Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, Program Notes

Bolcom, Violin Concerto
Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 2

Concerto in D for Violin and Orchestra (1984)
William Bolcom
Born May 26, 1938 in Seattle, Washington

Quasi una fantasia; Tempo giusto; Allegro elegiaco
Adagio non troppo ma sostenuto
Rondo-Finale

Among music critics the word "eclectic" was once pronounced with an ironically raised eyebrow, slightly wrinkled nose and disapproving droop of the mouth, as if describing a person who made love with his socks on. Now, in the Post-everything Age, eclecticism is in, and one of its most accomplished and prolific proponents is composer William Bolcom, who critic Robert Carl describes as "a spirit hungry to embrace and reconcile elements of the musical culture from both the popular and 'serious' fields."

Bolcom was born in Seattle, studied piano and composition at the University of Washington (matriculating at the precocious age of 11) and Mills College, then at the Paris Conservatoire with Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen. He completed his doctorate in composition at Stanford University in 1964. He has been a member of the composition faculty of the University of Michigan since 1973, carrying on the great tradition of excellence begun there by Ross Lee Finney. He has been chairman of the Composition Department since 1998. He won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for his 12 New Etudes for Piano, has received numerous awards and commissions from musical ensembles and foundations around the world, and has fashioned a rewarding second career as accompanist for his wife, Joan Morris, on recitals and recordings of American popular songs. He composed the score for John Turturro's movie Illuminata in 1999. His two operas, A View from the Bridge (1999) and A Wedding (2004) were both commissioned and premiered by the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

The Violin Concerto in D was written for Romanian-born violinist Sergiu Luca, who gave the premiere performance with the Saarbrucken Radio Orchestra under the direction of Dennis Russell Davies on June 3, 1984. Like much of Bolcom's music, it is a rich blend of the wide variety of styles and genres that he has absorbed into his unique compositional voice. For the lover of dazzling virtuoso fireworks, there's plenty of bravura writing for the solo violin, especially in the rhapsodic outer movements. Ragtime, soft-shoe, Joe Venuti-style jazz, waltz rhythms and dryly neoclassical irony—they're all there. The sombre middle movement, a memorial to Bolcom's close friend, pianist Paul Jacobs, who died in 1982, features an eerily mournful dialogue between the solo violin and an offstage trumpet.

Symphony No. 2 in E Minor, op. 27 (1907)
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Born April 1, 1873 in Onega, Novgorod (Russia)
Died March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, California

Largo; Allegro moderato
Allegro molto
Adagio
Allegro vivace

It was bad. It was worse than bad, it was—well, the review by César Cui said it all: "If there were a conservatory in Hell and the assignment was to compose a symphony on 'The Seven Plagues of Egypt,' Mr. Rachmaninoff would have fulfilled the task brilliantly." The 1897 premiere of the twenty-two-year-old composer's First Symphony in St. Petersburg was an unmitigated disaster. What he had hoped would be acclaimed as a worthy successor to Tchaikovsky's symphonies had been sabotaged by an inept performance under the erratic baton of Aleksander Glazunov, who reportedly staggered on stage drunk. The reaction of the Russian musical elite was uniformly brutal. Rachmaninoff later wrote: "There are serious illnesses and deadly blows from fate which entirely change a man's character. This was the effect of my own symphony on myself. When the indescribable torture of the performance at last came to an end, I was a different man." Rachmaninoff fled the hall in despair, hid the score of the symphony deep in the darkest recesses of his closet and went into a blue funk that lasted for three years, during which he wrote not a single note.

Rachmaninoff's friends vainly tried various stratagems to lift his spirits and pull him out of his state of total apathy. Finally, in desperation, they persuaded him to see Nikolay Dahl, a neurologist and specialist in the infant art of hypnotherapy whose successful treatment of various nervous maladies was creating quite a stir in Moscow. Beginning in January of 1900, Rachmaninoff visited the doctor's apartment daily for sessions of hypnotic therapy. These sessions went on for four months, and, by the time spring arrived, the icy crust that covered Rachmaninoff's creative spirit had cracked and melted and musical ideas were flowing again. After the resounding success of his Second Piano Concerto in 1901, Rachmaninoff's career finally took off like a rocket. In fact, the demand for his services as a conductor and concert pianist eventually became so unremitting that he found little time for composing. Rachmaninoff decided to move with his family to Dresden in the fall of 1906, far away from the distractions of the hectic social and musical scene in Moscow. "I have escaped from my friends," he said with a broad smile to a Russian acquaintance who chanced to run into him on a Dresden avenue. "Please don't give me away!"

The tranquillity of his anonymous existence in Saxony gave him time to compose, and he finished the first draft of his Second Symphony on New Year's Day of 1907. After several months working on the orchestration, the work was ready for its 1908 premiere, but Rachmaninoff was still uncertain of his abilities as a symphonist. He wrote to a friend: "When I get it written… I give my solemn word—no more symphonies. Curse them! I don't know how to write them, but mainly I don't want to." Of one thing he was absolutely certain: no tipsy maestro was going to sabotage the introduction of the new work. He would conduct it himself. He led the first performance of the symphony in St. Petersburg and repeated it a week later in Moscow, to enthusiastic public acclaim. The stigma of his First Symphony's failure was erased and the new score soon became one of his most popular works.

The Second Symphony is broad in scale and generous in its expansive treatment of melodic ideas—a characteristic that has led many conductors to do some snipping and tucking here and there to keep things moving along. Fortunately, the habit of performing often-brutal surgery on the work (which is only about an hour long uncut) has become passé and it is usually performed intact today. The first movement begins with a darkly brooding Largo introduction whose twisting opening phrase provides the melodic motive on which the ensuing Allegro moderato is built. This is a warmly romantic movement graced by the lushly orchestrated lyric passages and impassioned dramatic climaxes that we have come to expect from Rachmaninoff. The second movement is an athletic scherzo with a boldly energetic opening theme in the horns and a long, singing second theme presented by the violins. The middle section is an energetic fugue that starts with a startling 'bang' from the full orchestra. The brilliant opening section returns, but the music gradually slows and becomes darker, and Rachmaninoff quotes (as he was fond of doing) the somber Dies Irae melody of the Requiem Mass before letting the movement fade away to silence. The slow movement is one of Rachmaninoff's most heartfelt and appealing lyrical statements. He had a genius for spinning long-breathed, rapturous melodies into soaring climaxes, and it is nowhere better displayed. The twisting opening motive from the first movement is subtly worked into the fabric of the music, serving mainly as an accompanying figure beneath and around the main themes before emerging into the forefront near the end. The grandiose Finale is a musical CinemaScope spectacular that features a rumbustious march in which a cast of thousands seems to stride by the camera, and one of Rachmaninoff's soaring "big tunes" that will certainly return at the end for the Big Finish. Meanwhile, reminiscences from the earlier movements interject themselves, and the orchestra eventually gathers all its sonic and rhythmic energy for the final push to the exuberant peroration.