​Scheherazade, Op. 35
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844 - 1908)
 
Rimsky-Korsakov gave the four movements of Scheherazade titles loosely based on the One Thousand and One Nights stories, but later withdrew the titles so that listeners could make up their own stories as they experienced his music. Like his Russian compatriots Tchaikovsky and Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov brought exciting rhythmic vitality and a flair for orchestral color to the Romanticism inherited from Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner. Scheherazade is a virtuoso showpiece for the entire ensemble as well as individual players (especially the violin, cello, clarinet, and bassoon), but it also has sections in which the entire orchestra has to coordinate in rhapsodic phrases that spontaneously ebb and flow. The fourth movement, with its overlay of two, three, and six beats per measure creates energy that finally spills over into the return of the “sea” music from the first movement.
 
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
Claude Debussy (1862- 1918)
 
Debussy’s tone poem, inspired by a literary poem of Stéphane Mallarmé, created a quiet revolution, because for all its sensual beauty, the way musical ideas are created and connected radically breaks from the goal-directed themes and harmonic progressions of his predecessors. Wisps of themes drift in and out, occasionally creating moments of tension or dramatic weight, but they always dissipate and a new musical idea emerges. At the end, the music dissolves into silence. 
 
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Paul Dukas (1865 – 1935)
 
Anyone living today has probably experienced (in the movie theater, on VHS tape, DVD disc, or most recently, streaming) Walt Disney’s Fantasia, and therefore cannot hear The Sorcerer’s Apprentice without thinking of Mickey Mouse. Dukas took his inspiration from a 1797 poetic ballad by Goethe. The musical sections closely follow the action of the poem, which is told in first person from the viewpoint of the apprentice. I’ve always felt sorry for Dukas in that like Clement Clarke Moore, the distinguished professor of Oriental and Greek literature who is known today only for “’Twas the Night before Christmas,” he is remembered for this one work despite having composed orchestral, stage, and ballet works. 

​Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72b
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827)
 
Beethoven’s sketchbooks show how many different versions he would make before being satisfied, but this effort sometimes continued even after the music was performed. In the case of his sole opera Fidelio, the overture went through a number of versions, and comparing them allows us to see the composer searching for the right proportions and dramatic structure. His first two versions (Leonore No. 2 and No. 3) used the same musical ideas, but in No. 3 the time scale was extended- passages which built up tension were given more time, climaxes were more powerful, to the point at which it overwhelmed the first few scenes of the opera. Realizing the problem, Beethoven eventually went on to write two more versions (using different musical materials), ultimately settling on the more lightweight work known today as the Fidelio Overture. Leonore No. 3 has special significance for me because it was on the first concert I conducted with the Wilmington Symphony back in the fall of 1986.
 
Concerto in E minor for violoncello and orchestra, Op. 85
Edward Elgar (1857- 1934)
 
One of Elgar’s last major works, it composed in the aftermath of World War I. The first movement has what I can only describe as a “somber lilt,” a kind of autumnal melancholy that pervades the music.
 
“Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio” from La Clemenza di Tito
W. A. Mozart (1756 – 1791)
 
Written in haste for a lucrative commission during Mozart’s last year of life, La Clemenza di Tito has been overshadowed by his concurrent project, The Magic Flute. In the aria “Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio,” Sestus (a castrato role) agrees to execute an assassination at the bidding of his beloved Vitellia. In addition to his dramatic writing for the voice, Mozart elevates the clarinet from a member of the orchestra in the pit to a character on stage.
 
Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 “Unfinished”
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828)
 
Franz Schubert (who, as a 17-year old, reportedly sold his text-books to pay for a ticket to see Beethoven’s Fidelio), wrote symphonies that continued the classical style of his predecessors Haydn and Mozart. But in the Symphony No. 8, one can feel new winds blowing. The shadowy beginning of the first movement has a subtle agitation and gradual unfolding that makes it understandable that this symphony was an audience favorite in the second half of the 19th century. And this was despite Schubert having only completed two movements out of the expected four. In the serene second movement, one of my favorite passages is the long oboe solo (the second theme) that drifts over a kaleidoscopic series of key changes in the string accompaniment. It has a relaxed pacing that is more characteristic of the Romantic period.
 
Donna Diana Overture
Emil von Reznicek (1860 – 1945)
 
Reznicek unfortunately comes to us as a one-hit wonder despite the large amount of music he composed. He was a contemporary of Richard Strauss but never achieved the success of his more extroverted contemporary. If Reznicek’s popular Donna Diana Overture, with its non-stop good spirits and sparkling orchestration, is any indication, some of his other works deserve attention. 

Overture to the Tale of the Fair Melusine, Op. 32
Felix Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847)
 
Melusine is a fresh-water sprite from European mythology. Often depicted as a mermaid, the main thread that runs through many versions of the fairy tale is that she requires any nobleman seeking to marry her to never observe her in the bath, and those who cannot live with this restriction are sent packing. Mendelssohn’s overture on the subject was written in 1834 as a birthday gift for his sister Fanny, but the composer denied any specific correspondences between his music and the plot of the story. The overture alternates between gently rippling music (as heard in the clarinets at the beginning) and the more agitated music introduced by the string section. As with much of Mendelssohn’s music, I find the sheer beauty and grace of the music causes orchestral players to search for their most lovely, singing tone-quality to do justice to it.
 
Sea Pictures
Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934)
 
Originally written in high keys for soprano voice, Elgar’s five Sea Pictures were transposed down for the powerful voice of English contralto Clara Butt, who reportedly gave their premiere dressed as a mermaid. The texts are by different poets, including Elgar’s wife (Caroline Alice Elgar, who was already a published author before marrying Edward). Colorful and evocative, I have always felt that these songs take wonderful advantage of the richness of the lower female voice, and a visit to Cornwall a couple of summers ago confirmed for me that the composer beautifully captured the intersection between the English coast and the sea surrounding it.
 
The Tender Land, Orchestral Suite from the opera
Aaron Copland (1900 – 1990)
 
In the summer of 1970, I was a high school student at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan, and had the opportunity for an entire week to watch guest conductor Aaron Copland rehearse a concert of his own music, including an orchestral suite from his opera The Tender Land. I still have strong memories of how, in his Brooklyn accent, he coaxed the young musicians to play with “more charactah.” With their classical training, they were not used to playing their instruments as if they were accompanying a barn dance.
 
The suite begins with a love scene from the opera, a duet with soaring melodies that ends with ominous chords representing the grandfather’s intrusion into the end of the scene. Next comes the party scene, in which Copland shows once again his uniquely effective way of translating what we now call American “roots” music into a symphonic texture. Without pause, the suite moves on to the uplifting quintet from the end of the opera’s First Act: “The promise of living with hope and thanksgiving is born of our loving our friends and our labor.”


- Written by Conductor Dr. Steven Errante

​Over the Stone (Tros y Garreg)
Karl Jenkins (b. 1944)
 
One of the royal advantages of being the Prince of Wales includes having an official harpist. “Over the Stone,” for two harps, percussion, and strings was “commissioned at the kind request of His Royal Highness” for harpist Catrin Finch and composed by Sir Karl Jenkins in 2002. Jenkins became famous for the familiar quasi-Baroque string music accompanying the DeBeers diamond commercial, and since has written a number of works that blend a popular-music sensibility with classical choral and symphonic forms.
 
“Over the Stone” capitalizes on the possibilities of having two harps instead of one- sometimes the soloists reinforce each other and at others there is a kind of dialogue. The styles range from folk-music simplicity (Tros y Garreg) to Piazzolla-like Latin abandon (Vamp Latino).  The fifth movement, for just the two soloists, demonstrates more unusual ways of playing the harp, including pedal glissandi (bending the pitch of ringing strings by changing the pedals), playing close to the soundboard, and slashing across the strings with fingernails.
 
Much of the work is joyful and immediately attractive, and I think that the percussion instruments work particularly well with the crisp articulations inherent to the harp.
 
 
Symphony No. 2 in E Minor
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
 
Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 was given its premiere in 1908 to great applause with the 34 year-old composer conducting. Since then the work’s reception has varied- even while the composer was still alive its almost hour-long duration was felt to be excessive and so drastic cuts were made. I can recall that by the time I went to college in the 1970’s no self-respecting serious musician would even admit to liking Rachmaninoff, his reputation having sunk so low. Since then, though, audiences have come around to appreciating the great beauty and vivid emotional content of his music, not to mention his dazzling way with the symphony orchestra.
 
The three faster movements of Symphony No. 2 are similar in that once the more energetic initial theme has had its say, the composer brings in one of his “big tunes.” Even in the second movement Scherzo the fun is interrupted by a melody with a great romantic sweep. The third movement, being the contrasting slow part of the symphony, is practically all big tunes. The rising melody that the violins introduce at the outset was loved so much by pop musician Eric Carmen that he appropriated it for his 1976 hit “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” and was shortly thereafter contacted by the Rachmaninoff estate about royalties owed. As beautiful as this melody is, the next one floated by the solo clarinet over gently undulating strings is even more so. I included this symphony in the WSO’s 2018-19 season at the suggestion of Symphony member Coleman Burgess, who also happens to be the solo clarinetist.
 
Other than not observing one repeat sign in the first movement, we are presenting the symphony without cuts, and so my advice is to sit back and luxuriate in the sheer abundance of memorable tunes and let the composer’s structure gradually and rewardingly unfold. 

​Alexander Borodin (1833 – 1887)
“Overture” and “Polovtsian Dances” from Prince Igor (1887)
 
As a doctor and chemist, Alexander Borodin provided science with such discoveries as “the first nucleophilic displacement of chlorine by fluorine in benzoyl chloride,” but fortunately we also have the fruits of his avocation in the form of a small body of memorable musical compositions. He wrote tuneful symphonies and string quartets, and left an unfinished opera about 12th-century Prince Igor and his war against the Polovtsy. After Borodin’s sudden death, his friends Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov finished Prince Igor, leading to a posthumous premiere in 1890.
 
Karel Husa (1921 – 2016)
“Élégie et Rondeau” for alto saxophone and orchestra (1961)
 
Czech-born composer Karel Husa became a US citizen in 1959 and spent his final years in Apex, North Carolina. A prolific composer, he won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for music. His 1961 “Élégie et Rondeau” begins slowly with a long solo line for the alto saxophone. Strings and later the rest of the orchestra gradually join to create an intense climax. After it subsides, bells, xylophone, vibraphone and piano introduce scattered notes that gradually assemble into a short melodic cell, providing the basis for the strongly rhythmic figures of the Rondeau.
 
Max Bruch (1838 – 1920)
Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 26 (1866)
 
Max Bruch was a teacher and composer who also spent three seasons as conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society. Such has been the popularity of his Violin Concerto No. 1 that it has threatened to make the composer into a “one-hit wonder.” The ravishing melodies that spin across the entire range of the violin are instantly gratifying, as is the skillful interweaving of the solo instrument and orchestra.
 
The Dance of the Coin (2017)
Julia Walker Jewell – Director, Composer/Creator/Screenplay
Honey Head Films – Co-Direction and Cinematography
Lesa Rogers Broadhead – Co-Director, Choreographer, Independent Dance Artist
Steven Errante, Orchestration
 
The Dance of the Coin is a multi-media work for film, dance and music that traces the journey of a 1942 German Third Reich 5 Pfening coin as it travels in time through the hands of both Jews and non-Jews, eventually landing in the palm of Julia Walker Jewell in North Carolina in 2009.
 
A film and choreographed dance sequences, accompanied by piano and orchestra, provide a series of vignettes which juxtapose the increasing suffering and despair of the Jewish people against the increasing power of the Nazi officers. Eight dancers perform on stage, working as one with the music and film. All three aspects of this piece are designed to stand alone and represent the work independently as well as part of the multi-media stage piece.
 
Composer Julia Walker Jewell offers the following reflection on The Dance of the Coin:
 
“The Dance of the Coin is intended to provide the audience with a glimpse into how the lives of those who hold and pass along this coin are affected. As the coin travels from Germany to America, the power of the hand is symbolized. It is the power of the hand that has the potential to be vigilant and strong, and not be indifferent. By using our hands to make music, film and dance, hopefully, we will not experience a repeat of the past, but create a future that embraces all faiths, colors, and cultures.
 
“Although I have been composing classical music most of my adult life, it is only recently that I have started to see the ‘fruits of my labor.’ As this work deals with an important part of human history, it is also an educational piece – one that invites the audience to ponder and reflect on how people behaved toward one another during such a difficult time. I have done a tremendous amount of research and taken great care to show historical accuracy in the vignettes I have created. I think the educational aspect of this work is beneficial to people of all ages, especially since the film, choreography or music can stand alone and be used as teaching tools.
 
“Primarily, it is my hope that The Dance of the Coin is a work of art; that it portrays, reflects and comments on humanity while entertaining, and that it leaves the audience with more hope and inspiration than when they arrived.”
 
Composer and keyboardist, Julia Walker Jewell is a native of Wilmington, NC. She is currently the full time Director of Music at Wrightsville United Methodist Church, where she serves as organist and directs the adult, handbell and children’s choirs. She is also the leader of the Port City Trio, a long time Wilmington band. Along with her husband, Kelly, she owns and operates Ted’s Fun on the River, a popular music venue in downtown Wilmington.
 
As a composer, she writes in both the classical and jazz idioms. In addition to writing for her Jazz Quintet, her classical works have been featured by the Tallis Chamber Orchestra of Wilmington, the “ComposerWorks Series”, and the “Very Special Arts Festival” in Brussels, Belgium. She received her B.A. from UNC Wilmington where she studied piano with Dr. Richard Deas and did her graduate work at Oakland University in Rochester, MI, studying commercial music and jazz.
 
Choreographer Lesa Rogers Broadhead earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance and drama from East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Professionally she has performed with The Cleveland Opera and the Atlanta Ballet. Lesa has also held teaching posts at Louisiana State University, Huntingdon College, Kent State University and the University of Akron.
 
Ms. Broadhead’s choreography includes reconstructing classical ballet favorites and contemporary works with themes on historical and societal issues, such as the Holocaust. In 1995 she was artist-in-residence at De Montfort University, Bedford, England, choreographing her first international Holocaust related dance work. In 1999 she presented three of her Holocaust related dance works at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., co-sponsored by the museum and the Embassy of Israel. These dance works have been the stimuli for Broadhead writing her first book with the working title THE HOLOCAUST: A Journey through Dance.  Currently, Lesa teaches at Wilmington Conservatory of Fine Arts, DREAMS of Wilmington, and at Brunswick Community College.
 
HoneyHead Films is a full service East Coast based female production company.  Founded in 2016, HoneyHead Films specializes in magical connections with tangible results, and is passionate about the untold art. Co-Executive Producers: Erika Edwards, Kristi Ray, and Devan Clark.

Antonín Dvořák (1841 – 1904)
Symphony No. 9 (“New World”) in E Minor, Op 95 (1893)
 
Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, whose early career was given a boost by the older Johannes Brahms, had a strong connection with folk music, especially that of Moravia and Bohemia. By the age of fifty, his fame had grown enough that the newly formed National Conservatory of Music of America in New York City hired him as director. During his short three years in America, he came in contact with Native American and African American music and wrote newspaper articles about how these traditions could form the basis of an American national musical style.
While in New York, he was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic Society to write a symphony, and in 1893 his Symphony “from the New World” was given a very successful premiere. It has now become one of the most popular symphonies in the repertoire. Many commentators have noted that the abundant folk-like melodies have elements of both indigenous American music and Bohemian music, betraying the composer’s homesickness.
First movement: After a somber introduction, the movement proper begins with a rising figure in the horns, the first of three main themes. The third of these bears a strong resemblance to “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” (minus the first two notes of the spiritual). What follows is a conventional development and recapitulation of the themes.
Second movement: The brass section begins with a series of mysterious chords which give way to the famous English horn melody. Other wistful themes follow, and before the final return of the English horn there is a triumphant full-orchestra passage in which the main theme of the first movement reappears, the cross-movement recurrence of themes being a common technique among of Romantic Period composers of symphonies.
Third movement: The gently propulsive figure in the woodwinds soon becomes a pounding dance in the full orchestra. The tempo calms a bit as gentler dance themes ensue. The return of the opening theme leads to another high point during which themes from previous movements return.
Fourth movement: Trumpets and horns introduce the assertive main theme, the repeated cadences of which lead to a second theme made up of boisterous triplets. A more serene clarinet melody is followed by yet another loud and energetic theme, concluding the presentation of the main material of the movement. The development section brings in themes from the preceding three movements, so by the tie of the “home stretch” part of the symphony we are hearing a musical culmination of much of what has gone on before.
 
Sergei Prokofiev (1891 – 1953)
Concerto No. 3 in C Major, Op. 26 (1921)
 
Ukrainian-born Prokofiev spent much of the time following the 1917 revolution outside of his country, but was welcomed back as a hero in 1932. Most of the rest of his career was spent going in and out of the good graces of the Soviet government. Pianist William Hueholt offers the following reflection on Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 3:
 
“Sergei Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto is an instantly appealing work––seemingly made to be enjoyed by a whole audience in a single delicious gulp.  Yet it is also one of those rare works that is undimmed by familiarity.  Those melodies––and what melodies they are!––are somehow elusive.  After one hearing, it seems as though you could whistle them.  But how does that part go again?  Just as soon as you think you grasp where Prokofiev is leading you, whoosh: the bottom falls out, the music swoops away in another direction entirely.
The piece is, for the pianist, full of both fun and frustration.  There is no mystery here as to the composer’s intent; Prokofiev is out to get you.  This is not a virtuoso showpiece––it’s all about the composer, despite the reams of brilliant, flashy writing.  His personality comes across so strongly that at times he almost feels like a physical presence.  No matter how quick you are, Prokofiev the chess master is always one step ahead.
That is why the opening of the concerto is some of the most striking music he ever composed.  The theme is presented by solo clarinet, then doubled by another, then joined by the whole orchestra in a single long sweep.  It is startlingly simple music, a non sequitur; perhaps a lesser composer would have started the concerto somewhere else.  But it lingers sweetly, through all the acerbic wit and glibness to follow.  I think it is a glimpse into Prokofiev’s soul.  And what a soul it is.”
 
Researched and written by Joan Olsson

​W. A. Mozart (1756 – 1791)
Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, KV 491 (1786)
 
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote concertos for many of the solo instruments typical of his time - violin, flute, horn (even bassoon), but he lavished some of his most beautiful music on the 27 concertos for his own instrument, the piano. Although he wrote most of them with himself in mind as the soloist, they are not mere showpieces for the keyboard, offering instead a chamber music-like balance between solo and orchestra.
 
Concerto No. 24, one of only two written in a minor key, is also distinctive in that there are extensive passages for the seven woodwinds and two horns during which the soloist and strings remain silent.
 
The First Movement begins with a shadowy unison statement introduced by the strings. While angular in outline, it is also tonally ambiguous in that it uses all twelve notes of the chromatic scale in the first ten measures. Soon the theme is given out by the whole orchestra, accompanied by a descending chain of diminished seventh-chords (the most dissonant chord in the harmonic palette of the 18th century). The ensuing material unfolds deliberately as more serene musical ideas appear. Even the solo piano part begins in a style that sounds more resigned than angry, and it takes a while for it to engage in the agitated mood of the opening. Mozart apparently struggled with proportions in this movement, because he lengthened the orchestral introduction after he realized how extended the solo sections were and how much time he needed to develop the themes.
 
The Second Movement is a Rondo structured around multiple returns of the graceful theme heard at the beginning. It is in the contrasting episodes that the wind group is often spotlighted (interestingly, using the oboes in the minor-key sections and clarinets in the major-key sections).
 
The Third Movement is a set of variations on a theme first played by the orchestra. The theme has a clear two-part form (with both halves repeated), the outlines of which can be heard in most of the variations. In later variations, instead of an exact repetition of each half, the focus passes between soloist and orchestra as the theme is transformed into different guises, from quiet and lyrical to assertive and agitated. The moment at which the solo oboe suddenly introduces a major-key version is particularly striking. For the final variation, the march-like rhythm is altered into a rollicking dance and the final statements of the soloist are swept up into a swirl of rising scales in the entire orchestra.
 
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897)
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 (1877)
 
Brahms’s reluctance to complete a symphony is a familiar story. Feeling the responsibility of assuming the mantle of Beethoven, he produced a number of orchestra works that were symphonic in form but called something else before finally completing his first symphony at the age of 43. After that icebreaker, his second symphony followed comparatively soon.
The gentle beginning of Symphony No. 2’s First Movement is what has caused commentators to call this symphony Brahms’s “Pastoral.” The first theme is actually two themes, a three-note melody sung quietly in the low strings over which a pair of horns emerges with a different tune. The symphony unfolds at a leisurely pace until the three-note melody appears in a triumphant statement above the full orchestra. A short transition leads to the second theme, which recalls Brahms’s earlier-composed “Wiegenlied” (known popularly as “Brahms’s Lullaby”). The rest of the movement honors the tradition of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven by treating the various themes to development, fragmentation, and finally reintegration, ending quietly as the three-note theme seems to skip cheerily into the distance.
 
The brooding Second Movement begins with a somber theme played by the cellos. In the second phrase the three trombones and tuba add a solemnity that will recur as the music alternates between despair and moments of repose.
 
The graceful Third Movement features a lilting melody in the oboe that returns several times, each recurrence after much faster contrasting music. The episodes, though in different tempos and meters, contain motivic seeds from the main theme, giving the whole an underlying coherence.
 
The main theme of the Fourth Movement is a quick, sinuous melody barely whispered by the string section which shortly fades to near silence, setting up the sudden joyful outburst by the full orchestra playing an extroverted version of the theme. Once again, contrasting themes are introduced, developed, and reintroduced. In the home stretch, the trombones and tuba begin propulsion that finally reaches high into the trumpets and a brilliant conclusion.

HECTOR BERLIOZ   1803 – 1869
Overture to Benvenuto Cellini, Op. 23 (1838)
 
Berlioz was a Romantic-era firebrand whose innovations in exploiting the characteristic sounds of instruments coincided with the appearance of increasingly larger orchestras (and audiences.) His exuberant style often unpredictably lurches between one idea and the next, often with maximum contrast in style and volume.
 
The Overture to Benvenuto Cellini begins with a noisy outburst that gives way to a slower theme plucked by the cellos and basses. This slower music competes with recurrences of the faster music until it culminates in the contrapuntal combination (noted by the composer in the score to make sure it is appreciated) of  “the theme of the Adagio combined with the second theme of the Allegro.”
 
ÉDOUARD  LALO   1823 – 1892
Concerto in D Minor for Violoncello and Orchestra (1876)
 
Édouard Lalo was a French composer of Spanish descent who followed Berlioz by a generation. His music was criticized at first for being “too progressive and Wagnerian” but was later overshadowed by the colorful developments of later composers like Debussy and Ravel. Despite prolific production of chamber music, orchestral music, and even an opera, he is represented in modern orchestral programming mainly by his Symphonie Espagnol, which is essentially a violin concerto.
 
His Concerto in D Minor for Violoncello and Orchestra is cast in the typical three movements. The First begins with a brooding Prélude before launching into an expressive Allegro maestoso that takes advantage of the solo instrument’s ability to sing across wide pitch registers. The Second Movement begins slowly as expected, but several times it is interrupted with a lilting Allegro presto whose repeated rhythmic figures in the orchestra create a kind of minimalist background. The Third movement, like the first two, begins slowly and seriously but soon breaks into a rollicking Rondo, with contrasting sections that pave the way for the welcome return of the Rondo melody.
 
MODEST MUSSORGSKY   1839 – 1881
Pictures at an Exhibition (1874)
orchestrated by Maurice Ravel (1923)
 
Mussorgsky was born into a family of Russian nobles that was impoverished by the Czar Alexander’s freeing of the serfs in 1861. He fell in with “The Five,” a group of amateur composers devoted to the creation of Russian music less affected by Western European influences. In Mussorgsky’s brief 46 years he was able to create a small body of works that show a distinctive, raw talent not inhibited by discipline or reliance on tradition.
 
His piano suite “Pictures at an Exhibition” was a tribute to his late artist friend Victor Hartmann. A number of short characteristic movements inspired by paintings and designs of Hartmann and are interspersed with “Promenade” movements which represent the exhibition-goer’s meanderings. The piano originals are vivid in the way rhythms and harmonies are used to evoke the visual images, but in Maurice Ravel’s masterful orchestration, they are made even more so. Ravel was not the first or last to orchestrate the suite, but his version is the most familiar, and the final section depicting Hartmann’s fairly modest (and unused) plan for a gate in Kiev is thrilling in its sonic magnificence. 

Bedřich Smetana
1824 - 1884
Vltava (The Moldau) 1874
 
Bedřich Smetana was born in a small Bohemian town in what is now the southern part of the Czech Republic. At a very early age, the musical prodigy learned to play both violin and piano, and was first taught by his father, a brewmaster and amateur musician. His musical development was rapid, and as a young man he opened his own music school with the encouragement and help of Franz Liszt. It was Liszt who had greatly impressed the younger composer with his dramatic program music. As Smetana wrote to Liszt: “I cannot describe to you the soul-stirring impression your music has made on me. Such as become my credo.”
​
Smetana became fired up with a fierce patriotism and embarked on the cause of creating music based on Czech legends, history, geography, customs, and dances. A provincial theater for Czech music was established in 1861, for which Smetana composed a series of native-language Czech operas based on Czech themes. In 1874, at age 50, the composer filled a cycle of six symphonic poems called Má Vlast (My Fatherland) with folk legends and rhythms of Bohemian songs and dances. Fate intervened; during this time of a rapid outpouring of nationalistic themes, he became afflicted with total deafness. Although he still composed in a frenzy, soon came a deteriorating mind, followed by eventual death in a mental institution at age 60.
Among the six symphonic tone poems in Má vlast is Smetana’s most famous composition, “Vltava” (in German, “The Moldau”), a majestic portrait of the 270-mile river in land-locked Czechoslovakia. The tone poem takes the listener on a sensory journey down a breath-taking natural river, as expressed in musical imitation of the sights and sounds a traveler experiences. Completed in 1874, and still under the strong influence of Franz Liszt’s program music, the work was written amidst a 100-year Bohemian struggle for democracy and freedom from the Austria-Hungarian empire.
Smetana wrote his own preface to the tone poem as follows:
 
“The composition describes the course of the Vltava, starting from the two small springs, the Cold and Warm Vltava, to the unification of both streams into a single current, the course of the Vltava through woods and meadows, through landscapes where a farmer’s wedding is celebrated, the round dance of the fairies in the night’s moonshine: on the nearby rocks loom proud castles, palaces and ruins aloft. The Vltava swirls into the St. John’s Rapids; then it widens and flows toward Prague, past the Vyšehrad (Upper Castle), and then majestically vanishes into the distance, ending at the Labe (or Elbe, in German).”
 
Leo Brouwer
1939 –
Concerto Elegiaco (Concerto No. 3) 1985   
 
Juan Leovigido Brouwer Mezquida (Leo) was born in 1939 in Havana, Cuba.  Descended from a long and wide line of musicians and drawn to the sounds of Flamenco

music he embarked on a largely self-learned experience of skills necessary for the guitar.
His physician and amateur classical guitarist father took over the direction of this musically-determined boy, even though he didn’t read music and was taught by rote. At the end of 1952, Leo’s formal guitar instruction was transferred over to renowned Cuban
guitar pedagogue, Isaac Nicola. It was Nicola who opened the young student’s eyes and ears to Renaissance, Classical, and Romantic periods of music history, and it was at this time when Leo’s compositional bent became alive. What he wanted to do was “fill the gaps” in Cuban music history and repertoire, creating compositions that emphasized his Afro-Cuban music heritage.

After his debut as a guitar performer at age 17, he was awarded a scholarship to study composition at The Juilliard School, and followed this with both a teaching and composition-studying position at Hartt College in Connecticut. He claimed that the training at both programs was the only formal instruction he had received as a composer-to-be.
Brouwer then returned to his beloved Cuba, where under the new communist regime, he became a strong advocate of Cuban nationalism, unquestioningly loyal to Castro’s principles of communism. With governmental approval, he became globally known as a Cuban music ambassador of his own works and those of other non-European origin. The composer’s personal catalogue lists at least 200 works. Brouwer also has over 60 film scores to his credit (including Like Water for Chocolate), has established a radio station network, played in chamber orchestras, and re-energized the Symphony Orchestra of Cuba. Now approaching his eighties, he continues on the concert circuit abroad and remains an active composer and arranger of music from his family home in Cuba.

The Concerto Elegiaco (Concerto No. 3) was written for guitarist Julian Bream. The halting two-note theme first heard in the low strings helps set the elegiac tone of the work. The low notes at the end of the First Movement (Tranquillo) fade into the Interlude, in which a rhythmically free, improvisatory guitar line is woven around held notes in the strings. This proceeds without pause to the Finale, an energetic Toccata in which rapidly repeated notes are alternately played by the guitar, strings, and percussion. Very near the end, the halting, dirge-like notes of the First Movement return before a final burst of energy from the guitar and orchestra.
 
Dmitri Shostakovich
1906 - 1975
Suite from the film The Gadfly 1955
 
Shostakovich’s musical parents realized that by age 5, their son was unusually gifted. They had taken him to a performance of one of Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas, and noted that he was singing several of the opera arias afterward. Still, the young child’s musical training was delayed until age 9. His conservatory graduate mother did not believe in structured musical training before then.

During Shostakovich’s first year of piano instruction, he began composing. The spirit of the most recent Russian Revolution inspired his musical writing, and he responded by such pieces as Hymn to Liberty and the Funeral March for the Victims of the Revolution.

As a teenager, he was employed to accompany silent films in the theatre, and would become so absorbed in the screen activity that he would forget to play. Although fired as piano accompanist, he was permanently hooked on movies and the eventual soundtrack writing that followed.

At age 13, the boy entered the Leningrad Conservatory, where the Conservatory director and composer Alexander Glazunov claimed, “the boy’s gifts are comparable to Mozart’s. If asked, I would give up my food rations for him.” Shostakovich rose quickly to top recognition in the Soviet Union, after public praise for his Symphony No. 1, which had been a graduation requirement. His subsequent career was spent under the regimes of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev, and he had to weather the irrational and unpredictable winds of official opinion. Criticism mostly centered on his compositional endeavors as not having enough mass appeal. Music needed only to be simple, tuneful, optimistic, and glorifying of Soviet ideals.
Although remembered principally for large-scale orchestral works and concertos, Shostakovich’s output for the big screen was prolific. Between 1919 and l970, Shostakovich wrote more than 30 movie sound tracks, which tend to be light, simple, charming additions to the plots.

The 1955 film The Gadfly is a boisterous affair, a swashbuckling costume drama depicting the life of a Russian hero in 1830’s Italy. The setting gave the composer the excuse to borrow musical ideas from Italian Romantic composers (Verdi, Bellini), and to write pseudo-Neapolitan songs and folk tunes. Most famous are the catchy “Galop” and the lovely “Romance,” but the other five numbers of the suite hold their own in their surprisingly tonal and rhythmically straight-forward and melodic style.  
 
                                                                        Researched and written by Joan Olsson

​Carl Nielsen
1865 – 1931
Overture to Maskarade (1906)
 
Maskarade is a comic opera based on a play by Ludvig Holberg. The story is one of love and mistaken identity that unfolds with a series of glittering masked balls as its backdrop. In the overture, Nielsen draws the listener immediately into the opera’s atmosphere of high spirits and romantic intrigues. Punchy melodies sparkle with wit and humor, clothed in brilliant, inventive orchestration. The opera itself is seldom heard outside of Denmark, but its overture is performed frequently as one of the composer’s most widely circulated works in Europe and North America.
 
Antonin Dvořák
1841 – 1904
 Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 53 (1879)
 
The Bohemian people regarded music as a fundamental part of life. So, in keeping with the tradition of his culture, young Dvořák learned to play the violin, and soon composed and played dance tunes and folk melodies in the village band. A local teacher recognized the young boy’s innate talent, taught the boy viola, piano, and organ, but soon recommended that the 16-year-old enter the Organ School in Prague. The young musician struggled against hunger and extreme poverty, but ultimately earned a position in the orchestra of the National Opera. Music had become his life (along with an addiction to trains).  He composed a prolific number of works, eventually attracting the attention of famed Brahms and fellow Czech, Smetana.
            After receiving recognition for his Slavonic Dances, the 38-year-old Dvořák’s career was launched, and next came the 1879 Violin Concerto. This work was initially looked down upon by critics because of its failure to observe standard German tradition and form. Rather, the Concerto was of a folksy, exotic style which pleased its large audiences.
            The First Movement begins with a four bar, fanfare-like orchestral introduction before the solo violin enters with its main theme, which features dashing, daring leaps in an unusual improvisatory, rhapsodic flavor. What follows is a sedate, lyrical second theme. Throughout the movement, a gypsy fiddling tradition and the feeling of the uncontainable Hungarian spirit play roles in this Slavic work. The customary recapitulation of opening material is eliminated, and is replaced by a brief cadenza and interlude that lead directly into the Second Movement.
            Its opening section is in a serene major key, while a contrasting middle section features a stormy minor key. Throughout, the soloist plays florid passages that act as embellishments to melody played by the orchestra. The beautifully soaring lyricism of this movement makes it a special favorite, and thus it is often played as an independent piece.
            The Third Movement is filled with Bohemian-flavored dance and song characteristics. The main theme is a furiant, a Czech dance of rapid nature, which is reprised in brilliant instrumentation near the end. The dance is played by cellos and oboes imitating bagpipes. Shortly before the end of the movement is a wistful dumka melody, exhibiting a gentle contrast to the furiant.
 
Richard Wagner
1813 – 1883
Introduction to Act III of Lohengrin (1848)
Transformation Music from Act I of Parsifal (1879)
 
Lohengrin is a chivalric melodrama that plays spiritual purity against evil. The barnstorming Prelude to Act III is vividly colorful, and prepares the way for the curtain to rise on a wedding scene.
            Parsifal is Wagner’s last opera, and its three acts are witness to a stage-consecrating festival drama based on a medieval legend and poem. The Transformation Music accompanies the Knights of the Holy Grail as they enter the Hall of the Grail. The musical themes are mostly solemn (Lutherans may recognize Wagner’s use of the “Dresden Amen”), but at one point a wrenchingly sorrowful theme rises out of the orchestra, representing the knight Amfortas, who was entrusted to guard the relics but succumbed to temptation.
 
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov
1844 – 1908
“Danse Indienne” from Mlada (1890)
 
Mlada is an opera-ballet in four acts that recounts a fantasy tale about the ancient pagan Slavs of the Baltic seacoast. Three national dances are featured in Act II amidst a midsummer festival of dancing and frolicking. The “Danse Indienne” allowed Rimsky-Korsakov to indulge his genius for composing what the Russians thought of as “Oriental” melodies - complex, sinuous, and played by combinations of woodwinds with underpinnings of a snare drum. During the dance, the spirit of the deceased Mlada appears.
 
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1840 – 1893
“Cossack Dance” from Mazeppa (1883)
 
Based on a narrative poem by Alexander Pushkin, the story concerns itself with a young woman whose powerful love draws her into a catastrophic, downward spiral. The
“Cossack Dance” (Hopak) is a national Ukrainian dance usually performed by athletic males. It features acrobatic jumps and spins, and often has battlefield “fights” depicted in pantomime form.
 
Giacomo Puccini
1858 – 1924
Intermezzo from Suor Angelica (1918)
 
Puccini followed in the tradition of Rossini and Verdi but also was aware of the developments by his contemporaries Debussy, Stravinsky, and even Schoenberg. Suor Angelica is the middle opera in the series of three one-act operas Puccini called Il Trittico. Sister Angelica is from a wealthy family that has committed her to a convent because of bearing a child out of wedlock, and she has just learned that the son she has been imagining for seven years actually died of a fever two years ago. She has a vision that she will join him in heaven, and during the Intermezzo she is seen preparing a fatal mixture of herbs that she intends to drink.
 
Richard Strauss
1864 – 1949
“Dance of the Seven Veils” from Salome (1905)
 
The setting is the court of King Herod in the Middle East around 30 A.D. Herod, in the mood for some entertainment on his birthday, asks his beautiful young stepdaughter Salome to dance in return for anything she wants. Her desire is for the head of John the Baptist delivered on a plate. The fulfillment of this is even too much for Herod, and as the final curtain comes down he orders Salome to be slain by the palace guards.
            The dance’s origin is from Oscar Wilde’s l891play Salome, who transformed the Biblical image of Salome into an incarnation of female lust. The opera (with its “Dance of the Seven Veils”) received rave reviews around Europe, but was immediately cancelled after its New York 1907 debut; it was considered “moral stench.”