Classics 7: Thinking of Mother Russia



Anton Stepanovich Arensky
1861-1906

Anton Stepanovich Arensky
Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky, Op. 35a

Anton Stepanovich Arensky was one of that unfortunately large group of prodigiously talented musicians who died young. The son of a physician, who was also an amateur cellist, and a mother who was a pianist, Arensky was already composing songs and piano pieces well before his tenth birthday.

A star composition student of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Arensky immediately began teaching at the St. Petersburg Conservatory upon his graduation. He later became a colleague of Tchaikovsky at the Moscow Conservatory, where he was a teacher of Aleksander Skryabin and Sergey Rachmaninov. In 1895 he became the director of the imperial chapel in St. Petersburg, resigning in 1901 on a significant pension to devote himself to composition, gambling and alcohol.

Arensky’s output is not extensive. He greatly disappointed Rimsky-Korsakov for abandoning the Russian nationalist movement and supporting Tchaikovsky’s more cosmopolitan romanticism. His eclectic approach is clearly evident in the Variations on a Theme of Tchaikovsky, an arrangement for string orchestra of the slow movement from his String Quartet No. 2, Op. 35, composed in 1894 as a memorial to Tchaikovsky, who had died the previous winter.

Arensky’s seven variations and a coda are based on the theme from Tchaikovsky’s song “Legend,” No. 5 from Sixteen Children’s Songs, Op. 54.

The variations are in the style of the Brahms/Haydn variations, with changes in harmony and mood, rather than a piling up of decorative passages over a static harmonic progression. The piece ends with a gentle, almost wistful, coda.

Among the most interesting variations are: number 1, which involves a little canon between lower and upper strings and modulates to another key (the relative major);

The obligatory variation in the opposite mode, number 3;

number 4, which works with fragments from the theme;

and number 6, the fastest of the group.



Sergey Rachmaninov
1873-1943

Sergey Rachmaninov
Piano Concerto No. 2 in c Minor, Op. 18

Sergey Rachmaninov grew up in a middle-class musical family, but under strained economic conditions. His father, a gambler and an alcoholic, squandered the family’s fortune to the point that eventually his mother and father separated and she had to sell what remained of the family’s assets and move into a small apartment in St. Petersburg. Sergey – whose care in better times would have been entrusted to a nanny – consequently grew up with little supervision.

His schooling suffered as a result. Although he showed early promise as a pianist and obtained a scholarship to study at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, the administration threatened to expel him for failing to attend classes. He subsequently transferred to the Moscow Conservatory where his initial attempts at composing were discouraged by his mentor. Nevertheless, he continued to march to his own drummer, defying his teacher and transferring to classes in counterpoint and composition.

Clearly, his sense of his own worth was more accurate than that of his professors. While still a student, he produced a string of successful works, including the tone poem Prince Rostislav, his First Piano Trio, and a flood songs and piano pieces. For his graduation in 1892 he composed the opera Aleko, which won him the highest distinction, the Great Gold Medal. The same year he also composed the Prelude in c-sharp minor, a work whose inordinate fame haunted him all his life because audiences always expected – and demanded – it as an encore at his performances as one of history’s greatest pianists.

By 1895 Rachmaninov felt confident enough to compose a symphony. The premiere took place in St. Petersburg in 1897 but was a dismal failure, in large part because to the shoddy conducting of Alexander Glazunov. Whereas earlier defeats had produced in Rachmaninov creative defiance, this disappointment brought on a severe depression. For three years he was unable to do any significant composing. After consulting numerous physicians and advisors, even asking old Leo Tolstoy for help, he finally went for therapy and hypnosis in 1900 to Dr. Nikolay Dahl, an internist who studied hypnosis and rudimentary psychotherapy in Paris. The result was one of the first well-known successes of modern psychotherapy. Although the composer was able to return to creative work, relapses into depression dogged him for the rest of his life. Significantly, all his large instrumental compositions are in minor keys, and one of the melodic themes recurring in many of his compositions is theDies irae chant from the Catholic mass for the dead that reminds mourners of the terrors of the day of judgment.

Rachmaninov expressed his gratitude to Dr. Dahl by dedicating the Second Piano Concerto to him. The first performance of the complete work took place in November 1901with the composer at the piano and was an instant success. It is Rachmaninov's most frequently performed and recorded orchestral work and its popularity has never waned. It even found its way into Hollywood as background music to the World War II movie Brief Encounter.

The first movement, moderato, opens with dark unaccompanied chords on the piano, which increase in intensity and are gradually joined by the orchestra, leading to the first theme. The effect is like the tolling of the giant low-pitched bells common in Russian churches.

The piano introduces the sensuous second theme, one of the composer's signature melodies.

About halfway through the movement as the development continues, a new rhythmic figure makes its appearance

, first as a barely audible accompaniment figure in the flute, then taken up in the piano and timpani as an accompaniment to the second theme.

Increasingly, it crops up all over the orchestra until the piano pounds it out, letting the rest of the orchestra carry the recapitulation of the main theme.

A long rhapsodic coda concludes the movement with a final dramatic burst of energy.

The second movement opens with muted strings, following with hesitant piano arpeggios in left hand.

As the piano remains in the background joined by the solo flute the clarinet finally brings out the theme in its entirety.

The middle section of this ABA form centers on a second theme, which is built on the first and belongs to the piano.

Typically of the middle sections of slow movements, it is more intense and passionate than the A section. It builds in speed and energy in a brief cadenza, after which the gentle atmosphere of the beginning return with variations of the first theme.

The brilliant third movement is characterized by abrupt changes in mood, all based on two themes. It opens deceptively quietly in the lower range of the orchestra, breaking into a sudden sparkling, drivingly rhythmic piano cadenza and finally the main theme.

The second theme, introduced by the violas and oboes, is intensely passionate, and another of the melodies that have made this Concerto so popular.

To conform to this new romantic mood, Rachmaninov rhythmically transforms his first theme.

Suddenly, the tempo increases to presto and we're in a whirlwind development of the first theme, including a little truncated fugue.

Then it's back to romantic second theme, more mood swings until after a short cadenza the second romantic theme is taken up by the highest instruments in the orchestra, culminating in a glittering climax.



Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1840-1893

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 4 in f Minor, Op.36

Throughout his creative career, Tchaikovsky’s inspiration went through extreme cycles tied to the frequent bouts of deep depression and self-doubt from which he suffered. The composition of this symphony in 1877 was strongly influenced by the events that happened in his life that year.

Things were actually looking up for Tchaikovsky during the early part of 1877. He had his first contact with Nadezhda von Meck, the wealthy widow of a railroad builder, who fell in love with Tchaikovsky’s music and arranged to pay him a large annual stipend. The only stipulation she attached to her generous help was that they never meet in person, although they corresponded voluminously. In May he started writing the symphony, but then in July came his disastrous marriage to one of his students who had fallen madly in love with him. Tchaikovsky, who was homosexual, hoped the marriage would still the rumors about his sexual preferences. But instead he fled from his wife in horror after two weeks. In total despair, he made a pathetic attempt at suicide (he walked into the Moskva River, hoping to die of pneumonia) and ended up with a complete mental collapse. To recuperate, his brother took him to Switzerland and Italy, where he picked up work on the symphony, finishing it in January 1878.

Tchaikovsky dedicated the work To Mme. von Meck, expressing his confidence in the new work: “I feel in my heart that this work is the best I have ever written.” He himself did not return from abroad for the February 1878 premiere in Moscow, which was only a luke-warm success.

In Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies, motivic unity among the movements was to take an increasingly more prominent role. The symphony opens with a sinister fanfare theme by the brass, which recurs as the movement unfolds.

The anxiety-laden main theme, which Tchaikovsky develops on the spot, strives towards a resolution that continually seems to elude it.

The relief comes with the second theme, one of Tchaikovsky's inimitable melodies, a waltz for solo clarinet,

and a third played in counterpoint with the clarinet theme by the strings and timpani.

The development, based exclusively on the main theme and the fanfare, begins quietly, slowly ramping up the emotional tension. After the recapitulation, the fanfare announces a long two-part coda with a new theme set contrapuntally against the main theme to resolve the movement on a more positive note.

But just as we are starting to sit back and relax, the fanfare returns to blast us back into Tchaikovsky's stormy reality.

The second movement, by contrast, opens with a plaintive melody on the oboe, accompanied by pizzicato strings.

The oboe theme is answered by a more intense second theme in the strings.

The pace picks up as the composer adds a dance-like melody.

Typical Tchaikovsky anxiety mounts,

until he returns to the gentle oboe theme now in the violins, adorned with feathery ornaments in the winds recalling the accompaniment to the clarinet theme in the first movement.

The third movement, Pizzicato ostinato, is a playful diversion.

It is a typical scherzo and trio. The Trio consists of a medley of tunes, the first for a pair of oboes,

the second, slightly mournful Russian folk tune, also for the upper winds,

and a playful brass riff with staccato playing to match the pizzicato strings from the Scherzo.

The movement ends with a medley of the various themes and instrumental combinations.

While one hears subtle references to first-movement musical ideas in movements two and three, Tchaikovsky explicitly unifies the Symphony in the Finale. This last movement is the most “Russian” of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic movements and is something of a musical battle between the festive and the melancholic. After a festive opening theme,

the oboe and bassoon introduce an authentic Russia folk-song (for which he was roundly condemned by his academic colleagues and the critics).

Once again, however, a sprightly mood turns negative,

and it is hardly surprising that the movement is brought up short towards the end by the reappearance of the grim fanfare from the opening movement – the spectre at the feast.

An energetic coda, however, tips the balance towards positive territory.