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Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975): Waltz II from Suite for Variety Orchestra
Instrumentation: Scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, percussion, and strings
Composed: After 1956
Duration: 3 minutes

Shostakovich was among the few who found equal success in the worlds of opera, symphonic and chamber music, and even film music. Throughout his lifetime, he composed music for over two dozen films of various genres, including Soviet war propaganda and biopics. Sometime after 1956, the composer’s close friend, Levon Atovmyan, assembled and arranged various theater, film, and ballet scores by the composer, creating the Suite for Variety Orchestra, which is attributed to Shostakovich but also incorporates new material by the arranger. Waltz II, a straightforward, if charming little work, was compiled by cues from the movie The First Eschelon, a 1955 Soviet war romance, which were subsequently edited out of the film’s final version.
The music later appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

D. Shostakovich: Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77 (99)
Instrumentation: Scored for 2 flutes and piccolo (doubling 3rd flute), 2 oboes and English horn (doubling 3rd oboe), 2 clarinets and bass clarinet (doubling 3rd clarinet), 2 bassoons and contrabassoon (doubling 3rd bassoon), 4 horns, tuba, timpani, tam-tam, tambourine, xylophone, celesta, 2 harps, and strings
Composed: 1947
Duration: 37 minutes

Shostakovich had both the fortune and the misfortune to be born in the Russian Empire. He inherited something of his grandfather’s revolutionary spirit—the latter took part in the January uprising of 1863-64, aimed at gaining Polish independence from Russia—a trait that years later would bring him into direct and nearly constant conflict with the Soviet authorities. But as a youth, Shostakovich came of age in the great Russian musical tradition of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, and at the Petrograd Conservatory, he was taken under the wing of another Russian legend, Alexander Glazunov. Shostakovich did not have to wait long to find success. His First Symphony, written as a graduation exercise, was soon performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic and not long thereafter was performed and recorded by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Although simultaneously considering a career as a pianist, Shostakovich became more and more convinced that composition was his destiny.

The composer’s stock rose quickly in the wake of this First Symphony. But along with his musical development was the need to somehow balance his modernist tendencies with the conservative environment fostered by the Stalinist Soviet machine. Though sporting a pro-Soviet choral finale, for instance, Shostakovich’s Second Symphony, of 1927, was found too progressive and failed to garner the support of his earlier symphony. With each successive substantial musical composition, Shostakovich faced increasing isolation and threat.

The force of nature that is the First Violin Concerto of Shostakovich began life in a Finnish dacha, where the composer was spending the summer of 1947. From the start, Shostakovich heard in his mind the virtuosity and dark Russian warmth of violinist Igor Oistrakh, with whom he had performed his Second Piano Trio just months earlier. Work went quickly, and by the end of the year, Shostakovich had completed two of the concerto’s four movements. But while working on the finale, the newspapers published the Communist Party Central Committee’s Zhdanov Doctrine, attacking a host of the country’s prominent composers, Shostakovich among them, for their formalist tendencies, i.e., music and art in general, which benefited the artist but alienated the working class. Given much of the music he had heretofore composed, which had repeatedly brought Shostakovich into the crosshairs of Stalin’s government, Shostakovich could hardly have been surprised by what he read. But now, worried that he might be arrested or worse—during the Great Terror a decade earlier, many of the composer’s friends and relatives had been imprisoned or killed—he requested official meetings to admit his guilt.

Shostakovich would return from government meetings and resume work on the concerto, imbuing it with precisely the characteristics anathema to the regime: dissonant harmonies, particularly those of the grotesque, satirical nature of the Scherzo; challenging and unorthodox formal outlines (the concerto opens with a serene Nocturne and closes with a Baroque-inspired Passacaglia); and a pronounced Jewish flavor—Shostakovich was not Jewish but kept close company with any number of Jewish figures, including Oistrakh, and remained sympathetic to the Jewish ideal and musical aesthetic, at a time when anti-Semitism was on the rise in the USSR. In sum, there was much to object to. When the work was complete, Shostakovich slipped it into a drawer, keeping it out of the public eye until a better time. Then he went on writing “happier,” music to pacify the authorities and put bread on the table.

Oistrakh finally gave the long overdue premiere of The First Violin Concerto in 1955. By the time he played it two months later with the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, the concerto’s destiny as a fixture of the repertoire was set. As with the life of Shostakovich, so are the challenges of the concerto. Whisperings of this are evident in the opening Nocturne, which rarely gives the soloist a bar’s rest. The relentlessly daemonic Scherzo, which places great demands on the soloist and the orchestra, features the composer’s first use of his personal motto, DSCH, expressed in German as the pitches D-Eb-C-B, heard at various times, starting about halfway through the movement and again in those that follow. The movement is also characterized by its Klezmer-inspired dances, harboring distinct echoes of the composer’s recently performed Second Piano Trio. The F minor Passacaglia, which occasionally features the sounds of romantic Russia from Shostakovich’s youth, unfurls with an oppressive ostinato motive in the lower strings, successively repeated (the essence of a passacaglia) and serving to underpin a variety of orchestral textures and melodies. The infamous cadenza that follows was so demanding that Oistrakh requested a break before the relentless finale, “so at least I can wipe the sweat from my brow.” And the last movement, which takes no prisoners, is a breathless, breakneck Burlesque that will leave the orchestra, conductor, and audience nearly as exhausted as our soloist.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990): Appalachian Spring
Instrumentation: Scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, and trombones, timpani, harp, piano, and strings
Composed: 1943-44, orchestral suite 1945
Duration: 27 minutes

Though the Jewish son of an immigrant family living in Brooklyn, Aaron Copland grew to be regarded as the “Dean of American Music” and almost single-handedly created the sound we now associate with the American West. His music requires little by way of introduction—it is familiar from the concert hall, TV commercials, adaptation by others (his anthem Fanfare for the Common Man, for instance, was subsequently appropriated by the band Emerson, Lake & Palmer) or even as the generic sound we now associate with the cowboy (the Marlboro Man, for instance). Although classically trained in the German and modernist traditions, Copland subsequently realized that to earn a living as a composer, he’d be most successful writing accessible, utilitarian music (precisely the type of music Shostakovich fought against). Among his most successful scores in this vein was Appalachian Spring, initially ballet music written for Martha Graham, but which Copland subsequently adapted into autonomous suites, for orchestra, and the version for chamber orchestra heard this evening.

Far removed from Appalachia, Copland had settled in Hollywood and had begun composing film scores by the time the ballet commission was forthcoming. Setting to work, he drew on American mythology, archetypes, history, and period music, bringing to life “a pioneer celebration in spring around a newly built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last [19th] century.” For his suites, Copland replaced the ballet’s episode titles with tempo markings (see below). The music, which segues directly from one section to the next, might be described as follows:

I. Very slowly. Introduction of the characters. The music opens serenely, painting a musical portrait of sunrise and illustrating Copland’s trademark “American” sound, with its unorthodox, wide-open voicing and
casual pacing.

II. Fast. A sudden burst of energy in the unison strings. There is something almost religious in the music’s exalted energy. Themes heard here are predominant throughout the ballet.

III. Moderate. Wedding Day or the Bride and Groom. The music radiates tenderness and strength.

IV. Fast. The Revival Meeting. Folksy feelings and suggestions of square dances and fiddlers.

V. Suddenly faster. Solo dance of the Bride. The music captures notes of motherhood, joy, fear, and general wonder.

VI. Very slowly (as at first). Transition reminiscent of the opening.

VII. Calm and flowing. Daily activity of the Bride and her Farmer-husband. Five variations on the Shaker hymn, The Gift to be Simple, which Copland quotes almost literally.

VIII. Moderate (like a prayer). The Bride has taken her place among her neighbors, the couple left “quiet and strong in their new house.” Some of the most moving “American” music ever composed, Copland’s score closes gently, with a final echo of the principal theme.

Johann Strauss II (1825-1899): “The Blue Danube”
Instrumentation: Scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, trombone, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings
Composed: 1866
Duration: 11 minutes

Known affectionately as “The Waltz King,” Johann Baptist Strauss was himself the son of a waltz composer and band master, and for a time, the pair were in direct competition. Strauss Jr., known to his family as Schani (Johnny), a composer of over 500 waltzes in addition to other dance music and operettas, rose to become the darling of Vienna, eventually even besting his father’s impressive success. Indeed, Schani’s music was so esteemed by Johannes Brahms that, when asked for an autograph by Strauss’s stepdaughter, Brahms penciled in “The Blue Danube’s” opening bars, then signed it affectionately, “Unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms.”

“An der schönen blauen Donau” (“By the Beautiful Blue Danube”), its original title, was initially composed as a work with words for the Vienna Men’s Choral Association. Only mildly successful, Strauss subsequently dropped the words and added more music for an 1867 performance at the Paris World’s Fair. It was this version that became increasingly well-known and which has since become the composer’s most popular waltz, performed yearly at Vienna’s New Year’s Ball. The work begins with a shimmer, in the key of A major, with the horns foreshadowing the main waltz theme over tremolo strings, all suggestive of the glowing chandeliers and golden hue of a Viennese ballroom. Strauss now spins out a string of five independent waltzes, each highly distinct in flavor, which segue one into the next, keeping the dancers moving. After a brief reprise of the opening waltz, Strauss buttons up his dazzling score with a sparkling, celebratory finish.

© Marc Moskovitz
marcmoskovitz.org