We are proud to welcome Vladimir Spivakov back to Overture Hall to lead this all-Russian program, our season finale. Maestro Spivakov first appeared with the orchestra --as conductor and violin soloist--in 2003, in a program that concluded with Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony. He returned again in 2006 to play Prokofiev's first violin concerto. Here, he leads a program of three works, beginning with Shostakovich's thrilling Festive Overture. Pianist Yefim Bronfman, who last appeared with the Madison Symphony Orchestra in 2003 (Beethoven's third piano concerto) joins us for the brash Piano Concerto No.3 by Prokofiev. We close with Tchaikovsky's final work, the profoundly tragic "Pathétique" symphony.

 
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Festive Overture

Shostakovich wrote the Festive Overture in early November 1954. It was first performed in Moscow on November 6, 1954. The Madison Symphony Orchestra has played the work twice previously on subscription programs, in 1979 and 1984. Duration 6:00.

When Josef Stalin died on March 5, 1953--on the same day as Prokofiev, by the way--life for Soviet artists began to change, gradually at first, and then with increasing speed, as the tight controls of the 1930s and 1940s relaxed. Shostakovich had suffered artistically under Stalin. After withdrawing his fourth symphony in 1936--at least partly to avoid censure for "modernistic excess" from Stalinist authorities--he redeemed himself in the eyes of the Party with the powerful and bombastic fifth.  If the sixth was suspiciously tragic and impudent in tone, he redeemed himself once again with the seventh and eighth symphonies:  enormous wartime works that take their cue from events in the Great Patriotic War.  With the ninth, composed at the very end of the war in 1945, Shostakovich again found himself suffering Stalin's displeasure:  this boldly sarcastic work had none of the pompous jubilation expected after the great victory.  The composer was formerly censured in 1948, for "formalistic distortions and anti-democratic tendencies alien to the Soviet people." It is no surprise, then that he kept his head down for the next several years:  composing easily accessible film scores, and politically safe pieces like the oratorio Song of the Forests.

Shostakovich's immediate response to Stalin's death was the tenth symphony, a return to an uncompromising modern style. The more modest Festive Overture, hardly modernist in any way, seems to be a response of a different sort: light and exuberantly happy. Shostakovich had gradually worked his way back into favor with Soviet authorities, and in 1954, he was named to a post with the Bolshoi Theater. The Bolshoi was chosen to host an important celebration of the 37th anniversary of the 1917 revolution, and turned to Shostakovich for a suitably joyful piece to open the festivities. They waited until just a week beforehand to inform him, however. Shostakovich seems to have been unfazed--his friend Lev Lebedinsk recalled how he composed with amazing speed, and was able to make jokes at the same time he was writing down music. Lebidinsk also recalled hearing the new piece for the first time: "Two days later the dress rehearsal took place. I hurried down to the Theatre and I heard this brilliant effervescent work, with its vivacious energy spilling over like uncorked champagne."

The Festive Overture begins--no surprise--with a grand brass fanfare. The tempo abruptly changes to Presto for the main theme, a bubbly clarinet theme that is varied in several ways. The second theme for horn and strings is more flowing and Romantic, though an irrepressible accompaniment figure continues the previous sense of energy. This ends in a witty pizzicato idea from the strings, and return of the first Presto music, eventually combined with the second theme, now played by the brasses. A short transition, and then a triumphant return of the fanfare, before Shostakovich ends with a rousing coda.

 
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Concerto No.3 for Piano and Orchestra in C Major, Op.26

Prokofiev's third piano concerto was composed in the summer of 1921, and the first performance took place on December 16, 1921, when he played the solo part with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. This is our fifth performance of the work. Previous soloists include: Grant Johannesen (1968), Horacio Guttierez (1982), John Browning (1991), and Philippe Bianconi (2003). Duration 28:00.  

In the aftermath of the 1917 revolution, Prokofiev left Russia for the United States. His decision to leave probably had less to do with politics than with his assessment of the market for new music in his devastated country. He had apparently intended to return to Russia after a few months, but he would not return to his homeland permanently for almost twenty years. His American sojourn (1918-22) was personally disappointing however. In an attempt to cash in on his novelty value, he was promoted as a "Bolshevik composer" from "Godless Russia." Prokofiev always tried to maintain good musical relations with Soviet musical authorities, even at this early date, but there is little evident that he considered himself to be a Bolshevik. While he was financially successful, American audiences gave his music and performances a lukewarm reception. Musically conservative American audiences found his music too harsh and dissonant, and American critics were savage. One Chicago Tribune writer, reviewing a 1921 performance of the The Love of Three Oranges, wrote that: "…Mr. Prokofiev might well have loaded up a shotgun with several thousand notes and discharged them against the side of blank wall." He was particularly disappointed by the tepid reaction to his Piano Concerto No.3, premiered in Chicago that year. He played the concerto the next year in Paris, and received an enthusiastic response. French reaction to this and other works was a major factor in his decision to leave America. He later wrote that he left America "…with a thousand dollars in my pocket and an aching head." He moved to Paris in 1922, and spent most of the next fifteen years there.

Prokofiev's third piano concerto was completed in 1921, during a summer vacation on the coast of Brittany. The work brought together several bits of sketch material from as early as 1911, but Prokofiev was able to fuse all of these ideas into an organic whole. It was composed directly after his famous "Classical" symphony (1917) and The Love of Three Oranges (1919). The concerto is built along Classical lines, with forms that resemble those of Mozart and Haydn. He conceived the concerto as a solo showcase for himself, and the main focus is the piano writing, reflecting Prokofiev's own style of playing--bold, incisive, and powerful. (A friend once remarked that, when Prokofiev played fortissimo, it was "...hard to bear in a small room.")

The concerto opens with a quiet and thoroughly Russian melody played by the solo clarinet. The Andante introduction abruptly changes character and speed (Allegro), and the piano introduces the main theme, an angular and exuberant melody. The more fragile second theme is stated by the oboe. After this theme is developed by the piano, the tempo slows to the original Andante for an extended central episode. Insistent beats from the timpani lead into a lengthy conclusion that serves both as a recapitulation and development of the two main Allegro themes.

The basis of the second movement (Theme and Variations) is a droll, marchlike melody played by the woodwinds. The piano plays first variation, a sentimental commentary on the theme. The tempo quickens for the next two variations, in which the orchestra carries bits of the theme beneath piano ornamentation. The fourth variation is an unhurried dialogue between piano and orchestra. The final variation calls for brilliant forte technique from the soloist. In the coda, the theme is played quite slowly under a delicate countermelody from the piano.

In his own program notes for the concerto, Prokofiev described the finale (Allegro ma non troppo) as an "argument" between soloist and orchestra. The opening bassoon theme "is interrupted by the blustering entry of the piano." This difference of opinion is not settled until the piano picks up the orchestra's theme and develops it. (The composer mined this melody from an unfinished string quartet written "on the white keys" of the piano.) The tempo slows and the woodwinds introduce a calmer idea, to which the piano makes a sarcastic reply. After further development of this new material, the movement closes with a blisteringly virtuosic coda.
 
 
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 ("Pathétique")

The Symphony No.6 was written between February and August 1893, and was first played in St. Petersburg on October 28, 1893, with Tchikovsky himself conducting. It has been played six times by the Madison Symphony Orchestra, beginning in 1945, and most recently in 1999. Duration 45:00.

"You can't imagine what bliss I feel, being convinced that my time is not yet passed and I can still work.  Perhaps, of course, I'm mistaken, but I don't think so." - Tchaikovsky (to his nephew)

None of the late symphonies is surrounded by more mystique than the sixth, however.  This is his last major work, and it was written after a protracted depression.  The optimism of the late 1880s collapsed when his longtime patroness and confidant Nadejda von Meck severed their relationship in 1890.  Though he was no longer financially dependent on her, his correspondence with Mme. von Meck had obviously been an emotional support--she had been the one person to whom he could open his heart, even though they never met in person.  Even artistic success and international fame was not enough.  On a fabulously successful American tour in 1891, he wrote in his diary about feeling old and washed out:  "I feel that something within me has gone to pieces."  By the beginning of 1893, he had hit bottom, writing to his nephew Vladimir Davidov on February 9 that: "What I need is to believe in myself again, for my faith has been greatly undermined.  It seems to me that my role is over."  Within two weeks, he reported back excitedly to the same nephew that he was composing "furiously."  By August, when the Symphony No.6 was nearly complete, he wrote again, calling it "the best, and certainly the most open-hearted of my works."  The supreme irony of this work is that, only nine days after he conducted its successful premiere in St. Petersburg, Tchaikovsky was dead.  The old story about his death from cholera seems to be a fabrication, covering up what was almost certainly suicide.  The precise details of his death remain a mystery, but one story that came to light in 1966 connects the death to a romantic relationship between the composer and the nephew of a Russian noble.  Such things were kept out of the public eye, but Tchaikovsky was supposedly convicted by a "court of honor" comprised of his noble peers, and told to kill himself to avoid embarrassment for all concerned.

Given the biographical circumstances of this symphony, Tchaikovsky's intended meaning is significant in how we hear it. Its pessimistic tone, and elements like the quotation of a chant from the Orthodox service for the dead, show that death was probably on his mind.  This is clearly a symphony with a message--it was billed as A Program Symphony at its first performance, and in a letter to his nephew, he described it as: "a work with a program, but a program of a kind which remains an enigma to all--let them guess it who can." Modeste Tchaikovsky, who composed a sort of biographical program for the Symphony No.6 after his brother's death, maintained that the secret died with the composer.    However, some clue of his intentions may lie in a brief note found among the sketches for his Nutcracker ballet, written a year earlier:

"Following is the plan for a symphony LIFE!  First movement--all impulse, confidence, thirst for activity.  Must be short (Finale death--result of collapse).  Second movement love;  third movement disappointment;  fourth ends with a dying away (also short)."

In his letters, Tchaikovsky promised "much innovation of form" in the Symphony No.6, and the opening movement certainly lives up to this.  Dispensing with the usual conventions, he presents three closely related ideas in three different tempos:  first a doleful bassoon melody, which gives way to a faster version of the same idea in the violas.  A descending line at the end of this section is transformed into the lush second theme in the strings.  After an ascending answer in the woodwinds, the second theme enters again in fuller form.  The music dies away--literally:  never one for understatement, Tchaikovsky writes the seemingly impossible dynamic marking  pppppp (pianisisisisissimo!) at the close of the exposition.  The development begins with a crashing chord from the full orchestra (merely ff -- ffff comes later...).  After a fierce fugato, the bassoons and low brass solemnly intone a chant from the Russian Orthodox mass for the dead ("With your saints, O Christ, may the soul of the departed rest in peace").  There is no regular recapitulation, but instead a continuation of the furious motion of the development, following on the heels of this chant.  When it reappears, the second theme is underlaid with a nervous accompanimental figure.  The movement fades away with quiet woodwind statements above descending pizzicato notes from the strings.

Innovation continues in the second movement (Allegro con grazia), a kind of waltz set in 5/4.  This meter was almost unheard of at the time, and can often sound awkward and off-balanced.  Tchaikovsky's melodies, however, flow so naturally that this odd metrical arrangement is scarcely noticeable.  The movement is cast as an alternation between the gentle, lilting "waltz’ and a more pensive trio.

The third movement (Allegro molto vivace) is a march, but this is not clear for quite a while.  Quick triplet figures are tossed off between strings and woodwinds as tiny fragments of a march theme gradually emerge.  When the march itself finally appears, some 70 bars into the movement, it is quietly stated by the clarinets, and then again by the strings.  There is a brief crescendo, but the dynamic backs off again and the strings and woodwinds introduce a countertheme.  The march theme begins again, still under tight control, and there is a lengthy section where tension builds to  the breaking point before the seemingly inevitable statement by full orchestra.  The movement closes triumphantly with a descending line in the brass and triplet flourish.

After the noisy bombast of the march, the tragic character of the finale comes as a complete surprise.  The main theme is given immediately by the strings, and then again with slightly augmented orchestration, rounded off by a melancholy bassoon solo.  The second theme moves to a somewhat brighter D Major, and the mood intensifies until an ominous strike of the gong.  The music builds to one more peak before silenced again by the gong and a dark trombone and tuba chorale.  As if exhausted, the movement quickly dies away to nothingness.
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program notes ©2008 by J. Michael Allsen