Overture to Abu Hassan Carl Maria Von Weber (1786–1826) Written: 1811 Movements: One Style: Early Romantic Duration: Four Minutes
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Overture to Abu Hassan Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) Written: 1811 Movements: One Style: Early romantic Duration: Four minutes Carl Maria von Weber was one of the first German Romantic composers of the 19th century. Like many other Romantics, Weber was involved in a wide variety of musical pursuits and dabbled in literature as well. He was one of the greatest pianists—and guitarists!—of his generation. As a conductor, he was one of the first to conduct standing and with a baton. From contemporary accounts it seems that he was also the sort of conductor whose countenance on the podium transfixed players and audience alike. When Beethoven heard Der Freischütz—Weber’s most important opera—he commented, “I never could have believed it of the poor weak little manikin. Weber must write operas now; nothing but operas, one after another.” Carl’s father Franz Anton was initially a military officer who then led a troubled career in the theater. Carl’s mother was a singer, and his cousin was Mozart’s beloved wife Constanze Weber. Carl published his first music when he was 12, and wrote his first opera when he was 14. He was only 18 when he became the director of the Breslau Opera. He then served as personal secretary to Duke Ludwig, the brother of King Frederick I of Württemberg. In 1810, during a rehearsal of his opera Sylvania, Carl and his father were arrested on charges of embezzlement. Both were imprisoned and later banished from the realm. It was at this time that Weber wrote his little one act Singspiel (an opera with spoken dialogue), Abu Hassan. Based on a story from the 1001 Nights, it is strangely similar to Weber’s own situation. Abu Hassan (cupbearer to a Caliph) and his wife Fatime attempt to defraud the Caliph by each claiming their spouse has died, thereby collecting a death benefit. When the Caliph shows up at Abu Hassan’s house and finds both husband and wife apparently dead, he announces a reward of 10,000 golden dinars to anyone who can solve the riddle of who died first. Abu Hassan springs to life and claims he died second. In spite of the fraud, all ends well in the opera. The short Overture to Abu Hassan is almost Mozartian in its effervescent liveliness. Based on material from the opera, it is the perfect foil to the hilarity that follows. In spite of the opera’s initial success, things didn’t go so well for Weber after that. As his biographer John Hamilton Warrick states: If only circumstances had allowed him to follow up this success . the whole course of his career and indeed the evolution of Romantic opera might have been completely altered. Yet he was compelled to put his energies into other aspects of opera, to waste much of the little time he had left in hackwork . 10 years, a quarter of his life, were to pass before his next opera, and that was Der Freishütz. Unfortunately, Carl Maria von Weber shared a trait with Mozart and two other great early- romantic composers, Schubert and Chopin: He died in his 30s. © 2018 John P. Varineau Concerto for Piano Aram Khachaturian (1903–1978) Written: 1936 Movements: Three Style: 20th Century Russian Duration: 33 minutes Aram Khachaturian was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. Almost completely unschooled in music as a child, he started studying the cello when he was 19, enrolled at a music school in Moscow, and eventually graduated from the Moscow Conservatory where he studied composition under Nikolai Myaskovsky. Khachaturian’s star rose quickly, aided by compositions such as his First Symphony, written to commemorate the “Sovietization” of Armenia, and his Poem about Stalin. In 1939, he was appointed vice-chairman of the Organizing Committee of Soviet Composers. In the same year, he received the highest award of the Soviet Union, the Order of Lenin, “for outstanding merit in promoting the development of Armenian art.” In spite of Khachaturian’s popularity as a composer and his dedication to communism, he was included in the infamous Zhdanov decree that condemned composers for being “formalist” and “anti-popular.” Along with Shostakovich and Prokofiev, he was forced to publicly repent at a special congress of the Composers' Union: “Those were tragic days for me.... I was clouted on the head so unjustly. My repenting speech at the First Congress was insincere. I was crushed, destroyed. I seriously considered changing professions.” However, as the state took away, it gave back when he was formally rehabilitated by another decree in 1958. In 1952 Khachaturian described the importance of folk music in his composing: I grew up in an atmosphere rich in folk music: popular festivities, rites, joyous and sad events in the life of the people always accompanied by music, the vivid tunes of Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian songs and dances performed by folk bards and musicians—such were the impressions that became deeply engraved on my memory, that determined my musical thinking. They shaped my musical consciousness and lay at the foundations of my artistic personality. Khachaturian wrote his Piano Concerto shortly after he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory. Described as “a virtuoso rivalry between the soloist and the orchestra” Khachaturian wrote it for his friend Lev Oborin, a member of a famed piano trio. (Khachaturian would later write a violin and cello concerto for the other two members.) A bang on the bass drum begins the piece. Soon, the piano proclaims the main theme of the first movement in triple octaves. After all sorts of pyrotechnics for the piano, the oboe intones a second theme infused with exotic melodic twists. The central part of the movement is almost frenetic in its drive. A cadenza near the end of the movement leads to a restatement of the opening theme. The second movement is a set of elaborate variations on a melody that Khachaturian devised by means of “drastically modifying the tune of a simple little Armenian song, very popular in its time, which I had heard in old Tbilisi and which any inhabitant of Transcaucasia knows well.” Apparently, Khachaturian modified the tune too much because “even the Georgian and Armenian musicians I spoke to could not recognize my theme's popular prototype.” The third movement is a wild romp characterized by impulsive rhythms alternating with grand gestural sweeps. A long meditative section for the solo piano interrupts the action. When the orchestra finally enters, it leads to a grand restatement of the concerto’s opening theme and an almost frenzied conclusion. ©2018 John P. Varineau Scheherazade, Op. 35 Nicholai Rimsky–Korsakov (1844–1908) Written: 1888 Movements: Four Style: Romantic Russian Duration: 42 minutes Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was the most successful of a group of Russian nationalist composers known as the The Five or The Mighty Handful. Rimsky-Korsakov and the others— Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, César Cui, and Modest Mussorgsky—all were mostly self- taught and, in many respects, amateur composers. As a group, they were dedicated to developing a distinctly Russian style of music based upon Russian folk music. Of the five, only Rimsky-Korsakov achieved official recognition by getting a teaching position at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He was an excellent teacher, but woefully underprepared for the job. In his autobiography, he explains how he barely kept one step ahead of his students: Had I ever studied at all, had I possessed a fraction more of knowledge than I actually did, it would have been obvious to me that I could not and should not accept the proffered appointment . I was a dilettante and knew nothing. I had to pretend that I knew everything and that I understood all the problems of all the pupils. I had to resort to general remarks. I was aided in this by the fact that at first none of my pupils could imagine that I knew nothing; and by the time they had learned enough to begin to see through me, I had learned something myself! As a teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov influenced two generations of Russian composers, including Stravinsky and Prokofiev. Scheherazade, Rimsky-Korsakov’s most famous work, involves fantastic tales of exotic characters and places. Stories from The Arabian Nights are the basis for the music. Rimsky- Korsakov included the following synopsis in the original score: The Sultan Schahriar, persuaded of the falseness and the faithlessness of women, has sworn to put to death each one of his wives after the first night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by interesting him in tales which she told him during one thousand and one nights. Pricked by curiosity, the Sultan put off his wife’s execution from day to day and at last gave up entirely his bloody plan. Many marvels were told Schahriar by the Sultana Scheherazade. For her stories, the Sultana borrowed from the poets their verses, from folk songs the words; and she strung together tales and adventures. Rimsky-Korsakov had in view, “an orchestral suite in four movements closely knit by the community of its themes and motives, yet representing, as it were, a kaleidoscope of fairytale images and designs of Oriental character.” He had originally intended to label the four movements “Prelude, Ballade, Adagio, and Finale.” However, he eventually published the piece with the following movement headings: “The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship,” “The Story of the Prince Kalandar,” “The Young Prince and the Young Princess,” and “Festival at Baghdad—The Sea— The Ship Goes to Pieces Against a Rock Surmounted by a Bronze Warrior.” “All that I wished,” he writes in his autobiography, “was that the listener should carry away the impression that it is beyond doubt an Eastern narrative of numerous and variegated legendary wonders.” Rimsky-Korsakov was careful to point out that the themes that you will hear throughout the four movements don’t always relate to the same subject: “In vain do people seek in my suite leading motives linked always and unvaryingly with the same poetic ideas and conceptions.