PROGRAM NOTES by Daniel Maki. Petrushka (1947 version) by Igor Stravinsky ( )

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1 PROGRAM NOTES by Daniel Maki Petrushka (1947 version) by Igor Stravinsky ( ) Duration: Approximately 34 minutes First Performance: June 13, 1911 in Paris Last ESO Performance: March, 2000; Stephen Squires, conductor In a period of three years shortly before the start of the First World War, Igor Stravinsky wrote in quick succession for the Ballets Russes in Paris music for three ballets that established him as one of the great creative figures of the twentieth century. The first was The Firebird, produced in1910, written in a lush post-romantic style that has maintained it as Stravinsky s most accessible and popular work. (The composer grew to refer to it as that great audience lollipop. ) The last of the three, produced in 1913, was The Rite of Spring, which literally caused one of the most scandalous riots in music history and immediately became an icon of the modernist movement in the arts, symbolizing the most radical experimental techniques of the time. Somewhere in between, both chronologically and stylistically, was Petrushka, first produced in Although containing many modernist techniques, it was considerably easier listening than The Rite, and la bourgeoisie was, accordingly, considerably less épatée. Its early success has continued, and with its brilliant orchestration and astonishingly original use of rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic elements, it has rightly taken its place as one of the masterpieces of twentieth century music. The story takes place in St. Petersburg at the Shrove-Tide fair, that time of year when Christians in many lands perform with unusual intensity all the forbidden activities that they plan to renounce during Lent. A Magician, or Charlatan as he is sometimes called, introduces three puppets beginning with Petrushka, the Russian incarnation of that crafty archetypal figure drawn from the commedia del arte of sixteenth century Italy and known in various other places as Punch, Polichinelle, or Pulcinella. A beautiful ballerina and an exotic Moor also make their appearance. In due course, Petrushka lusts after the ballerina but is rejected by her in favor of the handsome but stupid and brutal Moor. Petrushka and the Moor fight and Petrushka is struck dead by the Moor s scimitar, much to the consternation of the crowd. The Charlatan reassures the onlookers that Petrushka is only a puppet but as the crowd disperses, Petrushka s spirit appears on the roof of the little theatre, thumbing his nose, as the Charlatan flees in horror. All these goings-on are, of course, brilliantly depicted in the music. The colorful introduction perfectly captures the hub-bub of a carnival crowd complete with a carnival barker touting his attractions and occasional interruptions by organ-grinder music. Suddenly a deafening drum roll announces the Charlatan. After playing a languorous, improvisatory solo on his flute, he touches the three puppets with his flute and, to the astonishment of the crowd, brings them to life as they dance the spectacular Russian

2 Dance. The story then continues as Petrushka lamely tries to impress the ballerina, and she tries in turn tries to impress the Moor by playing a saucy tune on a toy trumpet (the famous cornet solo) and dances with him. After these smaller scaled and more intimate scenes we return in the final tableau to various crowd and dance scenes at the carnival, which are finally interrupted by cries from the puppet theatre as the Moor does poor Petrushhka in. Petrushka himself is portrayed by the famous Petrushka chord, which is actually a C major chord and an F# major chord played simultaneously to create an early example of the modernist technique known as polytonality, or the use of two different keys at the same time. Such dissonant music was intended as the puppet s brash and often insulting nature and contrasts with the less dissonant diatonic music of the crowd scenes. The tunefulness of the score owes much to a number of melodies that Stravinsky cheerfully purloined and put to his own uses. These include organ-grinder music borrowed from a French popular song, waltzes borrowed from the Austrian composer Joseph Lanner, and a number of Russian folk songs. The prominence of the solo piano part stems from the fact that the work began as a Konzertstück (concert piece) for piano and orchestra. Stravinsky said that from the beginning he had conceived the music as representing a puppet, annoying the orchestra with cascades of arpeggios. Only after some time did the idea occur of naming it after Petrushka, the character that he himself had enjoyed at carnivals since his childhood. At the very end of the work we hear Petrushka s final nose-thumbing retort, represented by one last statement of the Petrushka chord. The chord is in two different keys just as Petrushka himself is both puppet and human, serving, in the composer s own words, as the personification of the spiritual and suffering side of humanity. * * * Suite from Sleeping Beauty, op.66a TH 234 by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( ) Duration: Approximately 17 minutes First Performance: January 15, 1890 in St. Petersburg Last ESO Performance: November, 1956; Douglas Steensland, conductor In spite of the difficulties that he had endured with his first ballet, Swan Lake, when the opportunity presented itself some years later to do another, Tchaikovsky needed very little persuasion. The idea came in May of 1888 from Ivan Vsevolozhsky, the man newly appointed by Tsar Alexander III as director of the Imperial Theatres and who had been charged with making substantial reforms. Vsevolozhsky s proposition was for a new ballet on the Sleeping Beauty story, for which he would write a libretto based on Charles Perrault s version published in 1697 under the title La Belle au bois dormant. A major incentive for Tchaikovsky would be the chance to work with the legendary choreographer Marius Petipa, then at the height of his powers. The collaboration would

3 prove a great opportunity for Petipa himself, for, although he had already brought Russian ballet to a remarkably high level, he had never had the chance to work with a composer of Tchaikovsky s stature. Tchaikovsky was delighted to accept the commission and, by all accounts, the three artists enjoyed a very close and cordial collaboration. They met frequently, conversing, incidentally, in French, a practice, as readers of Tolstoy will know, that was quite common among the Russian upper classes of the time. Tchaikovsky paid a number of visits to Petipa s house to play excerpts, while the choreographer experimented with various scenarios using papier-mâché figures. Tchaikovsky s enthusiasm for the project spurred him to work remarkably quickly. After beginning work near the end of 1888, he interrupted the project for a tour that included, among other places, London, Paris, Berlin, and Hamburg. In Hamburg he had a chance to hear a performance of his new Fifth Symphony as well as to enjoy a bibulous lunch with Johannes Brahms (we were quite drunk, he wrote), whom he had grown to like personally despite his distaste for his music. Returning to Russia after a brief side trip to Greece and Turkey, he worked intensely on the score, completing it on 7 June, The entire project was, by his own count, completed in 40 days, a remarkably short time for a full length ballet. The orchestration would require another two months. The premiere took place in January of 1890, to mixed critical reaction. Tchaikovsky, always touchy about his work, was disappointed by the Tsar s two word verdict : Very nice. Critics seem to have been puzzled by this ground-breaking new work. The rich score was thought by some to be too operatic, the severe demands on the dancers thought to be stunts appealing to low popular taste, and the exquisite sets and costumes too luxurious. Nevertheless, audience reaction was enthusiastic and it did not take long for Sleeping Beauty to become one of the staples of the repertoire. Today it is widely viewed as the most nearly perfect example of Romantic ballet. Although the three collaborators may all have been dedicated Francophiles, the result of their work was what Jennifer Homans in her beautifully written history of ballet, Apollo s Angels, calls the first truly Russian ballet. The new work combined the sophistication of the classical techniques which Petipa brought from his native France with native Russian concepts, all of which was fertilized by Tchaikovsky s matchlessly sumptuous and dramatic music. As Ms. Homans points out, the hyper-refined, luxurious design of the ballet matched the exquisite Easter eggs and other objets d art produced by the legendary designer Carl Gustav Fabergé, objects that were much coveted by the Romanoff family and, along with the gloriously otherworldly character of ballet, perhaps helped them to forget momentarily the growing political problems of the country that they ruled. For those needing re-acquaintance with the story, the tale is set in the sixteenth century and begins with the christening of the baby princess Aurora. The good fairies present their gifts to the child, but then the evil fairy Carabosse appears, incensed because she was not invited to the ceremony. She casts a spell on the princess, according to which the princess will grow to be beautiful, but will prick her finger and fall into an eternal sleep. The good Lilac Fairy mitigates the curse by saying that a handsome prince will discover her, wake her from her sleep with a kiss, and they will marry. Sure enough, sixteen years later at her coming out, when the princess sees an old woman (Carabosse in disguise) with a spindle, she takes it and pricks herself, falling into a deep sleep. The

4 Lilac Fairy causes the entire kingdom to fall asleep not for eternity but only for a hundred years, and in due course Prince Désiré finds the Princess, kisses her and thereby awakens her and the entire kingdom. He receives enthusiastic assent from the King and Queen to marry their daughter and all ends well in the third and final act. Here, at the wedding, the libretto introduces as guests some of Perrault s other Mother Goose characters such as Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, and Cinderella. Incidentally, it is no accident that the kingdom awakens at the end of the seventeenth century during the reign of Louis XIV. The Sun King was a passionate devotee of the art of the dance and it was at his court that many of the basic principles of ballet were established. The final Apotheosis of this ballet thus glorifies not only the king but the art that he helped to establish. Today s performance presents three excerpts form the ballet. The Introduction immediately presents us with two of the leading characters. The noisy, agitated music at the very beginning is the theme of the wicked fairy Carabosse, while the following gentle melody heard first in the English horn represents her polar opposite, the good Lilac Fairy. After the famous signature waltz comes the Pas d action, which is the famous Rose Adagio, one of the high points of the ballet. In this scene, the princess receives a rose from each of her four suitors, while performing the remarkable feat of standing en pointe on one leg, with the other fully extended. With or without her physical presence, Tchaikovsky s wonderfully dramatic music conveys the scene with both power and grace. * * * Suite from Swan Lake, op. 20a by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky Duration: Approximately 27 minutes First Performance: March 4, 1877 in Moscow Last ESO Performance: February 2011; Robert Hanson, conductor When Tchaikovsky accepted a commission in 1875 for a new ballet for the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, he knew full well that he would be working in a genre that was hardly in the best odor among serious musicians. Although the art of ballet itself had reached a remarkably high level in Russia, the sounds emanating from the orchestra pit were often of a decidedly lower artistic level than what was occurring onstage.with a few notable exceptions such as the French composer Leo Delibes, whose ballet scores delighted Tchaikovsky, much of nineteenth century ballet music was, not to put too fine a point on it, hackwork, filled with superficial picturesque effects and endless clichés. Tchaikovsky later admitted that he had accepted the commission primarily for the money 800 rubles, to be exact- although he did add the qualifier, I have always wanted to write this sort of thing. Whether writing for pecuniary or artistic reasons, the new work, Swan Lake, would be the richest and most complex ballet score yet written. Together with his two later ballets, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, these works

5 are the first elaborate, fully symphonic scores written specifically for ballet by a major symphonic composer and would bring Russian ballet in all senses into its Golden Age. The Golden Age had rather a rocky beginning, however. The premiere took place in Moscow in 1877, but received mixed critical reviews. By all accounts the opening performances were poorly mounted, with second rate choreography, poor scenery and costumes, and the music poorly rehearsed and performed. Much of the music was considered too complex for dancing and music by inferior composers was inserted into various parts of the score. Nevertheless, audience reaction was good enough to warrant some forty performances over the next few years, until the ballet was withdrawn from the repertoire in Given the fact that Swan Lake is today one of the most popular of all ballets, it is a sad irony that Tchaikovsky never had the opportunity to see a first-rate production during his lifetime. It would not be until 1895, two years after Tchaikovsky s death, that a highly polished production would take place. The production choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg was a great popular success and set the precedent for subsequent productions. Purists continue to lament the fact that these new versions played fast and loose with Tchaikovsky s original score, including the reordering of some numbers, elimination of others, and even some re-composition by another vastly inferior composer. Worst of all, Tchaikovsky s original tragic ending was turned into a Hollywood style happy ending. Nevertheless, despite some recent attempts at using Tchaikovsky s original score, the overwhelming popularity of the revised production continues to maintain it as the standard version. The writer of the libretto is unknown but the source is apparently from German folk tales. Tchaikovsky himself may actually have had some involvement in the development of the story for it is known that he had written a swan ballet some time earlier as home entertainment for his niece and nephew. In any case, the ballet is, briefly put, the sad tale of the beautiful Swan Queen Odette, who lives under a curse by the evil magician Rothbart and must spend her daylight days as one of a group of swans in a lake of tears. Only by night are they free to dance in the nearby ruins. The curse can be lifted only by an avowal of undying love made by someone who has never pledged himself to another. Prince Siegfried falls in love with Odette and asks her to attend a grand ball where they will announce their betrothal. Rothbart, however, overhears their plan and sends his evil daughter Odile, who looks exactly like Odette. Siegfried is completely deceived and dances the Black Swan pas de deux with Odile, declaring his love. Finally he realizes his mistake and rushes after Odette. Because he has pledged himself to another, he can no longer break the spell. Odette throws herself into the lake, and, as Siegfried follows, the couple die together. The suite heard today begins with the famous minor key Swan theme, here mournfully sung by the oboe but recurring throughout the ballet in various guises. After the well known Valse comes the White Swan pas de deux danced by Siegfried and Odette with her retinue of swans in the background. The beautifully ornamented violin solo is joined near the end by an eloquent cello. The Scène that follows contains highly agitated music illustrating the heartbroken Odette as she rushes into the arms of her friends and Siegfried as he pursues her through a storm. In the final scene, the Swan theme reappears in the full orchestra first in its original somber version in B minor but

6 then turning into a triumphant B major as the lovers drown and are united in death. A group of swans reappears on the lake as the curtain falls. * * *