Stockport Symphony Orchestra 28 March 2020
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) - Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture (1880)
Shakespeare’s tale of Romeo and Juliet’s ill-fated romance has proved an attractive inspiration to generations of composers. Prokofiev’s ballet, Berlioz’s ‘dramatic symphony’, operas by Gounod and Bellini and Bernstein’s West Side Story all provide unique and compelling takes on the familiar story, spanning several genres. Tchaikovsky’s ‘fantasy overture’, a miniaturised programmatic tone-poem, provides another. Written at the age of 29, it proved to be the young composer’s first masterwork.
The genesis of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet is inextricably linked to the composer Mily Balakirev, ringleader of the so-called ‘mighty handful’ of Russian composers alongside Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Cui and Mussorgsky. Although Balakirev was so scathing of Tchaikovsky’s early tone poem Fatum that the score was destroyed, the elder statesman was instrumental in suggesting a Shakespearean play as the subject of a new work. His guidance was so overbearing, however, that Tchaikovsky complained of receiving ‘abusive letters’ from Balakirev, who was trying to dictate micro-details as musical key, structure and rhythms. Tchaikovsky was mostly obediently obliging, and his teacher was ultimately uncomfortably effusive in his praise of the famous ‘love theme’, writing “I imagine you are lying naked in your bath and that Artôt herself is washing your tummy with hot lather from scented soap”. The ‘Artôt’ referenced by Balakirev was a young Belgian soprano, with whom Tchaikovsky had a brief relationship until she married a rival baritone.
The overture’s Moscow première in 1870 was disappointing, Tchaikovsky recalling ‘My overture had no success here at all, and was wholly ignored’. It was heavily revised the next year, with the addition of its now familiar opening. Other Shakespearean overtures followed in the ensuing years, including The Tempet (1873), Otello (1976) and Hamlet (1888). In 1880, he resolved to turn Romeo and Juliet into a full opera, but in the event simply re-wrote the coda. The revised version proved far more successful, and Tchaikovsky was awarded the 500-Ruble Glinka award for it in 1884.
The twenty-minute overture follows a broadly traditional sonata form. A slow introductory chorale depicts Friar Laurence, before the turbulent exposition reflects on the warring Montagues and Capulets. The second theme is the famous ‘love theme’, richly scored for cor anglais and viola. The development section returns to the feud, occasionally punctuated by Friar Laurence’s peace-making efforts. At the climax of the surging tension comes the recapitulation, amid a tumultuous outpouring of emotion. In the dark coda, the timpani’s funereal heartbeat grimly portrays the lovers’ pact.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893): Sleeping Beauty Suite, Opus 66a (1889)
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Introduction
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Adagio
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Pas de caractère
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Panorama
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Waltz
When Tchaikovsky was first approached for a new ballet in 1888 by the director of St Petersburg’s Imperial Theatres, the proposed story was Fouqué's Undine. Having endured disappointing responses to his Swan Lake (1877) and the fifth symphony (1888), the composer was in a fragile mindset. The storyline for the new ballet was soon switched to Charles Perrault’s La Belle au Bois Dormant, in the Brothers Grimm version. A healthy sprinkling of other Perrault characters from Mother Goose (1697) also appear in the ballet, including Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood and Bluebeard. After working on the score with enormous enthusiasm and energy, Tchaikovsky was, for once, able to appreciate and take pride in his own work. The Tsar, present at the 1890 première in St Petersburg, damned it with the faint praise of “Very nice”, but public and critical reception soon established it as a much-loved favourite.
The idea of a concert suite of big numbers from the four-hour ballet occurred to Tchaikovsky himself shortly after its early success, though he could never quite decide on his preferred excerpts. The commonly performed suite was therefore arranged posthumously. We can at least be confident that the composer would not have grievances with such a ‘highlights package’ arrangement: he was clear that the ballet was more about its music than the story, noting that ‘Going to the Ballet for the plot is like going to the opera for the recitatives’.
The suite consists of five readily recognisable extracts from the ballet. The Introduction portrays the evil fairy Carabosse, who has cursed the infant Princess Aurora, and the benevolent Lilac Fairy, who softens the fatal curse into a century-long sleep. In the famous Rose Adagio, four princely suitors charm the Princess. The Pas de caractère depicts the Puss in Boots and White Cat, when they attend the royal wedding of Act 3. In the Panorama, the Lilac Fairy leads Prince Désiré through the forest to the somnolent Aurora, and the Waltz is taken from the birthday celebrations of Act 1.
Jean Sibelius (1865 – 1957) Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Opus 82 (1914-19)
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Tempo molto moderato – Allegro moderato (ma poco a poco stretto) – Vivace molto – Presto – Più presto
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Andante mosso, quasi allegretto – Poco a poco stretto – Tranquillo – Poco a poco stretto – Ritenuto al tempo I
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Allegro molto – Misterioso – Un pochettino largamente – Largamente assai – Un pochettino stretto
Sibelius’ seven symphonies constitute one of the most perfect sets in the genre in terms of tracing the development of their composer and rewriting the rules of the format. His first symphony, written under the Russian occupation of Finland, is intensely Russian in style, and could have been an eighth by Tchaikovsky. From that point onwards, Sibelius tirelessly refined and reworked the form of his symphonies, via the majestic second and the bleak desolation of the fourth to the unique seventh symphony. The cliché of his works having an ‘organic’ quality is not unjustified: more than almost any composer, his ability to form a continuously developing musical line from evolving motifs results in music of immensely satisfying architecture.
This development was achieved while struggling with his place in the world. Although he achieved huge success at home, to the point that his fiftieth birthday was declared a national holiday, he was tormented by doubts about his ability to cement himself as a progressive artist, rather than a decadent, anachronistic Romantic relic. At the same time, Schoenberg and Stravinsky were rejecting the symphonic tradition, and Strauss had turned to elaborate tone poems. Though Mahler persisted with the symphony, his scores bulged with rapidly escalating demands for vast orchestral forces in epic, 90-minute works. Sibelius’ seven symphonies instead become progressively smaller, shorter and lighter, culminating in the single-movement, twenty-minute seventh.
Amid great national pride and domestic acclaim for his works, the fifth symphony was commissioned in 1912 by the Finnish government to mark Sibelius’ forthcoming fiftieth birthday. Times had been difficult for the composer: in 1909-09, he had undergone fifteen major operations to resect a suspected throat cancer. With effective treatments in their infancy (Rutherford had only just started experimenting with radium at the Holt Institute in Manchester), and as an unreconstructed drinker and smoker, Sibelius was convinced that his end was near. Ultimately the tumour seems to have been benign, but the prospect of impending death motivated him to abstain from his vices and return to composing with renewed vigour. The symphony was completed ready for the evening of his fiftieth birthday, and was immediately greeted with huge public and critical popularity.
Sibelius remained dissatisfied with his new symphony, though, and quickly set about making revisions. The 1915 and 1916 versions were both withdrawn, and the work was put to one side in the shadow of World War One, the Finnish declaration of independence from Russia and the ensuing civil war. Only after returning home late in 1918 (having been forced to flee for Helsinki with his family earlier in the year) did he resume work on the fifth. Recalling that he ‘Practically composed anew’, he stripped the symphony down to three movements (amalgamating the first two) and prepared the version with which we are familiar today.
The symphony opens on a cold, bright morning with optimistic, avian horn calls above rumbling timpani. The woodwind take over the birdcalls as the music gathers momentum, seeming to rise, stretch and acknowledge the day. The light is transient, though, as a bleak bassoon solo heralds a suffocating fog of darker themes, derived from the symphony’s original scherzo. Just when it feels as though there might be no escape, the clouds part, the music quickly ascends through the gears and the morning light re-emerges, the music now in a quicker metre and galloping headily towards a boisterous conclusion.
The second movement is a surprisingly simple theme and variations, in which a light, ascending motif is passed in dialogue between flute and pizzicato strings. Moments of strife and sorrow pass as the music slowly unwinds with soft restlessness. The abrupt conclusion is unconvincing, and is followed immediately by the finale. A short, skittish passage provides some heightened energy before the emergence of one of Sibelius’ greatest passages. In his diary on 21 April 1915 he recalled his inspiration for this music: ‘Today at ten to eleven I saw sixteen swans. One of my greatest experiences. God, how beautiful!... Their call is the same woodwind type as that of cranes, but without tremolo. A gentle refrain that sounds like the crying of a small child. Nature’s mysticism and world-weariness!’. Beneath the undulating wings of a soaring horn figure, a touchingly melancholic theme sings eloquently from the cellos and woodwind. Although the busier early idea makes a brief reappearance, it is the swan theme which has the last word, blazing nobly through the last pages.