Who’s Performing
Gregory Hughes Artistic Director and Conductor
Thomas Pandolfi Piano
What’s Playing
TCHAIKOVSKY Selections from The Sleeping Beauty
PROKOFIEV Romeo & Juliet Suite No. 2
RACHMANINOV Piano Concerto No. 2
Program Notes
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Notes by Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn, Asheville Symphony
Tchaikovsky’s first ballet, Swan Lake (1877) was a revolutionary work. Its intensely dramatic score was so demanding for choreographer, dancers and orchestra that from its premiere, music from other composers was increasingly substituted for Tchaikovsky’s original score. The ballet itself was dropped from the repertoire after 1883 and was only revived in 1895, two years after the composer’s death, and even then in modified form.
By 1888, with his reputation firmly established, such shabby treatment would have been unthinkable. The Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg commissioned Sleeping Beauty, promising the composer a lavish staging paid for through the personal patronage of Tsar Alexander III.
The story, based on a French seventeenth century tale, was the work of the director of the Imperial Theaters. The famous choreographer and ballet master, Marius Petipa, specified the details of the individual numbers, including tempo, meter and duration.
Through Tchaikovsky’s imaginative orchestration and Petipa’s spectacular staging and choreography Sleeping Beauty became the model for the Russian imperial style. The story was definitely secondary or, as Tchaikovsky commented: “Going to the Ballet for the plot is like going to the opera for the recitatives.” Sleeping Beauty was premiered at the Mariinsky Theater in January, 1890. The Tsar, who was at the premiere, was less than enthusiastic: “Very nice” was his tepid comment. However the rest of the audience – and the rest of the world – thought otherwise. -
Notes by Chris Myers, Argyle Arts
We’re all familiar with the ending of Shakespeare’s most famous play: Romeo, discovering the seemingly lifeless body of his bride, drinks a lethal poison. Juliet, awakening from her faked death, finds him and, heartbroken, stabs herself with his dagger. This wasn’t how Sergei Prokofiev thought it should end, however. In a move which may (and did) raise eyebrows, he decided that Juliet should instead return to life in Romeo’s arms so that the happy couple could dance together into a bright and happy future.
Why did he make this choice? The more cynical among us might suspect an attempt at pandering to audiences. When asked at the time, Prokofiev simply said, “living people can dance. The dead cannot.” However, as one might suspect from an artist of Prokofiev’s caliber, the truth seems not to lie in commercial or logistical challenges, both of which he was more than capable of overcoming.
In reality, Prokofiev saw in his altered ending a metaphorical display of his devout Christian Science faith, in which death, illness, and pain do not exist, but are merely mental illusions which can be surmounted by faith and spiritual discipline. Naturally, this would not have been a popular explanation in Joseph Stalin’s atheist Soviet Union, so it’s unsurprising that Prokofiev chose to gloss over the question.
Initially, the Boshoi administration approved of this change, believing the various plot alterations to be consistent with Communist ideology. But Soviet ideology was a tricky thing to predict in the 1930s, and Romeo and Juliet didn’t escape the censor’s wrath. Prokofiev was already suspected of having been corrupted by his years in the West, and the composer’s willingness to alter the ending of a classic work of literature raised the ire of Soviet authorities. Around the same time, the famous denunciations of Shostakovich had begun to appear in the state news magazine Pravda, intimidating the Soviet musical world. Stalin’s decision to fire the entire administration of the Bolshoi and execute the general director, Vladimir Mutnykh, ended any discussion of the work’s premiere.
The work’s eventual premiere in pre-war Czechoslovakia led the Kirov Ballet to produce the work in 1940, but only once Prokofiev reverted to the traditional Shakespeare ending. It wasn’t just the ending that suffered, though. The dancers insisted that Prokofiev simplify the work’s complex rhythms, and his innovative orchestrations were viewed with suspicion by the orchestra and conductor, leading Prokofiev to reorchestrate the piece in a more traditional manner. Eventually, the Soviet Premier was convinced that the score held no remaining corrupting Western influences, and it finally appeared on the Bolshoi stage in 1946. This Stalin-approved version of the piece is the one the world knows today.
In the years between the work’s composition and theatrical premiere, Prokofiev arranged excerpts into two orchestral suites so that some of the music might be performed. The second suite features seven moments from the ballet.
Opening with the energy of “The Montagues and the Capulets”, the movement which portrays each of the two feuding families of Verona in broad dramatic musical strokes. A quieter episode provides accompaniment for Juliet’s first dance with her fiancé Paris before the conflict returns to bring the music to its conclusion. In “The Young Juliet”, our heroine is portrayed in music that is blissfully simple and naïve. “Friar Lawrence” provides a contrast, with solemn music befitting a monk of such learning. A “Dance” from the ball scene follows, after which we find ourselves in Juliet’s bedroom on the young couple’s wedding night (“Romeo and Juliet Before Parting”). The “Dance of the Girls With Lilies” provides a momentary interlude before we grieve with “Romeo at Juliet’s Grave”.
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Notes by Elizabeth Schwartz, Oregon Symphony
In 1900, Sergei Rachmaninoff was at low ebb, professionally and emotionally. His Symphony No. 1 had premiered to dismal reviews three years earlier, and this setback triggered a paralyzing depression that returned periodically throughout Rachmaninoff’s life. As Rachmaninoff recounted in his Memoirs, “I did nothing and found no pleasure in anything. Half my days were spent lying on a couch and sighing over my ruined life.” In desperation, Rachmaninoff sought help from a hypnotist, Dr. Nicolai Dahl, who was also an amateur string player. Dahl, using hypnotic techniques, would plant encouraging thoughts about writing the concerto in Rachmaninoff’s head during their sessions. In Rachmaninoff’s Recollections, the composer recounts, “I heard the same hypnotic formula repeated day after day while I lay half asleep in my armchair in Dr. Dahl’s study, ‘You will begin to write your concerto … You will work with great facility … The concerto will be of excellent quality …’ It was always the same, without interruption. Although it may sound incredible, this cure really helped me.” With Dahl’s support, Rachmaninoff was able to complete the concerto. It was an instant success; the following year, when Opus 18 was published, Rachmaninoff dedicated it to “Monsieur N. Dahl.”
The work opens with the soloist sounding a series of chords that ring like church bells, and grow in both volume and intensity. Interestingly for a piano concerto, the soloist’s role in this movement is largely one of accompaniment, until one of Rachmaninoff’s most familiar and beloved themes emerges. The music continues with a rousing march in the piano, which dissolves into a solo horn intoning the second theme.
The sensual beauty of the Adagio sostenuto creates an atmosphere of enchanted otherworldliness. The primary melody is heard first in the clarinet and flute, with the piano accompanying. The soloist takes up the melody and develops it, with accompanying woodwinds and strings.
In the Allegro scherzando, the lower instruments murmur a brief introduction to the soloist’s opening showy cadenza, which segues into the staccato pulsing rhythm of the first theme. The violas and solo oboe’s lyrical second theme is a marked contrast. The two themes vie for prominence as the mood of this movement shifts abruptly from jittery agitation to ecstatic rhapsody. Rachmaninoff concludes with a pull-out-all-the-stops ending showcasing the rhapsodic theme.