CL06-STRAVINSKY FIREBIRD

Joshua Cerdenia —Feuertrunken (Fire-Drunk) (2017)

Feuertrunken is a loud meditation (if one can meditate loudly) on joy. In the months that I spent composing the piece, between March–June 2017, I found little cause for celebration in the many goings- on both locally and abroad; perhaps this was the reason I thought the subject of joy had so much urgency.

During this time I also found myself absorbed in the Divine Comedy, especially the Purgatorio: Dante’s vision of purgatory is a giant mountain partitioned into seven terraces, each devoted to purification from one of the deadly sins. Dante ascends the mountain terrace by terrace, until at last he finds a great wall of fire between him and paradise. An angel of God encourages him to make the plunge into his final trial. Though my piece as a whole is not programmatic (meaning musical events generally do not correspond to anything in Dante’s story), there is a brief interlude in which I imagine Dante in devoted silence before he submits to the fire.

The title, meaning “fire-drunk” or “drunk with fire,” is of course from Friedrich Schiller’s famous “Ode to Joy:” “We enter, drunk with fire, Heavenly One, your sanctuary.” I thought some reference to Beethoven was the obvious route; instead I chose Mahler, whose music I think conveys joy so adeptly. Feuertrunken quotes the opening of Mahler’s first Symphony before veering off into various, intertwined episodes of supplication, blasphemy, and finally, praise.

— Joshua Cerdenia

Sir Edward Elgar (1857-1934)—Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 (1919)

During the First World War, Elgar’s contributions were musical and patriotic, but exhaustion and ill health punished this senior-statesman of British music, now in his sixth decade. Retiring to his secluded Sussex cottage, each sound of artillery fire from across the nearby Channel was a reminder that the world would be forever changed and not so welcoming to the voices of the past.

As a young man, Elgar enjoyed singing in a glee club and teaching music lessons, and with a continental education financially unattainable, he relied on local opportunities—performing with a provincial orchestra, composing works for choral festivals—to learn and develop his craft. While many of his colleagues would remain obscure on the world stage, his 1899 Enigma Variations brought him international fame overnight. Arguably, he was the first British composer of orchestral music in centuries to be taken seriously abroad, and this led to high-profile commissions, international tours, and a knighthood in 1904.

Throughout Elgar’s career, his wife Alice inspired him in their shared successes, and she was ecstatic as he composed three substantial chamber works from their cottage in the closing days of the war. As Elgar healed from a recent surgery, he knew his wife was succumbing to frailty. As her death loomed, he composed his Cello Concerto.

Composed in four movements, the opening cadenza cries out in grief, followed by a lamenting melody that first flows from the violas. Sorrowful and contemplative, the opening movement, with hesitance, is balanced by a fleeting scherzo where the soloist traverses the instrument with rapid-fire notes. The Adagio is stunning for its simplicity, as the cello sings lyrically above the orchestra. The finale is symphonic and noble, and is varied, spanning a spectrum of moods. Reminiscing on music that came before, this great finale is sometimes spirited, often brooding, but is ultimately heartbreaking in its conclusion.

Elgar’s concerto opened the London Symphony’s 1919 season but suffered from little rehearsal attention from the conductor, and the work would not gain any traction during its composer’s life. While Elgar was certainly not obscure in his final years—he still had many supporters—he was old-fashioned, and he soon lost his greatest inspiration. Not six months following the premiere of his concerto did his wife Alice succumb to cancer, and Edward would not complete another major work. Three decades after Elgar died, the first seminal recording of his concerto was made, establishing the work as a fundamental part of the cello repertoire while bringing international fame to 20-year-old Jacqueline du Pré.

Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016)—Cantus Arcticus, op. 61 “Concerto for Birds and Orchestra” (1972)

Helsinki-born composer Einojuhani Rautavaara was well-studied and productive in many different styles throughout his celebrated career. Like many aspiring Finnish composers, he began his studies at the Sibelius Academy while Jean Sibelius was still alive, and although the great master was in his final years, he proved helpful in providing a recommendation for further studies at the Juilliard School. Throughout Rautavaara’s varied career as a composer, he also taught, eventually returning to the Sibelius Academy as a professor.

In the 1960s, Rautavaara was an early adopter of serial composition techniques in Finland. This complex, modernist, and arguably inaccessible style had become the de facto approach to composition amongst the academic elite of the time, but even Rautavaara couldn’t help but imbue his serial scores with his preferred brand of grand Bruckneresque romanticism. Finding the laborious techniques of serialism ineffective, he eventually abandoned them altogether, freeing him in his most productive period in the 1970s.

In all, he composed eight symphonies, nine operas, and even more concertos and chamber works. Among his numerous stand-alone orchestral works is his opus 61 Cantus Arcticus. Subtitled “Concerto for Birds and Orchestra,” this innovative work infuses field recordings of birdsong with the textures of the orchestra. With sounds collected from the Arctic Circle and northern Finland, Rautavaara creates a soundscape unique to the natural settings of his homeland.

A solitary flute duet opens the movement The Bog, and recorded birdcalls integrate with instruments imitating wildlife. A broad melody enters, portraying the grand beauty and mystery of nature. The shore lark makes an appearance in a transition to the second movement, Melancholy, in which muted strings accompany the birdsong as if a distant chorale. In the final movement, Swans Migrating, the woodwinds imitate the chaos of a fleet of birds, as the orchestra builds a strung-out melody to a grand climax, then fades to silence.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1972)—Firebird Suite (1919)

Much like his contemporary, artist Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky has gone down in history for lending his unmatched creativity and technique to an array of styles. Late in life, he embraced serialism with his signature sound. In the 1920s, he was the standard-bearer for the stripped-down Neoclassical movement, again without sacrificing his musical personality. Throughout his stylistic diversions, however, the root of his fame was his early Russian period, defined by a series of commissions for Paris’ Ballets Russes: Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, and the work that introduced him to the world, The Firebird.

Stravinsky had a thoroughly Russian education, studying with the preeminent composer and master of orchestration, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. As a gift to Rimsky-Korsakov for his daughter’s wedding, he composed the short concert work Feu d'artifice ("Fireworks"). In the audience for the premiere was ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev, who was so impressed by the young composer’s work that he commissioned him for his nascent ballet company the Ballets Russes, which sought to bring new fantastic, and often Russian, works to the stages of Paris.

Based on a Russian fairy tale, Stravinsky’s The Firebird was a sensation, opening the 1910 season for the Ballets Russes. Parisian audiences, fascinated with Russian culture, were captivated by Stravinsky’s mystical score and the story of Prince Ivan, who, while hunting, strays into the magical world of Kashchei the Immortal. He captures the Firebird, and in exchange for her life, she gifts him a magic feather that will summon her in a time of need. Prince Ivan falls in love with a princess under Kashchei’s spell, and upon confronting the magician, summons the Firebird who makes Kashchei’s minions dance the “Infernal Dance.” The Firebird puts Kashchei to sleep, allowing Prince Ivan to destroy his soul, and all under his spell are released, leading to celebration.

Stravinsky’s beloved ballet continues to performed in full, but he also made several reduced concert versions of the work, including the oft-performed Concert Suite No. 2 from 1919. Here, Stravinsky chose from the larger ballet five key movements: An introduction and the Firebird’s dance, a movement for the Princess, the infernal dance, a lullaby for Kashchei, and a finale.

—Chaz Stuart, 2019