PROGRAM NOTES JANUARY 17/18, 2015

ALEXANDER BORODIN OVERTURE TO PRINCE IGOR

LAST PERFORMED BY THE WICHITA SYMPHONY FEBRUARY 20 AND 21, 1982

Alexander Borodin’s (1833-1887) opera Prince Igor, which many consider to be his finest work, remained unfinished when he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1887. The composer had worked on the project intermittently for 18 years, but his duties as a chemist and chemistry teacher at the Medical- Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg left little time for musical pursuits. He based his libretto, also unfinished, on a scenario by Vladimir Stasov—champion of all things Russian in art, literature and music. The scenario, in turn, drew on an anonymous, supposedly 12th-century epic, The Lay of the Host of Igor. Rimsky-Korsakov had intermittently tried to push Borodin into finishing Prince Igor. After Borodin’s death he was the natural choice to complete the opera, which he did with the help of the brilliant young Alexander Glazunov. The opera was eventually performed in 1890, but alternate versions that aim to restore some of Borodin’s original music have continued to appear. A definitive version may never be reached, though all agree that Borodin’s opera well deserves its place in the repertoire. The Overture and the Polovtsian Dances have become staples of symphony orchestras and the immensely popular Broadway show Kismet has made Borodin’s tunes familiar to many. The opera’s plot involves Russian Prince Igor’s failed campaign against the nomadic Polovtsians, which results in his and his son Vladimir’s captivity. Vladimir falls in love with Konchakovna, daughter of Khan Konchak, who would let Igor go if he would agree to a nonaggression pact. Igor proudly refuses and soon escapes. Vladimir stays, however, and is spared by the khan who even blesses his marriage to his daughter. Igor returns home, to the great joy of his wife Yaroslavna, and all the people rejoice. The Overture was one of the last parts of Prince Igor to occupy Borodin, and consequently he had not committed it to paper. He had, however, played it on the piano for friends, including Glazunov, who reportedly wrote it out from memory and orchestrated it. Though the younger composer’s several accounts about this task differ, he did consult various numbers that Borodin had completed and also drew on sketches. One Borodin scholar has gone so far as to suggest that Glazunov “composed it outright” based on notations in Borodin’s manuscripts, such as “This will do for a first theme.” Whatever Glazunov’s share in the Overture, the themes are Borodin’s, and the end result is an energetic, satisfying concert piece. The Overture’s slow introduction draws on the prelude to Prince Igor’s celebrated aria in Act II, “Nor sleep, nor rest of any kind,” and on a quiet progression from Borodin’s Prologue. The fast main section opens with the Polovtsian fanfares from Act III, the sequence of which Glazunov said he altered, and climaxes with the “reunion” duet of Igor and Jaroslavna from the last act. The exposition also borrows music from Konchakovna’s impassioned plea to Vladimir in Act III not to leave with his father (lively clarinet melody), followed by an extended treatment of Igor’s Act II aria (martial full orchestra, continuing with a solo horn). The development section features Konchakovna’s music, a clever entwining of the fanfare and duet music, and a passage from the recitative that introduces Konchak’s aria in Act II. Following the recapitulation, the coda ingeniously combines Igor’s aria and Konchakovna’s music, and the dazzling conclusion imitates the end of the opera’s third act.

The score calls for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings.

CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS PIANO CONCERTO NO. 4 IN C MINOR, OP. 44

LAST PERFORMED BY THE WICHITA SYMPHONY APRIL 8 AND 9, 1995

A child prodigy whose natural musical abilities rivaled Mozart’s, Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) possessed a score-reading facility and digital dexterity at the keyboard that dazzled those who came into contact with him throughout his life. Though he maintained a career as a virtuoso pianist for 75 years, he considered himself a composer first and foremost, so he eventually limited his public performances almost exclusively to his own works. He premiered all of his five pianos concertos. Also a renowned organist, he served for two decades at the church of the Madeleine, where Liszt heard him and proclaimed him the best organist in the world. By the 1890’s his popularity was so great that his picture appeared in a series of cards depicting famous people given free with packets of chocolate. Saint-Saëns lived such a long life that his music began to be viewed as old-fashioned by his younger colleagues, but he made major contributions to all genres of French music—even film. Today he is best known for the ever-popular Carnival of the Animals, his Organ Symphony, Danse Macabre, his opera Samson et Dalila, and several concertos—in particular Piano Concertos No’s. 2 and 4 and his First Cello Concerto. The Fourth Piano Concerto dates from 1875 during a period of intermittent work on Samson et Dalila. The composer played the premiere on October 31 that year at the inauguration of conductor Édouard Colonne’s “Artistic Society” concerts, a series honoring the memory of Georges Bizet. Saint- Saëns dedicated the work to Austrian pianist Anton Door, a professor at the Vienna Conservatory. At several stages of his life, Saint-Saëns showed great interest in the cyclic forms of Liszt, which combine a multimovement work into one movement with distinctly interrelated sections linked through thematic transformation. Saint-Saëns created his own novel structure based on this concept in his Fourth Concerto, and later in his Violin Sonata No. 1 and Organ Symphony. Explaining his unconventional approach in 1886, he wrote that these works are divided into two movements that nevertheless contain the four traditional movements—“the first, arrested in development, serves as an introduction to the slow movement, and the scherzo is linked by the same process to the finale.” In the Fourth Concerto, the first movement (Allegro moderato—Andante) is followed by a second movement that actually consists of three parts (Allegro vivace—Andante—Allegro), but the Andante is less a substantial section than an interlude linking the “scherzo” and “finale.” The orchestra unobtrusively begins the first movement’s main theme, in which Saint-Saëns particularly calls attention to the second note of his little three-note groupings, both by accentuation and dissonance. The piano immediately elaborates even before the orchestra presents the second half of the theme, which also receives piano comment. It soon becomes clear that Saint-Saëns is unveiling a theme and variations with additional variation nested internally. The second full variation he “arrests,” to use his word, by sweeping upward to a point of arrival but then sinking down into a new key for the Andante. This “slow movement” contains some of his most expressive writing for the piano, not only the opening’s atmospheric rippling figurations but also the lovely tune that emerges just after he presents a serene little chorale in the winds. It is the chorale, though, that assumes major importance in the remainder of the work. Here Saint-Saëns connects his sprightly “scherzo” (Allegro vivace) to the first movement by opening with refashioned music from the transition between the Allegro moderato and Andante. In the scherzo’s contrasting middle section—the traditional “trio”—he allows himself the fun of introducing a new galloping theme. He bases the ensuing interlude on the chorale and its elaboration from the previous Andante. A heroic fanfare signals the finale, launching a brilliant rondo whose main theme turns out to be none other than a grand version of the chorale in triple meter. Episodes recall other earlier material, which he eventually combines with fragments of his refrain in a contrapuntal, integrated tour-de-force. Instrumentation is flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons by two; two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings. PYOTR IL’YICH TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONY NO. 2 IN C MINOR, OP. 17, “LITTLE RUSSIAN”

LAST PERFORMED BY THE WICHITA SYMPHONYMARCH 7 AND 8, 2005

Pyotr Il’yich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) began composing the joyful and extroverted Second Symphony in the summer of 1872. He was visiting his sister and her husband at their estate in Kamenka in the Ukraine, also known as Little Russia. The peasant songs he heard there and incorporated in his Symphony led music critic Nikolay Kashkin to dub it the “Little Russian.” On his further travels that summer Tchaikovsky came close to losing what he had completed of the work in an incident with his luggage. He later delighted in telling the story of how he had passed himself off as “Prince Volkonsky, gentleman of the Emperor’s bedchamber” in order to get a quick change of horses at a staging post. At the next stop he realized he had left his luggage behind and, not wanting to go back and admit his identity, sent someone else. The postmaster would not release the luggage of such an important person, so Tchaikovsky was forced to go back himself. Relieved to retrieve his luggage without revealing his deception, Tchaikovsky engaged the postmaster in conversation. To the composer’s inquiry of the man’s name, the postmaster responded “Tchaikovsky.” Suspecting him of playing a joke in return, Tchaikovsky would not be satisfied until the friend he had been visiting nearby confirmed that the postmaster’s name really was Tchaikovsky! That fall the composer continued work on the Symphony in Moscow, writing in mid-November to his brother Modest, “It so preoccupies me that I’m in no fit state for anything else. This work of genius (as Kondratyev calls my symphony) is nearing completion. . . . I think it’s my best work yet in terms of polished form, not hitherto my strong suit.” Over the holidays he showed the score to the members of “The Five”—Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Borodin, Balakirev and Cui—who reacted favorably. “I played the finale at a soirée at Rimsky-Korsakov’s,” wrote Tchaikovsky, “and the whole company almost tore me to pieces with rapture.” They must have been particularly attracted to Tchaikovsky’s use of folk songs, which satisfied their nationalistic ideals. Cui, nevertheless, later wrote a scathing review of the work. Tchaikovsky dedicated the Symphony to the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society, which quickly scheduled its performance for January 24, 1873. The death of the Society’s patroness, however, forced its postponement until February 7. The Symphony’s great success on that occasion resulted in several more performances that season both in Moscow and in St. Petersburg. Tchaikovsky decided, however, that he needed to revise the work, which he accomplished in 1879–1880 while he was in Rome. He listed the revisions to his publisher: “1. I have composed the first movement afresh, leaving only the introduction and coda in their previous form. 2. I have rescored the second movement. 3. I’ve altered the third movement, shortening and rescoring it. 4. I’ve shortened the finale and rescored it.” The new version was first performed on February 2, 1881, by the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Musical Society conducted by Karl Sike. Tchaikovsky’s brother Modest wrote, “Not a single critic noted the changes in the work, nor the fact that the first movement was entirely new.” The original first movement was never published, though it has been recorded. While many commentators prefer the original movement, Tchaikovsky thought his revision a great improvement—he certainly succeeded in clarifying the structure and lightening its texture. The slow introduction begins with a variant on the folk tune “Down by Mother Volga” in a meditative horn solo. The fast main section contrasts an exuberant theme with a more lyrical oboe melody, which Tchaikovsky created out of his original first theme. He had to incorporate a bit of his original first theme in this theme’s eighth-note accompaniment figures in order to justify his retention of the original opening of the development section. The movement concludes with a return of the opening horn solo. The slow movement was the beneficiary of a theme from Tchaikovsky’s 1869 opera Undine, which he later destroyed. It had served as a wedding march in the last act of the opera; here the theme is employed as a refrain, or A in the scheme A-B-A-C-A-B-A. The most extended episode, C, employs “Spin, O my spinner”—which Tchaikovsky had already arranged as No. 6 in Fifty Russian Folk Songs— for a series of variations. The busy Scherzo is greatly effective in its rhythmic drive, which Tchaikovsky enlivens by metric changes and unexpected accents. The duple-meter trio interrupts the momentum; its main theme, featuring the winds, suggests a folk source, as does the violin counterpoint. Tchaikovsky referred to his Finale as “The Crane,” after the Ukrainian folk song that appears in a majestic introduction—somewhat like Musorgsky’s Great Gate of Kiev composed the following year— then as a first theme that initiates a little series of variations. The contrasting theme presents a lyrical melody incorporating syncopations. The development section daringly combines the two themes, a wide- stepping bass, and remote modulations in lighthearted abandon. He shortened the Finale by cutting the recapitulation of the first theme in the revised version—the folk song, after all, gets abundant exposure. The recapitulation winds down to a dramatic stroke of the tam-tam (gong) in preparation for the whirlwind coda that closes the work. The score calls for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. —©Jane Vial Jaffe