Download Program Notes Classics #4 - Tchaikovsky`s Capriccio Italien - 11

Program Notes
Classics #4 - Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio Italien - 11-19 November 2011
By Laurie Shulman ©2011
First North American Serial Rights Only
For people who live in Northern Europe, where the winters can be long and harsh, Italy is
paradise: sunny, warm, beautiful, and welcoming. This weekend’s program presents three
different ‘takes’ on the Italian experience, with nary an Italian composer in sight – though Italy’s
greatest writer does make a surrogate appearance.
In fact, literature is the other common thread on this concert. Both Berlioz’s Harold en
Italie and Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini were inspired by poetry. Each composition is a
musical response to the literary original. “It’s definitely an all-Italian program,” concurs JoAnn
Falletta, “but we are hearing foreigners’ views of Italy.”
We begin with Harold en Italie (1834), a unique work that is part concerto, part
symphony, part programmatic tone poem. Berlioz visited Italy after he won the Prix de Rome in
1830. The Eternal City did not appeal to him, but he found the surrounding countryside and the
Italian mountains enchanting. When the virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini acquired a rare
Stradivarius viola in 1833, he asked Berlioz to compose a piece for him to play on the
instrument. The result was Harold, a work inspired by Byron’s masterpiece Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage.
Each of its movements evokes a colorful Italian landscape. Harold – the solo viola – is
present for each scene. First we hear his mixed melancholy and joy as he wanders in the
mountains. Then he observes a group of pilgrims marching. In the third movement, Berlioz
emulates the shepherds [pifferari] piping. Again, Harold revels in the countryside. In the finale,
a band of brigands is having a wild party in their secluded lair.
“Berlioz intended Harold as a tribute to Paganini, putting the viola in the heroic role of
Harold,” explains Ms. Falletta. “It’s ironic: Paganini rejected the work because it wasn’t
virtuosic enough. But what great music! For me, this concert is also a tribute to our astonishing
and wonderful principal viola, Beverly Baker. I’m so happy she is playing it with us.”
The all-Tchaikovsky second half gives us the yin and yang of the Russian master’s Italian
impressions. His literary inspiration for Francesca da Rimini (1877) was Canto V of Dante’s
Inferno. The heroine Francesca is in an unhappy arranged marriage to an older, crippled man.
She falls in love with his younger brother, Paolo. When her husband discovers their adulterous
affair, he kills the lovers with his dagger. For their sin, they are consigned to the second circle of
Hell.
“I also read through Inferno when I was learning Italian, and was very taken with the
story of Francesca and Paolo,” recalls Ms. Falletta. “Tchaikovsky lavishes so much
compositional beauty on Francesca da Rimini. You can hear her voice in the clarinet, and Paolo
next to her, crying, and the whining of the winds. It’s graphic and remarkable – truly masterful
writing for orchestra.”
Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio italien (1880) is cut from a different bolt of cloth. It starts out
on the somber side, but Italian high spirits soon prevail and the music turns to merrymaking.
“Capriccio italien has great power, even though it’s practically a pops piece,” declares Ms.
Falletta. “Tchaikovsky knows what the instruments can do in a virtuoso way. He brings them to
their limit in the most thrilling fashion. He has a gift for mixing families of instruments just right
– like cantabile strings along with mighty brass. I hear the
ballet element in everything
Tchaikovsky writes, in his sense of rhythm. You can practically dance to both these scores!”
Capriccio’s opening fanfare is based on a bugle call that the composer heard at a military
barracks near his accommodations in Rome. He builds a sober march out of this tune, eventually
introducing popular Italian songs that give the piece lilt and excitement. At the end, all Rome is
celebrating in the streets.
More extensive program notes by Laurie Shulman are available on the Virginia Symphony web
site.
Harold en Italie, Op.16
Hector Berlioz
Born 11 December, 1803 in La-Côte-Saint-André, France
Died 8 March, 1869 in Paris
Approximate duration 43 minutes
George Gordon, Lord Byron, was the quintessential romantic figure. A dashing, wellborn Briton of astonishing good looks and prodigious literary gifts, he led a scandalous personal
life that did nothing to quell his popularity. The work that established his international reputation
was Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a long narrative poem in Spenserian stanzas that is loosely
biographical. In medieval parlance ‘childe’ designates a young man of noble birth who has not
yet been knighted. Byron’s hero is bored and disillusioned by a self-indulgent life at home. He
strikes out to see the world as a pilgrim. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is essentially a travelogue
with romantic subtexts of disillusionment and melancholy, contrasting romantic ideals with life’s
realities.
Byron published the first two cantos in 1812, dealing with Harold’s travels in Portugal,
Spain, the Ionian Islands and Albania. Canto III followed in 1816, chroncling wanderings
through Belgium, the Rhineland, and the Alps. Canto IV, which appeared in 1818, abandoned
the pretext of the pilgrim. Now Byron dealt more directly with his personal experiences in
Venice, Arqua, Ferrara, Florence, and Rome. The poems were still hugely popular in the 1830s
when Hector Berlioz read them. Byron’s Italian sojourn in particular resonated strongly, for
Berlioz had traveled widely in Italy when he held the Prix de Rome. The title and setting of
Harold en Italie derives from Byron’s Canto IV, but as Berlioz’s biographer Hugh MacDonald
has written, “Harold en Italie might well be Hector in Italy.” For this impressive work, Berlioz
borrowed Byron’s protagonist in name, but the experiences and vivid imaginings are Berlioz’s
own.
Harold dates from 1834, four years after Berlioz’s triumph with his first symphony, the
Symphonie fantastique. The impetus for Harold came from none other than the Italian violin
virtuoso Niccolò Paganini, who heard concerts of Berlioz’s music in Paris in December 1832 and
again in December 1833. Particularly impressed by the Symphonie fantastique, he called on the
French composer in January 1834. He had acquired a fine Stradivarius viola, he announced, and
wished to commission a new concerto. Within days, a Paris music journal reported the projected
title of the new work: “The Last Moments of Mary Stuart, dramatic fantasy for orchestra,
chorus, and solo viola.”
During the weeks that followed, Berlioz abandoned both the association with the Scottish
queen and the inclusion of chorus, and expanded his conception from one movement to four. He
recalled in his Memoirs:
No sooner was the first movement written than Paganini wanted to see it. At the sight of so many
rests in the viola part in the allegro he exclaimed, “That’s no good. There’s not enough for me to
do here. I should be playing all the time.” “That’s exactly what I said,” I replied. “What you want
is a viola concerto, and in this case only you can write it.” He did not answer; he looked
disappointed, and went away without referring to my symphonic fragment again. A few days
later . . . he left for Nice. It was three years before he returned.
Realizing that my scheme would never suit him, I set to work to carry it out with a different
emphasis. . . . My idea was to write a series of orchestral scenes in which the solo viola would be
involved, to a greater or lesser extent, like an actual person, retaining the same character
throughout. I decided to give it as a setting the poetic impressions recollected from my
wanderings in the Abruzzi, and to make it a kind of melancholy dreamer in the style of Byron’s
Childe Harold.
When he completed the score in June 1834, it retained a substantial concertante role for viola.
The French violist Chrétien Urhan was the soloist at the première on 23 November, 1834. Four
years later, Paganini finally heard Harold en Italie. He was impressed enough to send the
composer a gift of 20,000 francs, which proved to be the seed money for Roméo et Juliette,
Berlioz’s next symphonic masterpiece.
Harold is related to the Symphonie fantastique in the sense that Harold’s theme recurs in
each movement; however, as Berlioz intimated, the treatment of the theme is not altered or
distorted in the way that the idée fixe is in the earlier work. The viola theme remains substantially
unchanged through the four movements. While both works are programmatic, Harold does not
so much tell a story as evoke specific locales and their atmosphere. Where the Symphonie
fantastique is intensely personal and emotional, with the artist at the center of the drama, Harold
en Italie is more detached. The hero is more of an observer than a participant. Yet his sense of
yearning, his isolation from the world around him, comes through clearly in the melancholy
timbre of the viola.
It is that character that Berlioz establishes in the first movement, “Harold in the
mountains.” He adheres fairly closely to sonata form. The sedate introduction gives us a sense of
mournful wandering. We do not hear the viola theme outright at the beginning. Instead, Berlioz
hints at it, in minor mode, with pre-echoes and fragments. He recycled the tune from his Rob Roy
Overture (1831), which he had withdrawn after a single performance in 1833. Here he put it to
fine use, with the soloist’s initial statement switching to major mode. The harp furnishes the
principal accompaniment of this gentle theme, perhaps the loveliest in the Berlioz canon. A
poetic and meditative atmosphere dominates, until about seven minutes into the movement, when
the composer’s irrepressible urge for a dynamic symphonic allegro prevails.
The second movement, a pilgrims’ march, was hugely popular in Berlioz’s day, when
audiences regularly demanded it be repeated in concert. We hear the trodding of the faithful from
afar, then observe them as they pass close by. Finally they fade into the distant horizon. Berlioz
emulates the sound of church bells, first a low tolling from harp and horns, then higher chimes
from flute, oboe and harp. While there is an obvious parallel to the analogous movement in
Mendelssohn’s “Italian” symphony, Berlioz’s model was not Mendelssohn. Rather, the slow
movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony inspired Berlioz’s pilgrim music. The
superimposition of two principal ideas — a new march theme and the viola theme from the first
movement — is another characteristic of Beethoven’s slow movement that Berlioz adopted. The
oddly dissonant chiming of the church bells punctuates each successive phrase, while the soloist
embroiders variations, rendering each phrase different from the last.
The third movement takes its name from the Abruzzi region, but Berlioz was capturing
the music of pifferari, itinerant woodwind musicians he had encountered between Naples and
Rome. Piccolo and oboe sound the serenade in octave unisons, then once the peasant has secured
his lady love’s attention, he switches to the more seductive English horn. Musically, this
movement is distinguished by its complicated rhythms. Multiple patterns occur simultaneously
throughout the orchestra. Rhythmic irregularities fascinated Berlioz, and they abound in this
serenade, which weaves intricate relationships among various meters. Yet we never lose our
sense of pastoral calm and simplicity.
In the finale, Berlioz gives his imagination free rein. He had a romantic fascination with
the supposed life of the brigand: flaunting authority and social mores, seizing life with brio and
abandon. (Late in life, Berlioz conducted Harold in Germany, referring to his performance of
this finale “in my special furious style, with much gnashing and grinding of teeth.” In terms of
musical organization, the legacy of Beethoven materializes even more overtly than in the slow
movement, for the finale alludes to each of the previous three movements. Berlioz heard
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the first time while composing Harold en Italie, and knew no
more powerful tribute than to incorporate Beethoven’s technique of quotation into his own new
work. The violence of the outlaws’ orgy ultimately prevails over the voice of the viola, and
Harold concludes in a blaze of orchestral glory.
The score calls for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second doubling
English horn), two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba,
timpani, percussion, harp, solo viola and strings.
Francesca da Rimini, Symphonic Fantasy in E minor (after Dante), Op. 32
Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky
Born 7 May, 1840 in Votkinsk, Viatka district, Russia
Died 6 November, 1893 in St. Petersburg, Russia
Approximate duration 22 minutes
In Canto V of Dante's Inferno, Francesca da Rimini relates her tragic story from the
depths of hell, where she has been condemned for eternity. Trapped by her aristocratic father
into a loveless marriage with the cruel hunchback Rimini, she fell in love with his handsome
younger brother Paolo.
Reading about Launcelot and Guenevere together, she and Paolo
acknowledged and declared their own love. Upon discovering them in a passionate embrace,
Rimini drew his knife on his brother. Francesca hurled herself between them and the dagger
struck her first. Her husband then turned on Paolo, killing him as well.
Tchaikovsky began reading Dante during the summer of 1876. He was travelling from
the south of France, where he had enjoyed a holiday with his brother Modest, to Bayreuth, where
he attended a full performance of Wagner's Ring Cycle. Modest had suggested a number of new
topics for an opera, including Shakespeare's Hamlet and Othello, and Dante's Francesca.
Tchaikovsky was attracted to the powerful subject matter of the Italian poet, with its theme of
illicit love. But his librettist, Constantine Zvantsev, was quite insistent that the proposed opera
adhere to Wagner's theories. Tchaikovsky was inimical to Wagner's principles ("With the last
chords of Götterdämmerung I felt as though I'd been released from captivity," he wrote to
Modest), and could not continue with the opera project on Zvantsev's terms.
The idea of love entwined with sin appealed to him, however. Francesca's famous story
from part I of the Divina Commedia had caught his imagination.
He began composing a
symphonic fantasia based on Dante's tale. At the head of his score, Tchaikovsky included the
story of Francesca's plight, quoting 22 lines from the Italian poem. They function as a general
programme for the piece.
Francesca comprises three principal sections. A lengthy introduction (Andante lugubre)
depicts the entrance to hell. Tchaikovsky's extensive use of tritones emphasizes the netherworld
setting. (The tritone, or diabolus in musica -- “the devil in music”-- is the principal component of
the diminished seventh chord. The interval’s ominous and sinister character has historically been
associated with evil. In nineteenth-century music, composers frequently employed diminished
seventh chords to establish impending doom, unease, danger, and similarly ominous states.)
Shrieks of angry brass and woodwinds warn of the menacing horrors of the devil’s realm. The
ensuing Allegro vivo corresponds to Dante's second circle of hell. Here is the area to which those
who were slaves of passion are consigned. Their torment is an never-ending raging storm in the
infernal darkness. This is where Dante encounters Francesca, who emerges out of Tchaikovsky's
musical tempest.
A gentle clarinet solo provides the transition to the second principal section, Andante
cantabile. Here we leave the realm of specific musical illustration and move to the
psychological. David Brown calls Francesca's theme "one of the broadest, most widely-ranging,
most magnificent melodic statements Tchaikovsky had ever conceived." Her character is central
to the music, rather than details of her story. This section is lyrical and exquisite, eliciting from
Tchaikovsky some gorgeous orchestral writing, particularly for woodwinds and harp. At the
climax, we understand that Francesca’s nature encompasses passion as well as gentleness and
tenderness.
A muted brass fanfare related to one in the 1812 Overture paves the way Tchaikovsky’s
closing section: a return to the fury of the storm that opened Francesca. In Dante’s poem, after
Francesca concludes the narrative of her tragic tale, she and Paolo are swept up and carried back
to the raging inferno. Tchaikovsky recycles much of the violent music from the opening section,
emphasizing the inexorability of his heroine’s fate. The relentless repeated chords that close the
work leave little doubt that the tempest will rage in eternity.
When music critic Sergei Taneyev, the dedicatee of Francesca, reported to Tchaikovsky
that César Cui had detected the influence of Wagner's Ring in the new score, Tchaikovsky
responded:
The remark that I wrote under the influence of the Nibelungen is very correct. I
myself felt this while I was at work. If I'm not mistaken, it's especially noticeable
in the introduction. Isn't it odd that I should have submitted to the influence of a
work of art that in general is extremely antipathetic to me?
Others thought they perceived the influence of Liszt, who had his own attractions both to Dante
and to the realm of the infernal. Ultimately, however, the treatment of the orchestra in the outer
storm sections and the rich character painting of the heroine in the central part mark Francesca
da Rimini as Tchaikovsky’s own.
Francesca da Rimini is scored for a large orchestra of woodwinds in pairs plus piccolo
and English horn; 4 French horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, tuba, bass drum, cymbals,
tam-tam, and strings.
Capriccio Italien, Op.45
Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky
Approximate duration 15 minutes
Tchaikovsky was in many ways the most cosmopolitan and westernized of the 19thcentury Russian composers. His Capriccio italien, composed in 1880, is one reflection of his
extensive travels. In letters to his family, he revealed that the themes had come partly from
published Italian collections and partly from his own recollections of melodies heard on the
streets of Italy. Rather than connecting these ideas in a series of unrelated episodes in the style
of an Italian operatic overture, however, he intertwined them, binding disparate musical ideas
together into a dense orchestral fabric. The technique is decidedly Russian.
With this work Tchaikovsky made his contribution to a series of pieces composed by
Russians, but imbued with a strong Latin flavor. Considering how bitter the Russian winters are,
it is hardly surprising that Russian composers should be attracted to the warmth of music from
balmier climates. Tchaikovsky's most important precedent was the Spanish-style compositions
of Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857), the father of Russian music.
These include the famous
Capriccio brillante on the Jota Aragonesa (1845, also known as First Spanish Overture).
Tchaikovsky's younger contemporary Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov followed with his Capriccio
espagnol (1887), and a sub-genre was born.
Tchaikovsky's Capriccio opens with a dramatic fanfare adapted from a bugle call that the
composer heard in a Roman cavalry barracks near his lodgings in the Italian capital. The fanfare
ushers in a solemn march. Before long Italian sunshine breaks through these clouds, and the
work evolves into one of the most joyous that Tchaikovsky ever wrote.
Capriccio italien is a brilliant showpiece for orchestra, depicting Rome at carnival time.
Tchaikovsky uses the percussion section with great flair to establish a carnivalesque atmosphere.
We hear the crowd and sense its mounting expectation; we feel the hubbub of merrymaking. As
evening draws nigh, the quality of illumination alters from dusk to torchlight, and the streets
throng with people ready to party.
Capriccio italien is Tchaikovsky's valentine to the Eternal
City. More than 130 years later, it is still flowers, candy and perfume all rolled into one.
The score calls for 3 flutes (third doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2
bassoons, 4 horns, 2 cornets, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine,
cymbals, bass drum, chimes, harp, and strings.