Romeo and Juliet Suite

UH/9

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Romeo and Juliet Suite

The Montagues and the Capulets

The Young Juliet

Masks

Romeo and Juliet

The Death of Tybalt

Romeo and Juliet before parting

Romeo at Juliet’s Tomb

It is one of the many ironies of Soviet musical history that Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet - the one ballet on a Shakespearean theme with a regular place in the repertoire world-wide - was at first rejected by both the Kirov and the Bolshoi as undanceable. The composer’s immediate reaction to his disappointment was to compile two orchestral suites to demonstrate the quality of the score, above all the rhythmic and melodic attractions of the set-piece dances and the dramatic and psychological interest of the key scenes. Concert performances of the two suites (conducted by Prokofiev himself in 1936 and 1937 respectively) led to a staging of the ballet in Brno in 1938 and its first Russian production at the Kirov two years later.

Although those two suites are still popular in the concert hall and on record, they have the disadvantage - more significant now that the ballet itself is so familiar - that the various extracts do not appear in the same order as the events they represent in the story. A third suite, compiled from generally less interesting areas of the score in 1944, does not solve the problem. Conductors are free, however, to make their own selection: the seven movements chosen for this occasion - three from the first suite (Masks, Romeo and Juliet, The Death of Tybalt) and four from the second - are presented not exactly in chronological order but as near to that as is practically possible and in a more than usually convincing dramatic sequence.

The first movement, The Montagues and the Capulets, begins appropriately with the fateful succession of chords which accompany the Prince’s warning to the two warring families:

If ever you disturb our streets again,

Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.

The scene changes to the ball at the house of the Capulets, where the knights dance in aggressively heavy-footed rhythms and where Juliet dances with Paris to a graceful variant of the same Capulet theme, gliding with the flute on viola glissandi and turning in quietly expressive chromatic harmonies. The Young Juliet comes from somewhat earlier in the ballet. It represents her in playful innocence, running in semiquavers with the violins and clapping her hands to staccato chords; and yet, as the clarinet indicates, she is not lacking in sentiment and, on the subject of her marriage to Paris, not unthoughtful either. Masks returns to the Capulets’ ball as Romeo and Mercutio make their masked entry, cautiously at first on quiet percussion and stealthy clarinet but then in increasingly bold melodic profile.

Romeo and Juliet, the ballet equivalent of the balcony scene, is set in a delicate nocturnal atmosphere created by harp and muted strings. Beginning hesitantly with Romeo’s theme on solo strings and Juliet’s nervous answer on flute, the dialogue develops in intensity on an arch of ecstatic melody which finally falls back into the nocturnal stillness. The cruelly contrasting Death of Tybalt, which intervenes at this point, actually embraces three episodes from the end of the second act - Mercutio’s ill-advised sword fight with Tybalt, Romeo’s angered reprisal on Tybalt with its fifteen fatal blows, and the dramatic finale in which the Capulets mourn Tybalt and swear vengeance on the Montagues.

Romeo and Juliet before parting incorporates four numbers from the third act - Juliet’s Chamber, Farewell before Parting, Interlude and Juliet alone. Like the balcony scene it has a broad central climax, which is approached in this case by the dawning of day with tremolando strings and lyrical birdsong, a horn call offering a fragment of the main theme of the central section, and a solo viola (or viola d’amore) recalling a tender melody from the balcony scene. Before the end of the movement tuba and double bass share the misgivings of Juliet’s “ill-divining soul.”

In Romeo at Juliet’s Tomb the misgivings become reality as the tuba theme appears high on first and second violins and is brought gradually nearer with the funeral procession, carried by horns or trombones and tuba. The love theme from the balcony scene reappears on lower strings and woodwind as Romeo dances with the (apparently) dead Juliet in his arms. Another outburst of despair is followed by the death of Juliet as a theme from Juliet as a Child is exposed in unsupported octaves high on first and second violins and just dies away.Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Symphony No.5 in E minor, Op.64

Andante - allegro con anima

Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza

Valse: allegro moderato

Finale: andante moderato - allegro vivace

On a visit to Prague in 1888, only two or three months before he started work on his Fifth Symphony in E minor, Tchaikovsky was present at an evidently fine performance of Dvorak’s Seventh in D minor and, moreover, was presented with the autograph score of the work by the composer himself. Though the experience might not have had any direct effect on the shape taken by his Symphony in E minor, it is interesting that Tchaikovsky’s Fifth, like Dvorak’s Seventh, is the most regular, the most Western, the most evenly balanced of his later symphonies.

It is true that there is a fragment of a characteristically tortured programme in Tchaikovsky’s note books: Introduction. Complete resignation before Fate or, which is the same, before the inscrutable predestination of Providence. Allegro (1) murmurs, doubts, lamentations… (2) Shall I throw myself into the embraces of Faith??? On the other hand, the programme clearly applies only to the first part of the work and even there Fate plays nothing like the dramatic role allotted to it in the Fourth Symphony. Indeed, once the two clarinets in unison have introduced the motto theme in E minor (with its ominous descending scale) in the Andante introduction, it isn’t heard again until half-way through theAndante cantabile.

The most disturbing aspect of the Allegro con anima is not the sinister character of the first subject introduced by clarinet and bassoon over the stealthy tread of the strings: it is more disturbing that the yearning second-subject melody - which enters molto più tranquillo in D major on violins choking for breath on the first beat of every bar - is never allowed to fulfil its expressive potential. Cut off on a rising climax by the sinister E minor first subject on brass, the second-subject melody is not featured in the development section and is again cut short when it reappears in the recapitulation.

It does, on the other hand, find some sort of consummation in the Andante cantabile , which is nearly all in D major, the key area where the first movement so devoutly yearned to be. The lovely melody introduced by first horn over quiet string harmonies in the opening bars is in D major. The slightly quicker oboe theme is in F sharp major but, after the cellos have adopted the horn melody in D major, the oboe theme is re-introduced by violins in that same key and the whole orchestra takes it up to a massively confident D major climax. True, there is a more agitated middle section beginning in F sharp minor and the motto theme does make a fff intrusion - but, interestingly, in such a way as to make it easy for the violins to enter in D major with the horn melody set against pretty woodwind counterpoint. The motto theme intrudes also on the recapitulation of the oboe melody but only to be answered by the sweetest recollection of that theme in D major.

The Valse in A major enshrines a happy memory of a visit to Italy and an apparently irresistible young Florentine street singer called Vittorio. Tchaikovsky transcribed Vittorio’s Pimpinella at the time, adapted it for one of his songs, and incorporated an attractive phrase from it in the main theme of this movement. The staccato semi-quaver material in the middle section is beautifully integrated with the waltz on its return towards the end and the once ominous slow-march motto theme meekly complies with the prevailing waltz-time in the closing bars.

Beginning in G major with a fearless Andante maestoso version of the motto theme, the Finale turns back to E minor for the main Allegro vivace . The theme here is a trepak, a vigorous Cossack dance in duple time evidently not unrelated to the motto theme: certainly, Tchaikovsky makes a very neat point of comparing the scalic element in the two themes just after the motto makes its first dramatic re-entry in C major. This is at the height of the development section of a construction which achieves in its coda a full-scale maestoso treatment of the motto theme in E major followed by a brilliant fanfare based on the first subject of the Allegro con anima - the one sinister character not so far absorbed into Tchaikovsky’s brave new world.

Gerald Larner©