. It opens with a dark, brooding extends, of course, to her warfare. It is therefore setting of the Russian hymn God, Preserve Thy not surprising that Napoleon’s strategic People for violas and cellos.
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