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

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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

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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…. “Early in September, Bartók had written a letter to Primrose telling him that the Viola Concerto was ready in draft and that only some details of the scoring had to be written. What for Bartók would have been a matter of working out details and scoring involved for another person a lengthy task that required infinite patience and painstaking labor. First, there were many problems in deciphering the manuscript

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itself. Bartók wrote his sketches on odd, loose sheets of paper that happened to be at hand, some of which had parts of other sketches on them. Bits of material that came into his mind were jotted down without regard for sequence. The pages were not numbered and the separations of movements were not designated. The greatest difficulty encountered was deciphering his correction of notes, for Bartók, instead of erasing, grafted his improvements onto the original notes. Then there was the delicate task of completing unfinished harmonies and other adornments that he had reduced to a kind of shorthand. Technical passages for the solo viola also had to be worked out. [Primrose edited the solo part.] Finally, there was the orchestration itself to be done, for there were virtually no indications of the instrumentation.” Serly later wrote that he “virtually lived for over two years day and night with those thirteen mottled pages” in constructing the finished Viola Concerto from the scraps that his teacher had left at his death. In addition to the great technical skill he brought to his task, Serly also admitted that he was guided by “some inexplicable, intuitive grasp into the inner mind of the departed composer.” The score, a mighty labor of Serly’s dedication, respect and love, was finally ready for performance in 1949, and Primrose gave the premiere with conductor Antal Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra on December 2nd. (An alternate version of the score that Serly prepared for cello was not heard until Janos Starker performed it in 1981.) The extent of Serly’s contribution to the finished Concerto was called into question after the premiere, but Primrose defended him: “I feel quite sure that Serly came very, very close to what Bartók himself had meant to do, and that his scoring and formal smoothing-out was the most sincere and truthful job possible.” The Concerto’s somber opening movement is in sonata form. The soloist, sparsely accompanied by pizzicato strings, presents the main theme, an autumnal melody that is repeated several times in different guises. A bridge passage with faster rhythmic motion leads to the quiet second theme, a phrase of descending direction and chromatic ambiguity. Both of the exposition’s motives are treated in the development section. A brief solo cadenza serves as the transition to the recapitulation. A section at the movement’s end, marked Lento parlando (i.e., “slow and declamatory”), is a dialogue for soloist and woodwinds that leads without pause to the Adagio religioso, a simple three-part form. The viola presents the theme of the first section above sustained harmonies; the movement’s middle portion, quicker in tempo, supports the gestures of the soloist with string tremolos and flashing interjections from the winds (“like a great outcry, with the viola in its highest register, and all the woodwinds striving upwards as if in desperation,” wrote Primrose of this passage); the principal melody is varied upon its return. An abrupt change of mood and tempo heralds the finale, which recalls the energetic Gypsy style of Liszt and Enesco, but is darker, almost sardonic, in spirit. Formally, the movement resembles a Classical rondo, with the returns of the theme entrusted to the soloist and the intervening episodes initiated by the full orchestra. With its austere texture, harmonic acerbity and distilled Classical forms, Bartók’s Viola Concerto is a testament of the composer’s deeply personal, ineffable feelings, his final realization of the simple philosophy that guided the work of his entire life: “I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.”

IGOR STRAVINSKY

Petrushka, Ballet in Four Tableaux (Original 1911 Version)

Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg on June 17, 1882, and died in New York City on April 6, 1971. He composed Petrushka for the Ballets Russes in 1911, following the highly successful premiere of The Firebird in 1910, and it was premiered in Paris by the Ballets Russes with conductor Pierre Monteux on June 13, 1911. The Pittsburgh Symphony first performed Petrushka in at Syria Mosque with Stravinsky himself conducting in January 1940, and most recently performed it with conductor Yan Pascal Tortelier in March 2017. The score calls for two piccolos, four flutes, four oboes, English horn, four clarinets, bass clarinet, four bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two harps, piano, celesta and strings. Performance time: approximately 35 minutes

Stravinsky burst meteor-like onto the musical firmament in 1910 with the brilliant triumph of his first major score for the Ballet Russe, The Firebird. Immediately, Serge Diaghilev, the enterprising impresario of the troupe, sought to capitalize on that success by commissioning Stravinsky to write a second score

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as soon as possible. Stravinsky was already prepared with an idea that had come to him even before finishing The Firebird. “I saw in imagination a solemn pagan rite,” he recalled in his Autobiography of 1936. “Sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring. Such was the theme of Le Sacre du Printemps.” Diaghilev was as excited about this vision as was Stravinsky, and he sent the composer off to write the score with all possible haste. Stravinsky continued the story in his Autobiography: “Before tackling The Rite of Spring, which would be a long and difficult task, I wanted to refresh myself by composing an orchestral piece in which the piano would play the most important part — a sort of Konzertstück. In composing the music, I had a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life.... Having finished this piece, I struggled for hours to find a title which would express in a word the character of my music and, consequently, the personality of this creature. One day I leaped for joy, I had indeed found my title — Petrushka, the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all countries. Soon afterwards, Diaghilev came to visit me. He was much astonished when, instead of the sketches of the Sacre, I played him the piece I had just composed and which later became the second scene of Petrushka. He was so pleased with it that he would not leave it alone, and began persuading me to develop the theme of the puppet’s sufferings and make it into a whole ballet.” Though his progress on the score was interrupted by a serious bout of “nicotine poisoning,” Stravinsky finished the work in time for the scheduled premiere on June 13, 1911. The production was a triumph. Tableau I. St. Petersburg, the Shrove-Tide Fair. Crowds of people stroll about, entertained by a hurdy- gurdy man and dancers. The Showman opens the curtains of his little theater to reveal three puppets — Petrushka, the Ballerina and the Blackamoor. He charms them into life with his flute, and they begin to dance among the public. Tableau II. Petrushka’s Cell. Petrushka suffers greatly from his awareness of his grotesque appearance. He tries to console himself by falling in love with the Ballerina. She visits him in his cell, but she is frightened by his uncouth antics and flees. Tableau III. The Blackamoor’s Cell. The Blackamoor and the Ballerina meet in his cell. Their love scene is interrupted by the arrival of Petrushka, furiously jealous. The Blackamoor tosses him out. Tableau IV. The Fair. The festive scene of Tableau I resumes with the appearance of a group of wet- nurses, a performing bear, Gypsies, a band of coachmen and several masqueraders. At the theater, Petrushka rushes out from behind the curtain, pursued by the Blackamoor, who strikes his rival down with his sword. Petrushka dies. The Showman assures the bystanders that Petrushka is only a puppet, but he is startled to see Petrushka’s jeering ghost appear on the roof of the little theater. ©2020 Dr. Richard E. Rodda