Notes

Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953)

Suites from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64a/b (Selections) (1935)

First performances: Suite No. 1, Op. 64a 1936 (Moscow); Suite No. 2, Op 64b, 1937 (Leningrad)

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

And so begins the most famous play in the world ... with a spoiler.

William Shakespeare penned these lines circa 1595, and the intervening centuries have done nothing to diminish the impact of his epic tragedy. Inspiring more authors, composers and filmmakers than any other secular work, it's surprising that, as late as 1935, Sergei Prokofiev apparently became the first to write a ballet about the ill-fated lovers. With his Romeo and Juliet, Prokofiev composed the only full-length ballet that approaches the popularity of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker.

The Ukrainian enfant terrible abandoned post-revolutionary Russia for the Decadent West in 1918. As his star grew brighter, Prokofiev received recurring invitations to resume permanent residency in the USSR, and by the mid-1930s, with performance royalties waning and homesickness waxing, Prokofiev began to take the invitations seriously. In January1936 the Soviets denounced Shostakovich, their heretofore favorite composer, providing an unexpected lure: Prokofiev jumped at the chance to become the biggest sturgeon in the pond. That spring he settled his family in Moscow.

Prokofiev returned toting his most recent disappointment: Romeo and Juliet. The ballet already had been rejected by both Leningrad's Kirov Theater and Moscow's Bolshoi. The biggest obstacle was Prokofiev's happy ending, with Juliet reviving in time to stop Romeo from drinking poison. The composer said this was necessary because, you know, dead people can't dance, but the ballet companies feared government censure for corrupting the beloved story. Prokofiev eventually restored The Bard's dénouement, and the revised ballet premiered in Brno, Czechoslovakia, in 1938. Two years later the Kirov gave the Russian premiere, and Romeo and Juliet finally danced onto the Bolshoi's stage in 1946. It has remained in the international repertoire ever since.

While still struggling for his own happy ending with the star-crossed score, Prokofiev was determined to get the music before the public, even without toe-shoes. He performed selections as 10 Pieces for Piano, Op. 75, and arranged two orchestral suites; he later culled a third suite to coincide with the first Bolshoi production. It is common to mix movements from the suites to suit the needs of individual concerts—which brings us to now.

1. Montagues and Capulets combines the ominous Introduction to Act III with Dance of the Knights, which introduces the Capulet clan during the Act I ballroom scene. It is the ballet's best-known music, and its bellicose haughtiness aptly conjures both feuding families. The blustering is momentarily silenced by a chilly minuet during which Juliet fails to warm to Paris, an older suitor to whom she‘s been betrothed. The frostiness is brilliantly underscored with viola portamenti tracing a filigree of flute melody, against an icy background including harp, triangle and celesta.

2. The Child Juliet takes place earlier that afternoon, while the exuberant Juliet and her friends tease her nursemaid as they prepare for the evening’s ball. Lady Capulet interrupts their frolic, hoping to persuade Juliet to accept Paris's marriage proposal.

3. Masks returns to the Capulet's ball as mischievous Montagues crash the party, namely Romeo and his cousin Benvolio, along with Mercutio, Romeo's best friend.

4. Death of Tybalt moves into the morning streets soon after Romeo and Juliet’s secret marriage. Juliet's cousin, Tybalt, challenges Romeo to a duel, but Romeo refuses because he alone knows they are now related. Mercutio accepts the challenge, and turns the duel into a comical dance. Tybalt surreptitiously stabs Mercutio, who dies while his friends congratulate him on his convincing death scene. When Romeo realizes that Mercutio really is dead, he pursues and slays Tybalt, punctuated by 15 violent chords. The Capulets bear their slain kinsman before the Prince of Verona to demand justice. Romeo is spared execution, but is banished.

5. Romeo at the Grave of Juliet presents the heart-wrenching grief of the teenaged groom who has no idea that his bride will soon break from her drug-induced trance. Amid death-theme variations comes a recollection of young love as Romeo prayerfully tries to resurrect Juliet's seemingly lifeless body. Laying her again to rest, he downs a fatal draught. Juliet wakens—Romeo's prayer has been answered too late.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (2/3/1809, in Hamburg - 11/4/1847, in Leipzig)

Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 (1844)

First performance: March 13, 1845, in Leipzig; Ferdinand David, violin; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Niels Gade conducting

Felix Mendelssohn was a composer, pianist, organist and conductor whose prodigious musical talents rivaled those of Mozart, and who, like Mozart, did not live to see his 40th birthday. But young Felix came from a well-to-do German family and was raised in an intellectually stimulating and stable environment, protected from the childhood exploitation that Mozart endured. At sixteen, Mendelssohn produced his first masterwork, the Octet for Strings, Op. 20, and the following year saw the completion of the brilliant A Midsummer Night’s Dream concert overture. In terms of achieving his musical maturity, Mendelssohn surpassed even Mozart.

In contrast to many of his flamboyant contemporaries, Mendelssohn neither overcame abject poverty, had a string of adulterous affairs, nor suffered syphilitic insanity—consequently, his reputation as a “Romantic” has suffered. Mendelssohn did become a superstar performer and composer, but after he died Richard Wagner became a particularly vociferous critic, lumping him with the likes of Brahms for their backward-looking drivel, in contrast to his own creations of genius. In addition to tooting his own tuba, Wagner had ulterior motives which had nothing to do with Mendelssohn's music. For one, Maestro Mendelssohn had rejected (and possibly lost) the score to Wagner’s early Symphony. For another, Wagner was virulently anti-Semitic, and although Mendelssohn was Lutheran, his grandfather Moses was a well-known Jewish philosopher.

Sadly, Wagner’s propaganda had a negative effect among many critics even through most of the 20th Century, but Mendelssohn’s music has never fallen out of favor with concertgoers. Or bride's: the Wedding March from Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream has long been regarded as the quintessential recessional for weddings. Ironically, this March frequently is paired with the bridal processional from Wagner’s Lohengrin—it seems posterity finds Mendelssohn’s music the perfect complement to Wagner’s, so the two composers are now forever getting married.

Mendelssohn’s flawless Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64, is among the most-frequently performed concertos, and one of the most influential. It was composed for violinist Ferdinand David, a long-time friend of the composer who offered technical advice, and possibly composed the first-movement cadenza. Unusual for the time, the cadenza is written into the score rather than left for soloists to improvise, and it occurs as a bridge between the development section and recap, rather than at the coda. Other formal innovations include allowing the soloist to introduce the principal music of the first movement by dispensing with an orchestral exposition, and connecting all the movements into an unbroken musical stream.

The year after the Concerto's 1845 premiere, Mendelssohn achieved another triumph with Elijah, a sacred oratorio second in popularity only to Handel's Messiah. But the Violin Concerto proved to be Mendelssohn's last orchestral masterpiece, and perhaps the work that best fulfilled the promise of the former Wunderkind.

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (5/7/1840, Votkinsk - 11/6/1893, Saint Petersburg)

Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17, “Little Russian” (1872, rev. 1879)

I. Andante sostenuto — Allegro vivo (C minor)

II. Andantino marziale quasi moderato (E-flat major)

III. Scherzo: Allegro molto vivace (C minor)

IV. Finale: Moderato assai — Allegro vivo (C major)

Tchaikovsky began work on his folksy Symphony No. 2 in the summer of 1872. On break from his post at the Moscow Conservatory, the 32-year-old harmony professor was vacationing at the estate of his beloved younger sister, Sasha, and her husband, Lev Davidoff. Now, the tendency to attribute autobiographical origins to Tchaikovsky's artistic impulses often seems overplayed. In this case, however, the composer himself spoiled any mystery about who or what might have kindled his inspiration: the butler did it.

The Davidoff's rural retreat was in "Little Russia," which is what big Russian imperialists called The Ukraine. Sasha's old steward had a habit of humming homegrown tunes as he puttered about, and one of his Ukrainian Top 40 made it into the symphony's Finale, along with some other folksongs. Tchaikovsky had made use of folk music before, as did Mily Balakirev's "Mighty Handful," the self-proclaimed leaders of Russian musical nationalism. Balakirev and his proteges Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and Cui, were mistrustful of Germanic symphonic techniques, which didn't nurture the unique melodic flowering born of Russian soil, but instead hacked it to bits. Tchaikovsky, a handful unto himself, revered Beethoven and adored Mozart, so he dismissed this view. But he too wanted to create music that reflected the national identity, and he recognized that his own gifts manifested in memorably sweeping melodies. With little precedent, Tchaikovsky cultivated a hybrid, retaining basic formal outlines institutionalized by Papa Haydn, but with no qualms allowing melody, rather than motif, to dominate the discourse. Many critics have lambasted this sacrilege as a shortcoming, but time has proven that Tchaikovsky's deviance from "the rules" in no way diminishes his ability to stir the hearts and minds of listeners. On the contrary, along with his heroes Beethoven and Mozart, Tchaikovsky remains among the most-performed composers of symphonic music.

Added posthumously, the Second Symphony's Ukrainian nickname is certainly apt. The first movement begins with increasingly agitated iterations of the Ukrainian folksong, Down by Mother Volga, and the tune reappears in the development and coda. The second movement is a charming wedding march resurrected from Tchaikovsky's discarded opera, Undine, and it's lyrical middle section quotes another folk-song, Spin, O My Spinner. Some suggest that the Scherzo was inspired by Berlioz's gossamer Queen Mab and/or the Scherzo from Borodin's First Symphony. But Tchaikovsky's relative earthiness might be more a tribute to Beethoven, especially since the 4-notes that head the trio section transform Beethoven's Fifth Symphony "fate" motif into a jaunty folk-dance. As in Beethoven's Fifth, the lively Finale moves Tchaikovsky's symphony from C minor to a rousing C major, presenting a series of variations on The Crane, the favorite folksong of Sasha's butler. Tchaikovsky keeps the tune pretty much intact, offering variety through an ever-changing background and colorful harmonic movement. Contrast is provided by way of a lyrical, and surprisingly jazzy, second tune of the composer's devising. (On the heels of Tchaikovsky's tour de force, Mussorgsky would absorb The Crane into the Great Gate of Kiev, in Pictures at an Exhibition.)

The February 1873 premiere of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 2 was so successful that the work was twice repeated by popular demand that same season. The only detractor was the composer himself. In 1879, he tweaked the orchestration throughout, and pruned the third and fourth movements. Tchaikovsky also completely gutted the first movement, but he retained both its original Introduction and coda, and, as before, included Down by Mother Volga prominently in the development section. But for the "first subject" of the Allegro vivo he introduces a five-note motif taken from Let God Arise, a Russian Orthodox liturgical chant that Rimsky-Korsakov would use in his Russian Easter Overture (and which, coincidentally, has similarities with Beethoven's fate motif). For the chromatic start of the new "second subject," Tchaikovsky truncated his old "first subject" and combined it with figures from the original second subject. The revision was a resounding success when first performed in 1881, and, as the composer wished, it is the version of the Second Symphony almost always performed.

Fun fact: Tchaikovsky's "Little Russian" was a particular favorite of Igor Stravinsky, who conducted a number of American orchestras in their first performances of the work.