by Bill Scanlan Murphy
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1792)
OVERTURE, LE NOZZE DI FIGARO (THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO)
Composed: 1785
First performed: May 1, 1785, at the Burgtheater in Vienna
Perhaps surprisingly, this much-loved Mozart opera has a genuine, if tenuous, American connection. Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist of Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), is buried in-of all places-Queens; he died in 1838 at the age of ninety, still Professor of Italian at Columbia University.
Unlike many opera overtures of the period, which acted as a preview of the musical delights to come, the overture to Figaro uses no melodies from the opera, and there is even a suspicion that it might have been pulled from a drawer as Mozart’s deadline for the premiere loomed. Be that as it may, it would be hard to imagine a more apt evocation of the “mad day” that the opera is about to portray-when the servant Figaro outwits and humiliates the lascivious Count Almaviva. It is all bustle and light, with no glimpse of the tragedy of the betrayed Countess (a key feature of the opera) or, come to that, the snarling political edge of Beumarchais’ original play, wholly smoothed out and defanged by da Ponte for Mozart’s conservative aristocratic audience.
FELIX MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY (1809–1847)
VIOLIN CONCERTO IN E MINOR, Op. 64
Composed: 1844
First performed: March 13, 1845, in Leipzig
Like Mozart’s, Felix Mendelssohn’s life was tragically short; he lived barely three years longer than Mozart, though he died in considerably more material comfort. Mendelssohn’s musical career is a strange tale of a talent that sometimes seems to have matured backwards, beginning with startling works of original genius written while he was little more than a child (such as the Midsummer Night’s Dream music and the sublime Octet, both written well before the age of 20) and ending with a series of grimly derivative oratorios that made his reputation in his own time but have overshadowed it ever since. Though written only three years before his death, the Violin Concerto has deep roots in his youth and is arguably his greatest work,
In 1825, the 16-year-old Mendelssohn met a fellow prodigy, the 15-year-old violinist Ferdinand David; the two became firm friends. When Mendelssohn was appointed conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1836, David was his obvious choice as concertmaster; Mendelssohn proposed celebrating their double appointment with a violin concerto. A letter from Mendelssohn to David in 1838 includes the soaring opening melody of the first movement (he said the melody “gave [him] no peace”), but various mishaps and commitments prevented the work being completed until 1844. David offered help and advice on the very difficult violin part throughout; the first movement’s cadenza is, in fact, entirely by him.
Following the path blazed by Beethoven in his Fifth Symphony (which welded together its last two movements into a continuous whole), Mendelssohn links the movements of his concerto so that it is more or less a single movement, with sections corresponding to the traditional three movements.
Where other composers would have begun with an extended orchestral introduction, Mendelssohn throws the soloist into relief within a few measures of the opening, musing on the melody that had so nagged him in 1838; throughout the work, the orchestration in particular is superbly designed to frame and showcase rather than overwhelm the soloist. The cadenza, which would normally be expected near the very end of the first movement, appears here before the recapitulation, so that the opening melody is restored by the orchestra while the soloist is still working through David’s dizzying figurations.
What should have been the last chord of the first movement dissolves to reveal a single bassoon note, held into the opening of the central Andante. It has been said that this device was used by Mendelssohn as much to discourage applause at the end of the first movement as for structural reasons. Whatever the truth of this, the bassoon note tenuously unifies the first two movements. The serene lyricism of the slow movement is disrupted in the middle section by a technically hair-raising passage for the soloist, who accompanies his own melody with troubled rapid figuration and double-stops playable by only a tiny percentage of violinists.
The link into the finale, however, is definitely seamless, with the unity confirmed by clear references by the soloist back to the troubled world of the Andante. Violin and orchestra trade musical figures, statements, and disagreements back and forth until the final blaze of glory.
IGOR STRAVINSKY (1862–1971)
PETROUCHKA
Composed: 1910–1911, revised 1947
First performed: 1911, in Paris precede
It is strange to discover that the composition of Petrouchka largely followed that of the drastically more “modern,” epoch-making Sacre du Printemps, but this is indeed the case. Following the huge success of the Firebird ballet in 1910, the impresario Diaghilev asked Stravinsky for another score; in response, Stravinsky played him the sketches of what would become the Sacre. Diaghilev, while (of course) startled and impressed with this luridly “new” music, asked something less devastating for the time being. Petrouchka was the result, based largely on a piano concerto that Stravinsky had already partly completed. This explains the very prominent piano part, especially in the Shrovetide Fair scenes.
The ballet tells the story of Petrouchka, a wooden puppet in a sideshow at the Shrovetide Carnival. Petrouchka’s dismal life is lightened only by his hopeless love for the Carnival’s Ballerina, who responds by taking a string of other lovers who, in turn, take out their ultimately murderous frustrations on Petrouchka. This could, perhaps, be seen as a very cruel version of Pinocchio, with a disturbing dash of the supernatural as Petrouchka’s spirit rises after his reduction literally to splinters by the Moor, the Ballerina’s last lover.
Central to Stravinsky’s musical representation of this grim tale is his depiction of Petrouchka’s semi-humanity in the famous “Petrouchka chord,” which piles the triad of F sharp major on top of that of C major-the furthest possible key from F sharp, and so literally its “opposite.” This “bitonal” chord reappears at strategic points in the story, evoking strangeness, alienation, and the uncanny at every appearance.
At least as striking is the work’s astonishing orchestration. At the opening, double basses play a squealing figure on barely an inch of string over the stomping rhythm of the fairground music, directly prefiguring the (then) terrifyingly high bassoon solo that opens Le Sacre. In the “Bear Dance,” a clarinet screeches away, only just within the instrument’s playable compass-a sound both indescribably ancient and astonishingly modern.
Typically for Stravinsky, Petrouchka reaches as far back into the Russian past as it sees into the future. In stretching across so vast a musical canvas, it sums up the very concept of a masterpiece.
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