What’s Interesting About This Concert
- Celebrated as a musical genius, Shostakovich enjoyed a brilliant career until he fell out of favor with Stalin in 1936. The composer responded with the phenomenally powerful Fifth Symphony.
- A tale of two Jennifers: Concertmaster Jennifer Cho takes center stage for composer Jennifer Higdon’s Pulitzer prize-winning violin concerto. The awards committee hailed it as “a deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity.”
- The program includes a world premiere by our newest composer-in-residence, Viet Cuong, whose music has been acclaimed as “wildly alluring” and “inventive” by the New York Times.
The Program
CuongWorld Premiere
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HigdonViolin Concerto
Jennifer Higdon's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was written in 2008. The work was jointly commissioned by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the Curtis Institute of Music.[1] It was composed for the violinist Hilary Hahn and was given its world premiere by Hahn and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under the conductor Mario Venzano on February 6, 2009. The piece was later awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music.[2][3][4]
Composition
Structure
The concerto has a duration of roughly 33 minutes and is composed in three movements:
- "1726" – named after the address of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, 1726 Locust Street, where Higdon is a professor. The movement features a lot of simultaneous sevenths, seconds, and sixths, allowing the violinist to showcase great manual dexterity
- "Chaconni" – a lyrical movement, it allows the soloist to perform in duets and trios with various instruments
- "Fly Forward" – a fast–paced movement, Higdon imagined violinist Hilary Hahn racing in the Olympics as she was composing the piece
Instrumentation
The work is scored for a solo violin and an orchestra comprising two flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), two oboes (2nd doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, two percussionists, and strings.
Reception
The Violin Concerto has been praised by music critics. Reviewing the New York City premiere, Allan Kozinn of The New York Times wrote, "Its big, exploratory opening movement is packed with quick, insistent solo lines and dialogues between the violin and either the full orchestra or individual sections or players; its lush, slow movement (here in the form of a chaconne) exploits the violin's lyrical qualities, and its finale is driven by daredevil speediness."[5] Duncan Druce of Gramophone similarly described the piece as "an attractive, colourful work, scored most imaginatively and with great finesse." He continued, "I enjoyed the first movement especially, its disparate material so expertly contrasted and integrated. The second movement, entitled 'Chaconni', has a pastoral feel, vaguely reminiscent of Vaughan Williams but with the lark ascending into a more unsettled sky. The finale, a real showpiece for the violin, is less substantial but rhythmically most inventive."[6]
See also
References
- ^ Higdon, Jennifer (2008). Violin Concerto: Program Note. Retrieved August 2, 2015.
- ^ Huizenga, Tom (April 12, 2010). "Jennifer Higdon Wins Music Pulitzer". NPR. Retrieved September 16, 2010.
- ^ Schweitzer, Vivien (April 21, 2010). "Despite Anxiety and Naysayers, Composer Wins Her Pulitzer". The New York Times. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
- ^ Berger, Kevin (March 25, 2012). "Composer Jennifer Higdon pursues friendly music". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
- ^ Kozinn, Allan (February 16, 2011). "Sound That's Lush and Slow, Speedy and Precise". The New York Times. Retrieved April 8, 2016.
- ^ Druce, Duncan (April 2011). "HIGDON; TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concertos: Playing of great subtlety from Hilary Hahn in two well-contrasted concert". Gramophone. Retrieved April 8, 2016.
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ShostakovichSymphony No. 5
The Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, by Dmitri Shostakovich is a work for orchestra composed between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky. The premiere was a huge success and received an ovation that lasted well over half an hour.[1]
Form
The symphony is approximately 45 minutes in length and has four movements:
- Moderato – Allegro non troppo (D minor)
The symphony opens with a strenuous string figure in canon, initially leaping and falling in minor sixths then narrowing to minor thirds. Then, we hear a broadly lyric first theme played by the violins. The second theme is built out of octaves and sevenths. The two themes are expanded in the development section, by having different instruments playing them, and in different styles, including a march section. In the recapitulation, themes heard earlier on are brought back again either identically or somewhat varied. Near the end of the movement, the second subject is heard again in the form of a canon played by flute and horn, then the same material is played by the violin and piccolo. The movement ends with the celesta playing a rising figure, and slowly fading away.
- Allegretto (A minor)
This movement is in ternary form,[2]. The movement opens with a heavy, loud introduction in the basses, followed by a softer solo on the E♭ clarinet. There is also a theme played by the woodwinds that is repeated later. In the recapitulation, some of the material heard earlier is repeated piano and staccato, not loudly and sustained as at the start.
- Largo (F♯ minor)
Shostakovich begins this movement with violins in three sections, rather than the more usual two. The opening theme is played by the third violins. Second and first violins are slowly added and continue the melody. After the assertive trumpets of the first movement and the raucous horns of the second, this movement uses no brass at all, so there is a limited palette of sounds. This section yields to a pair of flutes in widely-separated counterpoint, the second of which makes reference to the first subject of the first movement. The solo is then passed on to the oboe with string accompaniment. The third movement ends like the first, with a celesta solo that slowly fades away. The strings are divided throughout the entire movement (3 groups of violins, violas in 2, cellos in 2; basses in 2).
- Allegro non troppo (D minor – D major)
This movement, also in ternary form (ABA), varies greatly from its predecessors, mostly in regards to melodic structure and motives. Various themes from derived from earlier in the work are expanded until we get to a new theme played on the trombone. This new theme is passed on to the strings and eventually the piece becomes quieter. The central section is much quieter and more tranquil, and is ultimately replaced by a march, where the melodies from earlier are played like a funeral dirge, accompanied by timpani. The music builds as the new accompaniment passes from timpani to woodwinds and then to strings, finally reaching a point where the piece changes from a minor key into a major key.
Instrumentation
The work is scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets and E♭ clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three B♭ trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, glockenspiel, xylophone, two harps (one part), piano, celesta and strings.
Overview
Composition
The Symphony quotes Shostakovich's song Vozrozhdenije (Op. 46 No. 1, composed in 1936–37), most notably in the last movement; the song is a setting of a poem by Alexander Pushkin (find text and a translation here) that deals with the matter of rebirth. This song is by some considered to be a vital clue to the interpretation and understanding of the whole symphony.[3] In addition, commentators have noted that Shostakovich incorporated a motif from the "Habanera" from Bizet's Carmen into the first movement, a reference to Shostakovich's earlier infatuation with a woman who refused his offer of marriage; she subsequently moved to Spain and married a man named Roman Carmen.[4][5]
Reception
With the Fifth Symphony, Shostakovich gained an unprecedented triumph, with the music appealing equally—and remarkably—to both the public and official critics, though the overwhelming public response to the work initially aroused suspicions among certain officials. The then-head of the Leningrad Philharmonic, Mikhail Chulaki, recalls that certain authorities bristled at Mravinsky's gesture of lifting the score above his head to the cheering audience, and a subsequent performance was attended by two plainly hostile officials, V.N. Surin and Boris M. Yarustovsky, who tried to claim in the face of the vociferous ovation given the symphony that the audience was made up of "hand-picked" Shostakovich supporters.[6] Yet the authorities in due course claimed that they found everything they had demanded of Shostakovich restored in the symphony. Meanwhile, the public heard it as an expression of the suffering to which it had been subjected by Stalin. The same work was essentially received two different ways.[7]
Official
An article reportedly written by the composer appeared in the Moscow newspaper Vechernyaya Moskva a few days before the premiere of the Fifth Symphony. There, he reportedly states that the work "is a Soviet artist's creative response to justified criticism". Whether Shostakovich or someone more closely connected with the Party actually wrote the article is open to question,[8] but the phrase "justified criticism"—a reference to the denunciation of the composer in 1936—is especially telling.[9] Official critics treated the work as a turnaround in its composer's career, a personal perestroyka or "restructuring" by the composer, with the Party engineering Shostakovich's rehabilitation as carefully as it had his fall a couple of years earlier.[8] Like the Pravda attack at that time on the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, the political basis for extolling the Fifth Symphony was to show how the Party could make artists bow to its demands.[8]
The official tone toward the Fifth Symphony was further set by a review by Alexei Tolstoy, who likened the symphony to the literary model of the Soviet Bildungsroman describing "the formation of a personality"—in other words, of a Soviet personality.[7] In the first movement, the composer-hero suffers a psychological crisis giving rise to a burst of energy. The second movement provides respite. In the third movement, the personality begins to form: "Here the personality submerges itself in the great epoch that surrounds it, and begins to resonate with the epoch."[10] With the finale, Tolstoy wrote, came victory, "an enormous optimistic lift".[10] As for the ecstatic reaction of the audience to the work, Tolstoy claimed it showed Shostakovich's perestroyka to be sincere. "Our audience is organically incapable of accepting decadent, gloomy, pessimistic art. Our audience responds enthusiastically to all that is bright, clear, joyous, optimistic, life-affirming."[10]
Not everyone agreed with Tolstoy, even after another article reportedly by the composer echoed Tolstoy's views. Asafiev, for one, wrote, "This unsettled, sensitive, evocative music which inspires such gigantic conflict comes across as a true account of the problems facing modern man—not one individual or several, but mankind."[11] The composer himself seemed to second this view long after the fact, in a conversation with author Chinghiz Aitmatov in the late 1960s. "There are far more openings for new Shakespeares in today's world," he said, "for never before in its development has mankind achieved such unanimity of spirit: so when another such artist appears, he will be able to express the whole world in himself, like a musician."[11]
Public
During the first performance of the symphony, people were reported to have wept during the Largo movement.[12] The music, steeped in an atmosphere of mourning, contained echoes of the panikhida, the Russian Orthodox requiem. It also recalled a genre of Russian symphonic works written in memory of the dead, including pieces by Glazunov, Steinberg, Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky.
Symphony as artistic salvation
After the symphony had been performed in Moscow, Heinrich Neuhaus called the work "deep, meaningful, gripping music, classical in the integrity of its conception, perfect in form and the mastery of orchestral writing—music striking for its novelty and originality, but at the same time somehow hauntingly familiar, so truly and sincerely does it recount human feelings".[13]
Shostakovich returned to the traditional four-movement form and a normal-sized orchestra. More tellingly, he organized each movement along clear lines, having concluded that a symphony cannot be a viable work without firm architecture. The harmonic idiom in the Fifth is less astringent, more tonal than previously, and the thematic material is more accessible. It has been said that, in the Fifth Symphony, the best qualities of Shostakovich's music, such as meditation, humor and grandeur, blend in perfect balance and self-fulfillment.[14]
Post-Testimony response
The final movement, often being criticized for sounding shrill,[by whom?] is declared in Testimony to be a parody of shrillness, representing "forced rejoicing". In the words attributed to the composer in Testimony (a work which, although attributed to Shostakovich himself, is shown to have serious flaws in its credibility[15][16]):
The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing", and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing."[17]
While most performances and recordings of the symphony have ended with a gradual acceleration of the coda, especially Leonard Bernstein's October 1959 Columbia Records recording with the New York Philharmonic (following a performance in Moscow in the presence of the composer), more recent renditions have reflected a different interpretation (though not clearly provable) of Shostakovich's intention.[citation needed] Shostakovich's friend and colleague Mstislav Rostropovich conducted the closing minutes in a much slower, subdued manner, never accelerating; he did this in a performance in Russia with the National Symphony Orchestra and in their commercial Teldec recording. He told CBS that Shostakovich had written a "hidden message" in the symphony, which is allegedly supported by the composer's words in Testimony.[citation needed]
Nowadays, it is one of his most popular symphonies.[18]
Notable recordings
Notable recordings of this symphony include:
(1) = recorded live at Bunka Kaikan, Tokyo, Japan
(2) = recorded in Moscow during start of 1991 Soviet coup d'etat attempt
(3) = recorded live in Tokyo
(4) = recorded live in Birmingham
(5) = recorded live at the BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, London
(6) = recorded live at Symphony Hall, Boston 11/2015; Winner of 2017 Grammy for Orchestral Performance
Source: arkivmusic.com (recommended recordings selected based on critics reviews)
Notes
- ^ As witnessed by the director of the Leningrad Philharmonic, Mikhail Chulaki: see Wilson (2006), p.158
- ^ Kostka, Stefan & Payne, Dorothy. Tonal Harmony: With an introduction to Twentieth Century Music, 6th ed., ch. 20, p. 338
- ^ BBC Radio 3 Discovering Music, retrieved on 25 April 2009.
- ^ Andrew Clark (2009-03-14). "A Liverpool orchestra at its peak". Financial Times. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
- ^ Stephen Johnson. "Shostakovich: A Journey Into Light". BBC Radio 3. Retrieved 2009-05-14.
- ^ Wilson (2006), pp.158-9
- ^ a b Maes, 353.
- ^ a b c Maes, 304.
- ^ Volkov, Shostakovich and Stalin, 183.
- ^ a b c Quoted in Taruskin, Richard, Public Lies and Unspeakable Truth, p. 32.
- ^ a b Sollertinsky, 84.
- ^ MacDonald, 123–124.
- ^ Sollertinsky, 82–83.
- ^ Schwarz, New Grove, 17:267.
- ^ Basner, Veniamin; Karayev, Kara; Levitin, Yuri; Khachaturian, Karen; Tishchenko, Boris; Weinberg, Mieczysław (2005). "A Pitiful Fake ('Zhalkaia poddelka'): About the So-Called 'Memoirs' of D. D. Shostakovich (1979). Letter to the editor of Literaturnaia gazeta.". In Brown, Malcolm Hamrick (ed.). A Shostakovich Casebook. Indiana University Press. p. 80. ISBN 9780253218230.
- ^ Taruskin, Richard (26 August 2016). "Was Shostakovich a Martyr? Or Is That Just Fiction?". The New York Times. New York. Retrieved 12 April 2017.
- ^ Volkov, 183.
- ^ Wright, Craig (2010). Listening to Western Music. Cengage Learning. p. 353. ISBN 978-1-4390-8347-5.
References
- Blokker, Roy (1979). The Music of Dmitri Shostakovich: The Symphonies. with Robert Dearling. Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses. ISBN 0-8386-1948-7.
- MacDonald, Ian (1990). The New Shostakovich. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-089-3.
- Maes, Francis (2002). A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar. Translated by Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21815-9.
- Rothstein, Edward (November 12, 1968). "A Labour of Love". Independent Magazine. pp. 49–52.
- Schwarz, Boris (1983). Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia: Enlarged Edition, 1917-1981. Bloomington: Indiana: University Press. ISBN 0-253-33956-1.
- Schwarz, Boris (1980). Sadie, Stanley (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: MacMillan. ISBN 0-333-23111-2.
- Sollertinsky, Dmitri; Sollertinsky, Ludmilla (1980). Pages from the Life of Dmitri Shostakovich. Translated by Graham Hobbs and Charles Midgley. New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-170730-8.
- Steinberg, Michael (1995). The Symphony: A Listener's Guide. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512665-3.
- Volkov, Solomon (1979). Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-014476-9.
- Volkov, Solomon (2004). Shostakovich and Stalin: The Extraordinary Relationship Between the Great Composer and the Brutal Dictator. London: Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-86141-3.
- Wilson, Elizabeth (2006). Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (2nd ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691128863.
External links
- Sample recordings of the first and second movements by the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conducting.
- Keeping Score: Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 Multimedia website produced by the San Francisco Symphony
- PBS Video: (Full Episode) Publicly condemned Shostakovich's 5th Symphony saved his life. Was there a hidden meaning
Featured Artists
Music Director, Donato Cabrera
Jennifer Cho, violin