Alexander Glazunov (1865–1936)

Alexander Glazunov was a major figure in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Russian musical circles. A prodigious student of Rimsky-Korsakov who was admired by no less than Franz Liszt, Glazunov became director of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1905. There his students included Prokofiev and Shostakovich. He wrote nine symphonies, a brilliant violin concerto, numerous ballet scores and orchestral tone poems.

Glazunov's influence was deeply felt for decades (even after the Soviet revolution) in the changing musical world of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Liszt introduced his First Symphony to Weimar in 1884. Glazunov was on the podium to conduct his Second Symphony at the 1889 Paris Exposition. Multiple appearances in London would follow with considerable acclaim for his music. After leaving Russia in 1928 to conduct concerts in Europe, Glazunov decided to settle in Paris in 1932 where he continued to live for the remainder of his life. His last years saw him conducting throughout Europe and the United States. (He even wrote a festival march Program Notes 136 for an American world's fair.) Very much a composer in the romantic mold, Glazunov inherited Tchaikovsky's inspired gift of melody and luminous orchestral color.

Raymonda marked the final work of the eighty year old choreographer Marius Petipa, father of romantic ballet and Tchaikovsky's collaborator on Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and Nutcracker. Originally staged at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater in 1898, later choreographic versions were conceived by Anna Pavlova and Rudolph Nureyev. George Balanchine used excerpts from the score for two divertissements. The ballet's fantasy scenario (by Russian novelist Lydia Pashkova) concerns the noble Raymonda, loved by a crusader knight. A plan by an evil pirate to abduct her is foiled by her family's guardian spirit and Raymonda's beloved kills the villainous abductor. The ballet's third act wedding sequence is devoted to a grand series of divertissements and character dances, very much in the spirit of the final act of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty (often performed alone as "Aurora's Wedding"). Indeed the Hungarian cortège and pas de deux have taken on a life of their own (in concert programs and via Balanchine and other choreographers).

Raymonda is one of Glazunov's finest achievements and an appropriate conclusion to the epochal balletic career of Petipa. (Glazunov frequently conducted this score both in the ballet pit and the concert stage.) This is music rich in the Russian Imperial theatrical tradition, rich in melodic inspiration and gleaming orchestral bursts of color. Glazunov's skill as an orchestrator is unsurpassed in this ballet, a coda to a remarkable era of evening length narrative dance works with a distinctive Russian accent.

—Program Notes by Lawrence Budmen

Georges Bizet (1838–1875)

Georges Bizet was still a teenager when he entered the Paris Conservatoire, studying with Gounod and Halevy among others. His remarkable gifts for melody and orchestration would take flight in abundant measure before he reached his twentieth birthday. At age seventeen, he wrote the delightful Symphony in C Major. Never performed in the composer's lifetime, that score has been immortalized by George Balanchine's elegant balletic setting. His first opera (begun when the composer was nineteen) The Pearl Fishers is a cornucopia of soaring melody and exotic atmospheric color. Bizet's final masterpiece, Carmen, was the crowning glory of a brief but vital creative life. Such august figures as Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and Johannes Brahms held Bizet's music in high esteem.

Program Notes 135 Bizet wrote the incidental music for the October, 1872 production of Alphonse Daudet's play L'Arlesienne. This score anticipates the orchestral magic, rhythmic energy and beguiling melodies of Carmen. To some extent, Daudet's drama is also similar to Prosper Merimee's novella (on which Carmen is based). As in the later work, a daring femme fatale is the focus of tragedy although L'Arlesienne is set in Provence rather than the sultry ambience of Spain. While Daudet's play was not successful, (the upper class Paris audience was offended by the story's provincial background), Bizet arranged a concert suite from the theatrical score. The premiere in December, 1872 brought the composer one of his greatest successes. After Bizet's untimely death, Ernest Guiraud (who revised Carmen) created a second suite. In both cases, the music was extensively reworked and reorchestrated for symphonic purposes. Among many choreographers who set works by Bizet, the famed French dancer Roland Petit created a dance version of L'Arlesienne in the 1970s, utilizing the Daudet story as source material.

At the outset of the Prelude, the vigorous theme that opens the famous Farandole (in the second suite) is stated but in a much more restrained fashion. This music immediately sets up the story's rural milieu, Bizet creating his own brand of folk and country dances. A sensuous theme follows (played by the saxophone, an innovative instrumental touch), suggesting the play's fateful heroine. The Minuetto is a bucolic dance, replete with Gallic lightness and verve. A lovely, songful theme forms the movement's central episode. The brightness of Bizet's orchestration brings unusual spirit to this movement, in contrast to the stately Austro-Germanic minuet. Strings alone carry the third movement Adagietto, a deeply moving vignette of great melodic and emotional power. The concluding Carillon is a rousing orchestral showpiece while a central episode of more ruminative quality suggests the toll of fate and doom that pervades the drama. With a full throttle reprise of the main melody, this enchanting score comes to a joyous conclusion. Although his output was relatively small, Bizet's melodic facility and ability to spin instrumental and vocal magic place him in the forefront of nineteenth century French composers.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

After the elegant Mozartean strains of Beethoven's first two keyboard concertos and the C minor gravitas of his third effort in the genre, the Piano Concerto No. 4 is a work of gentle lyricism, providing a glimpse of the composer's softer side (as well as his emotional anguish in the slow movement). The work's genesis is found in Beethoven sketches of 1803. Over the next two years he conceived and reworked the concerto, concurrently composing the Appassionata Piano Sonata and the opera Fidelio — such are the creative surges of a driven genius. At this point, Beethoven was still conceiving his keyboard works for display of his considerable prowess as a concert pianist (although he had to be all too well aware that his increasing deafness would bring his performing career to a tragic halt).

Beethoven dedicated the score to Archduke Rudolph, a former pupil who also was the dedicatee of the composer's Fifth Piano Concerto (Emperor), Archduke Trio and Opus 106 piano sonata. The concerto was first performed at a private concert in March, 1807 at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz, Beethoven's patron. (The Fourth Symphony was also played on that occasion.) Its first public airing took place at Vienna's Theater-an-der-Wien on December 22,1808 as part of a lengthy program that also included the Fifth and Sixth (Pastoral) symphonies, the Choral Fantasy, excerpts from the Mass in C Major and piano improvisations by the composer. For the Viennese audience and music journalists, the symphonies were the primary events of that historic evening. It was easy for the lyrically effusive concerto Program Notes 134 to get lost in the four and a half hour musical extravaganza; yet this concerto quickly became a repertoire staple. After Beethoven's first performance, his talented pupil Ferdinand Ries played the work on numerous occasions. The score is by far the most subtle of Beethoven's five concertos for piano and orchestra. This concerto is not a display piece in the virtuoso sense; yet the subdued thematic and developmental structure of the work can be deceiving. Beethoven's pianistic writing is some of the most difficult (for the performing artist) in any of his five concerto essays.

Despite the prevailing gentility of the fourth concerto, Beethoven was no less daring in breaking new creative paths. Instead of the traditional orchestral introduction, the first chords of the initial Allegro moderato are played by the solo piano, a suggestion of a theme which is then fully embellished by the orchestra. A second, more pensive subject is introduced before the orchestral tutti concludes on a note of triumph and optimism. The dialogue between piano and orchestra in the development section is unusually nuanced, highlighted by the strings introducing a broad new theme, almost a chorale. After the solo cadenza, the conclusion of the movement is surprisingly brief.

The second and third movements are linked without pause. In the Andante con moto (second movement), the strings proclaim a fierce, strongly stated subject which the piano answers with a soft cantabile response. The gentle harmony of the piano's phrases contrasts with the unmoored vehemence of the orchestral theme. After several repetitions, the piano gradually vanquishes the ensemble's anger. As the string tones become softer, the piano rises to a cadenza, topped by a Beethoven-esque trill, played at considerable volume. The strings quietly introduce the lively subject of the Rondo finale, repeated by the piano and then the full ensemble with great vigor. A second more poetic theme receives considerable development, Beethoven's orchestral writing particularly imaginative. Here the concertante give and take between soloist and ensemble recalls the finely gauged intimacy of chamber music. Following a solo cadenza, the coda is a vivacious reinvention of the principle theme. The élan and verve of this delightful finale find the titan from Bonn at his most congenial and sparkling. That light hearted vivacity cannot obscure the concerto's mastery. This score is one of the greatest works by one of music's true revolutionaries.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

After the elegant Mozartean strains of Beethoven's first two keyboard concertos and the C minor gravitas of his third effort in the genre, the Piano Concerto No. 4 is a work of gentle lyricism, providing a glimpse of the composer's softer side (as well as his emotional anguish in the slow movement). The work's genesis is found in Beethoven sketches of 1803. Over the next two years he conceived and reworked the concerto, concurrently composing the Appassionata Piano Sonata and the opera Fidelio — such are the creative surges of a driven genius. At this point, Beethoven was still conceiving his keyboard works for display of his considerable prowess as a concert pianist (although he had to be all too well aware that his increasing deafness would bring his performing career to a tragic halt).

Beethoven dedicated the score to Archduke Rudolph, a former pupil who also was the dedicatee of the composer's Fifth Piano Concerto (Emperor), Archduke Trio and Opus 106 piano sonata. The concerto was first performed at a private concert in March, 1807 at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz, Beethoven's patron. (The Fourth Symphony was also played on that occasion.) Its first public airing took place at Vienna's Theater-an-der-Wien on December 22,1808 as part of a lengthy program that also included the Fifth and Sixth (Pastoral) symphonies, the Choral Fantasy, excerpts from the Mass in C Major and piano improvisations by the composer. For the Viennese audience and music journalists, the symphonies were the primary events of that historic evening. It was easy for the lyrically effusive concerto Program Notes 134 to get lost in the four and a half hour musical extravaganza; yet this concerto quickly became a repertoire staple. After Beethoven's first performance, his talented pupil Ferdinand Ries played the work on numerous occasions. The score is by far the most subtle of Beethoven's five concertos for piano and orchestra. This concerto is not a display piece in the virtuoso sense; yet the subdued thematic and developmental structure of the work can be deceiving. Beethoven's pianistic writing is some of the most difficult (for the performing artist) in any of his five concerto essays.

Despite the prevailing gentility of the fourth concerto, Beethoven was no less daring in breaking new creative paths. Instead of the traditional orchestral introduction, the first chords of the initial Allegro moderato are played by the solo piano, a suggestion of a theme which is then fully embellished by the orchestra. A second, more pensive subject is introduced before the orchestral tutti concludes on a note of triumph and optimism. The dialogue between piano and orchestra in the development section is unusually nuanced, highlighted by the strings introducing a broad new theme, almost a chorale. After the solo cadenza, the conclusion of the movement is surprisingly brief.

The second and third movements are linked without pause. In the Andante con moto (second movement), the strings proclaim a fierce, strongly stated subject which the piano answers with a soft cantabile response. The gentle harmony of the piano's phrases contrasts with the unmoored vehemence of the orchestral theme. After several repetitions, the piano gradually vanquishes the ensemble's anger. As the string tones become softer, the piano rises to a cadenza, topped by a Beethoven-esque trill, played at considerable volume. The strings quietly introduce the lively subject of the Rondo finale, repeated by the piano and then the full ensemble with great vigor. A second more poetic theme receives considerable development, Beethoven's orchestral writing particularly imaginative. Here the concertante give and take between soloist and ensemble recalls the finely gauged intimacy of chamber music. Following a solo cadenza, the coda is a vivacious reinvention of the principle theme. The élan and verve of this delightful finale find the titan from Bonn at his most congenial and sparkling. That light hearted vivacity cannot obscure the concerto's mastery. This score is one of the greatest works by one of music's true revolutionaries.

Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826)

Best known as the father of German romantic opera, Carl Maria von Weber was no less audacious an instrumental composer. During his brief life, Weber created a steady flow of symphonic, chamber and operatic scores. Wagner considered Weber's Der Freischutz the birth of a distinctly German form of opera. Abu Hassan, Euryanthe, Oberon and the unfinished Die Drei Pintos (completed by Gustav Mahler) followed in quick profusion. He also composed two substantial symphonies, numerous concertos and chamber music spotlighting the clarinet, showpieces for piano and orchestra, a bassoon concerto and numerous solo keyboard works, both large and small in scale.

Invitation to the Dance is one of Weber's piano miniatures but has taken on a life of its own in the orchestration by that French magician of instrumental color Hector Berlioz. Russian choreographer Mikhail Fokine, one of the pioneers of modern ballet, used the score for his legendary pas de deux La Spectre de la Rose. The score begins with a cello solo, an invitation to a waltz. A vibrant, invigorating series of waltz themes (light years stylistically from the later Viennese confections of Johann Strauss, Jr.) take flight through a glittering array of orchestral coloration. At the conclusion the solo cello returns, bidding waltz partner and listener good night and warm adieux. For all its concise form and content, Invitation to the Dance is a remarkable work, replete with beguiling melodies dressed in Berlioz's orchestral mastery. This vignette is ample evidence of Weber's melodic and compositional powers.