Program notes by Eric Bromberger

The Enchanted Lake, Opus 62
ANATOL LYADOV
Born May 10, 1855, St. Petersburg
Died August 28, 1914, Novgorod, Russia

Born into a musical family in St. Petersburg, Anatol Lyadov studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and was invited to join the faculty of the St. Petersburg Conservatory at age 23. But for all his talent and training, Lyadov was notoriously unable to produce music. Some of this was the product of self-doubt (Lyadov was relentlessly self-critical), but he was also lazy. In the most infamous illustration of this, Lyadov had been Diaghilev’s original choice to compose the music for the Ballets Russes’ new production of The Firebird in 1910, but when Lyadov was unable to write the music, Diaghilev turned to an unknown young composer named Igor Stravinsky, and the course of music was changed.

As a composer, Lyadov was essentially a miniaturist, best remembered for his short piano pieces like The Musical Snuffbox. Perhaps understandably, the larger forms proved difficult for him: he wrote no operas, no symphonies, no concertos, no chamber music–his output consists exclusively of a few brief orchestral works, choral music and songs, and piano pieces. Lyadov, who was very interested in Russian folk music, was happiest when he could enter the magical dream-world of folk legend. He once said: “My ideal is to find the unearthly in art. Art is the realm of the nonexisting. Art is a figment, a fairy tale, a phantom. Give me a fairy tale, a dragon, a water sprite, a wood demon–give me something that is unreal, and I am happy.”

About 1905, Rimsky-Korsakov, trying to get Lyadov to produce something worthy of his talents, suggested that he write an opera on folk legends. Lyadov liked the idea, made some sketches, and then abandoned the project. Those sketches, however, turned into two brief orchestral pieces that have become his most popular works: both The Enchanted Lake and Kikimora spring from that “realm of the nonexisting” where Lyadov was happiest. The Enchanted Lake, first performed in 1909, is not crowded with incident or drama. Rather, this muted and evocative music is a mood-piece, and one understands why Diaghilev thought Lyadov might have been the right composer for The Firebird. The shimmering sounds of the opening set exactly the right mood for Lyadov’s portrait of the magical lake, and throughout this brief piece he shifts colors deftly, so that his lake is by turns misty, moonlit, and murmuring as the music makes its way to the subdued close.

Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Opus 30
SERGEI RACHMANINOFF
Born April 1, 1873, Oneg, Russia
Died March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills

When Rachmaninoff made his first concert tour of America during the 1909-10 season, he was frank about his motives: he needed money to support his family and he wanted to buy an automobile. During the summer of 1909, he composed a new piano concerto, his third, specifically for the tour, and he brought a dumb keyboard with him on the ship so that he could practice the new piece without disturbing fellow passengers (this experience proved so dissatisfying that he never tried it again). Rachmaninoff gave the première of the Third Piano Concerto with the New York Symphony under the direction of Walter Damrosch on November 28, 1909, and then played it extensively during his American visit: he toured with the Boston Symphony, performing the concerto in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Hartford, and Buffalo, and he gave a further performance with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Gustav Mahler in January 1910.

This is one of the greatest of all piano concertos–and one of the most difficult. Its unusual length, complex textures, powerful chordal writing, and brilliance make it a supremely demanding piece for pianists, so daunting that Rachmaninoff himself authorized four cuts and recorded the concerto in this abbreviated form (modern performances offer the concerto in its uncut version). The Third Concerto has all the Rachmaninoff virtues–gorgeous melodies, lush sonorities, and exciting climaxes–and it is easy to overlook how original this music is: almost the entire concerto grows out of the first movement’s opening theme, one of the most haunting melodies Rachmaninoff ever wrote.

Over rustling, muted strings, the solo piano in octaves lays out this lengthy opening statement, a melody of unmistakably Russian character. So “Russian” does this theme sound, in fact, that many have searched for its source. Years later, Rachmaninoff dismissed these efforts with some amusement: “The first theme of my 3rd concerto is borrowed neither from folk song forms nor from church sources. It simply ‘wrote itself’! . . . If I had any plan in composing this theme I was thinking only of sound. I wanted to ‘sing’ the melody on the piano as a singer would sing it–and to find a suitable orchestral accompaniment, or rather one that would not muffle this singing. That is all!” This “singing” theme will reappear in countless transformations throughout the concerto. The second subject, a precise little march, is laid out first by strings and then woodwinds; soon the piano takes this up and magically transforms it into a soaring episode–such elaboration and extension of basic theme-shapes is one of the pleasures of this concerto.

Rachmaninoff wrote a cadenza for the first movement, then went back and wrote a much more difficult one. This second cadenza is so long that it becomes almost a separate world within the movement, and Rachmaninoff accompanies the piano with brief wind solos in the course of it. The massive first movement winds down with an unexpectedly brief recapitulation: the two principal themes make quick reappearances, and the movement vanishes on barely-audible strokes of sound.

The second movement, marked Intermezzo, is in ternary form. It opens with the orchestra’s wistful introduction (Rachmaninoff marks the falling main theme ben cantabile) before the piano slips in almost unnoticed and then develops the orchestra’s opening ideas at length. Gradually the first movement’s germinal theme appears in the background, and Rachmaninoff builds the central episode–on a quick waltz rhythm–from a subtle transformation of this theme for solo clarinet over rippling piano accompaniment. Once again, there is only a hint of a reprise, and the piano drives the music without pause into the finale, marked simply Alla breve.

Powerful orchestral chords unleash a torrent here, with the piano announcing the propulsive ideas: a pounding march-like main theme and a syncopated chordal second subject. Along the way Rachmaninoff offers reminiscences, transformed once again, of material from the first movement. At the close, the syncopated chordal theme of this movement rises up to become a Big Tune that pushes the concerto to its overpowering climax and the knock-out close.

Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Opus 36
PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia
Died November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg

The Fourth Symphony dates from the most tumultuous period in Tchaikovsky’s difficult life, and its composition came from a moment of agony. When he began work on the symphony in May 1877, Tchaikovsky had for some years been tormented by the secret of his homosexuality, a secret he kept hidden from all but a few friends. As he worked on this score, one of his students at the Moscow Conservatory–a deranged young woman named Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova–declared her love for him. Knowing that such a prospect was hopeless, Tchaikovsky put her off as gently as he could, but she persisted, even threatening suicide at one point. As fate would have it, Tchaikovsky was also at work on his opera Eugene Onegin at this time and was composing the scene in the which the bachelor Onegin turns down the infatuated young Tatiana, to his eventual regret. Struck by the parallel with his own situation–and at some level longing for a “normal” life with a wife and children–Tchaikovsky did precisely the wrong thing for some very complex reasons: he agreed to Antonina’s proposal of marriage. His friends were horrified, but the composer pressed ahead and married Antonina on July 18, 1877. The marriage was an instant disaster. Tchaikovsky quickly abandoned his bride, tried to return, but fled again and made what we would today call a suicide-gesture. He then retreated to St. Petersburg and collapsed into two days of unconsciousness. His doctors prescribed complete rest, a recommendation Tchaikovsky was only too happy to follow. He abandoned his teaching post in Moscow and fled to Western Europe, finding relief in the quiet of Clarens in Switzerland and San Remo in Italy. It was in San Remo–on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean and far from the chaos of his life in Moscow–that he completed the Fourth Symphony in January 1878.

The Fourth Symphony has all of Tchaikovsky’s considerable virtues–great melodies, primary colors, and soaring climaxes–and in this case they are fused with a superheated emotional content. The composer’s friends guessed, perhaps inevitably, that the symphony had a program, that it was “about” something, and Tchaikovsky offered several different explanations of the content of this dramatic music. To his friend Serge Taneyev, Tchaikovsky said that the model for his Fourth Symphony had been Beethoven’s Fifth, specifically in the way both symphonies are structured around a recurring motif, though perhaps also in the sense that the two symphonies begin in emotional turmoil and eventually win their way to release and triumph in the finale. For his patroness, Madame Nadezhda von Meck, who had supplied the money that enabled him to escape his marriage, Tchaikovsky prepared an elaborate program detailing what his symphony “meant.” One should inevitably be suspicious of such “explanations” (and Tchaikovsky himself later suppressed the program), but this account does offer some sense of what he believed had shaped the content of his music.

The symphony opens with a powerful brass fanfare, which Tchaikovsky describes as “Fate, the inexorable power that hampers our search for happiness. This power hangs over our heads like the sword of Damocles, leaving us no option but to submit.” The principal subject of this movement, however, is a dark, stumbling waltz in 9/8 introduced by the violins: “The main theme of the Allegro describes feelings of depression and hopelessness. Would it not be better to forsake reality and lose oneself in dreams?” This long opening movement (it is nearly half the length of the entire symphony) has an unusual structure: Tchaikovsky builds it on three separate theme-groups which evolve through some unusual harmonic relationships. Like inescapable fate, the opening motto-theme returns at key points in this dramatic music, and it finally drives the movement to a furious close: “Thus we see that life is only an everlasting alternation of somber reality and fugitive dreams of happiness.”

After so turbulent a beginning opening, the two middle movements bring much-needed relief. The contrast is so sharp, in fact, that Taneyev complained that these were essentially ballet music made to serve as symphonic movements; Taneyev may have a point, but after that scalding first movement, the gentle character of the middle movements is welcome. The Andantino, in ternary-form, opens with a plaintive oboe solo and features a more animated middle section. Tchaikovsky described it: “Here is the melancholy feeling that overcomes us when we sit weary and alone at the end of the day. The book we pick up slips from our fingers, and a procession of memories passes in review . . .”

The Scherzo has deservedly become one of Tchaikovsky’s most popular movements. It is a tour de force for strings (which play pizzicato throughout), with crisp interjections first from the woodwinds and then from brass. Tchaikovsky makes piquant contrast between these quite different sounds, combining all his forces only in the final moments of the movement. The composer notes: “There is no specific feeling or exact expression in the third movement. Here are only the capricious arabesques and indeterminate shapes that come into one’s mind with a little wine . . .”

Out of the quiet close of the third movement, the finale explodes to life. The composer described this movement as “the picture of a folk holiday” and said, “If you find no pleasure in yourself, look about you. Go to the people. See how they can enjoy life and give themselves up entirely to festivity.” Marked Allegro con fuoco, this movement simply alternates its volcanic opening sequence with a gentle little woodwind tune that is actually the Russian folk tune “In the field there stood a birch tree.” At the climax, however, the fate-motto from the first movement suddenly bursts forth: “But hardly have we had a moment to enjoy this when Fate, relentless and untiring, makes his presence known.”

Given the catastrophic events of his life during this music’s composition, Tchaikovsky may well have come to feel that Fate was inescapable, and the reappearance of the opening motto amid the high spirits of the finale represents the climax–both musically and emotionally–of the entire symphony. This specter duly acknowledged, Tchaikovsky rips the symphony to a close guaranteed to set every heart in the hall racing at the same incandescent pace as his music.