BY LAURIE SHULMAN, ©2011
FIRST NORTH AMERICAN SERIAL RIGHTS ONLY
Johan Halvorsen: Suite ancienne
Born March 15, 1864, in Drammen, Norway
Died December 4, 1935, in Oslo
Homage to a famous father-in-law and a national literary treasure
Does the title Holberg Suite ring a bell? Edvard Grieg composed that solo piano work in 1883, then arranged it for string orchestra the following year. Its actual title is Fra Holbergs tid (“From Holberg’s Time”). The person in question was Ludwig Holberg (1684–1754), a philosopher, playwright and historian known as the “Molière of the North” for his satirical comedies of manners. He was born in Bergen, but spent most of his career in Copenhagen. Both Norwegians and Danes claim Holberg as a native son, and with good reason: he was the most prominent Scandinavian literary figure of the Enlightenment.
The Norwegian violinist, conductor and composer Johan Halvorsen (who married Grieg’s daughter) dedicated his Suite Ancienne “To the memory of Ludvig Holberg.” The suite consists of four entr’actes Halvorsen composed for a revival of Holberg’s play Barselstuen in 1911. He was consciously fusing aspects of older styles. The opening Intrata and variations would have been typical movements in a late 18th-century serenade, while the three dances were common to Baroque suites. Halvorsen’s music is neoclassical and reflective, an affectionate salute to the past. Suite ancienne falls into the same category as Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Tchaikovsky’s Mozartiana, Reger’s Suite in the Old Style and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin.
A Norwegian master worth discovering
Halvorsen established his reputation as a virtuoso violinist but gained a reputation as a conductor in the 1890s. He spent much of his career working in theatres, and he conceived many of his original orchestral scores as incidental music to plays by Shakespeare, Euripides and Norwegian writers such as Holberg. Today, Halvorsen is best known as the co-author of the Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia, a warhorse of the violin/viola duo repertoire, and for his popular Entry March of the Boyars. In Norway, Halvorsen is considered a worthy heir to the tradition of Edvard Grieg and Johan Svendsen. This colorful suite, with its sparkling orchestration and lively themes, is a persuasive invitation to get acquainted with more of his music.
Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19
Born April 23, 1891, in Sontzovka, Ukraine
Died March 5, 1953, in Moscow, Russia
Travel to greener—and safer—pastures
If you were 25 and came from a wealthy family in an absolutist state, and the status quo appeared to be on the verge of collapse, would you stick around and weather the storm or opt for friendlier shores? Sergei Prokofiev chose the latter option early in the Russian Revolution. By the spring of 1918, even train travel between Moscow and St. Petersburg had become risky because of political unrest; many Russians feared German invasion as much as the civil war. Prokofiev headed east, across the Siberian steppes to Japan, and then to California. His luggage contained several manuscripts, including a newly completed violin concerto.
The piece was remarkably free of any sign of the chaos into which Russia had been thrown. One wonders whether Prokofiev was simply ignoring what was transpiring around him, for its melodies are positively ethereal. As classically constructed as any piece he wrote, this concerto is more tender and romantic than sardonic. We hear the sensitive and lyrical Prokofiev, rather than the savage and sarcastic facets that had already manifested themselves in other works. His First Violin Concerto strikes a wonderful balance between the violin’s cantabile qualities and the excitement of a brilliant player giving free rein to sheer bravura technique.
Blue chip audience for a Paris premiere
Prokofiev waited five years to hear this concerto performed. He left America for France in the early 1920s, but he could not persuade a French violinist to learn his concerto. Finally, in 1923, he found a soloist: Marcel Darrieux, the concertmaster of Serge Koussevitzky’s specially recruited orchestra. Koussevitzky conducted the première at the Paris Opéra that October. The press sniffed at the new concerto, dismissing it as Mendelssohnian. As Prokofiev’s biographers Laurence and Elizabeth Hanson have written, “If there is one thing that disconcerts the intellectual Frenchman, it is genuine emotion openly expressed.”
Perhaps what the critics meant by “Mendelssohnian” was lyrical and melodious. Fortunately the audience also included such luminaries as painter Pablo Picasso, ballerina Anna Pavlova, composer Karol Szymanowski, pianist Artur Rubinstein and—most important—violinist Joseph Szigeti. The great Hungarian virtuoso was thrilled with Prokofiev’s concerto. Within a year Szigeti was touring with the piece all over Europe.
About the music
Szigeti surely responded to Prokofiev’s winning combination of lyricism and sparkle. The soloist’s opening theme is marked sognando (“dreamily”), over a shimmering, divided viola section. A poetic, magical quality wafts forth, both seductive and innocent, entwining us in a musical tale that unfolds at leisure. Prokofiev’s central scherzo is wild, dissonant and sardonic, a reminder that this is no one-dimensional composer. Still, his finale brings back both melodic elements and the gentle spirit of the first movement, embellished by elaborate trills, thrilling passagework and the sweetest of sounds. This is a concerto to take to the heart for many repeat hearings.
The score calls for two flutes (second doubling on piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, tuba, timpani, tambourine, snare drum, harp, solo violin, and strings. Timing: approximately 22 minutes.
Jean Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D, Op. 43
Born December 8, 1865, in Tavastehus, Finland
Died September 20, 1957, in Järvenpää, Finland
Elusive Nordic master
“Sibelius is an aggravatingly difficult person to catalogue,” Lawrence Abbott once said. The Finnish composer has been variously described as late romantic, expressionist, nationalist, spiritual mythologist and futurist. Partly because he enjoyed such a long life and fruitful career, his style evolved and altered, lending some credence to all the aforementioned categories. At the same time, certain common themes—Finnish legend, national pride—recurred throughout his career.
Sibelius’s reputation rests primarily on his orchestral works, which consist of seven symphonies and a number of tone poems. Criticism of his music has usually focused on a lack of continuity and a weak command of form. Paradoxically, The New Grove praises his “extraordinary originality as a symphonic thinker.” His early works show more influence of the Russian school than of classical models. But even there, he is difficult to pinpoint: there is a strong relationship to both Borodin and Tchaikovsky, who represent opposite ends of the “Russian” spectrum in the second half of the 19th century. About the only thing that remains consistent is the controversy surrounding his music.
“Organic” writing: musical fragmentation and reassembly
The Second Symphony, which was composed in 1901 and 1902, has become the most popular symphony by Sibelius, perhaps because of its frankly nationalistic stance. In its day, it was considered revolutionary because of its unconventional first movement form. Basically, Sibelius works with succinct motives that are detached at the beginning and become forged together in the development. At the conclusion of the movement, he breaks the melodic components into fragments again. The entire process is almost the inverse of the conventional approach to musical logic as codified in sonata form, wherein one expects exposition of thematic ideas that are fragmented and developed in a middle section, then unified at the close.
Nature metamorphosed into music
Sibelius had a remarkable ability to observe nature and translate his observations into music. He succeeded admirably in the Second Symphony, which overflows with pastoral elements that celebrate his native land. The opening triplets of the first movement are pastoral; so is the second theme. An oboe solo in the scherzo—with its famous repeated B flat—is an obvious reference to a birdcall.
But the success of the Second Symphony does not hinge solely on its joyous, expansive mood (Simon Parmet refers to Sibelius in this work as being “in one of those rare moods in which he is in complete harmony with the external world”). Sibelius forged a healthy balance of pastoral elements with intense drama, the latter particularly in the second and fourth movements.
Another fine stroke is his transition from third to fourth movements. He fuses scherzo and finale together by repeating the trio section and letting it unfold gradually into his finale. The transition is ingenious, organic and thoroughly convincing. Burnett James has written: “The finale is a fine paean of praise and strength, a sturdy affirmation of life and vitality ... The force of nature is given full rein. The winds howl and roar; the tuba emits prodigies of elemental energy; strings scurry and swirl; and once again the great ostinato pedal points in the orchestra hold the foundations firm.”
The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings. Timing: approximately 44 minutes. |
