The original version is Vocalise for choir a capella, written when I was 15, as a follow-up to my only other choral piece, Cancion del Destino (Song of Destiny). While planning this recording project the orchestra asked me to consider including a work of my own. They had given the pre-premiere of my new Flute Concerto with Tango a few years ago. I decided to orchestrate for string ensemble my old Vocalise, and re-named it Adagio to avoid confusion. Interestingly, I had not heard a single note of Rachmaninoff’s music when I wrote my Vocalise, and indeed they are quite different. Yet, there is some similarity of mood and spirit. A further coincidence is that last year I was asked by the Russian National Orchestra to make a new orchestration of Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise for our concert and live CD recording of the final event in Moscow of the First International Rostropovich Festival. My version has just been published, and the recording is released. But this is the first recording of my own Vocalise/Adagio, in any version. In its minimal duration it paints a portrait of desolation, perhaps unexpected for a boy of 15, and the tempo indication at the start, which surprises me now just as much, indicates “Slowly, and as sad as possible”. I can’t recall any particular reason why I wrote in that frame of mind, since I was a happy and contented teenager, but most if not all of my early works have that Slavic dark touch, and an elegiac and nostalgic mood.

Dvořák, fascinated by American life during his tenure as director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York, composed his final symphony there and gave it the title “From the New World.” A few days before the premiere, given at Carnegie Hall on December 16, 1893, by the New York Philharmonic under Anton Seidl, Dvořák wrote in The New York Herald: "I have not actually used any native American melodies. I have written original themes embodying the peculiarities of the Indian music." In fact, the music is an amalgam of what he heard in American music as filtered through a predominantly Slavic lens. Dvořák advised American composers to take advantage of their native folklore and give their music an American sound, and he tried to provide an example in this symphony, but, as Leonard Bernstein used to say, this work is actually “multinational in its foundations” The “New World” was a huge success from its first performance. Its tightness, beauty and immediacy have put it on a pedestal among the most famous works in the repertoire, and familiarity over the years has not diminished its freshness or its overall magic. This is my third recording of the work, following earlier ones with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Czech State Philharmonic of Brno, and I continue to approach it with wonderment. I have made several other Dvořák recordings, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, but this is my first comprehensive Dvořák cycle, exploring the earlier works, the descriptive overtures, and the exquisite Slavonic Dances.
There has been a question for years regarding the origin of the haunting English horn melody of the “NewWorld’s” second movement: whether it was Dvořák’s own or a quotation of one of the spirituals sung to him by his black pupils at the conservatory. Dvořák wrote that the melody, like all the others in the work, was his own. Many years later, William Arms Fisher (1861-1948), who had been one of his pupils, set words to the tune, creating the spiritual “Goin’ Home.”
Dvořák was born on September 8, 1841, in a town near Prague. His father was a butcher and inkeeper, and at first insisted that his son follow him, but in the end he allowed him to become a full-time musician. The young Dvořák learned violin and viola, and played the viola in the National Theater Orchestra under Bedřich Smetana, while also giving private piano lessons. He fell in love with one of his pupils, the singer Josefina Čermáková, but she married someone else and Dvořák eventually married her younger sister Anna, with whom he had nine children. After eleven years in the orchestra pit, he secured a prestigious job as organist at St. Adalbert’s Church in Prague, which allowed him more time for composing. Dvořák’s main influences seem to be Brahms, who eventually became his friend and mentor, and Tchaikovsky. Dvořák’s fame spread quickly in Europe and eventually America, where the philanthropist Jeanette Thurber persuaded him to become the first director of the conservatory she founded in New York. It was there that he composed his final symphony, in his apartment on 17th Street. The building was demolished in the 1990s, but a statue of Dvořák was erected close by, in Stuyveasant Square.
The Czech Suite in D major, Op. 39, was composed in 1879 and promptly given its premiere in Prague under Adolf Čech. It is a sort of serenade in five brief movements, each with a slightly different orchestration. A year later, with the enthusiastic support of Johannes Brahms, his publisher, Simrock, commissioned the first set of Slavonic Dances, which launched Dvořák’s international recognition. The Slavonic Dances Op. 46 provided Dvoøák with his first international success. Perhaps because of my Slavic roots I have identified with Dvoøák since I first discovered music and I was thrilled when the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra proposed this cycle. I endeavored to study the manuscripts and the recently published Sourek's critical edition and also made sure the silence between movements was, for maximum dramatic impact, kept to a minimum between the 1st and 2nd, and between the 3rd and 4th. The timing of silence between movements is as crucial as the music itself.

Dvořák conducted the first performance of his Seventh Symphony in 1885 in London with the orchestra of the Philharmonic Society, which had commissioned the work. (The Society had commissioned Beethoven's Ninth Symphony among others). Before the Symphony was published (as No. 2, and with a dedication to the Philharmonic Society), he made a substantial cut in the second movement and then wrote to his publisher, “I am now convinced that there is not a single superfluous note in the work.” Like the Ninth Symphony “From the New World,” introduced eight years later in New York, the Seventh was a great success from the first performance. The clarity and directness of the music, the dramatic impact and beautiful melodic turns had an immediate impact on the audience of the times, as it does today. Several stellar conductors at the end of the 19th century—Hans von Bülow, Arthur Nikisch, Hans Richter--made the new symphony their own. Writers at the time, while admiring the new work, said that Dvořák was trying to emulate his idol Brahms. In my opinion, Dvořák’s writing for the orchestra works even better than Brahms’s, probably because he had put in so many years as an orchestral player, from the vantage point of the viola section. George Szell made some touch-ups in the orchestration of the Seventh, but they are barely noticeable without following the score. Szell had a special way with Dvořák’s music, and I spent countless hours in the Cleveland Orchestra’s library (during my years as the orchestra’s Composer-in-Residence) studying his markings in the Dvořák scores and parts. TheSeventh Symphony shows Dvořák at the height of his maturity. in form and concept.

Under the collective title Nature, Life and Love, Dvořák composed three overtures (actually brief tone poems) which might be performed either individually or as an integral cycle in which In Nature’s Realm was followed by Carnival and Othello. The theme of In Nature’s Realm makes cameo appearances as a unifying element in the two subsequent overtures. Dvořák struggled to provide an appropriate title for each of the overtures, and with the question of whether to publish them individually or as a triptych; his Berlin-based publisher Simrock strongly advised him to publish them as separate entities, and gave them individual consecutive opus numbers, with In Nature’s Realm leading off as Op. 91. While conceived in basic sonata form, the work’s expressivity and poetic paintings of nature give it a fluidity and almost improvisational character. Dvořák conducted the first performance in 1892, in his last concert in Prague before leaving for New York, where he introduced the entire cycle. In 1878 Dvořák composed his first set of eight Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, for piano four hands, and at Simrock’s request he followed up at once with an orchestral version of the entire set. This was greeted with enthusiasm by his new publisher, who had approached him at Brahms’s insistence. In 1886, Dvořák composed the second set of eight Slavonic Dances, Op. 72. For the first set, he used the Brahms Hungarian Dances as inspiration and model, as suggested by Simrock, but there are marked differences between the two sets.

The Slavonic Dances Op. 46 provided Dvořák with his first international success. The Scherzo capriccioso, composed in less than a month in 1883 and introduced in Prague that year under Adolf Čech, quickly became one of Dvořák’s most successful works. It received its first performance in England a year later at the Crystal Palace, in a Philharmonic Society concert conducted by Dvořák during his first visit to England, and was then taken up by Richter, Nikisch and many other conductors.

c 2010 JOSE SEREBRIER 

C 2010 

TANGO IN BLUE (2001) & CASI UN TANGO (2002)

  

  

  

After graduation from the University of Minnesota, and Dorati's departure from Minneapolis, with my Guggenheim grants finished, life became a big question mark. While driving back to New York I stopped for gas in a small city in upstate New York, and rad a newspaper announcement that on that same evening the local orchestra was auditioning conductors. With spirit of adventure, I called to ask if it was still possible to apply. The audition was successful, and I became the music director of the Utica Symphony, a semi-professional orchestra. The position in Utica was so underpaid that the only housing I could afford was a little room at the YMCA. I think my salary was $2000 per year. The position came as a package with a part-time Assistant Professor job at the local college to teach violin and composition, which paid some additional sum. This school, part of Syracue University, used makeshift classrooms, and was new and poor, but at least I had my own office, and a school library room where I could compose. It was in this school library/cafeteria that I wrote every note of my Fantasia for String Quartet. The noise and the constant chatter failed to distract me. I enjoyed writing this piece, which I did on commission from the Harvard Musical Association in Massachusetts. During my last months in Minneapolis, Mr. Dorati told me that he had noticed an announcement that this association had a compoetition to commission a string quartet. I applied for it and won the contest. The prize money was quite small, but it included a premiere by members of the Boston Symphony, at the Harvard Musical Association's beautiful salons at Harvard. The premiere, in the spring of 1961 was a wonderful event. The next time it was played was in Washington DC at the Inter-American Music Festival. I was unable to attend, but was amused by the Washington Post's review which declared it an instant "hit," "a veritable 1812 of string quartets." That was not what I had in mind at all, but I was delighted that it had communicated so well. Later, Wladimir Lakond, the editor at Peer Music suggested a string orchestra version of it, with doublebasses added, and he published both versions. As time passes, I still feel very close to this piece which just poured out of my pen in less than a week.

After a short introduction that sets the mood, a folk-like melody of melancholy nature is followed by a persistent solo violin that uses unexpected melodic and harmonic structures. This recurrent solo, a sort of devil's trill, is purposely out of place. Its closest "cousin" would be the solo violin in Mahler's Fourth Symphony (however, I did know this work at the time). The music goes back and forth in a truly improvisatory manner that justified the title. The closest if comes to a set form is the recapitulation of the solo violin section, which leads to an unexpected, driven coda. This ending may come as a surprise, since the bulk of the piece is so lyrical. The title has to do with the free form of the piece, but it was also a kind of homage to Stokowski/Disney's wonderful film. When I wrote Fantasia I had not yet started to work with Stokowski in New York (that would come 18 months later), but he had already premeired two of my works.

I had only taken a few violing lessons when I began writing the first segments of the sonata. At the time I had no idea what a sonata was, nor any other musical form, or key-relationships, or anything else about music theory. he piece evolved purely out of intuition. Many years later, after it was published, I was surprised to hear that somebody at a university in Texas had made a special analysis of it, which went on for many pages, discussing the formal structure and the key-relationships. This essay was published in 1965. There are indeed some things that can be analyzed, as an afterthought. The opening melodic line, which recurs from time to time, has a modal quality. The piece seems to evolve naturally, developing a form of its own, like a well-planned improvisation. The "appoggiatura" over a major-7th chord, which becomes a recurring element, would later become almost obsessive in many of my early works. The piece is very difficult to perform, making virtuosic demands at every stage. I quoted extensively from this sonata in my Winter Violin Concerto, more than forty years later, to tie a full circle between my earliest and my most recent work for the violin.

The genesis of this piece goes back to 1991 when I was commissioned to write a violin concerto. The concerto had to be the last piece of a puzzle, a violinist's idea to record the four seasons?not Vivaldi's, but by four 20th-century composers. We had Rodrigo's Summer Concerto, Milhaud's Spring Concerto, and eventually we found an Autumn, a salon piece for violin by Chaminade. I was asked to write a winter concerto to complete the cycle. The concept and form of the work evolved, rather ironically, while walking on the beautiful white sand beaches of Key Biscaine, Florida, at Christmas that year. I had never meanto to portray literally the season of winter. My winter concerto would have to be a poetic vision of winter, not so much the actual season but the winter of life, the time approaching death, when presumably all memories come back in a flash; when reality, futility, purpose, memories all mix in a mocking parade, a never-ending dream.

I couldn't write it fast enough. It was my first large-scale orchestral work in several decades, but I seemed to take off where I had left before. There was a major change in approach. Thanks to the more open times, I now felt free to write as I felt. The Violin Concerto was played in New York, Miami, London, and Madrid within a short time, and published both by Peer Music and by Kalmus. It was recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

From the start I felt that the concert contained the roots of a purely symphonic piece, a short impulsive utterance based on the same idea. When Reference Recordings approached me with the plan to do a recording of my music, I went back to that initiative, and produced a Winter's Journey, the title I gave it originally. To give it Schubert's title was daring, but in time the piece became Winterriese, like some people's names become them. In fact the piece quotes almost every composer but Schubert. Towards the climax of the piece, the first quote is from Haydn("Winter" from The Seasons), which has a mysterious ambience. Then a heroic quote from Glazunov("Winter" from The Seasons) in counterpoint with Tchaikovsky's First Symphony, "Winter Dreams". Eventually, all three tunes appear together. If one listens carefully, the Dies Irae can also be heard towards the end, evolving naturally from the Haydn quote.

The piece is like a train ride, when one rides backwards and all images fly by slightly distorted, never to return. All the trees are covered with snow andt he lakes are frozen. Icicles cling to the train's windows. There is no sky; everything seems blinding white.

This piece was premiered in Belho Horizonte, Brazil, conducted by my composition teacher, Guido Santórsola. I didn’t hear that performance, but I was present when he conducted it in Montevideo a few weeks later. To this day I recall a local critic writing that he enjoyed this dark, brooding piece, but that it had to be impersonal, because it seemed inconceivable to him that a 14-year- old boy living in Montevideo could write such sad, dark music. I don’t recall if this critic had further opportunities to hear music that I wrote years later, so he could re-evaluate his first impression. The Elegy was my first orchestral essay, the second being an ambitious large-scale fantasy-overture, The Legend of Faust, premiered two years later by Eleazar de Carvalho and the SODRE National Orchestra in Montevideo, after the work won the local composition contest. The Elegy was a first in many ways for my beginnings as a composer.  It was my first published composition (by the Pan American Union in Washington DC, which in turn led to my life-long relationship with Peer Music publishers). It was my first work to be played abroad, with performances at Radio France in Paris, conducted by Juan Protasi, and a New York premiere at Carnegie Hall conducted by Leopold Stokowski.

Shortly after my arrival in the United States I started my studies with Aaron Copland, and it was he who suggested the title for this enigmatic work. I had mentioned to Copland the motive behind this work: “There is that crucial moment in life when you must decide whether to make a left or a right turn, and that choice can shape your destiny.” Copland replied: “It’s a fateful, psychological moment.” Scored for string orchestra, there is also a distant trumpet sound –just one note- always present, sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming.

During my first years with Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra in New York I was still writing music regularly, mostly encouraged by him and some of his best musicians. Stokowski had assembled an orchestra with some of the best free-lance virtuoso musicians in the New York area. Two of the star performers were Paul Price, who commissioned my Symphony for Percussion for his Manhattan Percussion Ensemble, and Davis Shulman, who commissioned a work for trombone and strings. The Variations on a theme from childhood can be performed on trombone or bassoon. It requires a virtuoso of great technique. The strings are also stretched to the limits, with extremely high writing.

At about the same time as writing the Variations on a theme from childhood and the Symphony for percussion, I received a commission from the American Accordionists Association to write a work for accordion and chamber orchestra. The instrument was entirely foreign to me, but Elsie Bennett, long-time president of the organization, and the brains behind their massive commissioning series, lent me an accordion, which I studied for weeks. It was a great challenge, because the chords provided by the buttons on the left side of the instrument were ready-set, giving the composer very little freedom for tonal imagination and variety. The instrument has since then been improved, and composers today do not have that problem. I gave the commissioning organization a bonus, a piece for solo accordion, which I wrote at the same time. Less than a week after I sent all the music to the AAA, after a rehearsal at Carnegie Hall, I went across the street from the stage door, on 56^th street, to Patelson’s Music House. There in the window, displayed for all to see, was a published copy of my new work for solo accordion! I was stunned! The ink was still wet in the manuscript. I went inside and bought a couple of copies. Wladimir Lakond at Peer Music called the accordion publisher, Pagani, who simply said they just didn’t get around to sending the contract. That publishing firm has since ceased to exist.

As life grew busier with conducting tours and the direction of international festivals, I saw my composing time brought to a halt. What broke the ice was a combination of circumstances. For my festival in Miami I had commissioned Elliott Carter to write his Fourth String Quartet which we premiered together with new works by many other composers. In 1987 I had ten prominent composers write new works especially for Lucas Drew, one of the foremost double-bass virtuosos in America. He insisted, however, that I add my own contribution to the list. (One of my last works -some 15 years before-had been "Nueve," a "ritual" concerto for double bass and orchestra, written for Gary Karr). My small contribution to Lucas Drew’s series of commissions was George & Muriel, for the unusual ensemble of double-bass, double-bass choir, and wordless off-stage chorus. I found that writing this short piece, after so many years, was as if I had never stopped composing, and it encouraged me to continue. At that time, my close friends George and Muriel Marek were about to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary and I could not think of a more personal gift for them than a new composition. The two ideas combined, and hence "George and Muriel." George Marek was a very special personality. After rising to the presidency of RCA Victor Records, he reigned over the most exciting times in recording history, signing up Toscanini, Stokowski, Reiner, Heifetz, Rubinstein, etc. Simultaneously, he was writing book after book about music and musicians, and literally helping to shape the musical life and taste of the 40's and 50's. By the time I met him, walking on the beach in Long Island, he had long retired from the record industry and was writing books full time. His marriage to Muriel was a very special one, and a most inspiring one to observe and admire. This work does not intend to be in any way a portrait. It is a work I may have written anyway. The music reflects what was on my mind at that moment, my most intimate thoughts, and as such it is my humble but deeply felt homage to George and Muriel Marek.

When I first met this wonderful, colorful couple, Dorothy and Carmine, I was in the midst of organizing Festival Miami. My composing time had been reduced to the wishful thinking of ideas, with no time left for writing them down. Every moment was taken up by organizational work for the new festival and guest conducting all over the world.   This little essay, written to celebrate the marriage of long-time Miami friends Dorothy Traficante and Carmine Vlachos, is meant as a wedding gift rather than a musical picture. I experimented with sonorities by paring strings with two wandering flutes, one of which appears from nowhere in the audience, almost as a dancer who is sometimes invited to join the stage proceedings. The flutist is sitting in the audience unbeknown to the public, and sometime towards the end of this puzzling (to me as well) piece, the flutist seems to get excited or inspired by the happenings onstage and starts playing. By the time the public becomes aware that an 'intruder' is daring to interrupt the concert, the flutist stands and starts to walk toward the stage, all the while playing faster and faster until reaching the usual soloist spot on the stage next to the conductor. After a brief climax, the flutist exits slowly to the back-stage area, and can still be heard repeating a haunting drone as the orchestra comments with background sounds.  Finally, the sound of the flute can still be heard, but magically, this time the sound comes from the back of the auditorium (or the balcony), as a 2nd flutist echoes the dying notes of the first flute. Do not try to read a meaning behind the notes here (nor in the other essay of this series). Each listener is welcome to make up his own story line, if it helps in enjoyment of the music.

The Gypsy Dance is a marvel of Bizet’s mature writing for the orchestra and the stage. It provided a perfect conclusion to this orchestral version. In the opera, it is placed at the opening of Act II and entitled Gypsy song. 

In the the 17th and 18th centuries, Africans sold as slaves took the candombe percussion patterns to Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and even to Cuba where it developed different rhythms. It became adopted especially in Uruguay, later modifying into milonga, itself a predecessor of the tango. Candombe, milonga and tango originated from the same African roots, but tango adopted its name and pulsation from Spain. Candombe still exists in Uruguay, especially during Carnival, when amazing drummers parade with their collection of drums played with bare hands. My own Candombe is just an homage to the genre, contrasting the broken rhythm with melodic turns. It was written especially for the recording with the Málaga Philharmonic Orchestra, including my three previous attempts at concert tangos.

This 12-tone work and uses the human voice, performed from afar, creating a disembodied effect, more sensuous than erotic. The five wind players are expected to be seated at substantial distance from each other, this separation being crucial to the atmosphere and the tonal quality of the work. The suggestive title was proposed by the musicians of the Australian Wind Virtuosi before recording the work.

Symphonic transcriptions by Leopold Stokowski
 

MODEST MUSSORGSKY (1839-1881)

A Night on the Bare Mountain (1939)

Entr'acte to Act IV of Khovanshchina (1922)

Symphonic Synthesis of Boris Godounov (1936)

Pictures at an Exhibition (1939)

PYOTR ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)

Solitude (1936)

Humoresque (1941)

LEOPOLD STOKOWSKI (1882-1977)

Traditional Slavic Christmas Music (1933)

There was no record player in my childhood home in Montevideo, nor a telephone, which was not unusual. You had to have strong political influence to get a phone in those days. We used the grocery store across the road for those rare occasions when we needed to phone anyone. The first time I became aware of classical music was on the radio at home, and it just grabbed me in such a way that my life, at the age of nine, took a new turn. Until then I thought I was going to be a writer, like my father, which made him furious. I bought my first violin with my own savings, and after my initial lesson I had to walk home for hours because of a bus strike. My parents were quite worried when I was so late arriving and the punishment was no violin lessons for a month, which seemed like a year. For my second lesson I took along my first opus, a solo violin sonata, which really upset my teacher. "You must learn music before you try to compose" was his admonition. Indeed, I had no idea about keys, tonality, harmony, form or anything else. It was pure intuition. That piece was recently recorded, and it is included on a CD of my later orchestral works played by the LPO, a March 2007 Naxos release. Recently I had a letter from the University of Texas, where a composition class actually did a structural and harmonic analysis of this piece, regarding its "unusual formal structure, tonal implications", etc. I was amazed! If they only knew how it was written...on the other hand, it might have prejudiced them.

Soon after, my parents bought me a piano, sent me to a fantastic violin teacher (a Russian emigrant who had been one of Leopold Auer's star pupils) and they even bought a state-of-the-art record player! In just a few months my LP collection became so large that it invaded every available room in our rather large house. From the start, I found the violin literature limiting, and decided that orchestral repertoire was the future for me. While composing furiously in every format, I organized my own orchestra of young musicians. At 11, I was by far the youngest, but somehow they accepted it. Baroque was my favourite, and our first concert that year consisted of the four orchestral suites by Bach. Today, it seems incredible to me. Not knowing anything about the protocol, I insisted everyone play from memory, which upset them! After several months of rehearsals, and much yelling from the conductor, they could actually play from memory. In pictures taken of the opening concert (attended by the President of Uruguay, Luis Battle) one can see no music stands, but it can also be seen that one of the cellists had surreptitiously pasted pages of music to the chair in front of him. The National Youth Orchestra of Uruguay toured with me for four years, in several countries in South America, and then I organized another group, the Telemann Chamber Orchestra, which specialized in Corelli, Handel, Bach and Telemann: the age of the players ranged between 9 and 16.

By the time I left to study in America, at the age of 16, I had one of the largest record collections in Montevideo, which I had to leave behind. Virgil Thomson arranged for me a special US State Department scholarship to study with Aaron Copland, and also at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. I found Philadelphia boring in those days, and I was anxious to study conducting, which the Curtis Institute did not provide at the time. I condensed the four Curtis years into two, and after graduation I went to study in Minneapolis with Antal Dorati. That was a wonderful experience. Since I was moving about, and the stipend from the US State Department was limited, my days as an avid record collector had to slow down for those years. Two subsequent Guggenheim Fellowships (as composer) helped, and I soon started a new record library. My own first personal experience with recordings was when the Louisville Orchestra called to say that my second symphony, Partita, would be included in its series of new-music recordings. I was in shock. The previous year, having just arrived in the US, Leopold Stokowski had called me at Curtis from Houston asking if he could premire my First Symphony, barely finished, to replace the premire of the still-unplayable Ives Fourth. While some years later we would actually premiere Ives's Fourth Symphony together in New York, and still later I would make my own recording of it (with the LPO), in Houston I had my first quick glance at the Ives score.

Those first years in America were incredible, with one big surprise after another. A couple of years later, when Stokowski cabled me to invite me to be the associate conductor of his new and last orchestra, at Carnegie Hall in New York, it was like a dream. But even then I never thought that one day I would be making my own recordings. That seemed impossible.

My first such experience also came as a surprise. By then I was the composer-in-residence of the Cleveland Orchestra, and one night George Szell called to ask if I would be willing to travel to London first thing the next morning to record with the LSO. Someone had just cancelled. I didnt know what I was to conduct until I arrived in London. Picking me up at Heathrow Airport was Stuart Knussen, then Chairman and first bass of the LSO, to take me directly to the recording session. He talked a lot about his son, then 17, Oliver Knussen, a life-time friend ever since. I told Stuart, "please do not tell the orchestra that I will be sight-reading: it would scare them". After a shower at the recording venue, I was able to glance at the scores for the first time: Samuel Barbers ballet Souvenirs and the first complete recording of Gian-Carlo Menotti's ballet Sebastian. I had the luxury of half an hour to study the scores.

There was a further surprise the next day, after the last session. The LSO management called the studio to ask if I would make my London dbut with them. For my dbut, at the Royal Festival Hall, I conducted Mozart's Symphony No. 25, the UK premire of Ponce's Guitar Concerto with John Williams, and Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony. Since that time, and some 250-plus recordings later, I feel that I am just getting started. There is still so much music to be recorded, not only works that have yet to be discovered, but new, fresh versions of oft-recorded music. The newly developing technology will help disseminate music far and beyond anything we ever dreamed possible.The fun is just starting.

These days we seem to take for granted the originality of Tchaikowsky's music, because we have become so accustomed to it. The scherzo of the Fourth Symphony must have been a real surprise the first few times it was heard: an all-pizzicato movement, and each orchestral group playing in different keys; a first movement twice as long as any of the following ones; an almost Wagnerian leitmotif.

The first movement presents formal problems for the conductor, because the "seams" show much more than in the equivalent movement in either the Fifth or Six symphonies. Tchaikowsky was keenly aware of this problem, and wrote extensively about it to his benefactress, Mme. Nadejda Von Meck, the dedicatee of the Fourth (her name does not appear on top of the score, but instead the words “To my best friend”). The other three movements have easily-discerned formal patterns, but it is the opening movement that reveals Tchaikowsky’s struggles in starting this masterpiece.

This symphony was conceived and written during one of the most turbulent periods in the composer’s life, immediately following his short-lived marriage in 1877 and all the resulting trauma. Most of the work was completed while he “recuperated” in Italy and Switzerland. His fighting spirit seems to proclaim itself in the opening statement by the horns (secretly supported by the bassoons). If this is Fate, then it must be a heroic one. However, as strong and willful as it seems, this fanfare is soon interrupted with a crash, a repeated crash at that, followed by the most sorrowful descending melody, telling a story of woe and resignation--submission to Fate. The long movement is interrupted twice again by the Fate motive of the beginning, as a herald to the development section, and again before the coda. Fate was a favorite element in Romantic art, literature and music. Tchaikowsky was fascinated by it. One of his early symphonic poems was entitled Fate, and the word appears often in his correspondence. In my view, the 2nd movement comes as a natural consequence of the turbulence of the 1st, and I perform it with the minimum of gap between the two. This makes the difference in mood even more striking.

The 2nd movement is all nostalgia and poetry. Tchaikowsky abandons the heavy brass, and gives us one of his very best symphonic movements. The melody is a miracle of simplicity. The basic rhythmic structure is a constantly repeated 8th note, without pause, challenging the breath control of every oboist who has ever played it. The oboist's dream is to be able to play the entire passage in one breath, which is nearly impossible. The melody reappears unchanged over and over, played by the violoncellos, the violins, the violas, followed by a middle section which seems almost happy, care-free. But this brief smile doesn't last long. Passionate pleadings from the strings transform the happy passing moment, and the original melody returns, muted and resigned. When finally the bassoon gives us a last chance to hear the haunting melody, it is just a memory which breaks up into fading fragments as it dissipates and disappears.

The invention of colors in the 3rd movement, Tchaikowsky's bravery in inserting something seemingly frivolos , provides the right sort of relief in midst of all the passionate music. The Finale thus makes more sense. Using a Russian folk tune as his repetitive theme, Tchaikowsky builds one of his most rousing symphonic movements. At the end, the Fate motive interrupts, giving the symphony the cyclical and extra-musical meaning that Tchaikowsky intended. The musical idea is so clear that no program notes are needed to clarify it. Nevertheless, the composer did write an extensive program note which was never intended for publication, but which he sent in a personal letter to Mme. von Meck after completing the symphony in March 1878. He wrote to Mme. von Meck almost every day while composing this symphony. It is not clear whether Tchaikowsky used the literary description as a "map" to write the symphony, or whether he actually wrote it as an after-thought to further pique the interest of his new benefactress. While these program notes may now be irrelevant, and the music certainly stands best by itself, it is interesting to read them.

The introduction represents the leading idea of the entire work. It’s Fate, the inevitable force that watches over our aspirations of happiness, a force which, like the sword of Damocles, hangs over our heads to embitter the soul. The sense of hopelessness and despair grows inevitably stronger. Why not escape from this reality and lose ourselves in dreams? That is happiness, only a dream! But Fate awakens us suddenly. Life is a sequence between grim truths and fleeting dreams of happiness. There is no hope. This is, approximately, the program behind the first movement.

The second movement explores another side of suffering, the melancholy that overcomes us when we sit alone in the evening exhausted from the day’s work, and the book we hoped to read just slips away from our hands. Our mind is filled with old memories that go by in a dreamy procession. Still, these youthful recollections are sweet. Young blood pulsed warm through our veins and life was beautiful. However, even then there were sorrowful moments of irreparable loss.

In the third movement we have capricious arabesques and intangible forms, visions that pass through the mind when one has drunk wine and starts to feel the intoxication. Memories bring back the picture of a drunken peasant and a street song. From the distance we hear a military band. Confused images appear in our minds as we fall asleep.

The last movement could be summarized: if we can’t find happiness within ourselves, look for it in others. See how other people can enjoy life and lose themselves in festivities. A rustic holiday is underway. But before we can start to lose ourselves in the image of other people’s pleasures, indefatigable Fate breaks in to remind us of its presence. No one pays attention to us. How happy and festive they are! Their feelings are so simple, so inconsequential. How can you say that the entire world is immersed in sorrow? Happiness, simple and unspoiled, obviously does exist. Rejoice in the happiness of others, which makes life possible. At the end of his letter to Mme. von Meck, Tchaikowsky quotes a line from Heine: “When the words end, music begins”.

Francesca da Rimini's story fascinated Tchaikowsky, as did many sections of Dante’s Divina Comedia, which he read constantly. Francesca’s ordeal is described in Canto V of Dante’s Inferno.

Francesca, daughter of an aristocratic Italian family, had been forced to marry an older and badly deformed gentleman of the court. His brother Paolo was much younger and seemingly handsome, and the ensuing consequences are related by Francesca, according to Dante:

One day we read about Lancelot, and how love constrained him. We were alone and without worries. Several times, while reading, our eyes met and the color of our faces changed at once. The book was a Galeotto. That day we read no further.

Discovered by the husband, who tried to kill Paolo, Francesca tries to separate the two men, but is struck by her husband’s dagger. Paolo was next. Dante finds Francesca in the Second Circle, in the midst of the indescribable terrors of the Inferno. Liszt included briefly the plight of Paolo and Francesca in his own Dante Symphony, while Tchaikowsky concentrates exclusively on their doomed love affair.

It was while Tchaikowsky was pondering the possibility of marriage, in 1876, that he started sketching his Fourth Symphony, Francesca da Rimini, and to finish the Swan Lake Ballet. For a while he alternated working on the new symphony and Francesca.

Originally, it had been conceived as an opera. The idea was quite advanced, and Zvantsev’s libretto approved by Tchaikowsky, but at some point the librettist began to insist that the music should be in Wagnerian style, which upset and angered the composer. While he could not consciously avoid Wagner’s influence, nor Liszt’s, the idea seemed preposterous. His 1876 letters from Bayreuth amply describe his anathema to Wagner’s concept, music, and the entire experience.

The drama inherent in the original operatic project shifted itself to this remarkable symphonic poem. The opening Andante Lugubre portrays Dante’s description of the gates of Hell: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. The Allegro that follows represents the Second Circle, and the everlasting torment of those who succumbed to carnal passion. The haunting middle section lends a melancholy patina to the doomed love of Paolo and Francesca, with one of the most beautiful Tchaikowskian melodies first intoned by a pleading solo clarinet, and then taken up, passionately, by the entire string orchestra. The love affair continues for almost ten years before being discovered by surprise by older brother Giovanni, who kills them. In his short narrative, Dante’s poem lets Francesca tell her story until the young couple’s first love encounter. In Tchaikowsky’s music, the love section is followed by the couple’s eternal doom, musically a recapitulation of the opening section of the work, providing a full circle.

Balakirev, only three years older than Tchaikovsky, took on the informal role of mentor and tormented his younger colleague for many years with constant advice, most of which Tchaikovsky followed, but not without resentment. “Having to spend the entire day with him, as he demands, is a real bore, although I admit it has been quite helpful” he wrote to brother Anatol. Noticing from the start that the younger composer had a special affinity for programmatic music, Balakirev suggested the subjects of two of Tchaikovsky’s most successful works: Romeo and Juliet and the Manfred Symphony. It was because of Balakirev’s influence that the composer completely revised the original version of Romeo and Juliet. Three years after writing his First Symphony, Tchaikovsky undertook the Romeo and Juliet project, calling it an “overture” from the very first sketches, rather than a tone poem, as such a piece would have been called in those days. Is it an overture? Not in the sense that opera composers use the term, since it is not a “prelude” to an opera or play. Tchaikovsky finally decided to call it “Overture-Fantasia after Shakespeare’s drama”. A year earlier he had successfully completed a “symphonic fantasia”, Fatum (which, unlike most of his early works, did not require further revisions later on), and two years earlier he wrote an Overture in F major and a Festival Overture (on the Danish National Anthem). The Storm (not to be confused with The Tempest of 1873), written at age 24, was described only as an “overture”, since it was meant for Ostrovski’s drama. Tchaikovsky felt comfortable with this concise form: the concert overture and/or fantasia. By the time he composed Fatum, Francesca da Rimini and The Tempest, he was freely calling them “fantasias”, a more appropriate description. 

Born on August 6, 1995 near Havana, Cuba, into a humble musical family (his sister was also a composer), Lecuona showed from his earliest years a great talent for music. He wrote the first of his 400 songs at 18, and during his prolific life he composed many film scores, orchestral works, chamber music, an opera and numerous works for the theater. He became an outstanding piano virtuoso. His main musical influence was his teacher, the Spanish composer and pianist Joaquin Nin, and subsequent studies brought him to New York. His numerous recordings for RCA in the twenties, and later in the mid-fifties, are gems of pianistic virtuosity and improvisational genius. He amalgamated Latin American popular rhythms with sprinkles of jazz and Spanish harmonies, creating a fusion that became unmistakable Lecuona. Ravel attended Lecuona's Paris recitals in 1928 and made very complimentary comments about his music. Shortly after, Lecuona, who easily crossed the line between popular and "serious" music, organized the now legendary popular band "The Lecuona Cuban Boys" which toured the world for many years. There are at least three distinctive periods in Lecuona's life and music. His early formative years in Havana, followed by the New York and Hollywood years, and then Spain, which held a strong attraction all his life.
Several of his songs have become permanent hits, arranged in every possible format and recorded by popular singers as well as opera stars. "Siboney" and "Malagueña" are just two of these immediately recognizable tunes. During his lifetime, many other songs were extremely popular. One of these is "La Comparsa" (the freely-translated English title was "Carnival Procession), which opens this recording. Lecuona named his ranch, near Havana, after this song, which always seemed close to his heart.

It had happened before. Bach was considered hopelessly old-fashioned by his own sons. He was still writing Baroque music into the start of the totally different Classical era. Eventually, as time has proven over and over, it didn’t matter. Today, we perform Rachmaninoff and Sibelius alongside Schoenberg and Stravinsky, and the date when the works were written is no longer relevant to their value.
© 2009 José Serebrier