SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CLASSICAL CONCERT January 8 and 10, 2016 CLAUDE DEBUSSY L’isle joyeuse (Orch. Bernardino Molinari) MAURICE RAVEL Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major Marc-André Hamelin, piano INTERMISSION GEORGE GERSHWIN Rhapsody in Blue (Orch. Frede Grofé) Marc-André Hamelin, piano SERGEI RACHMANINOFF Cinq Études-tableaux (Orch. Ottorino Respighi) The Sea and the Seagulls The Fair Funeral March Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf March L’isle joyeuse CLAUDE DEBUSSY (Orch. Bernardino Molinari) Born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye Died March 25, 1918, Paris After years of struggle, Debussy finally achieved success with his opera Pelléas and Mélisande in 1902 and began work on La mer. Then came a complete change. In June 1904, Debussy abandoned his wife of five years and ran off with Emma Bardac, a singer and the estranged wife of a wealthy banker. In the first rush of excitement, Debussy took Emma to the Isle of Jersey off the Normandy coast, and it was there, during the summer of 1904, that he composed his L’isle joyeuse. Debussy frequently drew his inspiration from contemporary sources, but for this brief piano piece he turned to the past, specifically to an early eighteenth-century painting, L’embarquement pour Cythère by the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721). Watteau’s painting depicts the moment of departure of a group of revelers for the island of Aphrodite, goddess of erotic love, and Debussy sets out to duplicate the sensual expectancy of such a scene. It is hard not to believe that the details of Debussy’s own life – he too was escaping to an island with a new lover – were the direct inspiration for this spirited music. L’isle joyeuse opens with a brief introductory passage marked Quasi una cadenza, built largely on anticipatory trills. The main theme quickly appears, so full of triplets and dancing dotted rhythms that it seems to spill over with rococo decoration, with an almost arabesque elegance. The music, fast and festive, is in rondo form, and Debussy soon moves to a gently-rocking 3/8 meter, perhaps intended to suggest the motion of the boat. (He marks this section “undulating and expressive.”) Gradually the tempo accelerates, the music becomes more and more animated, and L’isle joyeuse rushes to a sonorous and exciting close. L’isle joyeuse is a spectacular work for the piano, and its proud creator wrote to his publisher: “This piece seems to embrace every possible manner of treating the piano, combining as it does strength with grace, if I may presume to say so.” However pianistic this music may be, its power and range of color suggested an orchestral sonority to even its earliest audiences. In 1917, working with Debussy’s approval, the Italian conductor Bernardino Molinari (1880-1952) made the orchestration of L’isle joyeuse heard on this program. Molinari transcribed L’isle joyeuse for a large orchestra, and it is a measure of this music’s power that he employed two harps, celesta, a large percussion battery and full wind and brass sections to orchestrate music that Debussy had conceived for one single piano. Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major MAURICE RAVEL Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Basses-Pyrennes Died December 28, 1937, Paris In 1929, while he was at work on his Piano Concerto in G Major, Ravel had a visit from the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein, brother of the linguist and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, had been a promising young pianist before World War I, but during the war his right arm was shattered and had to be amputated, and the field hospital where he was being treated was overrun by the Russian army. Wittgenstein spent time in a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia before he was repatriated. While his career as a pianist appeared to be over, Wittgenstein set out to create a piano literature for the left hand, and he made use of the family fortune to commission works for the left hand from Richard Strauss, Prokofiev, Britten, Hindemith, Korngold, Schmidt and others. Now he asked Ravel to write a piano concerto for the left hand. One might think that Ravel, already consumed with writing one piano concerto, would have no interest in taking on another at the same time, particularly one that brought such a severe limitation with it. But he was intrigued by the challenge, accepted the commission, stopped work on the Piano Concerto in G Major, and wrote the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major in nine months in 1930. He then returned to work on the Concerto in G Major and completed it in 1931. The two piano concertos – Ravel’s final instrumental works – are quite different from each other, as the composer well knew. To his friend Michel Calvocoressi, Ravel wrote: It was an interesting experience, to conceive and realize the two concertos at the same time. The first [the Concerto in G Major], which I propose to play myself, is a concerto in the strict sense, written in the spirit of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. I believe that a concerto can be both gay and brilliant without necessarily being profound or aiming at dramatic effect… The Concerto for left hand alone is quite different, and has only one movement with many jazz effects; the writing is not so simple. In a work of this sort, it is essential to avoid the impression of insufficient weight in the sound-texture, as compared to a solo part for two hands. So I have used a style which is much more in keeping with the consciously imposing style of the traditional concerto. Rather than finding writing for the left hand a restriction a limit, Ravel appears to have found it liberating; he produced a work of the greatest virtuosity, sonority and color. No one hearing (but not seeing) this music – with its massive chords, huge leaps and runs across the range of the keyboard – would guess that it is being played by just one hand; one early reviewer wrote that it sounded at moments as if it were being performed by four hands rather than one. The Piano Concerto in G Major is glittering, sparkling music – Ravel himself described it as a divertissement – but the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand is darker, more substantial, more profound. In its progress from darkness toward light, in the unbelievable virtuosity of its keyboard writing, in its dramatic extremes, this concerto is – in the words of the composer’s biographer Arbie Ornstein – “one of Ravel’s crowning achievements.” The French musicologist Henry Prunières was more specific about the source of its power. Noting that Ravel was usually reticent emotionally, he points out that “sentiment has taken its revenge for this long exile; it lights up the work magnificently and sometimes almost romantically. Those who have never understood that sentiment is always in abeyance in Ravel…were astounded to see him, for once, baring his soul.” Only about 18 minutes long, the concerto is in one movement in a sort of ternary form. It begins in the deepest register of the orchestra with divided cellos and basses slowly emerging from the darkness. Another deep instrument, the contrabassoon, sounds the long, lugubrious melody that will form the backbone of the concerto, and horns in octaves sing a subdued melody that will also figure importantly. The music slowly builds in volume, the rest of the orchestra enters, and out of a grand tutti the piano makes a brilliant entrance with a brief cadenza. The piano then declaims a chordal theme (written on two staves), and the ear recognizes this as a variation of the contrabassoon melody from the beginning. The piano also has an expressive second subject, simultaneously announcing that theme while accompanying itself; this is one of those passages almost impossible to believe is being played by one hand. The music gradually accelerates into the central section, marked Allegro, which marches smartly along its 6/8 meter. The piano dances into this march, and Ravel himself noted: “Only gradually does it become apparent that this episode in jazz style is actually built on the subjects of the first part.” Ravel develops these ideas at length, then makes a powerful return to the tempo of the opening section. A lengthy cadenza makes up most of this final section before the orchestra re-enters and rips the concerto to its violent close on a recall of the march rhythm. Rhapsody in Blue GEORGE GERSHWIN (Orch. Ferde Grofé) Born September 26, 1898, Brooklyn Died July 11, 1937, Hollywood If – as Dvořák suggested – American classical music would have to come from uniquely American roots, then Rhapsody in Blue is probably the piece of American classical music. In it, Gershwin combined the European idea of the piano concerto with American jazz and in the process created a piece of music that has become famous throughout the world. In addition to its many recordings by American orchestras, Rhapsody in Blue has been recorded by orchestras in England, Germany, Australia and Russia. Gershwin was in fact aware that Rhapsody in Blue might become a kind of national piece; he said that during its composition he “heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America – of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.” Classical purists argue that this is not a true piano concerto, and jazz purists argue that it is not true jazz. Of course both are right, but none of that matters: Rhapsody in Blue is a smashing success on its own terms.