Our third subscription concert opens with a sparkling tone poem by Respighi, his Fountains of Rome.  Cellist Ralph Kirshbaum makes his Overture Hall debut with two contrasting works: Bloch’s profound but dour Schelomo and the lyrical Silent Woods by Dvorák.  We end with Tchaikovsky’s great fifth symphony.


Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)
The Fountains of Rome

The Fountains of Rome was composed in 1915-1916.  The first performance was on March 11, 1917, in Rome. Previous Madison Symphony Orchestra performances were in 1966, 1968, and 1987.  Duration 15:00.

The “Roman trilogy” of Respighi includes three large symphonic poems that are easily his most famous works:  The Fountains of Rome (1916), The Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928).  In these works, the composer creates a sonic portrait of his city—from Fountains, celebrating the great Bernini monuments, to the wild revelry of Festivals, Respighi paints a colorful, programmatic picture of the Eternal City. Respighi described first chapter of this trilogy, Fountains, as an expression “ of the sentiments and visions suggested to him by four of Rome’s fountains, contemplated at the hour when their characters are most in harmony with the surrounding landscape, or at which their beauty is most impressive to the observer.” 

The work was first played in 1917, and the reception was rather tepid.  Discouraged, Respighi, put the score away until he was contacted by Arturo Toscanini, who asked for a piece for a February 1918 concert in Milan. Toscanini was deeply impressed by the work, and the Milan audience was wildly enthusiastic.  Toscanini became a champion of Respighi's music, and was responsible for conducting Fountains and other Respighi works like around the world.  Over the next decade, Respighi became the most widely-programmed and influential Italian composer of his generation.

According to Respighi, “The first part of the poem, inspired by the fountain of Valle Giulia, depicts a pastoral landscape: droves of cattle pass and disappear in the fresh, damp mists of the Roman dawn.”  The music is colorful and suitably fluid, with sinuous woodwind lines winding above a quiet background

The nest section is an abrupt change of pace—in Respighi's note: “A sudden loud and insistent blast of horns above the trills of the whole orchestra introduces the second part, The Triton Fountain. It is like a joyous call, summoning troops of naiads and tritons, who come running up, pursuing each other and mingling in a frenzied dance between the jets of water.”  This is wonderfully playful and capricious music that leads without a pause into the next section, The Fountain of Trevi at Midday.  This is much more forceful, in character with what the composer calls “a solemn theme borne on the undulations of the orchestra. The solemn theme, passing from the woodwind to the brass instruments, assumes a triumphal character. Trumpets peal: Across the radiant surface of the water there passes Neptune’s chariot drawn by seahorses and followed by a train of sirens and tritons. The procession vanishes while faint trumpet blasts resound in the distance.”

The final movement, is titled The Fountain at the Villa Medici at Sunset begins without a pause, with a light texture of solo violin and warbling woodwinds: According to Respighi: “It is the nostalgic hour of sunset. The air is full of the sound of tolling bells, the twittering of birds, the rustling of leaves. Then all dies peacefully into the silence of the night. ”


Ernest Bloch (1880-1959)
Schelomo (“Solomon”), Hebraic Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra

Schelomo was composed in 1916, while Bloch was in Geneva.  The first performance took place on May 3, 1917, at Carnegie Hall in New York City, with Hans Kindler as soloist.  Mr. Kirshbaum is the fifth soloist to perform this work with the Madison Symphony Orchestra.  Previous soloists include Leslie Parnas (1963), Zara Nelsova (1974), Nathaniel Rosen (1990) and, most recently, Lynn Harrell (1998).  Duration 20:00.

No 20th-century composer was so closely identified with the Jewish spirit as Ernest Bloch.  In 1913, he began to produce what he called a “Jewish cycle” of large musical works, that included settings of the psalms (1914), the symphony Israel (1915), Schelomo (1916), and several later works.  Writing soon after the completion of Schelomo, Bloch explained his intention in writing these works:  “It is not my purpose, not my desire, to attempt a ‘reconstruction’ of Jewish music, or to base my work upon melodies that are more or less authentic.  I am not an archaeologist.  I hold it of first importance to write good, genuine music, my music.  It is the Jewish soul that interests me, the complex, glowing, agitated soul I feel vibrating throughout the Bible; the freshness and naïveté of the Patriarchs; the violence that is evident in the prophetic books;  the Jew's savage love of justice;  the despair of the Preacher in Jerusalem;  the sorrow and immensity of the Book of Job;  the sensuality of the Song of Songs…  All this is in us; all this is in me, and it is the better part of me.  It is all this that I endeavor to hear in myself and to transcribe in my music: the venerable emotion of the race that slumbers way down in our soul.”

Bloch composed Schelomo for the cellist Alexander Barjansky and the composer traced its inspiration to a statue of King Solomon carved by Barjansky's wife Catherine.  Schelomo is set in a free, rhapsodic form, where melodies evolve slowly from preceding themes.  Although he quotes no specific Hebrew melodies, Bloch creates an Oriental atmosphere by frequent use of parallel fourths, occasional quarter-tone inflections, and a constantly shifting rhythmic background.  The cello's impassioned melodies, reminiscent of Hebrew chant, are played above a complex orchestral background.  Although the work was not composed according to a program, Bloch has explained this texture as a personification of “the voice of King Solomon” by the cello, and of “the voice of his age, his world, his experience” by the orchestra.  In the end, Schelomo is a lamentation, quietly dying away in the lowest range of the cello.  In Bloch's words: “Even the darkest of my works end with hope—this work alone ends with complete negation, but the subject demands it!”


Antonin Dvorák (1841-1904)
Silent Woods, for Cello and Orchestra, Op.68, No.5

This work was published in 1884 as a piece for piano, four hands.  Dvorák later arranged it for cello and piano (December 1891) and for cello and small orchestra (October 1893).  This is our first performance of the work.  Duration 5:00.

Dvorak appreciated the sound and expressive power of the cello, and wrote a number of solo works for the instrument, including the great Cello Concerto of 1895—one of the landmark works for the instrument—and several smaller pieces.  His Silent Woods had its origins in an 1884 set of programmatic pieces for piano, four hands titled Ze Sumavy (roughly: “From the Bohemian Woods”).  This set, composed for his publisher Fritz Simrock, proved to be very popular:  European audiences loved Bohemian music, and the also responded to its picturesquely-titled movements:  “By the Black Lake,” “Witches' Sabbath,” “In Stormy Times,” and so on.  The fifth and longest movement was given the Czech title Klid (“Silence”).  Six years later, Dvorâk was about to leave for an extended stay in the United States, and arranged a farewell concert tour through Bohemia in January with his fiends, the violinist Ferdinand Lachner and cellist Hanus Wihan.  For Wihan, he composed a Rondo for cello and piano (later arranged for cello and orchestra), and—just a few days before they left—an arrangement for solo cello and piano of Klid.  This proved to be one of the most popular pieces of the tour, and in 1894 Simrock published it with the German title Waldesruhe (“Silent Woods”).  The piece appeared in both the cello and piano version and a later orchestration by Dvorák—the version heard at this concert.  

The work has a simple three-part form, beginning with a lyrical and lovely theme from the solo cello, accompanied lightly by strings and woodwinds.  A more agitated central section speeds the tempo slightly, and introduces just a hint of Bohemian folk style.  The end is a highly varied reprise of the opening music, and a quiet coda.


Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op.64

Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony was composed in 1888 at the composer's summer retreat in Frolovskoe.  He conducted the first performance in St. Petersburg on November 17, 1888.  The symphony has been performed on seven previous occasions at these concerts, beginning in 1936.  Our most recent performance was in 2003, with guest conductor Vladimir Spivakov.  Duration 47:00.

Over ten years passed between the time Tchaikovsky completed his fourth symphony the time he wrote his fifth—a decade of deep self-doubt and insecurity for the composer.  During much of this period, Tchaikovsky was bedeviled by guilt over the ending of his brief and disastrous marriage, and by upheaval in almost every area of his professional and private life.  This turmoil is the very fabric of the fourth symphony and the opera Eugene Onegin, both of which were completed in 1878, but these works seem to have exhausted Tchaikovsky's creative resources.  Much of the next ten years was spent in seclusion or travelling throughout Europe.  Although he continued to compose during this time, few of the works he produced had the energy of his earlier music.  It was not until 1885 and afterwards, with the enthusiastic admiration of the Czar, increased popularity of his works in Russia, and an enormously successful tour of Europe in 1887 that Tchaikovsky began to recover from this emotional crisis.

In May of 1888, Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother with fears he had “written himself out,” but added a hopeful note that he was beginning work on a new symphony.  A month later, he wrote to his confidant Nadejda von Meck, and made an almost apologetic reference to the work.  The premiere, which he conducted in November, was relatively successful, but his continuing self-doubt is shown in another letter to Madame von Meck:

It was not until the following year, after a superb performance of the new symphony in Hamburg, and amid glowing reports of its success elsewhere, that Tchaikovsky himself began to express some satisfaction with the work.  Although the fifth symphony does not have an explicit program, it is apparent from Tchaikovsky's writings that both this work and the fourth symphony have Fate as their central idea.  However, the musical realization of this idea is very different in the two works.  In the fourth symphony, the motive associated with Fate is resoundingly announced by the brasses and plays an adversarial role throughout the work—it is as if, in 1878, that Fate was something against which Tchaikovsky felt a need to struggle.  However, his relationship with Fate in the fifth symphony is more resigned, even relaxed.  Tchaikovsky biographer John Warrack has suggested that, in both works, the figure of Fate “... is referring to his central emotional problem, his homosexuality.” It is relatively certain that, by 1888, Tchaikovsky had come to terms with this part of his nature.  Although he still felt guilt pangs, his acceptance was accompanied by a deepening religious conviction and renewed confidence.  A clear sense of this cautious self-assurance comes through in the symphony's triumphant finale.

The symphony opens with a slow introduction (Andante), quietly stating the motto that provides the dramatic background of the entire work—the motive that Tchaikovsky identified as “Fate.”  The clarinet and bassoon introduce the main idea of the movement's body (Allegro con anima), an E minor theme that Tchaikovsky may have derived from a Polish folk song.  Strings introduce a contrasting group of ideas, which are much more lyrical in nature.  The movement is worked out rather conventionally in sonata form, but the music is expressive throughout, creating moods of yearning, sadness, and emotional turmoil.

The second movement (Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza) is based on one of Tchaikovsky's most beautiful and expressive melodies, sung by solo horn above a light background of strings.  There are gentle answers by clarinet and oboe, and a change of mood.  This central section builds gradually towards a climax:  a statement of the Fate motive by the brass.  He returns once more to the lyrical mood of the opening, but at the end, the mood is shattered again by the return of Fate.

Tchaikovsky's waltz (Valse: Allegro moderato) is set in a three-part form—two principal sections enclosing a contrasting section or trio.  In this movement, the main theme was insprired by a Florentine street melody he had heard some years earlier.  The trio takes on a lighter character, dominated by a quick 16th-note melody passed among the strings and woodwinds.  After a reworked version of the main idea, Tchaikovsky adds a coda, which includes an ominous statement of the Fate motive by the clarinet and bassoon.  Here, it is fitted into the triple meter of the waltz, but it seems no less forbidding.

The introduction to the last movement (Andante maestoso) presents the motto in a major key, now transformed from something frightening into a triumphant march.  The body of the movement (Allegro vivace) returns to the E minor of the beginning of the symphony.  The first group of themes are generally quite forceful, while the second group, dominated by solo woodwinds, seem more hesitant.  The Fate motive rounds off the exposition, and pervades this movement as whole, finally set in an extended coda.  At the end, there is a surprise—the main Allegro theme of the first movement returns in the closing bars, transformed, like the Fate motive, into something exultant and optimistic.  This ending appeals for a programmatic explanation:  the dark feelings of the beginning (guilt?  shame?  self-doubt?), have now been assimilated or overcome;  the music has come full circle and the spirit is victorious.
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program notes ©2009 by J. Michael Allsen