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PROGRAM NOTES
by Edward Yadzinsky
1862
Edvard Grieg
is born
Firebird is
composed
Igor Stravinsky
is born
Claude Debussy
is born
1843
Sponsored by Pride Source
1868
Piano Concerto
is composed
1882
1899
Nocturnes is
composed
2011
1910
Freylekhe Tanzen
is composed
Freylekhe Tanzen
Michael Schachter
Born 1987; Massachusetts
Born and raised in Massachusetts, Michael has been studying the piano since he
was five years old, but it was not until middle school that he developed a serious
passion for performing and creating music. In high school, he studied classical
piano, jazz piano, and composition. He went to Harvard University where he studied
composition and orchestration. Following his graduation, he traveled to Chennai, India,
where he studied South Indian classical singing and vina playing.
While living in Chennai, Michael and his wife, Allie, lived and worked at an NGO that provides a wide
array of human services. Upon returning to the United States they founded a non-profit organization
that sponsors education and living expenses for child victims of human trafficking.
Michael is currently working on a Ph.D. in Music Theory and Composition at U-M. Michael’s music
draws from an eclectic brew of influences including jazz and New Orleans, Renaissance polyphony,
Jewish liturgy and Klezmer, and South Indian classical music.
Freylekhe Tanzen was composed in 2011 as his thesis for his Master’s in Composition. The work is
heavily steeped in the liturgical and folk music of European Judaism. You’ll hear the sounds of the
shofar (an instrument made of a ram’s horn) and Klezmer tunes from Romania, Bulgaria, Spain and
Russia. The title means “joyous dances” in Yiddish. The first half of the piece centers on a slow triple
meter dance style known as a Zhok. The second half of the piece focuses on a lively duple meter style
known as Freylekh, a popular Klezmer dance.
© Program Notes copyright 2017 by Edward Yadzinsky
Edward Yadzinsky joined the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra as a clarinetist and saxophonist in 1963.
As an avant-garde performer, he has appeared across the US, Canada and Europe, and has recordings
including Echoi, by Lukas Foss, with the composer at the piano. As a composer Yadzinsky has written
various chamber music works and a ballet for full orchestra. He is a professor at State University of
NY at Buffalo, is the historian of the BPO.
Michael relates: “At the very beginning you’ll hear shofars in the audience
and their sound is imitated by the orchestra. At several points throughout the
piece you’ll hear this come back. After the shofar calls, you’ll hear one of the main
melodies of the piece, first in the horns, then the strings. Then the orchestra plays in a
very loud dramatic fashion. Later in the piece, you’ll hear that theme return in different
ways: twisted around in the slow Zhok, it comes back after one of the next horn calls.
Then it is transformed to make the melody of the Freylekhe. At the very end of the piece,
you’ll hear the horns take up that main melody, joining together these two forces.”
Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16
Edvard Grieg
Born June 15, 1843; Bergen, Norway
Died September 4, 1907; Bergen
“Romantic nationalism” was the term Edvard Grieg preferred for the muse
behind his music. To be sure, his scores are replete with Nordic motifs, whether
picturesque, literary or musical. Likewise, his revered Piano Concerto is plied
with tunes that bear a kinship to the folk heritage of Norway. We should add
that the same song-like manner is noted throughout Grieg’s catalog, including his
incidental music for Henrick Ibsen’s dramatic poem Peer Gynt (another work that
enjoys best-seller status in the symphonic repertoire). Though no less worthy, the remainder of Grieg’s
output is oddly far less performed, rich as it is with evocative symphonic works, volumes of chamber
music and more than 150 songs.
Grieg was an exalted romantic – and there was no shortage of those in the 19th century. But the composer
was no less carried away by the love scenes in Wagnerian opera (Grieg attended the premiere of the
complete Ring at Bayreuth) than he was with the intimate nuance of Chopin or the virtuosic abandon
of Liszt. For its time, that was a rare mix. In any case, Grieg became engaged to the accomplished
soprano Nina Hagerup in 1864 and within months began to score the current work, which he completed
in 1868, then revised in 1906.
Through the 20th century various historians have cited the Piano Concerto in A Minor as an example of
less formal construction (no big development of the main tunes as in the piano concertos of Beethoven
and Brahms, for example). Hardly. By any measure Opus 16 is no less a full-scale work. The issue is
rather about style – simple as that. Again, Grieg remained true to the siren call of song.
Grieg structured the work to suit his own preferences. He was surely not duty-bound to emulate some
cast-iron rule about requisite first and second themes, exposition, recapitulation, cadenza, coda, etc.
A rolling tonic in the timpani sets the concerto on its way before big chords from the piano break
like lightning onto the stage. Then follows that beguiling first melody in Nordic A minor, glacial and
searching, one of the signature moments in music. The second tune is in disarming C major, warm, tender
and probing. Listeners often note the development sounds as deeply Romantic as Serge Rachmaninoff,
except that Grieg’s concerto was scored almost ten years before the Russian master was born..! A
brilliant cadenza emerges not long before the movement closes with a high energy coda.
Those who are especially fond of the placid second movements throughout the concerto repertoire will
find lingering allure in the Adagio, set with tonal radiance in C-sharp major. The expression is soulful,
limpid as the waters of Norwegian fjords. Is that a mountaineer’s plaintive horn we hear at the close?
We are buffeted back into A minor at the first light of the third movement Allegro moderato. The
rhythmic base has a dance-like motility, light and sporty. But yet another poetic treat waits just around
the bend – a gorgeous and gentle digression in F major. Just as we begin to expect a veiled final curtain,
the lusty momentum returns, with the soloist in a gallant dash. In a brief wink from the baton, a final
cadenza transforms into a radiant close in gleaming A major.
Events of 1868 (Piano Concerto composed)
- Detroit’s William Davis obtains patent for an “icebox on wheels” used for shipping fruits and fish
- Ulysses S. Grant elected president
- Birth of Scott Joplin, ragtime composer
- Tungsten steel invented by R.F. Mushet in England
- Wayne State University founded
- QWERTY typwriter invented
- Manet paints Portrait of Émile Zola
- Tales of the Vienna Woods composed by Johann Strauss, Jr.
- Brahms Lullaby published
Nocturnes
Claude Debussy
Born August 22, 1862; Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
Died March 25, 1918; Paris
“A Little Night Music” has come a long way in the 200-plus years since
Mozart scored his nocturnal serenades, of which Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
is the best known. And along the way the “night motif” has inspired a lot of
dreamy output from a host of concert hall regulars like Schumann, Tchaikovsky,
Mendelssohn, Grieg and Fauré, with further contributions from 20th century
masters like Stravinsky, Bartók and Hindemith. And of course any reference to the
nocturne genre must include a glance to the greatest wealth from the lyrical night – i.e., the midnight
violets by Frederic Chopin scored in a set of 19 exquisite Nocturnes for solo piano.
With so much night music for inspiration one might naturally surmise that Debussy simply extended
the mode into the dawn of the 20th century. But in 1899, the arrow of inspiration was lofted from a
different muse – a familiar source for Debussy – the world of painting. The composer was a big fan
of the canvases of his friend and compatriot Claude Monet, the English artist J.M.W. Turner, and the
works of American James McNeill Whistler. The latter was an acquaintance who had in particular
drawn the composer’s attention for his series of paintings titled Nocturnes.
In fact, the painting-to-music translation had a lot of relevance to Debussy – just five years later he
converted the seascape oils of Monet and Turner into the musical imagery of the immensely popular
La Mer (The Sea). But there may be a further connection here: the third movement of the Nocturnes
is like a pre-echo to the third movement of La Mer which likewise offers the haunting chant of Sirens,
the mythical divas of the sea.
With regard to the style of Nocturnes, a brief digression is in order. Music historians like to chronicle
all the influences which combine into the creative DNA of a given composer. In that context Debussy’s
profile is exceedingly complicated because his artistic nature matured late in the 19th century, just as the
foundations of music, painting and literature were evolving towards modernity. For his part, Debussy was
thoroughly informed in music from the late Renaissance through Tchaikovsky; he became a masterful
pianist in the classical mold; he took the trouble to meet Brahms; he often showed up at Bayreuth to
witness Wagner’s operas first hand; he was also keen about the diversity in world literature.
But for all this conventionality, Debussy never wrote a concerto, a symphony or an overture. His métier
became what is today known as Impressionism – a term borrowed from painting. His style might have
easily been noted as Symbolism – reflecting his affinity for the freedoms of the Symbolist poets like
Verlaine, Baudelaire and Mallarmé.
For Debussy everything was to be blended into a “symbolic impression,” like the vague mix of colors
on a vast landscape or seascape canvas. On this point Debussy once remarked to French-American
composer Edgard Varèse: “I love painting (les images) almost as much as music itself.” About Nocturnes
the composer has provided the following guide:
“The title Nocturnes is intended to convey general impressions and subtle shades of light. Nuages
(Clouds) portrays the unchanging aspect of the sky, with the slow, melancholy motion of the
clouds, dying away in shades of grey tinged with white. Fêtes (Festivals) presents the movement
and dancing rhythm of the atmosphere, with sudden flashes of light; then a procession (a dazzling,
fantastic vision) passing through and merging with the festivities. But the original background
persists – the fête and its blend of music and luminous dust combining in a universal rhythm.
Sirènes evokes the sea and its innumerable rhythms; then, within the silver of the moonlit waves,
the mysterious song of the Sirens before they laugh and pass on.”
Events of 1899 (Nocturnes composed)
- Olds Motor Works established in Detroit
- Renault automobile company founded in France
- Fiat automobile company founded in Italy
- Aspirin is developed in Germany
- Paul Gaugin paints Two Tahitian Women
- Most popular song is My Wild Irish Rose
- Maple Leaf Rag published by Scott Joplin
- Coca-Cola bottled for the first time
- The hamburger is introduced in the U.S.
The Firebird Suite
Igor Stravinsky
Born June 17, 1882; near St. Petersburg, Russia
Died April 6, 1971; New York City
Stravinsky vaulted onto the world’s musical stage with a triple grand jeté:
the years 1910, 1911 and 1913 witnessed the premieres of his ballets Firebird,
Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Each of them was commissioned by Serge
Diaghilev for the renowned Ballets Russes in Paris. In three short years the universe
of symphonic music was suddenly never the same, as if struck by lightning from Apollo. At once
orchestral music became more expansive and far less orderly, and made safe for Viennese atonality
and the burgeoning avant-garde.
Among Stravinsky’s breakaway ballets, Firebird maintains the closest musical ties to the heritage of
classical dance theater in the manner of Bolshoi in Moscow and Kirov in St. Petersburg. In this case
the lineage is traceable to the influence of Stravinsky’s mentor/master Rimsky-Korsakov, to whom the
work is dedicated. After the success of Firebird, Stravinsky revisited the score on three later occasions
to derive separate concert suites from the full ballet. For this A2SO performance, Maestro Lipsky has
selected the composer’s 1919 version of the concert suite.
About the fantastic nature of Russian legend, Stravinsky once observed that the stories typically involve
heroes who are “...simple, naïve, sometimes even stupid, devoid of all malice – but always victorious
over characters who are clever, artful, cruel and powerful.”
Indeed, Firebird has such a hero – Prince Ivan – a simple hunter and benevolent ruler of an artless little
kingdom situated in the deep woods of an exotic mountain. One day Ivan stumbles upon the forest
hideaway of an evil ogre named Kashchei, who has kidnapped and imprisoned 13 beautiful Princesses.
Ivan rescues them through the enchanting powers of a mystical bird of fire.
With haunting intonations the Introduction features the somber colors of low, enchanted strings. In
turn, the Firebird’s Dance and Variation reveals a fantastic creature from the mythological menagerie –
half-woman, half-bird, resplendent in flaming plumage, with intoxicating swirls en pointe. For contrast,
the Princesses gather for a Khorovod (an ancient Round Dance) set to a Romantic-styled folk melody,
with lucent harmonies brushed in by the piccolo, flutes, oboe and clarinet.
Then – just as we are lulled into a dreamy seance – ZAP..! – a wild, air-shredding rip from the piccolo
sends us reeling into the Infernal Dance of King Kashchei. Hold tight for profane rhythms, biting brass,
hot percussion and every conceivable timbre à la grotesque. With a single plume from the Firebird,
Prince Ivan destroys the evil Kashchei and frees the captured maidens, one of whom will become
his bride. The Berceuse (Lullaby) provides a lovely respite after the victory. The ballet ends with the
wedding of Ivan and his chosen Princess, represented by the music of the Finale, with a lambent, solo
horn over cathedral-styled sonorities at the close.
Events of 1910 (Firebird composed)
- Detroit’s population of 465,766 is ranked 9th in US
- Special education in Detroit schools was among the earliest in nation
- NAACP is founded in New York
- Kent State University founded in Ohio
- Boy Scouts of America is founded by painter “Uncle Dan” Beard
- Camp Fire Girls of America is founded by Luther H. Gulick
- Comiskey Park opens in Chicago
- Penn Station opens in New York
- Animated cartoons appear in films