The first movement is featured here, though hopefully sometime I will find the time to do the rest of it. Program notes for ICSO 3/3
Can't go wrong with Argerich.
Prokofiev's third and most enduringly popular piano concerto was premiered in 1921 (though sketches of the second movement date as far back as 1913). The bulk of the composition was completed during the summer of that year, which he spent in Brittany, France. He premiered it himself that December with Frederick Stock and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Vital and witty, this three-movement concerto is a pillar of the
twentieth-century piano repertoire.
The first movement opens with a quiet and lyrical clarinet solo, which the strings also quote. The introspective mood does not last long, however, as the strings rush forward with sixteenth notes to begin the Allegro, and the piano bursts forward with the main subject, a lively chattering theme. A slower, more wistful theme is articulated first by the oboe over pizzicato strings, which the piano develops before accelerating into a series of cascading triplets which crescendos into a grand restatement of the Andante theme, now given fully and expressively by the entire orchestra. The music segues into a long, discursive development of this theme. Then, with four quietly expectant chords intoned by the winds, the Allegro is brought back with a vengeance. The recapitulation features abrupt, jagged tempo changes that highlight each returning theme. The recapitulation of second theme winds down gradually, as if out of steam. But just before the listener catches his breath, the piano enters for the final flourish, a continuous run of sixteenths which drives forward inexorably to a thrilling close.
Allegro molto — Lento — Vivo — Allegro non troppo e maestoso — Tempo come I
see previous post for the first half of the movement vid.
this movement is extremely virtuosic and impassioned. as is implied in the title, it's kind of a mishmash of the previous themes, set in a new light, as well as a little bit of new material (the festival, etc) the first minute or so is alternation of a furious orchestral representation of the suite's opening motif, the sultan (who will kill scheherazade at any moment, it seems, but for his curiosity about the stories she tells), and a newly impassioned version of the scheherazade leitmotif, which is now even more ornate, faster, and flamboyant.
the carnival begins at the vivo, 7:47 in the video. the softly galloping theme is given first by the flute, then by the strings. then rimsky begins his typical process of repetition with augmentation. a second part of the theme comes in at 8:37, slightly broader (in rhythm only; the tempo remains the same). 9:09 brings the return of a third movement theme - a brief few moments of nostalgia. but without warning we are snapped back into the tempo and mood of the festival, with quick and piquant colors and rhythms. one of the program notes i read notes that the flavor of the polovtsian dances that rimsky had just been working on with borodin's score comes out particularly in this section of baghdad revelry. see for yourself.
this section goes on for a while, but i won't bore you by describing what rimsky does with the motif; it's all the same music, but he reinvents it by inserting shorter or longer sections of hiatus, playing with the rhythms (duple time, triple time, quadruple time) alternating it with that third movement melody, using different instrumentations, and usually adding some additional little lick in some instrument to accent it, usually from an entirely different section of the piece. we finally come to a more satisfying cadence, where we find ourselves all of a sudden right in the middle of the raging sea from the first movement (4:37).
from here is a depiction of one of sinbad's (many) shipwrecks. the swaying waves are augmented by even more chromatic swells from the winds, a rolling bass drum/timpani, and sustained chords from the brass. the shipwreck happens on a plummeting chromatic line starting in the violins, then, with a final fanfare from the brass, all is quiet.
6:27 is the beginning of the final section; the mood is stricken, the waves are still there, but calm now, and the reappearance of the chorale figure from the first movement reassures us that it was all just a story. scheherazade's voice comes in again to conclude the movement, which ends quietly - as most stories do.
Andantino quasi allegretto — Pochissimo più mosso — Come prima — Pochissimo più animato
curious to know what everyone thinks of the customary "naming" a movement by its tempo changes. what happens to the custom once we get into the late 19th century and every section of a movement has a different tempo? seems silly. i don't know that there are abbreviation standards in place for this sort of thing though. i expect sometimes we just take the tempo of the main body of the movement, because usually the changes are either very close to the beginning, as an introduction to the main part, or towards the end, as the movement speeds up or winds down.
please refer to previous post for the video with the first half of this movement, am trying to avoid having to post any of these twice.
this movement is supposed to be fairly simple both in melodic content and in form, which is basic ternary. we have a very sweet almost pastoral theme, which is given first by violins. (this is also the only movement which does not begin with the violin solo, but she has her say at the end of the movement...) some program notes call this a love scene; i think it's a bit more innocent than that, but who knows. the theme is circled around lots of instruments, and also gets lots of ornamentation in the form of a sort of rising and falling skitter or scale, usually in the upper strings or winds. it is in E flat, so it acts as a sort of neapolitan to the dominant, d minor/major. (the movement itself is in G.)
celibidache takes the middle section, which starts at 9:14, quiiiite a bit more slowly than is customary. it is introduced by a snare drum, and a dancelike theme forms the central part of the movement, first given by the clarinet, but then accented by more percussion (we get the introduction of the triangle here) and pizz from the string section. the quietness of the percussion writing, and some of the wind solos (i like the brassy trumpet one, which is so honeyed that it reminds me of some early jazz).
we go back to the original opening matter at 1:45, with the violins. scheherazade's voice comes back in for a little bit, turning into an extended string crossing arpeggiatic cadenza. as that's going on, the romantic theme of the movement comes back, with the violin finally snapping out of it to cadence with that theme. this last segment at last shows some development of that theme, kind of interestingly late for that sort of thing. the shifting of keys typical to developments comes in around 5:00. the movement closes with a sort of blend of the more sprightly elements from the middle section and the romanticism of the main theme.
the full tempo markings of this movement: Lento — Andantino — Allegro molto — Vivace scherzando — Moderato assai — Allegro molto ed animato
the opening of this movement is a little more nostalgic, with the violin solo in e minor (the first time it is in A minor, set a fourth higher), and quite a bit slower and less bold. here we get a sense of royal mystique, suspense and sparkle.
from the kennedy center program notes:
The Kalenders were a particular category offakir, roving monks who turned up at Eastern courts and bazaars dispensing stories, magic tricks and wit in exchange for a coin or a night's lodging. The "Kalender Prince" was one of those mendicants who turned out to be a nobleman in disguise.
the theme that opens the movement after scheherazade's intro is wistful, lilting, with little grace notes, based on a repeated figure descending stepwise (and on its rhythm, which is actually a sort of hemiola). the theme is first shown by the bassoon, then the oboe, eventually becoming a dance with the strings as it is speeded up. with each repetition of the theme each instrument is given a sort of additional "ad lib" in the triplets just before the cadence to the next instrument. after the strings it is given, staccato, sprightly, and faster, to the wind section. but suddenly, at 4:25, a solo cello pauses the ramp up with a rhapsodic solo. a solo oboe rounds off the section.
5:17 is the middle section, introduced by a rude awakening by the lower strings, alternated with a trumpet/trombone fanfare figure. this is rotated, and finally we get them stacked on top of each other above an insistent tritone chord. finally we hit a stride and the music goes into a brisk tempo giusto.
6:41 is a very unique moment - extended solos for the clarinet above perpetual pizzes. we snap out of it and back into the martial mood of the beginning of the middle section. (the new thing here is the addition of a scurrying upwards motif in the strings along with a piccolo twitter, supposedly representing sinbad's bird from the first movement.) the middle section is flanked also by the same type of solo as the clarinet's at 6:41, this time assigned to the bassoon, along with distressed alarm bells from the high winds. there is a brief transition to the original opening theme of the movement, with some interesting modal insertions, a bit of rubato, and some ornamentations from different instruments. overall the sound is much lusher the second time, a little more rhapsodic, but basically the same. we pause at 2:40, and then begin a coda, which is a looooong ramp up to the end, starting with a suspended tremolo rendition of the theme in the violins, which makes room for some wind solos before accelerating the triplets to a whirling end.
whoo i'm behind. just fyi, for anyone who reads regularly - when/if i ever get to the point where i am caught up in terms of entries for the month, i will be backdating the entries so that there are the correct number of entries per month (this is the easiest way to keep track).
here's something fairly easy - rimsky's symphonic poem is one of his two original orchestral masterpieces, the other being his capriccio espagnole. it displays characteristic verve, color, orchestration, and the obligatory huge violin solo; it's also pretty much textbook program music. for anyone who played this piece in youth orchestra, as i did, it pretty much becomes one of the biggest representative experiences of the young musician's early career. it is just one of the most universally adored pieces out there.
this orchestral fantasy was conceived as rimsky worked to finish borodin's prince igor score, part of which was blogged here. summer of 1888, rimsky finished this as well as his russian easter overture, op. 36.
rimsky actually disliked overly programmatic tendencies, so rather than trying to tell four stories from the books, he named his movements after themes to be found in the tales. (originally the names were even more vague - prelude, ballade, etc; but his colleagues prevailed upon him to give more detailed names.) he wanted the fantasy to be a russian take on oriental/arabic themes, so you get 1. large usage of the harp and an extended percussion and wind section which included: piccolo, snare/bass drum, tambourine, cymbals, and tam-tam 2. huge russian sounds and 3. lots of implication of "oriental" music (from the european sense) like the pentatonic scale.
i have waded through lots of youtube youth orchestra debris to bring you the below recording, which is celibidache/swr stuttgart (if it is not really cooperating with you, just pause and wait; it's worth it i think). but if you have the time make sure you check out this other fascinating recording featuring david oistrakh as the concertmaster. in many places the ensemble and sometimes the intonation is kind of atrocious, but it is quite worth it to hear those few violin solos.
we open with a grand dramatic unison line in a sort of modal E, allowing the curtain to rise. the violin solo, some form of which flanks every movement, is of course, none other than scheherazade herself, telling her stories. the harp interjections lend that misty quality of sending us back on a "long long ago" type of journey. it's basically a big recitative for the violin, who gets to take pretty much as much time as s/he wants. (in instrumental terms we call this a cadenza, but it is really quite a bit more operatic than that, especially when we consider the "character"-ness of the solo.)
we're off and immediately rimsky paints a huge picture of rolling waves with the lower strings arpeggiating back and forth as per the rocking of water and the presumed ship. sinbad the sailor receives 7 tales in the original arabian nights, and they are all about his sea voyages (with i think one exception). i think in the original writing they are all encased in one tale that a post-voyage sinbad tells to another poor guy who also just happens to be named sinbad (the tale of "how i became rich," basically). almost all of the tales involve him getting shipwrecked in some fashion, but his ingenuity always prevails and allows him not only to defeat whatever monsters are in his path but to return home with even more riches as well.
this movement is basically two parts, the second part of which is almost an exact reflection of the first part except in a different key. we have the sea motif - grand, windy, soaring, played by all the strings over a full wind and brass chorale, and rising all the time. this is in E major.
3:47 is a soft wind chorale introduction to the development of that grandiose motif, which we might be able to think of as scherazade's actual storytelling - the whole grand scene sort of recedes into a "storytelling" level, the solo violin comes back to soliloquize, in b minor, and its music gets expanded into the actual story. the motif here is full of triplets, a bit more flowing, much more quickly moving, and gets twined with the waves and the theme from the beginning. notice the big brass entrance around 5:33. we reach a head at 5:53, which is a big cadence in E major. the section rounds off with a similar trailing off into the chorale figure, but this time given by six violin solo and with a bit of wind ornamentation, at 6:58.
from here to the end of the movement is basically a repeat of 3:47 on, with a different instrumentation - solo cello instead of horn, use of different wind shadings, but the same violin solo (this time in e minor). it is compressed, but contains all the same motifs.
at 9:17 we hit a tranquillo, which begins the downward ramping of this movement, as if the story has reached its apex and is just wrapping up. all the motifs seem kind of tired.
for some dumb reason the recording cuts off only like two minutes before the end of the movement so for the rest of it take a look at the next blog entry.
ok, we are now in solid C Major for this movement, which is essentially an expounding upon the third and last folk song, "the crane." like the spinner song, i can't find any record of this song besides that it is used here, so just trust in the flavor of the tune :)
i read a program note comparing the opening fanfare to the great gate of kiev composed only a year later, and i rather like the comparison. it only works for about the first minute, though, because then this movement takes on a rather whirly folk dance like character (decidedly not great gate-esque). we get mostly every type of variation on the first two bars of this theme, with every instrument and other keys (e minor, at around 1:45). there is a nice little section where he alternates between the C major and an augmented sixth chord (A-flat). the second subject is a lilting theme at 3:00, in A-flat major, with the violins first. this pretty much gives us the entire scope of the movement's material, for the crane theme comes back and takes over the texture again, but this time it is also in A-flat major.
the development starts with a series of descending major thirds that is a continuation of the cadence at 4:33. we descend to a low of Db, and now we get statements of developmental snatches of both themes.
eventually we end up firmly back in c major, and it is more or less a straight shot to the end except for one lull in the action, at around 8:26, where the repetition of the theme gets interrupted by a little ornament in the piccolo and rising chromatic themes. the brass repeat their motif of descending thirds (basically a big diminished seventh chord), and this is accented at the bottom by a gong of all things. but after that big dramatic silence it's like OH WELL! and then we do the big happy ending that everyone is expecting. really this movement tires me out haha. i am really tired of hearing that theme by the end, which is after all only two bars long. but it is still fun :)
this whirling little scherzo might be one of my favorite of all tchaikovsky movements. it is in a brisk 3/8, with a really delightful tension and use of chromatic climbing to heighten suspense. also it is kind of cool how he varies the grouping of the bars. a lot of the time it sounds as if it could be 9/8 but he throws in random 6/8s to keep us on our toes. he does a lot of hemiola too, a lot of fun rhythmic things.
this movement is very accessible so it requires little explanation. there is a little sprightly trio section which starts at 2:30, with a meter change into a l'istesso tempo 2/8. the subject is given by the winds and horns.
for me the most amazing thing is the transition back to the da capo. this occurs almost without our noticing, at 3:30, with a quick switch by the winds into triplets instead of eighths, allowing the strings to take back the first theme of the opening.
the coda occurs at 4:46, with the return of some material from the trio meshed with relentless triplets from the scherzo.
this movement takes place in e flat major, the relative.
according to wiki the movement was originally a bridal march for undine, an opera which was never published. it's obviously a march, and i love the image of a procession approaching from the distance. but i don't know if it's something i would want to get married to ;)
the rhythmic, dotted opening theme is stated softly in the winds. it is joyful and affirmative, and dovetails nicely into a warmly lyrical string theme at 1:29. (this was actually the subject of my dictation at ithaca...) the march comes back after this, with a fun pizzicato underpinning.
unison Gs in the horns take us to a G minor section, where we hear a slower theme in quarters, which is the second of the three russian folk tunes that were incorporated into this symphony, called "spin o my spinner." actually very reminiscent of the mother volga theme in the first movement. i can't link to a recording of this song because i actually can find no evidence that it even exists, as a google search for the name turns up more hits for tchaik's symphony than for it itself. but every article on this symphony says the same, so it must be true!!
this central section is the most extended of the movement. eventually we are led to a chromatic climbing in the winds against a pedal Ab in the celli (around 4:50), and a forte restatement of the spinner theme, which begins to have tricklings of a pluckier mood at 5:23 in the strings. before we know it we've melted back into the march (which retains the ornamentation in the strings). one more restatement of the second theme, and of the march, and the movement is wrapped up.
ok, i have cultivated a bad situation and attitude regarding this. like all every day things, once you start not doing it every day, then you feel like one more day of not doing it will not make that big a difference. tough.
this symphony is subtitled "little russian," because of a collection of three ukrainian folk songs he used throughout the symphony (ukraine was called "little russia" sometimes, as a nickname). it was written in 1872 on holiday there, and (as one can tell from the nickname) is usually considered the most blatantly nationalistic of all his symphonies (most program notes mention that it earned considerable esteem in the eyes of the russian five, whom he showed the work to in its compositional stages). he revised it in 1879, and this is the version that we hear most often today. it's certainly the most played of the first three symphonies, though it doesn't get as much limelight as any of the latter three.
this movement opens with a pretty stylized version of a ukrainian song called down by mother volga. the first of many repetitions of this theme is stated by a solo horn. apparently this horn solo is a big deal. i had a friend at summer camp who had been assigned to play this, and she basically did nothing all week but panic and practice it.
at 1:37 or so, we hear the theme start to be fragmented, with the winds playing variations on the first bar and the strings playing a swirly rising motif that will also become prominent.
more layers are added, until at 2:40 we end up in a sort of d-flat major arrival. we quickly sink back into the solo horn statement, rounding off the introduction.
3:40 is the beginning of the allegro vivo. we finally get a new theme: it's much more martial, four eighths and a quarter; this becomes a heavily stated rhythmic motif for the rest of the movement. you may hear its influence in rimsky's russian easter overture. the much more pastoral, calmer second theme, with oboes, comes at 4:16.
5:26 is an arrival at E-flat major, the relative major key to the c minor. this is a pretty cool moment, and then he goes on to push it just a step downwards (one of those modulatory tricks that can seem hokey at times, but works nicely here) to D-flat major. he repeats this cadence in this key, and then goes to state the mother volga theme again this time in keys stepping merely sideways. we enter a turbulent development section filled with fragments of the mother volga theme as well as the first subject of the allegro vivo.
the end of the development comes with a sinking back into the second subject, instead of the first. this is at 7:41.
aroung 8:22 we get a couple interesting key areas touched on in the exit from the second subject. we end up in the key of c major for a redevelopment.
8:50 begins the coda to the movement. he intertwines all three themes, building them up into a gigantic climax in the home key. we end quietly, with the horn solo repeating the opening.
this last movement is my favorite. it's hard to find a recording where i can recreate how playing it last week felt, partly because we took it so slow, but it seems somehow right to me now. this is the only youtube recording i can find even remotely approaching it.
it begins with another low brass chorale, with something extra - a timpani death knell, with added interjections from a lone wood block. and then something so lovely so as to be out of place - violin melody which leads you on and on, somewhere undisclosed, so frail and without direction that breathing will break it. it goes nowhere. it's so easy to play this and phrase it according to its contour, but really it is even more haunting when it manages to stay perfectly still - singing while barely exhaling at all, as if really singing will somehow break one's voice. this is followed by a passacaglia, and it finally builds into the a gigantic scream that is the entire symphony's second loud spot. it is beaten down by despair, with clarinet and bassoon solos that might have been plucky but are too exhausted to protest. the violins again, made even more achingly beautiful by the fact that they just aren't allowed to phrase, to speak, to say anything beyond a wordless toneless line which is supposed to somehow encompass one's whole existence.
and then the symphony simply dies, the violin's flat line on the heart monitor acknowledged by a ghost's procession of percussion and keyboard instruments that is inexorable, irrevocable, and completely unsympathetic. this last percussion section takes place over a glistening a major chord which lasts for a minute, and then evaporates. the writing for the percussion is amazing here - the steady tick tock of wood block and castanets, against the quarter, quarter, (eighth rest) eighth | quarter, quarter which gets passed through the piccolo, xylophone, and timpani. it's the grim reaper! or so my imagination likes to think. he is unpitying, and he doesn't care that you don't want it to end like this.
there is no sense of grief - nothing so gratuitous or healthy as that. there is only: the fact of life, then death; the remnants of a desire to change that fact; and the emptiness of that impossibility. it's a symphony so personal that it feels almost insulting to clap after hearing it.
there are a number of recordings out there that insist on taking the first and third movements at the speed of traditional "fast" movements. after giving all of these a good listen i have decided there's definitely a reason shostakovich doesn't write "allegro" ever. this movement is obviously the symphony's "scherzo," but though it has a bit of that atmosphere, it shouldn't be taken too fast.
the lead-in is attacca from the previous movement, a series of ascending fifths in the bassoon that rudely interrupts the reverie that might be inspired by the final pizzicati of the second movement.
this is the only recording i can find which actually takes the speed of this movement as the title implies. i like the deliberateness of this tempo. nothing about it should be light or carefree or funny.
the theme played by the clarinet and next the violin is actually twelve tone music. one of the interesting things the conductor told us during our rehearsals was that as a soviet composer shosty was forced to speak against twelve tone music as bourgeois excessiveness. so it's quite interesting that he does his own exploration with it here. also, this is the most earwormy twelve tone music i have ever heard, and he's obviously into the idea of making music that, while still twelve-tone, is still rhythmically and even harmonically graspable.
the second theme is a sidling, ingratiating little slip of a tune played by the solo violin and then the clarinetist. it is followed by a development of sorts, which is very short - a theme by the cello section, which gets repeated by the wind section, both with amazingly orchestrated rhythm sections in the background. this is rounded off with a declarative bassoon solo, leading back into the ascending fifths that start the movement.
the last thing worth noting about this movement is the use of the percussion ticking off to the close. this is remarkable writing and really foreshadows the end of the symphony.
the end of the movement might be considered "cute" in a way, but i would smack anyone who felt like giggling after the end as sometimes happens with cutesy movements in symphonic concerts. this movement is not about being cute or light. one of the other interesting anecdotes the conductor told us last week was how he met shostakovich in old age, when he was a boy. he was in so many respects a broken man, shaking with parkinson's, sickly and strange. in this movement one gets a sense of wrongness, a twisted discomfort of melodies that wiggle around and can't ever seem to find anything comfortable. everything is wrong, the bedsheets are itchy and visions are dancing at the corners of the eyes, the voice won't work correctly and the eyes are too dry to cry. he is about to die in this symphony, and this movement is shaking, hallucinating maybe, the skeletal remains of a harrowed life.
The second movement begins with a chorale by the brass in F minor, but it is the least comforting chorale one can ever imagine. it is comprised of moving chromatic thirds, with a horn pedal on a clashing C. it rises and falls in dynamic, cadencing in various wrong keys.
this is followed by a mournful, songful extended cello solo, with muted affirmations in the strings.
the chorale comes back, with a slight half-step of different material, cadencing (weirdly) in e major. the cello comes back, also a half step off. shostakovich has a strange gift for making material seem the same but different.
after a short violin solo, two eerie chords at about 5:30 will get repeated at various junctures throughout the movement. the cello ends on a trill, and the the flutes come in with sixths, a relatively simple motif. the second time this comes around, it's the violas with the trill and a trombone giving a long soliloquy. this is a fantastic solo.
the flutes come back to cadence their melody from before in C major, with ominous pipings from a distant trumpet. the trombone comes back with its solo, but it is weirdly different in a way that is hard to pin; it sounds a bit brighter, perhaps.
the second time the violin plays the same solo, it leads to a crashing, almost grandiose climax. this is the second loud part of the symphony, and it is a big fanfare for the brass against descending chromatic lines in the strings, which almost immediately turn it from something that sounds grand and affirmative into something screeching and despairing. the fanfare has no choice but to succumb, and the brass join the strings in the chromatic meandering, eventually descending back into the quiet sixth motif, this time given by muted trumpets. note the woodblock. this rhythm - quarter, dotted eighth, sixteenth, quarter, quarter - is so ominous, so inevitable, and it foreshadows the percussion's presence which seems so deathly in the later movements. the strings echo the opening brass chorale at 2:48. celeste solo right afterwards, lone drops in a well of silence. grey pizzicati end the movement, like small thumps.
ok here we go. i am 21 posts behind, complete fail. i'm also sick, which is why i've put off making posts even though my audition was on monday and got home on tuesday. i've also started working here, so that is enough disincentive for me to be productive when i get home that i pretty much haven't done anything except sleep. but here we go! one change i am going to make (at least to try) is to make sets of posts. this relieves some of the difficulty of choosing a whole new work every day and allows me to cover complete works instead of just partial, because a "set" of posts will be comprised of the several movements of a given work.
we'll start with the symphony that played as part of the orchestra this week, shosty 15. this is actually a fantastic symphony and i like it way more than i thought i would. it's dark, personal, and very quiet. it's also very sad. if you give this a listen, do it alone, in a quiet room, with the earphones on and the hand our mouse on the volume control, because chances are the quiet parts will be too quiet for you to hear and the loud parts (there are only three in the whole symphony, all fairly brief) will be too loud for you to want your volume up.
shostakovich's 15th symphony was his last, and once you know this fact you can't help but listen to it with an ear towards death, in a way that i haven't found present with very many pieces (even the ones that have death in them). it is so quiet and so bitter. he was four years from his death (1975, written in 1971) when he wrote it. though that's quite a while, the fact that this was his last symphony is forever going to mean it's the one that faces "the end." amazingly enough this is a view which enriches it so much as to be almost astonishing (and we know a lot of other things about his condition when writing it that make this view make sense anyway). so though in general the music sounds like a lot of other shostakovich music - dry, sardonic, even witty - by the latter movements it just sounds like muted despair, or even resignation. that is, if the tempi are correct - it seems easy to miss this, in favor of something faster and pluckier. this works OK for the first movement, but it's worth having an ear towards how wooden some of this can sound. one of the things that came up during rehearsal for this piece was that many things could - and maybe should - sound so locked in that they were unmusical - and that has a striking sound that can be used to huge effect in this symphony.
he starts off by writing a bent and broken little tune which somehow manages to incorporate rigidified, dry snatches of rossini's william tell overture, as if these cheerful things have become brittle and stale. when prodded by authorities, he originally described it as a toy store, full of grotesque curiosities, but the only true part of this description (which was more a veneer for the sake of political correctness) was the grotesque part. by the time we get to the creepy little mishmash of cross rhythms and vaguely twelve-tone music at 4:23 which soon crescendoes into a sort of crippled climax, we know that there's not really any sense of the innocence or naivete that might be implied by the toy store description. we have to be kept on our toes by the rhythm and meter changes as well, which are not really grating but are unpredictable.
notice the use of percussion - celeste with the two introductory notes, and lots of xylophone solos. shostakovich does some fantastic writing for the percussion section during this symphony - wood block and castanets among the required instruments.
the returning motif of Eb-Ab-C-B-A is said to represent the name of his grandson, sascha. we all know of shosty's penchant for spelling out things in his music, usually his own name (and elmira, in symphony 10), so this is pretty likely.
bydlo means cattle in polish.
ok, the last and laziest bc i'm tired...
this has always been my favorite movement of the pictures, from the first time i played the suite to the third. i like the orchestral version's depiction of the ox coming, hulking by, and disappearing down the street (apparently the piano version does not have quite that range of color or movement).
here are both arrangements, mussorgsky's original for piano solo and ravel's orchestration.
it's a pretty simple depiction of an oxcart apparently hulking down the road. but i just looked up the picture of hartmann's that is apparently associated with this terrifically impressive little musical painting, and i'm actually kind of confused,
please leave a comment if you can find the ox, or its cart...
borodin seems to have been a bit of a pain to work with as a musical colleage/fellow composer (like all the mighty five except for balakirev, he was not a professional musician). it seems almost half of his stuff was either finished or orchestrated by glazunov and/or rimsky, and rimsky actually writes about the difficult night before the orchestration of polovtsian dances was due for rehearsal by the orchestra. apparently borodin had put off doing this so much that on the night before it was needed for copying/distribution, he hopped over to rimsky's house and the two of them plus anatoly liadov spent the whole night writing orchestra parts by hand.
if you know anything by borodin, it's either the very famous dance of the maidens from this little set of dances, or the nocturne from his string quartet no. 2.
ozawa/berlin.
there are several different dances, each ascribed to the different groups of people dancing. the first theme, in flute solo, with the distinctive triplets, is given in a slow 4/4 andantino, and is an introduction. it's followed by the most famous tune, at 0:58. this represents the dance of maidens. this theme plays with the a major key and its relative minor, giving a sort of modal feel. the diminished fourth in the second half of the phrase is a bit of "exotic" flavor to the melody.
at 3:10 we suddenly go into 3/4 with a more rambunctious galloping dance, which is representative of a general dance by everyone. it's actually got hints of ravel for me (or i guess it would be more accurate to say that ravel has traces of this type of festiveness and sliding chromatic scales in some of his colorful orchestral music).
5:17 goes back into duple meter, but is a brisk 6/8. this is apparently a dance of the boys, in presto. it builds to a sort of minor climax, but then all of a sudden we are back with the dance of the maidens at 6:40 or so. but then at 7:37 he decides to incorporate the theme from the dance of the boys in as well. they work well simply superimposed upon each other. then gradually the triplet rhythm takes over and we're back in the presto dance. now the tension starts building again for the second time.
now we get, in the same tempo, a running sixteenth note theme which i think that this particular recording skips the first time it's supposed to come around (which is directly after the first dance of the maidens). this is supposed to be a wild dance of men that first time, but along with a very very fast version of the introduction theme, it is now just a general dance. it leads to a rather rousing conclusion.
since this piece is part of an opera, i'll say a bit about what part of the opera these dances are supposed to represent. they occur at the bottom of act 2. prince igor has been captured by the polovtsy after his failed campaign, but since he didn't ask for mercy when he was captured, the ruler, Konchak, orders that he be treated like an honored guest, even offering him freedom on the condition that igor not wage war against them again. igor refuses, saying he can't lie, and konchak regrets that they were not born to be allies. he summons polovtsian slaves to entertain igor, and these dances are that entertainment.
the opera is, of course, about igor's escape and redemption. he returns and saves his own kingdom from destruction at the hands of a neighboring prince.
the main criticism of this opera is that it's not dramatically coherent, and borodin wrote his libretto pretty much as he composed the music. as a result they weren't able to make the music and the plotline cohere as well as they should have. and it also didn't help that he died before he finished, but this work was in progress for almost 20 years. so only pieces of it have really been enduring, this being one of them and the overture being the other.
for today's triple post due to my crazy laziness this weekend, three of the russian five (the loser on this one will be, unfortunately, mr. cui, who is so difficult to find music by that it almost seems amazing to me that we even remember that there were the russian five instead of four. maybe someday in the future i will make up for this).
balakirev is almost certainly the next least well-known after cesar cui, perhaps except among pianists. the majority of his repertoire was written for solo piano, and his career was as a mentor (to many composers that we do know rather more well, like rimsky), solo pianist, and musical intellectual. he did a lot to develop the state of musical perception in the public sphere and most of his works have a flair for the nationalistic. his primary influences were tchaikovsky, chopin, and glinka, and he was the only professional musician of the russian five, so he had to be, more or less, their PR man.
this concerto was begun in 1861, but not finished or published until after his death. the first movement was finished by 1862, but he stopped writing it. he picked it up again in 1906 and had not finished the last movement by 1910 when he died. the last movement was written mostly by his friend sergei liapunov, via sketches and directions from balakirev.
here we have what i'm pretty sure is the only recording on youtube... malcolm binns with conductor david lloyd-jones and the english northern philharmonia.
this work is written in basically sonata form. its key is said to refer to that of beethoven eroica, as well as schumann rhenish (also sounds a lot to me like the beginning of beethoven emperor). more or less all of balakirev's music was quite consciously to develop a language of nationalistic music, in a rather all-encompassing way that perhaps is better applied to him than it is for sibelius and grieg, other composers who are often just called "nationalistic." the first subject is a folksy motif introduced by an orchestra tutti. the piano comes in at 0:50, with a continuation of that idea, and includes lots of pianistic flourishes. somewhere along the way about 3 minutes in we get hints of themes in g-flat major. development begins at about 4:40. in sound and development this sounds to me quite a bit like tchaikovsky pc, but dale points out that the orchestration is generally a bit less pristine than it is in tchaikovsky, and that the use of folk material as main melodies a lot more for granted.
the first video ends basically just as the recap is beginning.
it's interesting that this concerto should fall so far out of the limelight when it seems to have much of the pizazz necessary for piano concerti to succeed. give it a listen and see if you think history has been unfair to it.
i know i'm not really doing much off the beaten path. after all youtube is flooded with high school orchestra recordings of this piece complete with comments of how this is their favorite piece EVER. it clearly requires little introduction. but i will branch out into a more diverse set of pieces after i have gotten into the swing of things. and anyway, this very fun piece deserves a bit more than mindless adulation.
this was written from 1887 to 1888, directly after he wrote capriccio espagnole, 1887 (op. 34), and scheherazade, 1888 (op. 35). right afterwards he basically stop writing orchestral works and focused entirely on opera. i think these three have proven more enduring than his operas, though.
this overture is a concert overture - no big opera or play attached to it - and is subtitled overture on liturgical themes. it's immediately clear why.
this is a reasonable recording by stokowski. there is one other decent one by maazel/cleveland, but i thought the stokowski a bit more interesting. there seem to be few professional recordings on youtube - the only other complete one i could find was by hollreiser/vpo, but the pitch on this recording is so high it basically just sounds like it's in the wrong key. there's also half of one by markevitch.
rimsky very much enjoyed playing around with liturgical themes and church tunes. in this piece he explicitly states that he was trying to explore both the pagan and religious aspects of the easter holiday. to that effect he actually puts in several bible verses into the score itself, and the main themes here are ostensibly church hymns, most prominently the paschal vigil (i tried to find a vid of this but only got crappy home vids, so this is the theme that the trombones give in the very beginning) and the angel cried, which is what the solo cello gives at 0:50. but there are tons more scattered around. see if you can pick out the lines that are hymns as you listen to the piece, but rimsky himself wrote a pretty comprehensive program note in his own autobiography, the excerpt which you can find here.
the cool thing about incorporating church hymns into music is that there are amazing ways of harmonizing them. especially for russian liturgical chants (or any chants really), all you are given is basically one unison line, and there are any number of ways to accompany this. what comes out can be purely major or minor, or, as rimsky ended up with sometimes in this work, modal. this flexibility goes for the rhythm too. usually with few rhythm markings, you can kind of stretch them to fit basically any meter. for example, the first theme, marked "lento mystico," is actually written in 5/2, though it's rather hard to tell from listening. it's not really important, as with chants, to stress strong and weak beats - this is more or less just for the sake of the notation. it's only after the first violin solo that we get something easier to nod our heads to.
apparently the violin solo, which crops up first at 0:29 and then again at 1:22 or so with the flute instead, is supposed to represent light from the sepulchre.
rimsky basically repeats himself twice in the first section, but he redoes the orchestration completely so that it still sounds fresh. the second time the original trombone theme comes back, it's maestoso, and written with reinforcement by a full string complement, which makes me hear, basically, an organ playing with several more stops pulled out.
we don't reach the "meat" of the piece until the allegro agitato at 3:52. here we get fast paced colorful writing - what everyone loves best about rimsky - with some occasional interludes for the violin solo theme to come back, and a more stretchy hymn (5:27). more grand entrances and even bells at the end are added for a huge climax at the end.
pretty much it's pure fun from the agitato until the end. but as one listens to this piece it's worth noting that even with the regular foot tapping rhythm, rimsky doesn't force these meter-less liturgical melodies into even, symmetric phrases. it makes this piece exotic and fun. not to mention all the fun off beat accents and syncopations. a good example is the slow hymn interlude. the chord at 5:37 would be longer in a less inventive person's piece.
the other thing one has to note is the saturation of pentatonic scale. they basically comprise the entirety of all the string parts (which are the busiest thing ever, but fortunately also the funnest thing to play).
this is a highly programmatic piece written by tchaik at the behest of the russian government during the serbian war against the ottoman empire. a propagandistic and accessible piece, it depicts russians coming to the aid of serbian military forces, premiered in moscow on nov 17, 1876.
wikipedia pretty much has the component themes and such explained, and i did this on a pops concert (complete with demos of the various motifs), so this is kind of a slacker entry...
from the beginning: here is a slavic melody called "Sunce jarko, ne sijas jednako," or "oh bright sun, your light is unequal."
tchaik directs this to be played with a funeral march's tempo and mood. notice the basses' ascending grace notes of doom that lends it that air, much like at least one other funeral march we can think of...
the other, more songful serb melody begins at about 1:10.
here's the battle that the serbs are laboring under at 1:24 - notice the dark brass ascending from underneath, the skittering of the strings.
at 3:10, here come the russians - a chipper little rustic tune. (if you want to see a really amusing conductor antic go just a few seconds before - about 3:00.)
here's god save the tsar at 4:34 (also an awesome little conductor gesture...). hmm, now what other piece might one ever have heard that before?
now they're just entering the battle - back come the warlike strains and a basic reprise of the two slavic melodies.
6:51 - according to my conductor last week, the russians *actually* help the serbs here.
