GEORGE WALKER
Sinfonia No. 4, “Strands”

 

A native of Washington, DC, George Walker celebrated the year of his 90th birthday with the premiere of a brand-new work, the Sinfonia No. 4, “Strands.” This distinguished composer, pianist, and educator—who won the Pulitzer Prize for his orchestral song cycle Lilacs in 1996—had just published a fascinating memoir in which he recounted a lifetime of successes and honors and also spoke quite frankly about his musical likes and dislikes.

Walker, who studied piano with Rudolf Serkin and composition with Samuel Barber’s teacher Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, first made his name with the often-performed Lyric for Strings, a creative response to Barber’s Adagio for Strings. Walker’s importance as a pianist is best illustrated by the fact that he performed Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto with The Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. As a composer, he always remained true to his classical roots and built an oeuvre of symphonic and chamber works that earned him the esteem not only of the profession but of a highly diverse audience as well.

Commenting on his Sinfonia No. 4, Walker noted: “I wanted to compose a work that was more than an overture or extended fanfare.” The composer wove “strands” from two African American spirituals into the fabric of his rhythmically vibrant and colorfully orchestrated, one-movement composition—hence the work’s subtitle. Walker further explained:

The Sinfonia begins with an introduction that consists of several sections before the principal theme is stated. This theme recurs several times. The quotation of the first spiritual provides a pensive relief from the proclamatory nature of the theme that precedes it.

The briefer snippet of the second spiritual is affirmative. The following section consists of a melodic bass line over which fragmented interjections are superimposed. A similar section recurs, combining with the opening phrase of the second spiritual played by the piano during the course of the work. The bass material appears briefly in the coda.

 

SERGEI PROKOFIEV
Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 16

 

Around the time the 21-year-old Prokofiev began work on his Second Piano Concerto in December 1912, a group of iconoclastic poets, including the 19-year-old Vladimir Mayakovsky, issued the futurist manifesto A Slap in the Face of Public Taste in Moscow. The two young artists were friends for a while, and Prokofiev’s desire to baffle his audience had something in common with the Russian avant-garde of those years.

The young Prokofiev enjoyed replacing certain pitches with their neighbors, giving the impression of being out of tune. Prokofiev offset these unorthodoxies by emphasizing traditionalism in other aspects of his style: His rhythms, for instance, often stay within the Classical framework of symmetrical, two-bar-plus-two-bar phrases, and the basic building blocks of his melodies are all inherited from Romantic music.

The beginning of the Second Piano Concerto is a perfect example of this dichotomy. Its beautiful, eight-bar melody, played by the solo piano to an accompaniment of almost Chopinesque figurations in the left hand, is “spiced” with many seemingly incongruous notes. A Romantic attitude coexists with some completely un-Romantic sonorities.

The second-movement Scherzo is a movement of perpetual motion with a virtually uninterrupted rhythmic ostinato (the “obstinate,” persistent presence of a rhythmic figure), shot through with occasional melodic fragments played by various solo instruments and instrumental groups.

The third-movement Intermezzo is also based on a rhythmic ostinato, interrupted only once by a short, lyrical piano solo. This caricature of a march includes a middle section where the piano’s arpeggio and glissando effects provide the background for a little tongue-in-cheek melody in the woodwinds. The march returns with a section for piano alone. Then the full orchestra gradually enters and builds up to a tremendous climax, only to collapse in the lowest register in a sudden pianissimo that ends the movement the same way the first movement had closed.

The Finale (Allegro tempestoso) contains a number of contrasting sections. It starts with a wild rush and irregular rhythmic figures with wide leaps in both the tempo and the orchestral parts. This material then yields to a slower tempo and a simple tune that, however, soon becomes extremely loud and agitated. After several more surprising changes of gear, the work finally reaches its animated and boisterous close.

The score of the Second Piano Concerto got lost or was destroyed during the civil war following the 1917 revolutions, so that Prokofiev, now living in the West, had to reconstruct it from memory in 1923. As he wrote, “I have so completely rewritten the Second Concerto that it might almost be considered my Fourth.” (His Third Concerto was written in the meantime.) By the time he returned to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, he was a world-famous composer who had left his youthful rebelliousness behind and was ready to accept the honors that he thought were going to be bestowed on him.

 

IGOR STRAVINSKY
The Firebird

 

Sergei Diaghilev’s Paris-based Ballets Russes was one of the greatest ballet companies in history that united many of the best dancers of its time. One of Diaghilev’s most brilliant moves was to engage the 27-year-old Igor Stravinsky to write the music for Michel Fokine’s ballet The Firebird.

The ballet was based on several Russian fairy tales, combined in an ingenious plot, which Eric Walter White summarized in his standard book on Stravinsky as follows:

A young Prince, Ivan Tsarevich, wanders into Kashchei’s magic garden at night in pursuit of the Firebird, whom he finds fluttering round a tree bearing golden apples. He captures it and extracts a feather as forfeit before agreeing to let it go. He then meets a group of 13 maidens and falls in love with one of them, only to find that she and the other 12 maidens are princesses under the spell of Kashchei.

When dawn comes and the princesses have to return to Kashchei’s palace, he breaks open the gates to follow them inside, but he is captured by Kashschei’s guardian monsters and is about to suffer the usual penalty of petrifaction when he remembers the magic feather. He waves it; and at his summons the Firebird appears and reveals to him the secret of Kashchei’s immortality (his soul, in the form of an egg, is preserved in a casket). Opening the casket, Ivan smashes the vital egg, and the ogre immediately expires. His enchantments dissolve, all the captives are freed, and Ivan and his Tsarevna are betrothed with due solemnity.

After a mysterious introduction and a depiction of Kashchei’s garden, the Firebird appears, pursued by Prince Ivan. The anguished fluttering of the bird is contrasted with a simple, Russian-flavored theme representing the prince. A sudden standstill in the music indicates that Ivan has captured the bird. With a slow, expressive melody, the Firebird pleads with the prince to let it go. When Ivan gives the bird its freedom, the flaps of its wings can be clearly heard in the woodwinds.

The appearance of the 13 enchanted princesses is announced by a magical chord progression in the violins. Their game with the golden apples is represented by a scherzo-like section, briefly interrupted by a clarinet solo. Prince Ivan (solo horn) appears and watches the round dance of the princesses. One of the ballet’s great melodies is introduced here by the solo oboe.

A trumpet call announces that Prince Ivan is approaching Kashchei’s castle. We hear the distinctive melodic style of the evil sorcerer as his minions charge the Prince. The motion stops abruptly when he is captured (not unlike what happened to the Firebird earlier).

The arrival of Kashchei the Immortal is proclaimed by some austere brass chords and frightening tremolos in strings and percussion. The solo violin plays the princesses’ theme from earlier as the young maidens intercede on Ivan’s behalf, but their melody is cut short by Kashchei’s wild brass and percussion sounds.

The Firebird returns to enchant the monsters in Kashchei’s service, who are all swept up in the ecstatic dance. But Kashchei does not surrender so soon; the famous “Infernal Dance” shows him in all his fury while a lyrical countersubject portrays the plight of his prisoners. As a total contrast, the Firebird’s “Lullaby” is a delicate song for solo bassoon, accompanied by harps and muted strings.

The evil sorcerer’s demise is depicted by a powerful tutti downbeat and a rapidly descending orchestral figure. After a moment of profound darkness, the scene changes. Kashchei’s palace has disappeared, the petrified knights return to life, and Prince Ivan celebrates his wedding with the most beautiful of the princesses. This scene contains the most famous folk song in the ballet. First played by the horn (Ivan’s instrument), the melody gradually grows in volume and orchestration. In a significant rhythmic change, the symmetrical meter of the song becomes asymmetrical for the final moments of the ballet.

© 2023 Peter Laki