Masterworks 4 Program Notes

from Northern Sounds Magazine Winter 2022-23

by Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra

Music Director Dirk Meyer

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

The Rock, Op. 7 SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

BORN: : April 1, 1873, in Novgorod, Russia DIED: March 28, 1943, in Beverly Hills, California WORK COMPOSED: 1893; dedicated to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov WORLD PREMIERE: April 1894, in Moscow; Vassily Safonov conducting PERFORMANCE HISTORY: There have been no previous DSSO performances of this Rachmaninoff tone poem. INSTRUMENTATION: : Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (triangle, tambourine, cymbal, bass drum, tam-tam), harp and strings. DURATION: 18 minutes

In 1893 Rachmaninoff was a composition student of Anton Arensky (1861-1906) at the Moscow Conservatory. As all music students know, exam time means performing for the other faculty, in this instance Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859-1935) and Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915).

Instead of holding the exams at the conservatory, Taneyev invited the students and other faculty to his home where the students could also perform for his house guest, Tchaikovsky. One student, Lev (Leon) Conus (1871-1944), performed his four-hand piano arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, which did not seem to particularly please the composer. However, the great composer enjoyed the performance of Rachmaninoff’s just completed fantasia, The Rock.

At the close of the evening [Rachmaninoff] acquainted us with the newly completed symphonic poem, The Crag [The Rock]. [...] The poem pleased all very much, especially Pyotr Ilyich [Tchaikovsky], who was enthusiastic over its colorfulness. The performance of The Crag and our discussion of it must have diverted Pyotr Ilyich, for his former good-hearted mood came back to him.

Ippolitov-Ivanov later recalled Tchaikovsky’s reaction: Tchaikovsky asked Rachmaninoff for permission to include The Rock in his forthcoming European concert tour, but sadly it never happened because Tchaikovsky died later that year.

As an epigraph for his fantasia The Rock, Rachmaninoff chose a couplet from a poem by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841): The golden cloud slept through the night Upon the breast of the giant rock

Rachmaninoff later shared that there was also another inspiration for the work which came from a short story by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), On the Road (December 25, 1886). The story tells of a chance encounter at a roadside inn during a stormy Christmas eve between a young woman and a man who is quickly approaching middle age. Grigory Petrovitch Liharev (the man) tells the story of his unhappy life to Marya Mihailovna Ilovaisky (the woman), who is deeply moved by it. The following day she departs on her journey and he, left alone with his life’s regrets, stands and is covered by the snow that falls around him - the rock of Lermontov’s poem.

There are three main themes to listen for in The Rock: the man, the woman, and the intense, frustrating struggles of the man’s life. The ominous opening emerges from the depths of the orchestra and sets off a journey of beautiful melodies and brilliant orchestral colors that are only a glimpse of what is to come in Rachmaninoff’s later works. As the conversation continues, the struggle for mutual understanding between them builds to an incredible climax dominated by the trombones, a moment not far removed from the earth-shattering climax in the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. The final measures fade with distant beats from the timpani.

SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR

Othello Suite, Op. 79 SAMUEL COLERIDGE-TAYLOR

BORN: August 15, 1875, in Holborn, London, England DIED: September 1, 1912, in Croydon, London WORK COMPOSED: 1909 WORLD PREMIERE: Not documented PERFORMANCE HISTORY: The only music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor previously played by the Orchestra was Keep Me from Sinking Down with Erin Aldridge, violin soloist, on February 26, 2022. INSTRUMENTATION: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion (cymbals, bass drum, triangle) and strings. DURATION: 13 minutes. Coleridge-Taylor was born to an English woman, Alice Hare Martin (1856-1953) and a Krio man from Sierra Leone, Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor (abt. 1848-1904), who was studying medicine in London at the time. They were not married and Taylor returned to Africa without learning that Alice was pregnant (her parents were also not married at her birth). She named her son Samuel Coleridge Taylor after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. After she had Samuel, Alice lived with her father Benjamin Holmans and his family in Croydon, Surrey. He was married to a woman not her mother and they had four daughters and at least one son. Both Alice and her father called her son Coleridge and in 1887 Alice married a railway worker, George Evans.

Taylor grew up in a musical family and he learned the violin from Holmans. After realizing his grandson’s extraordinary ability, he paid for him to have violin lessons. The family arranged for the fifteen-yearold Samuel to study at the Royal College of Music. He changed his focus from violin to composition and studied under Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (18521924), whose other students included Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Frank Bridge and Arthur Bliss. After completing his degree, Taylor became a professional musician; he conducted the orchestra at the Croydon Conservatory and was appointed a professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music.

The Othello Suite was commissioned as incidental music for the 1912 Herbert Beerbohm Tree production of Shakespeare’s Othello at His Majesty’s Theatre in London. Incidental music is used in plays and films as background to create a mood or enhance the action. Each of the five movements contain strong and contrasting themes, which must have been impressive as they accompanied Shakespeare’s Othello. One can only imagine what actions may have been taking place on-stage during each of these five movements: the lively, exuberant Dance; the playful, innocent Children’s Intermezzo; the somber, regal Funeral March; The Willow Song, a beautiful melancholic melody that epitomizes the tragedy of Othello; and the Military March which, in its joyousness, seems to be signaling a great victory.

Coleridge-Taylor lived too short a life, dying at the age of 37. His music definitely compares well with that of his contemporaries and deserves to be performed more often.

JEAN SIBELIUS

Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 82 JEAN SIBELIUS

BORN: December 8, 1865, in Hämeenlinna, in the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland DIED: September 20, 1957, in his home, Ainola, at Lake Tuusula, Järvenpää, Finland WORK COMPOSED: 1914–15; revised 1916 and 1919 WORLD PREMIERE: :Sibelius completed the first version of his Fifth Symphony just in time to conduct it for his 50th birthday, a Finnish national holiday, on December 8, 1915, with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Sibelius also conducted the final version with the same orchestra on November 24, 1919. PERFORMANCE HISTORY: This Sibelius symphony was also played by the DSSO in 1945 (Tauno Hannikainen conducting), 1980 and 1993 (both with Taavo Virkhaus), and on April 12, 2003, followed by a run-out concert in Hibbing, MN, the next day (with Markand Thakar). INSTRUMENTATION: : Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings DURATION: 30 minutes. The Finnish government declared December 8, 1915 a national holiday in honor of the 50th birthday of Jean Sibelius. To celebrate the occasion, the government commissioned a symphony from the honoree. After years of being a popular composer, Sibelius began receiving poor reviews following the premiere of his Fourth Symphony. An entry in his notebook from September 1914 gives an indication of his depression while mentioning his new symphony: “In a deep valley again. But I already begin to see dimly the mountain that I shall certainly ascend...God opens his door for a moment and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.” Musicologist James Hepokoski wrote that Sibelius “was beginning to sense his own eclipse as a contending modernist;” he realized that his strength was in developing the musical language he was most comfortable with. Sibelius specialist and Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu discussed Symphony No. 5 in 2018 saying that Sibelius made a definite choice “to stay within the frames of harmonic language of late-19th-century romanticism; instead he would innovate in the realms of macrostructure and instrumental coloring.” As an example the structure of this Symphony No. 5 is unusual: it has three movements, all in a major key (I. E-flat major, II. G major, III. E-flat major), making it seem as though the entire work is one movement. When it comes to tempo, it is symmetrical: the first movement starts slow and ends with a fast scherzo; the second movement maintains a medium tempo as a calm intermezzo; and the third movement begins fast and ends slowly.

Sibelius wrote in 1914, “I should like to compare the symphony to a river. It is born from various rivulets that seek each other, and in this way the river proceeds wide and powerful toward the sea.” The Fifth Symphony evolves out of the calm opening horn motif and flows like a river as it turns into a wild ride over the rapids. Sibelius creates such an organic quality in his transitions from one section to the next that it makes them seamless and unnoticeable.

As the finale opens, the tremolo in the strings captures the rustle of wings as it accompanies an expansive melody. He wrote in his diary on April 21, 1915, “Today at ten to eleven I saw sixteen swans. One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, what beauty! They circled over me for a long time. Disappeared into the solar haze like a gleaming silver ribbon.” Juxtaposed with this breathless rustling is a majestic ‘swan theme’ introduced by the horns.

The fragmentation of the winds and random punctuations of the timpani depicts an enormous struggle that may very well be associated with the anxiety of the world at war and Finland’s war for independence from Russia. The music builds and intensifies as it reaches its climax as the swan theme triumphantly returns. With the final six decisive chords Sibelius draws his Fifth Symphony to a victorious close.

Sibelius conducted the first version of his Fifth Symphony in Helsinki on his 50th birthday. Over the next four years he would revise it, commenting that he wanted to give it a “more human form. More down-to-earth, more vivid.” Work on the revision came to an unexpected pause in 1918 when Russian soldiers invaded his town and Sibelius and his family were forced to flee to Helsinki, where they remained until later that year. The final version, which he described as “practically composed anew,” was completed in 1919 and is more straightforward, classical and monumental compared with the more modernist style of the first version. Although Sibelius did not directly connect the Fifth Symphony with World War I and/or Finland’s war for independence, it is a symbol of the hope and strength that arose from that turbulent time. However, he specified in the program for the London premiere in 1921: “The composer desires the work to be regarded as absolute music, having no direct poetic basis.”