RAY CHEN PERFORMS SHOSTAKOVICH
Born in Taiwan and raised in
Australia, Chen was accepted to the
Curtis Institute of Music at age 15, where
he studied with Aaron Rosand and was
supported by Young Concert Artists. He
plays the 1715 “Joachim” Stradivarius
violin on loan from the Nippon Music
Foundation. This instrument was once
owned by the famed Hungarian violinist,
Joseph Joachim (1831–1907).
Ray Chen last appeared with the BSO
in April 2017, performing Paganini's Violin
Concerto in D; Ludovic Morlot, conductor.
About the Concert
THE FORGOTTEN OFFERINGS
Olivier Messiaen
Born in Avignon, France, December 10, 1908;
died in Paris, France, 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 appeared early, and at age
ten, he became a student at the hallowed
Paris Conservatoire, taking his lessons
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 until the end of his life.
Rather than a traditional tonal
composer, 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 actually
“saw” tonal colors in terms of the visual
spectrum. His music was mystical and
often radiantly joyous.
Messiaen wrote his first orchestral work,
The Forgotten Offerings (Les offrandes
oubliées), in 1930 when he was 22. An
expression of his profound Catholic faith,
it is in the form of a triptych: three sections
comprising of extraordinary slow and
quiet outer sections surrounding a fast,
rhythmically and sonically violent middle
section. The composer prefaced it with his
own prose poem:
“Arms outstretched, sad unto death,
you shed your blood on the cross. We
have forgotten, sweet Jesus, how you love
us. Driven by madness on a breathless,
headlong course, we have fallen into sin
like a tomb. Here is the unspoiled table, the
source of charity, the banquet of the poor;
here is the compassion offering the bread
of life and of love. We have forgotten, sweet
Jesus, how you love us.”
Messiaen described the three movements
as follows:
“THE CROSS (very slow, grieving,
profoundly sad): Lament of the strings
whose plaintive ‘neumes’ divide the melody
into groups of different lengths, broken by
deep gray- and mauve-colored sighs.
“SIN (quick, fierce, desperate, breathless):
A type of race toward the abyss at an
almost mechanized pace. One will note
the marked accents, the whistling of the
connecting notes in the glissando [slides],
the cutting cry of the trumpets.
“THE EUCHARIST (extremely slow):
The long, slow motion of the violins, which
raises itself over a carpet of pianissimo
chords in tones of red, gold and blue (like
a church window) to the light of soloists
playing string instruments with mutes.
Sin is forgetfulness of God. The cross and
Eucharist are offerings to God, who gave
His body and shed His blood.”
Instrumentation: Three flutes, two oboes, two
clarinets including bass clarinet, English horn,
three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets,
three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion
and strings.
VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 1
Dmitri Shostakovich
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, September 25,
1906; died in Moscow, Russia, August 9, 1975
During his long career under the
Communists, Dmitri Shostakovich
seesawed between being the pride of
Russian music and a pariah one step away
from the Siberian Gulag. In 1948, Stalin
attacked musicians, writers, scientists and
scholars, denouncing the most prominent
figures to cow the masses. Black lists were
drawn up, and heading the composers’
list were the names of Shostakovich and
Prokofiev. In one of those periods that
show human nature at its worst, musicians
scrambled to get their names off the list and
add those of their rivals.
That same year, Shostakovich had just
completed his First Violin Concerto, but
locked it away in a desk drawer; he thought
this probing and sometimes sarcastic
work might seal his doom with the Soviet
authorities. After Stalin’s death in 1953,
times were more auspicious. The concerto
came out again and was dedicated to
the phenomenal Russian violinist David
Oistrakh, who played the premiere on
October 29, 1955 with the Leningrad
Philharmonic. A packed hall gave the
composer and soloist ovation after ovation.
Composed in four movements of
symphonic weight, this is a true “iron
man” concerto, calling on everything in
the violinist’s technical arsenal as well
as vast physical and emotional stamina.
Even the redoubtable Oistrakh begged
the composer to give the opening of the
finale to the orchestra so “at least I can
wipe the sweat off my brow” after the
daunting solo cadenza.
Defying convention, movement one
is a quiet, meditative Nocturne, which
gradually rises from the lower depths of
orchestra and violin. This is profoundly
melancholy, even anguished music: a violin
aria with the soloist as a lonely insomniac
singing to a sleeping, indifferent world.
The mood of the second movement is
so common in Shostakovich that it seems
the composer’s mocking, self-protective
response to the regime he lived under. We
hear his famous signature motive DSCH:
the notes D, S (the German designation
for E-flat), C and H (German usage for
B-natural). A malicious-sounding ensemble
of woodwinds mocks the violinist with
this motive, and later the violinist bitterly
echoes it. The soloist flies through a crazed,
driven dance of exacting virtuosity.
As he would in other major works,
Shostakovich turned to the Baroque
passacaglia form for his powerful third
movement, the Concerto’s emotional heart.
The passacaglia uses a repeating melodic-
harmonic pattern, typically in the bass.
Shostakovich’s theme, which we hear in
M A R – A P R 2020 / OV E R T U R E
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