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Madison Symphony Orchestra Program Notes
March 6-7-8, 2009
83rd Season / Subscription Concert No. 7
Michael Allsen
For this March program, the Madison Symphony Orchestra welcomes
internationally-renowned conductor Yoav Talmi. Maestro Talmi
leads a program of three works, beginning with the dramatic Prince Igor Overture of
Borodin. The young Lithuanian violinist Julian then performs
Stravinsky’s “neo-classical” Violin
Concerto. We end with one of the most beloved of
Dvorák’s symphonies, the lighthearted eighth.
Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
Overture to Prince Igor
Borodin worked on his opera Prince
Igor sporadically from 1869 until
his death, when the score was left incomplete. The overture
existed only in sketch form, and was completed and orchestrated by
Glazunov for the opera’s premiere in St. Petersburg in 1890.
Duration 10:00.
Borodin was one of the great Russian nationalist composers sometimes
known as the “Mighty Five”—a group that also included Balikirev,
Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Cui. He was not a professional
composer, however: Borodin was a noted research chemist, and made his
living as a government official. This left him little time to
compose, and many of his works were left unfinished or were completed
by colleagues. His masterpiece is the grand opera Prince Igor, which occupied him for
nearly 20 years. The opera tells the story of the 12th-century
Prince Igor who is captured by the Polovtsians, a Tartar force that has
overrun his Russian homeland. Borodin died before the opera was
finished, and the score was completed by his young friends Nicolai
Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov. It was a great success at
its St. Petersburg premiere in 1890, and is occasionally performed
today, but two of its instrumental sections have become standard
concert repertoire: the evocative Polovtsian
Dances and the opera’s fine overture.
Borodin left only the barest of sketches for the overture, though he
had played it many times on piano for Glazunov, who reconstructed it
more or less from memory. Though Borodin was a firm Russian
nationalist, he used a traditionally European form for the overture: a
slow introduction followed by a series of themes from the opera
organized in sonata form. The introduction a calm, atmospheric
music—borrowed from the introduction to one of Igor’s main arias—that
sets the stage for what is to follow: an abrupt series of fanfares and
a ferocious dance of the Polovtsians. The clarinet introduces a
more seductive, oriental theme. This develops into a brisk dance,
and then solo horn spins out a lovely theme that is a lament sung by
Prince Igor as he languishes in captivity. The short
development has the low strings rumbling out another Polovstian tune
and then a series of increasingly tense fanfares, which lead to an
abbreviated recapitulation of the main ideas. A triumphant coda
foreshadows Prince Igor’s eventual victory.
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Concerto in D for Violin and Orchestra
Stravinsky composed this work in
France in 1931. He conducted the premiere on October 23, 1931,
with soloist Samuel Dushkin and the Berlin Radio Orchestra.
This is our first performance of the concerto. Duration 22:00.
Stravinsky's Violin Concerto
was in part the result of a meeting arranged in 1930 by the German
music publisher Willy Strecker, between the composer and the
Polish-born violinist Samuel Dushkin. Strecker urged Stravinsky
to write a concerto for Dushkin, but the composer was initially quite
hesitant, doubtful that he could write a virtuoso work for an
instrument he did not play. Strecker encouraged the two musicians
to collaborate, however, and they began a friendship that would last
the rest of Stravinsky's life. He completed the Violin Concerto a year later, and
afterwards completed a large Duo
Concertante for violin and piano that Stravinsky and Dushkin
used on extensive concert tours together in the middle 1930s. On
their collaboration on the concerto, Dushkin wrote:
“Whenever he accepted one of my
suggestions, even a simple change such as extending the range of the
violin by stretching the phrase to the octave below and the octave
above, Stravinsky would insist on altering the very foundations
correspondingly. He behaved like an architect who if asked to change a
room on the third floor had to go down to the foundation to keep the
proportions of the whole structure.”
He also recalled the creation of the distinctive triple-stop chord that
links together the four movements. They met at a cafe in Paris
and Stravinsky wrote out a chord, asking if it was “playable” on the
violin.:
“I had never seen a chord with such an
enormous stretch, from the E to the top A, and I said ‘No.’ Stravinsky
said sadly, ‘What a pity.’ After I got home, I tried it, and, to my
astonishment, I found that in that register, the stretch of the
eleventh was relatively easy to play, and the sound fascinated me. I
telephoned Stravinsky at once to tell him that it could be done. When
the concerto was finished, more than six months later, I understood his
disappointment when I first said ‘No.’ This chord, in a different
dress, begins each of the four movements. Stravinsky himself calls it
his ‘passport’ to that concerto.”
The concerto is an example of Stravinsky's mature “neo-classical”
style. Beginning with works like the Octet of 1923, he adopted a style
that is a kind of comment on earlier music, using diatonic melodies,
Classical forms like the sonata, fugue, and toccata, and a rather dry,
unemotional tone. This is thoroughly “modern” music
however—unlike Respighi, who adopted ancient music wholesale, without
fundamentally changing its elements, Stravinsky always put his own
harmonic and rhythmic mark on traditional forms, even in cases like
Pulcinella, where he does borrow old music. Writing about the Violin Concerto, Stravinsky said:
“The Violin Concerto was not inspired
by or modeled on any example... The titles of my movements—Toccata,
Aria, Capriccio—may suggest Bach, and so, in a superficial way, might
the musical substance. I am very fond of the Bach Concerto for Two
Violins, as the duet of the soloist with a violin from the orchestra in
the last movement of my concerto may show. But my concerto employs
other duet combinations too, and the texture is almost always more
characteristic of chamber music than of orchestral music. I did not
compose a cadenza, not because I did not care about exploiting the
violin virtuosity but because the violin in combination was my real
interest.”
The Violin Concerto was a fairly successful piece in its time, but
Stravinsky himself was particularly pleased by its adaptation as the
score to George Ballanchine's 1940 ballet Balustrade.
The opening Toccata begins
with the “passport” chord and continues with a very busy texture.
The toccata originated as a showy keyboard piece filled with quick
figuration, but here the quick notes are shared by the soloist and
various voices from the orchestra. A droll march constantly
intrudes on the movement, but is constantly cast aside by witty changes
of the downbeat. There are two Arias
at the center of the concerto, in traditional Baroque three-part (ABA)
form. Aria I begins
with an impassioned statement of the “passport” chord and the barest
hint of a passacaglia bass,
but, continues as a highly-ornamented line from the violin that
dominates throughout. At the opening of Aria II, the “passport” is
reinforced by the woodwinds. This movement features beautifully
lyrical playing by the violin throughout, supported in the central
episode by a gently insistent ostinato in the strings. The
“passport” opens the Capriccio
as well, but it is one of those “blink and you'll miss it” moments—the
violin whacks it once at the very beginning, with echoes from the
orchestra, but then launches into a wild finale. Here, the “duet”
texture Stravinsky described is most obvious, with a lengthy duo
between the soloist and first violin but also in clever conversations
with the horn, bassoon, and flute. There is a quick
tongue-in-cheek reference to his Soldier's
Tale that begins a brief and flashy coda.
Antonin Dvorák (1841-1904)
Symphony No.8 in G Major, Op.
88
Dvorák composed his
Symphony No.8 during the summer and
fall of 1889 at his Czech country home in Vysoká. He
conducted its premiere in Prague on February 2, 1890. This is our
fourth performance of the work: the Madison Symphony Orchestra has
played it previously in 1957, 1991, and 2000. Duration 34:00.
The Symphony No.8, one of
Dvorák's most popular works, was something of a turning-point in
Dvorák's career as a symphonist. His seventh symphony,
written in 1884 is thoroughly German in its expression and in its
strict formal development. The overriding influence of
Brahms—particularly that of Brahms's Symphony
No.3—is clearly audible. Coming five years later, the
eighth symphony represents a truly new approach: Dvorák had left
the imposing shadow of Brahms to find a more personal and natural means
of expression. The composer himself wrote of his desire to
compose a work that was “...different than the other symphonies, with
individual thoughts worked out in a new way.” In his eight and
ninth symphonies, Dvorák takes a freer approach to form and
thematic development, and his native Bohemian musical identity
reasserts itself. One episode from this period is revealing of
this new identity. When he published the score for the Symphony No.8, Dvorák had a
protracted argument with his publisher Simrock over the spelling of his
name—the composer insisted that his name be spelled in its Czech form,
rather than in the German form of previous scores. Frustrated by
Simrock's refusal, and by financial terms that were not in keeping with
his now-impressive reputation, Dvorák broke his contract with
the Viennese publisher, and gave the new symphony to the London firm of
Novello.
Of all Dvorák's symphonies, the eighth was the quickest to gain
international recognition. He conducted a successful at Prague in
February of 1890, and brought the new symphony with him to England, for
a performance in April. A few months later, his friend Hans
Richter conducted a performance at Vienna. Dvorák himself
conducted the symphony in Chicago three years later, at the Columbian
Exposition. Writing to Dvorák after the Vienna premier,
Richter expressed his admiration for the symphony:
“You would certainly have been pleased
with this performance. All of us felt that it is a magnificent
work, and we were all enthusiastic. Brahms dined with after the
concert and we drank to the health of the absent father of No.4. Vivat sequens!” [Note: The G Major symphony was for
many years as “No.4”—the fourth of Dvorák's mature
symphonies. This numbering has since been revised to include his
four early symphonies as well.]
Though this is a symphony in G Major, it begins with a pensive
minor-key melody for cellos, which will reoccur at all of the main
turning points the movement. The mood brightens with the addition
of woodwinds (Allegro con brio),
and the one of the movement's several main themes. Though it is
set in sonata form, the entire movement is characterized by a profusion
of eloquent melodies, rather than by extensive development.
(Once, in responding to a critic of Dvorák's music, Brahms
remarked that: “I would be happy if one of Dvorák's passing
thoughts occurred to me as a main idea.”) The climax of the
movement comes at the end of the development, after a fugato section,
when the trumpets triumphantly enter with the opening melody.
This leads to a varied recapitulation and a powerful coda.
The Adagio is more Bohemian
in flavor. There are no direct quotations of folk melodies in
this movement, but the folk element is clear in the simplicity of
Dvorák's themes and in the clear-cut form of this movement, in
which he presents two sections in alternation (ABAB) with relatively
little development. The first main section presents a series of
fairly somber ideas, most prominently, a melody sung by the clarinets
in their low register. The second section is much brighter, with
oboe, flute, and eventually solo violin playing a lovely theme above a
gentle dance-style background. This section reaches a climax as
trumpets and timpani enter dramatically. Both sections are
repeated in varied form.
Instead of a conventional scherzo, Dvorák's Allegretto grazioso is a
waltz-style movement set in a simple three-part form. The central
trio, a more folksy dance tune, is actually drawn from a now-obscure
Dvorák comic opera called The
Stubborn Lovers. After a reprise of the waltz, the
movement closes with an abbreviated version of the trio music.
Trumpet calls announce the beginning of the finale (Allegro ma non troppo) a
loosely-constructed theme and variations. The theme is laid out
by the cellos—a simple little two-phrase melody that apparently cost
Dvorák a great deal of work. (At one point, when he was
working on the symphony, he wrote to a friend that: “Melodies simply
pour out of me.” But this particular theme went through at least
nine drafts until he was satisfied.) His variations are
wonderfully inventive—from a rough and brassy Bohemian folk dance to
more introspective versions for woodwinds and strings. After a
series of quiet variations, Dvorák brings back the rough dance
once more, and ends in a crashing coda.
________
program notes ©2009 by J. Michael Allsen