CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The MET Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 8:00 PM

“[Lang Lang is] an artist ... with great gifts.”—Times (London)

“A picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggios.” Those are Stravinsky’s words describing his orchestral fantasy that evolved into the revolutionary ballet Pétrouchka. Acclaimed pianist Lang Lang joins the second half of this program to perform a grand-scale Romantic favorite: Brahms’s First Piano Concerto.

The MET Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Lang Lang, Piano

STRAVINSKY Pétrouchka (1947 version)

BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1

Program is approximately 1 hour, 55 minutes, including one intermission.

Program Notes:

IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882–1971)
Petrushka (1947 version)

Son of a famous bass of St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, Igor Feodorovich Stravinsky began musical studies at the age of nine, followed by private composition lessons with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov; along the way he absorbed the innovations of contemporary French composers such as Debussy and Dukas. After Rimsky-Korsakov’s death in 1908, the role of principal stimulus in Stravinsky’s career passed to the impresario Serge Diaghilev, who was planning a season of Russian ballet in Paris in 1910. On the strength of two orchestral works, Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks, Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to compose a ballet score based on the Russian legend of the Firebird, to be choreographed by Michael Fokine. The resulting work, with an exotic story and colorful music, generated the kind of success Diaghilev was seeking, so he approached Stravinsky about a new ballet for the subsequent Paris season.

Before undertaking this new project, Stravinsky decided to “warm up” with a concert piece for piano and orchestra. He imagined “a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the orchestra’s patience with diabolical cascades of arpeggios.” This “puppet music” he associated with the figure of Petrushka, the underdog in traditional Russian puppet shows. At the same time, he was considering a symphonic treatment of a Russian pagan ritual, but when he played the “puppet music” to Diaghilev, the impresario urged him to turn it into a stage work, for which Alexandre Benois, a Russian stage designer and art historian, would provide a scenario.

At Diaghilev’s urging, this new work became a ballet, first performed at Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet on June 13, 1911, conducted by Pierre Monteux, with Vaslav Nijinsky as Petrushka, Tamara Karsavina as the ballerina puppet, Enrico Cecchetti as the Charlatan who enslaves Petrushka, and Alexander Orlov as the Moor whom the Ballerina prefers to Petrushka. (To make room in the schedule for the “puppet ballet,” Stravinsky’s “pagan ritual” was held over until 1913, when, as The Rite of Spring, it would become one of the new century’s great theatrical scandals.)

Synopsis of the ballet’s action (based on the version printed in the 1947 score)
Scene 1. On a sunny winter’s day during the 1830s, at the Shrovetide fair in St. Petersburg’s Admiralty Square. Crowds of sight-seers stroll by: children, drunkards, shoppers, rival street dancers with their accompanists (playing hurdy-gurdies and music boxes). Eventually an old Charlatan of Oriental aspect presents three puppets which he has imbued with all human emotions: Petrushka, a Ballerina, and a Moor. At the command of his magic flute, they spring to life and perform a wild Russian dance.

Scene II. In Petrushka’s cell. More intelligent than the other puppets, Petrushka suffers more than they, due to his slavery, the Charlatan’s cruelty, and his own ugliness and ridiculous appearance. He seeks consolation in the love of the Ballerina, but just when he thinks he is getting somewhere, she flees, terrified by his eccentric behavior.

Scene III. In the Moor’s cell. Though the Moor is foolish and evil, his rich appearance seduces the Ballerina, who seeks by every means to captivate him, and finally succeeds. Just as their love scene begins, Petrushka enters, mad with jealousy, and is thrown out by the Moor.

Scene IV. The Fair, as in Scene I. The merriment is now at its height. A rakish merchant gives away handfuls of banknotes; coachmen dance with wet nurses; masqueraders lead a wild dance. Suddenly, cries are heard from inside the Charlatan’s little theater: The rivalry of the Moor and Petrushka has taken a violent turn. The puppets run out of the theater and the Moor kills Petrushka with a blow of his saber. When a police officer arrives, the Charlatan shows him that the “dead man” was only made from wood and filled with sawdust. The crowd disperses, leaving the Charlatan alone, but up on the roof of his theater he suddenly sees the ghost of Petrushka, threatening him and mocking all those whom the Charlatan has fooled.

Revisions
Early on, Petrushka underwent revision, initially to correct errors in the performing materials and to facilitate performance under touring conditions. Stravinsky made a suite of transcriptions for solo piano, and a mechanical piano roll of excerpts was also marketed. Eventually, a 20-minute suite of excerpts became the standard “economy-size” sampler for the concert hall. By the late 1940s, the advent of the long-playing record made more-or-less full-length recordings of the score viable, and the ballet’s complete score became widely accessible. In 1947, Stravinsky made a new orchestration, and, though it is sometimes suggested that he intended this rescoring to facilitate concert performances, his assistant at the time, Robert Craft, notes that it uses only six fewer players than the original instrumentation. He says that in 1947 Stravinsky was himself still conducting ballet performances of the work and that “Petrushka was rewritten solely because the composer was dissatisfied with, and wished to make improvements in, its orchestration.”


JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897)
Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15

Brahms began as a pianist and a composer of piano music, and only with trepidation did he extend his range to the orchestra—and in particular to its grandest form, the symphony. By 1876, when his first symphony finally appeared, it had been preceded by two Serenades (both launched in 1860) and the Variations on a Theme of Haydn (1873), works that engaged orchestral forces without confronting head-on the structural challenges of Beethovenian symphonic form.

That first symphony had another predecessor, which began its checkered history in 1854 as a sonata for two pianos that might have been intended as a draft for a symphony. (Unlike Beethoven, whose workshop, in the form of numerous sketchbooks, is mostly accessible, our knowledge about the development of Brahms’s works is scanty indeed; in his 50s, he deliberately destroyed most of his sketches and unfinished or unpublished works. Often our only clues to compositional pre-history are gleaned from references in correspondence.) This sonata for two pianos would eventually metamorphose into a piano concerto, in the process shedding a movement that later resurfaced as the second movement, “Denn alles Fleisch,” of the German Requiem, and acquiring a new finale. Brahms’s great friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, is reported to have given copious advice about orchestration.

Finally completed in 1858, the Piano Concerto in D Minor was introduced in Hanover on January 22, 1859, with the composer as soloist and Joachim on the podium. This performance achieved a moderate success, but a second one five days later in the more important venue of Leipzig, again with Brahms at the keyboard, fared less well. As he numbly reported to Clara Schumann:

My Concerto went very well. I had two rehearsals. You have probably already heard that it was a complete fiasco; at the rehearsal it was met with total silence, and at the performance (where hardly three people raised their hands to clap) it was actually hissed. But all this made no impression on me. I quite enjoyed the rest of the music and did not think of my Concerto.

It was the worst failure of Brahms’s career. Though the piano and orchestral parts were printed in 1861, the full orchestral score of the concerto was not published until 1873. Only gradually did the D-Minor Concerto achieve recognition comparable to the acclaim early granted Brahms’s second essay in the medium, the Concerto in B-flat Major of 1881. (The gap of more than two decades between piano concertos suggests the depth of the trauma induced by the Leipzig concert Brahms so numbly described to Clara.) Speculation about reasons for the “fiasco,” though historically fascinating, need not unduly concern the modern listener; suffice it to say that in 1859 there had never before been a concerto like this one. Despite the manifold traces of Beethoven (not only his piano concertos, but also the key and violence of the Ninth Symphony and the motto rhythm of the Fifth), the language is unmistakably that of Brahms—as we who know his later works can easily recognize, but something the 1859 Leipzig audience was not yet able to do.

Despite the conservative orchestration, the sonorities are often striking and individual. The first movement’s stormy opening theme (marked “majestic”, in a spacious 6/4 meter) is lined out almost exclusively by violins and cellos, the other instruments occupying themselves with the harmonies. A somewhat more consolatory theme follows immediately, then a more restless one, after which the main subject returns. This time, its downward chain of trills develops into a faster-moving theme, with a fanfare-like sequel. The soloist enters with an elaboration of this faster theme, joins in a second exposition of the initial themes, and then adds, in a solo, a more expressive one (marked “a little more moderately”). The fanfare motive is prominent as the exposition reaches a tranquil close.

A barrage of keyboard octaves plunges into a development ranging over several expressive regions (one of them unexpectedly jocular), until an exchange of hammered chords between piano and orchestra prepares the recapitulation. For the first time, the piano takes on the main theme from the very beginning—but in a “wrong” key. Other events in the recapitulation are recolored, so to speak: The theme that first introduced the piano now becomes a passionate orchestral outcry that eventually calms itself in the major mode, where the piano again offers its solo theme. Initial tempo and minor mode are resumed for the urgent coda. Here and elsewhere, the piano writing can be extremely challenging, but it never once sounds merely showy—which may have seemed a demerit in the work’s early days, when concertos were principally expected to showcase the virtuosity of the soloist.

On December 30, 1856, Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann about the concerto: “I am also painting a lovely portrait of you; it is to be the Adagio.” In the autograph manuscript, the opening melody of the slow movement (marked Adagio, in 6/4 meter) bore the inscription “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini!” Robert Schumann’s attempted suicide in 1854, his confinement in an asylum, and his death in 1856 were the most shattering events of Brahms’s youth, and his emotional involvement with his friend’s young widow then and afterward evidently shook him to the depths of his being. The “Benedictus” melody is freely varied by the soloist and extended, especially in two descending phrases that recall a similar rapt mood in the slow movement of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto. Clarinets introduce a melody in thirds, which serves as the occasion for a brief climax. The return of the meditative opening section leads into a piano cadenza and a quiet coda, during which the timpani are discreetly heard for the only time in the movement (the trumpets have been silent throughout.)

Like the final Rondo of the “Emperor,” this one (Allegro non troppo, in 2/4 meter) is launched by the piano, with a theme displaying both bucolic and hectoring tendencies. The first contrasting episode is in F major, the second begins in B-flat major and is eventually developed fugally. A cadenza (“quasi Fantasia”) leads to a coda in D major, beginning in a pastoral mood but finally achieving boisterous grandeur—a juxtaposition of apparent opposites that Brahms handled as successfully as had Haydn and Beethoven before him.

—David Hamilton

© 2009 David Hamilton

David Hamilton has written music criticism and record reviews for High Fidelity, The Nation, The New Yorker, the Financial Times, and the New York Times. He has been program annotator for the MET Orchestra since the beginning of its Carnegie Hall concerts, edited the Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia, and was co-producer of the Met’s Historic Broadcast Recordings.

The MET Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
James Levine conducts 30 performances of five operas in 2009–2010, his 39th season at the Metropolitan Opera, including opening night’s Tosca premiere (with which work he made his debut there in 1971), the new production of Les contes d’Hoffmann, and revivals of Der Rosenkavalier, Simon Boccanegra, and Lulu to end the season on May 15. He and the MET Orchestra will give two concerts at Carnegie Hall next season (soloists are Stephanie Blythe and Diana Damrau, while Pierre Boulez conducts the third in the subscription series with Deborah Polaski); with the MET Chamber Ensemble he appears in both Weill and Zankel Halls in music of Boulez, Mozart, Milton Babbitt, Roger Sessions, Elliott Carter, and Richard Strauss.

Maestro Levine leads the Boston Symphony in four programs here next season, including the Carnegie Hall Opening Night Gala on October 1 with Evgeny Kissin (in a program including the New York premiere of John Williams’s On Willows and Birches,” written for and performed by the orchestra’s longtime harpist, Ann Hobson Pilot, who recently retired), and concerts in February and April with soloists Pierre-Laurent Aimard (in music of Ravel and Carter) and Shenyang, Christine Brewer, Stephanie Blythe, Aleksandrs Antonenko, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (in Mendelssohn’s Elijah). His sixth season as Music Director of the BSO begins on September 23 and includes 40 performances of fourteen programs, among them a complete Beethoven symphony cycle (the orchestra’s first in more than half a century) and world premieres of commissions from Peter Lieberson, John Harbison, and John Williams and the U.S. premiere of Carter’s Flute Concerto.

James Levine’s 2009 Tanglewood season opens on July 3 with Yefim Bronfman in an all-Tchaikovsky program, to be followed at the end of that month by five more BSO programs, the annual “Tanglewood on Parade,” and, with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, a concert performance of the third act of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and staged performances in the Copland Theatre of Don Giovanni.

The BSO recently released the first four in a new series of recordings made in live performances in Symphony Hall, including Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloë, William Bolcom’s new Eighth Symphony, and the Brahms German Requiem.

Lang Lang, Piano
Twenty-six-year-old pianist Lang Lang makes his debut with the MET Orchestra at tonight’s performance. He has played sold-out recitals and concerts in every major city in the world, and is the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Vienna Philharmonic, and many of the top American orchestras.

Starting with the current season, Lang Lang is focusing on education and outreach programs for the involvement of children in music with residencies in six cities—Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco, London, Rome, and Stockholm. He also gives master classes regularly throughout the world including at Juilliard, the Curtis Institute of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and Hannover Conservatory, as well as at the top conservatories of China. His numerous educational and outreach events are organized in cooperation with the Lang Lang International Music Foundation launched last year to support young talent and develop new audiences worldwide.

In 2008, over five billion people viewed Lang Lang’s performance in the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, and tens of thousands of people enjoyed his performances in open-air concerts throughout the world. He also appeared with jazz pianist Herbie Hancock at the 50th Grammy Awards in a performance that was broadcast live to 45 million viewers worldwide.

Lang Lang began playing piano at the age of three and within two years was the winner of the Shenyang competition and gave his first public recital. He entered Beijing’s Central Music Conservatory at age nine, received first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians Competition, and played the complete Chopin Études at the Beijing Concert Hall at age 13. He was appointed International Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF in 2004, is Chairman of the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award Project, and serves on the Weill Music Institute Advisory Committee as part of Carnegie Hall’s educational program.

Lang Lang records exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon / Universal, and every CD he has made has entered the top classical charts as well as many pop charts around the globe. He received The Recording Academy’s 2007 Presidential Merit Award, was named the Academy’s 2008 Grammy Cultural Ambassador to China, and is the first Ambassador of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.