Rota: Divertimento Concertante

Divertimento Concertante for Double Bass and Orchestra

Nino Rota
(1911-1979)

Nino Rota is a familiar name to anyone with an interest in music for the cinema, with a remarkable succession of scores for the films of Visconti (The Leopard), Zefferelli (Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet), every single one of Fellini’s films---even the first of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather movies! But, as in the case of Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Bernard Herrmann, there is also a rich range of concert works by Nino Rota. Indeed, the roster of Rota’s compositions reveals an amazing output of compositions of every description: symphonies, chamber works, choral works, eleven operas, ballets and oratorios! Born into a musical family, Nino Rota was a child prodigy, with an oratorio performed when he was eleven years old! He attended the Milan Conservatory and Accademia Santa Cecilia (Rome), studied with Pizzeti and Casella, and even spent a couple years at the Curtis Institute in the early 1930s, where he was a fellow student of Samuel Barber and Gian-Carlo Menotti. Until the 1950s Rota pursued a successful academic career, then devoting himself to composition, and, increasingly, his film collaborations, which won him an international reputation.

The DIVERTIMENTO CONCERTANTE appeared in 1969, and is notable for its charm and sprightly Neo-Classic character, qualities which are so memorable in his film music, especially the scores for the Fellini films.

Scored for an orchestra of winds, horns and trumpets in pairs, timpani and string, the Divertimento is a delectable feast for a virtuoso bassist. The spotlight is usually upon the soloist, but the orchestra is treated with elegance and wit as well. The Allegro opens with grand RITORNELLO, full of Rossinian gestures, with sweeping melodic figures over bustling tremolo, and a lilting secondary melody first heard in the clarinets over a PIZZICATO background. The mood is cheerful and festive in an Italianate manner quite suggestive of the music Rota would supply for scenes taking place in crowded streets and markets in many a Fellini film. The solo instrument is treated with great flexibility and dexterity, moving from the characteristic husky bass of the lower strings to an expressive mezzo-soprano CANTABILE in the upper register. Especially gratifying is the delicacy of the solo line, often in fluid chains of triplets and figuration requiring the utmost agility on the part of the performer, as is particularly the case in a finely-wrought cadenza.

The MARCIA is a bright and jaunty movement, with the solo bass heard against the vivid and sharply-etched colours of the winds and brass. The crisp orchestral textures and nimble passagework in the solo bass are rather suggestive of Prokofiev, although the mischievous swagger of the music is unmistakably Italian in its breezy good humour.

The ARIA allows the double bass to reveal its full expressive powers in a sustained, spacious CANTILENA, heard over a measured PIZZICATO accompaniment. The soloist provides a lute-like PIZZICATO background when the melody is take up by the winds, which is then extended and enriched. After the melody is heard in a full orchestral tutti, it is heard in a nostalgic final statement in the bass, fading away with the haunting sound of harmonics.

The FINALE is a restless and athletic piece, full of busy sixteenth-note passagework, dotted rhythms and figuration darting around the winds of the orchestra. There is a brief contrasting episode, with a smooth lyrical theme in the strings first heard again arpeggiated triplets in the solo bass. The irrepressible energy of the opening returns to swing the music forward in a gallop, pausing for a sustained and expressive cadenza, then buzzing to a close.

Sarasate: Zigeunerweisen

Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20

Pablo de Sarasate
(1844-1909)

Born in Pamplona, the son of a military bandmaster, Sarasate was one of the most renowned Spanish musicians of his day, widely regarded as one of the finest violinists of the late 19^th century. As a boy he was the protégé of Queen Isabella of Spain, going on to study at the Paris Conservatory at the age of twelve, where he won prizes in violin, solfege and harmony. He embarked upon a career as a violin virtuoso, touring the Americas as early as 1867-71, with a return tour in 1889-90. From 1874 onward he was a regular visitor to London, where he took audiences by storm. Remembered today chiefly for his brilliant, crowd-pleasing virtuoso compositions, he was held in high esteem by the finest musicians of the day, including Brahms, Dvorak and Joachim. For someone likely to be dismissed as a “typically flashy fiddle-player,” it is striking to learn that Sarasate took great pleasure in performing chamber music. Some of the leading composers of his time composed major works for him, including Saint-Saens (Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso and 3^rd Violin Concerto), Lalo (Symphonie Espagnole), Wieniawski (2^nd Violin Concerto), and Bruch (Scottish Fantasy).

To persons of earnest high-mindedness Sarasate is likely to be scorned as the purveyor of encore kitsch. Fortunately today’s musical world is beginning to accept the notion that the musical equivalent of a chocolate dessert sometimes is just the thing to round out a concert menu. Of Sarasate’s many party pieces Zigeunerweisen (1878) and the Carmen Fantasy (1883) are best known to today’s listeners, with Zigeunerweisen (“Gypsy Tunes”) a perennial favourite over the generations. First published in Leipzig (which accounts for the German title by which it has always been known), the work has often been adapted for viola and cello---it is certainly fitting that the double bass should be given its turn in today’s performance, in an edition prepared by Joel Quarrington, who transposes the work to G Minor. It is interesting to note that Mr. Quarrington departs from common practice (in which the bass is tuned in fourths), tuning his instrument in FIFTHS, an octave below the tuning used by cellists.

Zigeunerweisen is quite simple in structure. After an declamatory opening in the orchestra, the soloist takes command, only rarely giving way to the orchestra thereafter! The first of two sections is given over to to characteristic yearning, heart-tugging melodic figures which were familiar ingredients in 19^th century “Gypsy” music. Sarasate is especially successful in capturing the rapturous emotional power which can still be heard in performances of genuine Gypsy music to this day. Set in a velvety G Minor, the music is full of soulful sighs and hesitations, the soloist displaying the full panoply of technical wizardry, with PIZZICATO effects, harmonics, arpeggiated figures, and every sort of melodic blandishment. The orchestra, always humble in its accompanying role, is allowed to set out a secondary theme of even more melting and expressive character---only to have the soloist snatch it away, naturally. Quite suddenly the music leaps into G Major, with a brisk and prancing rhythmic energy. An exhilarating new melody is unfolded, full of acrobatic tricks for the soloist, shifting into E Minor to hurtle onward to a zestful conclusion.

Stravinsky: Pulcinella Suite

Pulcinella Suite

Igor Stravinsky
(1882-1971)

Without a doubt the supreme influence upon Igor Stravinsky was his twenty year association with Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, a period extending from the Firebird Ballet (1909-10) to Apollo (1928). Diaghilev had a unique gift for discovering discovering remarkable creative figures, and fostering stimulating collaborative relationships among composers, choreographers and graphic artists which would have an impact in the world of music and dance through much of the 20^th century. Following the sensational 1913 premiere of Sacre du Printemps which revealed the 30 year-old Stravinsky as the most significant figure of of his generation there was excited speculation regarding what would be the next stage in these exciting developments. But there was not to be a 1914 season. With the outbreak of World War I the theatres of Paris were closed, and Stravinsky retreated to Switzerland with his family. Cut off from the lavish resources of the Ballets Russes, and working within wartime restrictions, Stravinsky composed a number of small-scale works, notably the Histoire du Soldat (which was performed by the Princeton Chamber Symphony in the 1990 season). With the end of the war Stravinsky returned to Paris, a city which overnight became a place of exile for Russian artists cut off from their homeland by the Bolshevik Revolution. While Paris had been home for the Stravinsky and the Diaghilev company for a number of years, their spiritual roots were in a Russia which few of them would ever see again. (Only in 1962 would Stravinsky was to return his motherland, now the Soviet Union.)

In 1919 Diaghilev approached Stravinsky with a proposal for a new work for Paris which initially struck the composer as “quite mad”: to prepare an orchestral arrangement of a miscellany of pieces by Giambattista Pergolesi (1710-1736) for a ballet in an 18^th century COMMEDIA DELL’ARTE setting. (There had been several recent successful ballets of a similar nature, such as Respighi’s BOUTIQUE FANTASQUE (on music of Rossini), and Tommasini’s GOOD-HUMOURED LADIES (on music of Scarlatti.) Diaghilev offered the inviting prospect of working with Picasso (scenery and costumes) and Massine (choreography), as well as the promise of some ready cash---Stravinsky, as usual, was in debt. Oddly, what might be described as “high-class hackwork” became a labour of love, and in hindsight can be viewed as a turning point in Stravinsky’s career, marking the first step in the development of his “Neo-Classic” style. Stravinsky laid out a work in 18 short movements for a chamber orchestra of 33 players, in a striking contrast to the colossal orchestra required for SACRE DU PRINTEMPS. It calls for winds (without clarinets), brass, timpani, three solo singers, and a body of strings strings divided into CONCERTINO and RIPIENO in the manner of the 18^th century CONCERTO GROSSO.

Pergolesi’s melodies and bass-lines are retained, as well as the basic 18^th century harmonic language and rhythmic figures. But similar to Picasso’s use of the work of earlier painters (such as Velasquez) as a springboard for fresh and original artistic experiments, Stravinsky relishes the opportunity to rummage through the stock ingredients of 18^th century Italian music, almost as if encountering them for the first time. The listener is teased by phrase patterns in which beats are unexpectedly cut out, others added; unremarkable melodies take on a piquant tang with touches of dissonance; basic tonic and dominant chords bump into each other with amusing results, while new lines of counterpoint are threaded through the musical texture. Stravinsky seems to strip music down to its nuts and bolts, putting everything again according to his own pleasure---not for nothing did he once describe himself in a passport application as an “inventor of music”! The warmth and affection with which this is accomplished makes PULCINELLA perhaps Stravinsky’s most loveable composition. As White put it, “Stravinsky speaks of his relationship to Pergolesi and his music in terms suitable to a love affair. This was no rape, but a seduction, carefully planned, successfully carried out, and vastly enjoyed---at least by Stravinsky!”

The1920 premiere was a huge success, delighting (and baffling) an audience which had come prepared for another musical onslaught in the manner of SACRE DU PRINTEMPS by this unexpected shift in the composer’s style. They could not know (and even Stravinsky himself might not have understood at the time) that the composer, now estranged from his native country, was beginning to forge a unique relationship to the Western European musical tradition from which Russian musicians had been largely excluded. As Stravinsky said, “PULCINELLA was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look, of course---the first of many love affairs in that direction---but it was a look in the mirror, too.” Thus began the “Neo-Classic” period in Stravinsky’s career, spanning thirty years, extending into the music composed during his first ten years as a resident in California, as was exemplified by the DANSES CONCERTANTES, heard in the December Princeton Chamber Symphony concert.)

A concert suite drawn from the complete PULCINELLA ballet was first performed by Pierre Monteux and the Boston Symphony on 22 December, 1922. The movements are as follows:

1. SINFONIA (Overture) – a solid, forthright introductory piece in G Major, somewhat pompous and theatrical in manner.

2. SERENATA – originally written for voice, solo oboe and solo violin now do the singing
over a rustling string accompaniment, with murmuring flute. Wistful and tender in mood,
the essence of the Italian operatic idiom.

3. SCHERZINO. Three movements in one: a brilliantly-coloured C Major section, frisky and cheerful in mood, giving way to a scurrying section in A Major, with
breathless passage work in the strings, and a concluding section in F Major, somewhat pastoral in tone, shyly skipping away in the closing bars.

4. TARANTELLA. This most Italianate of the movements is coloured by the sound of open strings and strumming PIZZICATO figures, with cross-rhythms and breathless forward momentum.

5. TOCCATA. A brief, fanfare-like movement bringing the brass to the fore, with humourous bangs on unexpected beats and an atmosphere of amiable pomposity.

6. GAVOTTA (with 2 variations). This movement provides an interlude of quiet coolness, with the instrumentation limited to winds and brass (mostly horns). The first variation is scored for an octet of winds and brass, the second featuring a dialogue between flute and horn against the rustic clucking of bassoons.

7. VIVO. One of the great examples of musical buffoonery, this uproarious movement features an unlikely duet between solo trombone and solo string bass, with rhythmic teasing and a a touch of mock pathos.

8. MINUETTO. An oddly march-like, mysterious little movement, most “unminuetlike” in character. The trombone once again has a moment of CANTABILE, the music gradually pressing forward in increasing sonority to move directly into the FINALE.

9. FINALE. The principal melodic phrase is as hackneyed a string of nine notes as can be imagined, which sports and gambols onward with exhilarating rhythmic twists and ostinato patterns. Unlikely echoes of the “Danse Sacrale” from SACRE DU PRINTEMPS sneak in along the way, the solo trumpet wheeling forward to a cadential slam-dunk.

Leighton :Dance Suite No. 2, Op. 59

Dance Suite No. 2, Op. 59

Kenneth Leighton (1929-1988)

Kenneth Leighton’s early musical training took place as a choirboy at Wakefield Cathedral, followed by studies at Oxford University. He attracted early notice from a number of important composers, including Vaughan Williams, Britten and Gerald Finzi. Composer of symphonies, concertos and chamber music, Leighton is perhaps best-known for his choral works. A prolific composer, his style, with its clarity, lyrical expressiveness and classic form, places him among the more conservative British composers of his time, although elements of the 12-tone technique were to have an influence upon his work as well.

One of a set of three Dance Suites commissioned in the early 1970s to be played by school orchestras, the Second Suite is a vivid example of Leighton’s style, in which technical mastery goes along with a flair for exhibiting an appealing “popular” tone.

The suite opens with a brightly-colored “Intrada,” a march-like introductory movement steps forth with energy and a confident swagger. A secondary, more lyrical theme follows, with the opening material returning to conclude the movement with brilliant flourishes.

The Ragtime Jig is quite removed from the edgy stride of Scott Joplin’s classical ragtime style, here rather stressing the “jig” element, giving a decidedly English cast to the music. Beginning quietly, the music builds to a climax, and then fades away softly in a low flute solo.

The closing “Introduction and March,” is the most imposing part of the suite, opening with

a broad, sustained melody in the strings, soon joined by the winds, moving ahead with a majestic stride and rising to a powerful fullness of sonority. Quite abruptly the music shifts to a springy, almost hectic quick march tempo, with a principal theme filled with rhythmic touches which gives the music a distinct contemporary flavour. A more sustained contrasting melody appears which, upon the return of the opening material soars overhead in the winds, the two thematic elements combined to bring the work to an exultant conclusion.

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Wieniawski :Concerto for Violin No. 2 in D Minor: First Movement, Allegro Moderato

Concerto for Violin No. 2 in D Minor: First Movement, Allegro Moderato

Henryk Wieniawski (1835-1880)

The Polish violinist Henryk Wieniawski was born into a family of musicians, and showing a great musical talent at an early age, entered the Paris Conservatoire, studying the violin, and soon gaining notice as one of the most brilliant performers of his generation. Much of his career was spent as a travelling virtuoso throughout Europe, as well as spending two years giving concerts in North America. For twelve years Wieniawski taught at the conservatory in Saint Petersburg (in that period Poland was a province of the Russian Empire), where he had a close association with the great pianist, Anton Rubinstein, and became a close friend of Tchaikovsky. Always in frail health, the composer became dangerously ill in 1880, and was taken to live in the palational home of Madame von Meck, Tchaikovksy’s patroness, where he died a few months later. Tchaikovsky wrote of his death, “in him we shall lose an incomparable violinist and gifted composer…the D Minor Concerto shows a true creative gift.”

Composer of many concert works for violin, the Second Concerto is his outstanding creation, a work of fire, lyrical power and great color.

The concerto opens with an introduction featuring a gentle theme in the violins, shared with the winds, and setting the stage for the entry of the solo violin, who is first heard taking up the initial melodic element, now adding some virtuoso touches. A richly lyrical secondary theme follows, which leads to an episode of increasingly brilliant technical display, all the resources of the violin given full rein.

Copland : “Hoe Down” from RODEO

“Hoe Down” from RODEO

Aaron Copland (1900-1990)

By the 1940s Aaron Copland had already become known as America’s best-known composer, and with the celebration last year of his centenary his position as his country’s best-loved composer is more secure than ever. Although active as a composer for films, with a couple of operas to his credit, the most natural medium for Copland’s dramatic instincts (very much like Stravinsky) was in the field of the dance. Indeed, it was with the appearance in 1938 of BILLY THE KID that Copland began to win a wide popular following. With the composition of RODEO (1942) and APPALACHIAN SPRING (1944) Copland’s reputation was firmly established as the composer who distilled the very essence of the American spirit into his music.

Following the sensational appearance of BILLY THE KID, Copland was invited to join in a second dance project by Agnes DeMille, who herself was about to win a great career success with her choreography for OKLAHAMA in 1943. Another ballet about cowboys at first had little attraction for Copland, but the ever-persuasive DeMille won out, and at the premiere of RODEO at the old Metropolitan Opera House Copland shared in one of the great triumphs of American dance. Four episodes from the ballet were published as a concert suite shortly afterward. The brilliant concluding Hoe Down is a glorious evocation of the time-honored American barndance, complete with fancy fiddling and stomping rhythms. There is a contrasting element midway, with a perky, prancing little ditty heard in the winds, then taken up by the strings. But in the end the fast and furious energy of the main tune carries the day, bringing the dance to an exhilarating finish.

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Berlioz :Hungarian March from The Damnation of Faust

Hungarian March from The Damnation of Faust

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

For more than a century after its appearance in the 1820s Goethe’s FAUST was to be a powerful preoccupation of a remarkable stream of composers, including Schumann, Liszt, Gounod, Wagner, Busoni, and many others. One of the earliest of these was Hector Berlioz, who as early as 1828 composed a set of “Eight Scenes from Goethe’s Faust” – which he promptly sent off to Weimar, seeking the approval of the great German poet. (Goethe gave the manuscript to a musical advisor, who dismissed it as incoherent rubbish!) In 1845 Berlioz returned to his Faust project, which now developed into a massive work for voices, chorus and orchestra, labeled a “Dramatic Legend” – a work not for the stage, but for the concert hall, with the usual visual and dramatic elements intended to take place in the minds of the listeners through the medium of the music.

Although in the main faithful to Goethe’s work, there is one startling liberty on the part of the composer: in order to inset into the action a stirring march composed after a visit to Hungary, Berlioz arbitrarily shifted the locale of the opening of the drama to that country. The march, sometimes known by its tradition Hungarian title, “Rákóczy March,” is one of several popular orchestral excerpts from the DAMNATION OF FAUST, notable for its brilliant coloration and dashing energy. The march begins softly, which caused Berlioz some nervousness when he conducted it in Budapest, lest the audience might take offense at such an understated opening. His fears were groundless; the swelling power and swagger of this infectious piece swept the Hungarians into a storm of applause, and the march has been one of the composer’s most popular compositions ever since.

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Humperdinck : Evening Prayer from Hansel and Gretel

Evening Prayer from Hansel and Gretel

Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921)

Engelbert Humperdinck today is remembered for a single composition, his opera HANSEL AND GRETEL. Introduced in 1893 under the baton of none other than Richard Strauss, HANSEL AND GRETEL was perhaps the most sensationally successful first opera in history, going on to join Handel’s MESSIAH and Tchaikovsky’s NUTCRACKER BALLET as a mandatory musical fare in the Christmas season. Growing out of a quite modest family entertainment, with a libretto by the composer’s sister, the work soon was expanded into a full-scale opera. Ironically, this unpretentious fairy-tale piece might well be described as the only successful opera to carry on the legacy of of Richard Wagner, with whom Humperdinck worked as a young man.

The Evening Prayer is a tiny little duet sung by Hansel and Gretel, who have become lost in the woods, and now prepare to sleep, singing the familiar words, “Now I lay me down to sleep….” No more gentle and tender music has ever been written.

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Mozart :Overture to The Magic Flute

Overture to The Magic Flute

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

In the last year of his life, contrary to popular myth, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was beginning to see a turnabout in his professional fortunes. True, he had been in ill health, burdened by debt and a falling-off of his popularity with fickle Viennese audiences. But by the spring of 1791 he was busy at work on two operatic projects at the same time: The Magic Flute, a German-language SINGSPIEL (an opera with spoken dialogue), and LA CLEMENZA DI TITO, a rather old-fashioned “serious” opera in Italian. While TITO was intended for a gala performance in Prague as part of the celebrations of the coronation of a new emperor, DIE ZAUBERFLOTE (“Magic Flute”) was written for more modest circumstances: performances in a small theatre in the suburbs of Viennese, before middle-class “family audiences.” While the Italian opera turned out to be a disappointment, the singspiel was an instant, long-running popular success---perhaps a sign of what might have been had Mozart lived.

Commissioned by a roustabout theatre-manager, one Emmanuel Schikaneder, who himself wrote the libretto (and even created the popular role of Papageno, the Bird-Catcher in the first performances), “The Magic Flute” was a confusing scramble of pseudo-Egyptian mythology (complete with references to Osiris and Isis), a boy-meets-girl story, plus a fascinating admixture of Masonic symbolism as well. (After years of prohibition by the Church, under the tolerant Emperor Joseph II the masons were permitted to exist, many of the most prominent artist and intellectuals of Vienna becoming members, including both Haydn and Mozart.)

The Magic Flute is Mozart’s most majestic overture: opening with a slow introduction featuring heavy, portentous chords (suggesting the Masonic element), leading to a full-scale ALLEGRO, filled with bustling fugal writing. Midway the music pauses, and three massive intonations in the brass and winds are heard, yet again a Masonic symbol. The whirling energy resumes, and the overture concludes in triumph.

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Roussel Sinfonietta for Strings, Op. 52

Sinfonietta for Strings, Op. 52

Albert Roussel (1869-1937)

Albert Roussel is a unique figure among 20^th century French composers. Born into a wealthy family, and despite showing early musical promise, Roussel decided upon a naval career, and spent five years as a commissioned officer in the French navy. However his musical interests asserted themselves, and at the age of 25 Roussel resigned his commission to devote himself to concentrated study. Settling in Paris, he came under the influence of the formidable Vincent D’Indy, under whom he studied at the Schola Cantorum---a course of study lasting a decade! He went on to become a professor at the Schola (where he numbered among his pupils Erik Satie, as well as a composer who later would become a powerful force in advanced 20^th century contemporary music, Edgard Varese.) His career as a composer grew steadily, moving from a early “impressionist” phase to a mature style of great individuality. A lone individual among his generation, he initially drew inspiration from the late 19^th century French tradition, the work of Debussy, and even from the romantic Russian masters. But it would be the work of Stravinsky and Prokofiev (who made their home in Paris after the First World War) which would have a lasting influence upon Roussel, resulting in music of an interesting toughness, sinewy texture, rhythmic bouyancy and bright primary colours.

The Sinfonietta for Strings, composed in 1934, is a splendid example of Roussel’s later style.

The work opens with a crisp, sharply articulated melody heard against a tramping rhythmic background, soon fading down to a more lyrical contrasting theme. The primary theme returns to round out the movement. The music is tonal, shot through with glints of dissonant harmonies, and generally preserving a resolute, unsentimental character.

The slow central movement opens with massive, sweeping chords, creating an atmosphere of grave intensity. The music seems to suggest a tapestry of string sonority, rich and introspective. Quite unexpectedly the third movement swings into action, for the first time laid out in a major tonality (D Major). The musical texture remains dense, lively, if a trifle muscular, springing forward and maintaining a restless momentum, coming to a blunt conclusion.

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Faure Nocturne from Shylock

Nocturne from Shylock

Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)

Although he would eventually create a true operatic landmark in his Penelope (1913), for many years Gabriel Faure never went beyond composing occasional sets of incidental pieces for theatrical productions, one of which would become his best-known orchestral composition, the Suite from Pelleas Et Melisande--- the very play which would be the basis for Debussy’s landmark opera of 1902, as well as orchestral works by Schoenberg and Sibelius.

An example of Faure’s incidental music is the set of pieces composed for an 1889 production of a play loosely based on Shakespeare’s Merchant Of Venice, Shylock.. One tiny movement, the jewel-like Nocturne is the best known of these pieces. Here, in a work for string orchestra, we hear Faure, the great melodist and composer of haunting songs (the glory of the French tradition of “melodies”), the violins soaring over a sustained, subtly-shifting harmonic background. This is indeed a genuine “song without words.”

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Massenet Meditation from Thais

Meditation from Thais

Jules Massenet (1842-1912)

In his day Jules Massenet was the Andrew Lloyd-Webber of his day: an enormously prolific, popular, commercially canny purveyor of operatic sweet-meats gobbled up by an adoring public all over the world. Never before or since had French opera achieved such an international following. Most of his operas (rather like those of his contemporaries Puccini and Richard Strauss) focused upon fascinating female protagonists, with more than a hint of a deliciously alluring erotic element designed to titillate and fascinate audiences.

Among the more “scandalous” Massent confections was Thais, first performed in 1894. This tale of a “courtesan, ” whose life becomes entangled with that of an austere “holy man, ” who progressively yields to her attractions---while at the same time SHE becomes drawn to his spiritual purity, stirred up a storm of comment, protest and sheer fascination on the part of the public and critics of the time. The title role was designed for a young Californian soprano, Sibyl Sanderson, who had a lovely voice, was quite beautiful, and known to be one of a long chain of Massenet mistresses. On the opera’s opening night Ms. Sanderson’s costume accidentally (?) came undone, revealing a fetching bosom, which more than stole the show, and added all the more to the uproar. To this day Thais has never quite lived down its torrid reputation.

All that stands in stark contrast (musically speaking) with the famous “Meditation, ” which forms an entr’acte at the opera’s midpoint. Justly famed as a work of intense emotion of a strangely ambiguous spiritual character---it is as often played at funerals as at weddings----the Meditation is heard as an extended violin melody hovering above a hushed string orchestra background. Vintage Massenet, the textures are lush, the melodic element smooth and creamy, and (mirroring the opera’s plot) nicely balanced between the sensual and the spiritual.

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Saint-Saens “The Elephant, ” from Carnival Of The Animals

“The Elephant, ” from Carnival Of The Animals

Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

The “Carnival of the Animals” was composed by Camille Saint-Saens as a private joke, quickly written in 1886, and never published in his lifetime. Ironically it would become the composer’s most-popular work, even outstripping the concertos and symphonies in the affections of the musical public.

Apart from the obvious pleasure of hearing musical portraits of the animal kingdom, a great deal of the fun of the “Carnival” lies in some of the in-jokes and sly musical subtleties which are woven throughout the work. A particularly droll example can be heard in the musical portrait of the Elephant. In the lumbering slow-waltz of the opening tune we can, of course, envision the bulk and gait of this huge beast. But then, to impart an unexpected touch of elegance (even to a pachyderm!) Saint-Saens slips in an extended quotation from Berlioz’ “Dance of the Sylphs” from the Damnation Of Faust. What makes this especially funny is remembering that a.) the Berlioz original rolls along at a quick tempo; b.) far from being heard in the low register of the orchestra, The Berlioz melody is heard in high, ethereal violins. But even if the listener has no inkling of the musical quotation, the likeness the animal being portrayed is faithful, affectionate, and amusing.

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Ravel Pavane pour une Infante defúnte

Pavane pour une Infante defúnte

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Some composers begin their careers with a Great Popular Success – usually a rather modest composition which becomes so-well loved (and overplayed) that their creators rue the day that they ever composed these pieces, despite the always-welcome royalties! Among a number of notorious examples would certainly be Rachmaninov’s “Prelude in C-sharp Minor, Liszt’s Liebestraum, and Chopin’s “Minute Waltz.” Such is the case with Maurice Ravel’s “Pavane for a Dead Princess” (often mis-translated as “infant, ” “Infante” actually refers to an “Infanta, ” the Spanish title for a royal princess.) Such a title is characteristic of the young composer’s romantic imagination in creating this exquisite musical miniature, which, however often it is picked out by “pretty young things with spidery fingers, ” never loses its appeal. The Pavane was one of the earliest of Ravel’s works to come to public notice, written in 1899 for solo piano and dedicated to the Princess Edmond de Polignac---an American woman (heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune) who became a central figure in early 20^th century Parisian musical life. (In 1910 Ravel prepared an orchestral setting of the work.) With its eerie calm and nostalgic, somewhat “archaic” tone, the Pavane represents a turning away from the gauzy shimmer of late-19^th century “impressionism, ” and even in this early work seems to look ahead to the neo-classic trend which music would follow by the 1920s.

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Satie March, “Le Piccadilly”

March, “Le Piccadilly”

Erik Satie (1866-1925)

Erik Satie is often thought of as one of the great eccentric figures in French music, known for miniature compositions with titles such as “Things seen from left to right (without glasses), ” “The Dreamy Fish, ” “Flaccid Preludes, ” and an especially evocative work for piano in Four movements, “Three Pieces in the shape of a Pear.” Satie, who had stumbled through his teens with fitful attempts at gaining a conventional musical education, would go on to become compose of note (and notoriety), a close friend of Debussy, who in his later years numbered among his friends Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. He would have a deep influence upon younger composers such as Ravel, Poulenc, and such Americans as Virgil Thomson and John Cage. For many years he lived an impoverished life in the Bohemian world of Montmarte, although at one point he inherited a legacy from his family with which he purchased a set of 12 identical grey velvet suits. His musical personality ranged from a Christian mysticism which was expressed in his “Mass for the Poor, ” to “Socrate, ” an austere and poignant setting of the account of the death of the Greek philosopher. There was also an uproarious sense of humour and somewhat surrealistic sensibility, as can be heard in his ballet, “Parade” (performed in 1917 with designs by Picasso), in which a typewriter makes an appearance as an orchestral instrument.

His jaunty musical spirit is nicely expressed in the tiny “Piccadilly” March composed in 1903. The title reflects Satie’s characteristic delight in things English---an eccentric artist perhaps inspired by a notion of the British as a nation of eccentrics. However, the music itself is actually an echo of American Ragtime, which became the rage in Europe early in the 20^th century. Indeed, the March actually began life as a song, “La Transatlantique” (“The Transatlantic Girl”), with a text by Satie himself, in a hilarious scramble of French and English, full of references to Baltimore, Chicago, Mississippi, Ohio – and dollars! That version was abandoned, and the march first appeared as a piano piece (later orchestrated), which follows the traditional march and trio pattern, full of the typical prancing rhythms and syncopation of Ragtime. Scott Joplin would have loved it.

NCO concert