by Bill Scanlan Murphy
RICHARD DANIELPOUR (born 1956)
VOX POPULI
Composed: 1998
First performed: 1998 in Evansville, Indiana
If On the Waterfront had been filmed in the age of the cellular phone, its music would have sounded much like this exciting overture, commissioned by Alfred Savia and the Evansville Philharmonic. Just as Bernstein, and before him Gershwin, transformed American popular music into the authentic language of a troubled world, in this piece Richard Danielpour, one of America’s foremost living composers, takes brassy jazz-derived figures (the Vox Populi – “the people’s voice”- of the title) and throws them around a disturbed and disturbing world that is very recognizably our own.
The opening chords, clinging to life over a threatening drumbeat, give way to a lively main section that some have likened to a very angry big band; a quiet, reflective section, highlighted by a solo violin, soon gives up in the face of the return of the opening drumbeat. Despite the very novel musical language, the A-B-A form of the traditional concert overture can still be discerned.
CHRISTOPHER THEOFANIDIS (born 1967)
RAINBOW BODY
Composed: 2002
First performed: 2002 in Houston, Texas
It can’t have been easy to please a panel of judges ranging from legendary pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy to Deep Purple’s Jon Lord by way of moviedom’s Jerry Goldsmith! However, Texas-born Christopher Theofanidis achieved this feat in October 2003 when Rainbow Body won the Masterprize Competition in London, earning its composer a prize of £25,000 (about $42,000). However, his reputation had long been secure before then; Theofanidis, now a member of the faculties of Baltimore’s Peabody Institute and the Juilliard Institute of New York, is one of the most successful composers of his generation.
Rainbow Body was commissioned by Meet The Composer for the Houston Symphony and Robert Spano. In this piece, the composer confronts and elaborates the ethereal musical world of Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), whose chants and sequences are one of the pinnacles of early music. In particular, Rainbow Body muses upon the melody of Hildegard’s responsory “Ave Maria, O auctrix vitae” (Hail Mary, source of life):
Hail, Mary, author of life!
You who rebuilt salvation,
You who destroyed death,
And trampled the serpent
To whom Eve arose
With outstretched throat, blown up in her pride.
Theofanidis’ music evokes both the sanctity of Mary and, in the work’s huge brass-dominated climax, her triumph over the serpent. The composer himself describes Hildegard and his own piece thus:
“Hildegard's melodies have very memorable contours which set them apart from other chants of the period. They are wonderfully sensual and set up a very intimate communication with the divine.
“Rainbow Body begins in an understated, mysterious manner, calling attention to some of the key intervals and motives of [Ave Maria, O auctrix vitae]. When the primary melody enters for the first time about a minute into the work, I present it very directly in the strings without accompaniment. In the orchestration, I try to capture a halo around this melody, creating a wet acoustic by emphasizing the lingering reverberations one might hear in an old cathedral.
“Although the piece is built essentially around fragments of the melody, I also return to the tune in its entirety several times throughout the work, as a kind of plateau of stability and peace within an otherwise turbulent environment. Rainbow Body has a very different sensibility from the Hildegard chant, with a structure that is dramatic and developmental, but I hope that it conveys at least a little of my love for the beauty and grace of her work.”
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897)
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 IN B-FLAT MAJOR, Op. 83
Composed: 1878–1881
First performed: November 9, 1881
Written a full 22 years after his first piano concerto, Brahms’ Concerto No. 2 is a far more serene work than its storm-tossed, Clara Schumann-obsessed, minor-key predecessor. In July 1881, Brahms sent a package to his friend, the pianist and surgeon Theodore Billroth, with the laconic note “I am sending you some little piano pieces.” The “little pieces” were, in fact, a four-movement concerto taking nearly an hour to play. To another friend, Elizabeth von Herzogenberg, he wrote: “I have written a tiny little piano concerto with a little wisp of a scherzo. It is in B-flat.” Some “wisp”!
In 1881, the Brahms’ Second was by far the longest piano concerto ever written. First performed in Budapest with the composer as soloist, the piece was an overnight success, with performances around the world within a year. For Brahms, this was a poignant contrast with the miserable failure that had befallen the first concerto. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this piece made Brahms the household name that he remains to this day.
The concerto begins quietly, with a gentle, reflective melody by solo horn (originally, strangely, the third horn), with interjections from the piano and woodwinds. A short cadenza for the piano leads to the main Allegro section, in which the horn melody receives the full Beethovenian sonata treatment. Brahms appears to have based the movement’s structure on the first movement of Beethoven’s Emperor concerto, but the scale is far larger and the melodic development more searching.
The second movement is Brahms’ “wisp of a scherzo,” which turns out to be—if not a nightmare—at least a restless night, beginning in D minor (a key unrelated to the work’s overall B-flat major) with a decidedly un-wispy, angry outpouring from the piano. The music moves to D major for a while, but the overall mood remains far from the “joke” that is the literal meaning of “scherzo”. Like the similarly haunted “Scherzo” of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, this movement, as Brahms well knew in his “wisp” remarks, is arguably the dark heart of this otherwise apparently untroubled work—despite, paradoxically, being based on material that had originally been intended for the Violin Concerto. The usual A-B-A structure is just recognizable under a great deal of close-detail thematic development.
As the slow movement begins, a solo cello intones another reflective melody over a string accompaniment before the piano takes it up for an untroubled cadenza. Brahms would later use the cello’s melody in his song Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer (My sleep grows ever more peaceful); it is not unreasonable to deduce that this is exactly what he means here, though the bitter emotional ironies of Brahms’ life are never entirely absent. A more agitated middle section points to less settled thoughts.
To call the last movement (Allegretto grazioso) a rondo is both literally true and massively misleading. What was once a light musical kaleidoscope in the hands of Mozart is now a huge musical edifice that just happens to have a recurring rondo theme (easily spotted by its dotted rhythm, first announced by the piano). Although the pianist has hardly had an easy evening thus far, he or she is now confronted with some of the most difficult music Brahms (himself a considerable virtuoso) ever wrote. But, for all its surging complexity, the music manages to remain “grazioso” throughout.
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