Musorgsky:

Pictures at an Exhibition

Modest Musorgsky (1839-1881)

Born little more than a generation before Sergei Rachmaninov, Modest Musorgsky made his way as a musician during a period in which Russian musical culture was still taking shape, when many of the most gifted composers were actually amateurs, writing music in their free time. It is hard to imagine that Alexander Borodin was employed as a professor of chemistry, and Rimsky-Korsakov began a career as a naval officer, only later becoming a professional composer and teacher. Even Tchaikovsky put in a few years as a government employee before being freed to compose full-time, in great part due to the generosity of his patron, Mme. Von Meck.

Musorgsky’s career followed a similar course. Born in a well-to-do land-owning family, he was educated at a military academy (with casual musical instruction from his mother and private teachers), and became a civil servant---the future composer of BORIS GODUNOV soon employed as “Assistant Head Clerk in the Third Section of the Forestry Department of the Ministry of State Property”! (Please note that this was fifty years before the Soviet era!) It was not quite as Kafkaesque as one might imagine. When time permitted music was composed, and Musorgsky was fortunate in having superiors who recognized his gifts and gave him considerable leeway in pursuing his creative activities. He was quite successful as a government functionary, dapper in appearance, cultivated and possessing a lively intellect. He also was subject to mental instability, fits of depression, and an increasing alcoholism which would eventually bring his short life to an end. The history books tend to overlook the more positive aspects of Musorgsky’s life, usually stressing his “unstable, disorderly temperament,” and sadly the composer is forever associated in the minds of most people with the heart-breaking portrait by I. E. Repin, painted only a few weeks before his early death. By fits and starts Musorgsky had won recognition as a gifted, if rather “eccentric” composer, closely associated with others of his generation (especially the “Mighty Five,” which included Rimsky, Borodin, Cesar Cui and Balakirev.) In the early 1870s came performances of his masterpiece, BORIS GODUNOV, soon followed by work on KHOVANSHCHINA (left incomplete at his death), a host of remarkable songs, and a number of larger compositions, many of them unfinished. The criticism of Musorgsky’s “eccentricity” usually referred to aspects of his harmonic and melodic style, as well as his idiosyncratic approach to instrumentation. Rimsky-Korsakov’s affectionate, if misguided, “revisions” and “corrections” in BORIS GUDONOV and other works left unpublished at the time of Musorgsky’s death are a clear indication of the general attitude of the composer’s contemporaries to what nowadays is considered to be remarkable originality and boldness of musical vision.

That Maurice Ravel should come to prepare an orchestration of the epic piano suite, “Pictures at an Exhibition” is an interesting aspect of the curious history of Musorgsky’s work and its emergence into the general repertoire in the 20^th century. The Russians had a traditional affinity for French culture, and not surprisingly some of the first western European musicians to take an interest in Musorgsky were French. Camille Saint-Saens, of all people, was one of the first to encounter the work of Musorgsky, followed by Debussy (who as a young man had spent time in Russia as a music instructor to the children of Tchaikovsky’s patron, Mme. Von Meck.) By the time Ravel was making his name as a composer Igor Stravinsky had burst on the scene, soon taking up residence in France. Himself a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky’s presence in Paris further strengthened the long-standing cultural bond between Russian and French culture. A further flood of Russian artists and intellectuals following the 1917 revolution added to this, with figures such as Serge Koussevitsky and Prokofiev becoming prominent in the musical life of Paris.

Ravel’s first serious involvement with the music of Musorgsky came in 1913, when he joined Stravinsky in preparing a new orchestration of the incomplete KHOVANSHCHINA, a project which was never completed. In 1922 he was commissioned by Serge Koussevitsky to transform Musorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” into a full-scale orchestral composition. This imposing fourteen-movement suite for piano was written in 1874, inspired by a memorial exhibition of works by the composer’s friend Victor Hartmann, an artist who had died the previous year. Seldom performed, often dismissed as awkwardly conceived for the piano, even today this composition is infrequently heard, and is often tinkered with by pianists, as was notably the case with Vladimir Horowitz, a lifelong champion of the work. Many musicians had suspected that “Pictures” would be better served by an orchestral transcription, and Ravel, with his feeling for orchestral color and love of Russian music, was certainly the ideal man for the job, although Ravel’s orchestral textures were closer to those of Rimsky-Korsakov than to Musorgsky’s own orchestral colours, with their bold, spare “earth tones.” First performed in Paris by Koussevitsky on 19 October, 1922, Ravel’s “Tableaux d’une Exposition” was a sensational success, and ironically has all but eclipsed Musorgsky’s rude and bluntly Russian original.

Pictures at an Exhibition is a musical depiction of paintings and drawings on display in a gallery, with the casual strolling of onlookers from one artwork to the next suggested by four short movements, each bearing the title “Promenade.”

The opening PROMENADE, marked “nel modo russico,” forms an introduction to the suite.

This is very “Russian” indeed, opening with a solo trumpet, taking on a sturdy peasant character.

The paintings are as follows:

1. GNOMUS. A design for a toy nutcracker prepared as a Christmas tree ornament. The “nutcracker” element is vividly illustrated by the use of a rattle, together with whip, side drum, cymbals and xylophone.

PROMENADE – now heard as a quiet contemplation of the paintings.

2. THE OLD CASTLE. Based upon a watercolor done by the artist on a visit to Italy in which a troubadour sings a melancholy song outside a medieval castle (here in the voice of an alto saxophone.)

PROMENADE. Now returning with fuller orchestration, fading away to prepare for the next picture.

3. TUILERIES. A painting depicting lively children’s games in the gardens in central Paris. An apt example of Ravel’s ability to bring together the distinctive Russian essence of the music, together with a Gallic elegance most appropriate for the subject of the painting.

4. BYDLO. In a foreshadowing of Stravinsky’s “Petrushka” Musorgsky depicts a Polish cart with enormous wheels, drawn by oxen, with heavy grinding rhythms and the dark colors of the Russian countryside.

PROMENADE. This ambling musical element is now heard in a lighter, more transparent texture.

5. BALLET OF THE CHICKS IN THEIR SHELLS. This is based on costumes which Hartman designed for a Bolshoi Ballet production in 1871.

6. SAMUEL GOLDENBERG AND SCHMUYLE. This musical dialogue, was inspired by a pair of portraits of two Jews: one rich, wearing a fur hat (depicted by solid, rather prideful music for strings and winds in unison), the other a poor Sandomir Jew (heard in pleading music played by muted trumpet.)

7. LIMOGES, THE MARKET PLACE. A scene of animated gossip among market women vividly mirrored in a flurry of instrumental activity, plowing head-on into the following movement.

8. CATACOMBS. Set out in two sections, the first subtitled “Sepulchrum Romanum” [“Roman Sepulchre], a stark, nearly immobile impression of the eternity of death, the second , “Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua” [“With the Dead in a Dead Language”] in which the Promenade theme reappears in an eerie atmosphere of muted tremolo strings.

9. THE HUT ON FOWL’S LEGS. This painting represents the famous home of Baba Yaga, a witch well known in Russian folklore, who flew through the skies in a pestle and mortar.

Here Ravel came closest to the spirit of Musorgsky with orchestral colors which create a memorable and evocation of this haunted fairy-tale world. Returning to the thumping energy of the opening section, the music hurtles on to plunge directly into the final movement.

10. THE GREAT GATE OF KIEV. Hartman’s drawing was a design for a massive memorial gate, with columns supporting an arch crowned by a huge carved war helmet. Here Ravel, seems to outstrip even such Russian masters of orchestration as Rimsky in creating an outpouring of incomparable majesty. The powerful, choral-like main theme recurs several times, contrasted by a quiet, chant-like episode rooted in the world of Russian Orthodox choral music, and a bell-like episode built upon tritone figures, with powerful echoes of the Coronation Scene from BORIS GODUNOV. The work concludes with the orchestra playing at maximum capacity, in an unparalleled display of rich sonority.

Rachmaninov: Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini , Op. 43

Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini , Op. 43

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Like Richard Strauss, Sergei Rachmaninov lived a life which stretched from an imperial late 19^th century world to the momentous cultural and political upheaval of the first half of the 20^th century. It was a life which moved from the world of Tchaikovsky and Mother Russia to the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, Riverside Drive, and Beverly Hills.

In another parallel with Strauss, Rachmaninov’s works have always been well-loved by the wider musical public, despite the strictures of critics and academics. Unlike Strauss, who attempted to ignore political storms, Rachmaninov suffered the wrenching impact of a loss of his cultural roots in leaving Russia behind after the Bolshevik Revolution. Although, like Strauss, a celebrated conductor, and one of the great virtuoso pianists of the age, Rachmaninov’s 25 years of exile severely limited his output as a composer, with but a scant half-dozen large-scale compositions written after 1918. While these include several splendid works, including the Fourth Piano Concerto, Third Symphony, and Symphonic Dances, only the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934) would gain popularity comparable with the early concertos and orchestral works.

Written in his summer home in Switzerland, the Rhapsody, which could well be regarded as a virtual “Fifth Concerto,” represents Rachmaninov at the height of his powers, still faithful to his late19t^h century Russian roots, yet venturing into a more tautly-constructed musical idiom, occasionally revealing some links with a more “contemporary” musical language that had been heard previously.. The basis for the work is the well-known 24^th Caprice for solo violin of Nicolo Paganini (itself actually a set of variations), which had been inspired sets of variations by a host of noted composers, among them Schumann, Liszt, Brahms and in the 20^th century Boris Blacher and Witold Lutoslawski.

The rhapsody comprises twenty-four variations, some following the theme quite strictly, others with relative freedom. And, in another time-honoured Romantic tradition, Rachmaninov makes occasional references to the medieval Gregorian Chant sequence, DIES IRAE, following in the footsteps of Berlioz and Liszt. (He had already made use of that melody in his First Symphony and the tone poem, ISLE OF THE DEAD, and it would reappear in his last work, the Symphonic Dances.)

There is a brief introduction built upon a distinctive five-note figure which runs through the Paganini theme, four sixteenth-notes linked to an eighth-note), but where one would expect to hear Paganini’s melody, Rachmaninov, in an eccentric departure from tradition, writes a skeletal “First Variation” BEFORE the theme is introduced. The Paganini’s original melody is heard in the violins in the tonality of A Minor.

Variations 2-6 form an unbroken group, performed without change of tempo, all in the home key. The five-note figure is much in evidence, only in Variation 5 moving away from a literal repetition of the theme’s melodic contours. A more reflective mood is heard in Var. 6, with greater rhythmic freedom and decorative filigree in the solo piano. The music’s momentum is slowed somewhat in Var. 7, the five-note figure now heard in an augmented form in the bassoon, the piano playing simple block chords as harmonic background. Following the toccata-like Variations 8-10, Var. 11 serves as a reflective, rhapsodic interlude, richly decorated with decorative writing in the piano against a sustained orchestral background.

Shifting to D Minor, now in triple metre, Var. 12 is marked “tempo di menuetto.” Hints of the DIES IRASE theme are heard in the piano, with elegant rhythmic figuration heard against swooning melodic figures in the orchestra. Still in D minor, the mood in Var. 13 now becomes heavy and assertive, with the piano slamming out chords, while the strings play a stripped-down version of the theme, with embellishment in the winds.

In a renewal of energy Var. 14 is set in the related key of F Major, the orchestra stepping off with a fanfare-like variant of the theme, soon joined by the piano, hammering out heavy chordal patterns.

In Var. 15 the piano sails off by itself, with richly-textured passagework which at first suggests a cadenza, joined by the orchestra to come to a quiet conclusion. Shifting to the remote, dark key of B-flat minor, the orchestra now takes the lead, with the piano heard as ornamentation over stretches of the theme heard in solo oboe, later solo violin and horn. Remaining in B-flat minor, Var. 17 forms a bridge to its successor, the piano confined to murmuring arpeggio figuration heard against the barest suggestion of the theme in the winds, with hushed tremolo in the strings.

Until now most of the variations have been tightly woven, and fairly removed from the characteristic gestures of Rachmaninov’s earlier style. But in Var. 18, at last the listener is rewarded with the celebrated D-flat major variation, revealing Rachmaninov in his most lushly Romantic guise, as through reverting to the seductive warmth of his earlier compositions. And, in a delightful instance of musical craftsmanship, this glamorous new melody turns out to be the result not of inspiration, but calculation: Rachmaninov INVERTS the Paganini theme (literally tipping the melody upside-down), a time-honored musical gimmick, with Paganini’s rather “classical” tune now taking on the distinctive lusciousness of old Russian Romanticism. First heard in the piano alone, in a easy flowing ANDANTE, the orchestra enters in full flood, producing the sort of textures which have been imitated in Hollywood soundtracks for the last seventy years. (Anyone suspicious of such “heart-on-sleeve” sentiments would do well to listen to the composer’s own recorded performance, which is both warmly tender and utterly free of sentimentality.)

In a renewal of energy, Variations 19-22 return to the home key of A Minor, each succeeding variation quickening in tempo. The soloist moves from springy triplets to buzzing sixteenth-notes (bringing back the five-note figure), followed by even more furious triplet passagework. In the march-like Var. 22 the rhythm of the five-note figure presses forward, the piano hammering out crisp chords with increasing power. Sustained lines in the strings form a background to racing patterns in the piano, the five-note figure takes the lead, building to a massive climax. A short cadenza in thundering octaves leads to Var. 23, in which the theme returns very much in its original form, with another short cadenza forming a link with the 24^th, final variation. Here the Dies Irae theme comes very much to the fore, as the music pushes on to a conclusion which, at the very last moment, suddenly pulls back to end quietly, with a final snap of the five-note figure.

Strauss: Suite from Der Rosenkavalier

Suite from DER ROSENKAVALIER Richard Strauss

(1864-1949)

For many music lovers Richard Strauss represents the very essence of 19^th century Romanticism, with his sumptuous orchestral tone poems, lavish operatic works and expressive lieder. But while his most popular works appeared before the First World War, Strauss would live the greater part of his life in the 20^th century---the precocious teenager who began his career in the age of Wagner’s PARSIFAL and the Brahms symphonies, would live to be a contemporary of such figures as Pierre Boulez, Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter! But then the career of Richard Strauss is filled with paradox. By the time he reached the age of thirty he had become the most celebrated living composer, acclaimed by many as the hoped-for successor to Richard Wagner, while many musical conservatives considered him to be a dangerous “revolutionary.” It is interesting that Johannes Brahms himself dismissed such talk, singling out Gustav Mahler as the REAL “revolutionary,” although the true importance of Mahler’s works would only be recognized fifty years after his death, as he himself had prophesied.

For all his precocious brilliance, Richard Strauss was nearly thirty years of age when he composed his first stage work, GUNTRAM (1894) , a galumphing Wagnerian epic which sank like a stone, followed in 1901 by a rather sour comic opera, FEUERSNOT, which was only a modest success. Could it be that the composer of “Don Juan” and “Zarathustra” was ill-suited for the musical stage? But the sensational premiere of SALOME in 1905 turned everything around, transforming the career of Strauss overnight. With ELEKTRA (1909), an exploration of human depravity almost exceeding the grisly power of SALOME, Strauss was at the height of his powers, hailed as the most significant figure in German opera since Wagner, as well as joining such figures as Schoenberg, Scriabin and Debussy in leading the way in new world of early 20^th century “modernism.” Strauss seemed to have made a daring leap forward not only in the striking psychological elements in these new operas, but also with regard to his basic musical language, particularly with regard to tonality and harmony. From this point forward Strauss would make opera his primary focus, ELEKTRA being the first of a half-dozen works with texts by the great Austrian poet and librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, in a remarkable partnership which lasted until the poet’s death in 1929.

Strauss’ had won international notoriety as a composer of operatic horror---even New York audiences were so stunned by SALOME in 1907 that the Met waited until the 1930s to mount another production! Thus it was not surprising that news of yet another Strauss/Hoffmansthal collaboration caused sensitive souls to quake at the thought of even greater operatic shocks in store. But when DER ROSENKAVALIER was first heard in 1911 it “shocked” only by its unexpected sweetness and tuneful expressiveness. (True, there was some moralist murmuring about the opera’s first scene, which finds a married woman in bed with a strapping young eighteen year-old, but that seemed to be a problem only in London---Sir Thomas Beecham has described a “typically English compromise” with the censors, which allowed the scene to be played if NO bed appeared on the stage, leaving the text unchanged, with several references to a bed!) On the threshold of the European catastrophe of the First World War, ROSENKAVALIER was a wistful look back to the 18^th century Vienna of Mozart’s MARRIAGE OF FIGARO, complete with a poignant central female figure, and a pair of young people falling in love at first sight. Now it was the turn of musical “moralists” to take offense, attacking (as some still do to this day) Strauss’ “cowardly” turning back from the bold “modernism” of SALOME and ELEKTRA, taking “refuge” in cozy musical nostalgia. Opera lovers, on the other hand were only too happy to hear in the new work echoes of FIGARO. ROSENKAVALIER’s Marschallin seemed to be a counterpart to Mozart’s Countess, and the decision to cast the young Oktavian as a “trouser role” for mezzo-soprano was surely a glance back to Cherubino, with links with Susanna as well. And forming a nostalgic (if anachronistic) link with “Old Vienna” was Strauss’ daring decision to thread a series of luscious waltzes through the course of the work, which has helped to make ROSENKAVALIER Strauss’ most popular opera It was such an overnight success in 1911 that special trains were run to take opera-lovers to Dresden to attend the first performances.

First published in 1945, the orchestral suite from DER ROSENKAVALIER seems not to be the work of Strauss himself, but may have been prepared by the conductor Artur Rodzinski. It comprises four extended sections heard without pause, laying out key scenes spanning the entire opera, with each of the principal characters represented in turn. Chief among these is a beautiful married woman on the verge of middle age, the Marschallin (Field-Marshal’s wife), whose clandestine affair with Oktavian, a boy still in his teens, soon comes to an abrupt end over the course of the action. The Marschallin’s cousin, the boorish, impoverished Baron Ochs is the comic focus of the work, with his hopes for an arranged marriage with Sophie, an innocent young woman from a wealthy family, coming to grief when the girl falls in love at first sight with Oktavian.

The introduction to Act I of DER ROSENKAVALIER forms the opening of the suite, with a swaggering figure in the solo horn setting in motion a swirl of orchestral activity which is intended to depict a night of tempestuous love-making. When the music gives way to a mood of tenderness, the curtain rises to reveal the Marschallin and Oktavian awakening in the first light of morning. This

richly-textured tonal picture glides on to the second section, the “Presentation of the Rose” music which opens Act Two, one of the most best-loved scenes in all of opera. Here the innocent young Sophie is excitedly awaiting the arrival of the “Rose Cavalier” (who turns out to be Oktavian), who is to present her with a silver rose, the symbol of Baron Ochs’ proposal of marriage. The horncall from the first section recurs, and with ever-mounting waves of excitement the music shifts into the ripe key of F-sharp major. In a dramatic harmonic gesture Oktavian’s entrance is portrayed with music capturing the glitter of the silver rose itself, with a magical combination of high shifting harmonies for 3 flutes, 3 violins, celeste and two harps. The first tentative phrases sung by Oktavian and Sophie, here heard in instrumental guise, become a rapturous duet. Rounded out by a return of the sounds of the silver rose, the third section follows, with the boisterous and mischievous introduction to Act III, which quickly gives way to an offstage waltz-tune which in the opera forms the background to an uproarious scene in which Baron Ochs makes a bungling attempt to seduce one of the Marschallin’s “maidservants,” Mariandel---actually Oktavian, dressed in woman’s clothing! In the course of this episode is heard music famously sung by a weepy, tipsy “Mariandel” to the memorable words, “Nein, nein, ich trink’ kein Wein”…. After a second waltz the orchestra swells into a majestically expansive version of the first,which is perhaps the finest waltz not composed by Johann Strauss! (For those with a musical sweet tooth this is probably the closest musical approximation of those unforgettable Viennese pastries heaped high with “Schlagobers” [whipped cream], which ten years later would be Strauss’ title for a ballet set in Vienna!) This wonderful waltz is associated with the clownish Baron Ochs (a role written for a deep bass voice), and in a delightful instrumental touch, the Baron’s low E with which he which concludes an earlier scene, is here given to a solo tuba. The fourth and final section encapsulates the most memorable music in ROSENKAVALIER: the concluding trio sung by Oktavian, Sophie and the Marschallin, in which the older woman regretfully (if without tears) “lets go” of her young lover, giving her blessing to the union of Sophie and Oktavian. This is followed by an artless little duet sung by the young lovers when they are at last alone together. Unlike the hushed final moment of the opera, which tiptoes away in a moment of witty pantomime, the suite concludes with a noisy waltz from earlier in Act III, which had been heard over the din of Ochs being chased from the scene by creditors and small children screaming “Papa! Papa!”

A Personal Recollection of Benjamin Britten

A Personal Recollection of Benjamin Britten.

The writer of these notes made an excited discovery of 20^th century English music when a teenager, and promptly wrote letters to Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten seeking advice and offering observations about their work. Back came warm and down-to-earth replies from both men, full of practical suggestions and kindly comments.

In the summer of 1957 Benjamin Britten spent a week at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival (in Ontario, not far from my home in Michigan), preparing for the first North American performances of his new opera, THE TURN OF THE SCREW. I had already obtained the recording of the opera (the first complete recording of a Britten stage work), and eagerly hopped on a bus to make the journey to Stratford. Britten, who knew I was coming, could not have been more friendly and welcoming. I, an eager-beaver teenager, was permitted to attend all the rehearsals, providing a glorious opportunity to see a great composer at work---and a wonderful conductor, as well, as I discovered. I was encouraged to get to know the cast members, every one of whom inscribed my precious LP recording album, and even was invited to sit in on a private rehearsal for a song recital given by Britten and Peter Pears. A page turner was needed from time to time, and I made myself useful, learning at close range what Gerald Moore meant when he pronounced Britten as the “finest accompanist in the world.” He struck me from the beginning as a figure of Mozartian versatility, spontaneity and sheer genius.

The next summer, cycling through England for the first time, I attended several concerts at Britten’s own Aldeburgh Festival, which took place each June in the village where George Crabbe had lived---an eerily beautiful place whch looked to be a living stage setting for PETER GRIMES. That was to be an introduction to an intensely “local,” “neighborly” artistic world which Britten made very much his own. He once said that in order to be universal an artist must first be able to focus upon his own friends and community. Britten’s life and career seemed to represent something quite simple, yet profound about the meaning of being a musician and citizen. Seven years later, having made the acquaintance of Imogen Holst (the delightful if slightly dotty daughter of the composer of “The Planets”), who was Britten’s tireless assistant at the Aldeburgh Festival, I found myself invited to be an assistant (and general Dog’s-Body) during the two weeks of the June Aldeburgh Festival. It was an amazing whirl of activity. Britten’s first “church parable,” CURLEW RIVER, was to be premiered; Britten conducted a performance of Haydn’s “Creation” which nearly caused the listeners to get up and dance in the isles. He brought Rostropovich over from Russia to play the Bach Cello Suites, one each evening at 11 p. m. in the parish church….he played SECONDO to Sviatoslav Richter’s PRIMO in a Schubert recital…he joined Peter Pears to perform WINTERREISE…Someone had the brilliant thought to persuade Richter and Rostropovich to appear TOGETHER in another 11 p. m. recital in the parish church---Britten turned pages.

Later, as a violinist in one of the London orchestras, I had the dizzying good fortune to participate in a performance of the “War Requiem,” conducted by Britten, as well as some orchestral concerts at Aldeburgh and London. There was a heart-stopping performance of Bach’s “St. John Passion,” as well.

I willingly skipped a four-star Verdi Requiem performance in London to go to Aldeburgh in mid-winter to help correct proof-sheets for a new Britten work about to be published. As I sat studying the manuscript I could see on the glass-top of the desk the reflection of seagulls circling over the sea before me---and in my mind I heard the “Dawn” Sea interlude from PETER GRIMES. We early-risers had seen Britten playing tennis at 6 a. m. during the Aldeburgh Festival---we were certain that he would still be doing that at the age of 85. A heart condition required a heart-valve operation, today as commonplace a procedure as an appendectomy. It was unsuccessful, leaving Britten partially paralysed. He slipped away at the cruelly early age of 63. No one who knew him can go through a single day without missing him.

Part: Symphony No. 2

Symphony No. 2 (1966)

Arvo Part (1935- )

In the last twenty years Arvo Part has become a widely recognised name in contemporary music, with a succession of works, many of them written for voices with Latin texts, which have won him a dedicated following. This was particular the case with music lovers who thirsted for new music without what was often felt to be a prevailing severe intellectualism and constricted emotional expression in much of the music composed since the 1950s. In America this desire for a simpler, more direct musical communication drew an entirely new audience to follow the work of such figures as Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, composers commonly labeled “minimalists,” whose work was marked by a sometimes deceptive simplicity, with great emphasis upon repetitive rhythmic patterns, the use of triadic sonorities quite divorced from traditional notions of “tonality,” and meditative, even spiritual connotations in creating moods, trance-like states of mind, with chanting, drumming and other evocations of non-western musical cultures.

Not long ago the work of Arvo Part would hardly figure in a discussion of 20^th century music---even as late as 1980 the article on Part in the New Grove Dictionary of Music consisted of a mere 25 lines. It was in 1982 that Arvo Part’s PASSIO brought wide attention to a newly evolving stage in his creative development, one which has become well known in a series of works with titles such as Litany, Miserere, Stabat Mater, Te Deum. While it is always enlightening to consider the earlier stages of a composer’s work, one might question the need to look back upon a composition dating from an early stage in his development (1966), moreover, one employing musical devices which have not remained part of his more mature style. And it is true that anyone familiar with the intensely quiet, “timeless” qualities of Part’s more recent work will be rather amazed by the Second Symphony of 1966. And yet the uniquely meditative and spiritual compositions written by Arvo Part in the last two decades might not have come into being without the composer having passed through the testing stages of his earlier, often deeply disturbing works such as the Second Symphony.

Arvo Part was born in Paide, a small town fifty miles from Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Long a part of thre Russian Empire, Estonia became an independent Republic in 1920, only to be absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940, finally regaining its independence in 1994. As a child he trained as a pianist, also playing the oboe and playing percussion in a dance band. In his late teens he turned to composition, studying composition in Tallinn under Heino Eller, the leading composer of the day. By then the arts in Estonia were firmly in the grip of Soviet “socialist realism” orthodoxy, harshly rejecting western influences, particularly those of serialism and the post-Webernian work of composers such as Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen. But it was also a period during which young Polish composers (most memorably Krzysztof Penderecki) were asserting their artistic independence by their own quite individual `response to some of those very western influences found to be so pernicious by the authorities in Moscow. Although a Prokofiev-like neo-classicism can be found in some of Part’s very first compositions, as early as 1960 he began to toy with the serial technique in his first major work, the cantata NEKROLOG, which immediately was attacked in official circles for its “espousal of western formalism.” While western serial composers were officially “tolerated” after 1958, an unofficial ban remained in effect, and many younger, more adventurous composers were severely criticised for their “experimental tendencies.” As late as 1968 Part’s CREDO for piano, chorus and orchestra was savagely attacked, bringing about a crisis both artistic and spiritual on the composer’s part, plunging him into a long period of silence. In the 1970s Part’s life went through some profound changes, including a conversion to the Russian Orthodox faith, and in 1980 a decision to move to Vienna, and eventually to Berlin.

Part’s growth as a composer moved directly into an intense preoccupation with serial techniques in his earlier works of the 1960s, in many respects spurred on by the vivid example of his Polish contemporaries. An element of musical “collage” and musical quotation also enters his work, as well as a fascination with traditional contrapuntal techniques often employed in serial composition, such as canonic writing. Soon Part began to explore European music of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, including such composers as Perotin, Ockeghem and Josquin des Pres. And a highly individual response to a concept of bell-sounds referred to as “tintinnabuli music” is at the core of most of the later works, which set religious texts and focus upon spiritual concepts.

Thus it is fascinating to discover the basic elements which underlie the Second Symphony, a work of unusual expressive mystery and emotional power. Written for a full symphony orchestra, with a duration of about 15 minutes, the work carries no tempo markings, instead giving bald metronome markings for its three movements: quarter-note = 104-120 (fairly quick), half-note = 112 (quite lively), quarter-note = 48-60 (quite slowly). A somewhat bizarre novelty in terms of sound resources is the use of children’s toys to produce background noise---Mark Laycock recalls a performance in Boston in which three percussionists employed rubber duckies! There is a degree of “aleatoric” writing (in which precise rhythmic notation is abandoned to chance), as well as an underlying tonal structure which is serial in basic design, although of little direct concern to the listener.

Although often described as “non-narrative” in character, the opening movement of the symphony follows a clearly defined structure. It opens with an aleatoric (random) chattering of pizzicato notes in the strings, employing the twelve chromatic tones squeezed into the space of an octave, joined by background noise of children’s toys. The first of a series of sustained, lyrical lines (gradually taking on a nearly traditional “melodic” character) is heard in the solo horn, followed by random chattering now given to the flutes. The random element returns in pizzicato strings, now joined by the eerie rustle of cellophane being crushed, soon leading to another lyrical line, now in the clarinet, arching upward quite expressively, followed (as before) by the random chattering, now in the lower winds, creating a more agitated mood. Now bowed (and louder) the random strings figure returns, with background noise made by applying wood blocks to the piano strings. The next sustained line is heard in the bassoon, becoming more intense, now followed by random chattering in the brass. The next entry of the sustained line is given to the brass, circling from low to high registers, joined by ominous rolls on the tam-tam. Suddenly, with a dramatic glissando in the harp, we are swept into the higher reachs of winds and strings for a series of triads heaped one upon the other---“Pelion piled upon Ossa,” with distinct key centers of B, D, E, F, E-flat, etc. pressed into a sort of multi-tonal fortissimo wail, soon melting away into highly colored, dissonant clusters in the brass, joined by shrieking trills high in the winds. This rises in intensity, then settles back into a soft D Major chord, which then swells into a fullest fortissimo to end suddenly.

While Wilfred Mellers describes the second movement as “scherzoid,” Charles Ives would probably add that “this scherzo is not a joke!” Chugging into life with bouncy, rather carefree pairs of repeated notes (to be played with aleatoric rhythmic freedom), this three-minute interlude rapidly takes on a truly nightmarish character---what seemed “carefree” at first becomes mindless and brutal. The jabbering repeated notes, passed among brass and winds is punctuated by isolated sustained tones in the strings, each time swelling from soft to loud, moving from high to low registers. At midpoint the music flies into splinters, and faintly echoing Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima,” with shards of sound sailing in all directions, a jagged pointillism is underway, with long sustained tones in the lower brass against a background of smacks and thuds in percussion and piano (using the flat of the hands directly on the strings). The sustained pitches rise, becoming yet more threatening, moving into the higher brass, joined by the winds to form a screaming, sinister wall of sound, to conclude by suddenly breaking off.

Moving immediately into the final movement we are confronted by a massive fortissimo string chord built up of superimposed fourths, stretching from highest to lowest pitches against which a thundering timpani drumbeat is heard: a rhythmically precise E-flat octave which is hammered out with mechanical deadliness, first a phrase of twelve notes, then eleven, ten, nine – and so on down to a single note. Each phrase is punctuated by a rapid scurrying figure in the strings, at first in an imperceptible DIMINUENDO, then rising again in volume, while the string pattern becomes progressively more hectic. This suddenly gives way to a section with the dry rattle of COL LEGNO strings (rapping the strings with the wood of the bow) against a tapestry of murmuring winds and brass. Brass figures begin to stand out, the winds begin to create a frenzied jabber, the entire orchestra rising in a huge CRESCENDO, out of which steals a tonal melodic fragment in the clarinet. In a startling, almost cinematic shift of orchestral mood and color, we suddenly find ourselves transported into a cloudless C Major, with a naïve little tune heard with traditional harmony and orchestration of blushing modesty. The melody is a passage from Tchaikovsky’s “Sweet Day-Dream” from an 1878 collection of children’s piano pieces. Three last dissonant crashes are turned aside by the cool sounds of open-string fifths, the children’s music continues, and drifts into silence.

What can this possible MEAN, many of us would ask. But then, we raise the same question with many of the works of Beethoven, of Mahler, of Debussy – and we are forced to supply our own private, unverifiable responses. Can this be another of those “Unanswered Questions?” Can it be related to the composer’s own personal struggle for creative integrity working under Soviet repression? A vision of the artist seeking some sort of personal salvation in a nihilistic world? Arvo Part himself might not be able to answer our questions – he might choose not to, or perhaps might not know the answer himself.

In his fine little 1997 book on the composer, Arvo Part’s most devoted interpreter, Paul Hillier, has this to say about the Second Symphony: “[There is] the feeling of savage, bitter scorn unleashed, barely relieved even by the dulcet conclusion. At the outset we are knocked off balance by the unexpected sound of children’s squeaky toys, the alienating effect of which lingers in the memory and permeates the whole piece; indeed, the beginning and end of this work may be said to inhabit childhood, the purity of which is invoked as something that might eventually overcome all the evil in the world.”

Britten: Four Sea Interludes from PETER GRIMES, Op. 33

Four Sea Interludes from PETER GRIMES, Op. 33

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

The England of Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe was also the England of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd: a rich musical heritage stretching back to the beginnings of the Renaissance, and one which would survive the disruption of the Cromwellian period to extend into the age of Henry Purcell. Then something quite odd happened: English music slipped into a position of subservience to Continental influences, and by the 19^th century the Germans, whose own musical culture hardly existed during the age of the Tudor composers, were wont to speak of England as “das Land ohne Musik” [“the land without Music”] !

No one is quite certain why the early death of Henry Purcell in 1695 marked the beginning of a period of eclipse of English music. But there is no doubt who led the way in restoring English music to its proper place in the world, as was acknowledged by Richard Strauss himself, who a hundred years ago lifted his glass to toast “the success of the first English progressivist, Meister Edward Elgar, and of the young progressivist school of English composers.” More than anyone Elgar indeed led the way, especially with his “Enigma” Variations of 1899. It is not surprising that Strauss would admire Elgar, whose music, despite its underlying English character, is stylistically closely related to late 19^th century German music. This points to an awkward situation faced by English composers in Elgar’s time: to form a strong bond with the mainstream of contemporary continental music, or to renew the roots of musical “Englishry” which go back to the Elizabethan age, and to traditional folk music as well. Elgar chose the former route, while younger English composers (especially Vaughan Williams and Holst) chose the latter, in a manner somewhat parallel to that followed by eastern European composers such as Bela Bartok in forging a distinctly “national music.” (Ralph Vaughan Williams was himself a warm admirer of Bartok, and even wrote a book outlining his point of view, significantly entitled “National Music.” ) The next generation of English composers followed these divergent paths of English music in a varying ways, and even at the end of the 20^th century there still can be detected a split between the “cosmopolitan” and more “nationalist” composers. William Walton, for example, was very much a “cosmopolitan,” more influenced by his long residence in Italy than anything redolent of the English landscape. Benjamin Britten occupies a unique position as a composer of strong continental sympathies balanced by an equal bond with the distinctly English traditions of the past. Britten grew up with a profound love of the work of Henry Purcell, as well as an openness to contemporary music far beyond most young English musicians of his day. He helped to arrange for a performance of Schoenberg’s PIERROT LUNAIRE while a student at the decidedly conservative Royal College of Music, and unsuccessfully sought to use a travelling grant to study with Alban Berg, who would be a powerful influence upon the young composer.

Britten almost became an American composer, when he moved to the United States in 1939 in company with his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, and the poet W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. The two writers remained in America, becoming citizens, and significantly were very much “European” artists as much as Anglo-American ones. At first intending to become a citizen, Britten initially found American life fascinating and stimulating, as can be heard in his sparkling opera PAUL BUNYAN, with a libretto by Auden, first performed at Columbia University in 1940. This was during a lively period at the end of the Great Depression, when Gershwin’s PORGY AND BESS, Virgil Thomson’s FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS, and the work of Marc Blitzstein and newly-arrived Kurt Weill were raising expectations for a great things in the field of American contemporary music theatre. While PAUL BUNYAN delighted its audiences, the critics (as Britten put it) “spat at it,” and the composer turned to writing orchestral and chamber music. Britten gradually realised that his roots remained in England, and received a powerful jolt when he read an appreciation by E. M. Forster of the work of George Crabbe, an early 19^th century English poet who lived in Britten’s own native East Anglia. Serge Koussevitsky, deeply impressed by Britten’s work, had commissioned him to compose an opera to be presented at the Boston Symphony’s summer school at Tanglewood, Massachusetts. Britten searched out the work of Crabbe, and in the poem “The Borough” found his subject: Peter Grimes. This also sealed his decision to return to England. He was only 28 years of age. In the March of 1942 Britten and Pears made a perilous crossing through submarine-infested Atlantic waters go home. Work on the opera began at once, and was completed in time for a sensational premiere on 7 June, 1945 at Sadlers Wells Theatre. The war in Europe had ended less than a month before; England was battered and exhausted, everyone was hungry for the renewal of life and spirit. For many the appearance of Peter Grimes symbolised that renewal. Interestingly, 1945 was the 250^th anniversary of the death of England’s last great composer before the period of eclipse, Henry Purcell---whose DIDO AND AENEAS had remained the one great English opera. Now there was another. (The promised Tanglewood performance took place in 1946, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.)

The impact of the first performance of PETER GRIMES was vividly described by the American literary critic, Edmund Wilson, who was present: “An unmistakable new talent of this kind is an astonishing, even an electrifying experience…. You do not feel you are watching an experiment; you are living a work of art. The opera seizes upon you, possesses you, keeps you riveted to your seat during the action and keyed up during the intermissions, and drops you, purged and exhausted, at the end.”

The opera is set in a fishing village on the North Sea coast of eastern England---a village very much like Aldeburgh, the birthplace of George Crabbe, and eventually the lifelong home of Britten himself.

Grimes is a fisherman, a grim and solitary figure, disliked, feared and eventually destroyed by his community. The opera opens with scene of an inquest in which an inconclusive verdict is handed down regarding the mysterious death of Grimes’ apprentice, due to a lack of evidence. Nevertheless, most of the inhabitants of the village are convinced that the fisherman is a murderer. Shown kindness and understanding by only a handful of his neighbors, Grimes takes on another apprentice, hoping to become a successful fisherman, determined to win respect in the community. However, Grimes is abusive to the new boy, and when he is accidentally killed, the fury of the town is aroused. With a lynch mob intent upon revenge, Grimes, who has lost his reason, is persuaded to put an end to his hopeless situation by sailing out to open waters, to end his life by sinking his boat. At the end, life in the village goes on as before.

Following the example of Alban Berg’s WOZZECK (itself influenced by Debussy’s PELLEAS ET MELISANDE), there are extended orchestral interludes linking a number of the scenes in PETER GRIMES, of which the “Four Sea Interludes,” are the most widely-known orchestral music by Britten (along with his popular “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”). These are a vivid example of Britten’s rich musical imagination, being brilliantly-colored “tone poems” which create an unforgettable musical atmosphere. One can all but smell the sea air, and look up to behold the clouds scudding past.

1. Dawn. The opera opens with a prologue in which the inquest into the death of Grimes’ first apprentice takes place. Following this the orchestra paints a tonal picture of the North Sea, the rhythm of the waves, the wheeling of the gulls, the vast, often menacing skies.

2. Sunday Morning. This interlude serves as an introduction to Act II, which opens with Ellen Orford, a schoolteacher sympathetic to Grimes, sitting near the waterfront with the new apprentice, while from the distance are heard the sound of church bells and hymn-singing.

3. Moonlight. This introduction to Act III, outwardly poetic and peaceful, has also been described as revealing a “steely, menacing tranquillity.” Moving haltingly forward, the music is punctuated withripples of color in the flutes and harps. With these simple means we can imagine the welling of the seawater…the reflection of the moonlight..

4. Storm. At the end of the first scene of Act I Peter Grimes has made an unexpected (and unwelcome) appearance in a pub crowded with townspeople taking shelter from the storm outside. As if lost in his own world he sings the visionary words, “What harbour shelters peace, away from tidal waves, away from storms…a harbour evermore where night is turned to day…” Following the momentary stillness of that vision the curtain falls and the the astonishing Storm Interlude is heard, forming an introduction to the second scene. Growing up on the coast of the North Sea Britten had experienced such storms, and drew upon those terrifying memories in creating this powerfully atmospheric music.

Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22 (1868)

Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22 (1868)

Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

Camille Saint-Saens was one of the great virtuoso pianists of his day, as can be verified by listening to the astonishing recordings which he made even in his advanced old age. He was an amazing child prodigy, both as composer and pianist----in his debut recital at the age of ten he offered to perform any of the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven as an encore! However, his pianistic activities were largely confined to his own works, among them five brilliant piano concertos, of which the Second Concerto in G minor is perhaps the most popular. Doggedly tradition-minded in outlook, Saint-Saens nevertheless was a warm friend of such path-breaking figures as Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and even won the admiration of Richard Wagner when he sat down to perform on the piano Tristan Und Isolde from the full score! He was the teacher of Gabriel Faure, and living well into the 20^th century, even knew the admiration of the young Maurice Ravel, and met the young Aaron Copland at the beginning of his studies in Paris in the early 1920s. (Saint-Saens also is remembered for his horrified reaction upon attending the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring in 1913!)

Although deservedly regarded as a musical conservative, Saint-Saens showed a lively interest in structural innovation in many of his concertos and symphonies, as in the case of the opening movement of the Second Piano Concerto. Instead of a brilliant introductory flourish, the piano quietly unfolds an improvisatory prelude heard without the orchestra, with piano writing quite clearly influenced by the characteristic figuration of Johann Sebastian Bach’s keyboard works. Only after a quite discursive initial section for piano solo is the orchestra make a striking entry with a powerful Fortissimo declamation. This leads to the principal melody set out in the piano, again lyrical rather than dramatic, which is juxtaposed with a section in B flat Major, giving an initial impression that it will serve as a second subject. But while an extended developmental section follows, there is no clear-cut recapitulation. The meditative opening improvisatory music returns, with the orchestral declamation heard again at the end. While the orchestra has its role to play, much of this ten-minute movement is confined to the piano alone. In the remaining two movements of the concerto, which are by turns brilliant, dramatic and quite popular in their “Parisian” tone, the role of the orchestra is greatly expanded from the reticent position it occupies in this poetic and reflective opening movement.

NCO Concert