Concert programme — Walton, Elgar, Holst & others

William Walton (1902-1983)

March: Crown Imperial

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

Introduction and Allegro, Op.47

Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

The Planets: Mars, the Bringer of War

Jean Sibelius (1865-1857)

Symphony No.5 in C major, Op.82: Allegro molto

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Piano Concerto No.2 in F, Op.102: Allegro

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.18: Adagio sostenuto

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Lieutenant Kijé, Op.60: Troika

Manuel de Falla (1876-1945)

El Amor brujo: Ritual Firedance

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

The Lark Ascending

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Boléro

William Walton (1902-1983)

March: Crown Imperial

Sir William Walton’s Crown Imperial would be a desirable item in any kind of sale. Although the composer was paid only 40 guineas for it, its value has since been enhanced in a variety of ways - not least through its royal and historical associations. It was commissioned by the BBC for the Coronation of Edward VIII but, after his dramatic abdication, it actually served its ceremonial purpose at the Coronation of his younger brother, George VI, in Westminster Abbey on 12 May 1937. If the British public needed proof of Walton’s genius - and he was regarded with some suspicion at the time - here it was. Once a dangerous modernist, he was now the new Elgar. The brilliance of the opening Allegro reale march and the melodic inspiration of the hymn-like section that alternates with it are both of a quality to stand comparison with anything in the Pomp and Circumstance marches he took as his model

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

Introduction and Allegro, Op.47

for strings

One of Elgar’s most valuable contributions to musical history was his foundation of a great British tradition of high-quality scoring for string orchestra. Although the Introduction and Allegro was not well received on its first performance by the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1905, in the course of time it has not only been recognised as one of the most resourceful of all scores of its kind but has also encouraged several other English composers to explore the same fruitful area - beginning with Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis in 1910.

As in the Vaughan Williams Fantasia, one of the major sources of interest in the Introduction and Allegro is the textural contrast between the full string orchestra and a solo quartet. Another is the quality of its melodic material, including an expressive song tune (introduced at a fairly early stage in the Allegro by a solo viola) that Elgar had heard floating across the bay towards him when out walking during a holiday in Cardiganshire some years earlier. As the composer once confirmed, the work is “a tribute to that sweet borderland where I have made my home.” At the same time it is a virtuoso study in scoring for strings crowned, before the final recall of the sonorous introductory bars, by “a devil of a fugue.”

Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

The Planets: Mars, the Bringer of War

Holst began writing his Planets with Mars, the Bringer of War in May 1914 - just a few months before the outbreak of a war that would be as crushing to humanity as this brutal music seems to prophecy. The inexorable progress of mechanical warfare, of which Holst could have known nothing at the time, is all the more sinister in that it marches in five rather than four beats to the bar and in that, while menace rises through strings and woodwind and military signals pass round the brass, there is not a hint of compassionate humanity from the beginning to the end. Consolation comes only in the next movement in the Planets suite, Venus, the Bringer of Peace.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1857)

Symphony No.5 in C major, Op.82: Allegro molto

Sibelius started work on his Fifth Symphony at much the same time as Holst began his Planets in the spring of 1914. It was in response to a commission from the Finnish government for a new score to celebrate his fiftieth birthday in December 1915. Although it was ready on time and although it was well received by the public, the composer was not happy with it and withdrew it for revision. The second version was completed and performed in 1916 but he wasn’t happy with that either and, significantly perhaps, it was only in 1919, after the War was over. that he was able to reshape the structure in a way that satisfied him. The last movement, headed Allegro molto, is the celebration of two associated themes - a four-note motif first heard tolling like a peal of bells in the horn section and a chorale melody superimposed on it by woodwind. Although they give way in the middle of the movement to a reappearance of the scurrying string figuration that opened it, the two themes return, imperceptibly at first but then, as the tempo broadens and the dynamic pressure intensifies, in sustained triumph.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Piano Concerto No.2 in F, Op.102: Allegro

A composer is not always the best judge of his own work. Shostakovich declared his Second Piano Concerto to be of “no artistic value” and yet, since it has turned out to be the last twentieth-century piano concerto to find a place in the popular repertoire, it is clearly by no means worthless. It is true that its aims are modest. Written in 1957 to encourage the composer’s son Maxim in his career as a pianist, it has few pretensions beyond being amusing both to play and to listen to. The thematic material of the first movement of the work, headed Allegro, compromises a kind of toy-soldier episode, with a cheerful march theme and a fanfare motif, and an attractively tuneful second subject introduced in bright octaves on the piano. Although the martial music dominates, not least in a grotesquely humorous development section, it is the second subject that achieves a broadly expressive climax just before the cadenza.

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Piano Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.18: Adagio sostenuto

The earliest twentieth-century piano concerto to find a place in the popular repertoire was Rachmaninov’s Second in C minor. It was written mainly in 1900 and first performed in its complete form in Moscow October 1901. Both on that occasion and in a performance of the second and third movements eight months earlier, when the first movement was still unfinished, the soloist was the young composer himself - who, having just recovered from a breakdown caused by the hostile reception of his First Symphony, must have been mightily relieved to see his work welcomed with such all-round enthusiasm. The second movement, headed Adagio sostenuto, is said to have moved his teacher, Sergey Taneyev, to tears. The work has been moving people to tears ever since, in brief encounters in the cinema as well as on longer acquaintance in the concert hall. The melodic beauty of the outer sections of the slow movement, which are most effectively offset by a quicker middle section, has not been surpassed in any piano concerto written since then - not even Rachmaninov’s Third or Fourth.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953)

Lieutenant Kijé, Op.60: Troika

Prokofiev was one of the first of the great composers to write music specifically for the cinema. His collaborations with Sergei Eisenstein in Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible are monuments in the history of the art. Alexander Feinzimmer’s satirical film Lieutenant Kijé might be not in the same league as those Eisenstein epics but the story behind it - about the absurdly elaborate efforts made to cover up a clerical error that added a non-existent officer to Tsar Paul’s army list - appealed so strongly to Prokofiev’s ironic sense of humour that it inspired one of his most engaging scores. The fourth movement of the concert suite that was drawn from the film score in 1934 is a Troika, a horse-drawn ride through the snow incorporating a virile Hussar song coloured by a jingling percussion evocation of sleigh bells.

Manuel de Falla (1876-1945)

El Amor brujo: Ritual Fire Dance

Although Falla’s one-act ballet El Amor brujo (Love the Magician) was written in much the same war-time period as Holst’s Planets and Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, it is not in the least affected by that catastrophic event. It is a story of Spanish gypsy passion - written for the Andalusian dancer Pastora Imperio who starred in the first performance in Madrid in 1915 - accompanied by music born directly out of Spanish folk song and inspired by the authentic flamenco spirit. Scored originally for a small ensemble, it was rewritten for full orchestra in 1916 and it is in this later version that it most often performed today - although the most popular number of all, The Ritual Fire Dance, exists in a variety of arrangements. Danced at night to ward off evil spirits, it is based on a genuine gypsy ritual introduced by oboe and repeated in a context of primitive rhythms and melodic fragments.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

The Lark Ascending

romance for violin and orchestra

The clear daytime air of Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending - another product of the War years begun in 1914 and completed in 1920 - is a refreshing contrast to the oppressive nocturnal atmosphere of The Ritual Fire Dance. Inspired by a poem by George Meredith, it is a rhapsodic evocation not only of the song of the skylark but also of the cool colours and gentle contours of the English landscape as the bird rises and hovers above it. The solo violin part is most poetically written, its arching line and elaborate figuration suggesting both the fluttering flight of the lark and the “chirrup, whistle, slur and shake” of its song. The orchestra is concerned more with sustained melody but it too breaks into birdsong from time to time just as the violin turns to folk song at the climax of the work, the two elements together forming one of the essential images of British music.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)

Boléro

When Shostakovich dismissed his Second Piano Concerto as of “no artistic value” he was echoing, though not consciously perhaps, Ravel’s comment on Boléro: “I have written one masterpiece…but unfortunately there’s no music in it.” Certainly, its material is limited but that was not the result of any lack of energy or inspiration on Ravel’s part. The fact is that when he came to write the score - for a short ballet on a Spanish theme to be performed at the Paris Opéra in November 1928 - he found that, through no fault of his own, he did not have the time to compose a whole new piece. So what he did was to write just one paragraph, consisting of two themes linked by a persistent rhythm on the side drum. He then repeated it four times over, always with a different orchestration and with gradually more and more colour added, sometimes in different harmonies but never without the side-drum rhythm and always, until the climactic moment just before the end, in the same key. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention and no one had ever invented anything remotely like Ravel’s extraordinarily daring, brilliantly orchestrated, and perfectly structured Boléro.

Rupert Avis©