October 24 Program: Atlantic Crossing
Comments by Music Director John Thomas Dodson
The ASO begins its Classical Concert Series with a program of music from France, Spain, and America. It also features the return of violinist Kurt Nikkanen, concertmaster of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, who played Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Piano two seasons ago.
We start with Debussy’s ground-breaking Impressionist work, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. After the Debussy, Kurt joins us for Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, a concerto for violin inspired by the music of Spain.
The program continues with a world première. Many of you heard Kenneth Fuchs’s music last season, and we will give the first performance of his new work for orchestra, Atlantic Riband. This is a piece depicting the days of the great ocean liners that traversed the Atlantic, competing for the banner awarded to the fastest ship. We finish with music taken from a ballet depicting the great passion of Spanish music.
Comments by Composer-in-Residence Kenneth Fuchs
Atlantic Riband
The great ocean liners of the Twentieth Century made a lasting impression on me. As a boy growing up in the 1960’s, I made many visits to the piers of New York Harbor. Standing on the edge of the sea wall and gazing up at the massive prow of a liner preparing to set sail across the Atlantic was an unforgettable experience. I can still smell the ocean brine, the oil, and the rope. I can see the bustle of activity on the pier and the Moran tugboats positioning themselves to move the great liner out into the Hudson River. And I can hear the deafening blasts of the ship’s horn, as the moorings were unfastened.
I visited all the great flagships of the Cunard Line, French Line, Italian-American Line, Holland-America Line, and United States Line. I had a special fondness for the S.S. United States, a marvel of American engineering and technology, which captured the Blue Riband (for the fastest transatlantic crossing) on its maiden voyage in July 1952. The ship crossed the Atlantic from New York to Southampton in three days and 10 hours, breaking all previous records, making it the fastest ship afloat. To this day, that record has never been broken.
The quest for speed across the Atlantic was the principal reason these ships were built. Until the jet age overtook them, they were vessels of commerce, industry, and travel. In the words of maritime historian John Maxtone-Graham, they were “the only way to cross.”
Although a purely abstract musical composition, Atlantic Riband can also be heard as an homage to an important era in United States history. In the form of an orchestral showpiece, the work expresses the energy and optimism — as well as the foreboding, mystery, and danger — of the ocean-going enterprise. The shipping lanes of the nearly unfathomable North Atlantic were not only crucial to commerce and industry, but also held promise for millions of immigrants. It is their hopeful struggle and ultimate victory of crossing the Atlantic in search of a new life that I wish to express in music.
Atlantic Riband is cast in one movement with two distinct sections. The principal musical elements of the entire composition — the intervals of an dominant seventh chord played as an arpeggio by the vibraphone, followed by three bi-tonal orchestral chords — emerge at the outset from a hushed orchestral texture. In the following fast section, marked Allegro energico, these motives are extended and taken up in various melodic and harmonic combinations and provide the basis for musical development and transformation throughout the remainder of the composition.
Atlantic Riband is dedicated to my maternal grandfather, Joseph Cornelius Van Hoek (1898–1989), who emigrated from Rotterdam to the United States with his family in 1911. His father served as an engineer for the Holland-America Line. The work was composed from February through June 2008 in Mansfield Center, Connecticut.
Program Notes by Beryl McHenry
Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun”
Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918)
Afternoon of a Faun
by Leon Bakst
“The Afternoon of a Faun” is a poem written in 1876 by Stephan Mallarmé, a Parisian poet who was part of the movement away from traditional poetic form at that time. The poem itself was sensuous and erotic in content, a definite departure from the poetry of its day. Debussy met Mallarmé in 1890 at one of the poet’s Salons, informal gatherings where artists met to discuss their work, and was inspired to set the poem to music. He outlined an orchestral work in three parts, but never actually composed the second and third parts, instead producing the Prelude as a stand-alone piece. It premiered in Paris in December of 1894, and Debussy biographers declared, “at the time it was written nothing like it existed in music.” Something so entirely different often received hostile reviews from the public, but the Prelude’s first audience was so enthusiastic that the conductor was obliged to repeat the performance on the spot. Critics were less excited and gave the work mixed reviews. Mallarmé was thrilled, however, and after listening, was said to remark, “I didn’t expect anything like this. The music draws out the emotion of my poem and gives it a background of warmer colors.”
The story line is simple. The music is used to evoke the “heat and silence, sensuality and gentle melancholy of an afternoon’s golden hours” as in the poem the slow, sensuous seduction of two nymphs by a faun is described. A faun, or satyr, is a Roman god figure, half man and half goat, with cloven hooves, horns, a tail and a furry coat. The flute, playing some of the most celebrated solo passages in orchestral literature, begins the work. Its sound brings forth the opening lines of Mallarmé’s poem:
I would perpetuate those nymphs.
Their rosy
Bloom’s so light, it floats upon air drowsy
With heavy sleep.
Was it a dream?
The flowing line of continuous tonal shifts describes the heat haze surrounding the lascivious faun as he drifts through the afternoon, falling in and out of sleep. This opening then moves into a second section, different in tone, and meant to describe the faun’s amorous dreams. As the work ends the solo flute’s theme is joined by a solo cello, then a solo oboe, playing a slight variation on the theme.
While melody is important, Debussy uses it only to create an atmosphere reflecting the qualities of the poem. He uses his opening note, a C#, as a kind of anchor, winding and shifting tones around it to create a feeling of fluid movement. His work brilliantly reflects the intentions of the poem on which it is based.
Symphonie espagnole for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 21
Edouard Lalo (1823 – 1892)
The music of Edouard Lalo did not come to be appreciated by the general public until the 1870’s, when he was nearly 50. His family had not encouraged his musical studies when he was growing up, and he actually ran away at age 16 to follow his dream. He found work as a string player and teacher, slowly making a name for himself as a composer of chamber works. It was not until 1874, when his Violin Concerto in F major was presented by the immensely popular Spanish violinist Pablo Sarasate, that he achieved the recognition he deserved. By this time the Symphonie espagnole had already been composed and was awaiting its premiere about a year later.
There has been much discussion about the title of the Symphonie espagnole. It has in its form elements of a violin concerto, and also of a symphony, and is actually a kind of hybrid of both. The title, however, is undoubtedly deliberate. At one time it was suggested by Sarasate’s accompanist that it should actually be called a suite. To this Lalo responded: “I absolutely reject the title Suite for my last piece…It’s a worn out tag, and one must find another. Artistically, a title means nothing and the work itself is everything…But commercially, a tainted, discredited title is never a good thing. I kept the title Symphonie espagnole contrary to and in spite of everybody…because it conveyed my thoughts – that is to say, a violin solo soaring above the rigid form of an old symphonie. The cries and criticisms will die down…the title will remain.”
He originally composed four movements (concertos usually have three) and then later added an additional extra Intermezzo which now is its third movement. The opening movement is the most symphonic, in which the orchestra introduces a theme for the solo violin to develop before introducing its own milder theme. The second movement, a scherzo, is a lively dance allowing the soloist to demonstrate virtuosity over pizzicato strings and harp. That added third movement, the Intermezzo, requires real gymnastics on the part of the soloist. The fingering is lightening fast and the register changes suddenly. It reminds one of the Habanera music of Carmen. The fourth movement is darker, reminiscent of a folk song, and the colorful finale begins by reintroducing the main theme. The pace is varied, with a slightly slower passage midway, allowing the soloist to draw breath before the final fireworks, full of pizzicati, glissandi, trills, and arpeggios.
The Concerto in F that introduced Lalo to the public has not survived to modern times, and very few of Lalo’s other works are ever performed. The Symphonie espagnole remains Lalo’s most enduring legacy.
Suite No. 2 from “The Three-Cornered Hat”
Manuel de Falla (1876 – 1946)
Much of de Falla’s music is rooted in Spanish folklore. He was born in the Andalusian region of Spain and ultimately became known as an artist who represented all parts of Spain, and honored all areas within his music. “The Three-Cornered Hat” was part of his effort to make folk music, the “music of the people,” into serious classical music and take it into the concert halls. Its subject is the behavior and daily life of ordinary people. Its tone is primarily light and sunny, and de Falla’s incorporation of both authentic and newly composed folk melodies helped create a stylized depiction of Spanish life that the public could relate to.
“The Three-Cornered Hat” premiered in Madrid in 1917. Some revisions were made and the first full performance of the ballet took place in London in 1919. It was immediately successful, and de Falla took two parts of the ballet score and formed them into the 12 minute orchestral suite which was published as Suite No. 2 in 1921. This suite consists of three prominent dances from the second scene of the ballet. The “Neighbor’s Dance,” based upon a gypsy song from Granada, is a scene of contentment and relaxation at the end of the workday. The “Miller’s Dance” is a man’s dance, an exhibition of masculine flourishes, and “The Final Dance” is alternately light-hearted and serious, depicting a dispute between the miller and his wife, which ultimately ends with a joyful reconciliation.
Like so many great ballet scores, “The Three-Cornered Hat” was commissioned by the great ballet choreographer Serge Diaghilev, director of the Ballets Russes. At the end of World War I, financial support for the arts was very low and the Ballets Russes was struggling to maintain its existence. Diaghilev was hoping that his new production would ride the crest of the wave of renewed post-war musical culture. He was correct in this thinking, and its success made the ballet one of the cornerstones of the Ballets Russes’ repertoire. The costumes and sets for the production were, incidentally, designed by one Pablo Picasso.