Monday September 28, 2009

Arapahoe Philharmonic
Vincent C. LaGuardia, Jr., conductor
Peter Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture
Ottorino Respighi: The Pines of Rome
Also, Charley anticipates the season-opener of the Arapahoe Philharmonic this Friday, and the Telling Stories show titled "Pilots" this Saturday.
Maurice Ravel: “Assez vif—Très rhythmé” (2nd movement) from String Quartet in F
Telling Stories String Quartet (Emily Lewis, Heidi Farr, violins; Megan Tipton, viola; Megan Titensor, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 040209 MS


Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture

``I shall be thinking of something new and big to write,'' Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck. ``I want to find an operatic subject that will be deep and exciting. What would you say to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? The richness of that tragedy is fathomless.''
It was composer Mily Balakirev who suggested that Tchaikovsky write not an opera but a symphonic overture on the subject. ``Arm yourself with galoshes and a walking-stick,'' he advised, ``and set out for a walk along the boulevards, starting with the Nikitsky: let yourself be steeped in your plan, and I am sure that by the time you reach the Sretensky Boulevard some theme or episode will have come to you.''
The Overture occupied Tchaikovsky for most of October and November of 1869. He sent the main themes off to Balakirev, who complained that the music depicting Friar Laurence resembled ``the character of Haydn's quartet themes, the genius of petty bourgeois music, awakening a strong thirst for beer.'' What was wanted, in Balakirev's opinion, was something ``on the line of Liszt's chorales.''
Balakirev also commented on the love theme: ``I often play it, and would like to hug you for it. It has the sweetness of love, its tenderness, its longing....I have only one thing to say against this theme: It does not sufficiently express a mystic, inward, spiritual love, but rather a fantastic passionate glow that has hardly any nuance of Italian sentiment. Romeo and Juliet were not Persian lovers, but Europeans.'' Overall, he liked the piece: ``It is the first of your compositions that contains so many beautiful things one does not hesitate to pronounce it good as a whole.'' When Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov saw the full score in January, Tchaikovsky recalled, ``my Overture pleased them very much and it also pleases me.''
It was a different story when Nikolai Rubinstein conducted the first performance of Romeo and Juliet at a concert of the Russian Musical Society in Moscow on March 16, 1870. ``It had no success at all,'' Tchaikovsky complained. ``I longed for sympathy and recognition, but the Overture was wholly ignored. After the concert, a crowd of us supped at Gurin's Restaurant, and nobody spoke so much as a word to me about it!''
Tchaikovsky made the first revision of the score in 1870. When the work was introduced in St. Petersburg in 1872, Cesar Cui wrote: ``The composition is a most talented one. Its special merit lies in the excellence of its themes.'' Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky made another revision of the music in 1880.
``The characterization of the music is very good,'' writes biographer Edwin Evans, ``in fact the entire work is based upon characterization rather than action. Apart from the opening theme which typifies Friar Laurence, the work has two principal contrasted movements, the one representing the feud of the Montagues and the Capulets, and naturally all fire and animation, and the other the love-stricken pair, all sweetness and romance. It closes in a manner suggesting a reference to the final tragic scene.''
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, English horn, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, harp and strings.

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936): Pini di Roma (The Pines of Rome)
I. The Pines of Villa Borghese: Allegretto vivace
II. The Pines near a Catacomb: Lento
III. The Pines of the Janiculum: Lento
IV. The Pines of the Appian Way: Tempo di marcia

Elsa Respighi records that in 1920 her husband ``asked me to sing for him the songs I sang as a child at play....The request surprised me and I was most amused to see Ottorino taking down the simple tunes that Italian children have sung for centuries.'' Four years later, those same melodies would surface in the opening section of The Pines of Rome. It is the second of the ``Roman trilogy'' of symphonic poems, the others being The Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals.
Bernardino Molinari conducted the first performance of The Pines of Rome on December 14, 1924 in Rome. Despite some isolated booing, the work was a success. ``Let them boo,'' said Respighi, ``what do I care?''
For performances in the United States, Respighi provided his own program note: ``While in The Fountains of Rome the composer sought to reproduce by means of tone an impression of nature, in The Pines of Rome he uses nature as a point of departure, to recall memories and visions. The century-old trees which dominate so characteristically the Roman landscape become testimony for the principal events in Roman life.''
Respighi and Claudio Guastalla developed a program for the work, which is printed in the score:
``1. `The Pines of the Villa Borghese:' Children are at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian equivalent of `Ring around the Rosy;' mimicking marching soldiers and battles; twittering and shrieking like swallows at evening; and they disappear. Suddenly the scene changes to...
``2. `The Pines near a Catacomb:' We see the shadows of the pines, which overhang the entrance of a catacomb. From the depths rises a chant which reechoes solemnly, like a hymn, and is then mysteriously silenced.
``3. `The Pines of the Janiculum:' There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of Janiculum Hill. A nightingale sings.
``4. `The Pines of the Appian Way:' Misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of innumerable steps. To the poet's fantasy appears a vision of past glories; trumpets blare, and the army of the Consul advances brilliantly in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the Sacred Way, mounting the Capitoline Hill.''
A recording of a real nightingale is used in the third section because Respighi ``simply realized that no combination of wind instruments could quite counterfeit the real bird's song. Not even a coloratura soprano could have produced an effect other than artificial.'' The English critic Ernest Newman disapproved. ``Musical realism of the Respighi type could be extended indefinitely,'' he wrote. ``We may live to see the evening when (Beethoven's) Pastoral Symphony will be given with real running water in the slow movement.''
The work is scored for piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 4 trombones, 6 Flügel horns, timpani, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, rattle, bass drum, tam-tam, bells, celesta, organ, harp, piano and strings.