Program Notes: May 30, 2004
Like many in early twentieth-century France, Maurice Ravel looked to earlier French traditions for models in order to move away from late nineteenth-century Romanticism, a tradition increasingly seen (in France) as too "German." It was in this light that Ravel began writing Le Tombeau de Couperin just before the outbreak of World War I; when he completed the suite after serving in the war, he dedicated each of its six movements to a different fallen comrade. The four-movement orchestral version (1919) binds Ravel's orchestral mastery to the exquisite charm of the original suite, now grouped as if to approximate a symphony, but without the pretensions of that genre. All of the movements present an odd but satisfying mix of the antique and the modern, but the most intriguing in this regard is the Forlane - the only movement that has been definitely linked to Franˆßois Couperin (1668-1733) - which gives piquant emphasis to a dissonant major-seventh in it main theme.
Many have been puzzled by Prokofiev's decision to return to the Soviet Union in 1936, a decision that had already been made when he wrote this concerto in 1935. However positive the results of this decision for posterity, his personal and professional situation after his return seems to have been mostly nightmarish, climaxing with the ironic coincidence of his dying on the same day as Stalin, in 1953. Perhaps the lonely solo line that opens the concerto, initially without accompaniment and thence subjected to a "wandering" harmonic plan, betokens the homesickness that seems to have been Prokofiev's lot before his return. Lyricism pervades the first two movements of the concerto, along with Prokofiev's "new simplicity" and the shadow of his ballet Romeo and Juliet, composed at the same time. In the second movement, that lyricism is most often placed against an oddly metronomic orchestral accompaniment, but is displaced almost entirely in the finale by a brusque athletic style, often with an admixture of colorful percussion (including castanets!).
Mozart's final symphony (from 1788), which acquired the nickname "Jupiter" after his death, is one of his most popular - and difficult - works. Its difficulties are by no means merely technical, but stem largely from the astonishing diversity of its themes, and the insistence with which Mozart weaves this diversity into an integrated whole. The first movement begins with an incongruous combination of a military motive and a limpid response, establishing a "comic-opera" feeling at the outset - as of contrasting characters interacting with each other - that will resurface throughout the work. Perhaps the most blatant example of this is the comic "soubrette" theme - actually a self-quotation from an aria - that enters late in the first section of the first movement after a melodramatic shift to the minor. The bustling finale manages to combine a similar operatic feeling with an opening four-note theme borrowed from the "high style," which Mozart had used in a youthful Mass movement. Like many of his comic operas, the symphony ends with an "ensemble finale" of sorts, an impressive five-part fugue at the end of the finale that combines several of the themes from the movement, all sounding at once. En route to the bubbling invention of this movement, the inner movements bring unexpected drama to what seem at first somewhat innocuous settings. The Andante, in particular, explores an astonishing dramatic range despite opening mildly in the galant style.
--- Raymond Knapp
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