Mosaics
Howard Hanson
b. Wahoo, Neb. / October 28, 1896
d. Rochester, N.Y. / February 16, 1981
One of the great figures in American music of the 20th Century, Hanson earned acclaim as composer, conductor, and educator. After studies in Italy, he returned to the U.S. and became director of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music in 1924. During his 40-year term, he raised the institution’s standards to the highest level. He also appeared widely as a conductor, championing music by American composers in particular. His music is decidedly Romantic: lushly scored, melodic, and approachable. His style flew in the face of many contemporary trends. On the other hand, its strong human content has helped ensure its survival, while many less audience-friendly scores have dropped from sight.
He composed Mosaics in 1957, on commission from conductor George Szell and his brilliant virtuoso ensemble, the Cleveland Orchestra. He took inspiration from the glorious mosaics in the Cathedral of Palermo, Sicily. “I used the descriptive title with the idea that it might suggest to people the way mosaics seem to change color and even form as lights and shadows play upon the composition,” Hanson wrote. The piece is a set of variations on the theme that appears right at the start. The music opens in a dark, foreboding mood, but throughout its 12-minute course its emotional range expands to embrace warmth and energy.
Cello Concerto, Op. 22
Samuel Barber
b. West Chester, Pa. / March 9, 1910
d. New York, N.Y. / January 23, 1981
After a period of relative neglect following his death, Barber’s reputation has ridden the recent Neo-romantic wave and returned to the high level it enjoyed during the peak of his career. His music combines the emotional warmth and spirit of communication found in 19th Century Romanticism with those techniques of contemporary practice that suited him.
His Cello Concerto was commissioned in the spring of 1945 by Serge Koussevitzky, the enterprising, Russian-born music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. John Nicholas Brown, a wealthy Rhode Island arts patron, provided the funding. The Concerto was intended for a specific soloist, Raya Garbousova. She visited Barber and played through much of her repertoire, to acquaint him with her personality and that of the cello. Their close collaboration continued throughout the composition process.
The premiere, which took place on April 5, 1946, drew a warm reaction from the audience, and the Concerto won the annual award of the Music Critics Circle of New York. Its extreme demands upon the soloist, however, have made it a relative rarity in performance. Barber revised it before it was published in 1950.
The orchestration is colorful but transparent, an important consideration in not veiling the low-voiced solo instrument. For all the Concerto’s technical hurdles, it focuses on the lyrical side of the cello’s nature. The themes of the first movement contrast dramatic energy and warmth. This section reaches its climax in a virtuoso solo cadenza. The slow second movement is one of Barber’s most beautiful and expressive creations. The soloist introduces the lilting, musing theme, supported by muted strings and decorated by solo oboe. The Concerto’s spirit of conflict is rekindled and intensified in the bold, driving Finale. This is also the most virtuosic segment for the soloist, culminating in a series of powerful dialogues between soloist and orchestra.
Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
b. Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia / May 7, 1840
d. St. Petersburg, Russia / November 6, 1893
Tchaikovsky saw himself as the victim of a cold, heartless fate. He confronted this feeling head on in Symphony No. 4 (1877). It dates from the period of his disastrous marriage to an unbalanced former student, and his subsequent attempt at suicide. In it, he used a recurring theme, a harsh brass fanfare, to represent fate. It may appear that fate has been dealt a lethal blow in the Symphony’s jubilant concluding bars, but the near-hysterical rejoicing bears an uneasy, hollow ring.
Ten years passed before he began his next symphony. He made sketches for it during the summer of 1887, set to work in earnest in May 1888, and completed it by August. In November, he conducted the first two performances himself. Audiences loved it. Critics, on the other hand, reacted with hostility. Tchaikovsky was devastated. In typically mercurial fashion, however, a further performance in Hamburg, under another conductor, instantly erased his pessimistic feelings. Everyone there adored the piece, and their acclaim convinced him of its worth.
Once again, he based a symphony on a recurring theme that represented his outlook on life at the time. By then, his attitude to fate had softened somewhat, possibly due to a rebirth in religious feeling. He now referred to it by the less intimidating name “providence.” Reflecting this shift, the Fifth Symphony’s “providence” theme is much less aggressive than its counterpart in Symphony No. 4. It appears in the opening bars, intoned quietly and soberly by the clarinets. Where the Fourth Symphony’s “fate” theme is heard only in the first and last movements, and remains unchanged from one appearance to the next, the Fifth’s “providence” theme plays a role in each of the four movements. Its character also changes to match the progress of the music.
After the introduction, the opening movement contrasts restless striving, represented in the first theme, a march-like variant of the motto, with a second subject whose heartfelt yearning is expressed with maximum eloquence by the strings. Tchaikovsky develops these melodies with what for him is unusual restraint and economy. The first theme strides across the scene sternly and defiantly to crown the movement.
What can only be described as a passionate love-idyll follows. Its materials number among Tchaikovsky’s most compelling and best-loved inspirations: a ravishing theme introduced by solo horn, and a more wistful idea first played by solo oboe. Both melodies grow in fervor as this expansive movement unfolds. Its sweeping, swelling raptures are twice interrupted, with a newly developed sense of forcefulness, by the “providence” theme. The second occurrence makes a particularly devastating impact. The concluding pages return the music to the hushed stillness from which it emerged.
Next comes a typically elegant Tchaikovsky Waltz. It serves as a well-judged transition between the weightier movements that flank it. He based it on a popular song he heard being sung by a boy in the street during a visit to Florence, Italy. The sole blemish on its courtly façade is provided by a brief, almost casual appearance of “providence,” just before the end. Thus softened, the once-gloomy theme sounds ripe for transfiguration.
It stands proudly on display in the slow-tempo introduction to the Finale, where it is heard in a major key for the first time. The Finale proper emerges swiftly out of the final bars of this passage. It is one of Tchaikovsky’s most joyous and energetic symphonic movements, strongly colored with the hearty flavors and dancing rhythms of Russian folk music. Brass fanfares and a thunderous timpani roll herald a pause for breath (no applause, please!). Its transformation complete, “providence” passes by in a sturdy processional, before a whirlwind coda brings the Symphony home.
© 2008 Don Anderson. All rights reserved.
