CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 8:00 PM

St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor
Nelson Freire, Piano

SCHUBERT Entr'acte (Act III) from Rosamunde
SCHUMANN Piano Concerto
PROKOFIEV Suite from Romeo and Juliet

Encore:
ELGAR "Nimrod" from Enigma Variations

Program Notes:

By Harlow Robinson

FRANZ SCHUBERT Entr’acte, Act III from Rosamunde
Born January 31, 1797, in Vienna; died November 19, 1828, in Vienna.

Composed in 1823, Rosamunde was first performed on December 20, 1823, in Vienna. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on January 2, 1913, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Joseph Stransky.

Scoring: flutes, oboes, clarinets in B, bassoons, horns in B, and strings.

The incidental music Franz Schubert wrote for Helmina von Chézy’s four-act play Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus proved far more successful than the play itself, which closed after only two performances. The play’s intricate and clunky plot revolves around shipwrecks, mistaken identity, poison ink, dancing shepherds, and scheming governors, although all ends happily with the triumph of Rosamunde and her noble lover Alfons over the forces of evil. Schubert produced ten musical numbers for the drama, working very quickly in order to meet a deadline. These included three entr’actes, ballet music, a romance for contralto, a chorus of spirits, a chorus of shepherds, a chorus of huntsmen, and a romance for contralto.

The B-flat Major Entr’acte was meant to be played following Act III, just after the nasty Fulgentius has written a letter with poison ink intended to kill Rosamunde. Subsequent research has revealed that the music for this entr’acte was most likely previously composed and recycled in order to save time. As Elizabeth McKay has written, its solemn, contemplative opening melody reappeared a few months later as the opening theme (in A minor) of the second movement of the String Quartet D. 804, and even later as the theme of the variations of the third Impromptu for Piano D. 935. The more cheerful middle section comes from a song Schubert wrote in 1816, “Der Leidende” (“The Sufferer”).

ROBERT SCHUMANN Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
Born June 8, 1810, in Zwickau, Germany; died July 29, 1856, in Endenich, near Bonn.

Composed in 1845, the Piano Concerto in A Minor was first performed on December 4, 1845, in Dresden. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 19, 1891, with the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch, with Ignace Jan Paderewski, piano.

Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in C, 2 trumpets in C, timpani, strings, piano solo.

The composition and early history of Robert Schumann’s only piano concerto is closely connected to his remarkable creative relationship with Clara Wieck Schumann, who became his wife in 1840, after a ten-year courtship fiercely opposed by her father, Friedrich Wieck. It was to Clara that Schumann officially dedicated, in 1839, a piece for piano and orchestra that he had been preparing for several years. “It is going to be a hybrid of symphony, concerto, and Grande Sonata,” he wrote to his fiancée, already renowned as a highly accomplished pianist. “I can’t write a concerto for virtuosos and have to think of something else.” Having completed the first movement (originally conceived as a separate piece under the title Konzert-Fantasie in A minor) in 1841, Schumann finished the remaining two (Andantino and Rondo) only in the summer of 1845. The following December, Clara gave the premiere in Dresden, to considerable acclaim. Soon after, she solidified the concerto’s reputation with a performance led by Felix Mendelssohn with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in their home town of Leipzig, and then with Schumann conducting in Vienna and Prague. So enthusiastic was the public and critical reaction that Breitkopf and Hartel published the work almost immediately, in 1846.

The Concerto opens with a passionate entrance (marked Allegro affettuoso) by the unaccompanied soloist that sets a highly romantic mood. The oboe, clarinet, bassoons, and horns then present the expansive noble main theme, from which most of the Concerto’s thematic material is derived. What follows is almost closer to a theme and variations structure than to sonata-allegro form. Nor does Schumann offer a strong contrast between solo and orchestral passages, instead linking and merging them in a unified whole. The short middle movement, an Intermezzo, is in A-B-A form, with an intensely lyrical middle section constructed around an intimate conversation between cellos and piano, one of the best examples of Schumann’s special gift for creating long, soaring melodic lines. In the finale, a rondo, the main subject refrain is closely related to the principal theme of the first movement, providing the Concerto with an unusual sense of musical and structural unity that in its inventive variety never becomes repetitious.

In an earlier article, Schumann had written that “we must await the genius who will show us in a newer and more brilliant way, how orchestra and piano may be combined, how the soloist, dominant at the keyboard, may unfold the wealth of his instrument and his art, while the orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may interweave its manifold facets into the scene.” That genius was Schumann himself.

SERGEI PROKOFIEV Suite from Romeo and Juliet
Born April 23, 1891, in Sontsovka, Bakhmutsk region, Yekaterinoslav district, Ukraine; died March 5, 1953, in Moscow.

Composed in 1935, Romeo and Juliet was first performed in December 1938 in Brno, Czechoslovakia. Suite No. 2 of Romeo and Juliet received its Carnegie Hall premiere on March 31, 1938, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. Portions of Suite No. 1— “Death of Tybalt” and “Masks”— received their Carnegie Hall premiere on March 21, 1943, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Efrem Kurtz. Suite No. 1 premiered in its entirety on January 9, 1945, with The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Pierre Monteux.

Scoring: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, cornet, 2 trumpets, 4 horns, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, drum, cymbals, bass drum, bells, xylophone, harp, piano, strings.

The idea of creating a ballet out of Romeo and Juliet originally came from the Soviet stage director Sergei Radlov (1892–1958), an important figure in the Russian theatrical avant-garde both before and after the 1917 Revolution. Radlov was also very familiar with Prokofiev’s music, since he had staged the first Russian production of his opera Love for Three Oranges in 1926 in Leningrad. Noted for his adventurous productions of contemporary opera, Radlov directed the Russian premiere of Berg’s Wozzeck at the Mariinsky Theatre, where he served as artistic director from 1931 to 1934. Radlov also staged several plays of Shakespeare at his own dramatic theater in the early 1930s, including Romeo and Juliet in 1934.

Originally, Radlov and Prokofiev were planning to stage Romeo and Juliet at the Mariinsky Theatre (later known as the Kirov Theatre). But in one of the many political storms that beset the theater during the Soviet era, Radlov lost his position there in the aftermath of the assassination of the Leningrad Communist Party boss Sergei Kirov in December 1934. Still continuing to work with Radlov as librettist, Prokofiev signed a new contract (also later broken) for the ballet with the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. At the time, Prokofiev was living a peripatetic and nomadic life, commuting between Paris (where his wife and two sons still lived) and Russia, with frequent trips to the US. Only in early 1936 did Prokofiev make the fatal decision to permanently settle his family in an apartment in Moscow.

Preparing for this final move back to his homeland, Prokofiev spent the spring, summer, and early fall of 1935 in the USSR. Despite the increasingly repressive political and ideological atmosphere to which he seems to have paid remarkably little attention, this was a period of apparently happy productivity. His chief project was Romeo and Juliet, most of which was composed amid the rural tranquility of Polenovo, a country retreat for the staff of the Bolshoi Theatre located in the town of Tarussa on the River Oka. “I am enjoying the peace and quiet,” Prokofiev wrote to his friend Vera Alpers. “I swim in the Oka, play tennis and chess, go for walks in the forest with our ballerinas, do some reading and work for about five hours a day. I am not resting so much as writing Romeo.”
Even for him, Prokofiev worked with incredible speed, as he did when genuinely inspired. Act II was completed on July 22, 1935, Act III on August 29, and the entire piano score was finished by September 8, after less than five months of work. In October, Prokofiev began the orchestration, working at top speed, producing the equivalent of about 20 pages of full score each day. But the planned Bolshoi production failed to take place, and no other theatre came forth to take on the project. Frustrated, Prokofiev created two orchestral suites from the ballet’s music in late 1936. These were performed soon afterwards in Russia, representing one of the few instances in dance history when a ballet’s music was heard in concert form before being staged.

The stage premiere of the full-length Romeo and Juliet eventually took place not in Russia, but in Brno, Czechoslovakia, with choreography by Ivo Psota, who also danced the role of Romeo. The first Russian production at the Kirov Theatre in Leningrad was choreographed by Leonid Lavrovsky, with Galina Ulanova giving one of her most successful performances in the role of Juliet. The story line of the Kirov version had been stitched together by four authors: Radlov, Prokofiev, Lavrovsky, and critic/playwright Adrian Piotrovsky.

In the Radlov-Prokofiev scenario, the play’s five acts and 24 scenes were divided into many short episodes, approximately equal in length. There are 52 such episodes in the final published version of the score. In his preceding five ballets, Prokofiev had also used an episodic structure, although the sections of his earlier ballets tended to be somewhat larger than the episodes in Romeo. Its more rapid, “montage-like” dramatic structure was no doubt influenced by Prokofiev’s recent experience of writing film music (including the score for Lt. Kijé). The ballet’s scenario also greatly expands on the crowd scenes in Shakespeare, making the action more “public” and giving the corps de ballet plenty to do.

The original scenario (later altered) also changed the play’s ending to a happy one. Radlov and Prokofiev had Romeo arrive a minute earlier than in Shakespeare, finding Juliet still alive. “The reasons that led us to such a barbarism were purely choreographic,” Prokofiev explained later. “Living people can dance, but the dead cannot dance lying down.” Another factor was certainly the Soviet doctrine of Socialist Realism, which urged composers to provide optimistic uplifting endings to their operas and ballets. In the end, Prokofiev and his collaborators restored the original tragic ending, which turned out to be spectacularly effective both choreographically and musically.

Romeo represents a giant step forward in Prokofiev’s evolution as a ballet composer. It is a remarkable synthesis of the five “lines” of his musical personality, as he once described them: classical, modern, toccata (or motor), lyrical, and grotesque. His aggressive “Scythianism” found brilliant expression in the violent hostility between the Montagues and Capulets, and in the brutal darkness of the unenlightened medieval setting (most obviously in the “Dance of the Knights”). His “classicism” found an outlet in the courtly dances required of an aristocratic setting, such as gavottes and minuets. Entirely appropriate for some of the character roles, such as the Nurse, was Prokofiev’s famous satirical style, while his scherzo style suited volatile characters like Mercutio. And finally, Prokofiev’s lyricism, an increasingly important part of his artistic personality since the late 1920s and now reinforced by the Soviet musical environment (which prized melody and accessibility above all else), was both necessary and particularly successful in conveying the innocent passion between the lovers that lies at the center of the drama. Romeo is Prokofiev’s first completely successful lyrical stage work and his first convincing portrayal of non-ironic romantic love.

The two orchestral suites Prokofiev arranged in 1936 from the music for Romeo and Juliet each have seven titled sections. Suite No. 1 (Op.64bis) focuses on rearranged genre episodes from Acts I and II and does not attempt to follow the dramatic action. Four of its sections are dance intermezzos and only two (“Madrigal” and “Romeo and Juliet”) make use of the major dramatic leitmotifs. Suite No. 2 (Op. 64-ter), on the other hand, possesses a more logical narrative structure that follows the play’s plot. In 1946, Prokofiev arranged another set of six numbers from the ballet as Suite No. 3 (Op. 101).


Copyright © 2007 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Harlow Robinson is Matthews Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University, and author of Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography and the recently published Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians: Biography of an Image.

St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor
Over the last 40 years, Yuri Temirkanov has forged a fiercely individual brand of music-making, marking him as one of the most dynamic conductors on the international concert circuit. In his primary role as Music Director and Principal Conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra—a position he has occupied since his predecessor Yevgeny Mravinsky’s departure in 1988—Temirkanov frequently elicits performances lauded for their intelligence, precision, and wide-ranging emotional depth. In addition to his tenure in St. Petersburg, the maestro currently serves as Principal Guest Conductor of the Bolshoi Opera, Principal Guest Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Conductor Laureate of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Music Director Emeritus of the Baltimore Symphony. He has also served as Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Director of the Kirov Opera and Ballet (now known as the Mariinsky Theatre), Principal Guest Conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic, and most recently, Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony. Mr. Temirkanov regularly appears with many of Europe’s leading orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Vienna Philharmonic, Dresden Staatskapelle, London Philarmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Santa Cecilia of Rome, and La Scala. He is a regular visitor to the US, where he conducts the major orchestras of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

In addition to his eagerly awaited fall tour with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, highlights of Mr. Temirkanov’s 2007–08 conducting season include Verdi’s La Traviata at Parma’s Teatro Regio, Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades and Bizet’s Carmen at the Bolshoi Opera; programs of Prokofiev and Shostakovich with the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony; the premiere of a new commission by Georgian composer Giya Kancheli with the Danish Radio Symphony; and a tour of Latin America with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic in summer 2008.

Yuri Temirkanov’s extensive discography features collaborations with the New York Philharmonic, the Kirov Opera Orchestra and Chorus, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, and the Danish National Radio Symphony. He has recorded the complete Stravinsky ballets and Tchaikovsky’s symphonic cycle with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as many of the major works of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, and Mussorgsky with the other ensembles.

Mr. Temirkanov is the recipient of numerous distinguished citations and awards, including the State Prize of Russia (1999) and the Association of Italian Music Critics’ Abbiati Prize (2003); he has also been made an honorary member of the International Academy of Sciences, Industry, Education and Art (1998). In 2003, he was awarded the President’s Medal by Vladimir Putin and was named Conductor of the Year in Italy. He has received Grammy nominations for his recordings of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky (1996) and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 (1998).

Yuri Temirkanov started his musical studies at the age of nine. After studying violin and viola as a boy, he eventually pursued viola and conducting at the Leningrad Conservatory. He took first place at the prestigious All-Soviet National Conducting Competition in 1966, and was subsequently invited by conductor Kiril Kondrashin to tour Europe and the US with legendary violinist David Oistrakh and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Temirkanov debuted with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic a year later, and was invited to join the orchestra as Assistant Conductor to Yevgeny Mravinsky. He served as Principal Conductor of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra from 1968 to 1976, then as Music Director of the Kirov Opera and Ballet until 1988, when he assumed his current position as Music Director and Principal Conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

ST. PETERSBURG PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

The St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra is Russia’s oldest symphonic ensemble, tracing its origins to a group of music-loving aristocrats who founded Europe’s first Philharmonic Society in 1802. The St. Petersburg Philharmonic we know today has earned near-legendary status as the preeminent exponent of the modern Russian symphonic tradition. With Music Director and Principal Conductor Yuri Temirkanov at its helm since 1988, the SPPO follows an ambitious schedule of worldwide touring and recording, building on the foundation laid by the Orchestra’s great former conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky.

To celebrate its notable 200th anniversary in 2002, the Orchestra performed at a star-studded Gala concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London, with soloists including Evgeny Kissin and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. In the earliest days of its existence, the SPPO’s energies were directed first, and exclusively, to the Russian aristocracy, and, after the revolution in 1917, to the working classes. In the first half of the 20th century, the SPPO was led by some of the greatest conductors of the time, including Glazunov, Koussevitsky, Tcherepnin, Walter, Klemperer, Kleiber, and Knappertsbusch. Beginning in 1938, when the Orchestra was known as the Leningrad Philharmonic, Yevgeny Mravinsky led SPPO to greatness. The maestro established and maintained an extraordinary level of musical quality and integrity, which remains the hallmark of this superb ensemble to this day. Mravinsky’s special friendship with composer Dmitri Shostakovich enabled the Orchestra to become a recognized champion and authoritative interpreter of the composer’s works. After World War II, the Orchestra’s reputation took on a global dimension: as the first Soviet ensemble to tour abroad, the Orchestra performed throughout Europe, Asia, and the US under the direction of such greats as Stokowski, Munch, Cluytens, Markevitch, Krips, Kodály, and Britten. Maestro Mravinsky also made numerous recordings with the Orchestra, which eventually obtained distribution outside the USSR.

In 1991, the city of Leningrad reclaimed its original name, and the orchestra became known as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Under the leadership of Music Director and Principal Conductor Yuri Temirkanov, the ensemble now regularly tours Europe, the US, and Japan. The SPPO is a favorite at such major summer festivals as Salzburg, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Rheingau, MDR, Lucerne, and the BBC Proms. The Orchestra’s live and recorded performances have established its worldwide reputation of unparalleled excellence.

Recordings of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic can be heard with Yuri Temirkanov conducting on Sony BMG Masterworks, with Mariss Jansons on EMI, and with Vladimir Ashkenazy on Decca.

Nelson Freire, Piano
Pianist Nelson Freire surged to international prominence in 1959 in a season of recitals and concerto appearances throughout Europe, the US, Central and South America, Japan, and Israel. Since that time, he has steadily built on this initial acclaim to become a highly sought-after soloist of the first rank. In recent seasons he has performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, toured Europe with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under the direction of Riccardo Chailly, and presented enthusiastically received recitals and orchestral appearances across North America with performances in Baltimore, Fort Worth, Montreal, New York City, Portland, and Seattle. He frequently appears with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood and tours the US in a duo-recital program with Martha Argerich. Mr. Freire marked the 150th anniversary of Chopin’s death with a triumphant performance of the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in Warsaw.

Mr. Freire is the frequent guest artist of many of the world’s greatest orchestras. In Europe, he has performed with the Berlin Philharmonic, Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, Vienna Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, London Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de Paris, Radio France Philharmonic, Monte Carlo Orchestra, and Orchestre de la Suisse Romande; in the US, with the orchestras of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, and Philadelphia. Among the distinguished conductors with whom Mr. Freire has collaborated are Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, Valery Gergiev, Eugen Jochum, Rudolf Kemp, Fabio Luisi, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, John Nelson, Vaclav Neumann, Seiji Ozawa, André Previn, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Hugh Wolff, and David Zinman.

Nelson Freire has recorded for Sony BMG Masterworks, Teldec, Deutsche Grammophon, and IPAM, among others. His recording of Chopin preludes received the Prix Edison. Other recordings have won the Diapason d’Or, Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros, and Choc du Monde de la Musique. In 2001 Mr. Freire signed an exclusive recording contract with Decca. Two recordings on that label received Grammy nominations in the Best Instrumental Soloist category: his 2005 recording of Chopin works (Études, Op. 10; Barcarolle, Op. 60; and Sonata No. 2) and a 2006 recording of Brahms’s piano concertos, with the Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailly.

Born in Brazil, Nelson Freire began piano studies at the age of three with Nise Obino and Lucia Branco, who had worked with a pupil of Liszt. In 1957, after winning the Rio de Janeiro International Piano Competition with his performance of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto, the president of Brazil awarded him a scholarship to study with Bruno Seidlhofer in Vienna. Seven years later, Mr. Freire won the Dinu Lipatti Medal in London, as well as first prize at the International Vianna da Motta Competition in Lisbon. Among his other awards are the French Victoires de la Musique’s Soloist of the Year 2002 and a special Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 2005.