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Program Notes: October 9, 2005
In Victor Hugo's 1838 play Ruy Blas, a slave in seventeenth-century Madrid wins the love of his queen while disguised as a nobleman, but dies by his own hand after murdering his cruel master, who masterminded the whole affair to exact revenge on the queen. When Mendelssohn was asked to write an overture to Hugo's play, however, he found it "beneath contempt," presumably because of either its democratic politics or its melodramatic excesses. Yet, when he reconciled himself to fulfill the commission (which took him all of three days in March 1839), he dealt directly with the play's subject matter, fashioning an agreeable alternation between "royal" (the stately opening brass fanfares) and "common" (the popular-sounding second theme), stitched together with suitably melodramatic music. But the overture, unlike the play, ends well; effectively, Mendelssohn converts Hugo's tragedy into a kind of Cinderella story with reversed gender-roles -- and, given how well the piece plays, it's probably just as well he didn't cap it all off with a musical depiction of the play's bloody conclusion!
Ostensibly, Richard Strauss's Don Juan (1889) is based on the same legends as Mozart's Don Giovanni -- probably deriving from a real person in seventeenth-century Spain, the same site of sexual intrigue evoked in Ruy Blas. But there is a world of difference between Strauss's tone poem and Mozart's opera, in which the murdering debaucher is severely punished and his demise roundly celebrated. If Strauss's Don Juan is punished, his punishment comes from within, in a Nietzschean narrative told solely from the perspective of a hero unconcerned with the effects his actions have on others. Although deriving from German poet Nikolaus Lenau's conception of Don Juan, who quests unsuccessfully for his idealized Woman, Strauss's hero seems to succeed in his quest, fusing his tempestuous drive and amorous passion into one heroic theme that first sounds about midway through the piece and returns grandly near the end. But after that culmination, the questing music resumes and then breaks off, leaving us suddenly stranded as the music fades abruptly into a strangely unheroic conclusion, presumably depicting the hero's death.
Beethoven wrote his Fourth Piano Concerto in 1806, and gave it its first public performance in 1808 (in a concert that also introduce the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Choral Fantasy, and movements from the Mass in C). The concerto is particularly noteworthy -- besides being one of Beethoven's most genial works -- for the innovation of beginning with the soloist rather than the orchestra, and for its middle movement, a quasi-operatic "scene" in which the beguiling, soft-toned piano wins an extended argument over a belligerent string group playing in unison. Explanations for this movement have varied, but the most convincing (to me, at least) is that Beethoven's was inspired by the myth of Orpheus in the Underworld, in which the musician wins back his beloved Eurydice by taming the Furies through song. Moreover, the pastoral first movement also seems to fit an earlier chapter of the myth, the Song of Orpheus; certainly it offers some of Beethoven's most beguiling music, and begins, suitably, with what may be heard as the strumming of Orpheus's lyre. But what are we to make of the finale, which fits none of the traditional endings for the Orpheus story? The puzzle is compounded by the fact that each movement uses a different orchestral group, with the second movement doing without the first movement's winds, and the third movement bringing them back with reinforcements from the brass and timpani. Despite this seeming game of musical mix-and-match, however, the concerto emerges as one of Beethoven's most satisfying works, with the irresistible high spirits of the finale dispelling the odd disparity between the first two movements.
-- Raymond Knapp
Rina Dokshitsky, piano
Israeli pianist Rina Dokshitsky frequently performs in chamber music programs and appeared several times at both the Italian and US Spoleto festivals with musicians such as Joshua Bell, Steven Isserlis and Kyoko Takezawa. Besides her frequent collaboration with Alban Gerhardt, with whom she played both his New York and Washington DC debuts (they recently recorded a CD with Spanish pieces), she performs with cellists of such caliber as Colin Carr (among others on a concert tour of Italy), Gary Hoffman and Soren Bagratuni (at Weill Recital Hall, New York, and Jordan Hall, Boston) as well as with members of the Borromeo String Quartet.
As a soloist she has performed with numerous orchestras in the United States and recently performed recitals for National Radio in Jerusalem and the Tel-Aviv-Museum recital series as well as concerts with the Israel Chamber Orchestra.
Dokshitsky won the 1987 Young Concert Artist International Auditions, the Bruce Hungerford Memorial Prize and the Mortimer Levitt Career Development Award for Women Artists, and debuted in the YCA series, the 92nd Street Y and the Kennedy Center. Her awards include the 1989 Arthur Rubinstein International Master Competition silver medal as well as gold medals at the International Competition for Young Artists in Serigallia, Italy and the Jerusalem Symphony Competition.
Before coming to the US, Rina Dokshitsky has performed as a soloist at age of 13 with the Israel Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta and David Shallon. She began her piano studies at six with Ilona Vinzse in Israel, and studied with Russell Sherman at the New England Conservatory, where she earned both bachelor's and master's degrees.
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