CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Boston Symphony Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 8:00 PM

Boston Symphony Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Piano
Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, Conductor

RAVEL Alborada del gracioso
RAVEL Pavane pour une infante défunte
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Major

RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé (complete)

Sponsored by Smith Barney

Program Notes:

MAURICE RAVEL
Born March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrenées, France; died December 28, 1937, in Paris.

Alborada del gracioso
Ravel composed Alborada del gracioso as one movement of his piano cycle Miroirs in 1905 and orchestrated it in about 1918. The orchestrated version was first performed in Paris on May 17, 1919, with Rhené-Baton conducting, and received its US premiere at Carnegie Hall on January 1, 1925, with the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch.

Scoring: 2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes and English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones and tuba, timpani, crotales, triangle, tambourine, castanets, side drum, cymbals, bass drum, xylophone, two harps, and strings..

In 1905 Ravel composed a set of five piano pieces under the title Miroirs (Mirrors). He later orchestrated three of the five pieces—Une barque sur l’océan, Alborada del gracioso, and La vallée des cloches—of which the most successful is certainly the Alborada del gracioso. In its original keyboard form, the piece is filled with powerful accents and fast repeated notes that are a challenge to even the most gifted virtuoso. Such overwhelming technical demands almost cried out to be translated to the orchestra, especially for Ravel, whose transcriptions are among his most successful and popular works.

The title of the piece is evocative, if a bit mysterious. Alborada is the Spanish equivalent of the French aubade, the Italian alba, and the German Morgenlied, all of them “dawn songs,” a characteristic genre from the lyric poetry of the Middle Ages. Generally they are conceived as being sung by a friend watching out for the safety of two illicit lovers. As the night wanes, the friend, outside the bedroom window, sings that the dawn is approaching and that it is time for the lovers to part. As such, the song is likely to be of a sentimental cast.

It is the second part of Ravel’s title that makes it elusive, for this is the aubade of the “gracioso”—a buffoon, a jester, a clown. So this “morning song” is not the end of a romantic interlude, but rather a vigorous Spanish dance, built up from a typical Iberian rhythm and the frequent opposition of 6/8 and 3/4 meters, often heard simultaneously in different instruments, and here also shifting occasionally from 6/8 to 9/8. The introductory phrase, pizzicato in the strings, suggests a guitar refrain that recurs several times between “verses” of the song, which becomes a brilliant orchestral showpiece, presented with bright splashes of color and virtuosic solo interjections culminating in a glorious racket.
—Steven Ledbetter


Pavane for a Dead Princess
Ravel composed his Pavane pour une Infante défunte originally for piano in 1899, and it was first performed in public by Ricardo Viñes at a Societé Nationale concert on April 5, 1902. The orchestral transcription dates from 1910 and had its first performance at the Concerts Hasselmans, Alfredo Casella conducting, on December 25, 1911. The first Carnegie Hall performance took place on March 10, 1937, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Artur Rodzinski.

Scoring: 2 flutes, oboe, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, harp, and strings.

Ravel inherited from his mother, whose early years were spent in Madrid, a strong feeling for the people, folklore, and music of Spain. His father, a Swiss civil engineer who played an important role in the development of the automobile, instilled in both sons—the elder Maurice and the three-years-younger Edouard, who would go on like his father to become an engineer—a love for things mechanical, frequently accompanying them on visits to factories of all sorts. That the boy Maurice would undertake a musical career seemed clear from the start; the only question was whether he would become a concert pianist or a composer. Following lessons in piano, harmony, counterpoint, and composition, he was enrolled in the preparatory piano division of the Paris Conservatoire in November 1889, but his early years there were marked by a succession of academic failures; he was finally expelled in July 1900, though he continued to audit the classes of his “dear teacher” Gabriel Fauré, to whom he would later dedicate his Jeux d’eau for piano and his string quartet.

On five occasions, Ravel competed for the Grand Prix de Rome, a state-subsidized prize designed to further the winning composer’s artistic development with a four-year stipend, the first two years to be spent at Rome’s Villa Medici. In May 1905 he tried for the last time (he had recently turned 30, the age limit for the competition)—and was not even admitted to the finals! There was an uproar: debate among the music critics was heated, the news made the front pages, and the integrity of the jury was suspect, especially considering that all six finalists were pupils of one of the judges, Charles Lenepveu, who was a professor of composition at the Conservatoire. Without question, a variety of musical/political factors were involved. Ravel was by now a prominent figure in Parisian musical life, recognized as the leading French composer of his generation and presumable successor to Debussy. But at the same time, his preliminary submission for the 1905 Grand Prix contained enough errors and infractions to suggest that he was being flippant, scornful, or both, and his teachers had frequently and consistently found him lacking in discipline despite his natural talents.

Ravel’s first published work was the Menuet antique of 1895, published in 1898. His formal debut as a composer came at the Société Nationale concert of March 5, 1898. The Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess), in its original piano version of 1899, was premiered together with Jeux d’eau. The latter was the historically more significant and held, in the composer’s words, “whatever pianistic innovations my works may be thought to contain,” but it was the charmingly elegant Pavane that was immediately popular and which drew the attention of both the listening public and amateur pianists. The orchestral transcription of 1910 served further to broaden its audience. The pavane was a ceremonial dance of the 16th and 17th centuries, its name most likely deriving from “Pava,” a dialect form of “Padua” in Italy. The infanta or Spanish princess of the title is nobody in particular: the piece was commissioned by the Princess Edmond de Polignac, whose salon Ravel frequented in Paris, and the composer, by his own admission, simply concocted a title that pleased him by its sound.
—Marc Mandel


Piano Concerto in G Major
Ravel composed the Concerto in G, along with his other piano concerto (the one for left hand), in 1930 and 1931, and conducted the first performance, with pianist Marguerite Long, at a Ravel Festival concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris on January 14, 1932, with the Lamoureux Orchestra. The Concerto received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on November 8, 1932, with Sylvan Levin, piano, and The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

Scoring: solo piano, piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, clarinets in E-flat and B-flat, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, triangle, side drum, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, wood block, whip, harp, and strings.

At about the same time that Paul Wittgenstein, a concert pianist who had lost his right arm during World War I, asked Ravel if he would write a concerto for him, Ravel’s longtime interpreter Marguerite Long asked for a concerto for herself. Thus, although he had written no piano music for a dozen years, he found himself in 1930 writing two concertos more or less simultaneously. The concerto for the left hand turned out to be one of his most serious compositions, but the G-major Concerto, dedicated to and first performed by Madame Long, falls into the delightful category of high-quality diversion. Ravel’s favorite term of praise was divertissement de luxe, and he succeeded in producing just such a piece with this concerto.

On the occasion of the first Boston Symphony Orchestra performances in April 1932 (the American premiere), the program book stated that “This concerto was intended for the Jubilee of the Boston Symphony Orchestra; but though, it is said, Ravel had worked continuously at it for more than two years, he was not satisfied.” In fact, as reported in the BSO’s 1938 program book when the orchestra next performed the concerto, again with Sanromá and Koussevitzky, Ravel had been asked to write a piece for the BSO’s 50th anniversary and did speak of a piano concerto, but “the score was not forthcoming from the meticulous and painstaking composer.”

The motoric high jinks of the first movement are set off by the cracking of a whip, though they occasionally yield to lyric contemplation. The second movement is a total contrast, hushed and calm, with a tune widely regarded as one of the best melodies Ravel ever wrote. The effort cost him dearly, and it may have been here that he first realized that his powers of composition were failing; they broke down completely in 1932, when the shock of an automobile collision brought on a nervous breakdown, and he found himself thereafter incapable of sustained work. For this concerto, he found it necessary to write the Adagio assai one or two measures at a time. The final Presto brings back the rushing motor rhythms of the opening, and both movements now and then bear witness that Ravel had traveled in America and become acquainted with jazz and recent popular music. He also met George Gershwin and told him that he thought highly of his Rhapsody in Blue; perhaps it is a reminiscence of that score that can be heard in some of the “blue” passages here and there.
—Steven Ledbetter


Daphnis et Chloé (complete)
Serge Diaghilev commissioned the ballet Daphnis et Chloé in 1909. Ravel composed the ballet in 1909–10 (a piano score was published in 1910) and completed the scoring in 1911, though there was some recasting of the Bacchanale after a private hearing, so the work was not ready until April 5, 1912. By that time the first concert suite had already been performed, on April 2, 1911, at a concert in the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris under the direction of Gabriel Pierné. Pierre Monteux conducted the first stage performance, in a production by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, on June 8, 1912, also at the Châtelet. Scenario and choreography were by Mikhail Fokin (Michel Fokine), scenery and costumes by Léon Bakst; the principal dancers were Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina. The first complete performance at Carnegie Hall of Daphnis et Chloé took place on March 9, 1961, with Schola Cantorum of New York and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Scoring: 3 flutes, alto flute, piccolo, 2 oboes and English horn, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, castanets, crotales, cymbals, wind machine, bass drum, tenor drum, tambourine, tam-tam, triangle, celesta, glockenspiel, xylophone, two harps, strings, and wordless chorus, plus offstage piccolo, E-flat clarinet, horn, and trumpet.

The ballet Daphnis et Chloé is Ravel’s longest and most ambitious work. Both his operas (L’enfant et les sortilèges and L’heure espagnole) are in a single act, and he preferred to work on Chopin’s rather than on Wagner’s scale. He was not exactly a miniaturist, but his consummate precision in matters of detail and technique spared him the need for a broad canvas or for any Mahlerian endeavor to search endlessly for the essence of his own ideas. They are perfectly formed and whole from the start.

In Daphnis et Chloé, though, he attempted the larger scale, and perhaps it is no surprise that the work is better known in the form of orchestral suites that divide it into sections of a more typically Ravelian dimension. It belongs to the most fertile period of his life and provides an invaluable glimpse not only of his incomparable musicianship but also of the extraordinary wealth of artistic activity in Paris just before the Great War.

Much of the credit for this surge of creativity must be accorded to Serge Diaghilev, the Russian impresario who commissioned scores from Debussy, Ravel, Dukas, and Satie (to name only the French composers on his list) and who had a knack of throwing together collaborators in different spheres (painters, dancers, musicians) who could work enthusiastically together. But even without Diaghilev the age was teeming: the rapid expansion of orchestral technique at the turn of the century, the prosperity of the European capitals, and the sense of unstoppable cultural advance—all this came together to produce an artistic heritage that dwarfed the output of the rest of the 20th century.

Diaghilev came to Paris in 1907 with some Russian concerts, in 1908 with Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, and in 1909 with the first season of the famous Ballets Russes. On each visit his ear was tuned in to local talent. Ravel was producing a series of masterpieces, mostly for piano or chamber ensemble, and although he completed the one-act opera L’Heure espagnole in 1907, it was not staged until 1911. Diaghilev can only have guessed at Ravel’s sense of stagecraft at that time; perhaps he heard the orchestral Rapsodie espagnole in 1908. By 1909 he had brought together Ravel and Mikhail Fokin, his choreographer, and had commissioned a ballet.

The proposed subject was a touchingly sensuous romance, “The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloé,” attributed to Longus, a Greek author of the third century A.D. This story entered French literary consciousness in 1559 when Jacques Amyot translated it from Greek. Amyot’s translation was reprinted in Paris in 1896. In June 1909 Ravel wrote: “I’ve just had an insane week: preparation of a ballet libretto for the next Russian season. Almost every night work until 3 a.m. What complicates things is that Fokin doesn’t know a word of French, and I only know how to swear in Russian.” Although Fokin is usually credited with the idea for the ballet, his ignorance of French suggests that the originator was more probably Diaghilev himself.

Despite Ravel’s haste, it was to be three years before Daphnis et Chloé reached the stage. A piano draft was ready by May 1910 and was in fact published that year. The first orchestral suite was played by the Colonne Orchestra and published in 1911, presumably with Diaghilev’s approval, and the full ballet was first staged at the Théâtre du Châtelet on June 8, 1912, with Karsavina and Nijinsky in the main parts, with décor by Bakst, and conducted by Monteux. There had been disagreements and delays, and Ravel’s conception of an idealized Greece, based on 18th-century French paintings, clearly differed from Bakst’s, although he later described Bakst’s design for the second part as “one of his most beautiful.” The dancers found the music unusually difficult to dance to and the production was notable for its “deplorable confusion,” yet it was a triumph for the principal dancers and the music was recognized from the first as a masterpiece.

Ravel liked to think he had written a “symphonic” score. He even called it a “choreographic symphony.” He is certainly meticulous and inventive in his use of principal themes, but his primary purpose was to convey action and atmosphere. The score closely describes the stage action, which must largely be missed in concert performances, although the character of individual dances and ensembles is clear enough. Ravel calls on the full modern orchestra, with infinite resourcefulness in his use of string effects, harps, muted brass, alto flute and other rarities, a wide selection of percussion, and a wordless chorus. Nowhere is his orchestral brilliance more varied and more vivid than in Daphnis et Chloé. When the upper woodwinds are in full spate and the lowest instruments are firmly anchored to slow-moving bass notes, the characteristic sound of the late-Romantic orchestra is displayed at its richest.

The score is in three continuous parts with concerted dances and set pieces at intervals: in between are passages of action or “recitative” to convey the interaction of characters or events. The opening scene is a grotto in a woody landscape where young shepherds and shepherdesses gather round the figures of three nymphs carved in a rock. Daphnis and Chloé are childhood companions who learn jealousy first through the attentions of Dorcon, an oxherd. He and Daphnis compete for her by dancing: Dorcon’s grotesque dance arouses derision, and Daphnis is left to discover the ecstasy of Chloé’s kiss. Lyceion, a shepherdess (two clarinets) then tempts Daphnis and leaves him troubled.

A band of pirates approaches and they carry Chloé off. Daphnis, searching for her, finds her sandal and curses his ill-fortune. Suddenly the statues glow and come to life. The nymphs’ solemn dance leads Daphnis to the god Pan.

A distant chorus covers a change of scene to the pirate camp where celebrations are in full swing. Bryaxis, the pirate chieftain, orders the prisoner Chloé to dance. In the middle of her dance she vainly attempts to flee, twice. Bryaxis carries her off, whereupon a mysterious atmosphere overtakes the scene and the pirates are pursued by cloven-hoofed followers of Pan, whose formidable image then appears. The pirates scatter and the scene returns to the grotto of the beginning for the famous dawn music. The shepherds have come to reunite Daphnis and Chloé. In gratitude the pair reenact the story of Pan and Syrinx (pantomime), and the ballet ends with the tumultuous Danse générale.

—Hugh MacDonald

Program notes copyright © 2007 Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc. All rights reserved.

Boston Symphony Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Now in his fourth season as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, James Levine is the BSO’s 14th music director since the orchestra’s founding in 1881 and the first American-born conductor to hold that position. Highlights of Maestro Levine’s 2007–08 BSO programs (three of which again go to Carnegie Hall) include an Opening Night all-Ravel program; premieres of new works by Elliott Carter, John Harbison, William Bolcom, and Henri Dutilleux; Mahler’s First and Ninth symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde; Smetana’s complete Má Vlast; the two Brahms piano concertos with Evgeny Kissin, and season-ending concert performances of Berlioz’s Les Troyens. He also appears in Boston as pianist, performing Schubert’s Winterreise with Thomas Quasthoff. Mr. Levine’s 2007 Tanglewood season included seven programs with the BSO, a concert performance with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra of Verdi’s Don Carlo, and a staged TMC production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, as well as classes devoted to orchestral repertoire, Lieder, and opera with the TMC’s Instrumental, Vocal, and Conducting Fellows. Following Tanglewood, he and the Boston Symphony Orchestra made their first European tour together, performing in the Lucerne Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival (in Hamburg), Essen, Düsseldorf, the Berlin Festival, Paris, and the BBC Proms in London. James Levine is also Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, where, in the 36 years since his Met debut, he has developed a relationship with that company unparalleled in its history and unique in the musical world today. His 2007–08 season with the Metropolitan Opera—where he has led more than 2,000 performances of 80 different operas—includes new productions of Lucia di Lammermoor and Macbeth; revivals of Tristan und Isolde and Manon Lescaut, and concerts at Carnegie Hall with the MET Orchestra (with soloists Alfred Brendel, Deborah Voigt, and Jonathan Biss) and MET Chamber Ensemble (joined by, among others, John Harbison, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Yefim Bronfman, Gil Shaham, and Anja Silja). Also this season, in February, he conducts the Juilliard Orchestra in Carter’s Symphonia: Sum fluxae praetium spei (a New York premiere) and Cello Concerto to close the Juilliard School’s Carter Festival.

Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Piano
Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s 2007–08 season includes performances with the Boston Symphony, National Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Detroit Symphony , Houston Symphony, and Cincinnati Symphony; a tour with the Takács Quartet; tours with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Luxembourg, London Philharmonic, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo; and concerts with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, the NHK and Singapore symphony orchestras, the Oslo Philharmonic, Radio Philharmonic Holland, Tonhalle Orchester Zürich, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Seville Royal Symphony Orchestra, and Valencia Orchestra. Recital appearances include Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, and Chicago’s Symphony Hall, as well as Japan, Germany, Spain, and several other US cities. Festival appearances include Tuscan Sun, Ravinia, and Saratoga; the December Nights of Sviatoslav Richter Festival in Moscow; the Cartagena Festival in Colombia; and the New Zealand Festival. Mr. Thibaudet records exclusively for Decca; his latest recording, Saint-Saëns’s piano concertos 2 and 5 with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, follows the February 2007 release Aria–Opera Without Words, featuring transcriptions of opera arias. Mr. Thibaudet was the soloist on the 2005 Oscar-nominated soundtrack of Pride and Prejudice. Other recordings include Strauss’s Burleske with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Satie’s complete music for solo piano, and jazz albums saluting Duke Ellington and Bill Evans. Mr. Thibaudet was born in Lyon, France, where he began piano studies at five and made his first public appearance at seven. He entered the Paris Conservatory at 12, to study with Aldo Ciccolini and Lucette Descaves, a friend and collaborator of Ravel. He won the Premier Prix de Conservatoire at 15 and the Young Concert Artists Auditions in New York City three years later. In 2001 the Republic of France awarded him the prestigious Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2002 he was awarded the Premio Pegasus from the Spoleto Festival in Italy, for his artistic achievements and his longstanding involvement with the festival. His most recent accolade is the 2007 Victoire d’Honneur, a lifetime career achievement award and the highest honor given by France’s Victoire de la Musique.

Tanglewood Festival Chorus
John Oliver, Conductor
The Tanglewood Festival Chorus celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2005. Following its Tanglewood performances this past summer with the Boston Symphony and Tanglewood Music Center orchestras led by James Levine, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the TMCO led by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, the chorus rejoined Mr. Levine and the BSO in Europe for Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust in Lucerne, Essen, Paris, and London, also performing an a cappella program of its own in Essen and Trier. The ensemble’s 2007–08 BSO season includes Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, the world premiere of William Bolcom’s Symphony No. 8, and concert performances of Berlioz’s Les Troyens with James Levine; Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with Bernard Haitink; and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius with Sir Colin Davis. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus was organized in the spring of 1970 by founding conductor John Oliver. Made up of members who donate their services, and originally formed for performances at the BSO’s summer home, it is now the official chorus of the BSO year-round, performing in Boston, New York, and at Tanglewood. It has also performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Europe under Bernard Haitink and in the Far East under Seiji Ozawa. The Tanglewood Festival Chorus can be heard on Boston Symphony recordings under Ozawa and Haitink, and on recordings with the Boston Pops Orchestra under Keith Lockhart and John Williams, as well as on the sound tracks to Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, and John Sayles’s Silver City. It gives its own Friday-evening Prelude Concert each summer in Seiji Ozawa Hall and performed its debut program at Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory of Music in May 2004.

In addition to his work with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, John Oliver was for many years conductor of the MIT Chamber Chorus and MIT Concert Choir, and a senior lecturer in music at MIT. He has appeared as guest conductor with the New Japan Philharmonic and Berkshire Choral Institute, and made his Boston Symphony conducting debut in August 1985.