| Birthday Souvenirs November 13 & 14, 2010 [buy tickets] |
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Concert Romānesc (Romanian Concerto) The son of Jewish Hungarian parents from Transylvania, György Ligeti spent his youth in Cluj, Romania where he attended the city’s conservatory, continuing his musical studies in Budapest. In 1942 he was sent to a forced labor camp, Hungary’s reluctant sop to Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism; the rest of his family was annihilated when the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944 as they fled from defeat in the Soviet Union. Following the war Ligeti resumed his studies and in 1950 joined the faculty at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest as a harmony teacher. Until his escape from Hungary in 1956, most of his published compositions were arrangements of Romanian and Hungarian folksongs and Rom (Gypsy) melodies, while his more serious works remained unpublished since they did not conform to the politicized Soviet-style strictures. Once Ligeti had settled in the West, his music changed dramatically. In the studios of the West German Radio in Cologne, he learned the techniques of serialism and electronic music, experimenting in both systems but ultimately rejecting both. His own freely atonal style concentrated on shifting instrumental colors and textures. It was either slow, in a style he labeled “clouds,” or nervous and agitated, frequently containing complex canonic counterpoint, which he called “clocks.” These two antipodal styles are exemplified in his orchestral piece, Clocks and Clouds. Ligeti’s music became familiar to a wide audience when Stanley Kubrick incorporated two of his compositions – without the composer’s permission – into the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Ligeti’s one opera, Le Grand Macabre (1978), has enjoyed considerable success in Europe but has never been performed in the United States – perhaps because of American audiences’ distaste for avant-garde music, particularly opera. His later works also showed the influence of minimalist composers Steve Reich and Terry Riley, both of whom he immortalized in Selbstportrait mit Reich und Riley (und Chopin ist auch dabei) (Self-portrait with Reich and Riley (and Chopin is also present)). Concert Romānesc, however, belongs to Ligeti’s earlier Hungarian period. He writes: “In 1949…I learned how to transcribe folksongs from wax cylinders at the Folklore Institute in Bucharest. Many of these melodies stuck in my memory and led in 1951 to the composition of my Romanian Concerto. However, not everything in it is genuinely Romanian as I also invented elements in the spirit of the village bands. I was later able to hear the piece at an orchestral rehearsal in Budapest – a public performance had been forbidden. Under Stalin's dictatorship, even folk music was allowed only in a ‘politically correct’ form, in other words, if forced into the straitjacket of the norms of socialist realism: major-minor harmonizations…were welcome and even modal orientalisms in the style of Khachaturian were still permitted, but Stravinsky was excommunicated. The peculiar way in which village bands harmonized their music, often full of dissonances and ‘against the grain,’ was regarded as incorrect. In the fourth movement of my Romanian Concerto there is a passage in which an F sharp is heard in the context of F major. This was reason enough for the apparatchiks responsible for the arts to ban the entire piece.”The work was finally premiered in 1971. Concert Romānesc is a concerto for orchestra, reflecting the influence of Bartók and Enescu – two composers whose takes on indigenous music were quite different. From Bartók, Ligeti learned the importance of careful research into the authentic modes, melodies, sonorities and rhythms of peasant music; from Enescu he borrowed the tradition of Rom fiddling, heard primarily in the cafés of Middle European cities. The first movement is based on a single folk melody.  Ligeti repeats the melody, featuring different orchestral grouping and illustrating a modality and harmony that seems almost medieval in style, its harmonies built on open fourths and fifths. The following Allegro is a “contest” among various small orchestral groups. The third movement begins with a dissonant duet for two clarinets, but it resolves into a duet of open fifths for two Romanian mountain horns that call to each other from a distance. Ligeti instructs the players to use natural tuning, which produces a slightly out-of-tune quality to those used to equal temperament. A mournful English horn melody emerges from the horn calls. After the orchestra has taken up the English horn melody, the movement concludes with a mysterious wind ensemble, reminiscent of the third movement of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, perhaps Ligeti’s homage to his late countryman.The final movement is a fiddling showcase à la Enescu; ironically, the violins begin with a toneless rustle that is still unmistakably Rom. It finally breaks out into call-and-response for solo violin and diverse orchestral ensembles. After nearly all the orchestra’s first chairs have had a crack at a solo, the Concerto concludes with a reprise of the horn duet plus the violin at the nearly inaudible extreme top of its range. | ||||||||||
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Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11 The son of a French father and Polish mother, Frédéric Chopin was born and grew up in Poland; but after the collapse of the Polish revolution against Russia in 1831, he went into exile to France. He settled in Paris, which was then the center of Polish émigrés. Because of his own financial success, he was able to play at charity concerts held for his poorer exiled compatriots and organize similar events. Although he was never able to return to his native country – in accordance with his will his sister brought his heart, preserved in Cognac, to Warsaw where it was placed in an urn installed in a pillar of the Holy Cross church in Krakowskie Przedmiescie. Chopin’s chosen medium was the piano as a solo instrument. In his late teens he did try to unite the piano with the orchestra, creating, in addition to the two piano concertos, the Variations Op.2, Fantasia on Polish Airs Op. 13, the Concert Rondo Op. 14 and the Grande Polonaise Op. 22. He was, however, uncomfortable with the orchestral medium and after age 20 never again wrote for orchestra. In all these works, the orchestral scoring is so light that in the nineteenth century it was fashionable to reorchestrate and “improve” the accompaniment. It is probable, however, that Chopin intended the orchestra to serve merely as a background fabric for the soloist. He himself was known to have had a rather light touch at the piano, and heavy orchestral accompaniment would have drowned him out. The concentration on solo piano works, however, could not have brought in enough income to sustain him; most of his life was devoted to teaching piano, in which he was a master. The e minor Concerto, although numbered No.1, was composed later than the second (1830) but was published first. It was premiered in October 1830 in Warsaw, with the composer at the piano. He wrote to a friend the next day: “I was not a bit, not a bit nervous and played the way I play when I am alone, and it went well...” This is a pianist’s concerto with all the frills and furbelows for the soloist, but it also contains the kind of poignantly lyric melodies that were to characterize the composer’s subsequent music for solo piano. The opening movement, Allegro maestoso, is in the classical tradition, with a long orchestral introduction in which Chopin presents all the main themes of the movement. & & When the piano enters, it is with embellishements of these themes. The development too, is in the traditional classical form. The composer wrote about the second movement, Romance: Larghetto: [it is] “of a romantic, calm and rather melancholy character...a kind of reverie in the moonlight on a beautiful spring evening.” A short orchestral introduction precedes the entrance of the piano, which this time presents the principal theme of the movement. The movement is a standard ABA form, as well as a set of free variations, or fantasy, for the pianist. The middle section presents a contrasting theme in a contrasting mood. The form, however, is less important than the unusual modulations and the pianistic decorations. To balance the introduction, Chopin also provides a substantial coda, yet one more fantasy on the theme.The finale, Rondo, vivace, is rhythmically related to the Krakoviak, a rapid dance originating around the city of Krakow and considered Poland’s national dance. The opening piano refrain reappears a number of times, separated by graceful, highly ornamented or dancelike melodies. & Less than a month after the premiere of the Concerto, Chopin left Poland, never to return. His solo piano works, however, include numerous polonaises and mazurkas that bear witness to his regard for his native land. | ||||||||||
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Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61 No other composer symbolized the Romantic Movement in music as did Robert Schumann. Talented both in music and literature, as a music critic and publisher of Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, he was the principal spokesperson for the Romantic ideal and the future of music. He was a true elitist, pitting “us,” the enlightened (the Davidsbündler), against “them,” the masses, whom he termed the Philistines. The latter appellation has, in fact, remained part of the international elitist vocabulary. Schumann was emotionally unstable and suffered from repeated severe bipolar episodes as well as neurosyphilis. Together the diseases undermined his health, and at 44 he made an unsuccessful suicide attempt by casting himself into the Rhine. He died two years later in an asylum. His beloved wife, Clara, a brilliant concert pianist for whom he felt an underlying professional envy, supported their eight children for the rest of her long life with a relentless series of concert tours. In the summer of 1844, after returning from an arduous concert tour to Russia, Schumann suffered a nervous breakdown that left him barely able to work. By the end of the following year, he managed to finish the Piano Concerto and in a sudden rush of inspiration sketched out his Symphony No. 2 in a few days in December. Nevertheless, it took him ten more months to flesh out the sketch and orchestrate it. He finished it on October 19, just in time for the premiere in Leipzig on November 5 under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn. In a letter to a colleague Schumann wrote: “I wrote my symphony in December 1845, while still in a semi-invalid state; it appears to me that one can hear this from the music. I began to feel more like myself when I wrote the last movement, and was certainly much better when I finished the whole work. All the same it reminds me of dark times.” The unusually long, slow introduction to the Symphony combines and interweaves two contrasting themes, recalling Schumann’s contrasting state of mind at the time: a slow horn fanfare combined with a dark and uncertain theme on the strings. There follows a brief duet for the oboes in a transformation of the opening horn call that will recur throughout the movement and even later in the Symphony. The Introduction includes an unorthodox acceleration in tempo, designed to maximize the musical tension until the audience is on the edge of their seats. One of the most interesting features of this symphony is the way in which Schumann incorporates the motivic material from the Introduction into the Allegro. The tempo and tension of the introduction increase until the aggressive main allegro theme erupts, immediately incorporating the oboe duet from the introduction. That little motive will come to dominate a good chunk of the development. The allegro themes also get a heavy workout, and the movement ends with a coda that incorporates all the themes, including a triumphant statement of the opening horn theme – now blasting out on a trumpet. The following Scherzo continues the battle of the contrasting moods. The scherzo theme is extremely agitated – perhaps reflecting the composer's mania. He then repeats his innovation from his “Spring” Symphony (No.1), in having two contrasting trios: the first lively and staccato, the second legato and dreamy. A reprise of the Scherzo separates the two trios. The runaway coda repeats the horn call from the first movement. The third movement is one of Schumann’s most moving utterances. Marked Adagio espressivo, it is based on a single passionate melody introduced on the violins and immediately picked up by a solo oboe and combined first with the bassoon, then with the other woodwinds and the strings. But it is the motive created by the opening four notes, with their intense unresolved pathos that the composer dwells on, continually returning to it in the course of the movement, often using different pitches but retaining the same languorous sighing shape. Orchestrating this intense movement sapped Schumann’s emotional energy and he had to put the symphony aside for an extended rest. As he wrote to a friend in a letter accompanying the manuscript, “it will tell you of many joys and sorrows.” Schumann spent much of his convalescent time in 1845 intensively studying the music of Bach; musical scholars have noted the similarity between Schumann's Adagio theme and the main theme from the first movement of the Trio Sonata from Bach's A Musical Offering. Since Schumann was fond of musical anagrams symbolism and allusions in many of his works – some have even found Bach's name spelled out musical pitches hidden in the second Trio of the Scherzo – the theory is certainly possible. After the heart-felt Adagio, the Finale bursts forth with a joyous voice, corresponding to Schumann’s statement that he was “feeling himself again.” It is extremely unusual for its time, not corresponding to any of the classical structures for symphonic movements. In sharp contrast to the monothematic Adagio, the Finale consists of a series of themes, the next one a scurrying episode including the return of an old friend, a cameo reappearance, a transformation of the Adagio melody and another one, this time in inversion (upside down) Later on, a new melody appears, which Schumann spends considerable time developing, topping it off with a reprise of the oboe duet from the first movement and then triumphal rendition of the horn call from the first movement. Through this culminating statement of the two motives, we finally receive the clinching evidence that, indeed, they are really transformations of the same musical idea, connected by their rhythm. | ||||||||||
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| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2010 | [buy tickets] | ||||||||||
