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Academy Festival Orchestra, July 9 PROGRAM NOTES RICHARD WAGNER Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg Composed 1861-62 Duration ca. 10 minutes Scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings The gestation of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Wagner’s only comic opera and one of his most popular works, was a protracted affair. The composer had known since his boyhood of the German “mastersingers,” groups of artisans who formed clubs (or guilds, as they called them) for the composing and singing of songs on popular and 14th through the 17th centuries and formed an important part of the social fabric of their communities. Wagner found the idea of these artisan-musicians an appealing subject, and in 1845 he made a detailed sketch of a libretto for an opera about them. Having done so, however, he put the work aside and turned to other projects. Not until 1861 did the composer again take up the idea of his “mastersinger” opera. His renewed interest in the work coincided with what seems to have been a happy stroke of inspiration. In November of that year he made a brief trip to Venice. He was returning by train to Vienna when, as he relates in his autobiographical Mein Leben: ... suddenly I heard music which could be the overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. When I arrived back in Vienna I quickly worked out the entire plan in unbelievable haste. I felt very happy that my memory remained crystal clear. Had his inspiration continued to flow so freely, Wagner might have finished the entire opera in a relatively short time and with relatively little effort. In fact, six more years were to pass before Die Meistersinger was finally completed. In light of this, it is remarkable how clearly the overture encapsulates the entire music drama. The boisterous crowds of villagers in medieval Nuremberg, the nobility of the old mastersinger Hans Sachs, the love between the young couple Walther and Eva, and Walther’s dramatic yet humorous triumph over the stuffy Beckmesser in the singing contest — all these are suggested in a rich tapestry of orchestral sounds. The overture opens with a stirring march subject, one of two associated with the mastersingers’ guild of the opera’s title. A brief passage based on the motif of Walther and Eva’s love then leads to the second “Meistersinger” theme, hardly less impressive than the first. This, in turn, is followed by a more lyrical idea that combines the love motif and the melody of Walther’s “Prize Song” in Act III. In the central portion of the overture, the initial “Meistersinger” melody receives humorous fugal treatment that mocks Beckmesser’s pedantry and alternates with the ardent motif of Walther and Eva. The final section is a polyphonic tour de force, with several of the opera’s most important themes played simultaneously in exultant counterpoint. IGOR STRAVINSKY Suite from The Firebird (1919 version) Composed 1909-10 Duration ca. 23 minutes Scored for piccolo and 2 flutes, 2 oboes and English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, and strings In the spring of 1909, a troupe of Russian dancers, musicians, and stage designers converged on Paris for a short season of ballet and opera presentations. Though few guessed it at the time, the Ballets russes, or “Russian Ballets,” as it was called, would change the history of dance and music. Thanks largely to the vision of its enterprising leader, Serge Diaghilev, the company became the spiritual home to some of the most innovative artists of the early modern period. Picasso, Cocteau, Nijinsky, and others hardly less famous all worked on productions for Diaghilev’s enterprise. So, too, did a number of outstanding composers, not the least of them being Igor Stravinsky. Indeed, Stravinsky’s association with the Ballets russes would last two decades and prove one of the most fruitful artistic collaborations in history. Through Diaghilev, the composer came into contact with some of the leading creative figures of the early modern era, and for his company he produced most of the works that secured his fame. The first of these was music for the ballet The Firebird. Diaghilev became determined to produce a piece based on a Russian fairy tale following the success of his first Paris season, and the scenario for The Firebird, fashioned from parts of several legends, suited his purposes exactly. Originally, the impresario hoped to obtain music for the production from Anatol Liadov, an established composer. But when Liadov could not promise timely completion of the work, Diaghilev approached Stravinsky, who had orchestrated several piano pieces by Grieg and Chopin for the Ballets russes the year before. Young and practically unknown at the time, Stravinsky was so pleased by this prospective opportunity that he began composing the music even before Diaghilev confirmed the commission. The work occupied him throughout the winter of 1909-10, and by mid-April he was able to send the score from Saint Petersburg, where he was still living, to Paris. The Firebird was presented by the Ballets russes on June 25, 1910, and its enthusiastic reception effectively launched Stravinsky’s career. The ballet relates a fantastic tale. Wandering alone in a deep wood, Prince Ivan, son of the Czar, comes upon the mythical Firebird. Quickly he captures her, but when she offers a magic feather as ransom, he frees her. Continuing on his way, the Prince encounters 13 princesses, who are under the spell of Kastchei, a demon of terrible power. (In his presence women are made captive and men turned to stone.) When the princesses flee, Ivan follows them into Kastchei’s castle and soon is himself captured. But he remembers the feather, and its magic renders Kastchei’s spells harmless. The Firebird appears and shows the Prince an egg containing the monster’s soul. Ivan smashes it, destroying Kastchei and freeing the princesses. Although Stravinsky spoke critically of The Firebird in his later years — the story “demanded descriptive music of a kind I did not want to write,” he asserted in one of his conversations with the conductor and writer Robert Craft — it has become one of his most popular works. It is best known through the concert suites the composer extracted from the full ballet score in 1911, 1919, and again in 1945 (the last being engendered largely by the need to renew a copyright). The second of these, the suite of 1919, has become the “standard” version, and it is this that we hear tonight. Approximately half the length of the full ballet score, this Firebird suite unfolds in five movements. The first three set the scene and introduce the principal characters of the fairy-tale drama. The initial measures suggest Prince Ivan wandering in the forest. There is an air of mystery and danger in the music of the low strings that begins the suite, in the menacing horn figures that punctuate this, and especially in the glissando harmonics (the eerie, sliding sonorities produced by the strings), an effect whose novelty Stravinsky noted with some pride. Next comes the dance of the Firebird, which sounds every bit as colorful and fantastic as the creature itself. The second movement gives us music of the princesses, their gentle demeanor conveyed in a song-like melody presented as an oboe solo over harp accompaniment. These dulcet sounds give way suddenly, however, to “Kastchei’s Infernal Dance.” The demon is suggested in angular rhythms and harsh outbursts, particularly from the brass. This entire sequence is brilliantly orchestrated, and we can scarcely imagine today the impact its fierce energy must have made on audiences in 1910. Of entirely different character is the “Berceuse,” a haunting lullaby rather oriental in tone. A brief sequence of falling string tremolos leads to the finale. Its melody, announced by the horn and gradually taken up by the full orchestra, is repeated in ever more sonorous instrumentation, building to an imposing climax in the final measures. The Firebird was Stravinsky’s first truly important composition, and it initiated a series of pieces based on Russian stories and folk verses that would occupy him for more than a decade. Moreover, it established the compositional language with which those works would be fashioned. This last is easily overlooked, since The Firebird most obviously embodies a kind of Russian impressionism whose debts of influence to Stravinsky’s teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, and to Debussy are quite evident. (Despite the novel effects of orchestration in the Introduction and rhythmic irregularities in the dances of Kastchei and the Firebird, its harmonies are more lush and its melodies more conventionally lyrical than in any of the composer’s subsequent scores.) But the melodic idiom, the asymmetry of rhythm and phrase length, and the bold use of the orchestra established here became foundations of Stravinsky’s coming work. He would extend them in an unprecedented and epoch-making fashion — in short, would modernize them — with his next major compositions, the ballets Petroushka and The Rite of Spring. The Firebird marked the end of the initial phase of Stravinsky’s development as a composer, but it pointed to the future as well.