8 minute read
Program Notes
Adam Walters
BORN: 1972 in the United Kingdom
The Downfall of Gaius Verres
(2024) U.S. Premiere
PREMIERE: April 11, 2024 at Huddersfield Town Hall, Huddersfield, UK
Approximate performance time is 6 minutes.
The Downfall of Gaius Verres is an orchestral work by Adam Walters, a composer, arranger, teacher, and instrumentalist who currently makes his home in London. It is the second composition by Walters for the Orchestra of Opera North.
The Downfall of Gaius Verres
Gaius Verres was a Governor of Sicily whose staggering abuse of power — including bribery, looting, and summary executions — was finally brought to an end by his trial in 70 A.D. The prosecutor was Marcus Tullius Cicero, who accepted the case when it was brought to him by the Sicilians who had been living under Verres’s tyranny. The trial was well-documented at the time, and accounts of it serve both as a detailed example of corruption in the Roman Republic, and of Cicero’s brilliance as an orator.
My short orchestral work is inspired by this event, as depicted in Robert Harris’s historical novel Imperium. I was particularly drawn in by his description of the crowds that grew ever larger and more frenzied as the trial drew nearer. In my piece, Verres is represented by the opening horn motive which, as the musical narrative unfolds, is woven into the orchestral texture in a variety of guises. Cicero is assigned a melody first heard in the winds. Insistent and unchanging, the melody is intended to evoke Cicero’s tenacity which ultimately led to his successful prosecution of Verres.
- Adam Walters
Sergei Rachmaninoff
BORN: April 1, 1873 in Semyonovo, Russia
DIED: March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, California
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor Opus 18 (1901)
PREMIERE: November 9, 1901 in Moscow, Russia
Approximate performance time is 32 minutes.
When Sergei Rachmaninoff completed his First Symphony in August of 1895, he was 22 and brimming with all the confidence of youth. “I imagined that there was nothing I could not do and had great hopes for the future,” he later recalled. Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony received its premiere in St. Petersburg on March 28, 1897, with Alexander Glazunov conducting. The performance was a disaster, and immediately after the final notes sounded, Rachmaninoff “fled, horrified, into the street.”
While Rachmaninoff was able to escape the confines of the theater, he still had to face the wrath of the critics. Russian composer César Cui wrote in the St. Petersburg News:
If there were a conservatory in Hell, if one of its many talented students were instructed to write a programme symphony on the “Seven Plagues of Egypt,” and if he were to compose a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff’s, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and would delight the inhabitants of Hell.
Rachmaninoff lapsed into a profound depression; his friends, alarmed by his state, tried all forms of cures. Finally, they convinced Rachmaninoff to consult Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a doctor who had gained some prominence for his employment of hypnosis. Between January and April of 1900, Rachmaninoff visited Dr. Dahl on a daily basis.
Rachmaninoff told Dahl that he had promised to compose a Piano Concerto. Dr. Dahl set about treating his patient:
I heard the same hypnotic formula repeated day after day while I lay half asleep in the armchair in Dr. Dahl’s study. “You will begin to write your concerto...You will work with great facility...The concerto will be of an excellent quality...” It was always the same, without interruption. Although it may sound incredible, this cure really helped me. Already at the beginning of the summer, I began again to compose. The material grew in bulk, and new musical ideas began to stir within me — far more than I needed for my concerto.
Rachmaninoff completed the final two movements of his Second Piano Concerto in the autumn of 1900 and performed them at a Moscow charity concert on October 14. Rachmaninoff added the opening movement in the spring of the following year and appeared as soloist in the November 9, 1901 premiere of the entire Second Piano Concerto. The composer readily acknowledged Dr. Dahl’s role in the creation of one of the most popular works of the 20th century and dedicated the concerto to him.
The Piano Concerto No. 2 is in three movements. The first (Moderato) opens with a series of tolling chords by the soloist, leading to the surging principal melody, marked “con passione.” The slow-tempo second movement (Adagio sostenuto) is a fantasia on a lovely theme, in turn related to a melody in the concerto’s opening Moderato. The finale (Allegro scherzando) is based upon two themes, the second, is one of Rachmaninoff’s most beloved. That theme makes a glorious return in the concerto’s closing measures.
Camille Saint-Saëns
BORN: October 9, 1835 in Paris, France
DIED: December 16, 1921 in Algiers, Algeria
Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah (1877)
PREMIERE: December 2, 1877 at the Hoftheater in Weimar, Germany
Approximate performance time is 8 minutes.
During his long, productive, and highly influential career, Camille Saint-Saëns composed successfully in a wide variety of genres. His catalogue includes a dozen operas; but only one, Samson and Delilah, has maintained a regular place in the repertoire. In the late 1860s, Saint-Saëns became interested in the ill-fated affair of Samson and Delilah as the basis for an oratorio. Ferdinand Lemaire, who authored the work’s libretto, convinced Saint-Saëns instead to use the episode from the Book of Judges to create a fully-staged opera.
Within a few years of its 1877 premiere, Samson and Delilah established itself as a mainstay of the French repertoire, a status it holds to this day. Some excerpts from the opera enjoy an independent life in the concert hall, including Delilah’s second-act aria, “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix” (“My heart opens at your voice”) and the final act’s brilliant orchestral Bacchanale. In the Temple of Dagon, the Philistines celebrate their victory over the blinded Samson. But that victory proves to be shortlived when Samson destroys the Temple and his enemies.
Ottorino Respighi
BORN: July 9, 1879 in Bologna, Italy
DIED: April 18, 1936 in Rome, Italy
Feste romane (Roman Festivals) (1928)
PREMIERE: February 21, 1929 at Carnegie Hall in New York City
Approximate performance time is 24 minutes.
Ottorino Respighi’s Roman Festivals is the final work in a series of three tone poems that present musical depictions of the sights, sounds, and history of the grand Italian capital. The first of the trilogy, Fountains of Rome , premiered in 1917, followed by Pines of Rome in 1924. Both premieres were held at the Augusteo in Rome.
The 1917 premiere of the Fountains of Rome, led by Antonio Guarneri, was not a success. However, the following year, Arturo Toscanini conducted the work at a Milan concert. The Milan audience and critics responded enthusiastically, prompting Respighi to comment to his publisher, Ricordi: “In Toscanini’s hands everything takes on strength and color: he understands and brings out the composer’s innermost thoughts.” It was Toscanini who conducted the world premiere of Roman Festivals, leading the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall.
In December of 1949 in Carnegie Hall, Toscanini recorded Roman Festivals with his NBC Symphony Orchestra. The kaleidoscopic orchestration and massive climaxes test the limits of even the most sophisticated modern recording technology. Certainly, the challenges were even greater when Toscanini and the NBC Orchestra recorded the work more than seventy years ago. RCA producer Richard Mohr recalled that when the recording was played for Toscanini’s approval, the maestro felt it lacked sufficient impact. When the engineers informed Toscanini that a higher recording level could lead to sound distortion, the Maestro thundered: “I don’t care! Break the machines!”
Roman Festivals is in four movements, played without pause. The score includes the following description:
I. Circuses — A threatening sky hangs over the Circus Maximus, but it is the people’s holiday: “Ave Nero!” The iron doors are unlocked, the strains of a religious song and the howling of wild beasts float on the air. The crowd rises in agitation: unperturbed, the song of the martyrs develops, conquers, and then is lost in the tumult.
2. The Jubilee — The pilgrims trail along the highway, praying. Finally appears from the summit of Monte Mario, to ardent eyes and gasping souls, the holy city: “Rome! Rome!” A hymn of praise bursts forth, the churches ring out their reply.
3. The October Festival — The harvest festival in the Roman “Castelli” covered with vines: hunting echoes, tinkling of bells, songs of love. Then in the tender even-fall arises a romantic serenade.
4. The Epiphany — The night before Epiphany in the Piazza Navona: a characteristic rhythm of trumpets dominates the frantic clamor: above the swelling noise float, from time to time, rustic motives, saltarello cadenzas, the strains of a barrel-organ of a booth and the appeal of the proclaimer, the harsh song of the intoxicated and the lively stornello in which is expressed the popular feelings. “Lassàtece passà, semo Romani!” (“We are Romans, let us pass!”)
