Shostakovich wrote the work for his friend Mstislav Rostropovich, who committed it to memory in four days and gave the premiere on October 4, 1959, with Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra in the Large Hall of the Leningrad Conservatory. — Wikipedia
Although titled a “Rhapsody”, this work is actually a set of variations for solo piano and orchestra. It is based on a theme composed by Niccolò Paganini, the great 19th-century Italian violin virtuoso, in his 24th Caprice for solo violin. The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini consists of 24 separate, highly diverse variations, each based on Paganini’s original theme, with close collaboration between the soloist and orchestra. For the solo pianist, the Rhapsody is an extraordinary tour-de-force, with technical demands intermixed with delicate passagework, cadenzas and ultimate Romantic lyricism.
The work can be divided into several broad sections: an opening fast section (Introduction and Variations I-V); a more free-form “rhapsodic” section (Variations VI-XI); a minuet and scherzando section (Variations XII-XV); a slow section, including the emotional heart of the work (Variations XVI-XVIII); and a rousing finale (Variations XIX-XXIV).
Unconventionally, it does not open with the theme itself, but with a bare harmonic skeleton; the theme itself appears in Variation II, appropriately introduced by the violins. In Variation VII, Rachmaninoff introduces a notable counter-theme based on the Dies Irae, a medieval Latin hymn referring to Judgment Day, and a tune with which Rachmaninoff had a life-long fascination. Probably the best known part of the Rhapsody is Variation XVIII, with its lush romantic theme played first by the solo pianist, and taken up in turn by the orchestra. The last section of the Rhapsody is a driving accelerando and ends, after a forceful reprise of the Dies Irae, with a witty pianistic flourish.
Prokofiev composed the original version of the Overture on Hebrew Themes during his sojourn in New York in 1920. He composed it for a chamber group that specialized in Klezmer and other Jewish music; the original orchestration was for clarinet, string quartet and piano. The piece became so popular that he was later asked to arrange it for full orchestra. It consists of two main melodies ostensibly taken from Jewish folk tunes – the first very much in the Klezmer tradition, prominently featuring the clarinet and hairpin dynamics; the second a melody played at Jewish weddings and featuring the ‘cellos and horn.
Debussy composed this atmospheric work in 1909-10 as an audition/competition piece for the Paris Conservatoire.
Originally composed for clarinet and piano, it was officially premiered in 1911 by the Conservatoire’s clarinet professor, Prosper Mimart. Debussy was most pleased after hearing the performance, considering it one of the most pleasing pieces he had ever written. He then proceeded to orchestrate it in 1911, and it is best known in that setting.
The “Première Rhapsodie” is mostly free-form. Although only 8 minutes long, it is musically rich while making great technical and musical demands on the soloist. A slow, dreamy opening gives way to a haunting clarinet theme, later characterized by third and sixth intervals. Clarinet mini-cadenzas and flourishes abound against poignant whole-tone chords in the winds and strings. The latter part of the Rhapsodie is a spirited scherzando that accelerates to a climax in the horns. A soaring clarinet cadenza ends this work with a flourish.
Stravinsky’s music for Pulcinella marks his transition from a Russian idiom, evidenced in earlier works like the Firebird and Petrushka, to a “neo-classic” style focusing on smaller-scale works characterized by order, balance, style and clarity.
Pulcinella was originally conceived as a ballet, premiered in Paris in 1920 by the renowned Ballet Russes. Four great 20th-century artists collaborated to create the ballet — Stravinsky (music), Pablo Picasso (scenery and costumes), Léonide Massine (choreographer) and Sergei Diaghilev (impresario). At Diaghilev’s suggestion, Stravinsky based the ballet music on works composed by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, a gifted baroque Italian composer of the early 18th century — or so he thought! Modern musicological research has shown that many works formerly attributed to Pergolesi were actually written by other composers, having been spuriously attributed to Pergolesi after his death.
In the ballet, 11 of the 21 numbers are based on works written by obscure 18th- or 19th-century composers, including Domenico Gallo, Carlo Ignazio Monza, and Graf Willem Unico van Wassenaer (an 18th-century Dutch nobleman whose music we have played in previous concerts).
The Pulcinella ballet was a great success, and in 1922 Stravinsky combined 12 of the ballet’s musical excerpts into the 8-movement suite for chamber orchestra which we’re performing today. While the movements retain much of their 18th-century origins, Stravinsky recomposed and reworked them for modern instruments, while adding his own unique rhythmic and harmonic features. All of the suite’s movements contain baroque elements; it’s the orchestrations, sonorities, and rhythmic variations — some of which would certainly jar the baroque ear — which clearly stamp this as Stravinsky’s work.
The noted German composer Paul Hindemith emigrated from Nazi Germany in 1938 and came to the United States in 1940. He was approached that year by Russian choreographer Léonide Massine to write music for a ballet based on works by the German composer Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826). When the project fell through due to artistic disagreements, Hindemith nonetheless went ahead with his Weber project in 1943, composing his most popular work, the “Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber.” It’s a brilliant, audacious and dramatic piece. Hindemith based it on four obscure Weber piano duets which he often played with his wife. One of these pieces (Turandot) is based on an old Chinese pentatonic tune; Weber also arranged that tune as an orchestral overture, which The Broadway Bach Ensemble performed a few years ago.
Hindemith took Weber’s charming piano duets and utterly transformed them into a work of symphonic proportions. Hindemith scored this work for a large orchestra, including a substantial percussion section, and added English horn, bass clarinet and contrabassoon to the usual string, woodwind and brass forces.
The opening Allegro is fiercely rhythmical, interspersed with lyrical wind solos, interrupted towards the end by timpani and percussion crashes. The Turandot scherzo elaborates its pentatonic theme in all sections of the orchestra; Hindemith develops it into a brass and percussion jazz fugue, with a striking section just for timpani and percussion. The dreamy Andantino is a calm in the storm, introspective and lyrical, with clarinet, bassoon and horn solos ending with a running flute obbligato. The closing Marsch moves relentlessly forward — propelled to a heroic theme played first by the horns, then taken up in turn by brass, winds and strings. The piece closes in dramatic fashion with a spectacular ending.
This Suite is taken from the ballet Billy the Kid written for the American Ballet Caravan at the suggestion of its director Lincoln Kirstein and based on a story by Eugene Loring. The following is a quotation from an article by Aaron Copland, Notes on a Cowboy Ballet.
The ballet begins and ends on the open prairie. The first scene is a street in a frontier town. Cowboys saunter into town, some on horseback, others on foot with their lassos; some Mexican women do a jarabe, which is interrupted by a fight between two drunks. Attracted by the gathering crowd, Billy is seen for the first time, a boy of twelve, with his mother. The brawl turns ugly, guns are drawn, and in some unaccountable way, Billy’s mother is killed. Without an instant’s hesitation, in cold fury, Billy draws a knife from a cowhand’s sheath and stabs his mother’s slayers. His short but famous career has begun. In swift succession we see episodes in Billy’s later life—at night, under the stars, in a quiet card game with his outlaw friends, hunted by a posse led by his former friend Pat Garrett, in a gun battle. A drunken celebration takes place when he is captured. Billy makes one of his legendary escapes from prison. Tired and worn out in the desert, Billy rests with his girl. Finally the posse catches up with him.
John Cheever (1912-1982) was one of the most important American short fiction writers of the 20th century. Sometimes called “the Chekhov of the suburbs,” his stories are mostly set in the Upper East side and the New York suburbs. His themes focus on the duality of human nature, often expressed as the disparity between a character’s decorous social persona and inner corruption. A compilation of his short stories, The Stories Of John Cheever, won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize For Fiction and a National Book Critics Circle Award, and its first paperback edition won a 1981 National Book Award. —from Wikipedia
In 1979 Jonathan Tunick was engaged by WNET to compose the music for a series of television dramas based on Cheever’s short stories. The composer has adapted some of his music from the series into a suite for full orchestra entitled “Cheever Country“, in three movements:
I. The Five Forty-Eight: A commuter train en route from Grand Central Station to the suburbs.
II. Amy’s Theme: Amy, an eight-year-old girl, attempts to discourage her parents’ excessive drinking by pouring their liquor down the drain. A succession of housekeepers are blamed for this and fired, until Amy is revealed as the culprit. Realizing the pain they are causing their daughter, Amy’s parents resolve to seek treatment.
III. Shady Hill Sequence: A theme and variations describing a suburban town, superficially idyllic but with an undertone of decadence.
“Thinking like a mountain” is a term coined by Aldo Leopold in his influential book A Sand County Almanac. In the section entitled “Sketches Here and There” Leopold discusses the thought process as a holistic view on where one stands in the entire ecosystem.
The essay “Thinking Like A Mountain” crystallizes Aldo Leopold’s philosophy about the balance of nature and our ethical relationship towards its preservation. It is the personal confession of one who momentarily upset that balance and whose remorse became the catalyst which prompted him to become a leader in the environmental movement.
In setting this powerful essay, I wanted to paint a portrait of the mountain. I was fascinated by the overlapping life cycles of the many elements which shared the mountain’s space, from the slow progression of the rocks to the flickering instant of the insects. They simultaneously inhabited the same world and I saw a parallel in the music, where multiple tempos and melodic lines can co-exist. Rather than illustrating the literal sound effects of nature, this music seeks to give voice to an inner natural order built on the primary elements of acoustics as described by Pythagoras. At this level, mathematics and the natural order have much in common with the structure of mountains. This composition was commissioned by a consortium including Explore Park in Virginia, The Billings Symphony in Montana, The Elgin Symphony in Illinois and the Shanghai Symphony in China.
A Little Night Music, suggested by Ingmar Bergman’s film Smiles of a Summer Night, is a romantic and sophisticated musical comedy, one of Stephen Sondheim’s most popular works. Swimming in a giddy atmosphere of romance, mystery and the waltz, there is no better example of its author’s penchant for an erudite, whimsical and knowing chuckle at the human condition.
In 2015 Jonathan Tunick created an orchestral suite from the score for a Sondheim Celebration concert at the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago. This performance marks the work’s New York premiere.
The songs included are: Night Waltz; Now/Later/Soon; You Must Meet my Wife; In Praise of Women; A Weekend in the Country; Send in the Clowns; Night Waltz (reprise).