Program Notes for Musical Portraits
April 24th, Michigan Theater at 8 PM
Copyright 2010 Edward Yadzinsky
Copyright 2010 Edward Yadzinsky
Roman Carnival Overture, Op. 9
Hector Berlioz
French composer and conductor
Born December 11, 1803; La Côte-Saint-André,
FranceDied March 8, 1869; Paris, France
Hector Berlioz was a man for all Romantic seasons. To be sure, the age was well underway when he arrived on the scene, but it was he who added savoir faire and glamor to the mode. Moreover he insisted that music was always up to something – that it always had a story line of some kind peering through the veils of rhythm and tone.
To this Berlioz was eternally true. Through his catalog of original scores, one will search in vain for a single title that does not represent a literary or real-world association of some kind. Furthermore, it is often noted that the composer had a passion for English novels, Shakespearean plays, English poetry and English actresses (he later married one). So we are hardly surprised to discover a few character-roles among his scores – e.g.,; Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Ophelia, Hamlet, etc. Beyond Shakespeare are captions from Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Thomas Moore, Benvenuto Cellini, Vergil, Victor Hugo, etc., including an American who did most of his writing in up-state New York – James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851).
Throughout history, ideas borrowed, shared or stolen have been the DNA of the arts, and the Roman Carnival Overture of 1838 is a splendid example. Searching for a rich libretto for a new opera, Berlioz was captivated by the celebrated autobiography of the great Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. In its own right, Cellini’s account remains one of the greatest examples of literature from the Italian High Renaissance. Oddly, the entertaining saga was not translated into French until well into the 19th century, at the perfect moment to impress the young and irreverent Berlioz, who was smitten by the tale of Cellini’s mad-cap life and times.
What a story! Hollywood has never invented a more picturesque nor picaresque character than the real-life Cellini. But the 1838 opera that bore his name never became a real success, in part because the libretto failed to capture the artistic spirit and dash of its celebrated hero.
In the original score, a late carnival scene in Renaissance Rome was tone-painted by Berlioz with his usual gift for florid and flinty orchestral color. As a musical melange, the composer borrowed the zesty carnival effects and plied them with Cellini’s love song from Act I. Voila: Le Carnaval Romain, (Roman Carnival Overture). Some years later Berlioz provided his own appraisal of the music: “...I cannot help recognizing in it a variety of ideas, an impetuous verve, and a brilliance of musical coloring....”
After a spectacular introduction, the beautiful music of Cellini’s love song is heard from a plaintive English Horn. It provides an early retreat in advance of the gusty celebration to follow. Stand by for all manner of orchestral luster, bellicose statements from the brass, jet-stream flares from the violins, soaring woodwinds, pointed percussion and a whirlwind of à la madness counterpoint. Magnifique..!
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major, Op. 77
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
German composer and pianist
Born 1833; Hamburg, Germany
Died 1897; Vienna, Austria
Opus 77 was written in 1878 while Brahms took a long summer holiday at Pörtschach on the edge of Lake Wörth in Alpine Carinthia. The tone of his letters during that time is reflective of the bright mood of the concerto itself: “Here melodies flow so easily and freely that one has to be careful not to trample any of them underfoot.” Opus 77 was completed just months after his second symphony, a detail which affords a clue to the grand orchestral architecture of the score. The concerto is dedicated to Brahm’s friend Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), the great Austrio-Hungarian violinist who also received major dedications from Robert Schumann and Antonin Dvorak.It is sometimes said that the Mount Everest of violin concertos is “The Beethoven” (in the vernacular of classical musicians). But if that is true, “The Brahms” has to be the Matterhorn. Yet, for all its daunting power, Opus 77 has a bearing so graceful that it seems borrowed from the harp strings of Orpheus.
Opus 77 was written in 1878 while Brahms took a long summer holiday at Pörtschach on the edge of Lake Wörth in Alpine Carinthia. The tone of his letters during that time is reflective of the bright mood of the concerto itself: “Here melodies flow so easily and freely that one has to be careful not to trample any of them underfoot.” Opus 77 was completed just months after his second symphony, a detail which affords a clue to the grand orchestral architecture of the score. The concerto is dedicated to Brahm’s friend Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), the great Austrio-Hungarian violinist who also received major dedications from Robert Schumann and Antonin Dvorak.It is sometimes said that the Mount Everest of violin concertos is “The Beethoven” (in the vernacular of classical musicians). But if that is true, “The Brahms” has to be the Matterhorn. Yet, for all its daunting power, Opus 77 has a bearing so graceful that it seems borrowed from the harp strings of Orpheus.
The first movement opens with the majesty of a great mountain expanse presenting a fully symphonic ambiance before the solo violin enters, shepherd-like, with a tune of beguiling simplicity. But this is far from innocent music, about which the spectacular cadenza leaves no doubt.For sheer loveliness, a pastoral oboe pipes its charm at the beginning of the Adagio. This lyrical moment was just too much for another of Brahms’ contemporaries, the great Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate who refused to perform the concerto, remarking: “Do you think I would be so tasteless as to stand on the stage holding my violin while the oboe plays the only melody in the whole piece?” Throughout his life, Brahms carried a musical quiver full of gypsy arrows. They can be heard whistling past our ears in many guises, some more subtle than others. But there is nothing oblique about the trajectory of the third movement – here we have a Hungarian-styled rondo which cavorts from a folk-like dance to an impulsive march with gaiety and high-wire pyrotechnics from the soloist. Wunderbar..!
Pictures at an Exhibition
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky
Russian composer
Born March 9, 1839; Karevo
Died March 16, 1881; St. Petersburg
Mussorgsky’s original set of ten musical images was composed for solo piano as a homage to the memory of the Russian architect and painter Victor A. Hartmann, who had been one of the composer’s closest friends. Deeply distressed by Hartmann’s passing (in 1874 at the age of 39), and after attending a memorial gallery exhibit of the artist’s works, Mussorgsky conceived the idea of a sonic exhibition via the gallery walls of a concert hall.
Mussorgsky’s original set of ten musical images was composed for solo piano as a homage to the memory of the Russian architect and painter Victor A. Hartmann, who had been one of the composer’s closest friends. Deeply distressed by Hartmann’s passing (in 1874 at the age of 39), and after attending a memorial gallery exhibit of the artist’s works, Mussorgsky conceived the idea of a sonic exhibition via the gallery walls of a concert hall.
Included in the scheme are several promenades, spaced quite naturally as one might walk into a large exhibit room and progress from one tableau to the next. Mussorgsky’s settings are a literal series of mini-tone poems representing the specific Hartmann sketches and watercolors which had been displayed in the exhibit. The original canvases are purportedly destroyed in a fire. However, reproduced in black and white, the images can be seen in the journal Musical Quarterly (Volume 125, 1939) in an excellent essay by Alfred Frankenstein.
Although Mussorgsky’s ori-ginal setting for piano had gained considerable popularity, the brilliant orchestral transcription in 1922 by Maurice Ravel catapulted the music into the high-currency limelight. It has ever since been one of the most performed orchestral show-pieces in the symphonic repertoire.
Pictures at an Exhibition
Maurice Ravel
French composer and pianist
Born March 7, 1875; Ciboure
Died December 28, 1937; Paris
As a “walk-by” reference for the musical pictures, Mussorgsky’s use of the variable Promenade serves to escort the viewer/listener from one canvas to the next. Gnomus is a comical but grotesquely carved nutcracker, a favorite icon in Eastern Europe; The Old Castle was a Hartmann watercolor of a chateau in the Middle Ages, here portrayed by a lyrical and plaintive alto saxophone; Tuileries represents children playing hide and seek in the well-known Parisian gardens situated between the Louvre and the Champs-Élysée; Bydlo depicts a scene from the ancient village of Sandomierz, showing a cart with over-size wooden wheels drawn by two oxen, lyrically represented by a mournful, high tuba; Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks conjures Hartmann’s sketch for a children’s ballet scene where canaries are gleefully trying to hatch; Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle represent two old Jewish gentlemen who meet in the street, one rich and pompous in furs, the other humbled in tatters; for Marketplace at Limoges, Mussorgsky wrote that the music represents French “bavardes” (gossips) chatting about Monsieur’s lost cow, Madame’s false teeth, and Monsieur’s big nose; Catacombs: Roman Sepulchre is an evocation of the open, public vaults of Paris, with skeletons revealed by light from a leering lantern; about Cum mortuis in lingua mortua “With the dead, in the language of the dead,” Mussorgsky noted that “...the skulls glow under the soft light”; The Hut of Baba Yaga, is a witch in Russian folklore who terrified children from her hut built on chicken legs; The Great Gate of Kiev is a sonic caption of Hartmann’s design (never built) for a commemorative, Russian-styled Arc de Triomphe. Immense and imposing, Mussorgsky noted the work was composed as a hymn of gratitude.
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