SoNA Imagine Big 2022-23 Program Notes

SoNA

Symphony of Northwest Arkansas

Imagine Big October 29, 2022 Walton Arts Center Paul Haas, conductor

“Connecting Go BIG or Go HOME, the Shostakovich Concerto No. 1, and Pictures at an Exhibition is a spirit of ambition, imagination, and contagious energy that speaks to SoNA’s biggest season yet and our vibrant future.” – Paul Haas

Go BIG or Go HOME (2019)

Jessica Meyer has been making waves. A

Jessica Meyer

violist, a teacher, and a composer, she brings

b 1974

a sheaf of sensibilities to her wide-ranging and always fresh compositions. Electronics.

Period instruments. Latin. Hip-Hop. Bluegrass. Funk. And, yes, Brahms.

They’re not musical directives you would encounter in the score of a Brahms

Go BIG or Go HOME dates from early 2019.

symphony. But there they are in the score

Meyer tells us that it began as the last

to Go BIG or Go HOME: Swervy Heavy Funk,

movement of a string quartet that she had

Slammin’, like a Burlesque solo, think Miami

written for Miami’s Nu Deco Ensemble.

Afro-Cuban... ALWAYS FUN!

“When the opportunity came up for me

to make this arrangement,” she explains, “I

Shostakovich was not arrested, but he might

wanted to both showcase what the group can

have been. He had fallen afoul of Party

uniquely do while also writing in a way that

bigwigs twice during his career. In 1936 he

captures the spirit of what Miami inherently is.”

was taken severely to task, then threatened, in a Pravda article entitled “Muddle Instead

What Miami inherently is: a melting pot,

of Music,” his opera Lady Macbeth of the

bristling with energy and dynamism. “In

Mtsensk District having elicited Stalin’s

Go BIG or Go HOME, you will find hints

condemnation. It was only with the Fifth

of funk, bluegrass, and Latin while being

Symphony that Shostakovich was able to

driven by groove, virtuosity, and moments

crawl back into official good graces.

of improvisation allowing members of the group to put their own personal signature

In 1948 he landed in even deeper trouble,

on the piece.” But that isn’t to imply that

denounced via the “Zhdanov Doctrine”

this is just some unbuttoned free-for-all.

that aimed to cleanse Soviet music of what

Meyer emphasizes that “it is written from a

was considered decadent and modernistic.

place of self-realization, empowerment, and

The fist came down particularly hard on

celebration of how joyous life can be.”

Shostakovich: he was dismissed from his positions as professor in both the Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories, while performances of his works were effectively banned. His very means of making a living

Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 107 (1959)

had been ripped away. And there he was, with his suitcase, sitting by the elevator door.

Dmitri Shostakovich b 25 September, 1906 in

Stalin died in 1953. Things got better. By

St. Petersburg, Russia

1959 Shostakovich was firmly re-established

d 9 August, 1975 in Moscow, Russia

as the Soviet Union’s greatest living composer, his music performed worldwide.

And now he had written a cello concerto for his dear friend, the incomparable master

There was a time, from the late 1940s

cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Imbued with

through the early 1950s, when Dmitri

joyous energy and irresistible verve, Cello

Shostakovich would spend his nights sitting

Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 107,

by the elevator door, suitcase at the ready,

comes off rather like the work of a much

so his family wouldn’t be disturbed when the

younger Shostakovich, one who had not been

authorities came to arrest him. Musicians

through the emotional and political traumas

are by and large harmless creatures and

of the previous decades.

rarely pose threats to the body politic, but life really could be that insecure for a composer

Shostakovich was blessed in writing for such

in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union.

an Olympian cellist, but even Rostropovich

needed sensitive scoring to avoid being

by a single composer but involved the

drowned out by the orchestra. Only a few

significant contributions of an artist (Viktor

composers have achieved truly well-balanced

Hartmann), an editor (Nikolai Rimsky-

cello concertos—Dvořák and Elgar come

Korsakov), and a field of orchestrators

most readily to mind. Shostakovich nailed

(including Sir Henry Wood, Maurice Ravel,

it, by slimming down the orchestra and

and Leopold Stokowski.)

opening up abundant sonic space for the soloist, even to the extent of scoring the

Mussorgsky and the artist Viktor Hartmann

third movement for cello alone. The ravishing

met sometime around 1870. Their mutual

second movement is particularly effective,

devotion to nurturing a native Russian

with its dialogues between the cello and

art encouraged the blossoming of a solid

various wind instruments.

friendship, cut tragically short when Hartmann died in 1873 at the age of 39. A

Nota bene: a wisp of a tune runs through

year later the influential critic Viktor Stasov

the concerto—it’s the first four notes you

helped to organize a showing of Hartmann’s

hear and almost the last ones as well.

works at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine

It bears a family resemblance to the “DSCH”

Arts. That exhibition inspired Mussorgsky to

motto—four notes outlining Shostakovich’s

plunge into the composition of Pictures at

name—that recurs in much of Shostakovich’s

an Exhibition, originally titled Hartmann. Six

music at this time.

weeks later the work was finished, although it was never to be performed publicly during Mussorgsky’s lifetime.

Music lovers are sometimes unaware that

Pictures at an Exhibition (1874, orch. 1922)

Mussorgsky wrote Pictures for solo piano; its

Modest Mussorgsky

In fact, the first known public performance

b 21 March, 1839 in Karevo, Russia

of the work, in November 1891, was an

d 28 March, 1881 in St. Petersburg, Russia

abridged orchestration by Rimsky-Korsakov’s

history of orchestral transcription runs deep.

student Mikhail Tushmalov. Since then, Maurice Ravel, orch.

approximately thirty orchestral transcriptions

b 7 March, 1875 in Ciboure, France

have been made of Pictures at an Exhibition.

d 28 Decenber, 1937 in Paris, France Maurice Ravel’s masterful 1922 orchestration has become the de facto standard. Despite his fastidious disdain for The familiar claim that great art cannot be

Mussorgsky’s crudity, Ravel was a bonafide

created by committee is sorely challenged

Russophile who could not help but respond

by Pictures at an Exhibition, an undisputed

to Pictures’s kaleidoscopic imagery. The

masterpiece that may have been written

celebrated result seamlessly blends two

contrasting cultures in a milestone of

accompanying us from picture to picture

orchestral writing.

as make our way along. It all culminates with Hartmann’s architectural design for

Pictures at an Exhibition charts the course

The Great Gate of Kiev, originally intended

of visitors strolling through a gallery of

for a civic competition. The gate itself was

Hartmann’s various paintings, sketches,

never built, but it lives on in Mussorgsky’s

and architectural fantasies. A Promenade

powerful portrait.

theme acts as a musical museum guide,

Program notes by Scott Foglesong, copyright 2022 First North American Serial Rights Only