Tchaikovsy's Fateful 4th
Monday, November 12, 2007 - 8:00 p.m.
Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre
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Roannoke Symphony Orchestra
DAVID WILEY Music Director & Conductor
Filipo Lattanzi Percussion
Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 4, F minor
Schwantner - Percussion Concerto
Sibelius - Finlandia
Concert sponsor:
Abridged Program Notes - [Complete Program Notes]
Symphony No. 4 in F Minor
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(b. 1840, Votkinsk, Russia; d. 1893, St. Petersburg, Russia)
Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony is a tale of two women. Both entered the composer's life in 1877, the year he created this tempestuous, fate-filled work. One of them nurtured his creative career with bountiful gifts of friendship, understanding, and money; the other, in a quixotic marriage, nearly destroyed it.
The composer's bright angel was Nadezhda von Meck, recently widowed and heiress to a substantial financial empire. An intelligent, highly complex woman, she loved music passionately and that passion became focused on Tchaikovsky. Early in 1877, she began writing long, heartfelt letters to him. From this grew one of the strangest and most fruitful relationships in music. Mme von Meck and Tchaikovsky found they were soul mates, yet they determined to conduct their relationship exclusively through letters and never to meet. For 14 years they poured out their innermost feelings to each other. She gave him a generous annual stipend that freed him from financial worries. Years later when they accidentally encountered each other on a street in Florence, they raced past each other in embarrassment. For a man of homosexual inclination who nevertheless yearned for closeness with a woman, it was an ideal situation.
Less ideal was Tchaikovsky's relationship with his dark angel, Antonina Milyukova, whom the composer -- hoping to create a "respectable" home life for himself -- foolishly agreed to marry in July 1877. The relationship was a disaster from the beginning and drove the composer to a nervous breakdown. He fled his new bride almost immediately and for years traveled throughout Europe to avoid her. The Fourth Symphony was conceived during this turmoil -- drafted before the marriage and orchestrated in the aftermath -- and the continual appearances of a malign "Fate" fanfare, the turbulence of its first movement, and the almost hysterical rejoicing of its finale reflect it.
Dedicating the symphony to her, Tchaikovsky turned to his "best friend," Mme von Meck, for solace. He kept her continuously apprised of the progress of "our symphony," and finally wrote, "This, my dear friend, is all I can tell you about the symphony. Of course, it is unclear and incomplete, but this is in the nature of instrumental music. ... As German poet Heinrich Heine said: 'Where words end, music begins.' "
Finlandia
Jean Sibelius
(b. 1865, Hämmenlina, Finland; d. 1957, Järvenpää, Finland)
The year 1899 opened ominously for Finland, at that time a dependency of the mighty Russian Empire. Under Czar Nicholas II, the Finns began feeling the weight of Russian rule as never before, and in February the Russian government issued the so-called February Manifesto, removing Finland's autonomy and severely curtailing the rights of free speech and assembly. An ardent patriot, Jean Sibelius was increasingly active in the fight for Finnish freedom, and his music became a rallying point for the movement, providing a cultural camouflage for underground political activity.
For the evening of November 4th, the Finnish press association announced a "Press Pension Celebration" -- a series of "Historical Tableaux," and music by Sibelius -- ostensibly to raise money for journalists' pensions, but more importantly to rally support for a free press. Sibelius composed introductory music for six historical scenes, the last of which was titled, significantly, "Finland Awakes!" But not wishing to provoke the Russian censors, he changed the title to Finlandia, when he revised it a year later as a freestanding tone poem. It became his most popular work and its central melody an unofficial national anthem for the Finns.
The text that originally accompanied this music saluted Finnish progress during the 19th century and included these words: "The powers of darkness menacing Finland have not succeeded in their terrible threats. Finland awakes." And the musical plan of this nine-minute work powerfully expresses this idea. "Why does this tone-poem catch on with the public?" Sibelius asked in his diary. "I suppose because of its plein air [outdoors] style. The themes on which it is built came to me directly. Pure inspiration."
Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra
Joseph Schwantner
(b. 1943, Chicago, Illinois; now living in Spofford, New Hampshire)
Usually when we hear a concerto, we thrill to the superior skills of a soloist playing on a single instrument, be it a piano, a violin, or a cello. The audience for this program will enjoy something quite different, as we witness a percussionist showcasing his virtuosity on some twenty different instruments, ranging from the marimba to the bass drum.
The myriad instruments of the percussion section have always played a powerful and colorful role in the orchestral works of American composer Joseph Schwantner. And so it was not surprising that in the early 1990s the New York Philharmonic should have turned to him to write a concerto for its principal percussionist, Christopher Lamb, in honor of its 150th anniversary.
We would expect a percussion showpiece to be flamboyant and intensely rhythmic, and indeed this Concerto meets that expectation in its first and third movements. However, its second and longest movement is slow, mostly very quiet, and touchingly beautiful. In December 1992, just as Schwantner was beginning to sketch the work, his friend and colleague Stephen Albert, also a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, was killed in an automobile accident. And so the Concerto was dedicated to his memory, and its second movement became a poignant tribute to "a man of intensity and strong convictions who possessed an indefatigable spirit and a fiercely independent musical vision" (in Schwantner's words).
Abridged notes, taken from Janet E. Bedell.
© Janet E. Bedell 2007
[Complete Program Notes]
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November |
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Sun 11, 2:00-4:00 p.m. |
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Open Rehearsal
$5 at-the-door
Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre
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Mon 12, 6:30 p.m. |
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Illuminations,
pre-concert event
with David Wiley and
Filippo Lattanzi, percussion.
FREE to ticketholders
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