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Joshua Bell
October 4, 2007
Click on the  to hear the musical examples.
George Enescu
1881-1955 |
Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 IN A Major, Op.11, No.1
George Enescu
Except for the two Romanian Rhapsodies, composer, conductor and violinist George Enescu is not a household name outside his native country. A man of divided loyalties, he spent a good part of his life studying and working in France, and much of his music reflects the musical trends of his adopted country during the turn of the 20th century.
Enescu was an amazingly versatile musician. Besides being an outstanding violinist and conductor, he was a virtuoso pianist, played the cello and viola (he once took part in a string quartet where he played each instrument in turn.) According to Noel Malcolm he once conducted Wagner’s Siegfried in Bucharest, singing the role of Wotan from the podium when the singer became ill.
The two Romanian Rhapsodies, composed in 1901-2, are homage to Romania’s native music and dance and do not reflect the style of the bulk of Enescu’s compositions. Returning home from studies in France, he was captivated by Gypsy style of violin playing that he heard around Bucharest, especially that of the Dinicu family (Grigoras Dinicu’s “Hora Staccato” for violin and piano was a popular encore made famous by Jasha Heifetz.) He became familiar with the folk dances and folk melodies of Romania’s many subcultures but did not laboriously record them for scholarly purposes as did Béla Bartók.
In the Romanian Rhapsody in A Major Enescu tried, through imaginative orchestration, to imitate the techniques and unique sounds of the native instruments used in folk dances. The Rhapsody opens with “improvised” alternating solos for clarinet oboe and flute. imitating the cobza, a plucked folk instrument. The work is episodic, going through a series of dances from typical urban “café music fare” to the popular rural ciocalia, in which the musicians try to imitate the sounds of birds. Typical of dance rhapsodies, the music becomes increasingly frenetic – almost as if the instruments of the orchestra are a troupe of gypsy violinists competing with each other.
Max Bruch
1836-1920 |
Violin Concerto No.1 IN g minor, Op.26
Max Bruch
One of the hallmarks of 19th century romanticism in music was the rise of the virtuoso violin or piano soloist, especially under the influence of those two great showmen, Niccoló Paganini and Franz Liszt. The result was an insatiable demand for new virtuosic concertos, and nearly every composer of the period tried his hand at satisfying this demand. Some of these composers are remembered today mainly for their contribution to this genre.
Among these musicians was German composer, conductor and music teacher Max Bruch. One of the minor figures of German late Romanticism, he spent most of career moving in Germany from one minor post to another as composer, teacher and conductor. Only in 1891 were his talents finally recognized and he became professor of composition at the prestigious Berlin Conservatory.
Bruch was a musical conservative who, drawing his inspiration from Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, had little use for the musical innovations of the late 19th century. Since his youth, he had been a prodigious composer best known for his choral works. Today, however, he is remembered mainly for his Violin Concerto in g minor, his Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, and for Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra, based on a melody from the Jewish Yom Kippur liturgy.
Bruch started the G minor Violin Concerto in 1857, but finished it only in 1866. Immediately after the premiere he revised the manuscript upon the advice of the great violinist Joseph Joachim, who premiered the revised version two years later. Joachim called it the “richest and most seductive” of the romantic violin concertos.
Originally, Bruch called the first movement Introduzione-Fantasia because, lacking much of a development section, it does not conform to the traditional sonata form; he finally settled on the simpler title, Prelude. The melancholy mood of the first movement is intensified by the slow tempo and brooding presence of the timpani, which opens the movement and literally provides a heartbeat throughout. The Adagio, which follows without pause is the heart of the whole work, intensifying the emotional tone set in the previous movement. The fiery Finale, Allegro Energetico is aptly named. Its pyrotechnics may have inspired Brahms, whose Violin Concerto came over ten years later.
Aaron Copland
1900-1990 |
Suite from the Ballet Billy the Kid
Aaron Copland
During his long career, Aaron Copland composed in many diverse styles: scores for films (The Red Pony, Our Town, The Heiress); works incorporating jazz (Piano Concerto, Music for the Theater); and serial (12-tone) compositions (Piano Quartet, Piano Fantasy). But the works by which he is best known are his three American ballets: Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1943).
In his early works from the 1920s, for example his Piano Concerto of 1926, Copland used a jazzy, hard-edged musical language, culminating in his highly dissonant Variations for Piano of 1930. The public refused to accept these works, especially the Piano Concerto: not since the premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in 1911 has a premiere generated so much controversy, not to mention invective, as its premiere in January 1927 in Boston, under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky.
By the mid-1930s Copland began to feel “an increasing dissatisfaction with the relation of the music-loving public and the living composer.” In order to reach a wider audience he started to simplify his style, making it more accessible, but without sacrificing sound artistic values. The first work in this more popular vein was El Salón Mexico in 1936. The second was Billy the Kid.
In 1938 Lincoln Kirstein, director of the American Ballet Caravan, became fascinated by a biography of the outlaw known as Billy the Kid (real name William Bonney), and approached Copland with the idea for a ballet. Copland, who admitted that he frankly disliked cowboy songs, agreed to try when he learned that Billy the Kid was originally from New York City. Incongruously, Copland spent the summer in Paris with a package of cowboy songs, working on the Western ballet. He finished it in September at the MacDowell colony in New Hampshire. It was premiered in Chicago in October of that year but accompanied by two pianos only. The Ballet with full orchestra finally premiered in New York in May 1939. It was a smashing success and has remained an audience favorite ever since.
In the summer of 1939 Copland compiled an orchestral suite from the ballet in which he used about two-thirds of the original music. Among the noteworthy features of Copland's orchestration is his use of the upper winds and muted trumpet in imitation of the harmonica. The six connected movements of the suite, which match the action sequence of the ballet, are:
“The Open Prairie:” Copland's characteristic open fifths, which have come to symbolize the open spaces of the American West, depict the land as yet undisturbed by the violence of man.
“Street in a Frontier Town:” Copland captures the bustle and energy of the town in a medley of cowboy songs. The first one, played by solo piccolo, is based on the tune "Great Granddad." It is followed by a lively original melody. A theme on muted trumpets playing a semitone apart represents a fight between two drunks in the ballet. The Mexican dance is probably the most famous of the Billy the Kid themes. Copland's source was "Come Wrangle yer Bronco." The final tune, based on "Git along Little Doggies," concludes the scene.
“Card Game at Night:” This gentle nocturne belies the conflict one would expect at a card game, but it sets up the audience for the shock of the gun battle. It is based on "Oh Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie."
”Gun Battle:” A volley of timpani, bass trombone and snare drum gunshots ring out over a brief melodic motive for muted trumpet. As the movement closes, they become slower and fade into the distance.
“Celebration after Billy’s Capture:” The celebration is hardly an orchestral extravaganza, rather a folksy dance in which the instruments play the tune in two different keys a semitone apart.
“Billy’s Demise:” This gentle melody is almost nostalgic, as the outlaw's death fixes him in legend. The Open Prairie theme returns, the seemingly endless expanse once again undisturbed and unchanging.
Conspicuously absent, however, is Home on the Range. “I had to draw the line somewhere,” Copland remarked.
Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2007
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