Suite from Karelia, Op. 11
Jean Sibelius
b. Hämeenlinna, Finland / December 8, 1865
d. Järvenpää, Finland / September 20, 1957
First performed by the RPO on October 31, 1957; Howard Hanson, conductor. Last performed on July 2, 2008; Christopher Seaman, conductor.
Sibelius regularly composed incidental music to accompany stage plays and pageants. The first commission to do so appeared in 1892, soon after the successful premiere of Kullervo, a large-scale, symphony-like tone poem for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra. The commission for incidental music came from the Viipuri Student Corporation at the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki. They were all from Viipuri (now Vyborg), a city in the eastern Finnish province of Karelia. They were planning a patriotic soirée, the stage portion of which would consist of scenes from the province’s turbulent history. The intent was to bolster Finnish, and specifically Karelian patriotism, in the face of ominous political rumblings from Finland’s powerful and belligerent neighbor, Russia.
Sibelius began work on the score during the summer of 1893. It consists of an overture and music to be heard during, and at times in between, the eight tableaux of the pageant. The soirée took place in Helsinki on November 13, 1893. It drew a sold-out house; in fact many people were turned away at the door. The event was counted a huge success, and it raised enough money to establish a school in the parish of Uusikirkko. The loud conversations of the audience, however, rendered much of Sibelius’ music inaudible.
Before the month was out, he began conducting extracts from the score at concerts. A friend, conductor Robert Kajanus, assembled the three-movement suite that you will hear at these performances, and conducted its first performance in 1899. It consists of music from the third, fourth, and fifth tableaux.
The Karelia Suite opens with an atmospheric and exciting Intermezzo. It depicts fourteenth-century Karelian woodsmen passing in procession, proudly and defiantly, on their way to pay taxes to a Lithuanian duke. The second movement, a melancholy Ballade, was originally a vocal piece. The tableau showed a deposed fifteenth-century king, Charles Knutsson Bonde, sitting in his castle and listening to a minstrel. The suite concludes with a festive march. It followed a call to battle issued by Pontus de la Gardie, a French-born, sixteenth-century soldier who became Swedish high commander in a war against Russia.
Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 82
Alexander Glazunov
b. St. Petersburg, Russia / August 10, 1865
d. Paris, France / March 21, 1936
First performed by the RPO on January 9, 1936; Fritz Reiner, conductor; Alexander Leventon, soloist. Last performed on February 1, 2003; Jorge Mester, conductor; Livia Sohn, soloist.
Glazunov is an important transitional figure in Russian music, linking the folk-based style of the late nineteenth century with the more cosmopolitan schools of the twentieth. He was the student and protégé of Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov, one of the most prominent composers who took Russian folk music as the root and pattern for concert works and operas. In his eventual position as director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, he taught many significant Russian musicians, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich among them. He found some of his pupils’ music bewildering, but the support he gave them rarely wavered.
Distressed by the changes brought about by the Bolshevik Revolution, Glazunov stuck it out for a decade before leaving Russia in 1928. Settling in Paris, he toured the world as a conductor and continued to compose, but without his previous energy and flair. Homesickness and a feeling of being left behind by musical developments gave his latter-day works a tired, colorless quality.
His earlier works are his best, including the melodious, gorgeously scored ballets Raymonda and The Seasons. Another is this concerto, his most frequently performed piece. He composed it in 1904. It is dedicated to, and was premiered by, the great Hungarian soloist Leopold Auer, the teacher of Heifetz, Milstein, Elman, and other outstanding violinists.
Following a formal structure instigated by Franz Liszt, whom Glazunov admired deeply, the concerto is cast in a single movement. The first two sections share an atmosphere of restrained melancholy, tempered by sweetness and a warm degree of expressiveness. A taxing solo cadenza acts as a bridge to a festive finale filled with virtuoso fireworks and sparkling orchestration.
Pétrouchka (1947 revision)
Igor Stravinsky
b. Oranienbaum, Russia / June 17, 1882
d. New York, New York / April 6, 1971
First performed by the RPO on January 9, 1936 (1911 edition); Fritz Reiner, conductor. First Scene conducted by Igor Stravinsky, March 1, 1945. Last performed on July 1, 2005; Christopher Seaman, conductor.
Stravinsky’s involvement in his first great success, the dance score The Firebird, came about in 1910, thanks to Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the renowned company Les Ballets Russes. Soon afterwards, he and Diaghilev agreed on an evocation of pagan Russia as their next project. Pétrouchka, however was destined to come to term first. “Before tackling The Rite of Spring, which would be a long and difficult task,” Stravinsky wrote, “I wanted to refresh myself by composing an orchestral piece in which the piano would play the most important part – a sort of Konzertstück. In composing the music, I had a clear picture of a puppet, suddenly let loose, trying the patience of the orchestra with devilish cascades of arpeggios. There follows a tremendous brawl which ends with the sad collapse of the poor puppet.”
Stravinsky settled on Pétrouchka (Punch) as the leading figure in his piece, adopting the pathetic clown character familiar from fairground shows in many lands. Visiting the composer to hear his sketches for the “pagan Russia” project, Diaghilev was surprised to hear materials for the piano concerto instead. Quickly sensing their stage possibilities, he persuaded Stravinsky to turn them into a ballet score. Composition continued in France, Switzerland, and Italy, between the summer of 1910 and May 1911.
Diaghilev, meanwhile, assigned Alexander Benois to create the scenery and costumes (Benois also collaborated on the scenario), and Mikhail Fokine, the choreography. The premiere in Paris on June 13, 1911 scored a tremendous success for all concerned, including Vaslav Nijinsky, who danced the title role.
Stravinsky’s score is one of his most brilliant achievements, bursting with the energy and inventiveness of youth. The depth of characterization is astonishing, no more so than in regards to Pétrouchka. Stravinsky gives the melancholy puppet enough personality to make listeners care about him, without letting us forget that he is made of straw and cloth, not flesh and blood. These performances will use the revised version of the orchestration that he prepared in 1947.
The setting is a Shrovetide fairground in St. Petersburg, about 1830. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the carnival is a puppet show, overseen by a mysterious, aging charlatan. His flute brings to life three characters: Pétrouchka, the handsome Blackamoor, and the lovely Ballerina. The three puppets perform a vivacious Russian Dance. The action moves backstage to Pétrouchka’s small, bare room. He professes his love for the Ballerina but she rejects him coldly. The next stop is the Blackamoor’s quarters, where he and the Ballerina are enjoying an amorous rendezvous. Pétrouchka appears, only to be chased away by his rival.
Back outside, evening is falling and the fair is in full swing. Suddenly Pétrouchka appears running through the crowd. The Blackamoor pursues him, then strikes him down with a sword. The charlatan demonstrates to the shocked crowd that the apparent murder victim was only a puppet. But as he drags the body away, Pétrouchka’s ghost appears above the theatre, rudely mocking his former master.
© 2010 Don Anderson. All rights reserved.
