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Program Notes
Classical Series
Ehnes Plays Barber
Peter Oundjian, conductor
James Ehnes, violin
Thursday, January 10, 2008 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, January 12, 2008 at 8:30 p.m.
Sunday, January 13, 2008 at 3 p.m.
in Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 14
SAMUEL BARBER
B. March 9, 1910, West Chester, Pennsylvania
D. January 23, 1981, New York, New York
Barber’s Violin Concerto was first performed by Albert Spalding, who played it with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, February 7 and 8, 1941. Scored for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, percussion, piano and strings (approx. 25 minutes).
The concerto is written in the best traditions Barber championed. It is lyrical, conservative in style and fastidiously orchestrated. The first movement is in a quite standard sonata form, opening with a transparent, long-spun solo violin theme that various commentators have likened (perhaps inappropriately) to a theme by Mozart. When this has run its course, the clarinet takes up a puckish second theme, then the violin returns with a rhythmically active theme, marked by numerous bounding-bow passages. The first two themes are rigorously developed before the first theme returns in a major orchestral climax, signaling the recapitulation.
A smoothly rising oboe melody at the beginning of the slow movement imparts an oriental flavor to the music. As this gradually fades away, it is joined by a horn theme that again becomes important at the end of the movement. In the meantime, the solo violin dominates the freely designed central section of the movement in what amounts to the closest thing to a cadenza heard anywhere in the concerto. The solo violin then takes up the oboe theme and the horn theme, bringing the movement to a close.
The perpetual-motion finale is not only a tour de force for the solo violin, but for the orchestra as well. It is a fleet, light-footed movement cast in a rondo form and while much of its dazzling character is meant to show off the solo violin, the challenges to orchestra members are equally formidable.
The Detroit Symphony Orchestra last performed Barber’s Violin Concerto on Nov. 17-20, 2004 with Itzhak Perlman conducting and Gloria Schmidt as the soloist.
DSO SHOP @ THE MAX RECOMMENDS:
Barber, Violin Concerto, James Ehnes, violin, Bramwell Tovey conducting the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, CBC 5241.
Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 60 “Leningrad”
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
B: September 25, 1906, Saint Petersburg, Russia
D: August 9, 1975, Moscow, Russia
Dedicated to the City of Leningrad and largely composed within the besieged city as a patriotic response to the Nazi invasion in 1941, it was enthusiastically embraced within the Soviet Union, but quickly dismissed and even ridiculed in the West.
Scored for three flutes (second doubling alto flute, third doubling piccolo), two oboes, English horn, three clarinets, (third doubling E-flat clarinet), bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, eight horns, six trumpets, six trombones, tuba, timpani, two harps, bass drum, cymbals, field drum, tam tam, tambourine, triangle, xylophone, piano and strings (approx. 70 minutes).
Seven of Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies carried overt references to the turmoil surrounding war and revolution in the history of the Soviet Union. The composer’s tortured personal relationship with Soviet artistic policy often seeped through the pages of his eight other symphonies. Not since Mahler and Joachim Raff was symphonic form so heavily involved with events and ideas beyond and outside the abstract realm of instrumental tone and musical themes that are the basis of the symphonic principle.
In the case of Shostakovich, the meaning and intrinsic value in his symphonies are further obscured because of public rebukes he suffered under the regime of Joseph Stalin, as well as the concomitant demands that he hew to populist artistic expressions of Soviet realism. Conflicting statements he occasionally made about the nature of these works and other statements attributed to him in the controversial memoir published by Solomon Volkov after his death have also confused those issues.
The first three movements of the Seventh Symphony were composed in Leningrad, beginning in July 1941, and the fourth movement was completed the following December in Kuibyshev, the temporary wartime Soviet capital on the banks of the Volga River. The Bolshoi Theater Orchestra gave the premiere there on March 5, 1942. The work was then performed in Moscow. Microfilm of the score was finally smuggled into Leningrad, where a sadly depleted Leningrad Radio Symphony defiantly performed the work on August 9, 1942.
Sir Henry Wood conducted the symphony’s London premiere in June 1942. Ernest Newman of the London Times, however, quickly dismissed the work’s value. The microfilmed score finally reached New York via a circuitous route through the Middle East. Arturo Toscanini passionately conducted its American premiere with the NBC Symphony in July 1942. This led the way for dozens of American performances over the next year. However, the symphony’s popularity soon evaporated and in 1943, Béla Bartók delivered a coup de grâce with his satirical trombone parody of its first-movement march tune in the “Interrupted Intermezzo” movement of his Concerto for Orchestra.
The Seventh Symphony is the first of Shostakovich’s truly long symphonies, cast in a discursive Mahlerian mode. The experience of hearing these symphonies is like crossing a vast ocean in a small boat, becalmed in light swells at some points, then being imperceptibly but irrevocably swept up in huge waves of strong, shifting currents. It is a purposefully constructed work, however, (especially considering the harrowing circumstances of its composition) and a significant milepost in Shostakovich’s symphonic legacy. Above all, it exemplifies his fascinating ability to gradually transform inconsequential scraps of thematic material into towering musical statements.
The symphony is cast in a traditional four-movement format with the second-movement Scherzo preceding the slow movement, which flows without interruption into the finale. The first movement opens with a bright, positive theme attributed to be an expression of the Soviet people at peace. The piece proceeds through a standard sonata-form exposition, but the development is replaced by an extraordinary interpolation: the insistent repetition of a distant march tune growing ever louder over some 300 measures. Shostakovich likened this to the repetitive rhythmic theme of Ravel’s celebrated Boléro. Other commentators have cited the rhythmic snare-drum figure of Carl Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony as another precedent. (Some have suggested that the deceptive gaiety of the tune referred to false hopes on the part of Russian people that Hitler’s advancing armies would liberate them from Stalin’s grip and treat them more humanely.) Another extraordinarily episode occurs toward the end of the movement, during a long, mournful recitative by the woodwinds, mainly the bassoon.
The central movements are abstract. The Scherzo opens in a pleasant mood, becoming more high-strung in the fast, nervous trio section at the center of the movement. The Adagio rises from a peaceful opening to an intense martial rhythm and a powerful unison for the strings, followed by a long reflective solo for the violas. The long finale, often called a “victory” movement, has a darkly resolute character as it builds its powerful climaxes.
The DSO last performed Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 60 “Leningrad” on Nov. 3-4, 2000, with Mark Wigglesworth conducting.
DSO SHOP @ THE MAX RECOMMENDS:
Shostakovich, Symphony No. 7, “Leningrad,” Valery Gergiev conducting the Mariinsky (Kirov) Theater Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Philips B0000376.
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