The Program
PYOTR ILYICH
TCHAIKOVSKY
Overture to The Voyevoda, Op. 3
Throughout his career, Tchaikovsky wanted to compose operas, but those efforts
brought only mixed results. While Eugene
Onegin has held the stage, most of his operas have not, and the story of his
first opera suggests some of the many difficulties that would lie ahead. In 1866, while still in his mid-20s, Tchaikovsky
set out to write an opera based on Alexander Ostrovsky’s melodrama Son na Volge (A Dream on the Volga). Tchaikovsky convinced Ostrovsky to write the
libretto for his opera, and the dramatist sketched out the text for what would be Act I. But Tchaikovsky promptly lost that
libretto, and while Ostrovsky tried to reproduce it from memory, the
composer’s continual suggestions drove him so crazy that Ostrovsky abandoned
the project, leaving Tchaikovsky to write the libretto to the second and third
acts himself.
The plot involves the doings of an evil voyevoda,
a term that suggests a figure of military and civil authority. In the opera, the voyevoda Shalïgin kidnaps two
women, Maria and Olyena, and holds them captive. Their lovers, Bastryukov and
Dubrovin, break into the voyevoda’s garden and rescue the women, while the
voyevoda himself is arrested.
Tchaikovsky composed The Voyevoda in
1867–1868, and it was first performed in
Moscow on February 11, 1869. That premiere seemed to be a
success—Tchaikovsky was given 15 curtain calls—yet the opera was dropped after
only four performances. Tchaikovsky came to agree with the negative judgment:
He used some of the music from The
Voyevoda in his next opera, The
Oprichnik, and destroyed the remainder of the score. Nearly a century
later, The Voyevoda was reconstructed
from the orchestral parts and presented in Moscow in 1949. The overture and
several orchestral dances remain the only music from the opera still performed
today. (The overture to The Voyevoda should
not be confused with one of Tchaikovsky’s final works, his “symphonic ballad” Voyevoda, composed in 1891 and published
posthumously as his Op. 78. Despite the similarity in titles, that tone poem,
based on a ballad by Adam Mickiewicz, is a completely different work from the
opera.)
Two
Alternating Ideas
The overture opens with a long solo for French horn, an idea Tchaikovsky
apparently liked: Three years later he would begin his Second Symphony with a similar horn solo. This opening
call repeats again and again, growing more dramatic as it proceeds. A lyric
episode marked Andante cantabile demonstrates
how fine a melodist Tchaikovsky was even as a very young man. Rather than
create real symphonic development in the overture, Tchaikovsky simply
alternates these two ideas.
As the overture rushes into an exciting coda, the young composer experiments
with metric notation. This Allegro moderato e maestoso has the unusual indication 3/4 5/4, and audiences will feel the
asymmetric pull of its phrases. Tchaikovsky settles into a steady 3/4 for the
powerful chords that rush the overture to its knockout conclusion.
—Eric Bromberger
PYOTR ILYICH
TCHAIKOVSKY
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23
Tchaikovsky began drafting this most famous of piano concertos in November and
December 1874, when he was a young professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Only
modestly talented as a pianist and insecure about his handling of larger forms,
the composer sought the advice of Nikolai Rubinstein, who was head of the
conservatory and the man to whom he intended to dedicate the concerto.
Rubinstein listened in silence as Tchaikovsky played the new work through, and
then, as Tchaikovsky later wrote:
There
burst from Rubinstein’s mouth a mighty torrent of words. He spoke quietly at
first, then he waxed hot, and finally he resembled Zeus hurling thunderbolts. It seems that my concerto was utterly
worthless, absolutely unplayable. Certain passages were so commonplace and
awkward they could not be improved, and the piece as a whole was bad, trivial,
vulgar. I had stolen this from somebody and that from somebody else, so that
only two or three pages were good for anything and all the rest should be wiped
out or radically rewritten.
The
Un-Dedication
Stung (and furious), Tchaikovsky refused to change a note, erased the
dedication to Rubinstein, and instead dedicated the concerto to German
pianist-conductor Hans von Bülow, who had championed his music. Bülow promptly
took the concerto on a tour of the United States, and it was in Boston on
October 25, 1875, that Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 was heard for the
first time.
It was a huge success on that occasion, and Bülow played it repeatedly in this
country to rhapsodic reviews. A critic in Boston, taking note of that success,
described the concerto as an “extremely difficult, strange, wild, ultra-modern
Russian Concerto,” but back in Russia the composer read the press clippings and
was beside himself with happiness: “Think what healthy appetites these
Americans must have! Each time Bülow was obliged to repeat the whole finale of
my concerto! Nothing like that happens in our country.”
It only remains to be said that Rubinstein
eventually saw the error of his early condemnation and became one of the
concerto’s great champions. It should also be noted that in 1889—perhaps more
aware of Rubinstein’s criticisms than he cared to admit—Tchaikovsky did in fact
take the concerto through a major revision, and it is in this form that we know
it today.
A
High-Drama Beginning
The concerto has one of the most dramatic beginnings in all the literature,
ringing with horn fanfares and cannonades of huge piano chords, followed by one
of Tchaikovsky’s great tunes, in which that horn fanfare is transformed into a
flowing melody for strings. This introductory section has become extremely
famous, but it has many quirks. It is in the “wrong” key (D-flat major), and,
however striking it may be, it never returns in any form: Tchaikovsky simply
abandons all this tremendous material when he gets to the main section of the
movement.
This “real” beginning, marked Allegro con spirito, is finally in the correct
key of B-flat minor, and the piano’s skittering main subject is reportedly
based on a tune Tchaikovsky heard a blind beggar whistle at a fair in the
Ukraine. To his patroness, Madame von Meck, Tchaikovsky wrote: “It is curious
that in [Ukraine] every blind beggar sings exactly the same tune with the same
refrain. I have used part of this refrain in my pianoforte concerto.” The
expected secondary material quickly appears—a chorale-like theme for winds and
a surging, climbing figure for strings—though Tchaikovsky evades expectations
by including multiple cadenzas for the soloist in this movement. The piano
writing is of the greatest difficulty (much of it in great hammered octaves),
and the movement drives to a dramatic close.
The second movement, Andantino semplice, is aptly named, for this truly is
simple music in the best sense of that term. Over pizzicato chords, solo flute
sings the gentle main theme, an island of calm after the searing first
movement. A scherzo-like central episode marked Prestissimo leads to the return of the opening material and a
quiet close.
The finale, Allegro con fuoco, is also well named, for here is music full of
fire. It is a rondo based on the piano’s nervous, dancing main theme, and while
calmer episodes break into this furious rush, the principal impression this
music makes is of white-hot energy. The “strange, wild, ultra-modern Russian Concerto” rushes to a knock-out
conclusion that is just as impressive to audiences today as it was to
those first listeners in Boston in 1875.
—Eric Bromberger
CARL NIELSEN
Symphony No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 27, “Sinfonia espansiva”
In the summer of 1910, Carl Nielsen, then
the second conductor in the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, began a new symphony,
one that he called “Sinfonia espansiva.” He wrote the first two movements that
summer, finished the third in the fall, and had the entire symphony complete on
April 30, 1911. Nielsen led the Royal Orchestra in the first performance on
February 28, 1912, and it was a triumph. The Third Symphony was soon performed in Amsterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, and
Warsaw, and after a performance in Stuttgart, the local critic described it as
“a mighty animating call from the North.” Nielsen, at 47, had finally found
success as a composer.
The nickname “espansiva” may have come from the composer, but it has
provoked varying explanations. From its smashing opening chords, this symphony
gives the impression of violence, but it is a healthy violence, spilling over
itself, slashing outward, growing, expanding. Nielsen later commented to a
Norwegian newspaper: “I am—or better—I was often a bone of contention … But
that was because I wanted to protest against the typical Danish soft smoothing
over. I wanted stronger rhythms and more advanced harmony.” The “Sinfonia
espansiva” breaks out and explores
new worlds, particularly in matters of form and harmonic development.
A Closer
Listen
The first movement, Allegro espansivo, rips to life on great, hammered As that
ring out with a primal fury. Oddly spaced, they catch us by surprise and
quickly dash the music into its main theme, a surging, driving melody in 3/4.
Just when our ears have adjusted to that triple meter (rather than the duple
meter more common to symphonic first movements), the opening theme becomes a
cosmic waltz, spinning off ever more energy as it dances through the heavens.
All this energy gradually subsides for the second theme-group introduced by
solo woodwinds. The development, surprisingly brief, begins delicately with a
solo flute, but the rollicking energy of the symphony’s opening is never far
away, and finally it returns to drive the movement to a grand close.
After the dynamic Allegro espansivo, we
find ourselves in a different world altogether, where the music seems to loll
on a hot summer afternoon. Across the span of the second movement, Andante
pastorale, Nielsen alternates long woodwind solos (the sound of a shepherd’s pipe?) with an impassioned hymn for
strings. The closing minutes bring one of the most striking touches of all:
Nielsen introduces a soprano and a baritone who sing a wordless melodic line on
the letter A, their voices becoming instruments in the orchestra. Nielsen
originally planned to have them sing this text, which remains relevant to the
music: “All thoughts disappear. Ah! All thoughts disappear. I lie beneath the
sky.”
The third movement, Allegretto un poco, is not quite the expected scherzo: It
is in 2/4 (rather than the expected triple meter), and its pace is not
particularly fast. Nielsen himself called this movement “the work’s heartbeat,”
and its main theme came to him while he was riding the tram in Copenhagen;
rather than risking losing the idea, he jotted it down on his shirt-cuff. A
fizzing energy alternates with more rustic interludes, and the composer left a
cryptic and provocative program: “The third movement is something that cannot
really be characterized in that both good and evil make themselves felt without
a real character.”
Nielsen also commented on the character of the Finale: “The Finale, on the
other hand, is straightforward: a hymn to work and the healthy enjoyment of
daily life. Not a pathetic celebration of life, but a sort of general joy in
being able to participate in the business of everyday living and to see
activity and skill unfold all around us.” The Allegro bursts to life on a grand
tune that seems to exude the health Nielsen describes. There are no battles
fought and won in this finale. There is no struggle at all, only a further
exploration of the energy of the beginning,
and the “Sinfonia espansiva” drives to a sunlit close on a vast unison
A.
—Eric Bromberger