RACHMANINOFF & THE FIREBIRD PROGRAM

Cindy McTee (1953- ) Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) Circuits Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor, Op. 1 A native of Tacoma, Washington, McTee holds degrees from Pacific Lutheran Rachmaninoff was born in provincial University, Yale University, and the Russia to aristocratic parents. Despite an University of Iowa, with additional study at unhappy childhood marred by a sibling’s the Academy of Music in Kraków. After a death, academic failure, and his parents’ distinguished teaching career at the financial misfortunes and ultimate divorce, University of North Texas, she retired Rachmaninoff graduated from the Moscow in 2011 as Regents Professor Emerita. Conservatory with honors in piano and the McTee has received numerous awards for coveted Great Gold Medal in composition. her music, including fellowships from the Guggenhim and Fulbright Foundations, While still a Conservatory student, as well as the National Endowment for the Rachmaninoff wrote a piano concerto and Arts, and she is recognized as one of the dedicated it to his composition teacher leading composers in the United States. who was also his first cousin, Alexander Ziloti. The work was published and Although McTee originally wrote Circuits performed, but the young composer— for chamber orchestra, she revised it still only 19—was dissatisfied and set it extensively in 2011 for orchestra. The aside. During the years that followed, he score calls for brass, woodwinds, strings, achieved phenomenal success with two and diverse percussion instruments, additional piano concertos, orchestral including cowbells and alpine bells. works, songs, chamber music, as well as piano pieces, including the celebrated According to the composer, “Circuits is C-Sharp Minor Prelude. meant to characterize several important aspects of the work’s musical language: a The composer revised his initial attempt strong reliance upon circuitous structures in the concerto genre 25 years later, and such as ostinatos, the use of a formal this version is known as Piano Concerto design incorporating numerous, recurring No. 1. Rachmaninoff was influenced not short sections, and the presence of an by the leading composers of his day, e.g., unrelenting kinetic energy achieved Debussy, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg, but through the use of 16th notes at a constant rather by the melodies and structures in tempo of 152 beats per minute.” Tchaikovsky’s music, leading one scholar to remark that “both [Tchaikovsky and Circuits exhibits a blend of McTee’s Rachmaninoff] represented Russian European training with American influence, melancholy expressed in German forms.” especially her love for jazz. Like big bands of an earlier era, the accompaniment Piano Concerto No. 1 follows the comprises driving rhythmic patterns, traditional fast-slow-fast, three-movement repeated exactly or with subtle changes, concerto plan. Like many other works while soloists seemingly improvise above by Rachmaninoff, it is in a minor mode, with atonal melodic snippets. The result contains intense lyricism and long melodic is a composition that is both technically lines, and displays a sense of drama. complex and very challenging. When the composer appeared in concert in Vienna for the first time, the audience

page 33 RACHMANINOFF PROGRAM (continued) couldn’t help but notice his extremely are symbols...of man’s attempt to know long arms, unusually large hands, and God [and are] symbolic places between extended thumbs. One audience member the mundane and spiritual world.” The even gasped, “He looks like the missing link gradual rise and fall of dynamics, along between ape and man!” But such seemingly with extensive arching phrases, may thus unattractive features enabled Rachmaninoff be viewed as musical metaphors for to effortlessly reach enormous spans of notes mountain skylines. on the keyboard. Nowhere is this more Hovhaness describes the opening of evident than in the opening movement’s Symphony No. 2 as “hymn-like and brilliant cadenza, which is filled with lyrical, making use of irregular metrical fiendishly difficult figurations way beyond forms.” The second movement is a double the technical abilities of most pianists. The fugue based on two themes—one that slow middle movement provides a moment is very melodic and the other fast and of brief relaxation, while the finale is frenetic. Although these imitative ideas remarkable for its concertato interplay in reach a dizzying climax, the work does not which the melody is tossed back and forth end here. Instead, Hovhaness, who was between the piano and orchestra. Just as strongly influenced by Indian spirituality, Conservatory students and teachers were follows this movement with a finale filled with dazzled by the premiere performance of contemplation. According to him, the third Concerto No. 1, today’s listeners remain in movement is “a chant in 7/4 time, played awe of this work. It may not be as well known softly by muted horns and trombones. as the later piano concertos, but it certainly deserves to be performed more often. A giant wave in a 13-beat meter rises up to a climax and recedes. After a middle Alan Hovhaness (1911-2000) section by oboes and clarinets in quintuple Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious meter, the earlier chant begins in muted Mountain” violins, which then give it to the whole orchestra for a magnificent conclusion.” Hovhaness, the son of an Armenian chemistry professor and an American In an age of experimental atonal or serial woman of Scottish descent, began music, Hovhaness was praised by critics composing at the tender age of four. He for writing a work that “is accessible and continued with piano studies and later pleasing to the ear,” full of consonance and enrolled at the New England Conservatory colorful orchestrations. Symphony No. 2 of Music, where e received the prestigious not only established his reputation as a Samuel Endicott Prize for Composition. composer but also remains a staple in After conducting the U. S. premiere of today’s orchestral repertoire. When asked Hovhaness’ first symphony, Leopold years later about the enormous success of Stokowski asked the composer for a second his work, Hovhaness commented, “I am work in that genre. The result was Symphony mixed—I am happy it is popular but I have No. 2, which was broadcast over NBC written much better work.” The composer radio in 1955 to instant acclaim. was undoubtedly referring to his other 69 symphonies (an astonishing number that The subtitle, “Mysterious Mountain,” which exceeds the total symphonic output of both the composer added as an afterthought, Mozart and Beethoven!), which are less refers not to a specific place but to mountains familiar to the public. in general. In his own program notes, Hovhaness explains that “Mountains

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Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) short melodic fragments, often in a narrow Suite from The Firebird (1919) range, but the novel elements in the work are still striking enough to portray a In 1910 Sergei Diaghilev, impresario contemporary quality. For example, in the of the newly formed Ballets Russes in Infernal Dance of King Kashchei, the music Paris, asked a young unknown Russian, achieves considerable power through Stravinsky, to write an original score for obsessive pounding rhythms, blazing the company’s upcoming production. orchestral colors, striking dissonances, Stravinsky had never received a commission and dynamic outbursts that continue to before, but Diaghilev, having previously thrill audiences. heard some of the composer’s early There can be little doubt that Stravinsky orchestral pieces in concert, must have contributed more to 20th-century music detected Stravinsky’s enormous talent. than almost any other composer of that Just before final rehearsals for the new era. There was no other artist of his day production, Diaghilev commented to the more involved in the past; yet in his music ballerina Tamara Karsavina, who created he was also profoundly aware of the role the title role, “Mark him [Stravinsky] well. art plays not only in understanding the He is a man on the eve of celebrity.” past but also preparing us for the future. Russian music had already taken Paris by Six years after the premiere, Stravinsky storm, and the new ballet was precisely arranged the ballet score as an orchestral what Parisian audiences were waiting suite, and in 1919 he re-orchestrated it, for. In June of that year Diaghilev and producing the standard concert version. Stravinsky unleashed the full-length The Firebird remains the earliest of ballet, The Firebird, and its immediate Stravinsky’s scores to have won and held success marked not only the beginning of a place in modern concert repertory. the composer’s prestigious international career but also a collaborative relationship with Diaghilev that lasted for many years. © Program notes by Dr. La Wanda J. Blakeney

The legend of The Firebird is one of the oldest in Slavic mythology. Prince-Tsarevich Ivan accidentally wanders into an enchanted garden, where he captures the Firebird, a beautiful bird of colorful plumage. The bird begs to be released, and the Prince gently acquiesces. In gratitude for her freedom, the bird gives one of her magical feathers to the Prince, who uses it to defeat the evil King Kashchei and win the hand of the beautiful Princess.

Stravinsky had studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov and was a close friend of Debussy, and the musical language of The Firebird owes much to both composers. There are dramatic increases in volume and tempo and numerous repetitions of

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