ZHANG CONDUCTS TCHAIKOVSKY
poems are entitled‘ Landscape’ and‘ The West Lake,’ respectively. My musical sound imagination came from the text in the poems.”“ Landscape” describes the moment when wind sweeps away a storm and restores calm, and“ The West Lake” describes a lakeside view that is beautiful whatever the weather.
Instrumentation: Two flutes( second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets( second doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion( suspended cymbal, triangle, three temple blocks, bass drum, tam-tam, two bongos, and conga), harp, and strings.
Alexander Glazunov
Born: July 29( old style)/ August 10( new style), 1865, in St. Petersburg, Russia Died: March 21, 1936, in Paris, France
CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA IN A MINOR, OP. 82 [ 1904 ]
Alexander Glazunov showed unusual talent from childhood. Rimsky-Korsakov accepted him as a private pupil in 1879, and within three years he unveiled the first of his eight completed symphonies and the first of his seven string quartets.
The arts patron Mitrofan Belyayev underwrote his publications and included him in his salon of cultural luminaries. In 1899, Glazunov was named Professor of Composition at his alma mater, the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and in December 1905 he became its director. He was a gifted, hard-working administrator, raising the school’ s academic standards, founding its student orchestra, and helping it weather the new demands of Soviet society following the October Revolution of 1918.
The first decade of the 20 th century represented the highpoint of his career as a composer, a moment when he benefited from the fullness of his experience, but was not yet entirely distracted by his administrative responsibilities. His Violin Concerto dates from just before he assumed the Conservatory directorship. It was written for the eminent violinist Leopold Auer. Some two decades earlier, Auer had declined an offer to premiere Tchaikovsky’ s Violin Concerto on the grounds that it was difficult to the point of being unplayable and, in any case, unidiomatic to the violin. No such complaints were registered about Glazunov’ s Concerto, which is essentially conservative in its language and, though highly virtuosic, unquestionably sensitive to the violin’ s capacities.
Glazunov seems to borrow a page from Mendelssohn and Liszt by linking the traditional three movements into an uninterrupted whole. Kinship with Mendelssohn’ s Violin Concerto is also revealed at the opening, where the soloist launches into the theme immediately without benefit of an orchestral introduction. The vehement nationalism of Rimsky-Korsakov’ s generation had faded by the turn of the century, but Glazunov nonetheless invests that opening melody with modality reminiscent of folk music.
Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, bells, triangle, cymbals, harp, and strings, in addition to the solo violin.
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born: April 25( old style)/ May 7( new style), 1840, in Votkinsk, Viatka District, Russia Died: October 25 / November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg, Russia
SUITE FROM THE SLEEPING BEAUTY, OP. 66A [ 1888 – 89 ]
When Ivan Vsevolozhsky, director of St. Petersburg’ s Imperial Theatre, and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky started planning a ballet, in 1886, they spun their wheels for a while planning something on the tale of Undine, the water sprite. Vsevolozhsky jump-started the project by changing course entirely. When he sent the composer the draft of a libretto derived from Charles Perrault’ s famous 17th-century fairy tale La belle au bois dormant( The Sleeping Beauty), Tchaikovsky responded:“ I am pleased to tell you that I am charmed, delighted beyond all description. It suits me perfectly, and I could ask for nothing better to set to music.”
Tchaikovsky was immersed in the composition by the end of 1888, and within months he turned the last page, notwithstanding a concert tour and a family vacation in the meantime.“ Finished
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