Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) Symphony No.2 in E Minor, Op.27 — Adagio

Peoria Symphony Orchestra February 13, 2016 Program Notes by Michael Allsen This concert opens with a lively overture by Rossini and a lush symphonic movement by Rachmaninoff. The orchestra’s showpiece is Ravel’s colorfully-orchestrated Boléro. We then welcome soprano Marisa Buchheit for a rich selection of arias and songs from opera and Broadway: works by Puccini, Arditi, Mozart, Lehár, Bernstein, and Kern. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) Overture to L’Italiana in Algeri Rossini’s opera L’Italiana in Algeri (“The Italian Girl in Algiers”) was premiered in Venice, at the Teatro San Benedetto on May 22, 1813. Duration 8:00. 1813 was Rossini’s Big Year: when this 21-year-old hit the operatic big time. He had worked with some success as a composer of lighter operas and musical “farces” even as a teenager. But his first true hit was in February 1813, when his serious opera Tancredi opened in Venice. The Venetian audience demanded a follow-up, and just three months later, he opened the comic opera L’Italiana in Algeri, which was every bit as successful as Tancredi. (Depending on which newspaper report you believe, he completed the entire score in either 18 or 27 days!) Rossini’s comic operas are always a delightful mix of ludicrous situations and silly characters, but L’Italiana features what is certainly one of his wackiest plots. A popular story line for comic operas in this period was the abduction of a young woman by a Turkish or Algerian prince—and her eventual rescue from his harem. Mozart used this in his Abduction from the Seraglio, and there are many others. L’italiana turns this common plot upside-down. A young man named Lindoro is shipwrecked off the Algerian coast, and is held captive at the court of the Bey of Algiers (the local Muslim prince). It is Lindoro’s girlfriend Isabella who comes to rescue him, which she eventually does—through a bit of outrageous flirting, careful planning, and some ridiculous plot twists. L’Italiana is still regularly staged today, and its lively overture is frequently played on its own as a concert piece. (For his part, Rossini liked it well enough that he actually recycled it as an overture to each of his next two operas!) It opens with a slow and rather sneaky-sounding introduction with pizzicato strings interrupted by a sudden cymbal crash (the prominent use of drums and cymbals lending this a bit of exotic “Algerian” flavor) and a lovely oboe solo. Just when things seem to be getting a little serious the tempo abruptly quickens, and the woodwinds begin a quirky main theme that builds quickly to passage for full orchestra. The oboe introduces a more lyrical second idea, with a spiky little piccolo countermelody. There is a brief, mock- serious development, before the overture ends with a full recapitulation of these ideas and short, furious coda. Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) Symphony No.2 in E Minor, Op.27 — Adagio Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No.2 was completed in 1907. The first performance took place in St. Petersburg on February 15, 1908. Duration 57:00. Rachmaninoff’s second symphony was a the work of a young man—completed when he was only 30—but it was also a work of a man who had already seen his share of troubles. The premiere of his first symphony in 1897 was such a disaster that Rachmaninoff seriously considered giving up composition, and the unrelentingly cruel attacks on this work contributed to a severe bout of depression. Rachmaninoff recovered his emotional stability and confidence only in 1900—the second piano concerto, published in 1901, represents his return to life as a composer. Perhaps with the failure of his first symphony in mind, he worked on the new E minor symphony in secret. At the time, he was living in Dresden, having left Moscow to escape increasingly violent political turmoil in Russia, and he did not tell even his closest friends about the new project Rachmaninoff returned to Russia in the summer of 1907, bringing the nearly- completed score for the Symphony No.2 with him, and the new symphony was ready in January of 1908 for its first performance in St. Petersburg. This performance, which Rachmaninoff conducted, was as much a triumph as his first symphony had been a failure. A second performance, just a week later in Moscow, was equally successful. Rachmaninoff had vindicated himself—most importantly in his own mind—as a symphonist, and the second symphony has remained in the repertoire ever since that time. The third movement (Adagio) is unabashedly Romantic throughout. The strings enter with a lush passage that is one of Rachmainoff’s most familiar melodies (thanks in part to a famous—or infamous—pop song reworking popularized by singer Eric Carmen in the 1970s). After this introduction, the solo clarinet spins out a seemingly endless melody above a string background. The central section of this movement develops the symphony’s motto melody in the strings, and the oboe and English horn overlay the strings with a rather spooky new theme. In the concluding section, Rachmaninoff returns to the lush opening theme, now letting it expand in much broader strokes. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) Boléro Ravel composed this work in 1928, and its premiere was at the Paris Opèra on November 22, 1928. Duration 17:00. Boléro is one of the later works of Ravel, and his most popular. In fact, Boléro is one of those pieces that is so popular it risks being a cliché. It has been used in movies—most famously in a memorable scene in the otherwise forgettable 1979 film 10—television, advertising, and even figure skating: usually to suggest something languorous and sexy. But the work Ravel called his “only masterpiece” remains as exciting and musically satisfying as it was in its first performance in 1928. Boléro was written as a ballet score by Ida Rubinstein. Her ballet, a solo dance set in a Spanish tavern, called for a Spanish idiom, and she originally suggested a transcription of pieces from Iberia by Isaac Albéniz. This proved impossible due to copyright restrictions, and instead Ravel produced an entirely innovative score based on a stylized boléro rhythm—a folk dance of southern Spain. The ballet production was successful, but Boléro proved to be phenomenally popular as a concert work, and it was promptly performed across Europe and America. Not everyone liked it, however—one American critic called it “...the most insolent monstrosity ever perpetrated in the history of music. From the beginning to the end of its 339 measures, it is simply the incredible repetition of a single rhythm....and above it is the blatant recurrence of an overwhelmingly vulgar cabaret tune...” Ravel was taken aback by the strong reactions—negative and positive—to the piece, and in 1931, wrote a letter to the London Daily Telegraph explaining his intentions: “I am particularly anxious that there should be no misunderstanding as to my Boléro. It is an experiment in a very special and limited direction, and it should not be suspected of aiming at achieving anything different from, or anything more than, it actually does achieve. Before the first performance, I issued a warning to the effect that what I had written was a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of orchestral texture without music—of one long, very gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and there is practically no invention except in the plan and the manner of the execution. The themes are impersonal—folk tunes of the usual Spanish-Arabian kind. Whatever may have been said to the contrary, the orchestral treatment is simple and straightforward throughout, without the slightest attempt at virtuosity... I have done exactly what I have set out to do, and it is for listeners to take it or leave it.” Ravel’s astonishing statement that Boléro is “without music” probably refers to its completely original form: there is none of the usual thematic development or sectional repetitions—there is simply a constantly-repeated two-part theme. There are also no changes in harmony in the traditional sense: the harmony is an unwavering C Major for nearly fifteen minutes. The form is instead a constantly-evolving orchestration, changing the color and gradually adding all of the instruments of an expanded orchestra that includes such unusual timbres as piccolo trumpet, oboe d’amore, and three saxophones. Underlying all of this is the unchanging boléro rhythm played by a pizzicato strings and single snare drum—in fact, one of the most challenging percussion parts in the orchestral literature! The two parts of the theme—each repeated in the form AABB—reappear some eighteen times over the course of the piece. There is a kind of inexorable growth until the very end, when without warning, the harmony abruptly changes to E Major. This seems to have been Ravel’s way of breaking the tremendous momentum of the piece—by this point it has reached critical mass, and the end is not a traditional coda, but more a kind of exhausted collapse. Vocal Selections Gianni Schicchi is the third of three short operas that Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) grouped together as “Il trittico.” The operas were premiered at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1918. Gianni Schicchi is the lightest of the three, a typically convoluted Italian comic opera plot that concerns the death of the wealthy Buoso Donati, and his greedy relatives struggle for his property. It also centers on the frustrated love of Rinuccio and Lauretta, daughter of the conniving Gianni Schicchi (a character briefly mentioned in Dante’s Inferno).

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