Overture Magazine 2019-20 BSO_Overture_Jan Feb | Page 32

ROMEO AND JULIET
in 1829 at age 19, he returned to Warsaw
to create the necessary vehicles for his
conquest of Western Europe.
Written in Warsaw in late 1829 and
early 1830, the Second Piano Concerto
was the first of his two concertos to
be composed, but the second to be
published. Chopin unveiled it at a concert
in Warsaw on March 17, 1830, and it
was such a tremendous success he had to
repeat the program five days later. It was
an equal success at his public debut in
Paris—the city in which he finally settled
permanently—in February 1832. In
attendance, his admiring rival Franz Liszt
wrote: “The endlessly renewed applause
did not seem sufficient to express our
enchantment at the demonstration of
this talent, which disclosed a new level in
the expression of poetic feeling and such
felicitous innovations in artistic form.”
But within a few years, Chopin virtually
dropped his public performing career.
Audience applause meant little to him,
and his retiring temperament and frail
health were poor matches for the life
of a barnstorming virtuoso. Already in
his Concerto, we hear something quite
different from the overt showiness of Liszt’s
concertos. “His music has an intensity born
of introspection,” writes Chopin scholar
Jim Samson. Chopin was the master of
subtlety, of virtuosity that does not call
too much attention to itself. And as a
passionate lover of opera, he carried the
tradition of bel canto opera—with its long
cantilena melodic lines and sumptuous
ornamentation—over to the keyboard.
In the first movement, singing lyricism
takes the place of conventional opening-
movement drama. Again, unlike Liszt,
Chopin showed relatively little interest
in the orchestral part. He does grant
the orchestra a lengthy exposition: its
only major opportunity to shine before
the piano pushes it back into a mostly
accompaniment role. After a reticent
beginning, its principal theme is forceful
and very rhythmic. But it is the tender,
songful second theme, introduced by the
oboe, which will play the larger role in this
movement’s emotional character.
With ringing octaves, the soloist takes
center stage. The principal theme is given
30
OV E R T U R E / BSOmusic.org
only cursory attention before launching
a new theme of Chopin-esque lyricism,
elegantly ornamented. Loving attention is
devoted to the second theme, and, after the
development section, Chopin can hardly
wait to get back to this theme and lavish
even more gorgeous embellishments on it.
Movement two is a ravishing nocturne
and the Concerto’s heart. It was inspired
by the composer’s frustrated love for a
young soprano, Konstancia Gladkowska.
A great aria for piano in the bel canto
tradition, its unforgettable melody is
ornamented with inspired expressiveness
and delicacy. In its powerful middle
section, the pianist passionately articulates
Chopin’s yearning for Konstancia over
agitated tremolo strings.
Chopin’s passion for his homeland
finds expression in the dancing finale in
the buoyant style of a Polish mazurka.
Here the pianist demonstrates her
prowess with a nonstop flight of airy, but
devilishly difficult figurations, sprung
from infectious dance melodies. At the
end, the tonality brightens to F major and
a horn signal summons forth a torrent
of keyboard brilliance, guaranteed to
conquer audiences.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes,
two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two
trumpets, bass trombone, timpani and strings.
SUITE FROM ROMEO AND JULIET
Sergei Prokofiev
Born in Sontsivka, Ukraine, April 23, 1891;
died in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 1953
As he returned to the Soviet Union in the
mid-1930s after years of exile in the West,
Sergei Prokofiev chose Romeo and Juliet
as a gift to his homeland, honoring the
Russian tradition of full-length story ballets
such as Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty. In
Paris, he had already proven his skills in
creating dance music with the ballets Pas
d’acier and The Prodigal Son for Diaghilev
and his celebrated Ballets Russes. His keen
dramatic sense had also been revealed in a
series of highly effective operas, including
The Gambler, The Love for Three Oranges
and The Fiery Angel.
With a commission from Moscow’s
Bolshoi Ballet in hand and the love story
driving his imagination, Prokofiev wrote
most of the two-hour-plus score rapidly over
the summer and early fall of 1935. But when
he played the music for the Bolshoi staff on
October 4 th , they were dismayed: Prokofiev
had given his ballet a happy ending in
which Juliet awakens in time to prevent
Romeo’s suicide! In his autobiography
Prokofiev explained: “The reasons for this
bit of barbarism were purely choreographic:
living people can dance, the dead cannot.”
Convinced that the lovers’ deaths could
indeed be staged effectively, he rewrote his
ending to match Shakespeare’s.
More trouble arose as the ballet went
into rehearsal. Bewildered by Prokofiev’s
frequently complicated rhythms, the
dancers complained that the music
was “undanceable,” and the Bolshoi
eventually dropped the production. But
Prokofiev believed deeply in his score—a
magnificent blending of his melodic gifts,
sophisticated wit and cinematic skill of
painting pictures with music—and in
1936, he created two concert suites to
advertise his masterpiece. Audiences fell
in love with the music, and ultimately,
the Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet mounted a
triumphant production in January 1940
that established the work as one of the
jewels of the classical ballet repertoire.
For these performances, Marin Alsop
has created her own suite of twelve excerpts
from the ballet’s score. Interspersed among
the major sections that mark critical
moments in the drama are five lighter
sequences—“Scene,” “Morning Dance,”
“Dance,” “Dance of the Antilles Girls” and
“Aubade”—which relieve the tension and
showcase the dancing of the corps de ballet.
The weightier selections are as follows:
“Montagues and Capulets”: With two
savagely dissonant chords, Prokofiev sets the
tragic scene as in the play’s prologue as the
Prince of Verona forbids the two families to
continue their feud. Then, in the swaggering
macho dance of the Capulet men at Juliet’s
ball, the composer incisively demonstrates
why this command will be ignored. In a
lyrical interlude, Romeo first spies Juliet
dancing with Paris, the man her parents
wish her to marry.