by David M. Zajic
Indigo Street
Thomas Schnauber (b. 1969)
Composed: 1997-1998
Premiered: February 3, 1998
Thomas Schnauber of Northfield, Minnesota is the winner of the Columbia Orchestra’s first American Composer Competition. The competition received 157 applications and was judged by conductor Charles Ellis and composers Bruno Amato and Lawrence Moss.
Schnauber grew up in both southern California and eastern Europe and holds dual German and American citizenships. He entered the University of Southern California as a double major in French horn performance and composition, but dropped the horn major during his sophomore year preferring the luxury of thinking through each musical decision over the quick reaction and facile intuition required of performers. After college, Schauber studied film scoring in Los Angeles and ethno-musicology in Berlin. Currently Schnauber is working on doctorates in composition and music theory at the University of Michigan, and playing French horn in the Cannon Valley Regional Orchestra, a community orchestra.
Indigo Street is based on a book by Swiss travel writer Nicolas Bouvier (1929-1998). Schnauber first met Bouvier in 1987 when the writer spent a semester at the University of Southern California Institute for Austrian, German and Swiss Studies. Bouvier introduced Schnauber to non-Western music and gave him a copy of The Scorpion Fish. The book is based on Bouvier’s experiences while stranded in Sri Lanka for seven months in 1955.
Indigo Street refers to the street where Bouvier lived, from which he observed the encroachment of insects, plants and the sea against abandoned Dutch buildings. An offstage brass chorale based on the Dutch National Anthem opens the work. The chorale is blended with an actual Sri Lankan Buddhist chant in the woodwinds to represent the fading Western influence over the island, recently independent after centuries of Portuguese, Dutch and British rule. Insects were Bouvier’s constant companions. Scurrying triplets introduce an epic battle between termites and ants. An exotic violin melody with trills and a snickering trumpet march clash to depict the fighting. One aspect of Bouvier’s writing style is the blending of supernatural elements with ordinary life. He describes a levitating priest who helps him with his writing. Later he discovers the priest had been dead for several years. A Sri Lankan Christian hymn in low brass and the chant melody combine to represent the mystic wisdom of the floating padre.
Indigo Street was first performed by the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra conducted by Chris Younghoon Kim. Schnauber immediately sent a recording and score to Bouvier, but sadly it arrived the day after Bouvier had died of cancer.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, op. 18
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Composed: 1900-1901
Premiered: October 27, 1901
On March 15, 1897 in St. Petersburg, Alexander Glazunov conducted the first performance of a symphony composed in 1895 by the young Moscow Conservatory graduate, Sergei Rachmaninoff. In St. Petersburg Philharmonic Hall a spiral iron staircase behind some curtains to the left of the stage leads out to the street. From this staircase Rachmaninoff listened, appalled, as Glazunov butchered the symphony so badly that the composer could not recognize his work amidst the discord. Neither the audience nor the critics could distinguish the fine symphony from the awful performance. Composer and critic César Cui wrote, “If there were a conservatory in Hell, if one of its gifted students were given the assignment of writing a program symphony on the Seven Plagues of Egypt, if he were to write a symphony just like Mr. Rachmaninoff’s, he would have carried out his task brilliantly and given acute delight to the inhabitants of Hell.” Rachmaninoff was devastated. He withdrew the symphony and was unable to compose any new music, even to fulfill existing obligations. Instead he kept busy as a conductor at the Moscow Private Russian Opera Company and in April 1899 conducted concerts of his earlier works in London.
One of Rachmaninoff’s unfulfilled obligations was a new piano concerto. The London Philharmonic Society had expected one in 1899, and the composer promised one for the following season. His friends and family suggested many remedies for his depression and writer’s block. In January 1900 Rachmaninoff began to see a hypnotist and amateur violist, Dr. Nikolai Dahl. Dr. Dahl’s treatment combined hypnotic suggestion (“You will begin your concerto... you will work with great ease... the concerto will be excellent”) with supportive and sophisticated musical discussions. Rachmaninoff resumed work on the second piano concerto that summer. The second and third movements were completed in the fall and performed on December 2, 1900 with Rachmaninoff’s cousin Alexander Ziloti conducting and the composer as soloist. Even though Rachmaninoff was nervous, had a cold, and had treated both conditions with large quantities of wine, this time the new work was a great success. Thus emboldened, Rachmaninoff completed the first movement by May 1901, and the entire work was premiered on October 27, 1901 at a Moscow Philharmonic Society concert, again with Ziloti and Rachmaninoff. The score is dedicated to Nikolai Dahl.
Symphony No. 5
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Composed: 1937
Premiered: November 21, 1937
Shostakovich wrote his Fifth Symphony during a very dangerous time in the Soviet Union. On December 1, 1934 Stalin secretly arranged the assassination of Sergei Kirov, a high ranking Communist official. Over the next several years Stalin had millions killed and exiled for the crime in what is now called the Great Terror. Merely having a conversation with an accused person was enough to result in secret arrest, trial and execution. Creative artists were required to produce Soviet Realism in their work. Soviet Realist art was designed to instill the values needed to bring about the Golden Age of Communism. Present reality was to be portrayed as a stage in the progression towards Communism, viewed in retrospect from a perfect Communist future. Thus Soviet Realism was a moving target because the Soviet government regularly redefined its official positions. In practice Soviet Realism was whatever served the momentary propaganda needs of the government. In contrast Soviet artists were to avoid Formalism, meaninglessly defined as “putting to the forefront the outer side of a question, the detachment of form from content.” In practice Formalism was anything Stalin didn’t like.
By 1935 Shostakovich was recognized as the foremost Soviet composer. His opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District enjoyed lengthy runs in Leningrad and Moscow as well as popular and critical acclaim. His artistic plans were regularly reported in the press, and he was in demand for musical committees, competition juries and organizational posts. On January 26, 1936 Stalin attended a performance of Lady Macbeth. Two days later an anonymous editorial appeared in Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, that savaged the opera as a “cacophonous and pornographic insult to the Soviet People,” and denounced the Formalist music critics who had praised it. Two weeks later Shostakovich’s ballet The Limpid Stream, a happy depiction of life on a collective farm, received the same treatment. Overnight Shostakovich became an unperson, meaning that he was probably marked for death, and therefore dangerous to associate with.
It is a mystery why Stalin did not make Shostakovich disappear as he did to so many millions during the Great Terror. Perhaps he appreciated Shostakovich’s film scores, recognizing cinema as an excellent medium of propaganda. Yet Shostakovich did survive, and in December 1936 began rehearsals in Leningrad for his Fourth Symphony, which had been completed before the appearance of the Pravda editorial. The symphony was extremely long, fragmented and difficult, and would surely have been perceived as the living essence of Formalism. The conductor, Fritz Stiedry, and the orchestra rehearsed the symphony poorly, perhaps trying to avoid association with such dangerous music. Ultimately Shostakovich decided to withdraw the symphony.
The Fifth Symphony was composed in the spring and summer of 1937. As an attempt to demonstrate the composer’s rehabilitation, it was a risky prospect because this “lengthy spiritual battle, crowned by victory” contains much that is tragic and depressing. The premiere, in Leningrad conducted by Yevgeni Mravinsky, was a huge popular success. The ovation lasted longer than the music. The symphony received official sanction in January 1938 when it was suggested to Shostakovich that “A Soviet Artist’s Practical Creative Reply to Just Criticism” would be an appropriate subtitle, a suggestion accepted by the composer “with gratitude.”
The official Soviet interpretation of the Fifth Symphony was that it depicted the progress of an intellectual from the tragic isolation of individualism to triumphant solidarity with the people. The symphony can also be seen as a dissident work in disguise, depicting the suffering caused by Stalin, the brutality of his secret police and the dehumanizing influence of the Great Terror. The exuberant march in the finale is particularly ambiguous. It might be a desperate effort by Shostakovich to preserve his life by glorifying Communism, or, as Shostakovich later implied, a sarcastic image of forced rejoicing. We as performers and listeners should feel fortunate that we are free to openly entertain and discuss both possibilities.
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