Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Programme Notes Online. Sunday Afternoon Classics An American in Paris Sunday 2 December

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1 Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Programme Notes Online Sunday Afternoon Classics An American in Paris Sunday 2 December pm GEORGE GERSHWIN ( ) An American in Paris An American in Paris. A Tone Poem for Orchestra. Composed and Orchestrated by George Gershwin. The words Gershwin inscribed on the front page of his manuscript are slightly unusual. You ll never see the words Composed and Orchestrated by Ludwig van Beethoven or indeed by Samuel Barber or Aaron Copland. In western classical music, it goes without saying that a composer would orchestrate his own music. But this was a bold statement for a Broadway composer a demand to be taken seriously, and a rebuff to the critics who d mocked Gershwin for being unable to orchestrate his own Rhapsody in Blue (1924). Not only was this songwriter presuming to write a Tone Poem, but he d even orchestrated it himself! George s proud father Morris summed up the general astonishment "It s a very important piece. It takes twenty minutes to play!" However seriously Gershwin took his work, though, An American in Paris is fun. Gershwin introduced his Piano Concerto to Paris in May 1928, and while by night he was toasted by the greats of European music, by day he raced round the city buying taxi horns. He d already had an idea for an orchestral work inspired by Parisian traffic noise; five months later it was complete. My purpose is to portray the impressions of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street noises and absorbs the French atmosphere, he explained and

2 the music is so vivid that the listener scarcely needs any more direction. No wonder it made such an irresistible ballet in the 1951 Gene Kelly musical it inspired! Our American strolls jauntily around the French capital and you can t miss those taxi horns. He overhears café bands and conversations, finds a moment of calm in a park, and flirts with a young Parisienne before sinking into a chair in a Left Bank jazzbar. A trumpet plays a smoky blues and homesickness overcomes him before the tempo picks up, and with it, his mood. In the 20s, Gershwin was never far from a party so the orchestra, in a riotous finale decides to make a night of it. It will be great to get home but meanwhile, this is Paris! Richard Bratby 2018 AARON COPLAND ( ) Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo Buckaroo Holiday Corral Nocturne Saturday Night Waltz Hoe-Down Burnt Ranch, a cattle farm somewhere on the plains west of Kansas City, in the days of the Old West. The Rodeo has already taken place, the champions have been acclaimed, and now folk are gathering for the party. A tomboyish Cowgirl wonders if this will be the night she wins the heart of the Champion Roper but both he and his rival, the Head Wrangler, have eyes only for the more traditionally feminine charms of the Rancher s Daughter. That s the basic premise of Aaron Copland and Agnes de Mille s 1942 ballet Rodeo and if it all sounds a bit like Oklahoma!, that s because Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were in the audience at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, for Rodeo s premiere. And on the strength of it, they hired de Mille to

3 choreograph their new show! Copland s music, and de Mille s muscular choreography had already become part of the way American saw its Western heritage, and in Rodeo s closing Hoe- Down, had created the definitive musical portrait of frontier life. And this was despite the fact that Copland had been reluctant to write the score he d already done one cowboy ballet, Billy the Kid, in But de Mille had been persuasive, and after all, the company in question was the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, the successor to Diaghilev s legendary Ballet Russe (now in exile in the USA). In wartime New York, Copland had buckled down to work at de Mille s request, combining his own plain-speaking musical style with authentic Western folk-songs and fiddle-tunes taken from the folklorist Alan Lomax s collection Our Singing Country. The aspiring young conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein acted as his assistant (and part-composed the Corral Nocturne). The result was an all-time classic of musical Americana, one of the most-produced ballets of the post-war era and a score which reduced by Copland to a four-movement concert suite adds up to a sort of Western symphony. Music this clear and colourful hardly needs explanation. After a brassy call to attention, Buckaroo Holiday portrays the main characters gathering for the dance: the lovelorn Cowgirl and the roistering cowboys ( Buckaroo was a slang term for cowboys before it had anything to do with plastic donkeys ). In the plaintive Corral Nocturne, the Cowgirl dreams beneath the vast starry sky; with the Saturday Night Waltz violins are tuned and the scene shifts indoors for what de Mille called a Texas minuet. And finally, the party ignites, with the ultimate in rollicking, rambunctious Hoe-Downs. Fiddles are scraped, pianos are pounded, and rows of boots stamp the barn floor and does the Cowgirl lasso her man? Well, what do you think..? Richard Bratby 2018

4 ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK ( ) Symphony No.9 in E minor, Op.95 From the New World Adagio allegro molto / Slow very fast Largo / Very slow Scherzo: molto vivace / Scherzo: very lively Allegro con fuoco / Fast, with fire Whose New World Symphony? That was Dvořák s New World Symphony but it doesn t say here who it s by. That (in)famous radio gaffe proves something. When a piece of music is more famous than its composer, you know you re dealing with a classic. But what s odd about Dvořák s Ninth Symphony is how so well-loved a piece can still inspire so many different opinions. You ll find writers who will tell you that this Symphony is based on African-American spirituals, Native American dance rhythms, or Czech folksongs. One American recording describes it as A passionate ode to the universal dream of a new beginning ; other writers have heard homesickness for Bohemia. And to millions, of course, it s still the symphony from the Hovis advert From New York s Docks and Skyscrapers One thing is certain: Dvořák wrote this piece in New York in the spring of 1893, and he wanted the world to know it: the title From the New World was his own. Jeanette Thurber had been determined to snare a great European composer to head up her newly-founded National Conservatoire, and for a $15,000 salary, Dvořák had been happy to be snared, sailing for New York in September Ever lively-minded, he was fascinated by what he found there and he took his duties towards American music seriously. He d already caused a stir by telling the press that In the Negro melodies of America I find all that is needed for a great and noble school of music. As his first major work in America, his new Symphony premiered at Carnegie Hall on 1 December 1893 was just as important a statement.

5 Slaves and Valkyries It s hardly surprising, then, that many listeners hear spirituals in this symphony. The quiet, husky flute melody from the first movement has reminded some of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot; but most attention has focussed on the Largo, and that glorious cor anglais melody. So good is that tune that it later gained words and actually became a spiritual Goin Home, sung by Paul Robeson amongst others. But that came after the symphony and how about those grand, mysterious opening chords, and the dancing woodwind interlude at the centre of the movement? They re the work of a composer who knew both his Wagner and his Bohemian village music. There was only one man who fitted that description Algonquins and Bohemians But what of other New World music? Dvořák was a fan of Longfellow s Song of Hiawatha, and the pounding rhythms of the scherzo are sometimes said to have been inspired by Native American drumming. In the summer of 1893, Dvořák did actually meet a party of Algonquin herbalists in Iowa, and he recorded the experience in two lovely chamber works. But the symphony was very definitely written in New York a world as distant as can be imagined from either Iowa, or Dvořák s beloved country home at Vysoká. Yet there s certainly a Bohemian swing to the scherzo s central section and that sweet, impetuous second melody is anything but the work of a sophisticated urbanite. However much Dvořák travelled and learned, his feet were still firmly planted at Vysoká. Goin Home And he was still a European composer, writing a major symphony in the year The symphony follows the classical rules; in fact, with its slow, sad introduction, Dvořák was reviving an almost defunct practice. He has some modern tricks up his sleeve too the motto theme (the horn call that launches the

6 first Allegro) recurs at crucial moments throughout the symphony. And as the stormy finale races homewards, he summons up the spirits of earlier movements, as if to remind us that the symphony is a journey that s bigger than any one episode. Folk music from around the world displays uncanny similarities. Dvořák loved and missed his home but bubbled over with enthusiasm for the energy and scale of America. The music of the New World symphony reflects all of this with colours more vivid, tunes broader and emotions less inhibited than in any of Dvořák s other symphonies. It s a glorious mix and ultimately, it s all Dvořák s. Richard Bratby 2018