ILS

YM

PH

ON

Y.O

RG

36

Pavane for a Dead PrincessMAURICE RAVELb. Ciboure, France, 7 March 1875d. Paris, 28 December 1937

The piece was likely premiered in its original form as a solo piano piece sometime after the work’s composition in 1899 at the home of Ravel’s patron the Princess de Polignac. The orchestral version was published in 1910 and premiered on February 27, 1911, in Manchester, England by conductor Sir Henry Wood. (Approx. 6 minutes)

Born in the French Pyrenees close to the Spanish border, Ravel grew up in Paris but is one of several French composers of his age who have written some of the best Spanish music for orchestra. He studied composition at the Paris Conservatory, but his success there was limited. At the time the conservatoire was not fond of stylistic creativity, and Ravel’s questioning manner and wild musical ideas led him to simply leave in 1895 after not earning a prize (like a diploma) in harmony for three years in a row. Shortly thereafter he made the acquaintance of fellow French composer Claude Debussy, whose own disgust for the stodgy reputation of the conservatoire and his lack of diligence in his studies caused him no shortage of disapproval from his teachers.

Ravel was readmitted into the composition studio of Gabriel Faure in 1898, and this piece comes from the years under his tutelage. It is based on the pavane, which is a slow processional dance from Padua (Pava, from which we get the word pavane being a dialect name for Padua). According to Spanish tradition, the pavane is performed as part of the funeral proceedings at the church, and is a stylistic farewell to the deceased.

After a well-received public premiere of the piano piece in 1902 by Ravel’s friend, the Spanish pianist Ricardo Viñes, the piece became very popular. Not that technically challenging to play, Ravel found the piece suffered musically at the hands of many an amateur pianist. As one friend of Ravel’s said, the piece won him “the esteem of the salons and the admiration of young ladies who did not play the piano overly well.” Because of its continuing popularity, Ravel created the stunning orchestrated version in 1910, which was generally considered to be an improved version of the work. Ravel was already a deft and imaginative orchestrator, and the colors he creates in the orchestra added much to the atmosphere of the work. As to the identity of the dead princess, Ravel acknowledged several years after writing the piece that he had no one specific in mind at all, but simply liked the way the alliterative title sounded: Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess).

Piano ConcertoEDVARD GRIEGb. Bergen, Norway, 15 June 1843d. Bergen, 4 September 1907

Premiered on April 3, 1869 in Copenhagen at the Royal Theater with Edmund Neupert, pianist and Holger Simon Paulli, conductor. (Approx. 30 minutes)

Grieg’s Piano Concerto has one of the most famous beginnings in the concerto repertoire – huge chords crashing down the piano to launch the work that itself launched Norway’s most famous composer’s career. Written when he was only 25, this piano concerto remains a concert favorite and set the composer off on a trajectory as the national voice of Norway.

FRENCH FINALEPROGRAM NOTESBy Erik Rohde © | Violin II, Illinois Symphony Orchestra | Music Director, Winona Symphony Orchestra | Director of Strings and Activities, Indiana State University

FPO

ILS

YM

PH

ON

Y.O

RG

37

Grieg was born into a musical family and first took piano lessons from his mother starting at the age of 6. By the age of 15 Grieg had met the famous Norwegian violinist Ole Bull (a family friend), who encouraged Grieg’s parents to send him to study at the Leipzig Conservatory. There he studied piano and some composition, and while he chafed under the discipline of the conservatory course of study, his time there was very influential. One major highlight of his life as a student was hearing Clara Schumann play her husband’s piano concerto. The two pieces bear some similarities, so it must have had an impact on the young composer.

Grieg’s own Piano Concerto was written while on holiday in Søllerød, Denmark in 1868. He had been married the previous year, and after his studies in Leipzig and a 3-year period spent in Copenhagen, living in Norway where he became a voice for his native country and drew inspiration from it. As he considered his compositional style, he wrote: “Composers with the stature of a Bach or Beethoven have erected grand churches and temples. I have always wished to build villages: places where people can feel happy and comfortable . . . the music of my own country has been my model.” So much of his music is inspired by the folk music of his own country, including such a prominent work as his first piano concerto.

Grieg was unfortunately not able to attend the premiere of his concerto, due to prior obligations with the orchestra in Oslo. He was thankful for news from his friend who was the soloist that several eminent music critics had “applauded with all their might,” and that Anton Rubenstein, the famous pianist, composer, and founder of the St. Petersburg Conservatory had been there and was “astounded to have heard a composition of such genius.”

The piece is full of Norwegian inspired melodies and dances. From the first movement, which contains wisps of Norwegian fiddling figuration, to the second, a lyric folk song, to the dancelike finale, his native musical roots come to the fore in a brilliant technical display by pianist and orchestra alike.

La Mer (The Sea)CLAUDE DEBUSSY b. Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, 22 August 1862d. Paris, 25 March 1918

Premiered on October 15, 1905 at the Concerts Lamoureux in Paris, Camille Chevillard, conductor. (Approx. 23 minutes)

Debussy’s love for the sea was ignited by tales from his father, a sailor who told him about vast oceans and exotic lands. Debussy’s family traveled to Cannes when he was 7 years old, and his fascination with the waves and emotions evoked by the water were set for the rest of his life. It was there that Debussy also began piano lessons. As a young adult, Debussy was scheduled to take a short trip along the coast in a small fishing boat with friends, but with a storm approaching, the captain advised that they cancel the trip. Debussy insisted that they set sail anyway and lived through his first storm at sea, at no little risk to himself and the rest of the crew and passengers. Two years before writing La Mer, Debussy wrote to a friend: “You may not know that I was destined for a sailor’s life and that it was only quite by chance that fate led me in another direction. But I have always held a passionate love for the sea.”

All these experiences he molded into orchestral form in his epic suite La Mer (The Sea). There are few pieces more richly evocative and reminiscent of the ocean. The work is cast in three portraits, each a different mood or portrayal of the sea.

ILS

YM

PH

ON

Y.O

RG

38

“From dawn to noon on the sea,” is a dark, mysterious setting. Debussy uses the orchestra to plunge us deep into the depths of the ocean where light is scarce and the colors are shaded. The ambience slowly transforms until a noble chorale-like passage takes us to a grand image of the sun blazing over the water at high noon.

The second movement, “The play of the waves,” is a sparkling portrait of waves splashing in an ever-changing mosaic across the orchestra. And in the final movement, “Dialogue of the wind and the sea,” Debussy gives us a storm much like the one he experienced earlier in his life. You can hear the wind whipping and the waves crashing as the orchestra is unleased in its full fury, much as the ocean itself.

The work, famous now, was not always so well received. Before the premiere, Debussy told Stravinsky that violinists in the orchestra tied handkerchiefs to their bows in protest of the music. Debussy himself was in the middle of a personal scandal that colored the premiere of La Mer in a disapproving light. Fortunately, the scandal quickly resolved, and Debussy’s epic portrait of the sea has remained a thrilling classic in the orchestral canon.

BoleroMAURICE RAVELPremiered in the United States by Arturo Toscanini conducting the New York Philharmonic on November 14, 1929. Ravel conducted the first Paris concert performance with the Lamoureux Orchestra on January 11, 1930. (Approx. 15 minutes)

The melody is now famous. Snaking its way across

various soloists in the orchestra, creating the most impossible, imperceptible, inevitable crescendo over the course of a full fifteen minutes, Boléro is now perhaps the most famous of Ravel’s music. It was first conceived for a ballet, a work promised to Ida Rubinstein for her Paris ballet troupe. Just before he left on a 4-month concert tour of America, he pulled aside a friend, Gustave Samazeuilh, who was the music critic of La Républicaine, and played his Boléro melody. “Don’t you think this theme has a certain insistent quality?” he asked. “I’m going to try and repeat it a number of times without any development, gradually increasing the orchestra as best I can.”

And he succeeded. Starting with a single snare drum playing as soft as humanly possible (softer, perhaps than humanly possible), the piece proceeds simply from one iteration of the melody to the next. We are so familiar with the work now that this no longer seems as avant garde as it was at the time. Imagine listening to a work with no thematic development! Yet Ravel masterfully structures the work so that the momentum and tension are increased so inevitably and slowly you cannot help but be swept along until the orchestra explodes into the overwhelming finale.

Here is what Ravel himself said about Boléro:

I am particularly anxious that there should be no misunderstanding as to my Boléro. It is an experiment in a very special and limited direction, and it should not be suspected of aiming at achieving anything different from, or anything more than, it actually does achieve. Before the first performance, I issued a warning to the effect that what I had written was a piece

FRENCH FINALE PROGRAM NOTES continued ...By Erik Rohde © | Violin II, Illinois Symphony Orchestra | Music Director, Winona Symphony Orchestra | Director of Strings and Activities, Indiana State University

. . . consisting wholly of orchestral texture without music—of one long, very gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and there is practically no invention except in the plan and the manner of the execution. The themes are impersonal— folk tunes of the usual Spanish-Arabian kind. Whatever may have been said to the contrary, the orchestral treatment is simple and straightforward throughout, without the slightest attempt at virtuosity. . . I have done exactly what I have set out to do, and it is for listeners to take it or leave it.

After writing a piece of only “orchestral texture without music,” Ravel was shocked, and not terribly thrilled, about the popularity the piece enjoyed in his lifetime. He wrote to a fellow composer that “I’ve written only one masterpiece – Boléro. Unfortunately there’s no music in it.” Supposedly at the Paris premiere a member of the audience shouted “Rubbish!” after the work, to which the composer replied, “That old lady got the message!” Whether the audience feels like it should shout “rubbish” or “bravo!” after this performance, it cannot be denied that the work is terribly effective!