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Approximately four minutes in length
Program Notes:
Shostakovich was a musical prodigy who entered the Petrograd Conservatory in 1919, at the age of 13. He weathered setbacks including the death of his father in 1922, a bout of tuberculosis in 1923, and ever-precarious family finances that led him to take a side job as a movie theater pianist—a gig that nurtured his lifelong affection for popular music. He still completed his studies at age 19, offering his First Symphony as a graduation piece.
Both Shostakovich and the conductor who had premiered the First Symphony, Nikolai Malko, attended a musical playing in Moscow in 1927, and they were both captivated by a number listed as “Tahiti Trot,” which accompanied a foxtrot dance. (The song was actually “Tea for Two,” composed by Vincent Youmans in 1924 for the show No, No, Nanette.) To have a little fun with the supremely confident Shostakovich, Malko challenged him one night to a bet: could he transcribe that tune from memory and orchestrate it, all in less than an hour? Shostakovich went to another room and triumphantly returned about 40 minutes later with this sweet and silly arrangement still known as Tahiti Trot.
Approximately two minutes in length
Program Notes:
The Golden Age is a ballet in three acts and six scenes by Dmitri Shostakovich. This piece is based on a libretto by Alexander Ivanovsky and premiered October 26, 1930 at the Kirov Theatre.
The ballet satirizes the political and cultural changes taking place in Europe in the 1920s. It is about a Soviet soccer team playing in a Western city. The team comes into contact with politically incorrect characters like the Diva, the Fascist, the Agent Provocateur and more. Match rigging, police harrassment and unjust imprisonment by the bourgeoisie are all faced by the team. Finally, they are freed from jail when the local workers overthrow the capitalist leaders. At the end of the ballet, the workers and soccer team engage in a dance on solidarity.
Shostakovich was a big soccer (football) fan and was said to have coined the phrase “Football is the ballet of the masses.”
The third movement of Shostakovich’s The Golden Age, titled Polka, was reused as the second of his Two Pieces for String Quartet in 1931. He also arranged the Polka for solo piano (Op. 22b) and piano four hands (Op. 22c), in 1935 and 1962 respectively.
Approximately four minutes in length
Program Notes:
As of 1902, Igor Stravinsky was a young law student whose musical pursuits amounted to some piano lessons and a year of private theory training. As he began to think more seriously of a life in music, he arranged to show some of his scores to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the leading teacher and tastemaker in Saint Petersburg. Rimsky-Korsakov steered Stravinsky away from the conservatory, where the untrained 20-year-old would have stuck out, but he saw enough promise that he took Stravinsky on as a private student.
The death of Rimsky-Korsakov in 1908 ended Stravinsky’s whirlwind apprenticeship. His real arrival as a professional composer came early the next year, when two short orchestral compositions, Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks, debuted on the same program. One attendee who recognized Stravinsky’s burgeoning talent was the ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev; he soon took a chance on Stravinsky when the original composer tapped for The Firebird fell through, and the rest is history.
With its fantastical textures and robust themes, Fireworks demonstrates how well Stravinsky absorbed the lessons of Rimsky-Korsakov, especially in the craft of orchestration. There are flashes of the ritualistic bombast that served Stravinsky so well in his forthcoming ballets, and at the same time hints arise of the sparkling clarity that Stravinsky maximized during his later decades of neoclassical exploration.
Approximately three minutes in length
Program Notes:
As if in relief to the gravity of the previous movement, this final movement is a lighthearted tribute to the “mestizo” or mixed-race music of the South American Pacific coast. In particular, it evokes the “romancero” tradition of popular songs and dances that mix influences from indigenous Indian cultures, African slave cultures, and western brass bands.
Currently serving as Composer-in-Residence with the storied Philadelphia Orchestra and included in the Washington Post’s list of the most significant women composers in history (August, 2017), identity has always been at the center of composer/pianist Gabriela Lena Frank’s music. Born in Berkeley, California (September, 1972), to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Gabriela explores her multicultural heritage through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Gabriela has traveled extensively throughout South America in creative exploration. Her music often reflects not only her own personal experience as a multi-racial Latina, but also refract her studies of Latin American cultures, incorporating poetry, mythology, and native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own.
Moreover, she writes, “There’s usually a story line behind my music; a scenario or character.” While the enjoyment of her works can be obtained solely from her music, the composer’s program notes enhance the listener’s experience, for they describe how a piano part mimics a marimba or pan-pipes, or how a movement is based on a particular type of folk song, where the singer is mockingly crying. Even a brief glance at her titles evokes specific imagery: Leyendas (Legends): An Andean Walkabout; La Llorona (The Crying Woman): Tone Poem for Viola and Orchestra; and Concertino Cusqueño (Concertino in the Cusco style). Gabriela’s compositions also reflect her virtuosity as a pianist — when not composing, she is a sought-after performer, specializing in contemporary repertoire.
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