Program Notes Suntory Hall Program Notes by April L
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楽曲解説 / Program Notes Suntory Hall Suntory Program Notes By April L. Racana Friday, January 15 The 872nd Suntory Hall Subscription Concert Sunday, January 17 The 873rd Orchard Hall Subscription Concert 1 15 Orchard Hall Orchard オ ー チ ャ ー ド Aram Il’yich Khachaturian (1903-1978) “Gayane” Suite No. 1 (excerpts) In 1943, Khachaturian began compiling 1 Dance of the Rose Maidens (ca. 2min) 17 three suites of music from the ballet. Lullaby (ca. 5min) However, the suites themselves are often Mountaineers’ Dance (ca. 2min) City Opera オ ペ ラ シ テ ィ not performed as the composer had Lezghinka (ca. 3min) determined, with conductors arranging Khachaturian was the son of an their own collection from the suites, and Armenian bookbinder who lived in the which usually features the most well Georgian region of the former Soviet known ‘Sabre Dance’ from the ballet’s Union. In 1921, he went off to Moscow final act. Another familiar number from 1 to enter college, but at the time music the suites is the ‘Adagio’ which was used 21 was only a side interest, studying cello in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Sapce privately. Eventually his musical skills Odyssey. would develop to the point where he entered the Moscow Conservatory The great variety of ethnic background in 1926, studying composition and in the workers living on the farm provides remaining there until completing his an opportunity for the composer to access graduate studies there in 1936, (the same a number of folk dance traditions in these year he debuted his Piano Concerto), and suites, including Armenian, Kurdish, quickly becoming a rising star among Georgian, Ukranian and Russian to composers of the region. highlight the music of each region. The composer’s full score to the Gayane ballet Gayane was the second of would earn him the Stalin Prize, and keep Khachaturian’s three ballets, and was him in the graces of the Stalinist regime premiered in December of 1942, in the due to its patriotic undertones. For this city of Perm where both the Kirov Opera concert series the TPO will perform four and Ballet Theatre of Leningrad had been numbers from Suite No. 1, including evacuated after the Nazis entered Russia ‘Dance of the Rose Maidens’, ‘Lullaby’, during World War II. The story in this ‘Mountaineers’ Dance’, and ‘Lezghinka’. ballet portrays life on a collective farm in Armenia, where people from various Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, regions of the former Soviet Union are English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 working and living together. The title bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, alto saxophone, timpani, bass drum, character, Gayane, is an Armenian cymbals, glockenspiel, gong, snare drum, woman whose husband is eventually tambourine, triangle, xylophone, tubaphone, revealed as a traitor. strings 13 楽曲解説 / Program Notes that Hitler merely finished off.” Later, borders, could hear it. Suntory Hall Suntory Shostakovich amended his ‘official’ statement: “I dedicated my Seventh The opening of the first movement Symphony to our fight against facism, to was described by the composer as our coming victory over the enemy and follows: “This is the simple, peaceful to my native city of Leningrad,” which life lived before the war.” However, was printed on the first page of the score during the development he indicated (1906-1975) 1 Dmitry Dimitrievich Shostakovich as “Dedicated to the city of Leningrad.” that “war bursts into the peaceful life of 15 Symphony No.7 in C major, “Leningrad”, op. 60 these people. I am not aiming for the Initially, Shostakovich had given titles naturalistic depiction of war… I am trying Hall Orchard オーチャード that year. However, some scholars have to each of the four movements: War, to convey the image of war emotionally.” I. Allegretto (ca. 29min) found evidence that the composer had Memories, the Wide Spaces of Our Land, He does this most effectively through the II. Moderato. Poco allegretto (ca. 15min) completed most, if not all of the first and Victory — however, he later decided use of his ‘invasion theme’ that becomes movement prior to that invasion. not to use the sub-titles and instead left a relentless march over the snare drum’s III. Adagio (ca. 19min) a few general notes about each: I. War rhythm, that grows louder on each repeat. IV. Allegro non troppo (ca. 19min) breaks suddenly into our peaceful life. … 1 Composed primarily in Leningrad, 17 where the composer had been born, The recapitulation of a funeral march, a The second and third movements It is known that Shostakovich the Seventh Symphony would become deeply tragic episode, a mass requiem. provide an interlude to the action, Opera City Opera オペラシティ encountered a great deal of pressure from Shostakovich’s longest work of the II. A lyrical intermezzo …no program featuring solos by the bass clarinet in the the Stalinist regime during his lifetime as genre. During the Nazi invasion of the and fewer ‘concrete facts’ than in the second, and flute over pizzicato strings an artist in the former Soviet Union. He city, which lasted nearly 900 days, it is first movement. III. A pathetic adagio in the third. The finale opens with the was criticized early in his professional believed that at least a million lives were with drama in the middle episode. IV. timpani roll and gradually builds to the life, which caused him to delay lost due to starvation, severe cold and the Victory, a beautiful life in the future. brass and percussion victory fanfares in performance of his Fourth Symphony and numerous air raids. The composer would C-major. Shostakovich states: “My idea 1 begin work on a more ‘appropriate’ Fifth choose to remain in the city, continuing After it’s premiere in Kuibyshev, of victory isn’t something brutal. It’s 21 Symphony (1937). In the next decade work on the second and third movements the entire symphony was performed better explained as the victory of light Shostakovich worked carefully to appease through the rest of the summer of again in Moscow three weeks later. over darkness, humanity over barbarism, the critics in the Stalinist regime and 1941. He (along with his family) were Eventually the score was secretly stored of reason over reaction.” compose within expectations, even if evacuated in the fall, so he would finish on microfilm and sent overseas to the only as a matter of self-preservation for the final movement in December in United States, where it was performed Instrumentation: 3 flutes (2nd doubling on alto flute, 3rd doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, himself and his family. Kuibyshev, in the Volga region. The entire by Toscanini in July 1942 in New York. English horn, 3 clarinets (3rd doubling on work would premiere there in March In August, the Seventh Symphony would E-flat clarinet), 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 8 The Sixth Symphony was premiered 1942, where the composer’s ‘official’ make its way back to Leningrad where horns, 6 trumpets, 6 trombones, tuba, timpani, xylophone, snare drum 3, triangle, tambourine, during a “Festival of Soviet Music” in comments indicated that the Seventh it was performed in defiance over tamtam, cymbals, bass drum, 2harps, piano, Moscow in November of 1939. In August Symphony was “a composition…closer loudspeakers so that the German troops, strings of 1939, Shostakovich commented in the to my Fifth Symphony than to my Sixth; who were stationed outside the city Leningardskaya Pravda: it is a continuation of the emotions and “The moods and emotional tone of the moods of the Fifth Symphony.” Sixth Symphony will differ much from the Fifth, which was marked by elements According to a later interview recorded of tragedy and tension. In my latest in Elizabeth Wilson Shostakovich’s symphony, music of a contemplative, “A Life Remembered”, the composer lyrical tenor predominates; I wished acknowledged that his “Leningrad” to convey moods of joy, spring, and Symphony was conceived as a ‘work youth.” There are conflicting accounts about the struggle against facism, but not of when Shostakovich began his work just in its Nazi form.’ He was also quoted on the Seventh Symphony. Initially, it as saying “I have nothing against calling was thought that he ‘officially’ began the Seventh the Leningrad, but it’s not April L. Racana / Music Specialist at Nishimachi International School where she has taught since work during the summer of 1941 when about Leningrad under siege. It’s about 1992. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana the Germans invaded Russia in June of the Leningrad that Stalin destroyed and (BS/Piano Pedagogy) and her graduate studies at San Francisco State University (MA/Music). 14 15.