CUCO: February 3rd, 2007
Guy Woolfenden conducting
Morwenna Del Mar cello
Programme:
Stravinsky Pulcinella Suite
Tchaikovsky Rococo Variations
Weill Second Symphony
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1970)
Pulcinella Suite (1920)
In the spring of 1919, Serge Diaghilev, the impresario who had collaborated with Stravinsky on such successes as The Rite of Spring, The Firebird, and Petrushka, suggested to the composer that he write a ballet based on some of Pergolesi's music. At first Stravinsky demurred, not being particularly fond of the Pergolesi he knew (primarily the Stabat Mater), but Diaghilev showed him some little-known manuscripts which caught his fancy, and so he agreed to the idea.
Pulcinella was an important turning point in Stravinsky's career, for it led him into the so-called ``neo-classical'' style which was to dominate his output for the next several decades. Unlike his earlier ballets, which were characterized by huge orchestras, and innovative rhythms, Pulcinella is relatively simple and sparse, scored for 33 chamber players and 3 vocal soloists, and sticking mostly to time signatures that had been used two centuries earlier. But even though Stravinsky used Pergolesi's melodies and bass lines with little change, he managed to put his own unmistakable stamp on the ballet through his use of modern harmonies and occasional rhythmic modifications.
In the ballet, Pulcinella, a traditional hero of Neapolitan commedia dell'arte, has captured the hearts of all the local girls. Enraged, their fiances plot to kill him, but he outwits them and substitutes a double, who feigns death and is then ``revived'' by a disguised Pulcinella. When the young men return, Pulcinella arranges marriages for everyone, and himself weds Pimpinella to produce the requisite happy ending.
Despite minor squabbles between the various principals, the first production (with costumes and scenery by Picasso) was a huge success. When Stravinsky later turned the ballet into a concert suite, he selected 11 movements from the original 18, replacing the vocal solos with instrumental passages. It is in this form, as well as in Stravinsky's transcriptions for violin or 'cello with piano (under the title Suite Italienne), that the work has achieved its greatest popularity.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Rococo Variations (1876)
Tchaikovsky composed this work in December 1876 for the cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, his fellow professor at the Moscow Conservatory. It was not a very happy time for the composer: his opera Vakula the Smith had not been successful; only discouraging reports had come back from German, Vienna and Paris about his overture-fantasy Romeo and Juliet (not yet in the final version we know today), and lack of funds forced him to abandon his plans for a concert of his music in the French capital. Nevertheless, in hardly more time than it took to put the actual notes on paper, he created the Rococo Variations, a work characterized by sunlit charm and grace, and in the spirit of his idol Mozart.
Mozart's customary Salzburg concerto orchestra--oboes, horns and strings--is only lightly embellished here, with the addition of flutes, clarinets and bassoons. This was the last score Tchaikovsky completed before he fateful year in which he began his curious relationship with his patron Nadezhda von Meck (a relationship of considerable intimacy, but carried on entirely through correspondence, without a single actual meeting) and entered into his disastrous marriage with a woman he barely knew. The marriage was over by the time Fitzenhagen gave the Variations' premiere in Moscow, on November 30, 1877.
Tchaikovsky's English biographer John Warrack notes that the composer's "sympathy with the rococo is shown in his ability to construct for his theme a melody that is impeccably classical yet unmistakably marked with his own personality." For all its "classical" character, this theme also has characteristics related to Russian folk song; in both respects, and in its particular contours, it resembles the theme of a later Tchaikovsky piece in variation form which, like this one, has found its way into the ballet repertory, the Theme and Variations finale to the orchestral Suite No. 3 in G major, Op. 55, composed in 1884. There is a similar resemblance, in fact, to the theme of the Elégie which opens that suite, pointing up the perhaps otherwise unsuspected thematic unity of that work as a whole. In any event, these tunes are both unmistakably Tchaikovsky and eminently well suited to variation treatment.
The version of the Rococo Variations that has been in circulation since the work's premiere is not the one Tchaikovsky set down, but an edition by Fitzenhagen, who eliminated one of the original eight variations and changed the sequence of the remaining seven. Some "authenticists" have denounced this edition as a corruption of the composer's wishes, and within the last two decades the original version was revived and recorded. Most musicians, however, as well as most listeners, seem to feel that Fitzenhagen's changes actually constitute an improvement, and it has been noted that, while Tchaikovsky did not conduct the premiere, he did give his apparent approval by conducting subsequent performances in which Fitzenhagen used his own edition. The brief introduction establishes the work's frame in a few deft strokes: its keynote is elegance, maintaining an appealing balance between the crisp 18th-century gesture and Tchaikovsky's natural warmheartedness. The seven variations do not simply flow from one into the next, but are linked by a ritornello in which prominence is given to the composer's beloved woodwinds. The ritornello itself is one of the most charming touches in the work, a direct link with the fairy-tale world of ballet into which Tchaikovsky had recently entered on the grandest scale with Swan Lake. The balletic feeling that pervades the entire work finds its strongest expression in the third variation, an expansive waltz. In the fifth variation the theme is given to the flute, with the cello providing ornamental trills; this section culminates in a cadenza, following which the penultimate variation appears in the form of a fairly impassioned Andante, to be succeeded in turn by the brilliant final variation which serves as the work's coda.
Kurt Weill (1900-1950)
Symphony no. 2 (1934)
"The Second Symphony is the pinnacle of Weill’s career, and one of the great works of the 20th century."
-American composer David Schiff in his article commemorating the
100th anniversary of Weill’s birth, and the 50th anniversary of his death.
In January 1933, Weill received a commission for a new symphony from the Princess Edmond de Polignac (born Winnaretta Singer), the American-born heiress to the sewing-machine fortune and a leading Parisian patron of the arts. Weill had not written a concert work since 1923, and the request excited him. He started sketching his Second Symphony in Berlin before the end of the month, but Hitler's accession to power on January 30th made staying in Berlin difficult for the composer, and he fled to Paris.
Upon arriving in Paris, Weill received a commission for a ballet, and the resulting work, The Seven Deadly Sins, caused progress on the symphony to temporarily cease. The symphony was not completed until February of 1934, and was premiered by the Concertgebouw Orchestra, under the direction of Bruno Walter, on October 11, 1934. The new symphony, with its mixture of the conventional and theatrical, was received warmly by the public but harshly by the critics. Walter would perform the work many times in such cities as Vienna and New York, by the piece fell into obscurity until Heugel published the score in 1966.
The work opens with a slow introduction, much in the manner of a classical symphony. It then opens up into a violent, triple-meter Allegro whose dynamic and rhythmic contrasts are both surprising and terrifying. Near the end of the movement, there is a period of stasis in which various wind solos float pensively over a constant military-drum figure in the strings.
The second movement's main rhythmic motive, heard immediately in the upper strings and winds, is reminiscent of the jazzy rhythms found in The Threepenny Opera and The Seven Deadly Sins. Funereal in its outlook, and formally very free, the movement offers some semblance of repose between the hectic outer movements.
To narrow down the last movement into one style is nearly impossible, for despite its rondo-like form, the movement changes styles very frequently, almost schizophrenically. It begins with a caprice in the strings and upper winds, but with the brass entrance it becomes a demonic show tune. This sections gives way to a military march, which features a very striking use of two piccolos. The movement becomes more an more complex, interweaving all that has come before, until it drives to the finish with a wild tarantella.