Composer Russell Steinberg—Music and Writings

RUSSELL STEINBERG UPBEAT LIVE TALK ON Thursday February 5 and Saturday February 7, 2009, 7:00 PM and 1PM
Walt Disney Concert Hall Los Angeles Philharmonic Charles Dutoit, conductor Yuja Wang, piano Debussy: Petite suite Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2 Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade Debussy Petite Suite Originally a piano duet, this early work of Debussy was later orchestrated by his colleague Henri Büsser. This is the early Debussy of the Arabesque and Clair de Lune, before the great leap in 1895 with the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and the birth of modernism. Here Debussy is just beginning his delightful experiments, bringing back older modal systems into tonal music and reveling in rich 9th, 11th, and 13th chords—the stuff that later American jazz musicians eagerly lifted from his music. And like those earlier works, the tunes are elegant and unforgettable. We can hear all this in the first movement titled Sailing. When I say Debussy’s tunes are unforgettable, I don’t really mean that the melodies are so hot, but that the harmonies that support them take something ordinary and give it an irresistible perfume. Those langourous sighs over the harp-like harmonies speak of a modal world, leaning strongly on a minor dominant that weakens the tonic and imparts a nostalgia to the work. Later harmonies suggest the augmented triad that would later obsess Debussy, as well as the rich chords he and Ravel made famous. I find the third movement Minuet the most elegant piece of the set. It opens with a brief introduction of delicate ornaments that recall the French baroque composer Couperin. Then the music settles into a minuet that sounds both antique and new. It has the rigid rhythm of a dance and a squareness to its phrasing, but its harmonies are again simultaneously modal and modern. The final movement lives up quintessentially to its title—Ballet. The music has a consistent pulse in two accompanying yet another addictive tune. The middle section is dreamier with more advanced harmonies. The Petite Suite is a piece written to instantly please and so it does. Prokofiev Piano Concerto #2 Prokofiev wrote: “What would be the ideal way to compose a concerto? It occurred to me today that it would certainly be interesting for a pianist to be presented with a concerto that had its origin in a technically challenging sonata and subsequently been transformed into a concerto. The solo part would be bound to be interesting pianistically, while the sonata itself would benefit by the reinforcement and embellishment of a skillfully added orchestral texture.” Clearly Prokofiev treated the concerto as a vehicle for experimentation. Last week we talked about the fifth piano concerto, in which Prokofiev expanded the first allegro movement into three separate movements, the third one a tour de force toccata. Only then did we get a slow movement followed by a finale—making five movements in all. The second concerto is also a “rethinking” of the concerto form. Prokofiev dares to buck the conventional Fast-Slow-Fast psychological dictum. He does so in an opposite manner to the Beethoven tradition of the ninth symphony—namely delaying the slow movement closer to the end of the piece. Instead he BEGINS the concerto with its slow movement and follows this not with two, but three fast tempo movements. It’s a remarkable idea, and one that indicates that Prokofiev, for all his modernisms, was even early on dialoguing with classical traditions rather than truly moving away from them like Igor Stravinsky. We often label both of them “neo-classicists,” but this is misleading because they aren’t the same. Stravinsky with the Rite of Spring created entirely new musical structures and connections, much like Picasso’s cubism dispensing with perspective and realism. Later when Stravinsky returned to classical structures in his Octet and later works, he used the casings without the innards, so to speak. In other words, he used the classical structures without the progression of chords that had produced those structures. Prokofiev is different. In his music he is still actively dealing with those progression of chords. He alters them substantially, adds a lot of dissonance, and continually resolves to the, so to speak, “wrong” places. But he does begin and end in all the “right” places. He is still in conversation with Bach and the tonal lineage. 1st movement The haunting tune that opens the concerto is a terrific case in point. It starts and ends in the “right” places for a piece in G minor. But good luck finding your way in the middle. And when it comes out all right in the end, we are startled and feel “had.” We know Prokofiev just got away with murder harmonically—in tonal terms-—but we’re not sure how this musical Houdini did it! All those harmonic twists and turns mark the “Prokofiev-ization” of the harmony. Once you become familiar with the style, your ear kind of rides the changing harmonies like a surfer keeping balance on giant waves. And it is exhilarating. The first movement is completely original. After beginning with this intensely lyric idea, the music gradually transitions to a march for the middle section. When the lyrical tune returns, Prokofiev has an astonishing surprise—an extended—extremely extended—piano cadenza that becomes increasingly virtuosic and is possibly the closest Prokofiev comes to sounding like Rachmaninoff. The lopsided forces of this first movement propel the concerto into its next three fast movements. 2nd movement Crazy octave trills initiate the second movement scherzo in a perpetual motion piece that lasts only about two and a half minutes. It has some of the same out-of-breath quality as the Chopin perpetual motion etudes. 3rd movement The out-of-breath quality continues directly in the third movement. After ponderous brass octaves, the clarinet enters chortling down in scales. The piano takes up this playfulness with acrobatic scales in what is decidedly a sardonic scherzo. These scales take on a shimmer in a middle section that reminds us a bit of one of the haunting solo dances in his Romeo and Juliet ballet written much later. The piece ends with a fiendish cackling in the woodwinds. 4th movement Where do you go from 2 fast movements in a row? Incredibly, Prokofiev creates a tempestuous finale that even outdoes the energy of those previous pieces in its opening acrobatics. But this is a complex movement that seeks to bind the entire concerto together. The energetic opening gives way to an extended second area that begins in desolation with chillingly beautiful dissonant piano chords. This is an intimate cadenza that becomes an increasingly lyrical search for the calm of the opening of the concerto. A lush theme emerges that is clearly related to the tune that began the concerto. Later this material returns in an even more extended piano cadenza. Both of these cadenzas clearly refer to the first movement. Just when that place of calm seems firmly established, the piece erupts back to its wild and violent opening. Prokofiev wrote about the premiere:
 “Following the violent concluding chord there was silence in the hall for a few moments. Then boos and catcalls were answered with loud applause, thumping of sticks and calls for ‘encore.’ I came out twice to acknowledge the reception, hearing cries of approval and boos coming from the hall. I was pleased that the Concerto provoked such strong feelings in the audience.” Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade Rimsky-Korsakov wrote: “The program I had been guided by in composing Scheherazade consisted of separate, unconnected episodes and pictures from The Arabian Nights, scattered through all four movements of my suite: the sea and Sinbad’s ship, the fantastic narrative of the Prince Kalendar, the Prince and the Princess, the Bagdad festival and the ship dashing against the rock with the bronze rider upon it.” 
 
“In composing Scheherazade I meant these hints to direct but slightly the hearer’s fancy on the path which my own fancy had traveled, and to leave more minute and particular conceptions to the will and mood of each. All I had desired was that the hearer, if he liked my piece as symphonic music, should carry away the impression that this is beyond doubt an oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders and not merely four pieces played one after the other….” This quote would really speak to my late Aunt. She loved to listen to classical music by closing her eyes and seeing pictures in her imagination. For her, that was what made music beautiful. Rimsky-Korsakov’s tunes tell the musical narrative of this piece so clearly (and with such sufficient repetition), that a listener needs little guidance to become fully absorbed. And what absorbs us quickly is the mastery this composer has over orchestral texture and color. The solo instruments and their combinations plus imaginative textures greet the ear at every turn. He and Maurice Ravel, by the way, were the two guys everyone else studies to learn to write for orchestra. If a lot of movie music at times sounds like Rimsky-Korsakov, that thievery is not accidental! The beginning invokes another famous piece of musical magic—Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night Dream. That piece begins with surprising wind chords to initiate the world of magic. Rimsky-Korsakov does the same with the beginning of Sheherezade after its initial brass fanfare. And then the solo violin, the voice of Sheherzade, begins spinning her tales and we’re off on the high seas with Sinbad. Much of Rimsky-Korsakov’s magic is the way he contrasts solo passages with full orchestral tuttis. The second movement begins with the beguiling violin solo but then the bassoon even outdoes that solo! This is a tenor reedy molto espressivo bassoon, in a high register approaching what Stravinsky’s stratospheric register for the Rite of Spring. And later in the movement, the bassoon becomes a virtuoso. This movement is full of colors, such as the brass fanfare figures and the captivating harp passages near the end of the movement. The third movement love song is among the most popular classical tunes, rightly so. It is quite long and yet is strongly crafted throughout. The beautiful arabesque scales that float in and around it are particularly wonderful. Exotic percussion and muted brass transport us to foreign lands in the middle section of this movement. By the fourth movement, Sheherezade is extending her powers, judging by the increased virtuosity of the violin cadenzas. It now feels like a violin concerto.This virtuosity is assumed by the entire orchestra in this movement. Strings pluck and bow furiously, winds and brass have complicated repeated figures, and the percussion too rattle away on tambourine, cymbals, triangle, and timpani. Sheherezade also ends just like Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Dream—with magical wind chords drawing the curtain to a close in E major. ********************************************************