Pulcinella – Digital Season 2122 – Programme Note

PULCINELLA 9 Apr – 9 May 2022

SCO.ORG.UK

PROGRAMME

Season 2021/22

PULCINELLA

9 April – 9 May 2022 RSNO Centre Haydn Symphony No 103 ‘Drum Roll’ Stravinsky Pulcinella Maxim Emelyanychev Conductor Claire Booth Soprano Andrew Staples Tenor Roderick Williams Baritone Introduced by Maxim Emelyanychev and Roderick Williams

Maxim Emelyanychev

Andrew Staples

Claire Booth

Roderick Williams

Please see sco.org.uk for artist biographies

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Our Musicians

YOUR ORCHESTRA FIRST VIOLIN Stephanie Gonley Ruth Crouch Kana Kawashima Aisling O’Dea Siún Milne Fiona Alexander

FLUTE Jack Welch Emma Roche

TRUMPET Peter Franks Simon Bird

OBOE Robin Williams Fraser Kelman

TROMBONE Duncan Wilson

SECOND VIOLIN Marcus Barcham Stevens Gordon Bragg Amira Bedrush-McDonald Sarah Bevan Baker Stewart Webster Niamh Lyons

CLARINET Jean Johnson William Stafford

VIOLA Fiona Winning Brian Schiele Steve King Rebecca Wexler Kathryn Jourdan

HORN Huw Evans Jamie Shield

BASSOON Paul Boyes Alison Green

CELLO Philip Higham Su-a Lee Donald Gillan Eric de Wit BASS Nikita Naumov Adrian Bornet Kirsty Matheson Sophie Butler Kana Kawashima First Violin

TIMPANI Tom Hunter

W H AT YO U ARE ABOUT TO HEAR Haydn (1732-1809) Symphony No 103 ‘Drum Roll’ (1795) Adagio – Allegro con spirito Andante più tosto allegretto

––––– More than 120 years, and numerous individual musical eras and styles, separate the two pieces in today’s concert.

But they sound rather more similar than you might expect. There’s a reason for that.

While the composer of the first was out to entertain demanding listeners with music that peers into the future, the composer of the second piece was instead gazing back in time, and using what he discovered as the basis for something entirely fresh and new.

Menuetto Allegro con spirito

Stravinsky (1882-1971) Pulcinella (1920) Overture: Allegro moderato Serenata: Larghetto: 'Mentre l'erbetta' Scherzino: Allegro Allegro Andantino Allegro Ancora poco meno: 'Contento forse vivere' Allegro assai Allegro – alla breve: 'Con queste paroline' Andante: 'Sento dire no'ncè pace' Allegro: 'Ncè sta quaccuna po' Presto: 'Una te fallan zemprecce' Allegro – Alla breve Tarantella Andantino: 'Se tu m'ami' Allegro Gavotta con due variazioni Vivo Tempo di minuetto: 'Pupillette, fiammette d'amore' Finale: Allegro assai

Let’s start with forward-peering Joseph Haydn, whose Symphony No 103 'Drumroll', opens the concert. By the time he wrote the piece, in 1794-5, he’d spent more than three decades employed in the lavish but rather isolated Eszterháza Palace, in what’s now north-west Hungary, in Haydn’s time firmly at the heart of the Habsburg Empire. During those decades, he’d used the wealthy Esterházy family’s resident musicians to the fullest, virtually inventing the modern symphony and string quartet as musical forms, and developing his clean, clear, elegant and mischievously witty musical style across operas, chamber music and plenty more.

But equally, he felt he needed to stretch his wings, and in 1790, aged 58, he found his chance. The incoming Prince Anton looked to trim back his artistic outgoings, still guaranteeing an on-going salary for Haydn, but no longer requiring his permanent presence. The composer’s music was already wildly popular among London audiences, and German-born, London-based impresario Johann Peter Salomon snapped him up for two visits to England, the first in 1791-2, and the second in 1794-5. Both went down a storm,

Haydn’s second batch of London symphonies – Nos 99 to 104 – represents a rare meeting of composer’s and audience’s minds: each knows the other intimately, and each is out to enjoy that relationship to the fullest.

Franz Joseph Haydn

so much so that Haydn reportedly even considered settling permanently in the English capital (and was explicitly invited to do so by George III, no less).

In truth, Haydn had already prepared a lot of music for his second visit while back home in Vienna. But unusually, he wrote his Symphony No 103 – the penultimate

He hobnobbed with royalty and the aristocracy, was fêted at high-society occasions, and even received an honorary doctorate in Oxford (which provided his 'Oxford' Symphony, No 92, with its nickname). More importantly, with the six symphonies he composed for his first visit, he got to know just what his London listeners liked. When he returned two years later, he could give it to them all over again with six more 'London' symphonies – and plenty more besides. In that respect, Haydn’s second batch of 'London' symphonies – Nos 99 to 104 – represents a rare meeting of composer’s and audience’s minds: each knows the other intimately, and each is out to enjoy that relationship

of his 12 London symphonies, and of his entire symphonic output – in London itself, during the winter of 1794-5. It was premiered on 2 March 1795 as part of a series of so-called Opera Concerts at the King’s Theatre, now the site of Her Majesty’s Theatre in Haymarket.

Unsurprisingly, it went down a treat. The Morning Chronicle wrote: ‘Another new Overture [another name for Symphony], by the fertile and enchanting Haydn, was performed; which, as usual, had continual strokes of genius, both in air and harmony. The Introduction excited deepest attention, the Allegro charmed, the Andante was encored, the Minuets, especially the trio, were playful and sweet, and the last movement was equal,

to the fullest.

if not superior to the preceding.’

There’s no doubt that Haydn was out to charm and delight his London listeners, as the review acknowledges. But he was

came hot on its heels, Igor Stravinsky had already begun downsizing his music from the lavish opulence of the three iconic

also out to prod them gently with some surprising innovations. Not least the opening, call-to-attention drum roll, which gives the Symphony its nickname. It serves as an appropriately serious-minded herald for the sombre, slow introduction that follows, which seems perpetually in search of its home key (and whose first four notes can’t help but bring to mind the ‘Dies irae’ plainchant, with all its associations of divine judgement and damnation). The change of mood when the movement’s blithe, scampering faster music arrives comes as quite a shock – although Haydn reprises some of his darker, slower music just before the movement’s end.

scores he’d created a few years earlier for Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company – The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. But he hadn’t particularly been focusing his attention on the music of earlier ages.

His slow movement alternates contrasting sections in the major and minor, growing in grandeur as it progresses, and is reputed to be based on Croatian folk songs that Haydn had studied. The composer also included a substantial violin solo, destined at the Symphony’s premiere for his London orchestra’s leader, Giovanni Battisti Viotti, himself an acclaimed soloist, conductor and composer.

That change came thanks to Diaghilev, who sensed a cooling in the two men’s relationship, and was keen to emulate the roof-raising successes of those earlier ballets, and to lure Stravinsky back into the fold. To do so, he suggested that the composer might consider writing a ballet score based on music he’d unearthed by Giovanni Pergolesi, the Italian composer who stradded the Baroque and Classical eras (about three decades before Haydn, in fact) and lived to the age of just 26.

Also included in Diaghilev’s lure were the two men who would be Stravinsky’s collaborators on the project: dancer/ choreographer Léonide Massine, and designer Pablo Picasso.

Following the First World War and the

Stravinsky was initially cool towards Diaghilev’s suggestion, but after perusing the material the impresario brought him, he became more interested: "I looked, and I fell in love," he later remembered. Massine came up with the ballet’s storyline during a visit to Naples in 1917, where he discovered the play The Four Pulcinellas, celebrating the traditional comic hero of Neapolitan commedia dell’arte. The final preposterous plot involves four young women, all of whom are in love with the somewhat grotesque Pulcinella, and the jealousy of the women’s lovers, who set out to murder him. When they appear to have succeeded, each man

so-called ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic that

disguises himself as Pulcinella and sets off

Haydn’s elaborate minuet and trio take us a long way away from the ballroom, in rich, complex music that quickly moves into far richer harmonic regions than its opening suggests. A gentle, rising horn figure launches the spirited finale, which derives all of its material from a single theme, first heard in the violins (and bearing a striking resemblance to the all-pervasive figure that begins Beethoven’s Fifth).

Pulcinella was premiered on 15 May 1920 at the Paris Opéra, to immediate and lasting acclaim.

Nonetheless, the journey from conception to premiere wasn’t smooth.

Diaghilev is reported to have been somewhat shocked by Stravinsky’s treatment of the music he’d given him Igor Stravinsky

to re-woo his own particular sweetheart. A magician arrives to reanimate Pulcinella’s corpse, which turns out to be someone else entirely. The magician reveals himself as

to credit Stravinsky as outright composer rather than simply arranger. Stravinsky himself later admitted: "I was attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing

Pulcinella, and sets about repairing the romantic rifts he’s caused.

'simple' music, blamed for deserting 'modernism', accused of renouncing my 'true Russian heritage'. People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried 'sacrilege': 'The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone.' To them all, my answer was and is the same: You 'respect', but I love."

Pulcinella was premiered on 15 May 1920 at the Paris Opéra, to immediate and lasting acclaim. Nonetheless, the journey from conception to premiere wasn’t smooth. Diaghilev is reported to have been somewhat shocked by Stravinsky’s treatment of the music he’d given him (which, it later emerged, was a mix of Pergolesi and works by contemporaries or imitators, including Domenico Gallo, Fortunato Chelleri, Carlo Monza and the 19th-century Alessandro Parisotti).

Diaghilev was expecting a rather tame, affectionate rescoring, but what he received was something quite different, to the extent that he realised he needed

Stravinsky’s score is indeed much more than a simple arrangement of the earlier music by Pergolesi (and others), and far more than simply pastiche. He generally retains the original works’ melodies and basslines, but allows himself free rein with the rest, introducing irregular rhythms, pungent harmonies, piquant instrumental timbres and uneven, quirky balances.

The result is almost an aural (rather than

‘Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible... It was a backward glance, of course, but it was a look in the mirror, too.’

optical) illusion, simultaneously 18thcentury music viewed through the prism of 20th-century modernism, and also a decidedly 20th-century work that pays affectionate homage to earlier styles.

Stravinsky admitted that Pulcinella was one of his favourites among his own pieces, and made good use of it, creating an orchestral suite (the version most familiar to us today) in 1922, and suites for violin and piano, and for cello and piano, in 1925 and 1933 respectively. And without it – and other historically informed music Stravinsky created around the same time – his later works would have been entirely different.

He later wrote: ‘Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible,’ also adding, ‘It was a backward glance, of course, but it was a look in the mirror, too.’ © David Kettle

Pulcinella (Maurice Sand)

LIBRETTO Stravinsky (1882-1971) Pulcinella (1920) Serenata: Larghetto, Mentre l’erbetta Tenor: Mentre l’erbetta pasce l’agnella, sola, soletta la pastorella tra fresche frasche per la foresta cantando va.

Tenor: While the lamb grazes, the shepherdess, all alone amid the leafy groves, goes singing through the wood.

Ancora poco meno: Contento forse vivere Soprano: Contento forse vivere nel mio martir potrei se mai potessi credere che, ancor lontan, tu sei fedele all’amor mio,

Soprano: Perhaps I might live content in my torment if I could but believe that, though far away, you were faithful to my love, faithful to this heart.

fedele a questo cor.

Allegro – alla breve: Con queste paroline Bass: Con queste paroline così saporitine il cor voi mi scippate dalla profondità.

Bella, restate qua, che se più dite appresso io cesso morirò.

Così saporitine con queste paroline il cor voi mi scippate, morirò, morirò.

Bass: With such delightful sweet words you tear out my heart from its very roots.

Fair one, stay here, for if you speak on I shall die without you.

Andante: Sento dire no’ncè pace Soprano, Tenor, Bass: Sento dire no’ncè pace.

Sento dire no’ncè cor. ma chiù pe’tte, no, no, no ace pace.

Chi disse cà la femmena sacchiù de farfariello disse la verità.

Soprano, Tenor, Bass: I hear it said there’s no peace, I hear it said there’s no heart; but for you, alas, no, there’s no peace.

He who says that a woman is more wily than the devil speaks the truth.

Allegro: Ncè sta quaccuna po Soprano, tenor (Soprano) Ncè sta quaccuna pò che a nullo vuole bene e à ciento ‘n frisco tene schitto pe’scorcoglia, e a tant’ante malizie chi maille ppò contà?

Soprano, tenor: (Soprano) Who love no-one and keep a hundred on a string, openly deceiving them all, thinking they’re the only one in the nest, and up to so many tricks that no-one could count them.

(Tenor) Una te falan zemprece ed è malezeosa, ‘n antra fala schefosa e bòlo maretiello.

Chia chillo tene ‘ncora e a tant’ante malizie chi maille ppò contà? chi maille stà a repassà?

(Tenor) One woman feigns innocence yet is cunning, another acts hard to please yet longs for a husband: one holds on tight to a man yet is up to so many tricks that no-one could count them. Who could even account for them all?

Presto: Una falan zemprece Tenor:

Tenor:

Una falan zemprece ed è malezeosa, ‘n antra fala schefosa e bòlo maretiello. ncè sta quaccuna pò che a nullo - udetene chi a chillo tene ‘ncore e a cchisto fegne amore e a cciento nfrisco tene schitto pe’scorcoglia, e a tant’ante malizie chi maie le ppo’ conta’.

One woman feigns innocence yet is cunning, another acts hard to please yet longs for a husband. There are some, too, who love no-one - listen to me one holds on tight to a man, pretending she loves him, and keeps a hundred on a string, openly deceiving them all, thinking they’re the only one in the nest, and up to so many tricks that no-one could count them.

Andantino: Se tu m’ami Soprano: Se tu m’ami, se tu sospiri sol per me, gentil pastor, ho dolor de’tuoi martiri, ho diletto del tuo amor, ma se pensi che soletto io ti debba riamar,

Soprano: If you love me, if for me alone you sigh, gentle shepherd, I grieve for your suffering, I delight in your love. But if you think that in return I should love you alone, dear shepherd, you’re likely to be easily proved

pastorello, sei soggetto facilmente a t’ingannar.

Bella rosa porporina oggi Silvia scoglierà, con la scusa della spina doman poi la sprezzerà.

Ma degli uomini il consiglio io per me non seguirò.

Non perchè mi piace il giglio gli altri fiori sprezzerò.

wrong. Sylvia may select today a beautiful crimson rose but tomorrow will spurn it on the pretext of a thorn.

But, for my part, I won’t follow men’s advice: just because I like the lily I won’t scorn other flowers.

Tempo di minuetto: Pupillette, fiammette d’amore Soprano, Tenor, Bass: Pupillette, fiammette d’amore, per voi il core struggendo si va.

Soprano, Tenor, Bass: Fair eyes, sparkling with love, for you my heart is breaking.

Italian text reprinted in consultation with Christopher Morley; English translation by Lionel Salter.

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