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.