• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

PHILHARMONIA CONCERT SOCIETY LTD Artistic Director: Walter legge PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA DORATI RUBINSTEIN February 5, 1962 ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL General Manager: T. E. Bean, c.b.e. PHILHARMONIA CONCERT SOCIETY Ltd ARTISTIC director: WALTER LEGGE PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA LEADER: HUGH BEAN ARTUR RUBINSTEIN ANTAL DORATI Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet falla: Nights in the Gardens of Spain bartok: Dance Suite RACHMANINOV: Piano Concerto No. 2 Monday, February 5, 1962, at 8 p.m. Programme One Shilling and Sixpence PROGRAMME NOTES BY MOSCO CARNER (Author's Copyright) Fantasy Overture, Romeo and Juliet Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) It was Balakirev who suggested to Tchaikovsky Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a subject for a symphonic poem, going even so far as to offer him a recipe for jogging his musical imagination. ‘Take goloshes,' Balakirev wrote in an amusing letter, ‘and a walking stick and go for a constitutional on the boulevards; allow yourself to become steeped in the subject and. I’m sure, by die time you reach the Stretensky Boulevard (in Moscow), some melody or episode will have come to you.’ It is not known whether Tchaikovsky followed his friend’s good advice and conceived the fantasy-overture, Romeo and Juliet, in this peripatetic fashion! But what we do know is that Balakirev took an intense interest in the genesis of the work, offering all kinds of useful observa­ tions so that Romeo and Juliet, which is dedicated to him, may be said to have been com­ posed under his paternal guidance. It was completed in November 1869 and its first performance took place at Moscow in the following March. Tchaikovsky intended no faithful representation of the action of the play but sought in the first place to express its emotional and poetic essence: ardent love thwarted and ending in the death of the two young lovers. The tragic atmosphere is at once established, in the slow introduction which introduces the ‘Friar Laurence’ theme—a kind of funeral march whose melody is reminiscent of an ancient Russian canticle. The main portion of the work is formed by an Allegro in sonata form, with two strongly contrasted subjects. The first of these is agitated, growing in ferocity in its further elaboration and suggesting the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets. The second idea, first announced on the melancholy cor anglais, is in a wistful lyrical vein and stands as the musical symbol of the star-crossed lovers. This is one of Tchaikovsky’s most inspired inventions and was later described by Rimsky-Korsakov as one of the finest melodies in the whole of Russian music. The poignant close of the work conjures up the union in death of Romeo and Juliet. ANTAL DORATI Nights in the Gardens of Spair Falla (1876-1946) Generalife - A Distant Dance - The Gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba Falla completed Nights in the Gardens of Spain, which is his most important composition for a symphonic orchestra, in 1915; at its first London performance in 1921 he played the piano part himself. It is not a piano concerto, as it is sometimes described, for die piano here is largely employed as an instrument of the orchestra though with sufficient virtuosity and brilliance to challenge a performer’s technical prowess. The skill with which its peculiar tone-colour, especially its percussive quality, is made both to blend with and stand out from the orchestra is no less than masterly and the resultant effect highly characteristic and individual. The subtitle, ‘Symphonic Impressions’, is indicative of what Falla set out to convey. Like Debussy’s Images for orchestra, which served the Spanish composer as a general model, Nights in the Gardens of Spain is an evocation of moods and atmospheres peculiar to certain landscapes and places—in this case the particular ambience of Falla’s native Andalusia. He himself has given the following description: ‘If these “Symphonic Impressions” have achieved their object, the mere enumeration of their titles should be a sufficient guide to the listener. Although in this work 1 have followed a definite design, regarding the tonal, rhythmic and thematic material . the end for which it was written is no other than to evoke the memory of places, sensations and sentiments. The themes employed are based on the rhythms, modes, cadences and ornamental figures which distinguish the popular music of Andalusia, though they are rarely used in their original forms. And the orchestration frequently employs certain effects peculiar to the popular instruments used in those parts of Spain—the guitar and the mandoline—like laud and bandurria. The music has no pretensions to being descriptive: it is merely expressive. But something more than the sounds of festivals and dances has inspired 'these “evocations in sound”; for melancholy and mystery have their part also.’ A mood of mingled mystery and melancholy is indeed the keynote of the first of these three nocturnes, which is called Generalife, after the ‘Garden of the Architects’, situated 011 a hillside overlooking the magnificent Alhambra at Granada. The title of the second nocturne, A Distant Dance, is self-explanatory. The last nocturne, which follows without a break, is called The Gardens of the Sierra de Córdoba and evokes a wild revelry in which a zambra, a band of gypsy musicians, entertains a party with its orgiastic songs and dances, accompanied by guitars and fiddles, until dawn breaks when host and guests disperse and a mysterious silence settles on the deserted scene. INTERVAL ARTUR RUBINSTEIN Dance Suite Bartók (1881-1945) In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the merging of Pest, Buda and Obuda into the city of Budapest (1923), the Hungarian Government asked the leading native composers to contribute music for a festival concert which was held on 19 November 1923. Kodaly wrote the Psaltnus Hungaricus, Dohnanyi the Festival Overture, op. 31, and Bartók the Dance Suite. The work consists of five dances of the most varied character, whose common denominator is a very pronounced rhythm, and a finale which represents a summing-up of various aspects of the dances. A link is provided between them by a recurring interlude or ritornel which remains all but unchanged throughout the work and serves as a point of reference. The dance themes are Bartok’s own, but they are derived from folk sources, including Arabic peasant tunes, which to some extent have coloured the melodic, rhythmic and instrumental character of the Dances Nos. 1 and 4. Nos. 2 and 3, on the other hand, are Magyar in spirit, while No. 5 has a distinct Roumanian flavour. The Dance Suite thus mirrors the wide range of Bartok’s scientific studies of musical folklore. One of the most interesting aspects of the work is the manner in which Bartók succeeds in combining the most divergent treatment of his material without evident disparity of effect. Diatonic passages alternate with chromatic ones, modality with pure major-minor, and pentatonic steps with polytonality. And yet, the impression the work creates is one of an organic whole, and this despite the sectional divisions of its form and the different national implications of the material. This is largely due to the compelling force with which Bartók impresses his strong musical personality on the music. Despite its title, it transcends the form of a suite and approximates to the charac­ ter of a continuous symphonic composition. The scoring is for an orchestra of normal size, with the addition of celesta, harp, piano and eight percussion instruments, and ^bounds in vivid and most colourful touches. Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 Rachmaninov (1873-1943) Moderate - Adagio sostenuto - Allegro scherzando ‘Young man, I see a brilliant future written on your face.’ With these words the young Rachmaninov was greeted by Chekov on the occasion of their first meeting. They were prophetic words. For as a pianist Rachmaninov was among the great ones of his time; as a composer he created a niche for himself, and had he set his mind to it, the odds are that he would have become an outstanding conductor. Is, then, the story of his life a 6 mere success story; In a sense, it is. Success came to this late descendant of the Hospodars Dragosh, the founders of medieval Moldavia, easily and early in life, and it never de­ serted him for long. In terms of world-wide fame and great wealth Rachmaninov’s career presented—after his flight from Soviet Russia and emigration to America in 1917 —an unclouded picture. Yet he was a profoundly unhappy man. When he appeared on the platform—tall, thin, with the sad long face of an ascetic and seemingly incapable of even the faintest smile—he suggested a Russian Atlas carrying the woe of the world on his bent shoulders. Yet this was not a mask put on to conform to the popular notion of the ‘romantic artist’ bowed down by a Byronesque melancholy, but the genuine ex­ pression of what he felt about himself, his art and the world he lived in. Rachmaninov s pessimism was congenital and not the result of any philosophy of life or meditation on the theme of lacrimae rerutn. It was the habitual state of mind of a man born without the mental stamina strong enough to cope with even the ordinary business of living. His weak nerves caused a serious mental breakdown at the age of twenty-seven and for several years afterwards he was under the treatment of the Moscow psychiatrist, Dr Dahl. What with his neurotic disposition and his morbid preoccupation with Destiny and Death—revealed in his music by his idiosyncrasy for the Dies Iran motive—the wonder is that Rachmaninov never contemplated committing suicide.

Load more

  9

Copy Link