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MASTERWORKS6 PROGRAM NOTES
Scenes from “Romeo and Juliet,” Op. 64
Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Written: 1935– 36
Movements: 8
Style: 20th Century Russian
Duration: 40 minutes
During Russia’s revolutionary war years, many artists and composers fled their country. The
United States was the beneficiary when composers like Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky settled here.
Initially, Sergei Prokofiev was more optimistic about life in the Soviet Union. He was there when Lenin
and the Bolsheviks seized power. However, the political turmoil of the country was not a place for a
young performer and “new” music. So, in 1918, Prokofiev also left for the United States. He intended to
be gone for just a few months―until the troubles blew over―but he didn’t return until 1927. Even then,
he only went there as a touring artist. Prokofiev spent four miserable years in the U.S. from 1918 until
1922, and then he moved to Paris. In spite of numerous artistic successes, he missed his homeland and
his friends. He began to visit the Soviet Union more and more frequently. By 1933, he had an apartment
in Moscow and in 1936, he permanently settled there with his family. He became a Soviet citizen.
Prokofiev was either optimistic or terribly naive about artistic prospects in the Soviet Union. His
arrival coincided with new edicts passed down from the Communist Party Central Committee
recommending “general guidelines” for composers. They were to “pay heed to the social content of their
music and appeal to the people at large; as a basis for this idiom they might look to the traditions of the
past and to the folk resources within the USSR.” These rather innocuous principles lead to full-scale
persecution of composers. Already, by 1935, Dmitri Shostakovich felt the sting of public condemnation.
Prokofiev was fortunate; he lasted until 1948 before his music was condemned as “marked with
formalist perversions and alien to the Soviet People.”
Prokofiev wrote some of his most endearing and charming works during the first few years back
in Russia: Lieutenant Kije Suite (1934―drawn from his music for a film), the lush and romantic Second
Violin Concerto (1935) and the children’s blockbuster Peter and the Wolf (1936). It was during these
years that he also wrote the stunningly beautiful score for the ballet Romeo and Juliet. Composing the
work seemed to be easy for Prokofiev; it took him only four months. However, the ending caused him
some trouble. “Living people can dance,” Prokofiev said, “the dying cannot.” So he wrote in a happy
ending, with Romeo arriving just in time! When he presented the score to the Kirov Ballet, they rejected
it out of hand claiming that it was unsuitable for dancing. Prokofiev made some revisions and,
fortunately, restored the proper ending. Even so, the ballet would not appear on the Soviet stage until
1940; it fell victim to political machinations at the theater. Frustrated at not getting the ballet staged,
Prokofiev extracted some of the music from the ballet for two orchestral suites. The Russian public
heard these suites a full four years in advance of seeing the danced version! Tonight’s concert draws
selections from both suites.
The music wonderfully paints the characters and action of the drama. You’ll hear the fierce
rivalry between the two families in Montagues and Capulets and the innocence and charm of a Young
Juliet. Masques portrays the audacious arrival of Romeo and company. The famous balcony scene is the
tender music in Romeo and Juliet. The Death of Tybalt describes both the fight between the youths and
the anguished cries from the Capulet clan over their dead son. The music for Romeo at Juliet’s before
parting is both tender and passionate. The ballet’s tragic conclusion comes in both Romeo at the grave
of Juliet and The death of Juliet.
As with much new music, Romeo and Juliet was roundly condemned by the critics as having no
melody or feeling. Prokofiev responded to those critics, “In Romeo and Juliet I have taken special pains
to achieve a simplicity which will, I hope, reach the hearts of all listeners. If people find no melody and
no emotion in this work, I shall be very sorry. But I feel sure that sooner or later they will.” You will.
Piano Concerto No.1 in F-sharp Minor, op.1
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Written: 1890-91; revised in 1917
Movements: Three
Style: Romantic
Duration: 27 minutes
By the time the Russian Revolution was in full swing, Sergei Rachmaninoff was an international
star, known as composer and virtuoso pianist. As the political situation in Russia grew grimmer, he
knew that he would have to leave his home country. He prepared several recital programs, borrowed
some money and set sail for New York. His first season of concerts got him enough money to pay off
his debts. Soon, with gramophone and piano-roll contracts, Rachmaninoff became one of the wealthiest
musicians in America. ("What a country!")
Rachmaninoff was born into the Russian aristocracy. He learned the piano from a professional
pianist from St. Petersburg, imported by his grandfather to the family estate. Eventually, at the age of
fourteen, he enrolled at the Moscow Conservatory. Rachmaninoff studied and lived with his teacher
Nikolai Zverev until the constant demands of practice fueled his desire to become a composer. Then he
studied with his cousin Alexander Siloti, one of Liszt’s star pupils.
Rachmanin0ff wrote his First Piano Concerto while he was still a student at the conservatory
and performed the first movement with the student orchestra as part of his senior year. Like many
“student” works, he modeled the original version of this concerto after one of the “masterworks.”
Rachmaninoff virtually copied the structure of the first and third movements of Grieg’s Piano Concerto.
Rachmaninoff was disappointed with audience reception to his concerto, and a disastrous first
performance of his First Symphony put him into such a funk that he literally stopped composing. (Leo
Tolstoy’s pointed remark to Rachmaninoff about his music—“Is such music needed by anyone?” —
didn’t help.) Only after extended therapy sessions with Nikolai Dahl, did Rachmaninoff try composing
again. Rachmaninoff wasn’t too wild about his concerto, either. “It is so terrible in its present form that I
should like to work at it and, if possible, get it into decent shape," he wrote. However, it was only in an
attempt to widen his performing repertoire before he left for America—he was scheduled to play 40
concerts in four months—that he actually completed a revision of the concerto. He didn’t change the
tunes so much as tighten up the construction and rework the accompanying orchestra.
The French horns begin the first movement with a bold fanfare and then the piano gets a
dramatic statement in octaves (à la Grieg). The orchestra gets first crack at the lush, romantic theme and
then the piano gets to augment it with all sorts of filigree. The piano introduces the much faster second
theme. After an extended orchestral interlude, Rachmaninoff plays around with the various elements;
there is a restatement of both of the principal tunes, and then a monumental solo cadenza before the
movement ends.
A solo French horn opens the second movement that is, essentially, one long lyrical song. When
the piano isn’t singing out the tune, it is busy ornamenting the orchestral utterance of it. If the first two
movements don’t provided enough technical fireworks, the impetuous third movement does.
Rachmaninoff can’t keep the capriciousness going for long and so transitions into another long, fluid
melody. The movement ends with even more flash and dash than it began.
©2012 John P. Varineau