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Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra Béla Bartók (1881–1945) Written: 1937-­‐38 Movements: Three Style: 20th Century Contemporary Duration: 36 minutes Bartók wrote his Second Violin Concerto just when Europe was disintegrating, right before World War II. He wrote to a friend: I see that Hungarian politics is steering the country on an ever more distorted course . . . There is the imminent danger that Hungary too will surrender herself to this regime of thieves and murderers. I do not feel like meeting people, everyone is suspected of being a Nazi. . . . Nearly all of our 'educated' Christians are adherents of the Nazi regime; I feel quite ashamed of coming from this class. Yet Bartók biographer György Kroó rightly claims that the Violin Concerto "is a work written by a composer who loved life and people, and who had found true harmony." Bartók began writing this violin concerto at the request of his old friend, and virtuoso violinist, Zoltán Székely. Bartók suggested a large-­‐form theme and variations rather than the standard concerto. Though Székely resisted and Bartók eventually gave in, both men ended up getting their own way. The middle movement of this standard three-­‐movement work is a set of theme and variations and the last movement is so entirely based on the themes of the first movement that it could be called a variation of it. Bartók constructed both the first and third movements in a standard sonata-­‐allegro form in which he presents contrasting themes at the beginning, develops them in the middle and then restates them at the end of the movement. The first theme (remember that the third movement themes are really just variants of the themes in the first) has a rhapsodic character, almost like a Hungarian folk song. This leads to a contrasting second theme, which contains all twelve notes of the chromatic scale! Some would think that he was delving into the atonal twelve-­‐tone techniques of Arnold Schoenberg, but Bartók had other ideas. The great violinist Yehudi Menuhin recalls a phone conversation with Bartók about the concerto: Knowing that I had just performed his great concerto, Bartók probed to see how well I had grasped it, asking particularly my opinion of a passage in the first movement. 'It's rather chromatic,' I offered. 'Yes, it's chromatic,' he said. 'Well, I wanted to show Schoenberg that one can use all twelve tones and still remain tonal.' Bartók uses the development to toy with the first theme melodically and rhythmically, sometimes slowing the theme down, and sometimes even writing it upside-­‐down. After the restatement of the themes, the soloist gets a solo cadenza. If you listen very closely at the beginning of this cadenza, you'll hear Bartók's first use of quarter-­‐tones, intervals that are smaller than any other interval in standard music. The second movement is a set of six variations on a beautiful melody. After a statement of the theme, the first variation is an embellishment of it over the timpani and plucked strings of the double-­‐
basses. In the second variation, the theme is broken into smaller parts and periodically interrupted by the harp. The third variation features the soloist playing many notes simultaneously, known as multiple-­‐stops. The lower strings get the tune in the fourth variation as the soloist rhapsodizes above them. The pace quickens for the fifth variation, a jesting version of the theme. Finally, while the soloist embellishes the tune, the rest of the strings play the theme in a three-­‐part canon—essentially a round. At the end of the movement, the original theme comes back, this time an octave higher. The movement ends wistfully, just as the third movement crashes in with its variants of the themes from the first. ©2015 John P. Varineau Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 Heitor Villa-­‐Lobos (1887–1959) Written: 1938 and 1945 Movements: Two Style: Contemporary Duration: Eleven minutes The most authoritative English music reference, the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians hails Heitor Villa-­‐Lobos as “the single most significant creative figure in 20th-­‐century Brazilian art music. . . . As widely different in sound structure or style as many of his works may be, his express intent was directed towards the best representation of . . . the multiple and varied Brazilian cultural traditions.” Villa-­‐Lobos learned music from his father, himself an amateur musician. “With him I always attended rehearsals, concerts and operas,” Villa-­‐Lobos said. “I also learned how to play the clarinet, and I was required to identify the genre, style, character and origin of compositions, in addition to recognizing quickly the name of a note, of sounds or noises . . . Watch out, when I didn't get it right.” His father also taught him the cello, and aside from that instruction, Villa-­‐Lobos was self-­‐taught. He made his living by playing in cafes, and eventually played in the Rio de Janeiro Opera and other orchestras. By 1917, he had already composed nearly one hundred works. When the French composer Darius Milhaud—a member of the infamous group of composers called “Les Six”—came to Brazil to work in the embassy during World War I, he became an advocate of Villa-­‐Lobos. The Russian pianist and composer Artur Rubinstein also befriended Villa-­‐Lobos, championed his works wherever he travelled, and helped him get a government grant to go to Paris “to advertise his achievements.” He presented a series of enormously successful concerts there and rubbed shoulders with many of the leading contemporary composers who gravitated towards Paris. In 1930, he moved back to Brazil for good where he started several music schools. By the 1940s, he had an international reputation with many important conductors championing his music. Villa-­‐Lobos was always interested in the folk music of his native Brazil. Beginning with his return to Brazil in 1930, he began writing a series of nine works that he called Bachianas Brazileiras. He described them as a . . . special kind of musical composition based on an intimate knowledge of the great works of J. S. Bach and also on the composer's affinity with the harmonic, contrapuntal and melodic atmosphere of the folklore of the northeastern region of Brazil. The composer considers Bach a universal and rich folkloristic source, deeply rooted in the folk music of every country in the world. Thus Bach is a mediator among all races. Villa-­‐Lobos wrote the first movement of his fifth Bachianas Brazileiras in 1938 for a soprano soloist accompanied by eight cellos. Perhaps the best known of all of his works, it begins with the singer and first cellist intoning a sensuous, wordless song over a typically “motoric” pizzicato rhythm that characterizes much of Bach’s music. A bittersweet and impassioned song, with lyrics by Ruth Corrêa, interrupts the movement, and then the wordless music returns, this time hummed by the singer. The much faster second movement, added by Villa-­‐Lobos in 1945, uses lyrics by Manuel Bandeira. The rhythm here is more Brazilian than Bachian, ending with a flourish. © 2015 John P. Varineau “La puerta del vino” and “Les collines d’Anacapri” from Préludes Claude Debussy (1862-­‐1918) Orchestrated by Colin Matthews (1946) Written: 1911–13 (orchestrated in 2003 and 2006) Style: Impressionistic Duration: Seven minutes To our ears, influenced by jazz, rock-­‐and-­‐roll, and numerous other popular idioms, as well as the craziness of contemporary classical music, the music of Debussy may strike us as merely beautiful and colorful. But when he was writing it, Debussy was breaking the cherished rules of composition established through hundreds of years of practice from before the time of Bach, through Mozart and Beethoven all of the way up to Brahms. Dissonance, that tension-­‐
producing clash of sound that must be resolved properly into a relaxing consonance (according to the rules), became an opportunity for new color. Rhythm, the thing that organized music into neat little manageable packets, disintegrated under Debussy: “Barlines are like children; they should be seen and not heard.” Even the long soaring romantic melody of the nineteenth century was under pressure from Debussy. “Any sounds in any combination and in any succession are henceforth free to be used in a musical continuity,” he wrote. Debussy succeeded in using sound in a similar way that the Impressionist – and later, Fauvist – painters used color. His music is almost like a painting: You focus on different parts, reveling in the play of color. Both pieces by Debussy on tonight’s program started out as piano pieces. Debussy wrote a series of twenty-­‐four Préludes, arranged into two books of twelve each. Interestingly, he put the title of each Prélude at the end of each, as if to say, “oh, this is what I was trying to depict.” The Hallé Orchestra asked the British composer Colin Matthews to arrange some of the Préludes. He explains the process: I did not originally plan to orchestrate all of Debussy’s Préludes . . . but I did decide that I would go in at the deep end by tackling two of the most pianistic preludes. . . . This initial venture seemed to work . . . and gradually I realised that I was going to have to transcribe all twenty-­‐four preludes. Why undertake such a project? In my own (very inadequate) playing of the pieces I had always heard the sounds of the orchestra. . . . I have always enjoyed working with the music of other composers and the insights that this brings, and the challenge of adding around ninety minutes to Debussy’s orchestral sound-­‐world proved irresistible. I decided early on that I would remain faithful to that remarkable sound-­‐world, and not try to convert the Préludes into something that they were not. But in order to avoid contriving a pastiche of Debussy’s orchestral style I kept the sound in my head and did not look at a single orchestral score of Debussy’s while working on the project. La Puerta del Vino (The Wine Gate). After a postcard of the Alhambra sent by Manuel de Falla. A habanera which Debussy marks to be played ‘with abrupt contrasts of extreme violence and passionate sweetness’. Les collines d’Anacapri (The hills of Anacapri). Possibly inspired by the label of a wine bottle, this is a mixture of exuberance and reflection, another prelude to which I added an expanded coda. ©2015 John P. Varineau and Colin Matthews The Pines of Rome Ottorino Respighi (1879–1936) Written: 1924 Movements: Four (played without pause) Style: Contemporary Duration: 23 minutes When it comes to the music of the twentieth century, scholars tend to focus on the “giants”—
those composers whose works break with the past and set music on new paths. Those giants—like Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg—produced most of their earth-­‐shattering works in the first thirty years of the century. They had a powerful influence on all music. But there are also the “not-­‐so-­‐giants” who were actively writing at the same time. Their music, much of it very interesting and good, has had a difficult time making it into the standard repertoire. Because of his conservative nature, Ottorino Respighi never made it into the pantheon of the great composers. Nevertheless, in terms of mastering the craft of writing for orchestra, he has few equals. Respighi didn’t want to be avante-­‐garde. Instead, “he desired above all to compose music that would speak to his compatriots about all aspects of their beloved country in a musical language that was beautiful and easy for ordinary people to accept and enjoy.” The works that he is best known for are a series of three symphonic pictures called tone poems. In each, Respighi handles the orchestra as if it were a canvas on which he paints vivid sound colors. The first, written in 1916, is called The Fountains of Rome and the third, Roman Festivals was written in 1928. The second, The Pines of Rome, was written in 1924. Thankfully, these works are part of the standard repertoire and are audience favorites. Writing in the third person, Respighi provided the following comment for the first Philadelphia Orchestra performance of The Pines of Rome: While in his preceding work, The Fountains of Rome, the composer sought to reproduce by means of tone an impression of nature, in The Pines of Rome he uses nature as a point of departure, in order to recall memories and visions. The century-­‐old trees which dominate so characteristically the Roman landscape become testimony for the principal events in Roman life. For further clarification, he included the following explanation in the score: The Pines of Villa Borghese: Children are at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian equivalent of “Ring around a Rosy”; mimicking marching soldiers and battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows at evening; and they disappear. Suddenly the scene changes to – The Pines near a Catacomb: We see the shadows of the pines, which overhang the entrance of a catacomb. From the depths rises a chant which reechoes solemnly, like a hymn, and is then mysteriously silenced. The Pines of the Janiculum: There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of Gianicolo’s Hill. A nightingale sings (represented by a recording of a nightingale song, heard from the orchestra). The Pines of the Appian Way. Misty dawn on the Appian Way: The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines; indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of innumerable steps. To the poet’s fantasy appears a vision of past glories; trumpets blare, and the army of the Consul advances brilliantly in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the Sacred Way, mounting in triumph the Capitoline Hill. ©2015 John P. Varineau