Program Notes:
All-Rachmaninoff

Vocalise, Opus 34, No. 14

As the very word suggests, a “vocalise” is intended to be sung. Most often it is nothing more than a student exercise in vocal training, a wordless melody that challenges the young singer to solve certain technical problems (breath control, phrasing, articulation, and so on) without having to confront the additional complications presented by a text. Very few such pieces are ever heard outside the confines of a voice teacher's studio.

Rachmaninoff's Vocalise, on the other hand, is a finished song of extraordinary elegance by one of the great masters of Russian song. He composed it in April 1912 and revised it that October. A wordless song is, of course, easily transferred to instruments, where it offers the same challenge to sensitive, expressive performance as it does to the singer. When the vocal version came to be identified as one of his greatest melodic effusions, he prepared an orchestral version in which massed violins sing the expressive melody and the rest of the ensemble richly colors the piano part.

© Copyright Steven Ledbetter

Caprice bohémien, Op. 12

Rachmaninoff’s 1894 Caprice bohémien is one of a number of nineteenth-century Russian orchestral compositions based on “exotic” folk music; this tradition begins with Spanish-influenced works by Glinka from the 1840s and 50s, continues with that composer’s Kamarinskaya (1848), based on two Russian traditional tunes, as well as an assortment of overtures by Balakirev drawing on Spanish, Russian and Czech sources, from the 1850s and 60s. Its best-known immediate ancestors are of course Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio italien (1880) and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol (1887); the tradition continues into the early twentieth century with Liapunov’s 1907 Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes for piano and orchestra, somewhat improbably dedicated to Ferruccio Busoni.

Although its French title might be ambiguous, Rachmaninoff’s early tour-de-force is neither related to the Parisian Bohemia of Murger and Puccini nor to Czech melodies. The Russian original, Kaprichchio na tsyganskiye temy [Каприччио на цыганские темы] makes it clear that it is in fact based on [Russian] Gypsy themes. Its dedicatee, Pyotr Viktorovich Lodyzhensky, was the husband of a woman of Gypsy heritage, Anna Lodyzhenskaya, who in turn was the dedicatee of the composer’s passionate First Symphony, which he composed next. However, not only do the Caprice and the Symphony share thematic material, but so does the slightly earlier symphonic poem The Crag (1893) whose title, taken from a poem by Lermontov, itself quoted at the head of the score, refers as well to a melancholy short story of love and loss by Chekov. To further enrich this mélange of musical, literary and personal cross-references the title page of the First Symphony bears not only Mme. Lodyzhenskaya’s initials, but as well the Biblical quotation which Tolstoy placed at the head of Anna Karenina: “Vengeance is mine, I shall repay.” (Romans, 12:19) Whether or not Rachmaninoff imagined himself re-creating the novel’s Vronsky-Anna-Karenin triangle remains a matter of speculation. It would appear that he was infatuated-or at least obsessed-with Anna Lodyzhenskaya, although some biographers prefer not to dwell on this matter.

The Caprice bohémien is a continuous work with several obvious internal elements; there is a fast beginning which sets forth thematic material to be developed later on, a slow passage, beginning with a wide-ranging melody first played by strings in unison and then echoed by the clarinet, continuing with a flute solo which in turn leads to an impassioned outburst for the full orchestra. After this subsides, the main, dance-like section begins, at first slowly, with a melody played by flutes and violins. The tempo increases and the scoring thickens phrase by phrase; a full Romantic battery of colorful percussion punctuates and reinforces the underlying rhythmic drive. Motifs from the introduction, both fast and slow, mingle with the spirited dance; unexpected chordal twists at cadences cleverly subverts any potential for tonal monotony. Rachmaninoff saves his biggest surprises in scoring, pace and harmony for the last moments, which bring the work to a rousing conclusion.

As the JCC Symphony Orchestra we have performed the Caprice bohémien twice before, in 1988–89 and 1997–98; Rachmaninoff’s first two symphonies, his first three piano concerti and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini have been in our repertoire since 1998–99.

© Copyright Joel Lazar

Symphonic Dances, Opus 45

Most of Rachmaninoff’s last years were devoted to touring as a concert pianist and committing his works to records. Between 1936 (when he completed the Third Symphony) and his death in 1943, he wrote only one new large composition, the Symphonic Dances, which qualifies as his only “American” piece, composed on Long Island after the outbreak of war made it impossible for him to return to Europe. While sketching the work he intended to entitle the three movements “Morning,” “Midday,” and “Evening”—possibly intended as an analogy with youth, maturity, and death—but in the end, he dropped any programmatic references.

Possibly because he was composing in America, the home of jazz, Rachmaninoff decided to write an extended part for saxophone. Concerned to choose the proper member of that family of instruments, he consulted his friend Robert Russell Bennett, best known as Broadway’s leading orchestrator for four decades, the man who created the “sound” of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, among many others. Bennett’s recollections give us a charming glimpse of the usually dour composer: “He played over his score for me on the piano, and I was delighted to see his approach to the piano was quite the same as that of all of us who try to imitate the sound of the orchestra at the keyboard. He sang, whistled, stamped, rolled his chords, and otherwise conducted himself, not as one would expect of so great and impeccable a virtuoso.”

The premiere was generally successful, but critics simply labeled the Symphonic Dances “a rehash of old tricks,” putting a cloud over the work for a number of years. More recently, it has enteredthe active repertory, a change that has gone hand‑in‑hand with the general reevaluation of Rachmaninoff’s work as a whole. Until very recently, he was regarded as a reactionary by musical intelligentsia; times are changing, though, and his star is rising again.

As so often in his music, Rachmaninoff refers to the chants of the Russian Orthodox church and quotes the Roman Catholic Dies irae as well (it must have been his favorite tune—he used it probably more often than any other composer in the history of music). The score also gave him an opportunity to come to terms with the most catastrophic failure of his life. The premiere of his First Symphony in 1897 under the baton of Alexander Glazunov—reputedly drunk at the time—must have been indescribably bad, to such an extent that he put aside that manuscript, which was apparently lost in the Russian Revolution. (Only two years after the composer’s death did the orchestral parts turn up in Leningrad, allowing the work to be reconstructed.) The failure so deeply affected the young composer that he gave up composition entirely for several years, and only after extensive therapy and hypnosis did he return with one of his most successful works, the Second Piano Concerto.

But he still recalled that old failure in 1940, since the first movement coda of the Symphonic Dances quotes the main theme of the First Symphony—music he was sure no one would ever hear again, or even recognize—but turns the darkly somber melody into something more sweetly resigned, as if all that he had produced in the meantime had somehow laid to rest the bogey of that first bitter failure.

A brief introduction hints at the prevalent rhythm leading to the principal material, elaborated through varied harmonies and orchestral colors. The main section dies away in a reversal of the introduction, and the middle section begins wonderfully with woodwinds alone. A gently rocking figure becomes the background to the ravishing melody in the alto saxophone. The return to the opening material comes in a developmental passage based on the principal themes. When C minor brightens to C major, the coda converts the dark, minor, chantlike theme from Rachmaninoff’s “lost” First Symphony into something altogether consoling in the major, a broad melody in the strings against brightly kaleidoscopic figures elsewhere in the orchestra.

Though written in 6/8 time, the second movement is a waltz, but not one of those lilting carefree Viennese waltzes that seduces the listener into joie de vivre. It is altogether more melancholy, oddly chromatic, turning strange melodic corners. When the violins take up the theme in parallel thirds (a technique characteristic of the most sugary romantic waltzes), we hear that the sweetness has turned to vinegar. They recall the end of an era, much as Ravel’s La Valse does, and as Stephen Sondheim was later to do in his score to A Little Night Music.

The last movement draws together two of Rachmaninoff’s favorite sources for thematic inspiration: the chant of the Russian liturgy and the “Dies irae” melody—unlikely material to find in a dance! The chant tunes are subjected to rhythmic syncopations that change their character considerably. The “Dies irae” appears in the outer sections of the movement, sometimes plain, sometimes cleverly disguised. An important new theme first heard in the English horn is a rhythmically disguised version of the Russian chant to the words “Blessed be the Lord”; it forms the basis for an exhilarating dance passage. Shortly before the end of the piece, Rachmaninoff introduces a new chant‑related melody in clarinets and violins over bassoons and trumpets, the remainder of the orchestra being silent. Here he wrote into his score the word “Alliluya,” a reference to his 1915 choral All Night Vigil from which this section is derived. But it is perhaps also the composer’s own hymn of thanks for having the strength to finish this, his last score. He made his thoughts still clearer at the end of the manuscript, which he signed with the words, “I thank thee, Lord.”

© Copyright Steven Ledbetter