2015 Program Notes, Book 3 |
39
OVERTURE TO
COLAS BREUGNON,
THE MASTER OF CLAMECY
, OP. 24 (1935-1937)
Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904-1987)
The Overture to
Colas Breugnon
calls for piccolo, three flutes,
three oboes, three clarinets, three bassoons, contrabassoon,
four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,
percussion, harp and strings. Performance time is 5 minutes
The 1937 three-act opera
Colas
Breugnon
, generally
acknowledged to be Soviet composer Dmitri Kabalevsky’s masterpiece, was based on
a novel by the distinguished French man of letters and music Romain Rolland. Rolland,
trained as a musicologist, wrote biographies of Beethoven, Handel, Michelangelo,
Tolstoy and Gandhi, won the Nobel Prize in 1915 for his ten-volume musical novel
Jean
-
Christophe
, andwas extremely active and influential as a teacher and administrator
in French musical life from the turn of the 20th century until his death in 1944. His novel
Colas Breugnon, The Master of Clamecy
(Rolland was born in the Burgundian village
ofClamecy) is the imaginary diary covering one year in the life of the title character,
a 16th-century master woodcarver. Colas’ chronicle recounts the people and events
that touch him during that year—a shrewish wife, an early and still-longed-for lover,
a granddaughter, a notary and a curate, as well as a grape harvest, a plague and a
peasant uprising—and his philosophy of humor and resilience in the face of difficulty
and crisis. The novel enjoyed amazing popularity in Russia, having run through 120
editions in that country even before Kabalevsky adopted it for his opera. The spirit of
wit,
bonhomie
and youthful vigor pervade the sparkling Overture to
Colas Breugnon
.
CAPRICCIO ITALIEN
, OP. 45 (1880)
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Capriccio Italien
is scored for piccolo, three flutes, two oboes,
English horn, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two
cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and
strings. Performance time is 16 minutes.
For nearly a decade after his disastrous marriage in 1877,
Tchaikovsky was filled with self-recrimination and doubts about
his ability to compose anything more. He managed to finish the Violin Concerto during
the spring of 1878, but then had to wait more than three years for someone to perform
it, and did not undertake another large composition until the
Manfred Symphony
of
1885. His frustration was only increased when he stayed at home in Moscow, so he
traveled frequently and far during those years for diversion. In November 1879 he set
off for Rome via a circuitous route that took him and his brother Modeste through
Berlin and Paris, finally arriving in the Eternal City inmid-December. Though Tchaikovsky
was never long parted from his residual melancholy, his spirits were temporarily
brightened by some of the local tunes he heard in Rome, and he decided to write an
orchestral piece incorporating several of them.
The
Capriccio Italien
opens with the trumpet fanfare of the Royal Cuirassiers, which
Tchaikovsky heard from his hotel every morning, and gives way to a dolorous melody
intoned above an insistent accompanimental motive. There follows a swinging tune
given first by the oboes in sweet parallel intervals and later by the full orchestra. A brisk
folk dance comes next, then a reprise of the dolorous melody and finally a whirling
tarantella
, perhaps inspired by the finale of Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony. This
“bundle of Italian folk tunes,” as Edwin Evans called the
Capriccio Italien
, ends with
one of the most rousing displays of orchestral sonority in all of Romantic music.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
