Dvořák's Cello Concerto

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Carlos Kalmar, conductor
Quirine Viersen, cello

SAMUEL BARBER
Music for a Scene from Shelley, Op. 7

Vital Stats

Composer: born Mar. 9, 1910, West Chester, PA; died Jan. 23, 1981, New York City

Work composed: 1933

World premiere: Hans-Werner Janssen led the New York Philharmonic on Mar. 24, 1935.

Oregon Symphony premiere: At these concerts

Instrumentation: 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, cymbal, tam tam, harp and strings

Estimated duration: 9 minutes

The premiere of Samuel Barber’s Music for a Scene from Shelley was also the first time the composer had ever heard one of his orchestral works performed (he was not allowed to attend rehearsals but recalled sneaking in with his friend and colleague Gian Carlo Menotti). “A sort of renewal of spring and brotherhood fills everything,” Barber wrote his composition teacher Rosario Scalero. “I have been so happy writing it.”

Inspired by poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s 1820 play Prometheus Unbound, Music for a Scene from Shelley is a youthful work, written when Barber was just 23. Musically, Barber was still searching for his own distinctive compositional voice, and his second work for orchestra is a soft wash of impressions that suggest Debussy’s influence. Despite its literary genesis, Barber went to great lengths to explain that his music, inspired by a scene in Act II, was not overtly programmatic. Barber was particularly drawn to these lines:

“... nor is it I alone,
Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one,
But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy.
Hearest thou not sounds i’ the air which speak the love
Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou not
The inanimate winds enamoured of thee?
List!” [Music]

In response to music critic Lawrence Gilman’s statement that Barber’s music “seeks to convey something of Shelley’s pantheistic rapture,” Barber insisted his intention was “to describe the ‘voices in the air’ imploring Asia (goddess of love) to bring back sympathy and love to mankind (through Prometheus’ release); not ‘the sounds in the air which speak the love of all articulate beings.’ ... it is [the voices’] entreaty that they might hear this wonderful music, and not the music itself.”

Reviews were favorable. One critic declared Music for a Scene from Shelley “one of the most appealing new works by a native American that have been heard here during the last five or 10 years.” Another described the music as “investing a broad melody with shimmering color and tender mood,” and Olin Downes wrote, “This composer seeks the special color and the evocation of mood that he wants in a genuinely musical way … in other words, a young composer is seeking his characteristic impression and style.”

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK
Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104

Vital Stats

Composer: Born Sept. 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, near Kralupy (now the Czech Republic); died May 1, 1904, Prague

Work composed: 1894-5; dedicated to Dvořák’s friend, cellist Hanuš Wihan

World premiere: Cellist Leo Stern performed the solo, with Dvořák conducting the London Philharmonic Society in London on Mar. 19, 1896.

Oregon Symphony premiere: Nov. 26, 1956, with Theodore Bloomfield conducting; Leonard Rose, cello soloist

Most recent Oregon Symphony performances: Feb. 5-7, 2005, with Yakov Kreizberg conducting; Daniel Müller-Schott, cello soloist

Instrumentation: solo cello, 2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 3 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle and strings

Estimated duration:  40 minutes

“I have … written a cello-concerto, but am sorry to this day I did so, and I never intend to write another,” said Antonín Dvořák to one of his composition students. “The cello is a beautiful instrument, but its place is in the orchestra and in chamber music. As a solo instrument it isn’t much good.” These comments may surprise music lovers, who revere Dvořák’s cello concerto as one of the finest works in the orchestral repertoire and the standard by which all subsequent cello concertos have been measured.

American operetta composer and cellist Victor Herbert, who wrote Babes in Toyland, changed Dvořák’s low opinion of the cello as a solo instrument. After hearing Herbert perform his own cello concerto in March 1894, Dvořák, inspired by Herbert’s brilliant playing, decided to write one of his own. Herbert, who was then principal cellist for the Metropolitan Opera, recalled, “After I had played my [2nd] Cello-Concerto in one of the [New York Philharmonic] Concerts – Dr. Dvořák … threw his arms around me, saying before many members of the orchestra: ‘famos! [splendid] famos! ganz famos!’”

Although the cello concerto, like Dvořák’s New World Symphony, was also written while Dvořák lived in America, it has no obvious American flavor. Instead of the New World’s extroverted and profoundly American energy, the cello concerto is a deeply personal Slavic work, full of beautiful and well-crafted melodies.

Of particular interest is the Adagio ma non troppo, in which Dvořák quotes from the song Kéž duch můj sám (“Leave me alone.”) Many years earlier, Dvořák had fallen in love with Josefina Čermáková, and this song was among her favorites. Josefina did not return his feelings, and Dvořák ultimately married her younger sister Anna. In time Dvořák grew to love Anna deeply, but his youthful feelings for Josefina never totally disappeared. While Dvořák was writing the cello concerto in the fall and winter of 1894-95, he received word that Josefina had fallen gravely ill, and his concern for her took musical shape in the form of this personal quote.

The Finale continues Dvořák’s tribute to Josefina, who died in May 1895. Having returned home to Prague by that time, Dvořák revised the ending to include the most famous part of this great work, the coda. Dvořák’s son Otakar, in his book of reminiscences Antonín Dvořák, My Father, wrote, “This impressive ending to the concerto was my father’s tribute to and final departure from his last love.”

Dvořák dedicated the cello concerto to his friend, fellow Czech Hanuš Wihan, who provided Dvořák with technical knowledge regarding the cello’s capabilities. However, Wihan, not content with his advisory role, suggested and apparently insisted on so many revisions that Dvořák finally rebelled. In a letter to his publisher, Dvořák wrote: “I will give you my work only if you promise not to allow anybody to make changes – friend Wihan not excepted.”

Critics and audiences received the cello concerto with enthusiasm. The London Times wrote, “In wealth and beauty of thematic material, as well as in the unusual interest of the development of its first movement, the new Concerto yields to none of the composer’s recent works; all three movements are richly melodious.” Johannes Brahms was also a fan; in a letter to his publisher Simrock, who was also Dvořák’s publisher, Brahms wrote, “Cellists can be grateful to your Dvořák for bestowing on them such a great and skilful work.” From his deathbed, Brahms continued to praise Dvořák’s Cello Concerto: “Why on earth didn’t I know one could write a cello concerto like this? If I’d only known, I’d have written one long ago!”

AARON JAY KERNIS
Newly Drawn Sky

Vital Stats

Composer: born Jan. 15, 1960, Philadelphia

Work composed: 2005; commissioned by Welz Kauffman and the Ravinia Festival in honor of James Conlon’s first season as music director

World premiere: James Conlon led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Pavillion in Highland Park, Ill., on Jan. 7, 2005

Oregon Symphony premiere: at these concerts

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (one doubling English horn), 3 clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, piano, harp and strings

Estimated duration: 18 minutes

Aaron Jay Kernis hit the ground running at the age of 23, when the New York Philharmonic premiered his Dream of a Morning Sky in 1983. One of the youngest composers ever to be granted the Pulitzer Prize in Music, Kernis won the award in 1998 for his composition String Quartet No. 2, musica instrumentalis. He has also won the 2002 Grawemeyer Award for the cello and orchestra version of Colored Field, a work inspired by the composer’s visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau. Other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, an NEA grant and three BMI Student Composer Awards.

“I want everything to be included in music,” declared Kernis in a musical manifesto, “Soaring melody, consonance, tension, dissonance, drive, relaxation, color, strong harmony and form – and for every possible emotion to be elicited actively by the passionate use of these elements.” Through Kernis’ mastery of orchestral colors and textures, Newly Drawn Sky contains all these musical components. A musical portrait of a summer sunset, Newly Drawn Sky is a pensive work, suggesting an array of cloud formations and ever changing colors as the sun lowers gently and inevitably below the horizon.

In his own notes for Newly Drawn Sky, Kernis described it as “a lyrical, reflective piece for orchestra, a reminiscence of the first summer night by the ocean spent with my young twins (who were 6 months old when the work’s initial inspiration came to me), and of the changing colors of the summer sky at dusk.  While the work is not programmatic or specifically descriptive, it reflects a constancy of change and flux, musically and personally.”

LEONARD BERNSTEIN
On the Waterfront Symphonic Suite

Vital Stats

Composer: born Aug. 25, 1918, Lawrence, MA; died Oct. 14, 1990, New York City

Work composed: The film score was composed between February and May in 1954. Bernstein made a six-movement symphonic suite from the film music in 1955 and dedicated it to his son Alexander Serge.

World premiere: The Boston Symphony Orchestra, led by Bernstein, premiered the suite at the Tanglewood Festival on Aug. 11, 1955.

Oregon Symphony premiere: Apr. 27, 1986, with Neal Gittleman conducting

Most recent Oregon Symphony performances: Apr. 17-19, 2004, with James DePreist conducting

Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, 2 timpani, celesta, pianino, bass drum, chimes, cymbals, glockenspiel, snare drum, large and small tam tams, triangle, tuned drums, vibraphone, wood block, xylophone, harp and strings

Estimated duration: 22 minutes

“Hollywood is exactly as I expected it, only worse,” wrote Bernstein to his friend and colleague Aaron Copland while he was in California composing what would end up being his only original film score (the music for the films On the Town and West Side Story was adapted from their respective Broadway stage productions). 

Bernstein had originally declined producer Stanley Spiegel’s request to score On the Waterfront, the 1954 film directed by Elia Kazan, which starred Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy, a longshoreman from who defies the corrupt union bosses who control the docks of New York. However, after watching a rough cut of the film, Bernstein agreed to the project. In his book The Joy of Music, Bernstein recalled: “I thought it a masterpiece of direction; and Marlon Brando seemed to me to give the greatest performance I had ever seen him give, which is saying a good deal. I was swept away by my enthusiasm into accepting the commission to write the score, although I had thereto resisted all such offers on the grounds that it is a musically unsatisfactory experience for a composer to write a score whose chief merit ought to be its unobtrusiveness.” Although Bernstein was inspired by the film’s gritty dramatic potential, he anguished over the inevitable cutting and editing of his music. “The composer sits by, protesting as he can, but ultimately accepting, be it with a heavy heart, the inevitable loss of a good part of his score,” Bernstein wrote. “Everyone tries to comfort him. ‘You can always use it in a suite.’ Cold comfort.” But Bernstein did rescue the edited portions the following year, when he composed a 20-minute orchestral version of On the Waterfront.

The six movements of the suite, as Bernstein explains, “follow as much as possible the chronological flow of the film itself.” The suite opens with a solo horn and quickly evolves into an agitated theme for saxophone, which captures the violence and rage of life on the docks. Bernstein juxtaposes this ferocity with a tender, reflective melody for flute and harp that portrays Edie Doyle, Brando’s love interest, played in the film by Eva Marie Saint. Bernstein’s instinctive affinity for drama infused his symphonic suite for On the Waterfront, and the music, although written to accompany the film, stands on its own merits as a piece of compelling musical narrative.

© 2010 Elizabeth Schwartz

Program Notes by Elizabeth Schwartz

Elizabeth Schwartz is a Portland-based free-lance writer, researcher and musician. In addition annotating programs for the Oregon Symphony and other ensembles, she has also contributed to NPR’s Performance Today (now heard on American Public Media). Schwartz also co-hosts The Portland Yiddish Hour, heard at 10 a.m. Sundays on KBOO 90.7 FM. Email: schwartzelizabeth@yahoo.com.

Recommended Recordings by Michael Parsons

Barber: Music for a Scene from Shelley
Marin Alsop-Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Naxos 8559044

Dvořák: Cello Concerto
Mstislav Rostropovich-Cello
Herbert von Karajan-Berlin Philharmonic
Deutsche Grammophon 447413 
OR
David Finckel-Cello
Felix Chiu-Sen Chen: Taipei Symphony Orchestra
Tapei Symphony 1

Kernis: Newly Drawn Sky
Carlos Kalmar-Grant Park Orchestra
Cedille 105

Bernstein: Symphonic Suite from On the Waterfront
Leonard Bernstein-New York Philharmonic
Sony Classical 92728

These selected recordings are available at Classical Millennium, located at 3144 E. Burnside in Portland.