Tchaikovsky and Franck



Gioacchino Rossini
1792-1868

Gioacchino Rossini
Overture to Semiramide

One of the most prolific opera composers of all time, Gioacchino Rossini wrote nearly 40 operas by the time he was 37 – then quit. For the rest of his long life he composed only sporadically and, except for church music, mostly small works he tossed off for the entertainment of his friends. He published over 150 musical miniatures in a collection that he called Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of old age).

Semiramide was one of Rossini’s ventures into serious opera. Written on commission for Venice’s famed Teatro la Fenice, it was the last opera he wrote for the Italian stage. Based on Voltaire’s play, it is the story of the Babylonian queen Semiramide (Semiramis) who connives with her lover to kill her husband but in turn falls in love with the young general Arsace who, unknown to Semiramide or himself, is actually her son Prince Nina. It ends with Arsace’s killing of the guilty queen, condemning her lover to death and ascending the throne.

In his contract, Rossini was given 40 days to write the opera, but it took him only 33. The overture took him just a few hours, which is perhaps why it sounds so spontaneous and fresh. It is one of the few overtures Rossini wrote that actually “belongs” to the opera and was not borrowed from some other one: in the long and slow introduction, four French horns intone a hymn-like passage from Act I,

while the main body of the Overture begins with a theme from the introduction to the opera’s final scene.

Early in his career, Rossini had developed a template for overtures. All he had to do was come up with a half dozen tunes; stringing them together was virtually automatic. In addition to another major tune from the Overture,

the composer finished it off with what later became known as “The Rossini Rocket,” in which a phrase is repeated several times, each time louder than the last and involving an increasing number of instruments.

(Actually, Rossini did not invent the “rocket;” it was a device used in the pre-Classical symphonies of the famous Mannheim court orchestra during the last quarter of the eighteenth century.)



Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1840-1893

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto No. 1 in b-flat Minor, Op. 23

It is ironic that Tchaikovsky’s two most popular works, this Concerto and the Violin Concerto were at first rejected by the greatest virtuosi of his country as unplayable fiascos.

“...Utterly worthless, absolutely unplayable. Certain passages are so commonplace and awkward they could not be improved, and the piece as a whole was bad, trivial, vulgar.” This was the verdict of Nikolay Rubinstein, first director of the Moscow Conservatory and one of Tchaikovsky’s mentors, on hearing the composer play his new composition, the Piano Concerto in b-flat minor, on Christmas Eve, 1874. The tirade raised Tchaikovsky’s hackles, and he refused to change a single note (although in later editions he made some minor modifications). But with Rubinstein’s negative opinion, he had little chance of mounting a respectable performance – or unbiased reception – in Russia. And so, what has come to the most popular piano concerto by Russia’s most popular composer was premiered in Boston on October 25 1875, with a pick-up orchestra and famed pianist Hans von Bülow, where it was a smashing success.

It is worth remembering that the First Piano Concerto came relatively early in Tchaikovsky's career. Rubenstein, the founder of the Moscow Conservatory, had served both as a mentor to the young composer, as well as his first employer. Moreover, Tchaikovsky's well-known bouts of depression and sense of alienation because of his homosexuality exacerbated his self-doubts about the quality of his music. It was a personal triumph, therefore, that he managed to withstand Rubinstein's vicious assault.

Although the majestic introduction has become so well known as to be recognizable even to classical music illiterates, it was revolutionary for its time. It remains unlike any standard introduction in the orchestral repertory, replete with a fully developed theme and a cadenza. The four horns in unison play a four-note phrase that prefigures the opening theme, followed by the rest of the orchestra playing a series of chords which shift the key from b-flat minor to the relative major key, D-flat.

The piano enters with crashing chords that span more than six octaves and serve as the accompaniment of the introductory theme on the strings.

Introduced by a soft chordal transition, the exposition begins with a rhythmic figure that shifts the accent as the theme proper commences.

The melody is one Tchaikovsky allegedly heard a blind beggar sing at a country fair, but this theme too is hardly touched on again. As if the composer were searching for just the right melody to express his emotions, a sighing second theme in the winds

and yet a third is added by the strings.

The development concerns itself largely with these two final themes, including wide mood swings that show off the pianist’s technical virtuosity. At one point Tchaikovsky combines the melody of the second theme in the horns with rhythm of principal theme in the upper winds.

The long cadenza is unusually restrained, a fine vehicle for highlighting the pianist’s control of pianissimo.

The second movement opens with a gentle theme on the flute, accompanied by muted strings;

the theme is then taken up by the piano with just a single note change. Instead of maintaining the tempo for the middle section of the slow movement, Tchaikovsky quixotically launches into a tonally ambiguous (Lisztian, in fact) cadenza of pianistic pyrotechnics

as a lead-in to a melody based on a popular cabaret song of the time.

In the rondo finale Tchaikovsky again uses a folk tune in triple meter, but with the accent always on the second beat.

The violins introduce a second, broad lyrical theme for contrast, echoed in the piano.

As momentum towards the climax builds, the violins sneak in a hint of the main theme of the first movement.

In place of a formal solo cadenza, an excited coda with lavish pianistic flourishes concludes the Concerto.

It is probably fair to ask why this Concerto is such a popular competition piece. In keeping with the composer’s tumultuous emotional life, it requires of the performer a mastery of just about every artistic and technical resource: rapid passages in octaves, abrupt changes in mood, delicate passages of arpeggiated filigree, giant buildups of harmonic and emotional tension, whispered legato pianissimos. Is it any wonder Rubinstein overreacted?



César Franck
1822-1890

César Franck
Symphony in D Minor

A Belgian by birth who lived and taught most of his life in France, César Franck was one of the most influential music teachers of the period and a famous organist. Although he enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire at age 15, his maturation as a composer came late in life – he composed his most lasting compositions while in his 50s and 60s. Franck was an easy-going, unassuming person, who never knew how to promote his works. As a result, much of his music was either ignored during his lifetime or derided by the doctrinaire academicians. He achieved worldwide recognition only in the last century. But his students adored him, calling him “Pater seraphicus,” and his influence on the future of French music was enormous. He was appointed in 1871 as professor of organ at the Conservatoire, but his classes evolved into de facto composition classes for the succeeding generation of major French composers, including Vincent d’Indy, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson and Paul Dukas.

The Symphony in d minor was a late work. Franck was reluctant to try his hand at a symphony and, ironically, it was the success of his pupil Vincent d’Indy’s Symphony on a French Mountain Air in 1887 that encouraged him to attempt one as well. He finished it in 1888 and it premiered in the following year. The Symphony was a dismal failure. Critics, music professors and in particular composer Charles Gounod lambasted it as: “...the affirmation of impotence carried to the point of dogma.” A pedantic teacher at the conservatory decided that the work could not be called a symphony at all because of the English horn solo in the second movement. “Who ever heard of writing for an English horn in a symphony?” he asserted (wrongly, by the way; Haydn used two in his Symphony No.22 and Hector Berlioz, another Frenchman no less, opens the slow movement of the Symphonie fantastique with one of the most famous English horn solos in the repertory (FYI, Dvorák composed the Symphony No. 9 in 1893, after Franck’s.)

The Symphony digresses from the classical form in other ways as well. It has only three movements and its structure is cyclical – all the themes recur towards the end, a method widely used by Franz Liszt, one of Franck’s models. The opening three-note phrase of the slow introduction

is a variant of the famous opening of the fourth movement of Beethoven’s last quartet (Op.135) where he wrote Muss es sein? (Must it be?) above the notes.

Liszt had also used the phrase in the opening of the tone poem Les Preludes.

Franck opens the Symphony with slow, foreboding statements of the motive, later expanding it into a full-fledged theme in an aggressive, even threatening transformation in the Allegro.

The movement vacillates between the two tempi. There are only two themes in this movement, the second a contrasting, but equally strong-willed, lyrical melody.

The movement is something of a pitched battle between the two themes; the fact that they resemble each other in rhythm and in their constituent motives makes it easier to make them compete head to head. In the end, the first one wins out, although resolving in D major.

The second movement opens with a haunting theme on the harp and pizzicato strings playing pianissimo.

The “notorious” English horn takes up the melody,

which is completed by the horn. Franck uses the theme as a refrain between a series of new melodies,

which he combines melodically

and contrapuntally into the original theme at the end of the movement.

The final movement opens with a melody in D major

and a contrasting secondary one.

Soon, however, the “English horn” theme from the previous movement recurs. This is no example of cyclical tokenism. Rather, Franck incorporates all three themes together, contrasting them in the kind of dappled effect of sunlight and shade one gets on a partly cloudy day. The climax of the movement occurs with the full orchestra playing the “English horn theme” against a counterpoint of violins.

Franck then brings in a repeat of the second theme from the first movement.

The Symphony concludes with a restatement of the opening three-note motive from the first movement sets up the triumphant conclusion.