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Kansas City Symphony
2011-2012 Classical Series
November 18, 19 and 20, 2011
Michael Stern, Conductor
Behzod Abduraimov, Piano
BARTÓK
RACHMANINOFF
Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 43
— INTERMISSION —
PROKOFIEV
Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, Op. 33a
Prelude: The Ridiculous Fellows
Infernal Scene
March
Scherzo
Nocturne: The Prince and the Princess
Flight
HINDEMITH
Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by
Carl Maria von Weber
Allegro
“Turandot,” Scherzo: Moderato — Lebhaft
Andantino
March
Nov. 18-20, 2011, page 1
Notes on the Program by DR. RICHARD E. RODDA
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19 (1918-1919)
Piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons,
contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion,
celesta, harp, piano and strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• the one-act opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and the ballets The Miraculous
Mandarin and The Wooden Prince are Bartók’s only stage works
• the tawdry story is about an eerie “Mandarin” whose desire is stronger than
the wounds inflicted on him by assailants
• the ballet was staged just once during Bartók’s lifetime
Bartók composed three works for the stage. The first, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1911), is a
powerful one-act opera packed with symbolism in which the composer combined his interest in
French Impressionism (especially Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande) with his vast knowledge of
folk songs and legends and Hungarian prosody. The ballet The Wooden Prince (1915), Bartók’s
second theater piece, is built around a silly fable in which a beautiful princess falls in love —
with the walking staff of a handsome prince! Both of these works were banned after some
initial success because their librettist, Béla Balázs, had been forced into political exile. Bartók’s
third and final stage effort was the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin.
The following synopsis of the plot appears in the orchestral score: “In a shabby room in the
slums, three tramps, bent on robbery, force a girl to lure in prospective victims from the street.
A down-at-the-heels cavalier and a timid youth, who succumb to her attractions, are found to
have thin wallets, and are thrown out. The third ‘guest’ is the eerie Mandarin. His impassivity
frightens the girl, who tries to unfreeze him by dancing — but when he feverishly embraces
her, she runs from him in terror. After a wild chase he catches her, at which point the three
tramps leap from their hiding place, rob him of everything he has, and try to smother him
under a pile of cushions. But he gets to his feet, his eyes fixed passionately on the girl. They
run him through with a sword; he is shaken, but his desire is stronger than his wounds, and
he hurls himself on her. They hang him up; but it is impossible for him to die. Only when they
cut him down, and the girl takes him into her arms, do his wounds begin to bleed, and he
dies.”
In 1928, Bartók derived a “suite” from The Miraculous Mandarin for concert performance.
Unlike most suites, however, this one was not a series of scattered excerpts plucked from the
score but was created simply by the elimination of the closing pages, namely the scene of the
Mandarin’s death, so that the Suite ends with the breathtaking music of the Mandarin’s
pursuit of the girl, a passage that critic Alfred Einstein considered “the wildest chase in
modern music.”
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 43 (1934)
Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two
trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
Nov. 18-20, 2011, page 2
• many of Nicolò Paganini’s contemporaries thought that he had made a deal
with the devil to acquire his astounding violin technique
• Rachmaninoff infused a demonic element into his Paganini Rhapsody by
quoting the Dies Irae (“Day of Wrath”) from the Requiem Mass for the Dead
• the Rhapsody is a set of 24 variations based on the last of Paganini’s Caprices
for Unaccompanied Violin
Nicolò Paganini, like most virtuoso instrumentalists of the 19th century, composed much of
his own music. Notable among his creative output are the breathtaking Caprices for
Unaccompanied Violin, works so difficult that even today they are accessible only to the most
highly accomplished performers. The last of the Caprices, No. 24 in A minor, had served as the
basis for compositions by Schumann, Liszt and Brahms, and it was also the inspiration for
Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Taking his cue from the diabolical element
of Paganini’s legend, Rachmaninoff combined another melody with that of the demonic violinist
— the Dies Irae (“Day of Wrath”) from the Requiem Mass. This ancient chant had long been
connected not only with the Roman Catholic Church service for the dead, but also with
musical works containing some devilish element. Berlioz associated it with the witches’
sabbath in his Symphonie Fantastique, Liszt used it in his Totentanz (“Dance of Death”), SaintSaëns in his Danse Macabre, and Rachmaninoff himself in his earlier Isle of the Dead.
The Rhapsody, a brilliant showpiece for virtuoso pianist, is a set of 24 variations. The work
begins with a brief, eight-measure introduction followed, before the theme itself is heard, by
the first variation, made from a skeletal outline of the melody. The theme, 24 measures in
length, is stated by the unison violins. The following variations fall into three groups,
corresponding to the fast–slow–fast sequence of the traditional three-movement concerto. The
most familiar section of the Rhapsody, and one of the great melodies in the orchestral
literature, is the climax of the middle section. This variation, No. 18, actually an inversion of
Paganini’s theme, has a broad sweep and nobility of sentiment unsurpassed anywhere in
Rachmaninoff’s works.
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Suite from The Love for Three Oranges, Op. 33a (1919)
Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons,
contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, two
harps and strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• Prokofiev composed The Love for Three Oranges to a French libretto for the
Chicago Opera in 1919
• American musicologist Donald J. Grout wrote that the opera is based on “a
merrily lunatic plot well suited to Prokofiev’s sharp rhythmic style of this period
and to his talent for humor and grotesquerie”
• the March was used as the theme for the long-running CBS Radio show The
FBI in Peace and War
Sergei Prokofiev enjoyed a great success at his American debut in November 1918 in New
York, and won even greater acclaim in Chicago a few weeks later when Frederick Stock
conducted the Scythian Suite and the First Piano Concerto, with the composer as soloist. While
in Chicago, Prokofiev met Cleofonte Campanini, principal conductor and general manager of
the Chicago Opera, who awarded him a commission to compose a new work for the company.
The timing was perfect. Even before he left Russia, Prokofiev had been working on a libretto (in
Nov. 18-20, 2011, page 3
French) based on a fantasy by the 18th-century Italian satirist Carlo Gozzi, and the Chicago
commission came just as he was preparing to begin serious work on the music. The Love for
Three Oranges was premiered in Chicago on December 30, 1921.
David Ewen offered the following summary of the plot: “Prokofiev’s opera is a play within a
play. A highly demonstrative audience of Cynics, Emptyheads, Glooms and Joys watches the
performance of a burlesque opera about a legendary Prince. The young man, dying of gloom,
can be cured only by laughter. A wicked sorceress, Fata Morgana, thwarts every attempt to
lighten his spirits, but when she takes a ridiculous fall during a scuffle with the palace guards,
the Prince laughs and is cured. The sorceress now decrees that he must find and fall in love
with three oranges. When the Prince finds the oranges in a desert, he learns that each contains
a beautiful Princess. Two of the young women perish of thirst. The Cynics of Prokofiev’s
audience revive the third with a bucket of water. After more trials, the Prince and Princess are
united and the sorceress and her evil cohorts meet suitable justice.”
The suite’s opening movement, The Ridiculous Fellows, is assembled from several passages
having to do with the Cynics or chudaki, a Russian word also implying an “eccentric” or
“oddball.” The music depicts their futile attempts to make the Prince laugh. Infernal Scene
accompanies the stage action during which Fata Morgana and the King’s Magician play a game
with huge cards, the stakes being the Prince’s life. The March (this martial theme may recall to
listeners of a certain age a radio program of yore about our national law enforcement agency)
suggests the cockeyed atmosphere of the royal court. The Scherzo occurs twice in the opera —
before and after the scene in which the Prince finds the Oranges. The Prince and the Princess
occurs immediately after the liberation of the third Princess from her incarcerating orange and
the successful efforts of the chudaki to revive her with a pail of water. The concluding Flight,
with the entire court dashing madly after the villains, recalls a breathless chase scene from a
rollicking silent movie.
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943)
Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons,
contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and
strings.
SIDEBAR – BULLET POINTS:
• Paul Hindemith was prodigiously gifted as composer, conductor, writer,
theorist, teacher, violist, cartoonist and scholar
• he composed the Symphonic Metamorphosis while teaching at Yale during
World War II
• the work is based on little-known themes by the early-19th-century German
composer Carl Maria von Weber
Hindemith first explored the idea of using Weber’s themes in 1940, when he was planning
a ballet in collaboration with the legendary choreographer Leonide Massine. Hindemith
sketched out some ideas based on Weber’s music, but Massine found them “too personal.”
Hindemith also had misgivings about the project when he found out that Salvador Dali would
be designing the production. Dali, it seems, had been responsible for a staging for Massine of
the Bacchanale from Wagner’s Tannhäuser filled with “a series of weird hallucinatory images”
that Hindemith felt were “quite simply stupid.” By mutual consent, composer and
choreographer abandoned the plan. Practical musician that he was, however, Hindemith did
not let the work done on the ballet come to nothing. Perhaps prodded by his publisher, B.
Schott, who was looking for a composition that would appeal to the prevailing American taste
Nov. 18-20, 2011, page 4
for colorful orchestral showpieces, he again took up the sketches in 1943 and gave them final
form as the Symphonic Metamorphosis.
The work’s four movements are organized loosely around the traditional symphonic model.
Each is based on a separate theme of Weber: three on miniatures for piano duet and one on an
Oriental tune from incidental music for a play. Hindemith kept largely intact the melodies and
structures of the originals, but expanded them considerably in harmony, rhythm and tone
color. The first movement is based on the fourth of Weber’s Huit pièces, Op. 60, for Piano Duet.
Vigorous and straightforward, the music preserves the sturdy Gypsy spirit of the original,
marked “All’ Ongarese.” The second Metamorphosis is a scherzo using a melody from the
overture Weber contributed to the incidental music for Schiller’s play Turandot. The haunting
theme of the third movement, an arrangement of a gentle siciliano from Weber’s Pièces faciles
for Piano, Four Hands, Op. 3, Book 2, is first sung by clarinet. The central section is marked
by a simple, lyrical strain from cellos and clarinets played against an undulating
accompaniment. The opening theme returns, decorated with elaborate arabesques in the flute.
The finale, derived from No. 7 of Weber’s Huit pièces, Op. 60, is one of the most stirring
marches in the orchestral repertoire.
©2011 Dr. Richard E. Rodda