A Magical Russian Adventure



Frédéric Chopin
1810-1849

Frédéric Chopin
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F minor, Op. 21

The son of a French father and Polish mother, Frédéric Chopin was born and grew up in Poland; but after the collapse of the Polish revolution against Russia in 1831, he went into exile to France. He settled in Paris, which was then the center of Polish émigrés.

Chopin's chosen medium was the piano as a solo instrument. Although in his late teens he tried to combine the piano with the orchestra, creating the two piano concertos, the Variations Op. 2, Fantasia Op. 13, Concert Rondo Op. 14 and the Grand Polonaise Op. 22, he was uncomfortable with the medium and after age 20 never again wrote for a large ensemble. In all these works, the orchestral scoring is so light that during the nineteenth century it was fashionable to re-orchestrate and "improve" it. Be that as it may, Chopin probably intended the orchestra to serve as a delicate background for the soloist, especially since he himself was known to have had a rather light touch on the piano; heavy orchestration would have drowned him out.

The f minor Concerto, although listed as No. 2, was the first composed (1829-30) but was the second published. It was premiered in March 1830 in Warsaw with the composer at the piano. As was so often the case with composers in the Romantic Era, the inspiration for the Concerto came to Chopin as the result of unrequited love. The object of his ardor was a voice student at the Warsaw Conservatory. But by the time the Concerto was published six years later, he had long forgotten her and dedicated it instead to his pupil, Countess Delphine Potocka, a gifted singer and close friend.

Although Chopin has the reputation for musically "wearing his heart on his sleeve," he was also gifted and innovative in his use of harmony and phrase structure. The Concerto capitalizes on all the pianistic qualities that were to catapult him to fame in Paris. It opens in a gruff mood,

followed by a more lyrical second theme introoduced by the solo oboe.

When the piano enters in a standard double exposition, it inserts its own second theme before taking up the oboe theme.

The development section of the first movement is a major departure from true development as understood by Beethoven. Chopin's music never argues; rather, his development could be described as a commentary on the themes and on what had gone on before, his customary tendency is to embellish and decorate the pianistic line.

This long section is almost serpentine in the way it slides in and out of new keys and deftly manipulates phrasing and the themes themselves. In this regard, the Concerto foreshadows the composer's future, even more adventurous harmonic writing.

The slow movement is intense and still lyrical, with the ornamentation of the main theme gradually becoming an integral part of it. With its seemingly endless, fluid lines, elaborate ornamentation and recitative-type passages, this movement has led scholars to compare Chopin with the contemporaneous Italian bel canto style of opera composer Vincenzo Bellini, whom Chopin greatly admired. Chopin provides a brief orchestral introduction

where embellishment now becomes an integral part of the first theme with the entrance of the piano.

After all the trills and decorations, however, Chopin gets down to the real meat of the movement in what has become one of the most quoted of his melodies.

The finale is a rondo, although unusual in that it is a waltz.

Not surprisingly, it provides the pianist with glittering runs and pyrotechnics to show off against a largely superfluous orchestra. The rondo is never played quite the same way twice. The third episode is in mazurka rhythm.

The mazurka became one of Chopin's signature rhythms, an expression of his nationalistic feeling. It originated as a Polish folk dance in triple meter from the Mazovia district near Warsaw. But mazurka became an umbrella name for a number of related dances: the fiery mazurek, the lively oberek or the slower and more sentimental kujawiak. All three dances originated from the older polska, a dance in which a strong accent falls on the second or third beat of the measure, accompanied by a tap of the heel. Chopin composed nearly 60 mazurkas for piano solo, as well as several that have been lost. A horn fanfare heralds a spectacular coda. Oddly, there is not a single cadenza in this piece.

The Concerto was received enthusiastically at the premiere, but Chopin had his doubts as to whether the audience actually understood it: "The first allegro...received, indeed, the reward of a 'Bravo,' but I believe this was given because the public wished to show that it understands and knows how to appreciate serious music. There are people enough in all countries who like to assume the air of connoisseurs!"



Igor Stravinsky
1882-1971

Igor Stravinsky
Suite from the Ballet Petrushka

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Stravinsky’s great ballet, Petrushka, went through a fascinating set of metamorphoses. First conceived as a concert piece, it was inspired by the immensely popular Petrushka puppet plays of nineteenth-century Russia, which took their name from their main character. The traditional Petrushka was an obscene clown, whose ancestors and relatives include Pulcinella of the Italian Commedia dell’Arte and Punch, combined with an indigenous Russian folk character. This original orchestral sketch is maddeningly no longer extant, but we know that it contained no organized plot and that the composer had no thought of staging it.

After the stunning success of The Firebird In 1909, which Stravinsky composed on commission from Sergey Diaghilev, the great expatriate impresario of the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev commissioned a new ballet from the composer. Stravinsky collaborated with artist and librettist Alexander Benois and choreographer Mikhail Fokine to transform the idea of the original instrumental concert piece into drama and movement.

In the ballet, the collaborators imbued Petrushka with a soul, converting the screeching dupe into a pathetic – if not entirely sympathetic – victim of his own passionate nature. At first he is happy to be a mere puppet; but when he falls in love with a beautiful dancer and tries to win her love, the world turns against him and he loses her, and to the amusement of everyone he is killed by his rival the Moor. The ballet concludes as Petrushka’s ghost appears on a rooftop, an eerie and pathetic witness to his own defeat.

Petrushka was premiered with great success in Paris in 1911, but the first performance in Vienna was a disaster: “I have just come from Vienna, where the brilliant Opera House orchestra has sabotaged my Petrushka. Such ugly, nasty music, it was declared, couldn’t be played better,” wrote the composer to a friend.

Within a year, Stravinsky excerpted an orchestral version of eleven numbers from the full ballet. These were not designated as a “Suite” until Stravinsky revised the score in 1946. While the original score called for a large orchestra, the new version greatly reduced and simplified the instrumentation. Stravinsky also provided for an optional alternate ending. Diaghilev was unhappy with the last scene, which starts with a general melee of the crowd celebrating Shrove Tuesday and concludes as Petrushka is mortally wounded by his rival, his ghost cackling and fading hauntingly into the night. Stravinsky substituted the final bars with a fortissimo orchestral flourish.

The Suite captures the essential elements of Stravinsky’s original score: the wealth of Russian folk melodies; the excited pulsating ostinato representing the milling crowd

and, of course, the famous Petrushka motive, two parallel arpeggios a tritone apart (diminished fifth, known in the Middle Ages as the devil in music), which provides the central dramatic and musical tension of the piece.

The Suite runs out the various numbers in the order in which they appear in the ballet, but it is a suite of dances, not a condensed plotted version of the original. Between the first few movements, Stravinsky added a drumroll of the kind used to attract an audience at street shows.

The central section, "In Petrushka's Room," is a character sketch of the lovesick puppet, his fantasies of the dancer,

and his jealous anger.

The remaining sections of the Suite present the colorful sights at the fair: "The Charlatan," whose sleight of hand is brilliantly portrayed in the music;

"The Russian Dance;"

"The Dance of the Wet Nurses;"

"The Dancing Bear;

"The Dance of the Gypsy Girls;"

"The Dance of the Coachmen;"

and "The Mummers' Dance."