Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Programme Notes Online Pops Series Valentine s Classics Wednesday 14 February 2018 7.30pm PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893) Romeo and Juliet: Fantasy Overture A passionate story of doomed love in a violent world the tale of Romeo and Juliet was made for Tchaikovsky. Yet the idea for this overture wasn t even his own. In January 1868, he d met Mily Balakirev, the eccentric, domineering leader of the St Petersburg circle of Russian nationalist composers. Early the following year, Balakirev proposed a Romeo and Juliet overture, and sent Tchaikovsky an outline of how such a piece might be composed. He even wrote the first four bars of a suggested opening just to get Tchaikovsky started! It worked. Tchaikovsky s inspiration ignited and he wrote the overture in barely two months October and November 1869. As its title implies, the overture isn t a blow-by-blow re-telling of Shakespeare, but a fantasy inspired by the main themes of the drama violence, reconciliation, and, of course, love. The solemn introduction depicts the wise and compassionate character of Friar Laurence, whose pleas for peace are shattered by the main Allegro of the overture a savage and fast-moving portrayal of the war between Montagues and Capulets. Out of this emerges, with growing passion, the great sweeping love-theme of Romeo and Juliet. Its hushed, gently rocking continuation evokes the Italian summer night, before the conflict resumes, the love theme rises to an even more passionate height, and the final tragedy unfolds. As both families stand,
stricken, around the dead lovers, the music slows once more and Friar Laurence speaks his final, consoling words. Richard Bratby 2018 SERGEI RACHMANINOV (1873-1943) Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.14 Moderato / At a moderate speed Adagio sostenuto / Slow, sustained Allegro scherzando / Fast, playful Conducting the premiere of the First Symphony by a 24-year-old Moscow composer on the night of 27 March 1897, Alexander Glazunov may have been drunk or just hung over but the performance was a disaster, and the composer, Sergei Rachmaninov, had fled the hall even before it finished. The symphony was never again played in Rachmaninov s lifetime, and his confidence was so shattered that he found himself unable to compose. Friends tried to lift his spirits by arranging a meeting with his idol, Tolstoy but the cantankerous old genius, rather missing the point, simply asked Rachmaninov who needs music like this? By now Rachmaninov was deeply depressed. In desperation, he agreed to undergo treatment with Dr Nikolai Dahl, a pioneering hypnotherapist. It worked. Under Dahl s guidance, Rachmaninov began his first new work in three years a concerto for his own instrument, the piano. You will work freely and easily, Dahl repeated to Rachmaninov, the concerto will be of excellent quality. So it was. Rachmaninov tried out the last two movements at a charity concert, and the response was so good that he finished the first movement in a fraction of the time. The complete concerto was premiered in Moscow on 9 November 1901... and need one say more? In 115 years its popularity has survived the launch of three more Rachmaninov concertos, critical snobbery, blatant imitation (Addinsell s Warsaw Concerto) and of course Brief Encounter!
Rachmaninov himself played it with the Liverpool Phil in the late 1930s. The Second Concerto didn t just re-launch Rachmaninov s career; it gave him his musical voice. The ill-fated Symphony remains a powerful work but it s very different from the Rachmaninov we know now. With its velvet-dark colours, haunting melodies and broad, eloquent paragraphs, the Second Concerto is the first work that sounds like the Rachmaninov of the Classic FM Hall of Fame. And Dahl was right it really is of excellent quality. From that hypnotic opening chain of piano chords, the first movement rises in a great arch to a martial, trumpet-topped climax and down again. The second turns Orthodox chants (clarinet) into a dreamily romantic nocturne with a glittering firework display at its centre. And the finale speeds breathlessly through the night with three pauses for that tune. There s little in music to match the thrill of its final, triumphant return, as the glittering piano crowns a great orchestral surge and then races for the finish. You ll hear Rachmaninov s signature the rhythm of his name in the very last bar. Richard Bratby 2016 SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953) Romeo and Juliet, Op.64: Suite suite chosen by Martin Yates Montagues and Capulets The Child Juliet Dance Romeo and Juliet (Balcony Scene) Death of Tybalt Romeo and Juliet before parting Romeo at Juliet s Tomb
Prokofiev s music for Romeo and Juliet has always had a life in the concert hall. Although it was eventually recognised as the greatest ballet score by any Russian composer since Tchaikovsky and the most inspired of all ballets on Shakespearean themes it was initially rejected by both of the leading Soviet theatres, the Kirov (now Mariinsky) in 1935 and the Bolshoi in 1936. The composer s reaction to the setback was to compile a Romeo and Juliet concert suite, which was first performed with much success in Moscow in November 1936. The ballet still not having reached the stage by the following year, Prokofiev put together not only a second orchestral suite of seven dances, this time for Leningrad (now St Petersburg), but also a set of ten piano pieces which he himself introduced to the audience in Moscow. The strategy was effective at least in that, by a quirk of history, it led to a staging of the ballet by the Yugoslav National Ballet in Brno in Czechoslovakia in 1938. It was not seen in Russia, however, until the Kirov condescended to present it in 1940 and, although the Kirov version was also performed in Moscow, the Bolshoi mounted its own production only in 1946 in anticipation of which Prokofiev compiled the third and last of Romeo and Juliet orchestral suites. The problem with Prokofiev s orchestral suites is that it is sometimes difficult to follow the story of the ballet through them which is one reason why it is now common for conductors, each of whom has his favourite excerpts, to compile their own suites. Martin Yates s not far from chronological choice of movements begins dramatically, like the composer s second suite, with The Montagues and the Capulets and the fateful succession of chords which accompany the Prince s warning to the two feuding families: If ever you disturb our streets again / your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace, as Shakespeare has it. The scene changes to the ball at the house of the Capulets, where the knights dance in aggressively heavy-footed rhythms and where Juliet dances with Paris (whom her parents have chosen as her bridegroom) to a graceful variant of the same Capulet theme,
gliding with the flute on viola glissandi and turning in quietly expressive chromatic harmonies. The Child Juliet comes from somewhat earlier in the ballet during the preparations for the Capulet ball where for the first time she is to meet Romeo, a Montague who has to keep his identity secret. She is introduced here in a state of playful innocence, running in semiquavers with the violins and clapping her hands to staccato chords on woodwind; and yet, as the clarinet indicates, she is not lacking in sentiment and, on the subject of her forthcoming and unwelcome marriage to Paris, not unthoughtful either. The lively Dance which forms part of a street carnival in the second act is also included in Prokofiev s second suite. The tenderly expressive Romeo and Juliet, from Prokofiev s first suite, opens with the ballet s equivalent of the Balcony Scene. Set in a delicate nocturnal atmosphere created by harp and muted strings, it introduces Romeo s theme on solo violins and Juliet s nervous answer on flute. It incorporates also an ardent passage identified by Prokofiev in the ballet score as the Love Dance, where another Romeo melody is developed to an amorous climax before subsiding into sweet sorrow. As in Prokofiev s first suite, the amorous atmosphere is cruelly dispatched by the violent events associated with the Death of Tybalt Mercutio s ill-advised sword fight with Juliet s brother Tybalt, Romeo s angered reprisal on Tybalt with its fifteen fatal blows, and the dramatic second-act finale in which the Capulets mourn Tybalt and swear vengeance on the Montagues. Romeo and Juliet before Parting, featured in Prokofiev s second suite, comes from after they have been secretly married by Friar Laurence. They awaken in Juliet s chamber to the song of the lark and take their leave of each other amidst a frankly operatic orgy of melody, including a rhapsody on the Love Dance introduced here on a solo viola before it is taken up by a passionately expressive saxophone.
In an effort to avoid her still expected marriage to Paris, Juliet has taken a potion which allows her to feign death and which, after a miscalculation by the helpful Friar Laurence, is so efficacious that it convinces not only Juliet s parents but also, tragically, Romeo himself. In Romeo at Juliet s Tomb, which ends the second suite, he enters the Capulet crypt after the departure of the family mourners. Taking Juliet s apparently dead body in his arms, he guides her for the last time through their Love Dance and kills himself. When she awakens Juliet finds Romeo dead beside her. She too recalls the Love Dance but only a ghostly echo of it high on violins before, according to the stage directions, she dies slowly. Gerald Larner 2018 MAURICE RAVEL (1875-1937) Boléro How do you write 15 minutes of orchestral music in just four months? For most composers this wouldn t be a problem, but not for the painstaking Maurice Ravel he typically needed two years to conceive and complete an orchestral score. He certainly wasn t planning on doing any composing during his summer holiday of 1928; Ravel meant to spend a relaxing couple of months orchestrating Spanish piano pieces by Albéniz as the score for a ballet, Fandango, for the choreographer Ida Rubinstein. It was to be premiered in November. So when he received the news, in June 1928, that Albéniz publishers had refused him copyright permission to orchestrate the pieces in question, he was first furious My holiday is ruined these laws are idiotic! and then panic-stricken. Rubinstein still needed her Spanish score and Ravel now faced the tightest deadline of his career. A few days later, while swimming at his holiday home in St Jeande-Luz, Ravel hit on a simple but brilliant solution. He d take two of his childhood fascinations the sounds of his father s machine
factory and his mother s Basque folksongs and build a piece out of one Spanish-style melody and a repeated, machine-like rhythm. Don t you think this tune has something insistent about it? he asked a friend. I m going to try and repeat it a good few times without development while gradually building it up with my very best orchestration. Which is precisely what he did. Ravel s orchestration wrings every last drop from this very basic material, with 15 minutes of repetition in which, ingeniously (and incredibly) not a single bar is actually repeated exactly. It doesn t even change key not, that is, until the very last page of music when Ravel suddenly unleashes a quarter-hour s worth of bottled-up tension and the piece crashes to a halt. Renamed Boléro, the finished ballet was first performed in Paris on 22 November 1928, to rapturous applause. Even Ravel was taken aback by Boléro s success. He was still puzzled years later, commenting I have written only one masterpiece. Alas, it contains no music. Hearing of an audience member who walked out of a performance with cries of He s mad!, his response was even more wry. Aha, he observed. She understands! Richard Bratby 2018