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Madison Symphony Orchestra Program Notes
October 15-16-17, 2021
96th Season
Michael Allsen
This program opens
with a brilliant orchestral showpiece, Ravel’s
Spanish-flavored Alborada
del gracioso. We are proud to welcome back pianist Olga
Kern for her fourth appearance with the Madison Symphony
Orchestra. She previously performed in 2008 (Beethoven’s third
concerto), 2010 (Rachmaninoff’s second concerto), and 2014
(Rachmaninoff’s first concerto). Here, she plays Rachmaninoff’s
last major composition for piano and orchestra, and a work of
stunning virtuosity, the Rhapsody
on a Theme of Paganini. Our season-long
tribute to Beethoven continues with his monumental Eroica Symphony.
Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso
(“Morning Song of a Jester”) is his orchestrated version of a
1905 piano work. Ravel was fiercely proud of his mother’s
Basque heritage, and this is one of many of his compositions
in a Basque or Spanish style.
Maurice Ravel
Born: March 17, 1875, Cibourne,
Basses-Pyrénées, France.
Died: December 28, 1937, Paris, France.
Alborada
del gracioso
• Composed: Written in
1904-1905 as a piano work; orchestrated in 1918.
• Premiere: May 17, 1919
in Paris, with Rhené-Baton conducting the Pasdeloup Orchestra.
• Previous MSO Performance:
1968.
• Duration: 8:00.
Background
Ravel was born to a Swiss father and a Basque
mother in Cibourne—a small seaside town in the Basque region
near France’s border with Spain. Though his family moved to
Paris when he was just three months old, he remained emotionally
connected to his mother’s heritage throughout his life, and many
of his works channel influences from Basque and Spanish music.
As his friend Manuel de Falla once wrote: “Ravel’s Spain was
felt in an idealized way through his mother.” In 1905, he
completed a five-movement piano suite, titled Miroirs, with a lively
Spanish-style fourth movement, Alborada del gracioso.
In 1918, impresario Serge Diaghilev asked Ravel to orchestrate Alborada del gracioso
and another piano piece, Chabrier’s Menuet pompeux. These
were to appear, together with Fauré’s Pavane, as the
accompaniment for a Spanish-themed ballet by Diaghilev’s Ballets
Russes. While the planned ballet production fell through,
Ravel’s brilliant orchestral version of Alborada del gracioso
quickly became one of his most popular concert works.
The musical style and title reflect Ravel’s
idealized vision of Spain. The alborada, or “dawn
song,” is a traditional form of serenade sung on feast days, or
to honor a particular person. In this case the person being
honored is a gracioso,
someone who is funny or witty. Ravel’s original music for piano
largely reflected this amusing character, but in transforming
this work for a large orchestra he also injected subtle elements
of darkness and tragedy. This may have reflected the difficult
events of the World War I years: Ravel’s service as an ambulance
driver, which ended with a severe bout of dysentery, the deaths
of many close friends, and most traumatic of all, the death of
his beloved mother in 1917.
What
You’ll Hear
Pizzicato
strings and harp open this work with a lively texture meant to
meant to evoke the strumming of a guitar.
Colorfully-orchestrated melodies with distinctive Spanish
rhythms spring up from this background, accented by castanets
and tambourine, though the mood changes abruptly after a biting
orchestral chord. The middle section begins with a soulful and
rhythmically free bassoon solo, answered by the strings. The
bassoon’s melody is picked up by the full orchestra, and works
up to a grand emotional climax, before the original mood
returns. The
closing section is filled with sometimes chaotic good humor
before it builds up into a wild conclusion.
Like many composers,
Rachmaninoff used the theme from the demonically difficult Caprice No.24 by the
19th-century violinist Paganini as the basis for his own
virtuoso variations. He also worked in references to the
funeral chant Dies
irae, a kind of personal musical signature, appearing in
several of Rachmaninoff’s works.
Sergei
Rachmaninoff
Born: April 1,1873,
Oneg, Russia.
Died: March 28, 1943,
Hollywood, California.
Rhapsody
on a Theme of Paganini for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 43
• Composed: July-August, 1934.
• Premiere: November 7, 1934;
Rachmaninoff as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold
Stokowski conducting.
• Previous MSO Performances:
1961 (William Doppmann), 1970 (Augustin Anievas), 1983 (Ruth
Laredo), 1989 (Vladimir Feltsman), and 2010 (Philippe Bianconi).
• Duration: 22:00.
Background
By the 1930s
Rachmaninoff was well-established as one of the leading pianists
of his age, and spent much of his time touring successfully in
Europe and America. In 1930 he visited Switzerland and decided
to build a home in the village of Hertenstein,
on the shore of Lake Lucerne. The name of his house,
“Senar,” was derived from the names “Sergei,” “Natalia,”(his
wife) and “Rachmaninoff.” Senar became a beloved retreat until
the Rachmaninoffs sought refuge in the United States at the
beginning of World War II. He composed two of his final large
works while in Switzerland: the Symphony No.3
(completed in 1938) and the Rhapsody on a Theme of
Paganini—his last great solo work for piano.
The choice of
Paganini was a telling one. Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) was the
model for countless virtuosos to follow. With his astonishing
technique and powerful sound, he toured Europe for decades, and
was one of Classical music’s first “superstars.” In 1819, his
published his ironically-named 24 Caprices for solo
violin. Hardly capricious, this is a series of increasingly
challenging technical solos, culminating in the phenomenally
difficult No.24—a set
of variations on an original theme that uses Paganini’s entire
battery of advanced playing techniques. Even during Paganini’s
lifetime, composers began to use the theme of No.24 as the basis for
their own sets of variations: Liszt, Brahms, and
literally dozens of others down to our own day. This theme
became something more than just a tune—when it appeared, it
was a symbol of virtuosity. Rachmaninoff, himself a
towering virtuoso, turned to Paganini’s famous theme as the
basis for one of his most challenging piano works. A couple of
months before the premiere, Rachmaninoff wrote ironically to a
friend: “It is rather difficult. I must begin learning it.”
It is unclear
whether or not Rachmaninoff originally conceived of the Rhapsody as a piece of
program music, but he later suggested a program in a letter to
choreographer Mikhael Fokine, who used the Rhapsody for a ballet
about Paganini. Rachmaninoff suggested to Fokine that he should
“...resurrect the legend about Paganini, who sold his soul to an
evil spirit in exchange for perfection in his art and for a
woman. All the variations which contain the Dies irae represent the
evil spirit.” The composer identified Variations 11-18 as “love
episodes,” and Variation 19 as “Paganini’s triumph,” but, true
to form, the Devil wins in the end and claims the unhappy
artist’s soul.
What You’ll Hear
In a move
reminiscent of the final movement of Beethoven’s “Eroica”
symphony, Rachmaninoff presents the first “variation,” a
skeletal version of the theme, before the theme is played in its
entirety. When the theme finally appears, it is stated starkly
by the strings, with minimal accompaniment from the piano and
woodwinds. The succeeding 23 variations wring an amazing amount
of musical material from this deceptively modest little idea.
Variations 2 through 6 remain close to the outlines of the tune:
the piano is supported by sparse orchestration, and the theme is
varied with relatively simple ornamental and rhythmic means. In
the next four variations (7-10), the mood becomes increasingly
sinister, with reminiscences of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique:
the Dies irae (“Day
of Wrath”) chant in Variations 7 and 10, and the ghostly string
effects in Variation 9. This demonic tension is resolved in
Variation 11, a lush cadenza-style treatment of the theme that
must be a tribute to the style of Liszt. Liszt is there for the
next few variations as well (12-15), which have a distinctly
Hungarian flavor. The climactic point of this section is
Variation 18—richly Romantic music familiar from several classic
film scores—in which the piano uses the theme in inversion
(upside-down) to create lush new harmonic possibilities.
Variations 19-24 are a finale that peaks in a solo cadenza
before the massive final variation, with its wild piano
figuration and the Dies
irae blasted by the entire brass section. The ending is
one of Rachmaninoff’s rare flashes of humor—a flippant little
gesture that gives the piano the last word.
Born:
December 17, 1770 (baptism date), Bonn, Germany.
Died:
March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria.
• Composed: 1802-1803.
• Premiere: April 7,
1805, Vienna.
• Previous MSO Performances:
1934, 1966, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2011.
• Duration: 47:00.
Background
The years
1802-1812 in Beethoven’s life have frequently been labeled the
“heroic decade”—the most productive period in his life, and
years which saw a new set of personal and musical concerns. In
the face of the ultimate challenge to a
composer—ever-encroaching deafness—Beethoven’s output over the
next decade was indeed heroic: the third through eighth
symphonies, the “Razumovsky” quartets, the final two piano
concertos, the violin concerto, and Fidelio. Beethoven’s
writings and the dramatic content of his music during this
period—particularly his only opera, Fidelio—show an
increasing preoccupation with the ideals of human dignity,
heroism, and freedom. These works greatly expand the Classical
forms, sometimes transcending these forms altogether, and they
focus on exhaustive development of thematic material. Nowhere
are Beethoven’s “heroic” tendencies more readily apparent than
in the “Eroica” symphony.
The well-known
story of the “Eroica” symphony’s dedication reflects Beethoven’s
political and humanistic concerns during a time of great turmoil
across Europe. He had followed the career of Napoleon Bonaparte
with great interest, though like many Austrians, he probably
began to question the French First Consul’s commitment to the
ideals of the French Revolution as France became more and more
warlike. The symphony was originally titled “Bonaparte” in
recognition of Napoleon’s supposedly republican ideals. However,
when he heard of Bonaparte’s coronation as Emperor, Beethoven
tore up the dedication page in disgust, exclaiming: “Is he too
nothing more than an ordinary man?” (In an early manuscript copy
of the symphony, Napoleon’s name has been crossed out so
violently that there is a hole in the page.) In the first
published edition, Beethoven noted merely that the work was
composed “to celebrate the memory of a great man.”
The Symphony No.3 is
formidable in length and depth. It was certainly one of the
longest and most complex symphonic works that his Viennese
audience had ever heard, and several critics expressed dismay at
its “incomprehensibility.” (Beethoven’s fascination with the
gigantic works associated with revolutionary France—works by
composers such as Cherubini and Méhul—was clearly an influence
in this piece.) This symphony expresses the heroic ideals of
struggle and triumph—and though it is not a strictly
programmatic piece, despite the evocative “funeral march” of the
second movement, it communicates valor and courage. One added
dimension that would have been clear to listeners in 1803 is his
pointed reference to the music of his Prometheus ballet in
the final movement. His ballet score had been wildly popular
after its premiere two years earlier, and its main theme in the
context of a “heroic” symphony would have brought to mind the
central character of the ballet: a mythical figure who defied
authority to enlighten the human race.
What You’ll Hear
The Symphony No.3 begins by
breaking molds. Most of the later symphonies of Haydn and
Mozart, and Beethoven’s own first and second symphonies begin
with extensive slow introductions. Beethoven brusquely disposes
of the introduction to the first movement (Allegro con brio) in
two forte chords,
which lead directly into the opening theme, played by cellos and
basses. This theme begins simply enough, but a feeling of
restless instability appears almost immediately. An extended transition
section culminates in the second main theme, which is first
stated by the clarinets and oboes. The exposition ends with an
immense closing passage, which serves to introduce even more new
melodic material. The development section is heroic both in
dimensions and style—this section by itself is longer than many
contemporary opening movements. After a climactic series of
crashing dissonances, Beethoven introduces a new idea, a
melancholy oboe melody. After a recapitulation of the main
themes, the movement closes with an enormous coda that continues
to develop Beethoven’s ideas.
The funeral
march (Marcia funebre)
is constructed as a rondo, with the somber repeating main theme
presented at the outset by the strings. A major-key episode
interjects a note of hope, but this is soon overtaken by the
main theme. A second contrasting episode begins with bass
rumblings and intensifies through a great fugal passage to an
impassioned climax. After a final return of the main theme, the
movement closes with a stark and haunting coda.
As in the Symphony No.2 of 1801,
the third movement (Scherzo:
Allegro vivace) is a designated as a scherzo (Italian for
“joke” or “trifle”), replacing the more usual third-movement
minuet used in the symphonies of Beethoven’s contemporaries.
This scherzo is set in the same three-part form as the minuet,
but it has none of the minuet’s courtly grace (or aristocratic
associations). The opening section is a mix of perpetual motion
in the strings and a playful melody in the upper woodwinds. The
central trio has a more heraldic quality, beginning with a horn
call. This call is answered by the strings and woodwinds. The
movement closes with a return of the opening section and a brief
coda.
Beethoven was
never one to avoid recycling a good tune—to cite merely one
example, the famous “Ode to Joy” theme of the Symphony No.9 appeared
in at least two earlier works. The music of the third symphony’s
finale (Allegro molto)
is Beethoven’s final reworking of music that had appeared in
three earlier works, beginning with his music for the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus
(1801) and a piano contradance of the same year, and the Variations and Fugue on a
Theme from Prometheus for solo piano. After a brief storm
at the opening of this movement (probably a reference to the
plot of the Prometheus
ballet), Beethoven introduces a simple bass line in pizzicato strings. This
bass line moves through an increasingly complex set of
variations, acquiring a countermelody on the way. The central section is a
tremendous fugue, which builds towards a broad and triumphant
coda. In symphonies by his contemporaries, the fourth movement
was typically a rather lightweight, breezy piece, but this
finale is a weighty counterbalance to the symphony’s opening
movement. If the opening movements of the “Eroica” break the
18th-century mold of symphonic form, this one kicks away the
last traces!
________
program
notes ©2021 by J. Michael Allsen