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Symphonic Cycle 08 |
Symphonic Cycle 08

03/04ABR2025|20:00H

Teatro de la Maestranza |
20:00 h.

SOFÍA GUBAIDÚLINA | Fairy Tale
CARL NIELSEN | Concierto para flauta y orquesta
ÍGOR STRAVÍNSKI | La consagración de la primavera

Flute | Vicent Morelló Broseta
Conductor | Nuno Coelho

Symphonic Cycle 08 | Program notes
Symphonic Cycle 08
Program notes

Tonight's concert begins with a piece by Sofía Gubaidúlina, ninety-four years old, one of the most prominent composers from Russia, after Shostakovich and Schnittke. Her early works were labeled as "irresponsible," although she received the support of Shostakovich, who, being well-versed in many ways and strategies to deal with the authorities, encouraged her to follow her "wrong path."

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From Carl Nielsen, who dominates contemporary Danish music and has influenced later composers, we will hear his Flute Concerto. Born in the same year, he is the Danish equivalent of Sibelius in Finland, and his music is also faithful to national sentiment and a tradition that emphasizes the importance of melody.

The farewell piece, The Rite of Spring, is actually a beginning. Igor Stravinsky’s boldest and most controversial work inaugurates the new music of the 20th century, in a year, 1913, that for many historians, breaking strict chronology, marks the end of the 19th century, already on the doorstep of World War I.

 

Sofía Gubaidúlina: Fairy Tale.

Born in the Soviet Union, Sofia Gubaidúlina is considered one of the most prominent contemporary composers due to her daring experimentation with alternative tunings, her approach to twelve-tone serialism, unusual instrumentation, and the treatment of spiritual themes, which are influenced by Eastern traditions and a certain mystical longing. She considers "an ideal" the situation in which "the artist masters all means—both new and traditional—but as if not paying attention to either."

The Poema-Skazka ("Fairy Tale Poem") was originally composed for a 1971 radio program based on "The Little Piece of Chalk," a children's story by Czech writer Miloš Macourek, which carries a deep meaning, as the composer pointed out: "I liked the story so much, and I found it so symbolic of the fate of an artist that I became very personally connected to this work".

The protagonist is a piece of chalk that dreams of drawing castles, gardens, and the sea, but every day it draws numbers and words on the chalkboard. The children grow up, and the chalk becomes smaller and smaller until it is thrown away. One of them keeps it in his pocket, and the darkness makes it think it has died, but the child pulls it out and draws with it on the asphalt, creating castles, gardens, and the sea. The chalk is so happy that it doesn’t realize it is disintegrating.

Gubaidúlina is known for her surprising way of interspersing dramatic moments of silence between serene cascading melodies and intense bursts of harmonic color, as seen in the presentation of this story as a sound tapestry, where instrumental voices create a certain static atmosphere in which a pizzicato fugue with jazz-like undertones stands out, along with some moments of orchestral intensity that gradually lead to a final approach to silence.

 

Carl Nielsen: Flute Concerto and Orchestra.

When Nielsen wrote this concerto in 1926, he had already completed the cycle of his six symphonies (four of which have suggestive titles: The Four Temperaments, Expansive, Unextinguishable, and Semplice). Its origins date back to 1921, when, impressed by performances of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet, he wrote his own Wind Quintet specifically for this ensemble. The final movement of this quintet was a theme with variations representing the personalities of the five performers and their respective instruments, clearly an evocation of Elgar's Enigma Variations. The next project was to write a concerto for each of the instrumentalists, starting with flutist Gilbert-Jespersen. Before his death, Nielsen was only able to write, in 1928, the Clarinet Concerto for Aage Oxenvad.

Nielsen began working on the concerto while traveling through Germany and Italy in August 1926 with the intention of premiering it in Paris in October. Not finishing it in time, he prepared a provisional ending that did not prevent the positive reception at the premiere, which was attended by Ravel and Honegger.

In January 1927, the final version was premiered in Copenhagen, and the concerto entered the international repertoire. Like his previous Violin Concerto, the work connects with tradition while reflecting the trends of the decade, close to the neoclassical style. The concerto lacks tonal stability and consists of only two movements.

The first, Allegro moderato, features dialogues between the solo flute and the orchestra, but also between the clarinet and the bassoon. After an unexpected interruption by the bass trombone, the flute takes the foreground with a cantabile theme. An orchestral cadence leads back to the opening themes before ending calmly.

The second movement, Allegretto un pocoAdagio ma non troppoAllegrettoPoco adagioTempo di marcia, opens, according to the composer, with "a little malice in some notes played by the orchestra, but the atmosphere quickly relaxes again, and when the solo flute enters, it does so with childlike innocence." The melodic beginning of the movement fluctuates between Allegretto, which becomes Adagio ma non troppo, before settling into a Tempo di marcia variation in the melodic opening. The glissando of the trombone introduces a final series of grotesque humor, bringing the work to a conclusion.

 

Igor Stravinski: The Rite of Spring.

One of the central themes in the abundant bibliography on Igor Stravinsky (biographies, studies of his works, his memoirs, and several books of conversations) is The Rite of Spring, as if the bassoon solo in its high register with which it begins opened the door to 20th-century music, but also as if the sacrifice of the chosen one and the primitive violence of the dances foreshadowed the imminence of war.

For 20 years, the Ballets Russes, founded in 1909 by the magician Serguéi Diáguilev, spread the great vitality of the Russian school and Slavic exoticism throughout Western Europe, based on the harmony of all the arts involved in dance. Already in 1910, Stravinsky premiered The Firebird and followed up the next year with Petrushka. After these two successes, he wrote The Rite of Spring for the Parisian season of 1913, which premiered on May 29 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, conducted by Pierre Monteux. The choreography was created by Vaslav Nijinsky, with scenery and costumes by Nicholas Roerich. The program also included Les Sylphides, The Spectre of the Rose, and the "Polovtsian Dances" from Prince Igor.

Unlike the previous "Russian" ballets, which were less "revolutionary," Stravinsky dared to innovate more than the French avant-garde had dared to do. As expected, its premiere caused a scandal: the audience began booing the work before it had even finished, there were fights, and police presence was required in the second half. All this was to the great satisfaction of the impresario ("It was what I wanted"). The premiere, which has several literary testimonies, was realistically recreated in the 2009 film Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, directed by Jan Kounen.

Except for the enthusiasm of some more open critics, the work was considered a loud and incomprehensible succession of sounds and noises. As an example (and not the harshest), Jean Chantavoine wrote the following the next day in Excelsior: "To suggest the lack of harmony of a world only partially human, immersed in barbarism and close to animality, Stravinsky writes The Rite of Spring, a work that, almost from start to finish, is deliberately dissonant and ostentatiously cacophonous." In contrast, his friend Jean Cocteau found in it "lyricism and mysticism".

According to Stravinsky, the work has its origins in a vision: "I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan ritual: the wise elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance to her death. She is being sacrificed to propitiate the god of spring." In this evocation of primitive Russia, no folk themes are used, but critics note that the entire score is filled with an "unconscious folk memory".

In this work, Stravinsky develops an entirely new sound and experiments with tonality, meter, rhythm, accents, and dissonance. There are abundant percussive effects, aggressive and violent, while the expressive and melodic sound of the string instruments disappears. It is the percussion and wind instruments that evoke a wild and primitive nature. The violins are practically limited to rhythmic accompaniment functions. He also included uncommon instruments in a symphonic orchestra, such as the güiro and piccolo trumpet.

The work carries the subtitle "Stories of Pagan Russia in Two Parts," and the titles of the various movements clearly indicate the progression of the action. The first part, "Adoration of the Earth," includes: Introduction - Spring Rites (Dance of the Young Girls) - Abduction Game - Spring Rounds - Rival Tribes Game - The Wise Man’s Procession - Adoration of the Earth (The Wise Man) - Dance of the Earth. In the second part, "The Sacrifice," we find: Introduction - Mysterious Circles of the Young Girls - Glorification of the Chosen One - Invocation of the Ancestors - Ritual Action of the Ancestors - Sacred Dance (The Chosen One).

The Rite of Spring has gained greater recognition as a concert piece and is considered one of the most influential works of the 20th century. However, it is important to remember that it was created for the stage and, in the realm of dance, it also represented a radical departure from classical ballet, having become an iconic piece of contemporary ballet. In 1987, through notes and drawings, Nijinsky's original lost choreography was reconstructed and performed by the Joffrey Ballet of Los Angeles. The ballet has been choreographed by most of the great personalities in the dance world, such as Maurice Béjart in 1972 and Pina Bausch in 1975.

Juan Lamillar