Patti Johnson Wilson Classics Series - Concert I: Ravel and Tchaikovsky
Program Notes
The word Umoja is Swahili for unity. It has come into popular contemporary usage in African American culture as the first principle of the holiday Kwanzaa, whose seven-day celebration focuses on a different principle each day. The struggle for unity, whether as a nation or as a group of people is a universal concept not limited to Kwanzaa, however, and in the orchestral work, Umoja: Anthem of Unity (2019), by composer Valerie Coleman (b. 1970), Umoja embodies both the unity of the particular and the general. In particular, Coleman says, her aim was to “provid[e] an anthem that celebrated the diverse heritages of the [Imani Wind] ensemble itself.” As founder of that internationally acclaimed chamber group, in which Coleman played the flute, she also had the opportunity to compose new works that they performed. Umoja originated there in 2001. With the expansion of the work to a piece for large orchestra in 2019, the concept of unity is correspondingly expanded. Umoja relates to the family as easily as it does to the nation and beyond.
A native of Louisville, KY, Valerie Coleman began composing and playing music early in life. By the age of 14, she had already composed three symphonies and performed as flutist with the Louisville Youth Orchestra. After completing degrees in performance and composition at Boston University and Mannes College of Music in New York City, she went on to create Imani Winds, a wind quintet consisting of all African American and Latino musicians dedicated to performing repertoire by underrepresented composers. Like Umoja, Imani is also a Swahili word that is part of the seven principles of Kwanzaa. Imani means faith.
The idea of Unity, whether musical or human-oriented, implies an effort to bring together disparate elements. It is the result of effort and perhaps implies the presence or awareness of disunity. Umoja, as a musical work, is a depiction of this struggle to unify despite forces that work against its achievement. The work opens in a state of ethereal calm. A glockenspiel, marimba, and vibraphone are sounded by using violin bows contributing to this unfocused and otherworldly atmosphere. A theme coalesces into a melody in the solo violin, leading to a lush string melody that is calm and comforting. The violin theme appears twice more, in the trumpet and piccolo, before a new more agitated and unsettling section begins with the solo flute. Umoja is disrupted. The music becomes disconnected and diverse rhythms, meters, and tonal colors seem to compete with one another until, at the insistence of the strings, a new kind of unity is ultimately achieved. A lyrical idea pervades the orchestra and a sense of jubilance and joy arise in the dancing rhythms that ensue bringing this exuberant work to its conclusion.
The Piano Concerto in G by Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), composed between 1929 and 1931, was one of his last completed works. Following a highly successful tour of the United States in 1928 that helped solidify his reputation as one of Europe’s most esteemed composers, he set to work on two concertos for the piano. One is the Concerto for the Left Hand, composed for pianist Paul Wittgenstein who lost his right arm when injured during the First World War. The other concerto was the one heard on this program and originally intended for his own performance during a planned subsequent tour that never materialized due to the neurological disorder that would both silence his compositional voice and eventually take his life. While concertos form a major component of the standard orchestral repertoire, Ravel composed only these two and they are dramatically different from one another. The Concerto in G has become a regular part of the piano repertoire and is a work of kaleidoscopic variety and color. When composing this concerto Ravel has said he considered calling it a “Divertissement,” suggesting a work that is light and entertaining in character rather than one that is serious and weighty, a contrast to the late Romantic concertos of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The G major concerto balances the lightness of the type Ravel described with the technical precision and virtuosity that characterizes his music in general.
The sparkling first movement reveals influences as varied as American jazz and folk music of the Basque region—a location frequently visited by Ravel. A carnival-like mood, bustling like the opening of Stravinsky’s Petrushka, launches the concerto on its eclectic path. A snap of the whip and a tootling tune in the piccolo set things in motion leading to a sensuous Iberian theme followed by a bluesy, Gershwin-esque response. The lovely slow movement has a lullaby-like quality reminiscent of some of Ravel's most tender and lyrical music such as the familiar Pavane pour une infante défunte. Effervescent energy returns for the playful finale that at times recalls the busy, perpetuo style of Prokofiev, and provides a buoyant close to this brilliant concerto.
It would seem that for Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) music was at least as personal as the expressions heard in Valerie Coleman’s Umoja. In his case, the confessional quality of his works seems filled with trouble, turmoil, and heartache. "It is my profound conviction that Mozart is the highest, the supreme point attained by beauty in the sphere of music. No one other than he has made me weep, tremble with joy from recognition of the closeness to something which we call the ideal ..." These lines were written by Tchaikovsky in 1886. The following year he composed an orchestral suite based on music by Mozart. A year later he composed his Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64, more than a decade after his Fourth Symphony. Despite Tchaikovsky's worship of Mozart, upon hearing his music, perhaps especially his symphonies, we become fully aware of the historical and cultural distance that separates these composers. In Mozart's greatest works, we are profoundly engaged by what Tchaikovsky termed his "supreme beauty.” Tchaikovsky's beauty is more visceral as he unrelentingly strives to expose the raw emotional nerve of his being. His Symphony No. 5 is to some extent a continuation of Tchaikovsky’s personal narrative expressed in his Fourth Symphony, though the perspective has changed during the intervening years. Tchaikovsky seems to have had some kind of program in mind, but what exists of it in his surviving documents is too fragmentary to be of much use to us today. As in the Fourth Symphony, Fate also plays an important role in the Fifth, and the recurrence of the opening theme in each movement seems to be a recognizable reference to this idea. The difference in perspective here seems to be a resignation to an unavoidable fate that is now governed not by malevolence and sorrow, but by divine providence.
The somber opening of the first movement presents the dirge-like fate theme in the clarinets sparsely accompanied by the strings. This theme consists of two basic parts, a characteristically descending second half, preceded by a more rhythmic figure of alternating long and paired short notes that is believed to have been borrowed from an opera by the great Russian composer Mikhail Glinka. Glinka's original, unquestionably known by Tchaikovsky, carried the words "Do not turn to sorrow." This slow introduction is soon replaced by the wistful flowing first theme of the Allegro. Momentum builds as the whole orchestra becomes involved with this sardonically dancing idea. A brief second theme strives upward in the strings and soon launches into the three-note third idea. Extended syncopated phrases in the winds and strings lead into the development, which ingeniously juxtaposes the three main ideas of the movement.
The second movement is one of Tchaikovsky's most poetic creations. Atmospheric string chords set up the beautifully poignant horn solo. Soon clarinet and oboe join and lead off in a new direction. A passionate theme in the clarinet begins a new section that climaxes with the shattering return of the fate idea from the first movement. The forces regroup around the horn and oboe ideas only to be rebuffed once again by fate. The movement closes with strings gently recalling the earlier oboe theme.
A breezy waltz, tinged with sentimentality, serves as the basis for the third movement. The opening section returns after each new episode until just before the end, the clarinets and bassoons once again whisper the mocking fate motive.
Fate introduces the massive Finale whose carefully planned climaxes are Tchaikovsky at his most vehement. A slashing theme in the strings begins the Allegro vivace as the unrelenting drive of this movement is relieved only briefly by the skipping theme presented in the winds. New themes, mostly derived from earlier motives, rise up to participate in the nearly ecstatic momentum of this movement which leads to a majestically culminating statement of the fate theme. The symphony concludes with one last headlong rush with trumpets triumphantly blaring the opening movement's first Allegro theme as a closing fanfare.
©2024 Robert S. Katz, Ph.D.