Program Notes: May 25, 2003
Debussy wrote his Petite Suite between 1886-1889 for piano four-hands; in 1907, the work was orchestrated by Henri Busser with the apparent approval of the composer. The work has a certain magic stemming from the odd but surprisingly pleasant ways its various contradictory influences -- the poet Paul Verlaine, Wagner (here and there), Tchaikovsky, Faure -- bump into each other. Even the Javanese gamelan -- a profound influence on Debussy, but not until after he composed the Suite -- may be heard, in the colorful orchestrations that could just as well have been by Debussy himself. Given their titles, the first two movements would seem to stem directly from Verlaine, and so are probably meant to depict a moonlit boat and the antics of a pet monkey, respectively.
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his First Cello Concerto (premiered 1959) for his beloved colleague and champion, Mstislav Rostropovich, during the period of the "Thaw" that followed Stalin's death in 1953. Shostakovich was inspired not only by the great talent of Rostropovich, but also by Prokofiev's Symphony-Concerto, which he much admired. The concerto is based on a four-note motto, stated boldly at the beginning and used with particular force in the outer movements, a somewhat grotesque figure that bears a family resemblance to Shostakovich's personal motto D-S-C-H (derived from the German spelling of his name, and consisting of the notes D E-flat C B). The layout of the concerto is unusual, with a hauntingly beautiful slow movement and dramatic solo cadenza (the whole of the third movement) sandwiched between dynamic outer movements. Throughout the concerto, Shostakovich gives a special place to those instruments, such as the horn, clarinet, viola, and even tympani, that resonate particularly well with the cello's full-bodied and deep tones. Of particular beauty is the elegiac return in the second movement of the main theme, when ethereal harmonics in the cello combine with celesta and muted strings. The concerto represents Shostakovich at his most personal, especially evident in the wry humor of the finale -- a tone so hard to interpret in his music -- in which patches of traditional "Russian" sounds and a melodic snatch from a favorite song of Stalin (Shostakovich's nemesis) make intermittent appearances.
Beethoven's Seventh Symphony (1812) manages to be enormously evocative without giving way easily to programmatic interpretation, although many have tried. Among interpretations that have been offered, the "village wedding" that Schumann imagined in the piece has seemed too specific, as has Berlioz's "peasant dance," while Wagner's "Dionysian orgy" and "Apotheosis of the dance" come across as too vaguely grandiose and sensualist. Others have heard medieval chivalry; still others political revolution. But in the end we are left to fend for ourselves, to make whatever sense we may of the stirring horn calls and mysterious groanings of the first movement, the hypnotic beauties of the second movement, tinged with antiquity (routinely encored in early performances), the disturbing contrasts of the third, and the raucous, ecstatic frenzy of the finale. The Symphony, with its companion, the Eighth, was written at the end of the most productive decade of Beethoven's life, completed just prior to the devastation that followed the episode of the "Immortal Beloved" (probably Antonie Brentano), which left him a broken man who would be able only gradually, over a period of several years, to reconstitute his creative faculties.
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