Overture Magazine - 2018-19 Season BSO_Overture_NOV_DEC | Page 24

VIOLINIST JOSHUA BELL
The Man With The Violin, and a newly
commissioned animated film. Bell
debuted the 2017 Man With The Violin
festival at the Kennedy Center, and, in
March 2019, presents a Man With The
Violin festival with the Seattle Symphony.
Born in Bloomington, IN, Bell began
violin at age four, and at age 12, began
studies with Josef Gingold. At 14, he
debuted with Riccardo Muti and the
Philadelphia Orchestra and debuted at
Carnegie Hall at age 17 with the St. Louis
Symphony. Bell received the 2007 Avery
Fisher Prize and has been named Musical
America’s 2010 Instrumentalist of the Year
and an Indiana Living Legend.
Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman
Stradivarius violin with a François Tourte
18 th -century bow.
Joshua Bell last appeared with the BSO in
February 2016, performing a fantasy-suite
from Bernstein’s West Side Story and
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.
About the Concert
OVERTURE TO MAY NIGHT
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Born in Tikhvin, Novgorod, Russia,
March 6, 1844; died in Lyubensk, Russia,
June 8, 1908
While most concertgoers know Rimsky-
Korsakov for his spectacular orchestral
showpieces Scheherazade and Capriccio
espagnol, he in fact devoted most of his
career to writing operas, 15 in all. Still
very popular on Russian stages, these
operas are a fantastic blend of Russian
folklore, fairy tales and mysticism, all of
which stimulated his gift for exotic and
colorfully scored music.
Based on a short story drawn from
Gogol’s collection of tales about peasant
life in the Ukraine, Evenings on a Farm
at Dikanka, May Night was his second
opera and the one that really established
a template for his future stage works.
The Gogol collection was a favorite of
Rimsky’s, and he recalled that he and
his wife-to-be had read this particular
story together on the day he proposed to
her. Rimsky created his own libretto and
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OV E R T U R E / BSOmusic.org
wrote May Night rapidly during 1878–79.
It premiered at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky
Theater on January 21, 1880; one of
the leading characters was sung by Igor
Stravinsky’s basso father.
May Night is set in a village kept
spellbound by the presence of an old
ruined castle on a lake, which is believed
to be haunted by the ghost of a beautiful
girl who drowned herself and became a
water-sprite. This legend becomes a reality
when Levko, the son of the mayor, falls in
love with Hanna, but is thwarted by his
father. When the water-sprite appears to
him, he is able to solve the ancient mystery
that holds her captive, and she in turn
enables him to marry Hanna.
The Overture embodies all the aspects
that animate this opera: the yearning
romance, the earthy comedy and the
spooky tale of the water-sprite ghost. The
latter element is captured marvelously
in the opening moments when ominous
trombone calls punctuate the eerie
shimmer of woodwinds and violins.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes,
two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two
trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings.

SYMPHONY NO. 4 IN F MINOR
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Born in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire,
England, October 12, 1872; died in London,
August 26, 1958
As audiences gathered in London’s
Queen’s Hall on April 10, 1935 to hear
the Fourth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan
Williams they undoubtedly had some
strong preconceptions about what they
were about to hear. His previous Third
Symphony, subtitled “Pastoral,” had
been the epitome of his unique musical
style: lyrical, contemplative and featuring
haunting modal melodies inspired by
British folksong.
But the Fourth Symphony turned out
to be something shockingly different,
completely lacking in English reticence.
It began with a dissonant scream played
fortissimo by the entire orchestra —
one of the most violent openings in
the symphonic repertoire. There were
no sweet violin solos and none of what
reviewer Edwin Evans called Vaughan
Williams’ “corduroy tunes.” The
Fourth was bracing and modern and
uncompromising. And yet the surprised
audience responded with enthusiasm and
vociferous applause. Today the Fourth
is generally ranked as the greatest of
Vaughan Williams’ nine symphonies.
This Symphony’s disturbing, aggressive
energy seemed to reflect the apprehensive
mood of the 1930s, with the world
gripped by economic depression and
the rise of fascism. When World War II
erupted, many began to see this work
as prophetic. But Vaughan Williams
disavowed any such intentions. He wrote
to a friend: “I wrote it not as a definite
picture of anything external — e.g. the
state of Europe — but simply because it
occurred to me like this — I can’t explain
why — I don’t think that sitting down
and thinking about great things ever
produces a great work of art.”
The whole symphony is developed from
two powerful thematic fragments that we
hear at the very beginning. The first of
these “motto” motives is the screaming
dissonance heard at the outset — a D-flat
clashing violently against a C, one painful
half-step away — and the wailing melodic
pattern of notes sinking by half-steps
that follows. Vaughan Williams playfully
admitted that he liked to “crib” things
from other composers, and he borrowed
this from the dissonant fanfare that
opens the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony. Unlike Beethoven’s, this is
a dissonance that never seems to resolve
into consonance. The second motto is an
angular climbing melody that follows soon
in the brass and is echoed more quickly in
woodwinds and pizzicato strings.
After stirring up some wild rhythmic
confusion, this opening music subsides,
and over throbbing horns and trombones
we hear a surging theme in the violins,
derived from both mottos, which
expresses anguish and protest. This is
followed by a savage march theme, hurled
out in unison by the horn section. The
screaming motto returns and ushers in a
brief development section.