Prokofiev, Kaprálová, Bacewicz & Shostakovich

PROKOFIEV, KAPRÁLOVÁ, BACEWICZ & SHOSTAKOVICH Thursday 18 March 2021, Perth Concert Hall –––––

PROGRAMME NOTE

SCO.ORG.UK

Season 2020/21

PROKOFIEV, KAPRÁLOVÁ, BACEWICZ & SHOSTAKOVICH Thursday 18 March 2021, 7.30pm Perth Concert Hall

Prokofiev Sonata for solo violin Kaprálová Wind trio Bacewicz Wind quintet Shostakovich Two pieces for string octet Introduced by Rachel Spencer and Alison Green

Our Musicians

YOUR ORCHESTRA VIOLIN Stephanie Gonley Ruth Crouch Kana Kawashima Aisling O’Dea Amira Bedrush-McDonald Gordon Bragg Rachel Spencer Stewart Webster VIOLA Felix Tanner Brian Schiele

FLUTE Brontë Hudnott OBOE Robin Williams CLARINET William Stafford BASSOON Alison Green HORN Patrick Broderick

CELLO Su-a Lee Eric de Wit

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WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR Prokofiev (1891-1953) Sonata for Solo Violin in D major, Opus 115 (1947) Moderato Tema con variazione: Andante dolce Con brio: Allegro precipitato

Kaprálová (1915-1940) Wind trio (1937) Allegro ma non troppo Andante Andante semplice Vivo

Bacewicz (1909-1969) Wind Quintet (1932) Allegro Air: Andante Allegretto Vivo

Shostakovich (1906-1975) Two Pieces for String Octet, Op 11 (1925) Prelude: Adagio Scherzo: Allegro molto

––––– A bit like the squares on a chessboard, today’s concert is one of complements and contrasts: four pieces of music, all from the 20th century, two by Russians and two by Eastern Europeans (both of those Eastern Europeans, by chance, living in Paris); two by men and two by women, two for strings (or at least a single stringed instrument) and two for winds; two complete and two – well, not quite what their composers originally planned.

And despite the title of the first of those string works, Prokofiev didn’t originally write his Sonata for solo violin with a single player in mind. Instead, he composed it for massed ranks of violin students, usually about 20 per class, all playing the same music in unison according to the traditions of the Russian pedagogic system. Commissioned by the Soviet Union’s Committee of Arts Affairs, it was intended as an educational piece, and with its uncluttered directness and its melodic simplicity, it certainly fits that bill well in terms of putting relatively advanced students through their paces.

Nonetheless, with its distinctively Prokofievian mix of easy-going lyricism and deliciously acidic harmonies, it quickly outgrew any educational setting. Indeed, violinist Ruggiero Ricci gave the Sonata its professional premiere at the Moscow Conservatoire in 1959.

Prokofiev wrote the Sonata in 1947, a little more than a decade after returning to the Soviet Union after he’d fled recentlyrevolutionised Russia in 1918, first settling in the USA, then in France. It’s one of several works that he wrote explicitly to satisfy Communist Party demands, though not in quite as direct a way as in his

Prokofiev didn’t originally write his Sonata for solo violin with a single player in mind. Instead, he composed it for massed ranks of violin students, usually about 20 per class, all playing the same music in unison.

Sergei Prokofiev

gigantic Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of the October Revolution, for example,

relatively simple opening theme through several lithe transformations. He closes

or the less well-known Zdravitsa (usually translated as ‘Hail to Stalin’) to celebrate the man of steel’s 60th birthday.

with a wild mazurka dance in which he sends his violinists up and down the range of their instruments, and with a whirling central episode that returns to bring the Sonata to a fiery conclusion.

Cast in three brief movements, the Sonata begins in sprightly, dance-like fashion with a confident, assertive main theme, before progressing to a more lyrical, self-effacing second melody that’s interrupted by aggressive, folk-like chords bowed across all four violin strings. Prokofiev combines all these ideas in his central development section, before reprising them again at the end, all with such energy and variety that you quickly forget you’re listening to a single, unadorned melodic line.

His second movement is a gentle theme

We jump from the concert’s first string piece to its first work for winds, by a composer who achieved remarkable things in a tragically short life, and is slowly receiving the recognition she deserves. Born in Brno and dying in Montpellier just 25 years later, Vítězslava Kaprálová was both a composer and a conductor, and her music – which includes songs, piano music, a string quartet, two piano concertos and several other orchestral pieces – is gaining increasing

and variations, which puts its charming if

interest internationally.

Vítězslava Kaprálová achieved a remarkable amount in her tragically short life, as both composer and conductor, and thankfully her music... is gaining increasing interest internationally.

Vítězslava Kaprálová

Her compatriot and fellow composer Bohuslav Martinů played a large role

increasingly unlikely, or possibly because she was simply too busy with other music.

in the creation of her Reed Trio. He had moved to Paris in 1923 and, inspired by the exceptional standard of wind playing in France, wrote his own reed trio, Quatre madrigaux, in 1937 for the famous Trio d’Anches de Paris (or Paris Reed Trio), comprising oboe, clarinet and bassoon. On a return visit to Prague for the premiere of his opera Julietta, he met Kaprálová and encouraged her to come to Paris to study with him, which she did a few months later, quickly setting to work on her own Reed Trio in the hope that the same eminent players would perform and even record it.

As it stands, the Trio is a reconstruction by the oboist and musicologist Stéphane Egeling, and it received its premiere as recently as 2011. The first movement is Kaprálová’s original: it begins as a distinctive, memorable march, before the oboe introduces the slower, more lyrical second main theme. Kaprálová never completed the two remaining movements: instead, Egeling has added transcriptions for reed trio of movements from her piano work April Preludes: a melancholy slow movement led by an oboe melody, and a playful finale that leads the ear in all manner of unexpected directions.

Sadly, she never completed the work – possibly because the hoped-for

Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz was also a celebrated violinist, and wrote

performance and recording grew

extensively for strings – indeed, her

The Wind Quintet feels like a work that combines and contrasts Bacewicz’s musical interests at the time, notably a distinctively Gallic wit and sophistication as well as the earthier sounds of Polish folk music.

Grażyna Bacewicz

Quartet for four violins featured in a concert earlier in the SCO’s current season.

There’s a definite sense of Parisian nonchalance to the dashing first

But today we turn instead to one of her works for wind instruments. The 1932 Wind Quintet was her first international success, and won her first prize in a competition for female composers organised by the Parisian society Aide aux femmes de professions libres (in other words, female freelancers). Bacewicz was living in Paris at the time, studying composition with eminent pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, and she returned to the French capital two years later to study violin with the equally eminent Carl Flesch.

And the Wind Quintet feels like a work that combines and contrasts Bacewicz’s musical interests at the time, notably a distinctively Gallic wit and sophistication as well as the earthier sounds of Polish folk

movement, in which all five instruments seem to want to contribute to the conversation in an increasingly complex interplay of parts – though it’s all carried off with enormous charm (and consummate skill). The gently radiant second movement is an instrumental aria that begins on the horn and continues on the bassoon, while Bacewicz’s folk inspirations emerge in the perky, dancelike and very brief third movement. She brings things to a sparkling conclusion in a finale full of volatile, unpredictable energy.

music.

solo violin Sonata that opened today’s

For our final piece, we return to the world of strings. It was just six years before his death that Prokofiev wrote the

The work offers two complementary and highly contrasting movements, both of which show the young composer straining at restrictions and boundaries, and revelling in unrestrained dissonance and driving rhythms.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich

concert. Shostakovich, on the other hand, composed his Two Pieces for string octet

in unrestrained dissonance and driving rhythms.

right at the start of his career, aged just 18. Inspired by Mendelssohn’s Octet for double string quartet (four violins, two violas and two cellos), he began the work in December 1924 with grand ambitions for a multi-movement piece, but then put it on hold to complete his First Symphony.

When he returned to it in July 1925, however, he found he could no longer summon the enthusiasm he’d initially felt.

Abandoning his initial five-movement plan, he instead composed a Scherzo to go with the opening Prelude he’d already drafted, then left it at that. Even in this truncated form, however, the work offers two complementary and highly contrasting movements, both of which show the young composer straining at

There are distinctive nods to JS Bach in the opening Prelude (and indeed, Shostakovich had originally planned a Bachian fugue to go with it). It’s a restless movement, constantly changing in mood and texture, from rich chords and assertive solos at its start to a faster central section built around a far more jagged melody. If there’s any humour in the breathless Scherzo that follows, it’s of a pitch-black kind: with its galloping rhythms and unusual sonic effects – from slides to scrubbing melodies intentionally out of tune with each other – it’s a thrilling ride that grows increasingly frenetic as the movement progresses.

restrictions and boundaries, and revelling

© David Kettle

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