Beethoven's Emperor Concerto - Program Notes

Le Tombeau de Couperin (Orchestral Suite) (1919)
Maurice Ravel
Born March 7, 1875 in Ciboure, France
Died December 28, 1937 in Paris, France

"To hear a whole programme of his works is like watching some midget or pygmy doing clever, but very small things... the almost reptilian cold-bloodedness - which one suspects of having been consciously cultivated - of most of M. Ravel's music is almost repulsive when heard in bulk; even its beauties are like the markings on snakes or lizards."

-Review in the London Times of a concert given by Ravel

The subtle and highly original art of Maurice Ravel often met with complete incomprehension on the part of the musical establishment of his day. The popular image of him as a cold, obsessively perfectionistic technician was prompted as much by his public personality--he was a small, dapper man, always impeccably dressed, with an air of somewhat superior detachment--as by the gleaming, polished beauty of his meticulously crafted music. Like so many composers, Ravel's musical hero was Mozart. But the desire to emulate the diamond-like perfection of the angelic Wolfgang doesn't mean that Ravel or his music were bereft of warmth and passion. Far from it. Flashes of his Spanish ancestry (his mother was Basque) surge forth in his music, and his friends knew him as a generous, warm-hearted companion with a sly, mocking sense of humor.

Le Tombeau de Couperin began its life as a suite of six movements for solo piano. It was conceived as a tribute to the great French clavecinistes (harpsichord players) of the 17th and 18th century, most particularly François Couperin, who was known as Le Grand, and represented for Ravel the glory of the French musical past. Between its conception in 1914 and its completion in 1917, the suite took on a deeper, more tragic meaning for Ravel. He had experienced the horrors of World War I as an army truck driver at the Verdun front. The grief and shock caused by the death of many of his friends was compounded by the death of his mother while he was home on convalescent leave in January of 1917. The bright, elegant beauty of the dances in this suite thus came to symbolize for Ravel a poignant sadness for happy times he had shared. He dedicated each movement to a friend who had lost his life in the war. This is the significance of Tombeau, the French word for "tomb," in the title. In this context it means "homage to the dead" and harks back to the ancient custom in France and Italy of writing musical and poetic memorials for beloved friends and colleagues.

Ravel adapted four of the six movements for orchestra in 1919: the Prélude, Forlane (a gay dance in 6/8 time from 16th century Italy), Menuet and Rigaudon (a vigorous Provençal dance of the 17th century). The glistening, sun-drenched opulence of Ravel's orchestration belies the darker, tragic subtext imposed by the painful experiences of the war. The Prélude and Rigaudon contain some of the most fiendishly difficult passages ever written for woodwind instruments. Ravel showed no mercy in transcribing figurations that are perfectly sensible for the piano, but can give wind players (particularly the oboe soloist) fits. Even in the midst of his melancholy Ravel could not resist making a joke to his friends, Ida and Cyprian Godebski about the Forlane. It seems that the Archbishop of Paris, at the urging of the Pope, had banned the sexy, provocative tango, which was all the rage in European dance halls, and sought to revive the Forlane in its stead. Ravel wrote:

"I am now slaving away for the benefit of the Pope. You know that this august personage has just launched a new dance, the Forlane, and I'm now transcribing one by Couperin. I'm going to get Mistinguett and Colette Willy to dance it in fancy dress at the Vatican. Ah, there's the Angelus ringing; I'm off now to dinner."

Sinfonia No. 3 (La Salsa)
Roberto Sierra
Born October 9, 1953 in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico

Roberto Sierra showed interest in music at an early age, teaching himself to play his sister's piano. His formal training in music started at the Conservatorio de Música, in San Juan and then at the University of Puerto Rico. He graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in 1976, and traveled to Europe where he continued his studies in London at the Royal College of Music and at the University of London; at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht, Holland; and with György Ligeti at the Hamburg Hochschule fur Musik. In 1983, he became assistant and in 1985, director of the Cultural Activities Department at the University of Puerto Rico, then dean of studies and chancellor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music; in 1989, he became composer-in-residence of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Throughout this period, he was vigorously engaged as a composer on the international scene. In the autumn of 1992, Sierra joined the composition faculty at Cornell University, assuming a position made available by the retirement of Karel Husa. During the 2000-2001 season, Sierra was Composer-In-Residence with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Sierra first came to prominence in 1987, when his first major orchestral composition, Júbilo, was performed at Carnegie Hall by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. His works have been performed by major orchestras throughout the world. In recent years, Roberto Sierra's colorful and rhythmic music has attracted a growing audience both in North America and Europe and he is acclaimed as
one of Latin America's most active contemporary composers.

Although Sierra never played in a salsa band when he was growing up in Puerto Rico, he wishes he had. "This music is everywhere in Puerto Rico," Sierra says. "You don't even have to play it yourself--your neighbors will play it for you. It comes in your windows." Afro-Caribbean dance rhythms, hot and cool--Montuños, Guajiros, Bombas, Merengues, Plenas--Sierra heard them at every school dance, and they bubble, fizz and sway throughout the score of his Sinfonia No. 3, which he subtitles "La Salsa." The four-movement work isn't a piece of pops-concert fluff, but the creation of a sophisticated composer who has carved out a distinguished career in the concert hall. Sierra says of the Sinfonia: "I wanted to write a piece that takes off from the riffs of the salsa. I'm drawing on the vernacular. Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn--they all did that. It's nothing new."

Sierra's tribute to his cultural roots takes the 'riffs' he heard growing up and weaves them into a complex orchestral fabric that would leave Puerto Rican dance band musicians scratching their heads. Along with Afro-Caribbean popular music, he draws on the more genteel, European-influenced Danza form that was created at conservatories established under Spanish colonial rule. "When Puerto Rico became part of the U.S. in 1898, that whole musical tradition ended," Sierra says.

Sierra's favorite Danza composer is Juan Morel Campos (1857-1896), who wrote more than 500 Danzas and led his own dance orchestra. While he doesn't use literal quotes in the Sinfonia No. 3, Sierra thinks that Campos would recognize his influence. "If Campos were to hear it," Sierra laughs, "he'd have no idea of what I'm doing. But I want to continue that 19th century tradition. I want to link myself to that line of Puerto Rican music."

Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, op. 73, Emperor
Ludwig van Beethoven
Born December 16, 1770 in
Bonn-on-Rhine, Germany
Died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria

Beethoven wrote the Emperor Concerto in1809. The first performance was given in Leipzig by pianist Friedrich Schneider on November 28, 1811.

In May of 1809, Beethoven wrote to his publisher: "We have passed through a great deal of misery. I tell you that I have brought into the world little that is connected--only here and there a fragment. The whole course of events has affected both my body and soul... what a destructive and desolate life surrounds me! Nothing but drums, cannons and human suffering in every form!" Napoleon's armies had invaded Vienna on May 12, and Beethoven's lodgings were in the middle of the fighting. When the bombardment of the city grew too loud, the already seriously deaf composer took refuge in the basement of his brother Carl's house and covered his head with pillows to protect what little hearing he had left.

Because of unstable political and financial conditions after the Austrian surrender, the piano concerto he wrote in the midst of the French invasion was not premiered until November of 1811, in Leipzig. By then Beethoven's hearing had deteriorated too much for him to play the solo part as he had in the premieres of his previous concertos and the honor of that first performance went to Friedrich Schneider, a twenty-five year old church organist. Three months later, in February 1812, the concerto was given its Vienna premiere by Beethoven's student Carl Czerny. Beethoven, a staunch democrat, would have been furious if he had known that the E-flat Concerto would eventually be nicknamed the Emperor by his friend, pianist Johann Cramer. He despised Napoleon for declaring himself Emperor of France in 1804, and hated him the more for conquering his adopted home. A friend recalled Beethoven sitting in a café shaking his fist at the back of a French officer. "If I were a general," he muttered, "and knew as much about strategy as I do about counterpoint, I'd give you fellows something to think about."

This bellicose defiance seems to find its musical voice in what Maynard Solomon calls "the warlike rhythms, victory motives, thrusting melodies and affirmative character" of the Emperor Concerto. The work begins with an inventive and arresting musical cannonade: the orchestra fires out three great chords from which erupt brilliant mini-cadenzas for the solo piano. The final cadenza leads directly into the striding, martial opening theme of the movement. This branches out into a rich array of subordinate ideas that are subjected to typically dramatic, stormy development and dialogue between piano and orchestra. Just before the coda, where the soloist was usually expected to improvise a big cadenza, Beethoven made a revolutionary break with tradition. He wrote in the score, "Non si fa una cadenza, ma s'attacca subito il seguente" ("Do not play a cadenza, but immediately proceed to the following"). With these fateful words he seized full compositional control of every note in the concerto and signaled the end of spontaneous improvisation in concert music. The movement proceeds with Beethoven's own written-out cadenza, briefly treating the two principal themes and gradually bringing in the orchestra for a triumphant coda. After this composers increasingly supplied their own cadenzas rather than leave them to the musical whims of soloists.

The quietly lyrical second movement is a nocturne-like place of repose between the dramatic outer movements. A meditative melody sung by muted strings is decorated with garlands of variations by the solo piano. Beethoven creates one of his miraculous transitions here: as the final variation fades away, the bassoons softly sustain the home-key note of the movement, then, without any warning, the whole orchestra seems to sink down a half-step like a faulty elevator into the key of the finale. The piano begins playing quiet hints of the movement that is to follow, then suddenly bursts out with the ebullient, somewhat quirky opening theme of the rondo. This vigorous movement is a jig danced in army-boots: somewhat heavy-footed, but jolly and full of high spirits nonetheless. Especially inventive and (for its day) outrageous is the duet for piano and timpani just before the end that slows and fades into silence before the piano unleashes a blazing sequence of scales that lead into the final chords.

After the Emperor, Beethoven, who was only 39 years old, never wrote another piano concerto. This is likely due to the fact that his concertos were vehicles for his career as a solo pianist and his inability, due to deafness, to perform in public led him to concentrate on other musical genres. So we should be grateful: Beethoven's heartbreaking loss was to lead to the magnificent orchestral and chamber works of his last 18 years that are our priceless legacy.

Program notes Copyright © 2008 by Matthew Naughtin