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PROGRAM NOTES by Klay and Karen Woodworth Sergei Prokofiev Overture on Hebrew Themes, Opus 34 Sergei Prokofiev’s life in music began when he was a small child, studying the piano with his mother. His musical talent led to contacts with respected composers, including Sergei Taneyev and Alexander Glazunov. The latter composer recommended Prokofiev to the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and Prokofiev entered the Conservatory in 1904 at the age of thirteen. He studied there for ten years with composers Anatoly Liadov, Alexander Tcherepnin, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Upon graduation, he received both first prize as a pianist and recognition for his first symphony (the “Classical” Symphony), which remains popular today. Prokofiev applied for a visa to travel to the United States shortly after the October Revolution in 1917 and spent several years in the U.S. before moving to Paris in 1921. The contacts he made in both countries were valuable for commissions and performances of his music. He composed his opera The Love for Three Oranges for the Chicago Opera Company in 1919, he wrote music for many of Serge Diaghilev’s ballets with the Ballets Russes in Paris, and Serge Koussevitsky commissioned Prokofiev’s fourth symphony for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1929. While waiting for the premiere of The Love for Three Oranges in 1919, Prokofiev was approached with a commission for a touring group called the Zimro Ensemble, a string quartet with piano and clarinet. Zimro toured under the auspices of the Russian Zionist Organization. Their leader was clarinetist Simeon Bellison (principal clarinet with the New York Philharmonic from 1920 to 1948). Bellison presented Prokofiev with a notebook of “Jewish themes” from which he hoped the composer could craft a piece for the full ensemble. Prokofiev, who never worked with “folk” material and was not enamored with the project, started with some reluctance. Reading and improvising his way through the notebook, he soon found some complementary material and wove together an engaging chamber work. The overture’s first theme is a bouncy klezmer melody originally given to the clarinet. By way of contrast, Prokofiev introduces a lyrical melody deep in the cello register. The development of the themes creates some dramatic tension in the music before the klezmer melody returns. The recapitulation of the second theme over a shimmering accompaniment and then a deeply chordal cadence was reportedly Prokofiev’s favorite part of the piece. He ends the overture with a bright klezmer flourish. Zimro launched the work to acclaim in January of 1920, and the Beethoven Quartet introduced the music to the Soviet Union in 1924. The composer decided to orchestrate the work in the summer of 1934. Although Prokofiev never listed the Overture on Hebrew Themes as one of his best works, the original chamber version and the version for orchestra are among his most popular compositions. Ernest Bloch Three Jewish Poems (Trois Poèmes Juifs) Born in Geneva, Ernest Bloch grew up in a middle-class family. His father was a merchant whose shop sold Swiss tourist items. Bloch took up the violin as a youngster and, following the recommendation of his teacher, moved to Brussels to study with the celebrity violinist Eugène Ysaÿe in 1896. Ysaÿe recognized that Bloch had a stronger affinity for creativity than he did for performance and suggested he study composition with François Rasse. At nineteen, Bloch moved to Frankfurt for compositional studies with Ivan Knorr and two years later moved to Munich to study with Ludwig Thuille. His final sojourn as a budding composer was to Paris in 1903. His studies and travels ultimately exposed him to musical influences ranging from Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss to César Franck and Claude Debussy. He came to the U.S. on a concert tour in 1916 and brought his family to America shortly thereafter. He became an American citizen in 1924. After stints teaching in New York, Cleveland, and San Francisco (as well as time back in Europe), Bloch eventually moved to Agate Beach, Oregon. Despite this wide range of influence, many think of Ernest Bloch not as a gifted Swiss-American composer, but primarily as a Jewish composer. Writings from two points in the composer’s career show how he embraced his heritage: I have read fragments from Moses, and an immense sense of pride surged in me. My entire being vibrated, it is a revelation. I will find myself again in this. It stirred me so much that I could not continue reading for I felt fear. I had the fear of discovering too much “me” …. I would find myself a Jew, raise my head proudly as a Jew, and then how can I stand the life I am leading? … It is important that we express, show the greatness and destiny of this race. (1906) In a work that is called “Jewish,” I did not look at the problem from the outside. I made myself listen to a voice from within, profound, intimate, urgent, passionate, an instinct, far more than a cut and dry meaning, a voice that appeared to me from a great distance, from a time before me, before my parents … a voice that throbbed in the reading of certain passages from the Bible …. The entire Jewish heritage overwhelmed me, and from it was born the music. (1937) From 1912 to 1916 Bloch created a body of work he referred to as his Jewish Cycle. This group of works includes sumptuous psalm settings for voice and orchestra, the orchestral piece Israel, the popular concertpiece for cello Schelomo, and the Three Jewish Poems. In the Poems, Bloch created three beautiful pieces for orchestra that show the composer engaging with his heritage to create music for the wider world. The first movement, “Danse,” reaches between the music of Strauss and Debussy for an evocative (if European) orientalism. Its free form is held together with the cyclic devices Bloch learned in Belgium. Much more introspective, the second movement, “Rite,” builds to an early dramatic climax before spinning slowly away. “Rite” includes the characteristic shofar call Bloch evokes in many of the works in his Jewish Cycle. The final movement, “Cortège funébre,” is very personal. As Bloch wrote: This is more human. My father died — these Poems are dedicated to his memory. There is something implacably severe in the rhythms that obstinately repeat themselves. At the end, sorrow bursts forth, and at the idea of eternal separation the soul breaks down. But a very simple and serene melody arises from the orchestral depths as a consolation, a balm, a gentle faith. The memory of our dear departed ones is not effaced; they live forever in our hearts. The form is free, but it is really there, for I believe that our constitution demands order in a work of art. Antonio Vivaldi The Four Seasons (Op. 8, Nos. 1–4) Antonio Vivaldi was ordained as a priest at the age of twenty-five. Six months later, he became the violin master at the Ospedale della Pietá, an orphanage for girls in Venice. Although he was known throughout his life as “The Red Priest” (a reference to his hair color), he never returned to clerical duties. He began publishing chamber music in 1705 and mounted his first opera in 1713. Vivaldi wrote hundreds of compositions and published most of them, but his music faded from concert stages soon after his death. His current reputation is less than a century old. Rediscovered and championed by twentieth-century masters like Fritz Kreisler and Alfredo Casella, the music of Antonio Vivaldi is now heard everywhere. In his 1997 study of Vivaldi’s life and music, Karl Heller notes the parallels between the beginning of the Enlightenment and the popularity of Vivaldi’s concertos. As the individual began to take precedence over the church or the feudal state, the soloist on stage with a concerto by Vivaldi soared above the assembled orchestra with a melody no longer constrained by the rules of strict counterpoin. This was true of Vivaldi’s concertos collected as his Opus 3, known as L’estro armonico (1711). By the time that he published his Opus 8 collection in 1725, Vivaldi had been writing for the stage for a dozen years. Vivaldi’s Opus 8, titled The Contest Between Harmony and Invention, contained a dozen concertos. Seven of the twelve have descriptive titles, the first four of which are “Spring,” “Summer,” “Autumn,” and “Winter.” These, “The Four Seasons,” stand as an epitome of both individual expression and musical dramatization. As popular today with audiences and performers as they were in Vivaldi’s lifetime, “The Four Seasons” contain very evocative music. To heighten the experience, Vivaldi published the concertos with descriptive sonnets. The bright first concerto celebrates the arrival of Spring with its light breezes and babbling brooks. A brief shower momentarily stops the songs of birds. A goatherd sleeps in a pleasant meadow with his dog (barking provided by the violas). Finally, nymphs and shepherds dance to the sound of bagpipes — although the tune to which they are dancing expresses some anxiety about the coming summer. Vivaldi’s Summer is not a pleasant season, as the heat and insects cause a great deal of distress. A violent thunderstorm blows up and the heavy rains and hailstones destroy the crops. Vivaldi was famous for his musical “storms,” and in this concerto the writing is particularly effective, coming out of the undulating waves depicting heat. The peasants in Vivaldi’s world welcome the Autumn season as the time of harvest, Bacchanalia, and the hunt. The first two movements of the third concerto are dance music punctuated by drunken revelry and then sleep (five notations in the score mark points at which besotted dancers doze off). Then the hunters head out with their guns and dogs. They track and corner a beast who weakly dies, concluding the final movement. Winter is cold and forbidding, causing chattering teeth and stamping feet to be portrayed in the music of the first movement of the fourth concerto. Unlike the heat and storms of summer, however, the cold of winter can either be avoided or can lead to some seasonal fun. In the second movement, Vivaldi’s peasants wait in contentment by a blazing fire. In the finale, everyone goes outside to slide on the ice, tentatively at first but later running and slipping as the winds howl around them. ©2009 Klayton Woodworth and Karen M. Woodworth |