Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra 2019-2020 Mellon Grand Classics Season March 27 and 29, 2020 JUKKA-PEKKA SARASTE, CONDUCTOR RANDOLPH KELLY, VIOLA ZOLTÁN KODÁLY Dances of Galánta BÉLA BARTÓK (cmpl. Serly) Concerto for Viola and Orchestra I. Moderato II. Lento parlando — Andante religioso — Allegretto III. Allegro vivace Mr. Kelly Intermission IGOR STRAVINSKY Petrushka, Ballet in Four Tableaux (Original 1911 Version) I. The Shrove-Tide Fair II. Petrushka’s Room III. The Moor’s Room IV. The Shrove-Tide Fair Towards Evening March 27-29, 2020, page 1 PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. RICHARD E. RODDA ZOLTÁN KODÁLY Dances of Galánta (1933) Zoltan Kodály was born in Kecskemét, Hungary on December 16, 1882, and died in Budapest on March 6, 1967. He composed Dances of Galánta Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra’s 80th anniversary in 1933, and it was premiered by the orchestra with conductor Ernst von Dohnányi on October 10, 1933. The Pittsburgh Symphony first performed Dances of Galánta at Syria Mosque with Music Director Fritz Reiner in January 1944, and most recently performed it with conductor Hugh Wolff in January 1991. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs plus piccolo, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, percussion and strings. Performance time: approximately 15 minutes In 1905, when Kodály was working toward his doctoral degree at Budapest University, he found it necessary to leave town to do some research for his thesis — he needed information on the stanzaic structure of Hungarian folksong — and returned to his childhood home to collect it. Between 1885 and 1892 (ages three to ten), Kodály lived in Galánta, a small market town near the Austrian border, where his father was the local stationmaster for the national railway and where he had first heard the folksongs and Gypsy bands that were among his most lasting and influential musical impressions. When he returned there in 1905 on what proved to be the first of many folk music hunts throughout Eastern Europe, he went to old friends, servants and neighbors and asked them to sing again the songs he had loved as a boy. He accumulated over 150 examples, more than enough material to complete his thesis, and returned to Budapest. During the next thirty years, Kodály not only continued to collect indigenous music, but he also devised a system of music education based on Hungarian folk song and consistently utilized its stylistic components in his compositions. When the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned him to write a work for its 80th anniversary, Kodály dipped once again into his inexhaustible folk treasury for melodic material, turning to some books of Hungarian dances published in Vienna around 1800 that contained music “after several Gypsies of Galánta.” The Dances of Galánta follow a structure of alternating slow and fast sections. The work’s slow introduction consists of a series of instrumental solos (played in turn by cello, horn, oboe and clarinet) separated by rushing string figures. The first dance, a slow one begun by the solo clarinet, displays a restrained Gypsy pathos in its snapping rhythmic figures. The quicker second dance, initiated by the solo flute, is based on a melody circling around a single pitch in halting rhythms. The first dance returns in the full orchestra as a bridge to the next number in the series, a spirited tune with engaging syncopations heard first in the oboe. Another brief recall of the opening dance leads to the finale, a brilliant whirlwind of music that is twice broken off in its headlong rush. The first interruption is for a cheeky little tune insouciantly paraded by the clarinet and the other woodwinds. The second interruption is for a final reminiscence of the opening dance, which dissolves into a short clarinet cadenza. The closing section of the Dances of Galánta, electric in its rhythmic intensity and gleaming orchestration, is music of stomping feet, whirling bodies and abundant, youthful enthusiasm. BÉLA BARTÓK Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (1945; completed by Tibor Serly in 1946-1949) Béla Bartók was born in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary on March 25, 1881, and died in New York City on September 26, 1945. He composed his Concerto for Viola in Orchestra in 1945, and it was completed by his student Tibor Serly in 1946-1949 after Bartók’s death following a long battle with leukemia. The concerto eventually premiered by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra with conductor Antal Dorati and violist and commissioner William Primrose on December 2, 1949. The Pittsburgh Symphony first performed the concerto with Music Director André Previn and soloist March 27-29, 2020, page 2 Randolph Kelly in May 1979, and most recently performed it with conductor Semyon Bychkov and Mr. Kelly in March 2005. The score calls for piccolo, three flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, three horns, three trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. Performance time: approximately 23 minutes The last months of Bartók’s life were ones of alarmingly deteriorating health and strong, often conflicting emotions. The leukemia that had sapped his strength during his entire residence in the United States, beginning in 1940, finally proved fatal on September 26th; the year 1945 was a disheartening round of hospital stays, rest cures and confinement at home in his tiny 57th Street apartment in New York City. There was, however, some cheering news. Germany surrendered unconditionally on May 7th, freeing his beloved Hungarian homeland and allowing him to be restored to all the official posts he had resigned when he fled Budapest at the beginning of the World War II. He was even nominated as a member of the new Hungarian parliament. Following the successful premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra in Boston in December 1944, his music, which had suffered shameful neglect throughout his American residence, was finally being heard with some frequency. He was also receiving important commissions. Ralph Hawkes, of the publishing firm Boosey & Hawkes, ordered from Bartók in December 1944 a seventh string quartet (never realized), and two months later, at the instigation of Hawkes, the eminent Scottish violist William Primrose requested a concerto for his instrument. Another concerto commission, from the duo-pianists Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robinson, presented him with more work than his failing health would allow. The two-piano concerto was not written, but it may have been the catalyst for the Third Piano Concerto, the last work that Bartók completed. Bartók began the Viola Concerto soon after he received the commission from Primrose in February 1945. He worked deliberately but haltingly on the score, writing much of it in a cryptic notational shorthand that he devised to maximize his effort when he was well enough to compose. Early in the summer, he left the city for the quiet of Saranac Lake, where he had composed the Concerto for Orchestra a year earlier. (Bartók had to refuse Yehudi Menuhin’s offer to spend the summer with him in California when his physician advised against making the long trip to the West Coast). He put aside the Viola Concerto to write the Third Piano Concerto, which, given the difficult financial situation he knew would be the lot of his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory, after his imminent death, he viewed as a legacy to help insure her future. Throughout the summer he worked simultaneously on both Concertos, though the one for piano — the one for Ditta — received more attention and was finished in conventional notation, except for the closing page, before he died. The Viola Concerto, however, was left in quite a different state of completion. Less than a month before his death, back in New York, Bartók wrote to Primrose, “I am very glad to be able to tell you that your Viola Concerto is ready in draft, so that only the score has to be written, which means purely mechanical work, so to speak. If nothing happens, I can be through in 5 or 6 weeks, that is, I can send you a copy of the orchestral score in the second half of October. Many interesting problems arose in composing this work. The orchestration will be rather transparent, more transparent than in the Violin Concerto. Also the somber, more masculine character of your instrument exerted some influence on the general character of the work. The highest note I use is ‘A,’ but I exploit rather frequently the lower registers. It is conceived in a rather virtuoso style. Most probably some passages will prove to be uncomfortable or unplayable. These we will discuss later, according to your observations.” Bartók’s disciple Tibor Serly (pronounced SHARE-lee) continued the story of the Viola Concerto in an article that appeared in The New York Times on December 11, 1949: “On the evening of September 21, 1945, when I last talked with Béla Bartók, he was lying in bed, quite ill. Nevertheless, on and around his bed were sheets of score and sketch manuscript papers. He was working feverishly to complete the scoring of the last few bars of his Third Piano Concerto. While discussing the Concerto with him, my attention was drawn to a night table beside his bed where I noticed, underneath several half-empty medicine bottles, some additional pages in score, seemingly not related to the Piano Concerto. Pointing to these manuscript sheets, I inquired about the Viola Concerto. Bartók nodded wearily toward the night table, saying: ‘Yes, that is the Viola Concerto.’ To my question as to whether it was completed, his reply was, ‘Yes and no.’ He explained that while in the sketches the work was by and large finished, the details and scoring had not yet been worked out. The following day he was taken to the hospital, where he died on September 26th….