Program Notes by Jim Yancy

Elena Baksht, piano

February 28, 2009

Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967)

Hary Janos Suite

                  Prelude

                  Viennese Musical Clock

                  Song

                  The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon

                  Intermezzo

                  Entrance of the Emperor and His Court

 Christopher Dean, cimbalom

Kodaly and Bela Bartok both extensively used their native Hungarian folk song and dance in their music.  Kodaly made a lifelong study of Hungarian folk songs and quoted them even in important major works, such as his operas and orchestral compositions.  He was particularly interested in arousing in the Hungarian people “the consciousness of their own musical language.”  This he set out to do in his opera Hary Janos, a comic opera based on a real person who fought in the Napoleonic Wars.  Hary Janos embellished his exploits as he recounted them with the intent of giving himself a heroic status he was never able to achieve in real life.  The suite, in six movements, was composed in 1927, two years after the premiere of the opera.  It includes some of the opera’s most tuneful episodes and convincingly portrays Hary as a representative of Hungarian peasantry with all its bravado and conceit. 

Prelude.  “A Fairy Tale Begins.”  The first movement begins with an orchestral sneeze which, according to Hungarian tradition, suggests that any story preceded by a sneeze is one not to be taken literally.   What follows is an expressive melody which speaks for the sentimentality and the unbridled imagination of the protagonist.

“Viennese Musical Clock.”  Hary has come to Vienna and stares in wonder at the intricate musical clock on the imperial palace.  The mechanical nature of the clock is suggested by the percussion section and the regularity of the tune given by the woodwinds, horns, piano, and chimes.

“Song.”  This is a simple folk melody presented by a viola solo based on a Hungarian song, “This side the Tisza, beyond the Danube.”  Kodaly includes passages for the cimbalom, an instrument peculiar to Central Europe, similar to the hammered dulcimer.

“The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon.”  This movement is a strident caricature of military music with oblique references to the “Marseillaise.”  The percussion and lower brass depict the battle, and the low sliding sounds poke fun at the heroism of battle.  The movement ends with a mock funeral march featuring the saxophone.

“Intermezzo.”  This movement is based of the rhythms of the verbunkos, a Hungarian soldiers’ dance used to attract recruits for enlistment, and reflects a noble vision of national spirit.

“Entrance of the Emperor and His Court.”

Hary imagines a scene in which the members of the court shed their false dignity and become fairy tale figures.  They are caricatured in march tunes which, although replete with ceremony and crashing cymbals, serve to dispel any semblance of a real emperor or a real court.

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, op. 18

             Moderato

             Adagio sostenuto

             Allegro scherzando

Elena Baksht, piano

The first performance, in 1897, of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony was such a dismal failure with the audience and the critics Rachmaninoff went into a deep depression, starting drinking heavily, and was unable to compose for the next three years.  Bowing to pressures to produce a Second Piano Concerto to follow on the heels of the continuing success of his First Piano Concerto, he consulted Dr. Nikolai Dahl, a psychiatrist who specialized in treating alcoholics through hypnosis.  Because of his interest in music, Dr. Dahl treated the composer without charge, and Rachmaninoff went to sessions daily.  Dr. Dahl systematically tried to get him to sleep better, to stop drinking, to improve his appetite, and to increase his desire to compose.  Again and again, the doctor intoned: “You will begin to write your concerto; you will work with great facility; the concerto will be of excellent quality.”  It worked; and when the new concerto was completed, Rachmaninoff dedicated it to Dr. Dahl.  Despite continuing misgivings and recurrent bouts of depression, Rachmaninoff played the premiere in Moscow on 27 October 1901.  Not only was the concerto a success then, it has gone on to be one of the most played and enjoyed in the entire repertory.  It has been featured in numerous motion pictures, most memorably “Brief Encounter” in 1946.  One of its principal melodies was adapted into the popular song hit “Full Moon and Empty Arms.”

The first movement begins dramatically with nine unaccompanied chords building into a broadly lyrical theme in the strings against arpeggios in the piano.  This is music of true Russian spirit, with broadly sweeping melodies full of melancholy and passion emanating from the second theme and the development.  The use of the piano as accompaniment to the orchestra seems very like Tchaikovsky. 

The second movement establishes a starry and poetic mood with a beguiling melody from the flute, then the clarinet, and then taken up by the piano.  After a middle section of somewhat livelier material and a brief cadenza for the piano, the languid mood of the opening is restored.

It is in the second theme of the third movement that the highpoint of the concerto is reached.  Just after a brief piano cadenza, the theme is played by the full orchestra, one of the most expansive, passionate, romantic, and unabashedly emotional utterances in the entire piano repertory.  After a straightforward coda, the work is brought to an end.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Bolero

Before leaving for a concert tour of North America in 1927, Ravel promised the dancer Ida Rubenstein that, on his return, he would compose a ballet for her on a Spanish theme.  One day he played a tune at the piano for critic Gustave Samazeuilh.  “Don’t you think this theme has an insistent quality?” Ravel asked.  “I’m going to try to repeat it a number of times without any development, gradually increasing the orchestra as best I can.”  He called the finished ballet Bolero; it was a smash hit.  But Ravel felt the music could not succeed apart from the ballet, and predicted that symphony orchestras would refuse to program it.  He couldn’t have been more wrong as it soon was played by orchestras in many countries, and became his most popular orchestral work. 

Bolero was described by Ravel as “an experiment in a very special and limited direction and should not be suspected of aiming at achieving anything different from, or anything more than, it actually does achieve.  What I had written was a piece lasting 17 minutes and consisting wholly or orchestral tissue without music – of one long, very gradual crescendo.”

It consists of a single theme in two sections (the first section heard in flute, then in clarinet; the second heard in bassoon, then in clarinet).  Then the theme is heard in different combinations of instruments in increasing sonority punctuated by the side drum with the bolero rhythm which has been present from the opening.  The orchestral colors grow brighter and brighter and louder and louder propelling the momentum until finally the full orchestra thunders out the final statement of the theme.