Bartók's Miraculous Mandarin
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Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin Thursday, November 18, 2010 8 pm Saturday, November 20, 2010 8 pm Sunday, November 21, 2010 2:30 pm Jones Hall Hans Graf, conductor Augustin Hadelich, violin Bartók The Miraculous Mandarin, Opus 19 Chausson Poème for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 25 Ravel Tzigane INTERMISSION Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F major, Opus 90 Program Notes THE MIRACULOUS MANDARIN, OPUS 19 Béla Bartók Born: Mar 25, 1881, Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary Died: Sep 26, 1945, New York, NY Work composed: 1918-19 Recording: Sir George Solti conducting the Chicago Symphony (London) Instrumentation: three flutes (two doubling piccolo), three oboes (one doubling English horn), three clarinets (second doubling E-flat clarinet, third doubling bass clarinet), three bassoons (two doubling contrabassoon), four horns (two doubling Wagner tubas), three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta (doubling organ) and strings If there is a watershed in Bela Bartok’s stylistic development, its mark is to be found in the violent pantomime tale of a Chinese mandarin coaxed into a brothel where he is robbed, suffocated, stabbed and hung by three thugs, but refuses to die until he has embraced the woman who lured him there. Bartok encountered the libretto by Melchior Lengyel in a literary magazine in 1917 and was fascinated by this tale of an urban love-death. In the final turbulent days of World War I, he sketched out a scenario and completed a piano sketch of the music by May 1919, during a time of political upheaval and human displacement in his native Hungary. But the work lay unperformed for the next seven years, partly because of his delay in orchestrating the piano version. On November 27, 1926, the pantomime finally achieved a single performance at the Cologne Opera House, on a double-bill with Bartok’s opera, Bluebeard’s Castle. However, audience reaction was so violent that further performances were banned by the city’s mayor, Konrad Adenauer. The pantomime was successfully produced in Prague the following year, but was never performed in Budapest during Bartok’s lifetime. Modern productions have included former Houston Ballet artistic director Ben Stevenson’s realistic staging in 1985. The work begins with an agitated portrayal of three thugs ordering the woman out into the street to attract customers. Her siren dancing is represented by elaborate clarinet solos, as she lures two penniless victims in quick succession – a ridiculous old rake and a student – both of whom are quickly thrown back out by the thugs. When the mandarin enters after the third clarinet solo, the orchestra becomes convulsed in expressing the woman’s conflicting emotions. She is under orders to entice him further, but is repelled by his fixed stare. She dances a seductive waltz, and he responds by chasing after her during a relentless Bartokian fugue. The final portion of the music is broken into shorter sections representing alternating attempts to kill the mandarin. When his desire is finally satisfied, the brutal energy of the musical score suddenly evaporates in a quiet ending. POÈME FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA, OPUS 25 Ernest Chauuson Born: Jan 20, 1855, Paris, France Died: Jun 10, 1899, Limay, near Mantes, Yvelines, France Work composed: 1896 Recording: Leila Josefowicz, violin; Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martinin- the-Fields (Philips) Instrumentation: pairs of woodwinds, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp and strings Though Ernest Chausson’s music is infrequently heard in the concert hall, he is regarded as the most refined among the group of late French romantic composers who were influenced by the style of Richard Wagner. His works were composed with fastidious care, and the richness of his harmony was balanced by a sense of restraint and a blooming lyricism. The Poeme for Violin and Orchestra was one of his later works, composed in 1896, just three years before his sudden, untimely death from a cycling accident at age 44. Noted Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye championed the work in several early performances following its completion. The structure of this rhapsodic piece is well planned, but elusive to the ear. It is based on two thematic ideas. The first is presented by the solo violin and then by the orchestra during the slow introduction. The second theme is stated in the solo violin several measures after an elaborate cadenza leads into a faster section of the music. From there on, the work blends elements of rondo and sonata principles, spacing partial restatements of the two themes between transitional interludes that fragment and develop its melodic elements. Finally, the themes appear in a climactic ending to the Poeme. Interestingly, all these sections are subsumed into an ever-changing tide of music, flowing under a nearly continuous solo violin line that blends considerable technical display into its long, lyrical melody. TZIGANE Maurice Ravel Born: Mar 7, 1875, Ciboure, Lower Pyrenees, France Died: Dec 28, 1937, Paris, France Work composed: 1924 Recording: Leila Josefowicz, violin; Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin-inthe- Fields (Philips) Instrumentation: pairs of flutes (second doubling piccolo), oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns, trumpet, percussion, harp, celesta and strings During the early 1920s, Maurice Ravel made several concert tours to England. Following one of his public appearances in July 1922, there was a private musicale where the composer met the young Hungarian violinist, Jelly d’Aranyi, who was the grand-niece of famed 19th-century violinist Joseph Joachim. Ravel scholar Arbie Ornstein recounts a story told by Gaby Casadesus, that Ravel repeatedly asked the violinist to play gypsy melodies – all night long; in fact, until the exhausted partygoers finally went home at 5 a.m.! The seed of Ravel’s Tzigane was evidently sown in his mind that night, though this gypsy rhapsody did not take shape until two years later. Like many of Ravel’s orchestral compositions, Tzigane originated with a keyboard accompaniment. Later that year, it was transcribed into the orchestral version heard tonight. The piece opens with a long, slow, guttural solo passage, the first half of which is played on the low G string of the violin. It continues through a gauntlet of other technical challenges before the tempo picks up speed and the orchestra joins in. Several of the thematic ideas presented in the opening violin solo are taken up and modified during later sections. The work comes to its climax in a long, perpetual-motion coda. SYMPHONY NO. 3 IN F MAJOR, OPUS 90 Johannes Brahms Born: May 7, 1833, Hamburg, Germany Died: Apr 3, 1897, Vienna, Austria Work composed: 1883 Recording: Christoph Eschenbach conducting the Houston Symphony (Virgin Classics) Instrumentation: pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings Some scholars divide Brahms’ four symphonies into two general categories, ascribing a tragic/heroic character to the C minor and E minor symphonies and a pastoral mood to the two middle symphonies in D major and F. Actually, the Third Symphony encompasses all these moods in a wondrous interplay of shadow and sunlight. Significantly, its broad range of expressive values is also contained within a shorter time span than any of Brahms’ other three symphonies. Like Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and Dvorˇak’s Eighth Symphony, the first movement begins with a melodic motto, which is extensively developed and later serves as a milepost marking off the exposition, development, recapitulation and coda of the movement. The three-note motto, F, A-flat, F, not only poses the movement’s light-versus- darkness conflict between F major and F minor, but also symbolizes Brahms’ personal philosophy, “Frei aber froh”/”free but happy.” This musical acrostic served as Brahms’ response to the famed musical motto, F, A, E (“Frei aber einsam”/”free but alone”) adopted by his longtime friend, violinist/conductor Joseph Joachim. The tightly structured movement is full of the sinewy counterpoint that lends so much strength to Brahms’ music. Though the heaving polyphony of the opening set of themes gives way to a gentler, more relaxed subsidiary theme, struggle and tension dominate much of the development, recapitulation and the powerful coda, which surprisingly resolves the tonal conflict in a quietly descending F major arpeggio at the very end. The slow movement is a marvel of gentle, deeply personal, even mysterious musical ideas. Its opening clarinet theme has the deceptive simplicity of a folksong, but is belied by its highly irregular phrases and cadence patterns. Stillness overtakes the music as clarinets and bassoons intone the modal theme of the middle section, which finally blooms into a soaring, richtextured melody. The opening theme returns in a much fuller orchestral arrangement and is followed by a quiet coda. The character of the third movement is more akin to a wistful waltz or intermezzo than a scherzo or minuet. Its yearning cello theme is repeated by the violins and then the high winds. A quaint wind trio section intervenes before the opening melody returns, this time featuring the solo horn, oboe and finally the strings. The moody finale is the most dramatic of the four movements, reasserting the frowning tonality of F minor in a furtive introductory section that incorporates the middle theme of the second movement. The principal theme suddenly erupts in snarling melodic leaps, propelling almost the entire movement forward in a state of high agitation. As a golden sunset to this orchestral storm, the music finally calms itself in a shimmering, quasi-Wagnerian coda that yields up the symphony’s opening motto in a peaceful F major tonality. ©2010, Carl R. Cunningham Biographies Hans Graf, conductor Known for his wide range of repertoire and creative programming, distinguished Austrian conductor Hans Graf – the Houston Symphony’s 15th Music Director – is one of today’s most highly respected musicians.