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Opening Night Magic with Firebird Concert Notes

Bolero

Maurice Ravel

b. Ciboure, France / March 7, 1875; d. Paris, France / December 28, 1937

In 1928, the dancer Ida Rubinstein commissioned a new ballet score from Ravel. He planned to answer her request with orchestrations of piano music by a composer he admired – the Spaniard Isaac Albéniz. Discovering that the transcription rights had already been spoken for, he decided instead to create an original work with Spanish flavoring. He also used the opportunity to conduct a musical experiment. As he put it, the score would be “uniform throughout in its melody, harmony and rhythm, the latter being tapped out continuously on the drum. The only element of variety is supplied by the orchestral crescendo.” Instrumental coloring plays a major role, as well, an area in which Ravel had attained supreme mastery.

Choreographer Bronislava Nijinska set the ballet in a Spanish inn. A woman (Rubinstein) danced alone atop a table surrounded by men. As her steps grew more and more animated, her observers became increasingly excited, eventually pounding the table in rhythm to the music. At the climax knives were drawn and a brawl broke out.

After the first, wildly successful ballet performance, Bolero quickly won popularity in the concert hall, as well. The whole affair surprised Ravel – and also embarrassed him. Composer Arthur Honegger recalled that “Ravel said to me, in that serious, objective manner which was characteristic of him: ‘I’ve written only one masterpiece, Bolero. Unfortunately, there’s no music in it.’” Audiences have disagreed. It may not be wise to hear Bolero too often, but when everything falls into place, it has the power to mesmerize the senses and quicken the pulse more effectively than any other piece of music.

Firebird Suite (1919)

Igor Stravinsky

b. Oranienbaum, Russia / June 17, 1882; d. New York, New York, USA / April 6, 1971

Stravinsky’s ballet The Firebird belongs to his first creative period, when his music displayed the influence of the colorful, folk-based style favored by his teacher, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. It came into being thanks to the impresario Sergei Diaghilev. For the second Parisian season of his celebrated company, Les Ballets Russes, Diaghilev envisioned a lavishly mounted new dance production, its plot adapted from Russian fairy tales.

When his first choice as composer, his former music teacher, Anatoly Lyadov, was judged too slow to complete the score on time, Diaghilev cast about for a replacement. Familiar with Stravinsky through the orchestrations of Chopin’s piano music that he had contributed to Diaghilev’s ballet Les Sylphides, and impressed with two of Stravinsky’s brief, original orchestral pieces (Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks), Diaghilev offered the 27-year-old composer a tentative commission for The Firebird.

“I had already begun to think about The Firebird when I returned to St. Petersburg from Ustilug in the autumn of 1909,” Stravinsky wrote, “although I was not yet certain of the commission (which in fact did not come until December, more than a month after I had begun to compose; I remember the day Diaghilev telephoned me to say to go ahead, and my telling him I already had).” He completed the score in March 1910.

“I was flattered, of course, at the promise of a performance of my music in Paris, and my excitement at arriving in that city, towards the end of May, could hardly have been greater,” Stravinsky wrote. The premiere on June 25, 1910 achieved a glittering triumph, launching him into the front rank of contemporary composers.

Stravinsky arranged three concert suites from the full score of The Firebird. The ASO will be performing the second, which is by far the most popular. It contains roughly half the music of the complete score. It follows the sequence of the original scenario. With the help of a magic firebird, the hero, Prince Ivan, rescues a group of spellbound princesses from the clutches of an evil magician, Kastcheï. Stravinsky’s music is highly atmospheric, colorful, imaginative and melodious. It includes two Russian folk songs, one a lyrical tune for the princesses, the other the majestic hymn which closes the score. The whirling, nightmarish Infernal Dance performed by Kastcheï and his monstrous subjects is a tour de force of orchestral brilliance.

Cello Concerto in B Minor, Op. 109

Antonin Dvorak

b. Nelahozeves, Bohemia / September 8, 1841; d. Prague, Bohemia / May 1, 1904

This magnificent Concerto was the final piece Dvorák composed during his three-year term as Director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York. Inspiration flowed from several sources. One was the powerful homesickness that he had harbored since he left his beloved Czech homeland in 1892. Further stimulation flowed from the second of Victor Herbert’s cello concertos (which Dvorák heard in New York and which admired strongly), and from Hanuš Wihan, the cellist of the Bohemian Quartet, an ensemble that had done much to popularize Dvorák’s music. Wihan offered to assist with the creation of the new Concerto’s solo part. He proved too industrious an adviser, making more revisions and additions than the composer wanted.

Three decades before, Dvorák had been in love with Josephina Cermáková, an aspiring 16-year-old actress to whom he gave piano lessons. Even though she rejected his romantic advances, he retained a powerful affection for her. He married her younger sister, Anna, perhaps because he considered her the closest substitute he could find. While he was composing the second movement of this Concerto, a letter from Josephina revealed that she was gravely ill. In her honor, he quoted the melody of one of his songs, Leave Me Alone in My Fond Dream, which was a particular favorite of hers, in the middle panel of this movement.

She died in May 1895, one month after he resettled in Europe. A few weeks later, he revised the final pages of the Concerto’s Finale to include a second quotation from the song, this time as a memorial tribute. British cellist Leo Stern gave the Concerto’s premiere, in London on March 16, 1896, with the composer conducting.

The opening movement begins with an orchestral introduction outlining the two main themes. The first – sombre, almost funereal – soon bursts forth into forceful expressiveness. Solo horn introduces the second theme. Its haunting lyricism recalls the slow movement of the “New World” Symphony. Dvorák said that it had cost him a great deal of effort, but that it moved him profoundly every time he heard it. Passing through much drama, the movement concludes with ringing fanfares.

The slow second movement opens with a warm, tranquil theme introduced by the woodwinds. Dvorák gives the middle section a forceful launch, then takes up the soaring melody of Josephina’s favorite song, here transposed into a minor key. A quasi-cadenza for the soloist, with light accompaniment, precedes a return to the opening subject and a peaceful, contented coda.

Strong contrasts characterize the Finale, from the forceful opening theme in march rhythm, through a wistful subject strongly inflected with the spirit of Czech folk music, to a sizeable, elegiac reverie where themes from the previous movements reappear briefly. Here, in a final gesture of farewell, Dvorák returns Josephina’s beloved song to its original, major-key warmth.

Program Notes by Don Anderson (c) 2008

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