SERGE RACHMANINOFF (1873-1943)
Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 1
Scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle, cymbals, strings and solo piano
The teenaged Serge Rachmaninoff ran full-throttle on a fast track toward success as a pianist and composer. Private keyboard study under the highly disciplined guidance of Nikolai Zverev and harmony lessons from Nikolai Ladukhin had prepared the talented but lazy boy for the rigorous Moscow Conservatory curriculum. Barely 13 years old, Rachmaninoff arranged Tchaikovsky's new Manfred Symphony for four-hand piano. His first original composition-a scherzo for orchestra-followed a few months later. Various solo piano pieces and songs, a draft for an opera based on Victor Hugo's Notre Dame and an astonishingly high score (5+) on the conservatory's music theory examination verified his accelerating development.
Rachmaninoff moved out of Zverev's residence in 1889, claiming a need for quieter surroundings in order to compose. Fellow student Matvei Pressman remembered that "Zverev was so upset that he almost fainted. He considered that he had been deeply hurt, and none of Rachmaninoff's reasoning could change his mind." The wounds from this angry separation took many years to heal. Meanwhile the newly independent musician moved into the Moscow home of his cousins, the Satins. His first major undertaking, begun in November 1889, was a piano concerto in C minor. Though he eventually abandoned the heavily edited sketches, Rachmaninoff gained invaluable experience that ensured success for his next attempt in the form-the Piano Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp Minor, Op. 1.
Sketches for the first movement bear the date June 8, 1890, during what became the first of many annual summer retreats at the Satins' countryside property, Ivanovka. Another project-a commissioned four-hand piano arrangement of Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty-and self-professed idleness soon diverted his attention from the concerto. After another school year and his graduation from the conservatory, Rachmaninoff resumed work on the concerto at Ivanovka in July 1891. One intense creative flourish rapidly brought the work to its completion on July 6. "I wrote down and orchestrated the last two movements in two and a half days," the exhausted composer wrote Mikhail Slonov two weeks later. "You can imagine what a job that was! I wrote from five o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock in the evening, so I was terribly tired when I finished the work."
The world premiere of the Piano Concerto No. 1 (the first movement only) took place at a concert of student works at the Moscow Conservatory on March 17, 1892. Vasily Safonov, the conservatory's director, conducted, and Rachmaninoff played the solo part. There was little time to rest on the laurels of this triumphant event, for days later the faculty distributed the required libretto for the composition examination: Aleko, based on Pushkin's poem Tsygany. Rachmaninoff cloistered himself away for the next few weeks, emerging on April 13 with a completed opera score. The examining committee again awarded him a 5+, his estranged teacher Zverev proudly presented him with a gold watch, and the conservatory bestowed on him the Great Gold Medal, previously earned by only two students.
Liberated from formal studies, Rachmaninoff reflected upon his recently completed concerto and found it imperfect, mainly in terms of its excessively thick orchestration and piano writing. He refused many invitations to perform the work over the next few years, considering the concerto "frightful in its present form." Rachmaninoff contemplated a revision of the score in 1908, but waited another nine years before embarking on a major reworking. Normally he required quiet and solitude for such work, but this revision took place amid the gunfire of the October Revolution of 1917. The new version retained the original thematic material, minus a few minor segments, but contained significant modifications to the orchestration, including the substitution of a bass trombone for the tuba and the addition of triangle and cymbals in the finale.
Rachmaninoff gained confidence in his refurbished score and introduced the revised concerto at a 1919 concert in New York City. Inexplicably the audience failed to warm toward this music, perhaps because the more mature Concertos Nos. 2 and 3 already had become regular concert fare. The Piano Concerto No. 1 begins with a riveting introduction: the winds repeat a single pitch (F-sharp) for two measures before the piano's bravura entrance. Following this commanding display of virtuosity, the violins introduce a soft, lyrical melody. The Presto movement assumes monumental dimensions, but nowhere is this expansiveness more evident than in its immense solo cadenza. The Andante, a delicate nocturne for piano and orchestra, required very little modification, but Rachmaninoff greatly improved the finale by creating a more dramatic opening and streamlining the structure. This final version, which he recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Eugene Ormandy in 1939 and 1940, continued to please its composer. "I have rewritten my first concerto; it is really good now," Rachmaninoff later told Alfred Swan. "All the youthful freshness is there, and yet it plays itself so much more easily."
DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-75)
Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, Op. 47
Scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, three clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, bells, xylophone, two harps, celesta, piano and strings
An urgent message came over the New York Times's wire in 1937 from Soviet correspondent Harold Denny: "COMPOSER REGAINS HIS PLACE IN SOVIET. Dmitri Shostakovich, who fell from grace two years ago, on the way to rehabilitation. His new symphony hailed. Audience cheers as Leningrad Philharmonic presents work." Although Aram Khachaturian's Piano Concerto also received its premiere on that November 21 concert by the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky (at the Festival of Soviet Music, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution), it was Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 that brought the audience to its feet. The diminutive, bespectacled composer walked onstage dozens of times to acknowledge the thunderous ovation. One audience member, A.N. Glumov, recalled the conductor's grandiose, selfless gesture: "[He] lifted the score high above his head, so as to show that it was not he, the conductor, nor the orchestra who deserved this storm of applause, these shouts of 'bravo'; the success belonged to the creator of this work."
The Symphony No. 5 offered more than rehabilitation: it was a glorious resurrection for the recently beleaguered Shostakovich. His troubles began on January 28, 1936, when Pravda printed an aggressive attack against his latest (and popularly acclaimed) opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Titled "Muddle instead of Music," the article condemned the "Leftist confusion instead of natural, human music. The power of good music to infect the masses has been sacrificed to a petty-bourgeois, Formalist attempt to create originality through cheap clowning. It is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly." So it did for Shostakovich and other "Formalist" composers. The Union of Soviet Composers convened in February and publicly denounced Shostakovich. This official act of humiliation initiated Soviet persecution of progressive artists and musicians that lasted throughout the Stalin years.
Shostakovich reclaimed some credibility with his Symphony No. 5, known as "the creative reply of a Soviet artist to justified criticism" (a subtitle belonging to a journalist, not the composer). Not all party officials were convinced by the people's enthusiasm for the work. Some complained openly at the concert hall that the audience had been hand-selected for the premiere, and their ovation was therefore viewed with skepticism. Others doubted that the young composer could "rehabilitate" in such a short period. Shostakovich kept party criticism at bay by announcing plans for a sixth symphony, dedicated to Lenin. Twenty-four years passed before he composed the Symphony No. 12 ("The Year 1917") in Lenin's memory.
In the wake of Soviet censures, Shostakovich cultivated a type of musical schizophrenia wherein he proclaimed public ideals through the symphonic form, while submerging his private thoughts in the personal string quartet medium. (By the end of his life, he had written an equal number of symphonies and quartets-15.) The Fifth retained vaguely autobiographical meaning for the composer. "The theme of my symphony is the making of man. I saw man with all his experiences in the center of the composition, which is lyrical in form from beginning to end. The finale is the optimistic solution of the tragically tense moment of the first movement."
Shostakovich's opening Moderato initially dwells on imitative ("Formalist") treatment of a contorted theme characterized by melodic leaps, chromatic harmonies and dotted rhythms. Violins offer the second theme, a slow-moving melody accompanied by long-short-short rhythms in the lower strings. The development begins with an ostinato played by the piano and an ominous descending horn melody. Excitement builds steadily as the music accelerates. A militaristic section enters, complete with snare drum. Close imitation based on the opening theme merges with the fortissimo recapitulation. A flute quietly restates the contrasting theme, and the music fades toward the end.
The Allegretto is the scherzo movement. Cellos and double basses begin a triple-meter dance. Woodwinds then introduce enthusiastic dotted rhythms, and the horns add a heroic strain. The trio begins with a solo violin melody. A relatively complete version of the scherzo follows. The coda harks back to the trio theme.
Reduced instrumentation-lacking brass and most percussion-and subdivided strings reinforce the Largo's introspective quality. Shostakovich advanced several lyrical themes toward the cause of extended symphonic contemplation. The march-like final movement explodes with pounding timpani and blaring brass, disturbing the slow movement's sustained tranquility. Repetitious long-short-short rhythmic patterns build to the loud string and woodwind theme. A French horn soliloquy restores lyricism to the symphony. Strings sustain this melodious tranquility. The march theme begins slowly then accelerates for the triumphant D-major conclusion.
-Program notes © 2015 Todd E. Sullivan
