Arvo Pärt is one of the most frequently performed of all living composers. He has a reach that goes well beyond the normal borders of classical music audiences. A broad swath of the public, especially in turbulent times such as our own, finds solace and serenity in his aesthetic. Pärt’s works are a manifestation of his commitment to Orthodox Christianity, but they have strong appeal to secular audiences. In the words of Steve Reich, “He’s completely out of step with the zeitgeist and yet he’s enormously popular, which is so inspiring. His music fulfills a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion.” His admirers include those in the pop music world: Michael Stipe of R.E.M., for example, speaks of “the unbelievable calm and brilliance of his music, and a seeming simplicity ... It brings one to a total meditative state.”
Much of Pärt’s style is based on ancient chant and liturgical texts, representing a renunciation of his modernist works from the 1960s when he was part of the Soviet avant-garde. Beginning in 1976, he began writing in a technique he called Tintinnabuli (Latin for “little bell”), a new kind of minimalism featuring long-held drones, tinkling bells, modal harmony, slow-moving lines, and moments of sublime silence. Works such as Fratres, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, and Tabula Rasa quickly entered the repertory and stayed there, along with symphonies, choral works, and solo pieces.
Swansong is a magical compression of Pärt’s aesthetic. Composed in 2013, it was the result of a commission of the Mozart Week Festival in Salzburg—where Pärt was the festival composer in 2014—and was premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Marc Minkowski. It is an orchestral version of Littlemore Tractus from 2000, which was composed for choir and organ to celebrate the 200th anniversary of cardinal John Henry Newman’s birth. That work is based on a fragment of Newman’s sermon “Wisdom and Innocence,” which contains a prayer for “a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.” Beginning with somber winds, tingling percussion, and plucked strings, it unveils an arcing, hymn-like melody featuring chorale-like brass, rising to an ecstatic crescendo before gradually dying away as strings, harp, and a bell-like triangle close the work in a rapturous whisper.
The moment when Mozart fully became Mozart. That’s what many commentators say about the Piano Concerto No. 9. This is a work of stunning ambition and innovation, larger than life, more expansive, virtuosic, and emotionally varied than Mozart’s usual during this period. Charles Rosen writes that it is “perhaps the first unequivocal masterpiece of the Classical style.” It was a personal favorite with Mozart and became his first published piano concerto.
Until recently, no one knew why the Piano Concerto No. 9, written in 1777 in the month of Mozart’s 21st birthday, had the nickname “Jeunehomme.” Some thought it referred to a pianist; others believed it was the commissioner of the piece or a muse. Viennese musicologist Michael Lorenz finally identified her as Louise Victoire Jenamy, daughter of the prominent French dancer and choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre. It was for her that Mozart composed the concerto, which he played himself in a private concert on October 4, 1777, and later took on the road to Mannheim and Paris. Some believe Victoire Jenamy may have performed the premiere earlier, during a visit to Salzburg in the winter of 1776–1777. If this is correct, she was obviously a highly skilled pianist, as this is a formidably difficult work.
The concerto is full of unexpected emotions and structures, including written cadenzas, normally left for the performer to improvise. Anticipating Beethoven’s last two piano concertos, the piano jumps right in at the beginning of the glittering first movement, not content—as was customary—to wait for the orchestra to announce the themes; near the end of the orchestral exposition, after the strings play the sumptuous second tune, the soloist intrudes again, and at the very end it joins the orchestra for the conclusion rather than letting it have the last word alone. Next comes a minor-key movement inaugurating a mysterious melancholy that looks forward to Mozart’s later masterpieces. Intimate, introverted, and longer than Mozart’s previous slow movements, it unfolds like a series of arias.
In bracing contrast, the Presto finale is joyous and thrillingly virtuosic, its technical brilliance rivaling any of Mozart’s later concertos. The rondo theme plunges relentlessly ahead—as do the colorful episodes—but in another surprise, its galloping energy is interrupted by a wistful minuet. After this interlude, the piece regains momentum and scampers toward a celebratory conclusion. Mozart keeps the music swirling and spinning longer than we might expect, as if reluctant to let the piece end.
Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet is by turns brash, lyrical, and witty, with plenty of passion, but also shot through with Prokofiev’s acrid irreverence. This complexity is an admirable rendering of Shakespeare’s vision of young love assaulted by harsh, dumb reality, but for years it confused the critics, who judged it too “cold” to be proper love music. (Olin Downes of The New York Times wrote in 1938, “There is the partial suggestion of that which is poignant and tragic, but there is little of the sensuous or emotional.”)
Today, Romeo and Juliet is one of Prokofiev’s most popular scores (indeed, it was always popular with audiences, if not critics—a classic case of the former being ahead of the latter), but its initial history was as star-crossed as Shakespeare’s lovers. Beginning in 1934, Prokofiev fought for six years to get his “undanceable” ballet produced in Russia, succeeding only after mounting an unusual public relations campaign in which he performed piano and orchestral excerpts in Europe and America.
As a ballet, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is necessarily more sectional and specific than Tchaikovsky’s fantasy-overture or Berlioz’s symphonie dramatique adaptations. Nevertheless, like Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, it is very much a “symphonic ballet” that works wonderfully as concert music. The dramatic structure consists of an elaborate tissue of motifs that represent not only specific characters, but their thoughts and fantasies, sometimes crisscrossing or coalescing—a technique inaugurated by Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.
The music for this massive score exhibits a variety of Prokofiev’s styles beyond his predominant Romantic mode from this late period. The strutting pomposity of “Montagues and Capulets” recalls the barbaric and satiric aspects of an earlier Prokofiev. Delectable touches of his neoclassical period are also evident in the clear lines of “Juliet as a Young Girl” and “Masks.”
The heart of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet is—as it was for Tchaikovsky and Berlioz—the balcony scene, with its heavenly succession of each lover’s motif blossoming into long-breathed melodies, along with a new motif that represents their passion. Prokofiev was understandably astonished by the critics’ charge that even this work lacked emotion: “If people find no melody and no emotion in this work,” he wrote, “I shall be very sorry.”
A rather scary footnote to the tortured history of this score involves the near-decision to please the dancers by changing Shakespeare’s tragic ending to a “happy” one. (In this version, Romeo would arrive a minute earlier and find Juliet alive.) Prokofiev nearly bought into this “bit of barbarism,” as he later called it. What finally made him come to his senses and jettison the “happy” version was an offhand remark by someone to Prokofiev during the discussions. “Strictly speaking,” this unnamed person said, “your music does not express any real joy at the end.” Prokofiev admitted that this “was quite true” and decided to leave Shakespeare’s ending alone.
—Jack Sullivan