Audio Notes

< Back to Audio Notes

Rachmaninoff's Paganini Rhapsody
February 1, 2, & 3, 2008

Click on the to hear the musical examples.

Modest Musorgsky 1839-1881

“Dawn on the Moskva River ”
(Prelude to the opera Khovanshchina)
Modest Musorgsky

Modest Musorgsky, one of the mavericks of 19th century Russian music, left very few completed scores by the time of his early death from alcoholism. Of his meager output, the opera Boris Godunov, some of his songs, the short orchestral score St. John's Night on Bald Mountain and the piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition, were completed at his death and have stood the test of time. They now are considered among the highlight of Russian 19th century music. Musorgsky was a proponent of Russian nationalism, and he was a member of the “Mighty Five,” together with Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, Cesar Cui and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, whose goal was to further the pan-Slavic movement and Russian nationalist music.

Musorgsky’s opera Khovanshchina was left incomplete and unorchestrated at his death. It is a bloody story of intrigue surrounding the ascension to the throne of Peter the Great. As was his wont, Rimsky-Korsakov finished and orchestrated it, and it was finally premiered in 1886. Musicians and audiences found fault with Rimsky-Korsakov’s efforts, both with his orchestration and his many cuts. Other composers, including Stravinsky and Ravel, tried their hand at completing it, but gave up. Finally in 1959, Shostakovich brought out a version without cuts that has met general approval. A performance at the Met in 1972 was probably the first uncut performance ever.

The orchestral prelude, describing the dawn over Moscow's Red Square with a view towards the river, has become popular as a separate tone poem, although in the opera the curtain rises after the first 22 bars. Its serene melody contrasts sharply with the bloody action that follows. In Rimsky-Korsakov's orchestration, the melody is repeated in a series of beautiful solo opportunities for the upper woodwinds.

Dmitri Shostakovich 1906-1975

Symphony No. 1, in f minor, Op. 10
Dmitry Shostakovich

Volumes have been written about Dmitry Shostakovich and his ambivalent relationship with the Soviet regime. Much of this writing is based on after-the-fact statements whose authenticity and veracity is often difficult to verify. What is clear is that the composer was a true son of the Russian Revolution and, as teenager, a true believer. But in his late twenties he became caught up in the Stalinist nightmare and apparently only survived the purges because Stalin liked the music Shostakovich obediently churn out for propaganda films.

Shostakovich came from a music-loving family and young Dmitry was exposed to good music from a young age. Upon starting piano lessons – admittedly with extreme reluctance – at age nine, he immediately displayed a level of innate talent, including perfect pitch, advanced sight-reading and, most important, a nearly “photographic” musical memory. At age 13 in 1919, he entered the Leningrad Conservatory, unsure whether he wanted to become a pianist or composer. However conditions were so dire in the struggling new Soviet regime that the slight, nearsighted prodigy suffered from anemia and malnutrition, despite special food rations for talented students.

It was his outstanding composition teacher Maximilian Steinberg who encouraged him and promoted Shostakovich’s meteoric rise to fame. It was for the graduation project for Steinberg’s composition class in December 1925 that Shostakovich composed his First Symphony. He had been working on it for a year and a half, but his efforts were continually interrupted when the death of his father and economic necessity forced him to earn money by accompanying silent films on the piano. Although it was technically a student work, it flew in the face of both the Russian academic tradition and the style established by the last generation of Russian masters, the “Mighty Five.” An interesting exercise is to contrast this idiosyncratic symphony with the First Symphony of Prokofiev, "The Classical," composed only a few years earlier in 1918.

The premiere in May 1926 by the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Nikolai Malko, created a sensation; the Scherzo had to be encored. Conductor Bruno Walter shortly thereafter conducted the work in Berlin, and two years late Leopold Stokowski conducted it with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

With its combination of musical irony and intense pathos, the First Symphony foreshadows many of the composer’s subsequent works. Shostakovich himself called the music of the first two movements “Symphonie -grotesque,” poking fun at academic tradition – even in the orchestration with prominent parts for both piano and saxophone. Later in his career, the “grotesque” elements would come to represent the repressive forces of Soviet politics, particularly the figure of Joseph Stalin. Even if his “hidden” musical symbolism was unknown, his musical acerbity and dissonant harmony periodically got him into trouble with the Soviet authorities. With the third movement, Lento, however, the mood turns somber, and in the last movement – threatening and tragic.

While the opening movement contains all the external trappings of sonata allegro form, Shostakovich presents them tongue in cheek. Instead of a somber slow introduction, he opens the symphony with an understated fanfare, whose theme is taken up by small instrumental groups in turn, and finally turned upside down by the violas. In a move he may have learned from Haydn, he goes on to incorporate the little theme into the main sonata allegro section of the movement, which begins with a jaunty march. The second theme, which demands a contrast according to classical principles, is a waltz for solo flute.

Shostakovich carries the playful mood into the Scherzo, which, like the preceding movement, bears a relationship to the standard form, only to thumb its nose at it. Instead of coming out with the main theme intact, Shostakovich merely hints at it, presenting bits of it at a time, only later the entire theme. There is, however, a proper trio section. But instead of maintaining it with a completely separate existence from the Scherzo, Shostakovich makes the climax of the movement a contrapuntal combination of the two themes with full orchestra, concluding with three emphatic piano chords.

Both Shostakovich and Prokofiev are known for the gripping pathos of their slow movements, which later in both careers came to represent laments for the victims of oppression and war. The Lento opens with an exceptionally long solo oboe theme, answered by a solo cello, only a small part of which is given here.   A second theme in the violins, closely related to the first, is punctuated by a brief trumpet fanfare, which recurs throughout the movement. While the oboe theme suggests lonely melancholy, Shostakovich builds the emotional intensity to a more universal level by building up the orchestration.

The question remains as to what it was about Shostakovich’s world at age 19 that contributed to the creation of such a personally prescient piece. Spurious reports of the ten-year-old Dmitry witnessing the brutal slaying of a child by a policeman at a workers’ demonstration made their way into the composer’s “official” biography. Yet, even if such a single incident cannot be verified, the boy certainly was witness – if even indirectly – to the human carnage of the early years of the Revolution, where lists of “Enemies of the People” who had been executed were plastered on billboards throughout Petrograd (later Leningrad). The melancholy oboe theme and trumpet fanfare in the third movement and, in the fourth, the mournful introduction with its bass drum “gunshots,” the solo violin and saxophone laments, the trumpet calls and the return of the timpani tattoo bear musical witness to a life of menace and deprivation.

On the other hand, the composer, who later in life described in detail his extra-musical symbolism and coded writing, never spoke of any political significance for his First Symphony. Perhaps the dismal finale merely reflected the young composer’s mood at the moment. He wrote in a letter:

“I am in a terrible mood. I cannot find a room in Moscow. I cannot find work...The horrid town of Moscow doesn’t want to nurture me in its cradle. Its teeming masses make a terrible impression on me...but nevertheless, I want to go there with all my soul. So there. Sometimes I just want to shout. To cry out in terror. Doubts and problems, all this darkness, suffocate me. From sheer misery, I’ve started to compose the Finale of the Symphony – it’s turning out pretty gloomy…”

Whatever the extra-musical meaning embedded in the Symphony, it is clear that even at this early stage, Shostakovich’s musical language of despair was already well formed.

The Finale is a study in contrasts and mood swings. It opens almost as a continuation of the third movement, again with an oboe theme. But in a sudden about-face, Shostakovich returns to his grotesque mood with a clarinet theme that recalls the allegro theme from the first movement. This digression is cut short by the aforementioned "gunshots." It is only at this point that the main theme of the movement is revealed, first angrily blared out in the orchestra, but immediately morphing into a lament for solo violin. One more blast of the theme is cut short by a funereal timpani tattoo, whose rhythm recalls the trumpet motive from the Lento, echoed by the violin and trumpet. Although the Russian and later Soviet symphonic traditions demanded upbeat – even celebratory – conclusions, Shostakovich attenuates his with a level of dissonant bombast that smacks of the mockery of the first two movements.

Sergey Rachmaninoff 1873-1943

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43
Sergey Rachmaninoff

Sergey Rachmaninoff grew up in a musical family, middle-class but under strained economic conditions. His gifts as a pianist were recognized early, but he always wanted to compose and considered himself a composer first, pianist second. Already established as a performer, he gained instant fame as a composer at age 19 with his Prelude in c-sharp minor, a work that haunted him all his life because audiences always expected (and demanded) it as an encore to his concerts.

The premiere performance of Rachmaninoff's First Symphony took place in St. Petersburg in 1897. It was a dismal failure, in large part due to the shoddy conducting of Alexander Glazunov, who was drunk. The disappointment brought on a severe depression, and for three years Rachmaninoff was unable to do any significant composing. Finally in 1900 he went for therapy and hypnosis to Dr. Nikolay Dahl. The result was one of the first well-known successes of modern psychotherapy. Rachmaninoff was consequently able to return to creative work on his Second Piano Concerto, dedicated to Dahl. Relapses into depression dogged Rachmaninoff, however, for the rest of his life. And significantly, all his large instrumental compositions, as well as most of the rest of his oeuvre, are in minor keys.

For 25 years Rachmaninoff managed to divide his time comfortably among composing, conducting and performing, with composing having priority. But this idyllic life was changed drastically in 1917 by the Russian Revolution which, as a conservative and traditionalist, he viewed with horror. He left the country with his family in 1917, never to return, eventually settling in the United States. His sources of income having dried up, he became a full-time pianist for the rest of his life, leaving him little time to compose.

One of Rachmaninoff’s late works was the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, composed in 1934, a set of variations based on the twenty-fourth Caprice from Paganini’s Caprices for Violin Solo, Op.1. This Caprice – itself a set of bravura variations – has also served such diverse composers as Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, Schnittke and Lutoslawski. Rachmaninoff played the premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra in Baltimore under the baton of Leopold Stokowski.

The piece opens with an introduction that hints at the theme to come, followed by the first variation (which he labeled “precedente”), a skeletal version of the theme itself, using only the first note of each of Paganini’s measures. (Beethoven had used a similar device to open the set of variation in the Finale of the Symphony No. 3 (Eroica), a stunningly novel approach for the time.) Only afterwards does Rachmaninoff present the theme in full, following it with 23 more variations and a mischievous two-measure coda. The Variations give the pianist the same kind of virtuosic workout as its model did for showman Paganini.

In the Rhapsody Rachmaninoff reveals an inventiveness, and even an uncharacteristic sense of humor, that made it an instant success with audiences and pianists alike. While the Paganini variations concentrate on virtuosic pyrotechnics, Rachmaninoff, imbues the little tune with a wide array of eccentric rhythms (Var. 2), clever harmonizations (Var. 15) and changing moods. (Var. 8) Yet however much a variation appears to stray from the theme, the underlying harmonic structure remains constant.

Among the most interesting variations is Variation 7 with the appearance of the Dies Irae from the Catholic Mass for the Dead. It is a theme that recurs frequently in Rachmaninoff’s music, usually in the most somber contexts, but here it has a decidedly tongue-in-cheek character:  Conveniently, the chant melody fits exactly the simple harmonic structure of the Paganini theme. The Dies irae recurs in later variations, but always balanced by the main theme and never imposing its somber atmosphere on the composition as a whole.

The second highlight occurs in Variation 18. Nearly all of Rachmaninoff’s music is in minor keys. Yet, “compelled” by tradition to compose at least one variation in the opposite mode, he accentuated the contrast by not only composing Variation 18 in the major mode, but inverting the theme as well. Listeners often think of this variation as a totally new theme. And indeed, it bears a striking similarity to the composer's romantic second themes in his symphonies and piano concerti.

Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov 1844-1908

Capriccio espagnol , Op.34
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

In the development and maintenance of the tradition of Russian nationalist music, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov occupies a place of honor. From 1871, when he joined the faculty of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, until his death, he taught and encouraged nearly every young Russian composer, from Glazunov and Arensky to Stravinsky and Prokofiev. After the death of Borodin and Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov edited and completed – and “corrected” – their manuscripts, especially their operas, and had them published. He also helped publish the works of many other less famous Russian composers.

Rimsky-Korsakov was particularly fond of “ethnic” pieces, creating compositions with Russian, Central Asiatic, Italian and Spanish castes. In spite of the fact that his acquaintance with Spain was minimal – as a naval cadet in 1864-65, he spent three days in Cadiz – he felt sufficiently comfortable with its folk idiom to compose the symphonic suite Capriccio espagnol. The work started life as a movement in a planned fantasia for violin and piano, but during the summer of 1887 he abandoned the idea, completely revising and orchestrating the sketches. From its premiere in October 1887, it was a spectacular success particularly among orchestra players, who get hefty solo riffs.

Rimsky-Korsakov borrowed the themes and harmonies from a collection of authentic Spanish songs, transforming them with multicolored, sonorous orchestration. According to the composer, it is nothing more than “a purely superficial, effective composition of sparkling, lively color…The opinion formed...that the Capriccio is an unusually well-orchestrated piece, is incorrect: the Capriccio is a brilliant composition for the orchestra. The change of timbres, the happy selection of melodic designs and figuration, exactly adapted to each kind of instrument, the brief virtuoso cadenzas for each instrument...all constitute the very essence of the composition, not its mere dressing up.” In other words, don’t probe it for deep meaning.

The five movements begin with: “Alborada” (a Spanish morning song), which serves as a kind of musical glue to give unity to the piece. There follows a set of five variations, which are more variations in mood than bravura showpieces. The “Alborada” then repeated in a different key. The “Scene and Gypsy Song,” features a series of faux-improvisatory orchestral solos that serve as a workup into to the principal theme. The "Fandango, " a couples dance in triple time traditionally accompanied by guitar and castanets, completes the group. At the end a presto reprise of the “Alborada” returns as the coda.

Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2007

< Back to Audio Notes