orchestral

Ludwig van Beethoven | Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61

“Ideas for the Violin Concerto (1806) can be found in the same notebook that Ludwig van Beethoven was using for the Fifth Symphony,” (Nashville Symphony). “While the latter required several years to be hammered into being, he produced the concerto in a matter of months, in 1806. But Beethoven did keep his soloist, a friend named Franz Joseph Clement who had been a former prodigy, waiting until the very last minute; he completed the score barely in time for the premiere two days before Christmas.

Beethoven had written his piano concertos up to this time for himself as soloist, but here he tailored this piece to the musical personality of Clement, who was acclaimed for the delicacy and tender refinement of his style—aspects that Beethoven highlights throughout the piece. But for all the celebrity of the soloist, the work did not catch on right away. While not as outwardly radical as the Eroica, the Violin Concerto was path-breaking in its own way and may have disappointed concertgoers expecting a mere display piece. There are few documented performances over the next three decades or so, and the Violin Concerto had to wait for such advocates as Joseph Joachim.”

After beginning in D major, the orchestra shifts with a sudden burst of increased volume (1:02) to D minor. Many more shifts occur throughout, but this one takes place before the violin soloist’s part even begins. This frequently-programmed piece is quickly recognizable — even from this introductory section alone.

Camille Saint-Saens | Africa (op. 89)

French composer “Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was left bereft at the death of his mother in December 1888, and the cold winter winds in Paris persuaded him that perhaps a warmer climate might better suit him,” (Interlude.hk). “Accordingly, he left Paris for Algiers where he stayed until May 1889 – walking, reading, listening, but not composing. Finally, in late 1889, he went first to Cadiz, Spain, and then to Las Palmas to take a winter holiday in the Canary Islands. There, he took a hotel room not in his well-known name but under the same of Charles Sannois, businessman, locked himself in his room, and started to work.

… The resulting work, Africa, Op. 89, was the result of the time he spent in Algeria and Egypt, and, at the final climax, uses the melody Salam al-Bey, then the Tunisian national anthem … In addition to this version for piano and orchestra, Saint-Saëns also created a solo piano version which is extremely difficult as both the originally challenging piano part and the orchestra parts are resolved in the solo pianist’s part.”

Sticking to the orchestral version: after beginning in G minor, the piece shifts to Eb major during an animated cadenza section in or around the 1:58 mark.

Francis Poulenc | Concerto in D Minor for Two Pianos and an Orchestra

French composer Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) “… described himself, saying ‘I was born in Paris on 7 January 1899 and I studied piano under Vines and composition mostly from books, because I was feared being influenced by a teacher. [He allowed himself only one lesson with Ravel!] I read a lot of music and greatly pondered musical aesthetics,” (IndianapolisSymphony.org). “My four favorite composers, my only masters, are Bach, Mozart, Satie and Stravinsky. I don’t like Beethoven at all. I loathe Wagner. In general I am very eclectic, but while acknowledging that influence is a necessary thing, I hate those artists who dwell in the wake of the masters. Now, a crucial point. I am not a cubist musician, even less a futurist, and of course, not an Impressionist. I am a musician without a label.’ (In Praise of Poulenc, Fred Flaxman, WFMT 2002)

Poulenc dedicated his Concerto for Two Pianos to Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac, who was the twentieth child of Isaac Singer, inventor of the Singer sewing machine. Although born in Yonkers, New York, she grew up in Paris, and eventually presided over an influential salon, some say the most important avant-garde music salon in Paris between the wars. Poulenc (and the other members of Les Six) was a frequent visitor: along with Faure, Stravinsky, de Falla, Satie, Widor, Nadia Boulanger, Milhaud, Debussy, and many more. It was the crème de la crème. The social and musical power and presence of her salon as well as extraordinary life are well told in Music’s Modern Muse by Sylvia Kahan … Regarding his presence in Les Six, Stewart Gordon in A History of Keyboard Literature noted ‘Poulenc was the most consistent in developing and sustaining a style of directness, simplicity, clarity, and the inclusion of influences from popular music … ‘ The composer completed the work in three months (in 1932).

The piece begins with a restless introductory section, making liberal use of accidentals instead of written key signatures (probably just to save ink in noting rapidly shifting tonalities as they whiz by). But at the 5:40 mark, the piece falls squarely into Bb major for a section fittingly marked très calme. More changes in key follow.

Camille Saint-Saëns | Danse Macabre, Op. 40

“Camille Saint-Saëns was many things. Also a scholar and writer of wide-ranging interests and an equally wide-ranging traveler, he was a multifaceted musician who excelled as a keyboardist, composer, conductor, teacher, and editor,” (LAPhil.com). “He lived to scorn the work of Debussy and Stravinsky (among others) and is often regarded as a conservative – if not reactionary – composer. But in the early and middle years of his career Saint-Saëns championed the most progressive wing of contemporary music (including Schumann, Wagner, and Liszt) and his own music was often highly original in form and orchestration.

‘Danse Macabre’ (1874) is a case in point. It is one of four tone poems Saint-Saëns composed in the 1870s, all inspired to some degree by examples from Franz Liszt (whose own ‘Totentanz’ dates from 1849) and exploring both Liszt’s thematic transformation concept and novel instrumentation … The piece caused some predictable consternation on its premiere … but it also quickly became a popular hit. Liszt himself arranged it for piano not long after the premiere, and it soon found other keyboard transcriptions, including piano four hands and organ.”

The piece, originally written by the French composer for orchestra, is adapted here for guitar quartet and performed by the Quatuor Eclisses, an ensemble which formed at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris in the early 2010s. After an intro which briefly visits D major, the piece shifts to G minor for the first statement of its main theme (0:32). At 3:05, a middle section transitions into B major, growing more turbulent until 5:29, when the original theme (and primary key of G minor) return. (NOTE: The video embed looks like it won’t play, but it does!)

for Maurice

Sergei Prokofiev | Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor

“Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor begins with a lonely, lamenting statement in the solo violin,” (The Listeners Club). “It’s a strangely solitary voice which opens the door to an unsettling drama filled with chilly anxiety and occasional raw terror. In his program notes, the American violinist Stefan Jackiw … provides the following descriptive analysis of this opening:

‘Prokofiev puts the listener ill at ease right from the start. The piece opens with the solo violin alone, playing a foreboding melody in G minor that is based on a 5‐beat motive. We are used to hearing musical ideas that fall neatly into 2, 3, 4, or 6‐beat patterns. Five beats don’t feel comfortable. Furthermore, since the violin is alone, the orchestra gives the listener no additional context to find his bearings. When the orchestra finally comes in several bars later, it enters in a completely different tonality, further throwing the listener off balance and compounding the sense of unease. The movement closes with one of the most nihilistic statements in music I know: two short, dry pizzicati thuds from the entire orchestra, like a falling guillotine.’

Prokofiev wrote this music in 1935 as he was preparing to resettle in his native Russia after years abroad in Paris and the United States. In order to be repatriated, he needed to appease Stalin and his restrictive artistic ideals of ‘Soviet Realism.’ For Prokofiev, this meant abandoning the “decadent formalism” of his earlier enfant terrible years.”

Beginning in G minor, the first movement progresses through several phrases before shifting to C# minor at 0:57. Many other shifts in tonality follow, as this score-based video shows!

Hector Berlioz | Les Troyens

“Unappreciated and misunderstood in his lifetime (1803-1869), today the French composer’s music is instantly recognizable – and for a variety of reasons,” (CurtainGoingUp). “First for their coloristic elements (i.e., an exceptionally high quotient of woodwind, brass, choral and percussive effects), along with their originality, ingenuity and character. His output of operas and large-scale concert works – from the trailblazing The Damnation of Faust and Benvenuto Cellini, to his choral-symphonic Roméo et Juliette and comedic Beatrice and Benedict, as well as the reverent L’Enfance du Christ (“The Childhood of Christ”) and the massive Requiem – have all enjoyed a modern resurgence, with a handful or so belatedly joining the standard repertory, a most welcome inclusion.”

The Berlioz opera Les Troyens (The Trojans) is a five-hour epic in five acts. The performance here, “Chasse Royale et Orage,” is merely an orchestral excerpt. “Written between 1856 to 1858 and revised up to 1863, Les Troyens was Berlioz’s largest and most ambitious work, and the summation of his entire artistic career,” (HBerlioz.com). “Its origins go back to his childhood and his reading of Virgil’s Aeneid under his father’s instruction, as he recalls in his memoirs. Thereafter Virgil was never far from his thoughts – citations from the Roman poet abound throughout his writings …”

After a harmonically restless journey throughout, perhaps the clearest modulations in this section of the work shift from a brass feature in Bb major (5:29) to a more string-centric G minor (5:49) before a big fortissimo leap into Eb major at 6:26.

Good Morning (from “Singin’ in the Rain”)

“’Making Singin’ in the Rain and childbirth were the two hardest things I’ve ever done,’ Debbie Reynolds wrote in her 2013 memoir, Unsinkable,” (Slate). “’The movie was actually harder, because it hurt me everywhere, mostly my brain and my feet.’ Reynolds was only 19 when she was cast alongside Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor in what would become one of the greatest Hollywood musicals … But she had no training in dance, and she was about to share the screen with two of Hollywood’s greatest hoofers. ‘I wasn’t a dancer,’ Reynolds wrote, ‘and I had three months to learn what Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor had been doing for years.’

Reynolds’ preparation was arduous, and Kelly, who co-directed Singin’ with Stanley Donen, was a stern and unforgiving taskmaster who had opposed Reynolds being cast in the part. At one point, according to Unsinkable, she wound up crying under the piano in one of MGM’s rehearsal rooms, where she was comforted by no less than Fred Astaire. ‘You’re not going to die,’ Astaire told Reynolds. ‘That’s what it’s like to learn to dance. If you’re not sweating, you’re not doing it right.’” It’s riveting to watch Reynolds, well known as a triple threat, keep up with dance legends Kelly and O’Connor — particularly given that the number was shot over a single 15-hour day.

“Singin’ in the Rain (1952) is the best musical of all time, according to the prestigious American Film Institute,” (The Guardian). “West Side Story came in at number two, followed by The Wizard of Oz and Cabaret.”

After a start in B major, we shift to G# major at 1:01. Several other key changes follow, beautifully presented by full orchestra.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=GB2yiIoEtXw%3Frel%3D0%26enablejsapi%3D1