PENINSULA MUSIC FESTIVAL PROGRAM 8

Thursday, August 23, 2018, 7:30 p.m.

Victor Yampolsky, Conductor Riana Anthony, Cello Chris Wild, Karen Smuda Emerging Conductor†

ST. PETERSBURG TO MOSCOW II

GLAZUNOV Concert Waltz No. 1 in D major, Op. 47*†

KABALEVSKY Cello No. 2 in C minor, Op. 77* I. Molto sostenuto — Allegro molto e energico — Cadenza I: Tempo I Rubato — Allegro molto agitato — II. Presto marcato — Cadenza II: L’istesso tempo — Molto sostenuto — III. Andante con moto — Agitato — Molto tranquillo Played without pause

— INTERMISSION —

RIMSKY-KORSAKOV Scheherazade, Op. 35 The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship The Story of the Kalandar Prince The Young Prince and the Young Princess Festival at Baghdad — The Sea — Shipwreck

* first PMF performance

This concert is sponsored by Friends of PMF 2.0. Carl & Judy Jackson, Richard Kozak, Mike & Connie Glowacki and Tom & Linda Weisensel

Photography and audio recordings of this concert are strictly prohibited. Please, no cell phones during the concert.

— 31 — PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. RICHARD E. RODDA

Program 8 Eighth and the atmospheric tone poems The Kremlin and , occasionally grace con- Concert Waltz No. 1 in D major, Op. 47 cert programs. “Within Russian music, Glazunov has a Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936) significant place because he succeeded in reconciling Composed in 1894. Russianism and Europeanism,” wrote Boris Schwarz. “He was the direct heir of Balakirev’s nationalism but By the turn of the 20th century, Russian music tended more toward Borodin’s epic grandeur. At the had become a mature art. The works of Tchaikovsky, same time he absorbed Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and Borodin, having virtuosity, the lyricism of Tchaikovsky and the contrapun- been played at home and abroad, established a national tal skill of Taneyev.... He remains a composer of impos- character and tradition that they wanted to see passed ing stature and a stabilizing influence in a time of transi- on to succeeding generations. The most important tion and turmoil.” Russian musical torchbearer of the two decades after The 19th-century mania for the Viennese waltz raged 1900, the time between the deaths of Tchaikovsky and in as virulently as it did in the rest of Europe — his contemporaries and the rise of the modern school of Johann Strauss the Younger spent many summers at Prokofiev and Shostakovich, was Alexander Glazunov. the fashionable resort of Pavlovsk, south of St. Pe- Glazunov was gifted with an exceptional ear and tersburg, after he began touring in 1856 — and left its musical memory (after Borodin’s death, he completely progeny in the concert and stage works of Tchaikovsky, reconstructed the Overture to from recollec- Rachmaninoff, Liadov, Prokofiev, Shostakovich and tions of Borodin’s piano performance of the piece), and other of the nation’s composers. In 1894, Glazunov early demonstrated his gifts in his native St. Petersburg. contributed two fine specimens to the genre of the con- By age nineteen, he had traveled to western Europe for cert waltz, which are based on the Viennese model that a performance of his First . During the 1890s, strings together several continuous strains of comple- he established a wide reputation as a composer and a mentary character. conductor of his own works, journeying to Paris in 1889 to direct his Second Symphony at the World Exhibition. Cello Concerto No. 2 for in C minor, Op. 77 In 1899, he was engaged as instructor of composition Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904-1987) and orchestration at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Composed in 1964. When his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, was dis- Premiered on January 15, 1965 by the Leningrad Philhar- missed from the Conservatory staff in the wake of the monic, conducted by the composer with Daniel Shafran 1905 revolutionary turmoil, Glazunov resigned in protest as soloist. in April and did not return until December 14th, by which time most of the demands by the faculty for the school’s Dmitri Kabalevsky, one of the most prominent figures autonomy had been granted. Two days later he was in Soviet music, was born in St. Petersburg on Decem- elected director of the Conservatory. He worked cease- ber 30, 1904. Though Kabalevsky showed considerable lessly to improve the curriculum and standards of the talent as a self-taught pianist from his earliest years, his Conservatory, and made a successful effort to preserve father, a mathematician in government service, provided the school’s independence after the 1917 Revolution. him with a general rather than a specifically musical In the final years of his tenure, which lasted officially education that also uncovered abilities in painting and until 1930, Glazunov was criticized for his conservatism poetry, activities he continued throughout his life. In (Shostakovich, one of his students, devoted many ad- 1918, the family moved to Moscow, where Kabalevsky miring but frustrated pages to him in his purported mem- furthered his liberal training while studying piano at the oirs, Testimony) and spent much time abroad. In 1929, Scriabin Musical Institute. During the following years, he visited the United States to conduct the orchestras he concentrated on piano by giving lessons, serving as of Boston and Detroit in concerts of his music. When his accompanist, and providing background music for silent health broke, in 1932, he settled with his wife in Paris; he movies. Short etudes he wrote for his pupils ignited his died there in 1936. In 1972, his remains were transferred interest in composition, and he entered the Moscow to Leningrad and reinterred in an honored grave. A re- Conservatory in 1925 as a student of Nikolai Mias- search institute devoted to him in Munich and an archive kovsky. His first important compositions (a piano sonata, in Paris were established in his memory. a string quartet and a piano concerto) date from the late Glazunov’s greatest period of creativity came in the 1920s; they received enough recognition that he gradu- years before his Conservatory duties occupied most ated from the Conservatory in 1930 with special honors. of his time and energy. He produced much music in all After writing articles for the journal Sovremennaya forms except opera — his last major work, the Saxo- Muzika (“Contemporary Music”) beginning in 1927, Ka- phone Concerto of 1934, bears the opus number 109. balevsky became a significant contributor and spokes- His best-known piece is the , written just person in Russian musical life: he was a charter member before he was installed as director of the Petersburg of the Union of Soviet Composers, a senior editor in Conservatory, but a few other works, notably the bal- the music publishing house Musgiz, principal editor of lets and , the Fourth, Fifth and Sovetskaya Muzika, professor of composition at the Moscow Conservatory and, in 1956, a cultural represen-

— 32 — tative of his country to the United States. In 1940, he the opera Prince Igor, in a state of unfinished disarray. became a member of the Communist Party; that same Rimsky-Korsakov had taken it upon himself to complete year he was awarded the Order of Merit, and six years the piece, and may well have been inspired by its exotic later received the Stalin Prize. He died in Moscow on setting among the Tartar tribes in 12th-century central February 14, 1987. Kabalevsky’s works, written largely in Asia to undertake his own embodiment of musical Ori- an easily accessible idiom characterized by conventional entalism. The stories on which he based his work were melody, traditional tonal harmony colored with some taken from the Thousand and One Nights, a collection of nose-thumbing, Prokofievian dissonances, and clear, millennium-old fantasy tales from Egypt, Persia and India simple forms, include seven operas (Colas Breugnon is that had been gathered together, translated into French, the best known), four symphonies, numerous indepen- and published in many installments by Antoine Galland dent orchestral scores, six (three for piano, beginning in 1704. They were in large part responsible two for cello and one for violin), various chamber pieces for exciting a fierce passion forturquerie and chinoiserie and songs, many patriotic choral and vocal composi- among the fashionable classes of Europe later in the tions, and much incidental music for stage and film. century, a movement that left its mark on music in the Kabalevsky’s Cello Concerto No. 1 was taken into the form of numerous tintinnabulous “Turkish marches” by Soviet repertory soon after its 1949 premiere, and Daniel Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and a horde of lesser now- Shafran, one Russia’s leading virtuosos, performed it on faded lights, and in Mozart’s rollicking opera The Abduc- several occasions, including a concert with the com- tion from the Seraglio. The taste for exoticism was never poser conducting in 1954 that so impressed Kabalevsky completely abandoned by musicians (witness Bizet’s he asked the young cellist to record it with him. Their The Pearl Fishers or Puccini’s Madama Butterfly or Tu- collaboration so impressed Kabalevsky that in 1964 he randot or even The Girl of the Golden West; Ravel prided composed the Cello Concerto No. 2 for Shafran and pre- himself on his collection of Oriental artifacts), and proved miered and recorded it with him. The Second Concerto the perfect subject for Rimsky-Korsakov’s talent as an is a work of dark emotional hue, somewhat reminiscent orchestral colorist. Preliminary sketches were made for of Shostakovich’s music during those years but with- the piece in St. Petersburg during the early months of out his frequent bitterness or caustic wit. The Concerto 1888, the score was largely written in June at the com- is in the conventional three movements, though they poser’s country place on Lake Cheryemenyetskoye, near are linked by extended cadenzas and the entire work Luga, and the orchestration completed by early August. played without pause. It begins with a brooding intro- Scheherazade was a success at its premiere in St. duction whose pizzicato cello theme is heard as a motto Petersburg in December, and it has remained one of the throughout the work. Flutes in icy harmonies take over most popular of all symphonic works. the theme as background for a lyrical obbligato line from To refresh the listener’s memory of the ancient leg- the soloist. The bassoon mutters a quick, circling motive ends, Rimsky-Korsakov prefaced the score with these in its low register that the cello borrows as the theme of words: “The sultan Shakriar, convinced of the falsehood the movement’s fast central section. The mood of the and inconstancy of all women, had sworn an oath to put brooding introduction returns with a keening, neighbor- to death each of his wives after the first night. However, ing-note phrase from the cello’s earlier obbligato to lead the sultana Scheherazade saved her life by arousing his to Cadenza I, based on the pizzicato motto that opened interest in the tales she told him during 1,001 nights. the Concerto. The tempo quickens for the Presto, a Driven by curiosity, the sultan postponed her execution muscular scherzo with march-like episodes that use from day to day, and at last abandoned his sanguinary the introduction’s pizzicato theme. The cello continues design. Scheherazade told many miraculous stories to the scherzo’s galloping figurations inCadenza II, into the sultan. For her tales she borrowed verses from the which the timpani boldly intrudes. The finale juxtaposes poets and words from folk-songs combining fairy-tales a long, soulful cello melody with dynamic contrasting with adventures.” To each of the four movements of his sections that return the fast music of the first movement. “symphonic suite” Rimsky gave a title: The Sea and Sin- The Second Concerto comes to a soft, if not quite fully bad’s Ship, The Story of the Kalandar Prince, The Young conclusive, close. Prince and the Young Princess and Festival at Baghdad –The Sea–Shipwreck. At first glance, these titles seem Scheherazade, Op. 35 definite enough to lead the listener to specific nightly Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) chapters of Scheherazade’s soap opera. On closer ex- Composed in 1888. amination, however, they prove too vague to be of much Premiered on December 15, 1888 in St. Petersburg, help. The Kalandar Prince, for instance, could be any conducted by the composer. one of three noblemen who dress as members of the Kalandars, a sect of wandering dervishes, and tell three “In the middle of the winter [of 1888], engrossed different tales. “I meant these hints,” advised the com- as I was in my work on Prince Igor and other things, I poser, “to direct but slightly the hearer’s fancy on the conceived the idea of writing an orchestral composition path which my own fancy had traveled, and leave more on the subject of certain episodes from Scheherazade.” minute and particular conceptions to the will and mood Thus did Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov give the curt explana- of each listener. All I had desired was that the hearer, if tion of the genesis of his most famous work in his auto- he liked my piece, should carry away the impression that biography, My Musical Life. His friend it is beyond doubt an Oriental narrative of some numer- had died the year before, leaving his magnum opus, ous and varied fairy-tale wonders.” ©2018 Dr. Richard E. Rodda — 33 —