Joshua Bell Plays Lalo

Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall

Carlos Kalmar, conductor
Joshua Bell, violin

CARL NIELSEN
Overture to Maskarade

Vital Stats

Composer: born June 9, 1865, Sortelung, near Nørre Lyndelse, Denmark; died Oct. 3, 1931, Copenhagen

Work composed: 1904-06

World premiere:: Maskarade premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen on Nov. 11, 1906, with Nielsen conducting. In 1907, Nielsen wrote a different ending for the Overture, so it could be performed by the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Tor Aulin.

Oregon Symphony premiere: At this concert

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals and strings

Estimated duration: 4 minutes

Danish composer Carl Nielsen was a man of many facets. His powerful Symphony No. 5, last performed by the Oregon Symphony in 2004, eloquently captures the terror and chaos of World War I. In contrast, Nielsen’s opera Maskarade is a lighthearted comical story, so beloved by Danes that it has earned the unofficial title of Denmark’s national opera.

Nielsen grew up in a small village on the island of Fyn, one of 12 children. At age 24, Nielsen became a violinist with the Royal Orchestra, and for many years afterwards supported himself by both playing with and conducting the Royal Theater and the Music Society Orchestra. Nielsen’s years of working in the theatre served him well when he turned his attention to Mascarade, a comic play by fellow Scandinavian Ludvig Holberg, dubbed “the Molière of the North.” Holberg’s name might also be familiar to music audiences from Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite.

Nielsen composed Maskarade, his most popular theatre work, with lightning speed. The Overture was finished only eight days before the opera’s premiere. In the opera, the Overture leads without pause into Act I, but Nielsen revised it slightly, giving it a proper finale for a concert performance in 1907 by the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. This version of the overture was widely performed both inside and outside Denmark and helped establish Nielsen’s reputation abroad.

Nielsen’s satirical treatment of Holberg’s play, itself a satire, did not go over well with everybody. In a letter to a friend during rehearsals, Nielsen wrote, “You cannot imagine what I have heard from many sides … from the actors, I’ve had anger because I have laid hands on Holberg’s comedy.”

Holberg’s play centers on what was a controversial aspect of Danish social life in the early 18th century: masked balls, which removed the distinction between social classes and promoted shameless conduct (in fact, masked parties were banned in 1724, the year Holberg wrote Mascarade). Nielsen’s opera, with a libretto by Vilhelm Andersen, emphasizes the hypocrisy and pretentiousness of upper class Danes. According to biographer Jack Lawson, Nielsen was uncomfortable with “establishment figures … two letters written by Nielsen around this time include unfavourable descriptions of Copenhagen’s elite, who were often unable, he felt, to differentiate between exuberant behaviour and misconduct.”

AARON COPLAND Suite from The Tender Land

Vital Stats

Composer: born Nov. 14, 1900, Brooklyn, NY; died Dec. 2, 1990, North Tarrytown, NY

Work composed: The orchestral suite was composed in 1958; the full opera was begun six years earlier and completed in 1954, on a commission from the League of Composers (funded by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein), originally intended for a television broadcast..

World premiere: The Tender Land premiered on Apr. 1, 1954, produced by the New York City Opera, with Thomas Schippers conducting and Jerome Robbins directing. Copland conducted the premiere of the suite with the Boston Symphony on Apr. 10, 1958, and recorded it with them two years later.

Oregon Symphony premiere: Nov. 3, 1975, with the composer conducting

Most recent Oregon Symphony performance: Nov. 12, 2000, with Murry Sidlin conducting

Instrumentation::Piccolo, 2 flutes, oboe, English horn, 2 clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, orchestra bells, triangle, ratchet, slapstick, snare drum, triangle, woodblock, xylophone, celeste, piano, harp and strings

Estimated duration: 19 minutes

Although Aaron Copland began writing The Tender Land, in 1952, the idea of composing an opera had been gestating within him for some years previously. According to biographer Howard Pollack, Copland had reservations about writing what he described as “a very problematical form – la forme fatale.”

Chief among Copland’s concerns was finding the right libretto. When the League of Composers commissioned Copland to write an opera for television, with financial backing from the Broadway team of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Copland asked his then-lover, Erik Johns, to provide a libretto based on James Agee’s landmark documentary book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and the powerful accompanying photographs of Walker Evans. Johns began with Evans’ photograph of a sharecropper mother and daughter as the basis for the characters Ma Moss and Laurie, but The Tender Land is only loosely connected to Agee’s stories of poor rural southerners in the 1930s. Johns set the opera in the Midwest, rather than the South, and made the opera’s central dramatic conflict one of characters, rather than economic class issues. “These changes shifted the emphasis from difference of class to difference of individual personality,” Johns explained.

The story centers on Laurie, a young woman on a small Midwestern farm. Two migrant farm workers, Martin and Top, appear in town, and Laurie falls in love with Martin at her high school graduation dance. The two decide to elope, but Top tells Martin he cannot provide Laurie much of a life, and Martin reluctantly leaves town with his friend, abandoning Laurie. When Laurie finds out that Martin has left her behind, she too decides to leave her family and her hometown in pursuit of her childhood dreams.

After the opera’s premiere, Copland ruefully reported to a friend, “We had a flop on our hands.” Critics panned the thin plot, and Olin Downes, writing for the New York Times, said the ending was “inconclusive and unconvincing.” Subsequent revisions, which expanded The Tender Land from two to three acts, met with mixed reviews.

Copland said of the orchestral suite he wrote for The Tender Land, “It does not represent a digest of the dramatic action of the opera, but it proceeds from the second act to the first in a three-movement sequence. The first movement … is comprised of the introduction to Act II and the music of the love duet. The second movement is the lively square dance from Act II, and the last movement is the music of ‘The Promise of Living,’ the vocal quintet from the end of Act I.” According to Copland, reviews of the suite were much more enthusiastic than for the opera itself.

ÉDOUARD LALO
Symphonie espagnole, Op. 21

Vital Stats

Composer: born Jan. 27, 1823, Lille, France; died Apr. 22, 1892, Paris.

Work composed: 1874-5; dedicated to Pablo de Sarasate

World premiere: Feb. 7, 1875, in Paris, with violinist Pablo de Sarasate and Édouard Colonne conducting

Oregon Symphony premiere: Feb. 13, 1928, with Willem van Hoogstraten conducting; Alberst Spalding, violin soloist

Most recent Oregon Symphony performances: Nov. 14-16, 1998, with James DePreist conducting; Elmar Oliveira, violin soloist

Instrumentation: Solo violin, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, snare drum, triangle, tambourine, harp and strings

Estimated duration: 31 minutes

“It is a well-rehearsed truism that the best Spanish music was written by French composers.”
– James M. Keller

Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, Claude Debussy’s Iberia and Georges Bizet’s Carmen are just three of many works that support annotator Keller’s tongue-in-cheek assertion. Frenchman Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole also fits into that category, at least on the surface. Lalo, however, as his name suggests, was of Spanish descent, so his Symphonie espagnole is not really a musical appropriation. On the other hand, all the Spanish elements of the Symphonie, including its title, are not, as one might expect, a musical reflection of Lalo’s ancestry. Rather, these elements are a deliberate homage to the virtuoso Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate, for whom Lalo wrote the Symphonie, and to whom he owes his lasting reputation. (Ironically, Sarasate moved to Paris as a young man and, according to some, thought himself more French than Spanish.)

If you are unfamiliar with the name Édouard Lalo, it is not a reflection on your musical knowledge. Lalo is, to borrow a somewhat unfortunate description from pop music, a one-hit wonder. It was the Symphonie espagnole, written when Lalo was in his fifties, that finally won him the fame he had been seeking since his youth.

Why Lalo’s other music failed to catch on with 19th-century French audiences may have less to do with Lalo’s ability as a composer and more to do with what one scholar has characterized as the frivolous musical tastes of French, particularly Parisian, audiences. Fortunately, audiences outside France responded more favorably, including many of Lalo’s composer colleagues. “Do you know the Symphonie espagnole by the French composer Lalo?” Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote to his patron, Nadezhda von Meck. “It is so fresh and light, and contains piquant rhythms and melodies which are beautifully harmonized … Lalo is careful to avoid all that is routinier [that which is routine], seeks new forms without trying to be profound, and is more concerned with musical beauty than with traditions.”

The French might have ignored the Symphonie as well, had it not been for Sarasate. The violinist’s good looks and virtuosity assured packed concert halls, and in the Symphonie Lalo provided him with the perfect vehicle to showcase his style, which combined purity of tone with flexibility and a graceful restraint not common among 19th century violinists. Musicologist Michael Steinberg said of the Symphonie and Sarasate, “This is music that asks for nonchalance. It wants a virtuoso who has plenty to show off, but who disdains showing off … Sarasate was that kind of player.” Fellow violinist Alberto Bachmann, in his Encyclopedia of the Violin, added, “[no one had] been able to play with so prodigious an artistry as Sarasate, combining grace, clean-cut brilliancy, and bewildering vitality in so remarkable a degree.”

The five movements of the Symphonie espagnole feature several Spanish dances. The Allegro non troppo alternates between a vigorous dotted rhythm and a sensuous malagueña. Pizzicato strings highlight the lively seguidilla of the Scherzando, while the Intermezzo suggests a habanera. The Andante departs from the lilting Spanish rhythms with a brass chorale and a solo violin melody whose contours suggest the Kol Nidrei melody from Jewish liturgy. In the Rondo, Lalo returns us to Spain with a rousing saltorello, and a return of the first movement’s malagueña.

GEORGE ENESCU
Rumanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A major, Op. 11, No. 1

Vital Stats

Composer: born Aug. 19, 1881, Liveni Vîrnav [town renamed George Enescu]; died May 3 or 4, 1955, Paris

Work composed: 1901

World premiere: Enescu conducted the Orchestra Filarmonica premiere of both Rumanian Rhapsodies in Bucharest on Mar. 8, 1903.

Oregon Symphony premiere: Nov. 3, 1969, with Jacques Singer conducting

Most recent Oregon Symphony performance: Mar. 15, 2002, with Murry Sidlin conducting

Instrumentation: 3 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, cymbal, triangle, 2 harps and strings

Estimated duration: 11 minutes

George Enescu came to regret the success of his youthful Rumanian Rhapsodies, which he wrote at the age of 20. Their enduring popularity overshadowed all Enescu’s later, more substantial, works. This bothered Enescu, whose compositional style was both eclectic and multifaceted, and who disliked being piegonholed as a nationalist composer. At one point, Enescu dismissed the Rumanian Rhapsody No. 1 as “a few tunes thrown together without thinking about it.” In fact, Enescu’s preliminary sketches reveal meticulous attention to the placement of each of the Rhapsody’s melodies within the overall structure of the piece; he also paid special attention to the orchestration of each tune.

The Rhapsody No. 1 is a lively blend of Romanian folk songs and dances. Enescu may have first heard the opening melody, “Am un leu” (I want to spend my money on drink) from the gypsy violinist Lae Chioru, with whom Enescu studied violin as a child of four. The gypsy fiddling style is highlighted throughout the Rhapsody, with numerous elaborations, ornaments and sharp rhythmic accents. ‘Am un leu,’ intoned by a solo clarinet, opens the piece, and is repeated by the full orchestra. A highly decorative second theme follows, and the bulk of the music is a pastiche of several tunes spliced together. Another folksong, “The Skylark,” features a pattern of trilled notes in the violins, and Enescu repeats this simple melody with increasing speed and intensity.

© 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

Nielsen: Overture to Maskarade
Herbert Blomstedt-San Francisco Symphony
Decca 460985

Copland: Suite from The Tender Land
Murry Sidlin-Third Angle New Music Ensemble 
Koch Classics 7480  

Robert Hanson-Elgin Symphony Orchestra
Naxos 8559297

Lalo: Symphonie espagnole for Violin and Orchestra, Opus 21  
Joshua Bell-Violin
Charles Dutoit-Montreal Symphony Orchestra
Decca 444802

Enescu: Rumanian Rhapsody in A major, Opus 11, No. 1
Antal Dorati-London Symphony Orchestra
Mercury Living Presence 432015

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