Download Knoxville - Reading Symphony Orchestra

Notes on the Program by DR. RICHARD E. RODDA
Symphonic Dances from West Side Story .............................................................................................. Leonard Bernstein
(1918-1990)
Composed in 1957.
Broadway opening on September 26, 1957, conducted by Max Goberman; the Symphonic Dances were premiered in
concert on February 13, 1961 in New York, conducted by Lukas Foss.
West Side Story was one of the first musicals to explore a serious subject with wide social implications. More than just
the story of the tragic lives of ordinary people in a grubby section of New York, it was concerned with urban violence,
juvenile delinquency, clan hatred and young love. Much of the show’s electric atmosphere was generated by its brilliant
dance sequences, for which Jerome Robbins won the 1957-1958 Tony Award for choreography. In 1961, Bernstein chose
a sequence of dance music from West Side Story to assemble as a concert work, and Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal executed
the orchestration of these “Symphonic Dances” under the composer’s direction. Bernstein said that he called these
excerpts “symphonic” not because they were arranged for full orchestra but because many of them grew, like a classical
symphony, from a few basic themes transformed into a variety of moods to fit the play’s action and emotions.
Knoxville: Summer of 1915 ...........................................................................................................................Samuel Barber
for Soprano and Orchestra, Op. 24
(1910-1981)
Composed in 1947-1948.
Premiered on April 9, 1948 in Boston, with Eleanor Steber as soloist and Sergei Koussevitzky conducting.
In 1947, the American soprano Eleanor Steber commissioned a work from Samuel Barber she could perform with
Sergei Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Barber’s father was terminally ill at the time, and the composer
had recently been moved by a collection of prose and poetry by James Agee that recalled to him his youth and the happy
times with his family in years gone by. Barber selected excerpts from Agee’s anthology as the basis for his commissioned
piece, and set them as Knoxville: Summer of 1915. The work was dedicated to the “memory of my father.” At the head of
the score appears the poignant phrase, “We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I
lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.” Knoxville: Summer of 1915 vividly captures the bittersweet
nostalgia associated with the recall of the warm, simple, loving moments of youth.
In the South, “Alassio,” Op. 50, ..................................................................................................................... Edward Elgar
(1857-1934)
Composed in 1904.
Premiered on March 16, 1904 in London, conducted by the composer.
As a restorative for body and spirit during the damp British winter, Elgar and his devoted wife, Alice, left London for
the Mediterranean coastal town of Bordighera, just east of Monte Carlo, on November 21,1903. Elgar found Bordighera
“lovely but too Cockney for me,” and on December 11th, the couple travelled up the coast to Alassio to take rooms at the
Villa San Giovanni, from which Elgar reported that he could see “streams, flowers, hills, with the distant snow mountains
in one direction and the blue Mediterranean in the other.”
On one sunny afternoon, the Elgars made an outing to an old church in the village of Moglio, the sound of whose
name so appealed to Elgar that he repeated it over and over to himself until it had generated a musical motive in his mind.
He added this fragment to the other sketches he was accumulating for an overture, called tentatively In the South, but it
was not until an excursion to the Vale of Andora four days later that the finished shape and content of the new work
became clear to him. The score of In the South, to which Elgar appended the subtitle Alassio, was finished in London on
February 21, 1904. The work’s premiere on March 16th confirmed his reputation as the leader of English music; he was
knighted four months later.
Though Elgar called In the South an overture, its scale, orchestral expansiveness, evocative episodes and even its form
make it, in effect, a symphonic poem. Its allusive qualities are indicated by two poetic excerpts the composer placed at the
head of the score. The first is from Tennyson: What hours were thine and mine, In lands of palm and southern pine, In
lands of palm, of orange blossom. The other excerpt was culled from Byron’s Childe Harold, the literary inspiration for
Berlioz’s Harold in Italy: ... a land Which was the mightiest in its old command And is the loveliest ... Wherein were cast
... the men of Rome! Thou art the garden of the world.
Elgar contained his vision within a modified sonata form, which was made to accommodate two atmospheric episodes
in place of the usual development section. An entire procession of fine melodic ideas occupies the first theme area: a
heroic leaping motive; a striding downward melody marked with the composer’s most characteristic performance
instruction, Nobilmente; and a gentle, limpid strain led by the clarinet. The formal second theme, assigned to the strings, is
quiet and almost passionately lyrical. The center of In the South holds two of Elgar’s most evocative sound pictures. The
first is a bold depiction inspired by his vision of ancient Roman armies; the second grows from a haunting, bucolic
melody entrusted to the solo viola. A full recapitulation of the earlier themes rounds out In the South.
Romeo and Juliet, Fantasy-Overture ........................................................................................... Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840-1893)
Composed in 1869, revised in 1870 and 1880.
Premiered on March 16, 1870 in Moscow, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein.
Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet is in a carefully constructed sonata form, with introduction and coda. The slow
opening section, in chorale style, depicts Friar Lawrence. The exposition (Allegro giusto) begins with a vigorous,
syncopated theme depicting the conflict between the Montagues and the Capulets. The conflict subsides and the wellknown love theme (used here as a contrasting second theme) is sung by the English horn to represent Romeo’s passion; a
tender, sighing phrase for muted violins suggests Juliet’s response. A stormy development section utilizing the driving
main theme and the theme from the introduction denotes the continuing feud between the families and Friar Lawrence’s
urgent pleas for peace. The crest of the fight ushers in the recapitulation, in which the thematic material from the
exposition is considerably compressed. Juliet’s sighs again provoke the ardor of Romeo, whose motive is here given a
grand, emotional setting that marks the work’s emotional high point. The tempo slows, the mood darkens, and the coda
emerges with a sense of impending doom. The themes of the conflict and of Friar Lawrence’s entreaties sound again, but
a funereal drum beats out the cadence of the lovers’ fatal pact. Romeo’s theme appears for a final time in a poignant
transformation before the closing woodwind chords evoke visions of the flight to celestial regions.
©2015 Dr. Richard E. Rodda