Concert Series IV, 2011-2012 Season
Leonard Bernstein
Candide Overture
More than West Side Story, which has unproblematically been embraced as a Broadway musical, Candide, based on a story by the Enlightenment philosophe Voltaire, has been tossed between the categories of musical and operetta, with many changes (including a complete change of book) in the process. But the overture stood firm through all the upheavals, and well it might, as it is a wonderful piece of music, often played, as here, on its own (and by the NY Philharmonic, since Bernstein’s death, on their own, without conductor, as a tribute to him.) It is essentially a medley: the extremely perky material derives from the show-stopping aria “Glitter and be gay,” and the big tune—introduced gloriously by the violas – is from the duet “Oh Happy we” in which the hero and his mismatched beloved imagine their future together – he fantasizes about chickens and children, while she imagines Paris and parties. The most brilliant feature of the overture however, in addition to its sparkling orchestration, is its witty rhythmic play: Bernstein writes music that feels as if it is (or ought to be) entirely regular, but it either isn’t at all (the big tune is in a seven-beat meter), or it keeps catching the listener wrong-footed.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Oboe Concerto in C Major, K. 314
Although Mozart is justly celebrated for the exquisite wind writing in his symphonies, operas, and piano concertos, his wind concertos are less well-known than his piano concertos, most of which he wrote for himself, or his violin concertos, which were all written for himself. His wind concertos – four for horn, three for flute (one a transcription of this oboe concerto), one for flute and harp, and one each for oboe, bassoon and clarinet – were all written for friends or colleagues. This oboe concerto was produced in Mozart’s last years of Salzburg for the Italian oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis, who had been hired in Salzburg in the Spring of 1777.
The concerto as a whole is in Mozart’s cheerful galant style, with elegant melodies and musical “sentences” that balance each other, whether by continuation or by contrast. The oboe part is quite virtuosic, using the highest and lowest ranges of the instrument in glittering passagework. The cadenzas (the completely solo passages for oboe) are not by Mozart, and the soloist would have been expected to improvise them in performance. The slow movement, like those of the violin concertos, evokes the idea of an aria, though no Mozart aria would actually have had so continuous a line. The last movement, a rondo, alternates an almost mechanical little tune in both the oboe and the orchestra with more lyrical and also more virtuosic passages. Mozart, as often, plays with the predictability of the returns of the main tune.
Igor Stravinsky
Petrushka
Petrushka was the second of the three pre-World War I ballet scores that Stravinsky wrote for the Ballets Russes company led by Sergei Diaghilev. (Firebird and The Rite of Spring were the other two). These works—all, in one way or another, on themes related to Old Russia, and all premiered in Paris—were increasingly extraordinary exercises in brilliant orchestration and a method of composition based on the layering and juxtaposition of more or less unchanging melodies and rhythmic cells rather than on the endless development and reformulation of harmonic and melodic material.
Stravinsky revised Petrushka in 1947, changing the orchestration slightly; it is this version we'll play today. It is in four large scenes, each of which presents a medley of different material. These scenes are separated by long rolls on the snare drum and timpani. The first scene depicts the Shrovetide fair in old St. Petersburg—an occasion for riotous carnival before the austerities of Lent. It is a scene of barely controlled chaos—different dances, jostling, and wild celebration all happen at once. The way Stravinsky layers ostinatos (little repetitive accompanimental ideas) is perfect for illustrating this multi-focused scene. In the midst of this (break in the noise of creepy bassoon music followed by a solo flute cadenza), the Old Charlatan arrives with his puppet theater and opens it up. The jolly march-like Russian dance that follows introduces our three main characters; Petrushka, the sad-sack lovelorn fool, the brash Moor, and the lovely Ballerina, all of whom are magically endowed with human (if rudimentary) feelings and capacities.
After the Russian dance and the drum roll, we see Petrushka alone in his room. The piano roulades give a vivid sense of his floppy puppet body, the martial trumpet motives (which recur later in the work) suggest his conflict with the Moor over the ballerina, and the sweet flute-dominated music suggest the ballerina. A pair of clarinets in seconds (one note apart) are also featured in this movement.
The third scene is set in the Moor's room, where his is playing idly with a coconut, which he eventually (and unsuccessfully) attacks with his scimitar. Eventually the ballerina comes in, tooting a little trumpet (this trumpet solo may be the most-practiced piece of orchestral trumpet music other than the opening of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony). He is charmed, and there is a slightly grotesque waltz played mostly by bassoon, trumpet, and flute. A faster waltz ensues, but simultaneously with a duple-meter melody, suggesting the differences between the two characters. The Moor then imitates the Ballerina's waltz. Trumpet motives indicate Petrushka's unwished-for arrival and a fight happens. Petrushka does not prevail.
The fourth scene returns us to the Shrovetide fair, with its brilliant chaos. There is a wet-nurses’ dance, in which the English horn and French horns (and eventually violins) play a broad melody over chicken-like chirping in the rest of the orchestra. A peasant lumbers in with a bear, to the screams of incredibly high clarinets. Gypsies and a Rake vendor are distinguished by a steady duple tune alternating with rushing around in the strings, including a little solo violin lick. The Coachmen dance a heavy boom-chick rhythm (sometimes we only hear the "chicks"), and the tune from the Wet Nurses’ dance returns. Masqueraders leap in to frantic string figures, but then there's a final scuffle introduced by a trumpet solo: the Moor kills Petrushka, who twitches a few times before dying to sad tunes in violin and bassoon. After the police have cleared away a juggler, the spirit of Petrushka gets his revenge by appearing—terrifyingly—to the assembled crowd and the Charlatan who thought he had reduced him back to a puppet.
Stravinsky's musical language is brilliantly colorful, acerbic, and rhythmically riveting. He calls for an enormous orchestra, including several percussionists, a harp and a piano, as well as triple winds and often-divided strings. Some of the tunes are reminiscent of Russian folk material, whether songs or dances, but everything is exaggerated, often to a point of grotesqueness. The overall effect is to make the idea of Old Russia exotically colorful, delicious chaos being part of the picture he's painting. The rudimentary story (with now-offensive character of the Moor as the hypermasculine Bad Guy) fits in with the almost primitivistic aesthetic of the whole work. The primitivism here, however, is not like the brutality of the Rite of Spring, composed only two years later; rather it communicates a wonderful exuberance and pleasure in the way material can be stripped down and combined with other simple material to make a glittering collage of sound.
Notes by Mary Hunter