Overture Magazine: 2016-2017 Season May-June 2017 | Page 27

program notes {
theme is a soaring, wide-ranging melody
— a Romeo and Juliet love song — also
introduced by the soloist.
In the gorgeous slow movement in
E-flat Major, the soloist’s command of
pure, lyrical tone is again on display. He
soars on a beautiful legato melody above
a subtle accompaniment of pizzicato
strings and clarinet (a combination also
heard in Romeo and Juliet). Prokofiev had
a fondness for exploiting the upper range
of violins, and in this melody’s later
reprise, he sends the soloist higher still,
supported by the orchestral violins also
in shimmering high register.
The lively finale brings a complete
contrast, with a rustic peasant dance
in heavily accented 3/4-time. The
soloist rips off fierce chords and fast
passagework, while an active percussion
section of bass drum, snare drum
and castanets adds to the fire. Here,
Prokofiev seems to remember the wild
ways of his youth and that a little
dissonance adds spice to life as well
as to music.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes,
two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns,
two trumpets, percussion, strings.
Les Offrandes oubliées:
symphonic meditation
Olivier Messiaen
Born in Avignon, France, December 10, 1908;
died in Paris, April 27, 1992
Olivier Messiaen was one of the 20 th
century’s great originals: a deeply religious
composer who utterly transformed the
way music sounded and operated as
he sought to express the mysteries of
Christianity. His musical talent ap-
peared early, and in 1919 at age 10, he
became a student at the hallowed Paris
Conservatoire, taking his harmony les-
sons alongside adults. After winning
many prizes, he graduated in 1930, and
a year later became the organist at Paris’
La Trinité, a post he held, in the grand
French composer/organist tradition, until
the end of his life.
Rather than a traditional tonal
composer or a non-tonal follower of
Schoenberg, Messiaen became a modal
composer, using “synthetic” modes
drawn from Eastern music and his own
invention rather than the medieval
church modes. His ear for instrumental
color was unique and extremely keen; he
The BSO
we are likely to go in the direction of size,
or dissonance, or complexity in music.”
Sergei Prokofiev wrote these words
around 1930, and they seemed strange
coming from a composer who two decades
earlier had been known as a fire-breathing
radical. Yet they were absolutely sincere —
a reflection of a trend at the time among
composers who were retreating from the
modernism they had once espoused. In
America, Aaron Copland was reaching
much the same conclusion.
Prokofiev’s “new simplicity” was also
preparing him for his return to the
Soviet Union after many years of exile.
There, dissonance was seen as an attack
on the state and uplifting melody as a
requirement for the building of Soviet
character. Written mostly in rural Russia
during the summer of 1935, the Violin
Concerto No. 2, with its abundance
of lyrical melody, turned out to be
Prokofiev’s farewell to the West. Created
for the French violinist Robert Soetens,
it was his last non-Soviet commission.
After he moved permanently to Moscow
in 1936, Prokofiev would realize — too
late! — that Soviet citizens could not
compose for the outside world or make
international concert tours as he was
accustomed to doing.
During that summer, Prokofiev was
also creating his glorious score for the
ballet Romeo and Juliet, and the Second
Violin Concerto seems to breath the
same air, especially in its rapturous
second movement. Originally conceived
as a “concert sonata” for violin and
orchestra, the work is more intimate and
integrated than the standard concerto,
while still giving the soloist plenty of
virtuosic opportunities. Although the
soloist begins alone, the orchestra enters
after eight measures and thereafter
maintains equality, sometimes even
pushing the violin into the background.
First movement: The soloist opens
with a brooding Russian melody in G
Minor that is simplicity itself, except for
its intriguing shifting rhythmic accents.
The orchestra will also grow to love
this tune; the cellos and basses sing it
memorably in canon with the soloist near
the end of the movement. The second
May– June 2017 |
O v ertur e
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