Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto • Dror Biran
October 27, 7:30 pm
Great Hall, GBPAC
Ingolf Dahl • Quodlibet on American Folk Tunes and Folk Dances
Zoltán Kodály • Variations on a Hungarian Folksong, ‘The Peacock’
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky • Concerto for Piano no. 1 in b-flat, Op. 23 with Dror Biran, piano
Dror Biran joins the WCFSO for one of the best-loved works of all time, Tchaikovsky’s exceptionally romantic and vibrant First Piano Concerto.
The folk-influenced sounds of the Tchaikovsky concerto play off of a pair of rare and exquisite orchestral gems including Zoltán Kodály’s Variations on a Hungarian Folksong (subtitled “The Peacock”), a colorful romantic orchestral setting of Hungarian folk music. Ingolf Dahl’s Quodlibet on American Folk Tunes and Folk Dances is another uncommon symphonic treasure drawing on American folk songs to encapsulate the exuberant and expansive nature of our own country’s cultural history.
Sponsored by Matt and Pooneh Glascock
Program notes
Ingolf Dahl • Quodlibet on American Folk Tunes and Folk Dances
Ingolf Dahl is on the periphery of known twentieth-century composers, but to say he did not live a fascinating life would be an understatement. The first half of his life was spent staying one step ahead of the Nazi persecution, fleeing Cologne for Switzerland in 1932. There, in addition to his studies, he became active in the activities of the Zurich Opera, preparing the chorus for the world premieres of both Berg’s Lulu and Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler. Even neutral Switzerland would eventually become hostile to Jewish refugees and Dahl left Europe for the United States in 1939.
Settling in Los Angeles, Dahl began his second life in the company of many expatriate European musicians, including Milhaud, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky—among many others. His many musical activities as performer, teacher (serving as Professor of Music at the University of Southern California from 1945 to his death) and composer ranged from constructing an English-language version of Pierrot Lunaire to work with Tommy Dorsey, Edgar Bergen and a host of Hollywood film studios. Dahl even performed the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata in the 1969 film, A Boy Named Charlie Brown.
The Quodlibet on American Folk Tunes (“The Fancy Blue Devil’s Breakdown”) was originally composed for piano eight-hands in 1953 and demonstrates Dahl’s successful foray into “Americanization.” His inclusion of no fewer than six fiddle tunes might actually surpass Copland’s much more well-known “Hoe Down.” Orchestrated in 1965, the Quodlibet remains Dahl’s most popular work.
• Brian Hughes
Zoltán Kodály • Variations on a Hungarian Folksong, “The Peacock”
Composer and music educator - developer of the now-famous (and inappropriately named) Kodály Method - Hungarian Zoltan Kodály almost single-handedly invented the modern-day study of ethnomusicology. Early on, he realized that what the world recognized as “Hungarian” music (as found in compositions ranging from Haydn to Brahms), was little more than gypsy street music and bore no resemblance to the actual folksong of his native land. Hence, he set out to travel the countryside in search of native singers and their songs.
After writing a 1906 thesis on Hungarian folk song (“Strophic Construction in Hungarian Folksong”), he met Bartók and the two went on to work together in their song collections. It is said that Kodály and Bartók collected over 100,000 folk melodies which both employed in a myriad of compositions. But where Bartók’s works were infused with dissonance and rhythmic drive, Kodály was drawn to the lyrical possibilities of the material.
Kodály’s initial setting of the Peacock tune (translated into English as “Fly Peacock, Fly”) was composed for male chorus and appeared in the early 1930s. Kodály composed the variations on a commission celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, which premiered it under the baton of Wilhelm Mengelberg on November 23, 1939.
Kodály was very adamant about combining folk song in construction with the variation form:
Variations are the most natural development of folk music, for folk music itself is nothing but an endless series of melodies developing from each other and changing from one to the other in unnoticeable transitions. It is a pity that our composers do not write variations on folk songs more often. By this they would promote more efficiently than by anything else the bringing of folk music and composed music closer to each other.
Don Anderson of the Rochester (NY) Philharmonic, sums up this vibrantly colorful work:
This kaleidoscopic, brilliantly orchestrated score consists of an introduction containing the theme (it appears on solo oboe), 16 variations and a finale. The variations, the majority of which last mere seconds, fall into three broad groups, fast-slow-fast. The slow central segment brings the longest, darkest and least folk-like sections, climaxing in the anguished outbursts of No. 12 and the somberly pulsing funeral march of No. 13. A flute solo rekindles a spirit of optimism which propels the music onward with increasing exuberance. A majestic, full-orchestra reprise of the theme sets the stage for the exultant conclusion.
• Brian Hughes
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky • Concerto for Piano no. 1 in b-flat, Op. 23
With two symphonies and his first masterpiece - the “fantasy-overture” Romeo and Juliet - under his belt, Tchaikovsky set forth composing his first piano concerto in 1874. While he intended the first performance to be presented by his friend and Moscow Conservatory colleague, Nikolai Rubenstein, the pianist flatly rejected the original manuscript. Tchaikovsky recounted the event in a letter to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck:
…a torrent poured from Nikolay Grigoryevich’s (Rubenstein) mouth, gentle at first, then more and more growing into the sound of a Jupiter Tonana. It turned out that my concerto was worthless and unplayable; passages were so fragmented, so clumsy, so badly written that they were beyond rescue; the work itself was bad, vulgar; in places I had stolen from other composers; only two or three pages were worth preserving; the rest must be thrown away or completely rewritten. “Here, for instance, this—now what’s all that?” (he caricatured my music on the piano) “And this? How can anyone….” etc., etc.
Thus the premiere was entrusted to Hans von Bulow, who included the piece on a tour of the United States, performing it first in Boston. Ironically enough, Sergei Taneyev gave the Moscow premiere with none other than Rubenstein on the podium. While Tchaikovsky swore that he would publish the concerto as it was written (and he did), he would revise it twice and it is the 1888 version that is heard today. As for Rubenstein? His own prejudices toward the work softened and he performed it widely across Europe.
The concerto opens with probably the most famous introduction in the repertoire, with a few B-flat minor chords leading to the thundering piano chords in the “wrong key” of D-flat major. Rather than using this heroic theme for development, Tchaikovsky departs from it completely for the remainder of the movement, focusing on two unrelated tunes: one a jaunty, dance-infused tune and the other a lyrical song-like melody. An almost rhapsodic treatment of these themes (focusing more on the lyric) consumes the remainder of this lengthy movement—longer than the last two movements combined. Flashy pyrotechnics burst forth from the solo part, joining the orchestra in its final few chords.
The Andantino simplice offers a respite and begins with solo flute singing a tender lullaby. The piano soon joins and is in turn serenaded by the oboe and viola. Suddenly, the piano breaks forth in a scurrying scherzo, darting across the keyboard in breakneck fashion before a loud bang announces the return to the gentle night-song.
So popular was the last movement in its American premieres that audiences demanded an encore. Few finales more aptly fit the moniker, Allegro con fuoco (fast with fire). The muscular minor-key theme - based on a Ukrainian folk song - works back and forth with the orchestra in an almost call (piano in the minor) and response (orchestra in the major) pattern. Again, a splendid, song-like theme arises, this time in the strings, and it is this music that Tchaikovsky powers to the concerto’s exhilarating finish.
• Brian Hughes
