Alderley Edge Orchestra November 2017
Gioachino Rossini (1792 – 1868) – Overture, The Barber of Seville (1816)
The ebullient character Figaro is the central figure in a trilogy of plays by Pierre Beaumarchais. Mozart used the second of these, The Marriage of Figaro, in his opera of 1786. The less familiar third play, The Guilty Mother, was set to music by Darius Milhaud in 1966. Rossini’s opera buffa Il barbiere di Siviglia has enjoyed great popularity since its second performance, after its disastrous Rome premiere. The composer’s rival Paisello barely needed to encourage vigorous audience hissing and jeering as the performance was plagued by stray cats, trips and falls and faulty trapdoors.
Rossini wrote the opera in the space of three weeks, so he might be forgiven for forgoing his planned Spanish-inspired overture in favour of recycling an old overture from 1813. The opera itself is a masterpiece of cunning disguise, deceit and trickery, as the barber Figaro helps his friend Count Almaviva to prise the beautiful Rosina away from Dr Bartolo. A farcical series of disguises, threats and bribes is mirrored in an endlessly capricious and charming score.
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873 – 1943) – Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 (1901)
Igor Stravinsky famously referred to Rachmaninov as a ‘Six-and-a-half foot scowl’ in view of his tendencies towards anxiety and depression. It was Rachmaninov’s darkest period, though, which gave birth to his second piano concerto, now among the most popular works in the genre. After a precociously successful period in his youth, Rachmaninov hid in a stairwell with his hands over his ears during the calamitous premiere of his first symphony, conducted by the probably far-from-sober Glazunov. He wrote nothing for the next three years, languishing in a black hole of depression and creative drought from which not even Leo Tolstoy could jump start him. It was only when the Parisian neurologist and amateur violist Dr Nicolai Dahl took over Rachmaninov’s care that things began to improve. Under Dahl’s hypnosis treatments, the composer discovered a new creative voice and wrote the new concerto in his doctor’s honour.
From the tolling piano chords of the first page via yearning slow movement to joyous ‘big tune’ in the finale, the concerto is a steady struggle upwards towards the light. The composer himself was soloist at its premiere, where the symbolism of those last four notes – the whole orchestra proclaiming ‘Rach-man-in-ov!’ – must have been obvious. Dr Dahl, to whom the concerto was dedicated, got his own recognition too; word got around the audience at a 1928 amateur performance in Beirut that Dahl was in the viola section, and would not leave until he had received his own ovation.
Jules Massenet (1842 – 1912) – Suite No. 4: Scènes Pittoresques (1874)
The French late-Romantic composer Massenet is now best known as a prolific composer of opera, influenced by the likes of Berlioz, Wagner and Gounod. His heterogeneous style ranges from bel canto to comedy and epic grand opera, but his talents in other fields were also exceptional. In his younger days he would pay his way with ad hoc work as a lounge pianist and trianglist, and in addition to his theatre work he later wrote a huge collection of songs, a piano concerto and a number of orchestral suites. Tonight we hear the fourth of these, the Scènes Pittoresques. After an opening Marche, there is the vivid Air de ballet with its attractive cello solo, followed by the Angélus which imitates the bells of the Angelus on the horn. The Finale, a whirling Bohemian dance, ends the suite in a riot of colour.
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 – 1908) – Capriccio Espagnol (1887)
More detailed notes available here
Much of Rimsky-Korsakov’s reputation as the master orchestrator of his age rests on the success of his symphonic tone poems. His ability to create an utterly compelling sound world unique to each scene he wishes to portray easily rivals the skills of Wagner and Richard Strauss, the latter a man who famously claimed to be able to depict a dinner fork in music. In his youth, Rimsky-Korsakov’s naval training set his eyes on the horizon, inspiring works such as Scheherazade and Capriccio Espagnol. A contemporary Russian fondness for Spanish music, arising from the composer Glinka’s travels in the early 1840s, made a Spanish-themed symphonic suite a shrewd choice for such an adventurous orchestrator, though his own experiences of Spain were limited to three days in Cadiz as a naval cadet. The five-movement suite was composed for the players of the St Petersburg Imperial Opera, with virtuosic solos for the composer’s favoured players. It was originally intended for solo violinist with orchestra before evolving into a more democratic form.
The opening Alborada dance is an Asturian celebration of the sunrise, featuring clarinet and violin solos. The Variazioni introduces a melody in the horns, which is then developed around the orchestra before the Alborada makes a reappearance in a subtly different form. After a short pause, the fourth movement, Scena e canto gitano (Scene and gypsy song), places a series of five cadenza flourishes for brass, violin, flute, clarinet and harp above an exotic palette of percussive rolls, before a soaring string melody appears. The finale, headed Fandango asturiano follows immediately after, finishing the suite in a riotous romp through the Alborada theme.
© Rohan Shotton 2019. Programme notes may not be reproduced or edited without permission. Please contact me if you would like to use these notes.