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Home , Harlequin, Max Bruch

Peoria September 19, 2015 Program Notes by Michael Allsen

Our 2015-2016 begins with a brilliant, if rarely-heard work by Illinois-born Edward Collins, his Mardi Gras. The Peoria Symphony Orchestra then welcomes the remarkable young violinist Charles Yang, who she plays the evocative Chaconne from “The Red ” by John Corigliano. The orchestra has its own showcase with Stravinsky’s suite from the ballet Petrouchka.

Edward Collins (1886-1951) Mardi Gras

This work was composed in 1921-1922, and Frederick Stock conducted its premiere at Chicago’s North Shore Festival on May 26, 1923.

Though he is lamentably little known today, Edward Collins was once a respected figure in American music - particularly in Illinois. Born in Joliet, Collins studied piano and composition at the Chicago musical College, and later enrolled at the conservatory, where he studied with Max Bruch and Englebert Humperdinck. After a successful debut as a piano soloist in Berlin in 1912, he had a brief career as a conductor, working at New York’s Century Opera, and Germany’s Bayreuth Festival. He returned to America at the outbreak of World War II, and in 1917 enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving with distinction in the trenches, and arranging musical entertainment for the troops. (John Philip Sousa named Collins an honorary U.S. Army Bandmaster to honor his service.) After the war he took up a career as teacher, working for the remainder of his career at the Chicago Musical College and Chicago’s American Conservatory.

Mardi Gras, originally titled simply Festival Overture, is Collins’s first major orchestral work. In October 1921, he wrote in his journal: “Started my Festival Overture today - got a pretty good idea for the beginning. At last I have started writing something for orchestra. No more fooling now. Night and day I must work to make up for a ten year delay. My apprentice[ship] has been too long - from now on learning must come from writing only.” He submitted the score to a composition contest sponsored by the North Shore Festival. Though Mardi Gras did not win, his second orchestral work, Tragic Overture, took first prize, earning Collins a substantial $1000 award. Frederick Stock later programmed both overtures, and other Collins works on Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts. Collins provided the following description of Mardi Gras:

“As the title indicates, the piece is boisterous and bizarre by turns, with now and then a romantic or even serious moment this latter the constant companion of wild frivolity. It begins wildly in the spirit of , with and horns shouting forth the main theme to a fiery accompaniment by the , trumpets and higher woodwinds. This theme is repeated by the full orchestra, and then suddenly gives way to subsidiary fragments. The arrival of the enormous and the on stilts is accompanied by

the strings playing col legno (i.e., playing with the wooden part of their bows) and the hoarse notes of muted trumpets and the querulous tones of high woodwinds. Occasionally there is a loud guffaw in the brass. The final coda is the whole work ‘boiled down.’ Fragments of the entire thematic material are tossed back and forth until the wild scene reaches a culmination in a fanfare of trumpets sounding above the full orchestra. At this moment the carnival royalty arrives, thousands of colored streamers are thrown from upper windows, the air becomes thick with confetti, and lurid lights play upon the fantastic floats and the grotesque costumes of the revelers.”

Mardi Gras is a fine concert overture - very much in the spirit of Strauss’s late Romantic tone poems - though there are hints of adventurous Impressionist harmony. There are even a few bluesy passages that show that Collins must have had his ears open to the burgeoning Jazz scene in early 1920s Chicago. Though it was his first attempt at a full orchestral score, the orchestration is confident and colorful throughout, and his rousing coda is particularly effective.

John Corigliano (b. 1938) Suite from The Red Violin

Corigliano composed the Chaconne in 1999, and the piece was premiered in New York City on June 3, 1999, with as soloist and the Eos Orchestra.

John Corigliano first emerged as one of America’s leading in the 1970s, and has remained in the forefront of American musical scene ever since. The powerful Symphony No.1 (1990) - his impassioned response to the AIDS epidemic - has been recorded multiple times, and garnered a Grammy Award. The Ghosts of Versailles, certainly one of the most important operas of the 1990s, was an enormous success in its Metropolitan Opera productions. His Symphony No.2 won him the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. Corigliano has sometimes been described as a representative of the “New ” - a slightly misleading term that refers to composers whose music is both approachable to audiences and who freely appropriate and mix styles from across the musical landscape.

In 1997, director François Giraud asked Corigliano to write a score for The Red Violin. Corigliano was no stranger to film music: his score for the 1980 film Altered States had received an Academy Award nomination, and he also wrote a score for Revolution in 1985. (He would later win an Academy Award for The Red Violin’s score.) The Red Violin - simply one of the finest films ever made about the power of music - follows the 300-year history of a famed violin by the 17th-century master Bussotti. The unique structure of the movie posed special challenges: it unfolds in a series of historical chapters, with a linking story from the present. Corigliano turned to the chaconne, a form popular when the fictional violin was created, as an organizing strategy. In an interview shortly before he won his Oscar, Corigliano noted: “Focusing the entire score on seven chords was the idea I had. I could use a chaconne, which is basically a repeated series of chords - and although it’s an early form, it’s been used ever since the Baroque into the present. It also is a form which has a sense of cumulative power because of not only the repetition of the harmonies, but the variety of the melodic material above it. So that was the way I would deal with it. The first thing I wrote was the seven chords. Then all the thematic material

is composed above those chords, the most important one being Anna’s theme, the one she hums that becomes the violin’s theme.”

Corigliano has effectively reworked the film music as concert music in several ways: the Chaconne from “The Red Violin” (1997), the virtuoso violin solo Pope’s Concert (1997), the Suite (1999), and finally the Violin “The Red Violin” (2003). (All of these were written for the phenomenal Joshua Bell, who recorded the solo parts of the film score.) The suite, in eleven linked sections, does not precisely follow the film’s action but has a drama all its own. It begins with the quiet and haunting Main Title, introducing the chaconne sequence that underlies much of the score. Anna’s Theme - representing Bussoti’s wife and eventually the violin itself - leads to the frantic Death of Anna, which ends with a poignant version of the theme in the . The scene shifts to Oxford in the late , and a concert by the virtuoso Frederick Pope, a character clearly based upon the 19th-century violinist Niccolò Paganini (though much better looking!). Coitus Musicales is just what it sounds like - a passionate encounter between Pope and his lover Victoria. Journey to China, with the solo playing above a static background brings the violin to China in the 1960s. The heartbreaking music of Shanghai personifies Chou Yan, a music teacher who has inherited the violin: a dangerously Western possession in the time of China’s “Cultural Revolution.” Pope’s Betrayal, the first of two large solo cadenzas in the suite represents Pope, who has cheated on Victoria with a new lover, a Gypsy violinist. Fierce percussion accents lead to the more wistful music of Victoria’s Departure, with the chaconne theme again in the foreground. The Auction moves to the very end of the film (Montreal, 1997) in a tense scene involving a copy of violin that had been commissioned by Pope. The Gypsy Cadenza is a flashy virtuoso turn very much in the tradition of Paganini. The piece closes with an extended version of Anna’s Theme.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Suite (1919 version)

Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka was written in Switzerland in 1910-11, and was first performed during a performance by the Ballets Russe in , on June 13, 1911.

“Only a straw-stuffed puppet, this modern !” - Wallace Fowlie

In 1911, the Parisian public expected great things of young . There was an ongoing craze for Russian music and ballet, fueled by the shrewd impresario Serge Diaghilev, who had brought Stravinsky to Paris two years earlier. Stravinsky’s Firebird (1909) - his first ballet score for Diaghilev’s company, the Ballets Russe - had been an enormous success, and by 1911, he was already beginning work on the revolutionary score for Rite of Spring. According to his autobiography, his second work for the Ballet Russe, Petrouchka, began as a sort of compositional coffee break between Firebird and Rite of Spring:

“Before tackling Rite of Spring, which would be a long and difficult task, I wanted to refresh myself by composing an orchestral piece in which the piano would play the most important part - a sort of Konzertstuck. In composing the music, I had in mind a distinct

picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggi. The orchestra in turn retaliates with menacing trumpet blasts. The outcome is a terrific noise which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet. Having finished this bizarre piece, I struggled for hours, while walking beside Lake Geneva, to find a title which would express in a word the character of my music and consequently the personality of this creature.

“One day, I leapt for joy. I had indeed found my title - Petrushka, the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all countries. Soon afterwards, Diaghilev came to visit me in Clarens, where I was staying. He was much astonished when, instead of sketches of the Rite, I played him the piece Petrushka. He was so much pleased with it that he would not leave it alone and began persuading me to develop the theme of the puppet’s sufferings and make it into a whole ballet.”

Stravinsky’s hero, Petrushka, is one of the stock characters of the puppet shows that were a feature of fairs in Russia. He is a close cousin to Harlequin of the Commedia dell’Arte - a vulgar, low-class - but here he takes on a tragic role. The scenario that Stravinsky and Diaghilev created is set at a Shrove-tide fair (Mardi Gras or Carnival season in our part of the world) in St. Petersburg, complete with gypsies, dancing bears, masqueraders, and a puppet show. The puppets - Petrushka, the Ballerina, and the Blackamoor - suddenly come to life. The ballet, which was partly done in , is a tragic love triangle between these three characters, in which Petrushka is killed. At the close of the ballet, the Showman reassures everyone at the fair that Petrushka is merely a puppet, but when he is alone, Petrouchka’s ghost appears to make fun of him. The ballet ends as the Showman flees in terror.

Petrushka was a hit in Paris, and again a year later in England. Diaghilev took the Ballets Russe on an extensive tour the United States in 1916. This was the first exposure to Stravinsky’s music for audiences in New York City, Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and many other American cities. Though some audience members (and many critics) were bewildered by this “ultramodern” score, Petrushka was generally well-received on this side of the Atlantic. (It’s a sad commentary on our country at this time to note that he music was, in fact, much less controversial in America that the fact that a black character, the Moor, won out over the white Petrushka!) The ballet remained in the company’s repertoire until it was disbanded in 1929.

The score was published in 1912, and Petrushka was frequently played as a concert work. However, the fact that the ballet ended with a long, quiet episode, and the enormous size of the orchestra required made this a problematic . In 1947, Stravinsky completely revised Petrushka as a concert suite, setting it for a much smaller and more manageable orchestra, clarifying several problematic passages, and re-ordering the original four tableaux into eleven movements, which are played without pauses. At least part of Stravinsky’s rationale seems to have been simply to renew his copyright on the piece. (He had been furious when Walt Disney freely adapted the score to Rite of Spring in the animated Fantasia in 1940.) In any case, the suite works wonderfully as a concert work.

The opening and longest movement, The Shrove-tide Fair, shows the whirl of activity at the fair, as people gather around to see the Showman bring his puppets to life with a flute. Stravinsky’s music is based upon at least one, and possibly several Russian folk tunes. This opening section leads directly to the Russian Dance, as the three puppets dance a wild trepak for the fairgoers. Petrushka shows this miserable puppet in his miserable cell, cursing and mooning over the Ballerina, who eventually pays him a visit, and briefly with him, before leaving him alone. The Blackamoor shows Petrushka’s rival lounging in his room, which is elegantly furnished. The Ballerina announces herself with a cornet fanfare and then dances a little mechanical solo for the Moor. The two then dance an insipid Valse together, to a pair of tunes that Stravinsky borrowed from the successful Viennese waltz composer Joseph Lanner. A jealous Petrushka bursts into the room, and struggles with the Moor briefly, before the Moor tosses him out the door.

At this point in the 1947 suite, Stravinsky brings together a reminiscence of the opening music, and the climactic scene where Petrushka is chased down and murdered by the Moor - Shrove-tide Fair and Death of Petrushka. The suite closes with a series of dances drawn from the fourth of the ballet’s tableaux. The Wet Nurses’ Dance is based on two Russian tunes, the first introduced by solo oboe, and the second by oboe, trumpet, and finally full orchestra. Peasant with Bear has the peasant characterized by shrill clarinet, and the bear by solo . Gypsies and a - Vendor has a drunken merchant enter with two Gypsy girls - he tosses banknotes to the crowd and his girlfriends dance seductively. This is followed by a robust Dance of the Coachmen, which is also based on Russian folk material. The suite’s wild final dance, Masqueraders, is actually the music that leads up to Petrushka’s death in the ballet. The music brings together a flurry of images - dancers dressed as a devil, a goat, and a pig taunt the crowd before everyone joins in a frenzied final dance. _____ program notes ©2014 by J. Michael Allsen

Edward Collins (1886-1951) Mardi Gras

John Corigliano (b. 1938) Suite from The Red Violin

Main Title Anna’s Theme Death of Anna Coitus Musicales Journey to China Shanghai Popes Betrayal Victoria’s Departure The Auction Gypsy Cadenza Anna’s Theme

Charles Yang, violin

INTERMISSION

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Petrushka Suite (1947 version)

The Shrove-tide Fair Russian Dance Petrouchka The Blackamoor Valse Shrove-tide Fair and Death of Petrouchka Wet Nurses’ Dance Peasant with Bear Gypsies and a Rake-Vendor Dance of the Coachmen Masqueraders