Bassoon Concerto

As a pupil of Alois Hába in his department of microtonal music at the Prague Conservatory, Jirí Pauér might be expected to have inherited at least something of his teacher’s radical attitude to composition. But, as Hába himself was to observe when his department was closed in 1951, political conditions in post-war Czechoslovakia did not favour progressive tendencies in the arts, music included. Apparently Pauér did write pieces for the quarter-tone piano in the 1940s but he soon abandoned that progressive position. While developing an official career in a number of high-profile educational and performing institutions - including that of artistic director of the Czech Philharmonic - he devoted himself to producing music that the general public could easily understand and the authorities could readily endorse. He was awarded the State Prize in 1961.

It would be interesting to hear the Bassoon Concerto as it was when Pauér submitted it as a graduation composition at the Prague Academy of Musical Arts in 1949. It was extensively revised, however, in 1952 and, if there was anything risky in the original version, there is no trace of it now. How, he must have asked himself, did his Russian contemporaries like Prokofiev and Shostakovich cope when under pressure in similar but even more precarious political circumstances in the Soviet Union? He didn’t actually imitate those composers - the most prominent outside influence in the Bassoon Concerto is Pauér’s compatriot Janácek - but he seems to have concluded from their example that colourful orchestration, snappy rhythms, entertaining harmonies and catchy tunes, of both the cheerful and the lyrically expressive kind, were the answer. Certainly, the bassoon is well adapted to both those kinds of melody, as the Concerto most attractively demonstrates.

After the snappily rhythmic orchestral introduction, the soloist makes his first entry with the kind of material - a nimble dance tune incongruously set in the gruff lower register of the instrument - that is so often associated with the bassoon in its comic mode. The second subject, also introduced by the soloist but in a higher register this time, is a contrastingly expressive song with a gently undulating line of major and minor thirds. This poetic new idea clearly appeals to both the soloist and the orchestra, who lovingly expand on it before the bassoon turns to a more business-like theme to end the exposition. The song tune dominates the development section, where the orchestra gets so carried away by it that the soloist is left quite speechless until sugary harmonies on the celesta tinged by the triangle encourage him to make his own personal comment. Snappy rhythms signal the beginning of the recapitulation. Once again, in spite of the bassoon’s taste for virtuoso acrobatics, the second subject is the main source of interest, not least to a solo cello.

Perhaps the most resourcefully scored of the three movements, for both the bassoon and the orchestra, is the central Adagio, which is an exotic kind of nocturne. The bassoon sets the scene with a chromatic sigh of languor in its upper register, inspiring similarly sensuous colouring from flute, oboe and clarinet. The other main theme, a broader melody introduced by woodwind over a Janácek-like ostinato on the strings, the bassoon never gets to play. Nor does it compete with the trumpets and other wind instruments in the simulation of night-time nature sounds. It does, on the other hand, achieve a height of expressive eloquence shortly before the end of the movement.

The Allegro giocoso is the boisterous dance movement that the opening Allegro might have been if it had not got carried away by its second subject. Beginning with more snappy rhythms in the orchestra, it sets up another comic entry for the bassoon in its lower register and lets loose several other tunes of a similarly cheerful or even impudent disposition. There are two slower sections which offer space for lyrical reflection and, in the first of them, a peculiarly stubborn orchestral climax, but the underlying dance impetus, like the bassoon’s virtuoso energy, are not to be suppressed.