For this program, we welcome back mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. Ms. Graves last appeared with the Madison Symphony Orchestra in 1998, when she performed arias from Carmen and Samson et Dalila, and a memorable selection of American popular songs. Tonight she is featured in two works, Ravel's exotic song cycle Shéhérazade, and a new work by Richard Danielpour, Tripych from "Margaret Garner." Danielpour's 2005 opera Margaret Garner--which featured Ms. Graves in the title role--dramatizes an episode from the dark history of slavery in America. The Triptych, completed earlier this year, brings together three of the opera's most important moments. We close with Shostavovich's fifth symphony, a work that deals with tragedy of a different sort, the repression faced by artists in Soviet Russia. The Shostakovich symphony is, incidentally, a work that has special associations for both Maestro DeMain and the orchestra--it was last performed here in 1993, as the centerpiece of his "audition" for the post of Music Director.
 

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Tragic Overture, Op. 81

Brahms composed this work in 1880, and the first performance took place in Vienna on December 26, 1880. We have performed the overture on three earlier programs, in 1963, 1979, and 1990. Duration 13:00.

Brahms completed his Tragic Overture and Academic Festival Overture in quick succession during the summer of 1880, while he was at the resort town of Ischl. The Academic Festival Overture, a cheerful pastiche of student songs, was his acknowledgement of an honorary doctorate awarded to the previous year. The history of the thoroughly serious Tragic Overture goes back more than ten years, when Brahms first sketched material that would eventually form the basis of the piece. Although the two works were completed more or less simultaneously, they contrast dramatically in sensibility. Brahms himself said that Academic Festival Overture "laughs" while the Tragic Overture "weeps." Brahms seldom gave descriptive titles to his works, and he was ambivalent about naming the Tragic Overture, trying out several different titles (Overture to a Tragedy, Dramatic Overture, etc.) before settling on its familiar name. Though Brahms seems not to have had a particular drama--literary or otherwise--in mind, the work's title perfectly suits it character.

The overture begins abruptly, with a motto of two forceful chords, setting up a sense of instability that underlies most of the piece. The opening section is unsettled throughout, resettling briefly before the trombones intone a quiet and mysterious transition phrase. The second theme is a passionate melody played by the strings that rocks restlessly between major and minor and becomes increasingly agitated until the opening motto appears, first forcefully in the entire orchestra, and then in an apprehensive pizzicato echo in the strings. The development section introduces a new woodwind theme, Molto piu moderato, that is based upon elements of the opening theme. The recapitulation begins not with the expected chords, but with hushed trombone chords and a subtle version of what was originally a transitional idea. The recapitulation is relatively brief, but a final statement of the motto begins a long and somber coda.
 

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Shéhérazade: Three Poems of Tristan Klingsor

Ravel composed this work in 1903. The first performance, conducted by Alfred Cortot and featuring mezzo-soprano Jane Hatto, occurred on May 17, 1904 in Paris. Shéhérazade has been performed twice previously at these concerts, in 1971 (with Ilona Kombrink) and in 1992 (with Frederica von Stade). Duration 17:00.

At the turn of the 20th century, Paris was fascinated by oriental culture. In 1903, Tristan Kingsor (the Wagnerian pen-name of poet Léon Leclère) published a collection of 100 poems under the title Shéhérazade, a reference to the famous story-teller of the Arabian Nights. Klingsor's exotic and sometimes erotic verses perfectly suited the times. He and Ravel were members of a loosely-associated group calling themselves "The Apaches"--a salon gathering of artists who were interested in the most radical artistic notions, and who hailed Debussy as the most important innovator of recent years. The group fought intense aesthetic battles with the French musical Establishment, the Société Nationale, and eventually promoted their own concerts.

Ravel was attracted to Klinsor's poems, and decided immediately to set them to music, enlisting the poet's help. Klingsor later wrote: "For Ravel, setting a poem meant transforming it into expressive recitative, to exalt the inflections of speech into the state of song, to exalt all the possibilities of the word, but not to subjugate it. Ravel made himself the servant of the poet... His love of difficulty made him chose, along with L'Indifférent and La flûte enchantée, one whose long narrative made it appear quite unsuitable for his purpose: Asie. For at that time, he was engaged in a study of spoken verse, and was aiming at emphasizing accents and inflections and magnifying them by melodic transposition; to fix his design firmly, he insisted on my reading the lines aloud." For his part, Ravel wrote that in Shéhérazade, "the influence of Debussy is fairly obvious."

The music of Shéhérazade is constructed from the most colorful and transparent of fabrics, the orchestra providing only the lightest of accompaniment beneath the singer. Asie begins with a sinuous oboe solo before the singer enters to begin this journey to an imagined Asia. The singer recounts this exotic, if sometimes rather stereotyped vision as the orchestra responds with music that sounds both like Debussy's closely contemporary La Mer and the pseudo-Oriental writing Ravel himself would use again a few years later in his Mother Goose. The singer's narrative reaches a peak of excitement (and a high B-flat) at the line "I should like to see dying of love, or else of hate" before subsiding into homecoming.

The brief La flûte enchantée, is sung in the voice of a courtesan. As her master sleeps, she hearing the sensuous sound of her true lover's flute, touching her cheek "like a mysterious kiss." The final movement, L'Indifférent, is a perfect Impressionist painting of unrequited, even unnoticed love. As the singer outlines the features of her "young stranger" in loving detail, and seductively invites him to "let my wine refresh you," the orchestra plays the role of the tranquil, unconcerned object of her affection. In the end, the orchestra fades away as he walks away, unmoved.

Richard Danielpour (b. 1956)
Triptych from Margaret Garner

Danielpour's opera Margaret Garner was composed in 2003-05, and was premiered in Detroit on May 7, 2005, with Denyce Graves in the title role. The Triptych heard at these concerts was premiered by the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra on May 19, 2006. Duration 15:00.

"More than anything else, Margaret Garner is an opera that reminds us that we all belong to the same human family, and it demonstrates what can happen when we forget this fundamental truth." - Richard Danielpour

The historical Margaret Garner was at the center of one of the most symbolic and moving events in the years leading up to the Civil War. In January 1856, Garner and her family, who were living as slaves in Kentucky, stole a carriage, and eventually walked across the frozen Ohio River to escape to freedom in Ohio. Under the auspices of the Fugitive Slave Act, a posse of white men, including Garner's master, tracked the party to a small cabin near Cincinnati. When they tried to capture the family, Garner, refusing to let her children be returned to slavery, attempted to kill them, slashing the throat of one of her sons, and killing her infant daughter with a shovel. Her sensational trial became an important test case for the Fugitive Slave Act. In the end, Garner was returned to slavery, but the case served to feed the outrage of northern Abolitionists. The story was fictionalized by Nobel laureate author Toni Morrison, in her novel Beloved (1987). She was awarded the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved, and Oprah Winfrey later produced and starred in a film version.

Three of the opera's sections have been distilled in the Tripych heard at these concerts. In his program notes for the premiere in May, Richard Rodda wrote: "The Triptych for Mezzo-Soprano and Orchestra, which comprises Margaret’s three principal arias, follows the evolution of the title character through her relationships with her children (Margaret’s Lullaby), herself (A Quality Love) and, finally, her maker (Intermezzo and Soliloquy), the only moment in the opera when she is alone." Danielpour's setting of these moments is richly Romantic and eclectic, creating a sense of place and character with hints of African American musical idioms.

For her part, Denyce Graves, who created the role of Margaret, aptly sums up the powerful effect of this character: "The first thing that moves me, more than anything else, is that this woman probably felt--and the circumstances of her existence told her--that her life was of no importance, that it was completely insignificant. Yet, here we are, 150 years later, telling her story. And somehow, I'm her daughter. I'm somehow the daughter of the daughter of the daughter of her daughter. I'm connected to this woman."
 

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1976)
Symphony No. 5, Op. 47

Shostakovich completed this work in 1937, and it was performed for the first time in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) on November 21, 1937, by the Leningrad Philharmonic, under the direction of Yevgeny Mravinsky. It has been played twice at our concerts, in 1980 and 1993. Duration 44:00.

Tight artistic control over artistic expression is one of the things that nearly all totalitarian states share.  In Stalin's Soviet Union, the arts were considered to be every bit as much a tool for enforcing conformity as state-controlled media or the KGB.  A manifesto outlining the principles of "Socialist Realism" appeared in 1933. This doctrine was originally intended to control the content and style of Soviet literature, but it was quickly adapted to the visual arts, films, and music. As explained in an article published by the Union of Soviet Composers: "The main attention of the Soviet composer must be directed towards the victorious progressive principles of reality, towards all that is heroic, bright, and beautiful. This distinguishes the spiritual world of Soviet man, and must be embodied in musical images full of beauty and strength. Socialist Realism demands an implacable struggle against those folk-negating modernistic directions typical of contemporary bourgeois art, and against subservience and servility towards modern bourgeoise culture." In practice, Soviet music of this period served the propaganda needs of the state, and was aimed at proletarian consumption. Composers abandoned "formalist" devices--unrestricted dissonance, twelve-tone technique, etc.--in favor of strictly tonal harmonies and folk music (Soviet composers produced dozens of works for balalaika ensemble and concertos for other folk instruments during this period).

Shostakovich struggled heroically within this system. There was a continuing pattern in his works of the 1930s and 1940s of perilously pushing the limits of official tolerance and then rehabilitating himself with a work that seemed to conform more closely to the Party line. In 1934, his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was a rousing success, and continued to run for over 100 performances. In 1936, however, Stalin himself attended a performance, and left the theater in a rage. Within a few days, a review of the opera appeared in Pravda, complaining of an "intentionally dissonant, muddled flow of sounds," and angrily denouncing its anti-Socialist "distortion." Shostakovich was quickly transformed from one of the young lions of Soviet music to a suspected Formalist, and articles published in Pravda and the bulletin of the Composers' Union began to reveal "modernistic" and "decadent" elements in many of his works that had previously been blessed by the critics. The composer immediately cancelled the premiere of his fourth symphony, fearing that the dissonant nature of this score would push the authorities too far. He was so certain, in fact, that Stalin's goons would appear at his door that he kept a small suitcase in his apartment, packed for his trip to the Gulag Archipelago. A hastily-composed ballet glorifying life on a collective farm was not enough put him back in favor with the Composers' Union, but with the performance of his Symphony No.5 in November of 1937, Shostakovich regained a certain amount of his position in the hierarchy of Soviet musicians.

On its surface, the Symphony No.5 seems to be a meek acquiescence--Shostakovich humbly subtitled the work "The practical answer of a Soviet artist to justified criticism," and it was composed in honor of the 20th anniversary of the 1917 revolution. In describing the fifth symphony at its premiere, Shostakovich wrote: "The theme of my symphony is the making of a man. I saw humankind, with all of its experiences at the center of this composition, which is lyrical in mood from start to finish. The Finale is the optimistic solution of the tragedy and tension of the first movement. …I think that Soviet tragedy has every right to exist. However, the contents must be suffused with positive inspiration… " All safely Socialist sentiments--but hearing the Symphony No.5, we are struck not so much by the triumph and optimism of the Finale, but by the deeply personal anxiety and sense of suffering that underlies the entire work. Many members of the audience wept at the premiere, and the applause following the performance lasted nearly half an hour--facts that were reported in the official press as an emotional response to the symphony's uplifting conclusion. The audience was probably more perceptive, however. As Shostakovich wrote some 25 years later (well after Stalin was safely dead and repudiated): "Someone who was incapable of understanding could never feel the Fifth Symphony. Of course they understood--they understood what was happening around them and they understood what the Fifth was about." This work is indeed a "response to criticism," but it is a much more tragic and anguished response than the authorities chose to believe.

The tragic character of this symphony is established in the very opening bars (Moderato), in an angular, off-beat melody introduced by the low strings. Much of the beginning is devoted to an imitative exposition of this melody in the strings. A repeated rhythm appears in the lower strings, repeating incessantly beneath the second main theme, a lyrical melody in the first violins. This melody is built over the same large leaps as the opening theme, but here the effect is more melancholy than tragic. After flute and clarinet solos comment upon this theme, the horns introduce a more menacing march-like melody. This march increases in intensity until the climactic return of the opening theme. Near the close of the movement the second theme returns, now on a more hopeful note, in the solo flute.

For the main theme of the scherzo (Allegretto), Shostakovich parodies a melody from his Symphony No.4. The irony is obvious--here was a work that was unknown to the audience, and that, the composer felt, would never be performed. So the outward humor of this movement--bumptious bass lines, woodwind trills and tongue-in-cheek violin solos--overlays a bitterly sarcastic comment on Socialist Realism. A military-sounding waltz alternates with this main theme in the manner of a trio. At the end, he uses one of Beethoven's favorite jokes: what seems to be yet another repeat of the trio, played hesitantly by a solo oboe, is brusquely tossed aside by the brass, and the movement ends abruptly

The third movement (Largo) belongs entirely to the strings and solo woodwinds. Shostakovich divides the string section into eight parts throughout this movement, weaving complex counterpoint around a single somber melody. Flutes and harp introduce a second subject which is gradually woven together with the first. In a very beautiful central passage, solo woodwinds expand on the main themes above an effectively simple background of string tremolos. The movement builds gradually towards its climax, a return of the first theme in the full string choir, before fading away at the end. Though it is overshadowed by the broad opening movement and the powerful finale, the Largo may have been the movement that had the deepest impact at the premiere. Much of the weeping in the audience took place during the Largo, leading biographer David Fanning to suggest that the movement was "...a channel for a mass grieving at the height of the Great Terror, impossible otherwise to express openly."

The finale (Allegro non troppo) is set as a rondo, and brings the symphony to a properly jubilant finish. The main theme is an almost violent march, which alternates with several quieter sections. Shostakovich brings back reminiscences of several moments from preceding movements, building towards a massive coda in D Major. The composer's own program note (and the official reviewers) decribed the finale as triumphant and exultant. Once again, Shostakovich's intent in this movement may well have been sarcasm, rather than exaltation.
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program notes ©2006 by J. Michael Allsen