Lera Auerbach
with her musical performances. And
most of all, she is a composer, whose
passionate and emotionally vivid music
has been commissioned by major soloists
and orchestras throughout Europe and
the U.S.
Auerbach has said, “My piano
teacher discouraged me from pursuing
composition because he wanted me
to concentrate on becoming a concert
pianist. My composition teacher
discouraged me from practicing the
piano many hours a day as he wanted
me to focus on composition. My mother
discouraged me from writing poetry
and prose…because of her concern that
it would take me away from music.…
In general, everyone discouraged me
from doing everything that I am doing,
concerned I must be spreading myself too
thin.…At some point, I understood…I
have my road to take, regardless of how
uncommon it may be.”
Born near the border of Siberia
to a very musical family of Jewish
extraction, Auerbach completed her
first composition at age four. She wrote
her first opera at twelve, a work that
was performed across Russia. In 1991
while on a concert tour of the U.S.,
she defected from her homeland in
order to pursue her studies here–even
though she was only 18 and didn’t speak
English. But with her formidable talent
and determination, Auerbach earned
bachelor’s and master’s degrees at The
Juilliard School while simultaneously
pursuing comparative literary studies at
Columbia University. Her performing and
composing careers exploded, and in 2002
she made her debut at Carnegie Hall.
In 2007, she was selected as a member
of Young Global Leaders by the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Lera Auerbach’s music seizes
your attention and will not let you
go. It is generous in its emotional
communicativeness and in its original
and often very beautiful use of orchestral
instruments. Employing the grandeur
and drama traditionally associated with
Russian music, her music, nevertheless,
reveals a voice that is contemporary and
very distinctively her own.
Exemplifying Auerbach’s close
relationship with literature, Evas
Klage was inspired by a passage in
John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book XI.
Knowing that she and Adam will now be
driven out of the Garden of Paradise, Eve
laments her fate with these words:
“O unexpected stroke, worse than death!
Must I thus leave thee, Paradise?
Thus leave
Thee, native soil! these happy walks
and shades,
Fit haunt of gods; where I had hope
to spend,
Quiet, though sad, the respite of that day
That must be mortal to us both? O flowers
That never will in other climate grow,
My early visitation, and my last
At even, when I bred up with tender hand
From the first opening bud, and gave
ye names!
Who now shall rear ye to the sun, or rank
Your tribes, and water from the ambrosial
fount?
Thee, lastly, nuptial bower! By me adorned
With what to sight or smell was sweet,
from thee
How shall I part, and whither wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure
And wild? How shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits.”
Instrumentation: Flute, piccolo, oboe,
English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon,
contrabassoon, two horns, trumpet, bass
trombone, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp,
synthesizer and strings.
SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN D MAJOR
Sergei Prokofiev
Born in Sontsivka, Ukraine, April 23, 1891;
died in Moscow, Russia, March 5, 1953
Although his earliest works had been
aggressively modern, in 1917 Sergei
Prokofiev decided to try his hand at
a symphony in neo-Classical style,
anticipating a movement his arch-rival
Igor Stravinsky would also adopt. As he
explained, his First Symphony was also
an experiment in composing away from
the piano. “So this was how the project
of writing a symphony in the style of
Haydn came about…it seemed it would
be easier to dive into the deep waters of
writing without the piano if I worked
in a familiar setting. If Haydn had lived
in our era, I thought, he would have
retained his compositional style but
would also have absorbed something
from what was new.” The result was
a witty, bright-spirited work that
combined Classical form and musical
material with rhythmic and harmonic
twists that were pure 20 th century.
The fiery upward rush that opens the
first movement was known in Haydn’s
day as the “Mannheim skyrocket,”
because it was one of the virtuoso
effects associated with the celebrated
German orchestra of Mannheim.
The effervescent principal theme it
introduces is initially in the home key of
D major, but in a 20 th -century maneuver,
Prokofiev promptly drops it down to
C major. Even more memorable is the
second theme: a mincing 18 th -century
dance made comical by a sly bassoon
accompaniment. Notice the bright
and sassy writing for woodwinds
throughout this movement and the
Symphony generally.
Movement two has all the grace
and charm of Haydn’s lighter slow
movements. Violins, in the very high
range Prokofiev loved, sing a theme
of beguiling sweetness; it grows
lovelier still when a flute is added to
its repetition. In the more animated
middle section, the bassoon again
moves into the spotlight.
N OV– D EC 201 9 / OV E R T U R E
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