Maestro’s Musical Masterpieces
Saturday, September 14
Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” Leonard Bernstein
born in Lawrence, Mass., 1918;
died in New York City, 1990
Completed: Musical, summer, 1957; Symphonic Dances, winter, 1961
Premiered: Musical premiered August 19, 1957; the Symphonic Dances, March, 1961
Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, alto saxophone, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon; 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba; timpani; harp, piano, celesta; percussion; strings
Duration: 22 minutes
It is with West Side Story that Leonard Bernstein reached the peak of his theatrical genius. Created with the close collaboration of choreographer Jerome Robbins, this modern-day setting of Romeo and Juliet had everything—beautiful and dramatic music, a “book” that was moving and sophisticated, dancing that was vivid and exciting. Bernstein had determined to make a musical “that tells a tragic story in musical-comedy terms, using only musical-comedy techniques, never falling into the ‘operatic’ trap…” The need, he argued, was to tread a fine line “between realism and poetry, ballet and ‘just dancing,’ abstract and representational,” and to avoid being “messagy.” And, above all, “no happy ending!”
Work on West Side Story occupied Bernstein for two difficult years. With the help of a young and unknown lyricist named Stephen Sondheim, the genius of Robbins, the star quality of his two little-known leads, Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert, and the talents of a corps of young dancers of limitless energy, the show proved a stellar hit. Indeed it is fair to say that the Broadway musical theatre was never to be the same.
By 1961 Hollywood had gotten around to producing a film of West Side Story and naturally Bernstein was called upon to score it. As he made small changes, adding music where called for by the expanded medium of film, he decided to produce a concert version of the dances from his musical. But rather than merely work up a “Greatest Hits” medley, he decided to rearrange some of the dances into a continuous orchestral suite. With this decision he was free to alter the sequences to accommodate a more strictly musical structure. He also decided to leave out some of the more popular songs, including “Maria,” “Tonight,” “America,” in favor of elaborating others.
The work opens with the Prologue and the opening fight scene (complete with police whistle), then dissolves into the lovely ballad “Somewhere.” After the scherzo we move back to Act I and the “Dance in the Gym,” the occasion for the first direct meeting between Tony and Maria. “Cool” follows, treated as a toccata and double fugue, then the “Rumble” and the music to accompany the killing of Riff. To conclude, Bernstein offers the lovely duet between Maria and Anita, “I Have a Love,” ending with the original Epilogue.
Capriccio Espagnol, Op. 34 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
born in Tikhvin, Russia, March 18, 1844;
died in Liubensk, Russia, June 21, 1908
First Performance: St. Petersburg, October 31, 1887
Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons; 4 French horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba; timpani, harp, percussion; strings
Duration: 15 minutes
A disciple of the early Russian nationalists Glinka and Balakirev, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was both a fine composer and a selfless teacher. He inspired a younger generation that included both traditionalists (Rachmaninoff, Glazunov) and modernists (Stravinsky, Prokofiev). The critic Carl Van Vechten has written, “The folk song, the Orient, and the sea were the three great influences which pursued Rimsky-Korsakov throughout his career, and he never got very far away from any of them.” Trained as a naval officer, he traveled widely and his music reflects the exotic, the fanciful, and the picturesque.
This is certainly embodied in the Capriccio Espagnol. Its composition marked a revival of Rimsky’s musical creativity after several years of almost pietistic devotion to ordering, editing, completing, and in some cases re-composing the last works of his two great patrons, Mussorgsky and Borodin. After finishing the latter’s great opera, Prince Igor, Rimsky gave final shape to his own Capriccio Espagnol in early 1887, conducting the premiere that autumn in St. Petersburg.
The Italian word, capriccio, literally means “a head with hair standing on end.” In its English form, caprice, it refers to behavior that is sudden, impulsive, and whimsical. In music, then, a capriccio is an irrepressible piece that is free in form, often rhythmically brisk and bold in execution. This aptly describes Rimsky’s Capriccio Espagnol, written as he put it, as a “brilliant composition” designed to “glitter with dazzling orchestral color.” This patchwork of “striking ideas and bright effects,” he continued somewhat immodestly, “the change of timbres, the felicitous choice of melodic designs…exactly suiting each kind of instrument, brief virtuosic cadenzas for solo instruments, the rhythm of the percussion instruments, etc., constitute here the very essence of the composition and not its garb or orchestration.”
His original intent had been to write a rhapsody for violin and orchestra on Spanish themes, but he decided instead to use the orchestra itself as his virtuoso “instrument.” Rimsky reported that the orchestra loved the piece in rehearsal, applauding at the end of each section. He not only dedicated the piece to the St. Petersburg players, but listed all 67 musicians as “featured soloists” on the program page at the premiere. The opening night audience echoed the players’ enthusiasm, demanding it be repeated on the spot.
The Capriccio is in five sections played without pause: I. “Alborada,” a Spanish morning serenade that opens flamboyantly and subsides into an ethereal quiet; II. a set of “Variations” on the opening theme, led by the French horn, each of the five variations embodying a different orchestral color; III. “Alborada,” a repetition of the first section with changes in key and orchestration; IV, labeled “Scene and Gypsy Song”; and V. “Fandango of the Asturias,” a dance of Andalusia, appropriately accompanied by guitar and castanets. The piece ends with a final recall of the “Alborada” theme.
Pictures at an Exhibition Modest Mussorgsky (orchestrated by Maurice Ravel)
born in Karevo (Pskov), Russia, 1839
died in St. Petersburg, 1881
completed: St. Petersburg, July 27,1874; premiere: Ravel’s orchestrated version, Paris, October 19, 1922
instrumentation: piccolo, 3 flutes, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, alto saxophone; 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba; timpani, percussion, harp, celesta; strings
duration: 30 minutes
One of Mussorgsky’s closest friends was the painter and architect Victor Hartmann, whose sudden death at the age of 39 devastated the composer. In anguish he wrote, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life—and creatures like Hartmann must die?” Inspired by a memorial exhibit of Hartmann’s watercolors and drawings at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, Mussorgsky composed a tribute to his friend, a suite of solo piano pieces depicting in music ten of the works on display.
Mussorgsky generally composed very slowly and fitfully (several of his works took years to complete and a number were unfinished at his death). Yet he worked on Pictures at an Exhibition with an uncharacteristic efficiency, completing the work within a matter of months in the summer of 1874. It was not published until 1886, however, five years after his death.
The music, as with Hartmann’s pictures, evokes scenes, images and legends that were familiar to the Russian people. These musical “pictures” are prefaced by a Slavic “Promenade” that recurs in three intermezzi during the work, a sort of “walking music” to accompany the listener who “strolls” among the pictorial images.
Several attempts have been made to orchestrate this most pianistic of works, but the only one to hold the stage is the 1922 version by Maurice Ravel. Working on a commission by conductor Serge Koussevitzky, Ravel drew masterfully upon Mussorgsky’s own sense of tone color, his “painter’s ear,” to produce a ravishing, often bizarrely satirical work that is true to the original spirit of the music while exploiting the uniqueness of the instruments of the orchestral palette.
Following the opening Promenade, the sequence of ten pictures and intermezzi is as follows:
1. “The Gnome” — a grotesque, bandy-legged little nutcracker whose clumsy motions are accompanied by savage shrieks.
2. ”The Old Castle” — based on an Italian architectural watercolor, this movement evokes a medieval castle before which a troubadour sings. Mischievously, Ravel has given this “cantilena” to a saxophone. Promenade 2
3. “The Tuileries” — the well-known Parisian gardens are the scene of children playing and, far from their nannies’ wary eyes, quarreling over their games.
4. “Bydlo” — a great-wheeled oxcart rumbles down a country lane, as the driver (Ravel here has chosen a tuba) sings a mournful folk song.
Promenade 3
5. “Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells” — the catalog of Hartmann’s exhibit notes a picture of canaries ‘enclosed in eggs as a suit of armor.’ The orchestra chirps away delightfully in staccato pecks as the little birds emerge into the light.
6. “Samuel Goldberg and Schmuyle” — two Polish Jews are venomously portrayed; the one a rich man in a fur hat, arrogant, pompous and ponderous: the other a poor fellow, fussy, whining and nattering away. Note Ravel’s use of “flutter-tongued” trumpets to depict Schmuyle.
7. “Limoges: The Marketplace” — haggling peasant women in a spirited discussion that borders on a brawl.
8. “The Catacombs: Sepulchrum Romanum” — a trip through Rome’s underground tombs by lantern light. The “Promenade” theme now returns in ghastly solemnity to reflect Mussorgsky’s note: ‘With the dead in a dead language.’
9. “Baba Yoga: The Hut on Hens’ Legs” — the ancient witch, Baba Yaga, pursues her victims from her hut that stands upon pilings made of chickens’ legs.
10. “The Great Gate of Kiev” — a processional finale, rich in imperial symbols, depicts the glories of old Russia, as the “Promenade” theme recurs in oriental splendor, joined by a majestic pealing of church bells.