St Petersburg, Concert Hall

Shostakovich. Lutosławski. Dvořák. Ravel


As part of the Moscow Easter Festival

Dmitri Shostakovich. Symphony No. 3 in E flat Major (The First of May)
Witold Lutosławski. Concerto for Piano and Orchestra
Antonin Dvořák. Cello Concerto No. 2 in B Minor
Maurice Ravel. La Valse

 

Antonín Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B Minor is one of the greatest masterpieces in the romantic repertoire. The Concerto was written during the third and final year that the composer spent in New York at the National Conservatory and it was completed on 9 February 1895. It was first performed on 19 March 1896 in London by Leo Stern, though it had initially been intended for Czech cellist Hanuš Wihan to perform it.
Dvořák began writing it after the immense success of the ultra-romantic Second Cello Concerto in B Minor by Victor Herbert, the Irish cellist, composer and conductor and a colleague at the Conservatory. The latter had recently arrived in the USA where he became leader of the cellos in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, a member of the New York String Quartet and the creator of an orchestra of his own that performed light music as well as composing popular operettas. But he was also an acclaimed composer of serious music.
Dvořák’s work on the Concerto did not flow easily. He had left for America for the first time alone, without his family, and that increased his nostalgia. Unlike his earlier American works, (the New World symphony or the Fourteenth Quartet), the Cello Concerto is free of Americanisms. In the middle of the second section one can hear the theme of Dvořák’s song Leave Me Alone (Op. 82 No 1). The story of its composition is connected with the composer’s hearing of the sickness and death of his wife’s sister, with whom he had once been in love. In the finale the theme returns – in the final duet of the cello and the solo violin.
Anna Bulycheva 

Two years after writing his Second Symphony (October) Shostakovich paid tribute to another major Soviet celebration – the First of May. In summer 1929 he composed the Third Symphony, which was entitled The First of May. Like the October symphony it has one movement and ends with a choral apotheosis to words specially written by the young Soviet poet Semyon Kirsanov (1906–1972).
If the October symphony represents the history of the struggle that led to the success of the Revolution, The First of May is dictated by the mood of a general joyous celebration. The First of May is thus almost entirely in a major key and, in comparison with the Second Symphony, less rich in contrasts. Its form, it may be said, is unique, not just for Shostakovich but for all symphonic music of the age. The composer Vissarion Shebalin, who was a friend of Shostakovich, recalled that the young Shostakovich was engaged by the task of “writing a symphony where not one single theme was repeated”. Clearly the principle of constantly renewing thematic material was the best way possible to portray the joyful Dionyssian spirit connected with the idea of the May Day celebrations in its most distant origins.
Levon Akopian

 

Witold Lutosławski was an acclaimed Polish composer and conductor. Unlike many contemporary composers, Lutosławski always tried to make the listener feel at home and at ease with his music. “I always feel a passionate desire to be close to other people through art. But I do not make it my task to win over as many listeners and admirers as possible. I don’t want to win people over, but I do want to find those listeners who feel the same way I do. How can I achieve this task? I believe only through the utmost artistic integrity and sincerity of expression on all levels – from technical details to the hidden, intimate depths themselves…” the composer said. Witold Lutosławski’s music stands out for its concert-style brilliance and elements of virtuoso performance are clearly expressed. Unsurprisingly, outstanding musicians were keen to collaborate with the composer. The first interpreters of his music included Mstislav Rostropovich (Cello Concerto), Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Les Espaces du sommeil), Georg Solti (Third Symphony) and Krystian Zimerman (Piano Concerto). The Piano Concerto is one of the composer’s greatest works. Lutosławski interpreted the genre description of “concerto” in accordance with its fundamental definition, meaning a kind of competition between the soloist and the orchestra which presupposes that the soloist has “sportsmanlike” valour (in the noblest sense of the word).

Ravel’s famous choreographic poem La Valse was completed in 1920, though in letters Ravel first referred to La Valse in 1906. At that time, he saw La Valse in the following light: “The work which I am now undertaking is not a miniature; it is a grand waltz, after a fashion it is a tribute to the memory of the great Strauss, but not Richard, the other one – Johann.” In a short autobiography from 1928, the composer wrote that “I conceived this work as a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, the whirling impression of which is fantastic and fatal. I have set this waltz in an imperial palace, close to 1855.”
The form of La Valse is dynamically entirely in the spirit of the 20th. It was not smooth spinning or the enjoyment of waltzing that attracted Ravel; his ultimate aim was to portray waltz spins and turns as deformed, truncated, cracked and shattered in the general atmosphere of fatal whirling. An inherently evil veil of ghostliness covers everything. The music of La Valse became one of Ravel’s most popular works, not just in its orchestral form but also in the arrangement for piano.

Московский пасхальный фестиваль
Age category 6+

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