A Celebration of Democracy
Sunday, November 10
Finlandia, Jean Sibelius
Born in Tavastehus, Finland, in 1865;
Died in Järvenpää, Finland, in 1957
Premiere: Helsinki, July 2, 1900
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons; 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba; timpani, percussion; strings
Duration: 9 minutes
In 1899 Finland was part of the Russian Empire. Sibelius wrote the music that became Finlandia that year for performance at a benefit concert for the beleaguered Finnish press, struggling under strict new censorship laws imposed by the Czarist government to curb the budding efforts toward Finish independence. For the concert Sibelius contributed a series of six musical tableaux depicting events in Finnish history. The last of the tableaux carries the words sung by a chorus, “The powers of darkness menacing Finland have not succeeded in their terrible threat. Finland awakes!” For his pains, the work was promptly banned by the authorities. Yet the following year he turned this tableau into a concert overture (or “tone poem”) that he brazenly called Finlandia. It became an instant sensation abroad, as it was featured in the Helsinki Philharmonic’s 1900 tour of Scandinavia and the European continent. It was the first of Sibelius’ works to become well known abroad and became forever associated in people’s minds for capturing the essence of the Finnish national spirit. It was also a great success in the United States, with two New York performances—at the Metropolitan Opera and at Carnegie Hall—in the space of two days in 1905. Sibelius himself conducted it on his first visit to America at a concert in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1914.
As the “de facto” Finnish national anthem one might expect this patriotic music to be derived from authentic folk melodies. Yet Sibelius insisted the he never used a theme in any of his compositions that was not his own creation. But he was the first to admit that much of his music was, as a critic Olin Downes put it, “naturally tinged with idioms of his country, and his writing is so often in the vein of Finnish melody that it is mistaken for it.” Authentic or not, Finlandia sounds Finnish.
The work is scored for large orchestra, with assorted percussion and lots of brass. It opens sinisterly, depicting the dark forces of foreign oppression. A transition follows, agitated, throbbing, and stirring, as one critic wrote, “with the spirit of revolt.” This leads to the hugely famous hymn tune destined to arouse the emotions of audiences who know nothing of Finnish nationalism.
Finlandia was last performed by the RSO in 2017 with Guy Bordo conducting.
Notes by Bob Johnstone
Lincoln Portrait Aaron Copland
born in Brooklyn, New York, 1900
died in New York City, 1990
Premiere: Cincinnati, Ohio, May 14, 1942
Instrumentation: narrator; piccolo, 2 flutes, English horn, 3 oboes, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon; 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba; harp, celesta; timpani, percussion; strings
Duration: 15 minutes
Following America’s entry into World War II, the conductor-entrepreneur André Kostelanetz commissioned three composers to write pieces “to express the magnificent spirit of this country.” He called for three musical portraits of inspirational Americans. The result was mixed. Jerome Kern composed an unmemorable Portrait for Orchestra of Mark Twain, while Virgil Thomson wrote The LaGuardia Waltzes in honor of New York City’s stormy-petrel mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
Aaron Copland had a somewhat loftier subject in mind. His first thought was to do a portrait of that most American of poets, Walt Whitman. But Kostelanetz already had a literary figure in his triptych and suggested a national statesman instead. Despite Virgil Thomson’s caution that “no composer could possibly hope to match in musical terms the stature of so eminent a figure as that of Lincoln,” Copland went ahead. As he put it, “Of course [Thomson] was right. But the sitter himself might speak. With the voice of Lincoln to help me I was ready to risk the impossible.”
Copland continued, “The letters and speeches of Lincoln supplied the text. It was a comparatively simple matter to choose a few excerpts that seemed particularly apposite to our own situation…. I avoided the temptation to use only well-known passages, permitting myself the luxury of quoting only once from a world-famous speech….”
He sketched out his Portrait in February of 1942, finishing it on April 16. Most of the music is original, but Copland drew upon two popular songs of Lincoln’s day: Stephen Foster’s “Camptown Races” and “a ballad that was first published in 1840 under the title, ‘The Pesky Sarpent,’ but is better known today as ‘Springfield Mountain.’” “In neither case is the treatment a literal one,” he wrote. “The tunes are used freely, in the manner of my use of cowboy songs in Billy the Kid.”
The piece is in three main sections. As Copland observed, “In the opening section I wanted to suggest something of the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’s personality. Also, near the end of that section, something of his gentleness and simplicity of spirit [suggested by the clarinet playing “Springfield Mountain”]. The quick middle section briefly sketches in the background of the times he lived [here are fragments of “Camptown Races”]. This merges into the concluding section where my sole purpose was to draw a simple but impressive frame about the words of Lincoln himself.”
Appropriately the score is dedicated to André Kostelanetz, who conducted the premiere at a pension fund concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in May, 1942. Later performances by the Boston Symphony and the New York Philharmonic contributed to its wide popularity with audiences then and since.
This is the second performance of Lincoln Portrait by the RSO, the first being in 2004 with Guy Bordo conducting and Bob Johnstone as narrator.
Notes by Bob Johnstone
Symphony No. 3 in Eb Major Op. 55 “Eroica” Ludwig van Beethoven
Born in Bonn, Germany, 1770
Died Vienna, 1827
first public performance: Vienna, April 7, 1805
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons; 3 horns, 2 trumpets; timpani; strings
Duration: 47 minutes
Beethoven intended with his Third Symphony to create a revolutionary work in honor of the greatest revolutionary of his age, Napoleon Bonaparte. He admired the French general for restoring public order in his ravaged land, while exporting the spirit of human liberty and equality throughout Europe. Yet Beethoven was always ambivalent toward Napoleon, recognizing in him a man not only of genius but of a towering ambition that could threaten the very liberties he was intent upon proclaiming.
Shortly after completing the Third Symphony in May of 1804, the composer learned that the Man of Destiny had had the audacity to crown himself “Emperor of the French.” According to a friend, Beethoven “flew into a rage” upon hearing the news, crying out, “Is he then, too, nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now he, too, will trample on all the rights of man and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others and become a tyrant!” Whereupon Beethoven went to the table, took hold of the title page by the top, tore it in two, and threw it on the floor. He altered the new title page to read, “Heroic Symphony—Composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.”
The “Eroica” has long been considered a true watershed in musical history. Jonathan Kramer has observed that “what Beethoven buries…is not Bonaparte…but the classical style in music. What is born is an overtly emotional music of unprecedented power and immediacy. The real hero of the ‘Eroica’ is the music itself.” Beethoven fully sensed this at the time; his sketchbooks show a supreme confidence of composition—-few of the false starts and rewrites that normally dot these pages. The symphony is a dramatic departure from the Viennese Classicism of Haydn and Mozart, his earlier models. Beethoven consciously associated with his new music an ethical ideal, a programmatic dimension that heralds the arrival of Romanticism. Themes of heroism and human greatness indeed preoccupied him during his so-called Middle Period, with the “Waldstein” and “Appassionata” piano sonatas, the three “Razumovsky” quartets, and the opera Fidelio. Yet it is the “Eroica” that marks the clear lines of the revolution that was emerging. Critic Paul Henry Lang calls it “one of the incomprehensible deeds in arts and letters, the greatest single step made by an individual composer in the history…of music.”
The premiere of the “Eroica” was delayed for nearly two years. After a private performance at the palace of the dedicatee, Prince Lobkowitz, the first public performance came at a Sunday evening concert at the Theater an der Wien on April 7, 1805. The reaction of the critics was mostly one of bewilderment. One reported that although “it contains some grand and daring ideas…the symphony would be all the better—it lasts a whole hour—if Beethoven could reconcile himself to make some cuts in it and to bring to the score more light, clarity, and unity, virtues such as were found in the symphonies of Mozart and—Anton Eberl!”
As if to stress its break with the past, the first movement (allegro con brio) begins abruptly with two dramatic staccato chords to usher in the first subject in the cellos and violins. A longer second theme appears in two sections, the first a tender three-note phrase, the second a lively passage in the strings, leading to a new subject of great beauty. This is not really a melody at all, but a succession of harmonies, yearning in intensity. After some discord comes the development, and a marvelously stormy and ingenious “working out” it is. After the repeat of the main theme comes the coda, or I should say Coda, for it is a massive 140 bars of astonishing originality.
The second movement is a funeral march, brave and indomitable. The melody begins immediately in the minor key, first in the strings, then poignantly by the oboe. A second broader theme follows, more melodic and confident, that soon relapses into the darkness of the opening. This mood is interrupted by the Trio, a radiant intermezzo for woodwinds with strings beneath. The original funereal music returns in a fugue, a brass fanfare of defiance only momentarily relieving the grief, intoned by the relentless tread of the double basses. The final mood is one of fortitude, heroic and sustaining to the last.
The third movement, a scherzo, begins in hushed tones as befits the successor to a funeral march, but quickly establishes a contrasting mood of gaiety with a spritely melody for oboe and first violins. The Trio middle section is for three horns in full hunting regalia.
The finale begins deceptively with massive chords that seem to herald a conclusion of pomp and bombast. But this is all a ruse, for what follows is a haunting pizzicato theme in the double basses, giving way to the higher strings playing the same line arco. Soon, however, this “theme” is shown to be merely the bass line to the real theme, an elegant, good-humored tune in the higher strings. Beethoven used this theme before in his music for Prometheus, and it later became the basis for his Opus 35 set of variations for piano, the “Eroica” Variations. A set of variations follows, mostly as fugues interwoven by the somber bass pizzicato. This builds to a substantial climax that subsides to a hush, only to be followed by a final explosive presto coda to bring this remarkable symphony to a close.
The “Eroica” was performed by the RSO in 2002 under the baton of Maestro Guy Bordo.
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.