J-Sym April 2014

Friday and Saturday, April 25 - 26, 2014 at 8 pm

The Firebird

Shizuo Z. Kuwahara, conductor

Stewart Goodyear, piano

SHOSTAKOVICH..............Tahiti Trot, Op. 16

PROKOFIEV.....................Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26

................................................Andante – Allegro

................................................Tema con variazioni

................................................Allegro, ma non troppo

KHACHATURIAN...............Masquerade Suite

................................................Waltz

................................................Nocturne

................................................Mazurka

................................................Romance

................................................Galop

STRAVINSKY...................The Firebird Suite (1919)

................................................Introduction—The Firebird and Its Dance—The Firebird's Variation

................................................The Princesses’ Khorovod (Round Dance)

................................................Infernal Dance of King Kashchei

................................................Berceuse (Lullaby)

................................................Finale

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906, St. Petersburg, Russia - 1975, Moscow)

Tahiti Trot, Op. 16 (Arranged from Vincent Youman's Tea for Two)

Dmitri Shostakovich is one of few Soviet composers who won a large following on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and together with Sergei Prokofiev and Aram Khachaturian he is identified as a “titan” of Soviet music. Shostakovich was 19 in 1925, the year he completed his First Symphony as a graduation piece from the Petrograd Conservatory; the following year Nikolai Malko conducted the premiere. While visiting Malko in 1927, Shostakovich heard Vincent Youman’s Tea for Two, known in Russia as “Tahiti Trot.” The conductor challenged the young composer to orchestrate the ditty from memory, wagering he couldn’t finish in an hour. Forty minutes later Shostakovich was 100 rubles richer. Malko premiered the arrangement in 1928, and Shostakovich incorporated the hit into his 1930 ballet, The Golden Age. While remaining faithful to Youman's song, the witty score displays Shostakovich's ironic sense of humor as it soft-shoe shuffles among muted trumpet fanfares, percussion and celesta tinkling like music boxes, slapstick swoons from trombones, jaunty woodwinds and schmalzy strings.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891, Sontzovka, Ukraine - 1953, Moscow)

Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26

Biographer Simon Morrison reckons the concert music of Sergei Prokofiev is played more often in America than that of any of his contemporaries. To put some of Prokofiev’s achievements in perspective, he wrote the "Classical" Symphony No. 1 in 1917, three years before Stravinsky took up neoclassicism, and completed his brilliant Piano Concerto No. 3 in 1921, three years before Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and five years before Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 1.

Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto is the most-performed of the five he wrote, and among all 20th-Century concerted works for piano and orchestra, only those by Rachmaninoff, Gershwin and Ravel rival its popularity. A solo clarinet begins the expansive melody that serves as an introduction to the driving, toccata-like principal theme of the sonata-form first movement; the contrasting secondary theme is a quirky gavotte punctuated with castanets, and the lyrical melody from the introduction returns for development. The second movement presents a balletic theme with five variations. Prokofiev’s finale is a rondo (ABACA-coda), but the gorgeous "C" segment becomes an interpolated slow movement that might have made Rachmaninoff proud, with an eerie midsection akin to the “night music” Bartók was beginning to explore.

Prokofiev identified four compositional precepts that guided him: (1) a commitment to Classical structures and developmental techniques, (2) a quest for new sonorities and melodic shapes, (3) rhythmic drive, and (4) lyrical expressiveness; he might have added: (5) a sense of humor. No work exemplifies these better than his Piano Concerto No. 3.

Aram Khachaturian (1903, Tbilisi, Georgia - 1978, Moscow)

Masquerade Suite

Aram Khachaturian grew up immersed in the folk music of his Armenian forebears, and it profoundly influenced his own music in much the same way American jazz suffuses the works of George Gershwin. Though Khachaturian never lived in Armenia, his cultural identity was so strong he was honored posthumously with his image on Armenian currency.

With a penchant for descriptive music, Khachaturian composed music for the the popular ballets Gayane and Spartacus, and provided scores for over three dozen plays and films. He wrote the incidental music to Masquerade for a 1941 centenary production of the play by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841). Though little-known in the West, Lermontov ranks among the giants of Russian literature as the poet-heir to Pushkin. He wrote Masquerade when he was 21, including two rewrites hoping to appease the censor's pen for his unflattering depiction of the aristocracy. The middle version eventually gained approval, but not before Lermontov had been killed in a duel.

Masquerade unfolds like a Russian Othello, wherein the wealthy Eugene Arbenin poisons his beloved wife, Nina, convinced she has humiliated him by being unfaithful. The intrigue begins during a masked ball when Prince Zvezdich flirts with a disguised woman who gives him a bracelet as a token of affection. The prince brags about his encounter to Arbenin, who recognizes the bracelet as Nina’s. When Arbenin asks Nina about the bracelet she confesses she lost it, never imagining the doubt beginning to consume her husband. The mystery woman, a baroness friend of Nina, learns of Arbenin's suspicions, but won't come forward for fear of damaging her own reputation. By the time the baroness ends her masquerade and sends a letter revealing Nina's innocence it is too late: Nina is dead and Arbenin goes mad, overcome with grief and remorse.

Khachaturian's score reflects the glittering "upper crust" of society that masks the darkening drama. He culled five movements from the full score for the 1944 concert suite. Included are three lively ballroom dances: the Waltz with its ominous undercurrent, the Mazurka, and the rollicking Gallop. For contrast, Khachaturian mixed in the Nocturne, a melancholy song for solo violin, and the lyrical Romance. The composer said the Waltz presented a special challenge because it had to justify Nina’s exclamation, "How beautiful the new waltz is! ... Something between sorrow and joy gripped my heart." Audiences agreed with Lermontov's tragic heroine. The Waltz became one of Khachaturian's most popular pieces, and was performed at his funeral.

Igor Stravinsky (1882, Lomonosov, Russia - 1971, New York City)

The Firebird Suite

When Igor Stravinsky wakened on June 25, 1910, he was virtually unknown, but by the following morning he had become one of the most celebrated composers in Europe. His overnight success came with the premiere of The Firebird, the first original score commissioned by Serge Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes.

The dance company had dazzled Paris the previous year, but none of its first-season productions featured newly-composed music. For the second season, choreographer Michel Fokine and production designer Alexandre Benois devised an original scenario combining two characters from Slavic folklore. One is Zhar-ptitsa, the shimmering Firebird whose magic can bring either good fortune or bad. The other is the ogre-demon Kashchei the Deathless, whose back-story hobbies include kidnapping princesses and turning would-be-rescuer knights into stone.

Since no fairytale is complete without a prince in tights, the story begins with the Introduction of Ivan Tsarevich lurking through the shadows. We can tell he is a good guy because he gave his entourage the night off, but the spooky music suggests that that might not have been a good idea. He spies The Firebird and Its Dance (with The Firebird's Variation). The Firebird flutters about erratically, but nonetheless is very beautiful, and shiny. Being a prince, Ivan knows that shiny is good, so he sneaks up and captures her. But being a hero, he lets her go when she begs for mercy. Before disappearing the Firebird gives Ivan a magic feather that can summon her if needed. Into the orchard tiptoe thirteen princesses bandying golden apples. Though obviously not condemned to hard labor, they are prisoners of Kashchei. Ivan joins them in The Princesses’ Khorovod, a circle-dance on the Russian folk song, In the Garden (introduced by solo oboe). The romantic reverie is interrupted by Kashchei and his minions, who capture Ivan. Before Kashchei can add Ivan to his collection of stone guests, the prince whips out the magic feather and the Firebird reappears. She casts a spell over the inhospitable horde, compelling them to dance the Infernal Dance of King Kashchei to exhaustion; she then lulls them to sleep with a Berceuse. While Kashchei snoozes, the Firebird reveals a giant egg that contains the demon's soul. Ivan smashes the egg, and Kashchei and his rotten corps vanish. As a fitting Finale, the gloomy realm becomes a sunny tableau, perfect for a wedding between Ivan and his dance partner from the previous evening. The formerly stone-faced knights join the princess bridesmaids, accompanied by triumphant reiterations of another Russian folk song, By the Gateway There Swayed the Tall Pine Tree.

The happy ending provided a very happy beginning for a young composer whose name is nearly synonymous with 20th-Century music. The Firebird’s success led to future collaborations with the Ballets Russes, including Petrushka, the (almost literally) ground-breaking The Rite of Spring, and Pulcinella, which introduced Stravinsky's neoclassical style in 1920. But the course of music history nearly took another path. The unknown Stravinsky was not Diaghilev's first choice for The Firebird -- he settled on Stravinsky only because his usual go-to guys proved unable to complete the commission.

Stravinsky incorporated many of the period's musical trends into The Firebird, with nods to Debussy, Ravel and Scriabin, and especially to Stravinsky’s teacher, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Since Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila in 1842, Russian composers used exotic chromaticism to depict supernatural characters, contrasting with folksy diatonic tunes for mere mortals. For the former, Rimsky-Korsakov favored an octatonic scale alternating wholetones with semitones. Stravinsky uses the same octatonic scale, and the two folk songs he adapts were taken from a collection Rimsky-Korsakov had arranged. (Later in life Stravinsky reportedly would observe, "A good composer does not imitate; he steals.")

The Firebird is Stravinsky's most popular work, from which he arranged three concert suites, in 1911, 1919, and 1945; the 1919 version is the most-frequently performed. The composer complained he was invited too often to conduct music from his first ballet at the expense of his later works, but it must have held an enduring place in his heart. In his last orchestral piece, the brief Canon on a Russian Popular Tune, Stravinsky returned to the folk song used at the end of The Firebird.

©2014 Edward Lein

Edward Lein produces Jacksonville Public Library's Music @ Main concerts, and was a finalist in the Jacksonville Symphony's 2006 Fresh Ink - Florida Composers' Competition

================OLDER (LONGER) VERSION========================

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906, St. Petersburg, Russia - 1975, Moscow)

Tahiti Trot, Op. 16 (Arranged from Vincent Youman's Tea for Two)

Along with Prokofiev and Khachaturian, Dmitri Shostakovich is one of few Soviet-era Russian composers to sustain a large following in the West, but his relationship with Stalin's regime was not always easy. The Soviets were quick to use his worldwide popularity as propaganda, so Shostakovich never stayed out of favor for long, but he nonetheless suffered official denouncements in 1936 and 1948. The charges stemmed from perceived Western-style "formalism," accusing Shostakovich of letting the structural aspect of his music take precedence over more direct communication with comrade listeners. Ironically, Shostakovich had detractors among the West’s avant-garde for the exact opposite reason. Ignoring ideological tyranny from both sides, performers and listeners have always embraced Shostakovich’s music, and he joins Stravinsky and Prokofiev as the most-esteemed Russian-born composers of the Modern era.

In 1926, Nikolai Malko conducted the first performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1, Op. 10, completed the year before as a graduation piece from the Petrograd Conservatory. During a visit with Malko a year later, Shostakovich heard Vincent Youman's popular Tea for Two, known in Russia as "Tahiti Trot." The conductor challenged the young composer to orchestrate the ditty from memory, wagering that it could not be completed in an hour. Forty minutes later Shostakovich was 100 rubles richer. Malko premiered the arrangement in Moscow in 1928, and Shostakovich incorporated the hit into his 1930 ballet, The Golden Age. While remaining faithful to Youman's song, the witty score displays Shostakovich's ironic sense of humor as it soft-shoe shuffles among muted trumpet fanfares, percussion and celesta tinkling like music boxes, slapstick swoons from trombones, and the schmalzy swelling of strings.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891, Sontzovka, Ukraine - 1953, Moscow)

Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26

Sergei Prokofiev ranks among the greatest composers of the 20th century, and biographer Simon Morrison reckons that Prokofiev's concert music is played more often in America than that of any of his contemporaries. To put some of his achievements in perspective, Prokofiev wrote his "Classical" Symphony No. 1, Op. 25, in 1917, three years before Stravinsky took up neoclassicism, and the brilliant Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major, Op. 26 (1921), appeared three years before Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and five before Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 1 (1926).

Abandoning the political uncertainty of his homeland after the Russian Revolution, Prokofiev set out for the United States in 1918. He was well-known in Europe as both pianist and composer, and he met with similar successes in America. But a delay in the production of The Love of Three Oranges (1920), newly-commissioned by the Chicago Opera, brought financial hardship. Moving to France in 1920, Prokofiev completed a commission for Serge Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, and Chout (The Buffoon) premiered to great acclaim in May 1921. By summer's end Prokofiev had finished his Piano Concerto No. 3, having sketched all but two of the work's main themes through the previous decade. When he returned to the States for the October opera premiere, he carried the new concerto with him, and both works were well-received in Chicago. Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 3 remains the most popular of the five he wrote, and among all 20th-Century concerted works for piano and orchestra (not counting Rachmaninoff's) only those by Gershwin and Ravel rival its popularity.

A solo clarinet begins an expressive melody that introduces the driving, toccata-like principal theme of the sonata-form first movement; the contrasting secondary theme is a quirky gavotte punctuated with castanets, and the lyrical melody from the introduction returns for development. The second movement presents a balletic theme with five variations. For his finale, Prokofiev adopts a rondo structure, ABACA-coda, but the gorgeous "C" part becomes an interpolated slow movement that might have made Rachmaninoff proud, with an eerie midsection perhaps akin to the “night music” Bartók was beginning to explore.

Prokofiev identified four factors that he hoped define his music: (1) a commitment to Classical structures and developmental techniques, (2) a quest for new sonorities and melodic shapes, (3) rhythmic drive, and (4) lyrical expressiveness; he might have added: (5) a sense of humor. His Piano Concerto No. 3 provides the perfect example of how well he achieved his goals.

Aram Khachaturian (1903, Tbilisi, Georgia - 1978, Moscow)

Masquerade Suite

Aram Khachaturian was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, and he spent his adult life in Moscow. But as a child his Armenian parents immersed him in the folk music of their homeland, and it profoundly influenced Khachaturian's compositions in much the same way that American jazz suffuses the music of George Gershwin. Though Khachaturian never lived in Armenia, his cultural identity was so strong that he was honored posthumously with his image on Armenian currency.

Khachaturian is grouped with Shostakovich and Prokofiev as the three "titans" of Soviet music, but as a child Aram did not display any prodigious musical gifts. It was after he entered the Gnesin Music Academy in Moscow in 1922 that his buried talent was unearthed, and in 1929 he was accepted into the Moscow Conservatory. Khachaturian garnered international acclaim even before completing postgraduate studies in 1937, especially for his Piano Concerto (1936) which continues to command a place in the world’s concert halls, as do his Violin Concerto (1940) and music from the ballets Gayane (1941) and Spartacus (1954).

Khachaturian had a particular gift for writing descriptive music, which he applied in composing scores for over three dozen plays and films. He wrote the incidental music for Masquerade (1941) for a centenary production of the play by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841), from which Khachaturian culled the five-movement concert suite in 1944. Though Lermontov is little-known in the West, in his homeland he ranks among the giants of Russian literature. Regarded as the poet-heir of Pushkin and inventor of the Russian psychological novel, Lermontov also wrote a half-dozen plays, though none was published during his brief lifetime. When he was 21 Lermontov prepared three different versions of Masquerade (1835), hoping with each revision to appease the censor's pen for his unflattering depiction of the aristocracy. It was Lermontov's second version that finally won approval, but not before he had been shot and killed in a duel.

Masquerade unfolds like a Russian Othello, wherein the wealthy Eugene Arbenin poisons his beloved wife, Nina, convinced she has humiliated him by being unfaithful. The intrigue begins during a masked ball when Prince Zvezdich flirts with a disguised woman who gives him a bracelet as a token of affection. The prince brags about his encounter to Arbenin, who recognizes the bracelet as one belonging to Nina. When Arbenin asks Nina about the bracelet, she confesses that she lost it, never imagining the doubt that has begun to consume her husband. The actual mystery woman is a baroness friend of Nina, who, even after learning of Arbenin's suspicions, won't expose the truth for fear of damaging her own reputation. By the time the baroness ends her masquerade and sends a letter revealing Nina's innocence it is too late: Nina is dead and Arbenin goes mad, overcome with grief and remorse.

Khachaturian's score reflects the glittering "upper crust" of society that masks the growing darkness of the drama. For the suite, Khachaturian extracted three lively ballroom dances, the Waltz, Mazurka and Gallop, and provides contrast with the Nocturne, a melancholy song for violin and orchestra, and the lyrical Romance. Khachaturian said that the Waltz was the hardest piece to compose because he had to live up to Nina's reaction when she exclaims, "How beautiful the new waltz is! ... Something between sorrow and joy gripped my heart." The Waltz, with its ominous undercurrent, became one of Khachaturian's biggest hits, such that it was performed at his funeral.

Igor Stravinsky (1882, Lomonosov, Russia -1971, New York City)

The Firebird Suite

When Igor Stravinsky wakened on June 25, 1910, he was virtually unknown, but by the following morning he had become one of the most celebrated composers in Europe. His overnight success came with the premiere of L'Oiseau de feu (The Firebird), the first original score commissioned by Serge Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes.

The dance company had dazzled Paris the previous year, but none of its first-season productions featured newly-composed music. For the second season, choreographer Michel Fokine and production designer Alexandre Benois devised a scenario for an original ballet combining two characters from Slavic folklore. One is Zhar-ptitsa, the shimmering Firebird whose magic can bring either good fortune or bad. The other is the (not quite) immortal ogre-demon Kashchei, whose back-story hobbies include kidnapping princesses and turning would-be rescuers into stone.

Since no fairytale is complete without a prince in tights, the story begins with the Introduction of Ivan Tsarevich lurking through the shadows. We can tell the prince is a good guy because he has given his entourage the night off, but the spooky music suggests that that might not have been a good idea. He soon witnesses The Firebird and Its Dance (and The Firebird's Variation). The Firebird flutters about somewhat erratically, but nonetheless is very beautiful, and shiny. Being a prince, Ivan knows that shiny is good so he sneaks up and captures her, but being a hero, he lets her go when she begs for mercy. For his kindness (actually as a bribe), the Firebird rewards Ivan before she disappears, giving him a magic feather that can summon her if needed. Into the orchard tiptoe thirteen princesses bandying about golden apples. Though obviously not condemned to hard labor, they are prisoners of Kashchei the Deathless. Ivan joins them in The Princesses’ Khorovod, a circle-dance on the Russian folk song, In the Garden (introduced by solo oboe). The romantic reverie is interrupted by the appearance of Kashchei and his minions, who capture Ivan. Before Kashchei can add Ivan to his collection of stone guests, the prince whips out the magic feather and the Firebird instantly reappears. She casts a spell over the inhospitable horde, compelling them to dance the Infernal Dance of King Kashchei to exhaustion, and then lulls them to sleep with a Berceuse. While Kashchei snoozes, the Firebird reveals the hiding place of a giant egg that contains the demon's soul. Ivan smashes the egg, and Kashchei and his minions vanish. As a fitting Finale, the gloomy realm is transformed into a sunny tableau, perfect for a wedding between Ivan and his dance partner from the previous night. There are happy endings all around as the formerly stone-faced knights join the princess bridesmaids, accompanied by triumphant reiterations of another Russian folk song, By the Gateway.

The happy ending provided a very happy beginning for a young composer whose name is nearly synonymous with 20th-Century music. The Firebird’s success led to future collaborations with the Ballets Russes, including Petrushka (1911), the (almost literally) ground-breaking The Rite of Spring (1913), and Pulcinella (1920), which introduced Stravinsky's neoclassical style. But the course of music history nearly took another path. The unknown Stravinsky was not Diaghilev's first choice for The Firebird---he settled on Stravinsky only because his usual go-to guys proved unwilling or unable to complete the commission.

The Firebird incorporates many musical trends of the period, with nods to Debussy, Ravel and Scriabin, as well as to the Russian nationalists including especially Stravinsky's teacher and surrogate father, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Since Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila (1842), Russian composers tended to use exotic chromaticism to depict supernatural characters, contrasting with folk-like diatonicism for mere mortals. For the former, Rimsky-Korsakov favored an octatonic scale alternating wholetones with semitones. Stravinsky likewise uses the octatonic scale, and the two folk songs he adapts were taken from a collection Rimsky-Korsakov had arranged. (Later in life Stravinsky reportedly would observe, "A good composer does not imitate; he steals.")

The Firebird is Stravinsky's most popular work. From it he arranged three concert suites, in 1911, 1919, and 1945; among these the 1919 version is the most-frequently performed. The composer would complain that he was invited too often to conduct music from his first ballet at the expense of his later works, but it must have held an enduring place in his heart. Stravinsky's last orchestral piece, the brief Canon on a Russian Popular Tune (1965), is based on the folk song used at the end of The Firebird.

©2014 Edward Lein

Edward Lein produces Jacksonville Public Library's Music @ Main concerts, and was a finalist in the Jacksonville Symphony's 2006 Fresh Ink - Florida Composers' Competition

SHOSTAKOVICH

PROKOFIEV

KHACHATURIAN

STRAVINSKY