PMF Program Notes - August 1, 2006

Star Spangled Banner
Tchaikovsky :: Eugen Onegin: Polonaise
Chopin :: Piano Concerto No. 2 in f-minor, Op. 21
Tchaikovsky :: Symphony No. 3, op. 29, D major (Polish)

Sponsored by the Egan Foundation and the Egan Family in Memory of Margaret Egan Noonan

In the plot of Tchaikovsky’s opera, the young and worldly Eugene Onégin arouses love for himself in Tatiana, a gentle country girl. She innocently writes him a letter revealing her feelings, to which Onégin haughtily replies that the best he can offer her is brotherly affection. At a ball in honor of Tatiana’s name-day, Onégin deliberately inflames the jealousy of Lensky by flirting with Olga, Lensky’s fiancée and Tatiana’s sister. Lensky challenges Onégin to a duel, and is killed. Four years elapse, during which Onégin, haunted by Lensky’s death, has sought diversion in constant travel and amusement. Upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, he is invited to a party at the house of Prince Gremin, at which he again sees Tatiana, now a grand and beautiful lady after two years of marriage to the Prince. Onégin regrets his earlier refusal of Tatiana’s advances and the unsettled state of his life, and realizes that he is, after all, in love with her. He pleads his affection in a series of passionate letters, and Tatiana agrees to see him. She confesses that she still loves him, but that she will not be untrue to her husband. She bids Onégin farewell forever, and leaves him distraught and overcome by despair.

The Polonaise, an elegant dance used by 19th-century Russian society to embellish its formal occasions, accompanies Prince Gremin’s ball in Act III.

Composed in 1829.
Premiered on March 17, 1830 in Warsaw, with the composer as soloist.

Frédéric Chopin was nineteen and in love when he wrote this Concerto in 1829. The Concerto he handled with maturity and assurance — the love affair, he did not. When Chopin finished his studies at the Warsaw Conservatory that summer, he was already an accomplished pianist and composer. As a graduation present, his father sent him to Vienna, where he gave two successful concerts and found a publisher for his Variations for Piano and Orchestra on Mozart’s La ci darem la mano (Op. 2). It was sometime during those summer months that he began the F minor Concerto. Though he enjoyed his visit to the imperial city, his thoughts were often back in Warsaw, centered on a comely young singer, one Constantia Gladowska. In his biography of the composer, Casimir Wierzynski passed on some information about this apparently delightful lady: “She had been studying voice at the Conservatory for four years and was considered one of the school’s best pupils. She was also said to be one of the prettiest. Her regular, full face, framed in blond hair, was an epitome of youth, health and vigor, and her beauty was conspicuous in the Conservatory chorus, for all that it boasted of numbers of beautiful women. The young lady, conscious of her charms, was distinguished by ambition and diligence in her studies. She dreamed of becoming an opera singer....” Constantia was certainly a worthy object for Chopin’s affections, though she had no way to know of his interest — it took him a full year to utter a word to her.

Chopin first saw Constantia when she sang at a Conservatory concert on April 21, 1829. For the first time in his life, he fell in love. He followed Constantia to her performances, and caught glimpses of her when she appeared at the theater or in church, but never approached her. He kept his churning passion secret even from his friends. She was on his mind constantly, and the emotional rush of young love played a seminal role in the creation of his two piano concertos. On October 6th, Chopin, recently returned from Vienna, composed a waltz (Op. 70, No. 3) with the image of Constantia vivid in his mind. That evening, he was no longer able to contain his feelings and wrote to his friend Titus Woyciechowski, “I have — perhaps to my own misfortune — already found my ideal, whom I worship faithfully and sincerely. Six months have elapsed, and I haven’t yet exchanged a syllable with her of whom I dream every night — she who was in my mind when I composed the Adagio of my Concerto.” Chopin’s love manifested itself in giddily immature ways. He raved about Constantia’s virtues to his friends. He invited one Mrs. Beyer to dinner simply because her given name was the same as that of his beloved. He reported “tingling with pleasure” whenever he saw a handkerchief embroidered with her name. He broke off one of his letters abruptly with the syllable “Con — ,” explaining, “No, I cannot complete her name, my hand is too unworthy.”

After yet another half year of such maudlin goings-on, Chopin finally met — actually talked with — Constantia in April 1830. She was pleasant to him, and they became friends, but he was never convinced that she fully returned his ardent love. She took part in his farewell concert in Warsaw on October 11th, and he kept up a correspondence with her for a while through an intermediary. (He felt it improper to write directly to a young woman without her parents’ permission.) Her marriage to a Warsaw merchant in 1832 caused him intense but impermanent grief, which soon evaporated in the glittering social whirl of Paris, his new home.
Another woman entered the story of the Second Concerto with Chopin’s move to France — Countess Delphine Potocka, one of the grandes dames of the Parisian salons, and a lady of wealth and taste who also possessed a fine singing voice. She was one of Chopin’s earliest supporters in the French capital, and she bestowed her favors upon him in a more meaningful manner than had his young girl friend back in Warsaw. The two remained close for the rest of Chopin’s life. When she learned that he was on his deathbed in 1849, she rushed back from Italy and comforted him with her songs during his last hours. The Concerto No. 2 was dedicated to the Countess upon its publication in 1836.

The F minor Concerto was first heard at Chopin’s concert of March 17, 1830 in Warsaw’s National Theater, an occasion that also marked his official public debut as a pianist in that city. He achieved such a resounding success that he had to schedule an additional performance the following week to satisfy the audience demand. Since three full movements of a single concerto played one immediately after another were a bit too demanding for the contemporary taste, a Divertissement for French horn by Görner was inserted between the first two movements to leaven the proceedings. Despite this intrusion typical of the times (even Beethoven’s works were thus split asunder in the early 19th century), Chopin reported a fine success for the new work. “The first Allegro of my Concerto (unintelligible to most),” he wrote, with a whiff of condescension, to a friend, “received the reward of a ‘Bravo,’ but I believe this was given because people wanted to show that they understand and know how to appreciate serious music. There are people enough in all countries who like to assume the air of connoisseurs! The Adagio and Rondo produced a very great effect; after these, the applause and the ‘Bravos’ came really from the heart.” Soon after its premiere, the Concerto acquired such influential admirers as Liszt and Schumann, and it has remained one of the best-loved works in the piano repertory.

Chopin based his concertos on the Romantic piano style of Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Field and Ries rather than on the weightier abstract forms of Beethoven. The orchestra in these virtuoso works is, truly, accompaniment, and is virtually excluded from the musical argument once the pianist enters. The center of attention is the soloist, and it says much about the quality of Chopin’s writing for the piano that his concertos continue to be heard while literally shelves-full of their contemporary creations have not been displayed for over a century. In the opening movement of the Second Concerto, most of the orchestra’s participation occurs in the introduction, in which are presented the main theme (a rather dolorous tune with dotted rhythms played immediately by violins) and the second theme, a brighter strain given by woodwinds led by the oboe. The piano enters and, with the exception of orchestral interludes surrounding the development section and the concluding coda, dominates the remainder of the movement. The writing for the soloist makes abundantly clear that even at the age of nineteen, Chopin was a master of weaving elaborate filigrees of figuration around simple melodic shapes to create his characteristic gossamer piano sonorities and incomparable range of feeling.

Liszt thought the second movement “of a perfection almost ideal; its expression, now radiant with light, now full of tender pathos.” Robert Schumann — writer, publisher, editor as well as composer — mused, “What are ten editorial crowns compared to one such Adagio as that of the Second Concerto!” Composed under the spell of his first love, this movement was a special favorite of Chopin himself. A description of the movement’s form — three-part (A–B–A) with wide-ranging harmonic excursions in the center section — is too clinical to convey the moonlit poetry and quiet intensity of this beautiful music. In both its technique and its tender emotionalism, it breathes the rarefied air of Chopin’s greatest works.

Chopin’s biographer Frederick Niecks noted the finale’s “feminine softness and rounded contours, its graceful, gyrating, dance-like motions, its sprightliness and frolicsomeness.” The theme was inspired by the mazurka, the Polish national dance that also served Chopin as the basis for more than fifty stylized compositions for solo piano. The movement brims with dazzling virtuosity. Its structure comprises a series of episodes rounded off by the return of the beguiling main theme and a cheerful coda in F major heralded by a call from the solo horn.

Of Chopin’s F minor Concerto, Herrmann Scholz, a noted German pianist and a contemporary of Brahms, wrote, “It is a piece full of poetic charm. In it all the attributes of a perfect work of art appear in the happiest union: noble melody, choice harmonies, agreeable figures, and the perfection of form, while the thoroughly original ideas are finely contrasted.”

Symphony No. 3 in D major, Op. 29, “Polish”
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Composed in 1875.
Premiered on November 19, 1875 in Moscow, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein.

Tchaikovsky composed his Third Symphony in the astonishingly short period of only eight weeks during the summer of 1875 — astonishing not just because of the speed with which such a large work was written, but also because it was composed immediately after one of the worst episodes of depression and self-deprecation that he ever experienced. On the preceding Christmas Eve, he had taken his new B-flat minor Piano Concerto to Nikolai Rubinstein, director of the Moscow Conservatory and his boss, for his evaluation. Rubinstein vilified it. Tchaikovsky was both enraged and wounded. His always-delicate nerves gave way, and his doctors advised him to travel abroad, forbidding him to compose or touch a piano, which counsel he ignored to stay in winter-bound Moscow to continue his teaching duties at the Conservatory.

On January 21, 1875, Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Anatoli of the underlying cause of his malaise: “I am very, very lonely here, and if it weren’t for my constant work, I should simply succumb to my melancholia. It’s a fact that XXX [his symbol in his correspondence and diaries for his homosexuality] constitutes an unbridgeable chasm between me and the majority of people. It imparts to my character an aloofness, a fear of people, a timidity, an excessive shyness, a distrustfulness — in a word, a thousand traits which are making me more and more unsociable.” He admitted to Modeste, Anatoli’s twin, that he was so disgusted with his life that he often considered suicide. He could rouse little enthusiasm for creative work during those months, composing only the bittersweet Sérénade Mélancolique for Violin and Orchestra (Op. 26) for Leopold Auer and a handful of songs. These latter works, as with most of the songs that he wrote, were a musical marking-time, written when he could not bring himself to undertake larger projects. The only solution to his problem, he believed, was to marry, as a sign to himself and to the world that he was capable of living a conventional life. “From this day on I will seriously consider entering into matrimony with any woman,” he wrote to Modeste on September 22, 1876. “I am convinced that my inclinations are the greatest and insuperable barrier to my well-being, and I must by all means struggle against my nature.” He finally did marry, in 1877 — to one of his students — and it was a complete disaster. His marital catastrophe did serve, however, to exorcise at least some of his personal devils, and he became more contented with himself thereafter.

Tchaikovsky’s gloom of the winter of 1875 lifted when the weather improved. He reported to Anatoli on March 21st, “Now, with the approach of spring, these attacks of melancholia have completely stopped, but,” he added pessimistically, “I know that each year — or rather, each winter — they will return more strongly.” His mood was further improved in May, when he received the commission for Swan Lake from the Imperial Directorate of the Moscow Theaters, a project he longed to undertake since conceiving a passion for the ballet music of Delibes during a trip to France sometime before. As soon as classes at the Conservatory finished in June, he accepted an invitation to visit the country estate of his friend Vladimir Shilovsky at Ussovo, where he began the Third Symphony. The sketches were completed by the end of the month, when he moved to the estate of N.D. Kondratiev at Nizi; he orchestrated the fourth and fifth movements in just five days after his arrival on July 10th. His final stop of the summer was at his sister Alexandra’s home in Verbovka, where the three remaining movements were orchestrated in about a week. Tchaikovsky was refreshed at Verbovka not just by completing the Symphony and having begun Swan Lake, but also by the loving attention of his sister, her children and his father, so that he was able to return to Moscow in the fall stronger both physically and mentally.

For the fee of 300 rubles, the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society and its director, Nikolai Rubinstein, were given the rights to the premiere of the Third Symphony. Rehearsals began early in November, and the piece was first performed on the 19th of the month to a warm response. Tchaikovsky assessed the event and the music in a letter to Rimsky-Korsakov: “It seems to me the work does not contain any very happy ideas, but, as regards form, it is a step forward. I am best pleased with the first movement, and also with the two scherzos, the second of which is very difficult, consequently not nearly so well played as it might have been if we could have had more rehearsals.... On the whole, however, I was satisfied with the performance.” When the work was played in St. Petersburg early in 1876, Tchaikovsky reported to Modeste, “My Symphony went well and had considerable success. They called out and applauded me in a very friendly way.” The critic Hermann Laroche was unstinting in his praise. “The importance and power of the music,” he wrote, “the beauty and variety of forms, the nobility of style, the original and rare perfection of technique, all contribute to make this Symphony one of the most remarkable works produced during the last ten years. Were it to be played in any musical center in Germany, it would raise the name of the Russian musician to a level with those of the most famous symphonic composers of the day.” Not all agreed with Laroche, however, and the composer was soon worried because “the press ... has been rather cold toward my Symphony. They are all agreed that it contains nothing new and that I am beginning to repeat myself. Is this really so?” he asked Modeste. His fears were allayed the following summer when he attended the first Bayreuth Festival as a press correspondent but was received as a distinguished visitor whose presence incited “one long confusion of hospitality,” he marveled. “It appears that I am not so unknown in Western Europe as I thought.”

The sobriquet “Polish” attached to the D major Symphony (the only one of Tchaikovsky’s six symphonies in a major key) did not originate with the composer, but seems to have first been appended by Sir August Friedrich Manns when he conducted the work at a London Crystal Palace concert in 1899. Manns’ inspiration was the stylized polonaise used as the finale, though there is no question that the Symphony is thoroughly Russian in spirit and thoroughly Tchaikovskian in manner. The model for this five-movement work may well have been Schumann’s “Rhenish” Symphony, which Tchaikovsky held in high esteem. Instead of adding a slow movement to the traditional four-movement structure, as Schumann had done to depict a grand ceremony in the Cologne Cathedral, however, Tchaikovsky inserted a waltz before the slow movement.

The Symphony opens with a doleful introduction based on a fragmented idea passed between the strings and the horns. The sonata form proper begins with the change to a brighter key and the presentation of the sweeping main theme; the subsidiary theme is a sad, little melody intoned by the solo oboe. A buoyant tune initiated by the clarinets closes the exposition. All three themes are elaborated in the development section. The recapitulation recalls the melodies in their original forms before one of Tchaikovsky’s most exciting codas ends the movement. The second movement, Alla Tedesca (“In the German Manner”), traces its waltz heritage to Glinka’s Valse-Fantasie, Weber’s Invitation to the Dance and, ultimately, the Austrian peasant dance, the Ländler. The movement’s central trio is built on quick, chattering woodwind figures, which continue as accompaniment when the waltz theme returns. The elegiac Andante takes as its principal subject a plangent melody intoned by the woodwinds; a passionate strain for full orchestra provides formal and expressive balance. The Scherzo is indebted to Mendelssohn for its mercurial grace and to Tchaikovsky’s own 1872 cantata celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Peter the Great for the theme of its trio. The finale (Tempo di Polacca) is a majestic polonaise which encompasses episodes based on a broad complementary theme and an imposing amount of fugal development.