‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini’ for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 43       
Serge Rachmaninoff

Serge Rachmaninoff was born in Oneg, Russia, on March 20/April 1, 1873 and died in Beverly Hills, California, on March 28, 1943. A virtuoso pianist of the highest order, as a composer Rachmaninoff represents one of the final expressions of Russian Romanticism. “The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini” was composed in 1934 and received its first performance on Nov. 7 of that same year in Baltimore, with the composer as soloist and the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Leopold Stokowski. The piece is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, snare drum, triangle, glockenspiel), harp and strings.

The grand 19th-century tradition of virtuoso pianism lasted well into the 20th century, extending, it may be argued, uninterrupted through the career of Vladimir Horowitz and beyond — including Chautauqua favorite, Alexander Gavrylyuk. Rachmaninoff, however, stood uncontested as a towering example of the state-of-the-art at the beginning of our own century. As has been the case with so many other virtuosos, Rachmaninoff was far more than a brilliant technician and one of the greatest pianists of his generation, but proved to be a thoroughly accomplished musician, skilled in composition as well as conducting. “The Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” composed in 1934, is a work that remains conscious of the virtuoso tradition from which it sprang. The great Italian violinist Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) was the individual who set the standard for all instrumental virtuosity in the 19th century, including pianists, most notably Franz Liszt. Paganini’s most influential work was his “Twenty-Four Caprices,” the last of which is a theme with variations. This theme has fired the imagination of many other composers, a more recent example being the “Caprice Variations” for solo violin of George Rochberg from 1970, and Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody” is one of the best. Its structure is that of introduction, theme and 24(!) variations. Each variation puts the pianist’s skill to the test. Two musical features, however, stand out as particularly memorable. The first is his use of the medieval Dies irae plainchant in Variations 7, 10 and 24. This melody is a sequence from the Catholic funeral liturgy, used famously by Hector Berlioz in the finale of his “Symphonie Fantastique” and again by Rachmaninoff in his “Isle of the Dead,” a symphonic poem inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s painting. Rachmaninoff may have been seeking to evoke memories of Liszt’s “Totentanz” here, but this tune had long been associated with the concept of the demonic and the supernatural — the very attributes of virtuosity itself. Indeed, legend had it that Paganini had sold his very soul to the devil in order to acquire his uncanny superhuman skills (one is reminded of Stravinksy’s “The Soldier’s Tale,” as well as the popular ballad, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”). The second feature is the Andante cantabile eighteenth variation, whose tune is so appealing that one might fail to notice how cleverly the composer has inverted the intervals of Paganini’s theme in deriving its shape. Fans of the 1993 hit film starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, “Groundhog Day,” may recognize this variation, where the television meteorologist, Phil Collins (played by Murray), having mastered the art of piano playing as he changes his ways from cynical boor to nice guy, performs this music in a jazzy arrangement at a party in the hotel in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. 

Symphony No. 5, Op. 47
Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Sept. 12, 1906. He died in Moscow on Aug. 9, 1975. He was one of the Soviet Union’s greatest composers. Although he composed in a wide variety of genres, including film scores, he is best known for his 15 symphonies, which are among the finest examples of its kind from the mid-20th century. His Fifth Symphony was first performed in Leningrad (now, once again, St. Petersburg) on Nov. 21, 1937. Its success was unequivocal and it remains one of the landmark compositions of this century. It is scored for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, E Flat clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, bells and xylophone), two harps, piano, celesta and strings.

Of Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies, the Fifth Symphony is his most popular and frequently performed work. A pejorative overtone creeps in, however, when one tries to define the word “popular” by seeking its opposite, such as when “popular” music (e.g., rock, hip-hop or traditional) is contrasted with “art” music (e.g., symphonies, chamber music, opera). How many of us, for example, have at some time or other characterized some “popular” music as “coarse, primitive, (or) vulgar”? These, however, are the precise words that appeared in a January 1936 article in Pravda titled “Muddle Instead of Music,” an article (possibly authored by Joseph Stalin himself) that denounced Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, and ballet, The Limpid Stream. Thus began one of the saddest episodes in 20th-century music history — the official exile of one of the Soviet Union’s most gifted talents. Those who dared to stand by Shostakovich, either personally or artistically, did so at grave risk to their own careers, or even lives. The irony, however, was yet to come. Shostakovich sought to deal with Stalin’s rebuke through continued work on new compositions. His immense Fourth Symphony was written over the course of the subsequent months of 1936, but the work was withdrawn under suspicious circumstances shortly before its scheduled premiere in April. The Fifth Symphony, composed during the next year, enjoyed a much happier fate. One journalist dubbed the new symphony as “a Soviet artist’s practical, creative reply to just criticism,” a subtitle that was used for the first time at the Moscow premiere in 1938. Shostakovich, typically, neither endorsed nor renounced the title. 

But did the Fifth Symphony truly represent the rehabilitative effort from a man who had fallen from the good graces of a repressive regime? Evidence that has recently surfaced in two books — Solomon Volkov’s Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (London, 1979) and Elizabeth Wilson’s Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (Princeton, 1994) — paints a rather different portrait. Here we discover a composer who at first believed that his career lay in ruins. His strategy in public became the maintenance of humility and submission. In private, by contrast, Shostakovich set himself on a course of defiant resistance to Stalinist repression by encoding private warnings and references into his scores. Purely instrumental music, after all, has one advantage over works for the stage; censors, who for the most part are musical illiterates, have a harder time applying their political standards. One may recall here how, 100 years earlier, the crafty Robert Schumann slipped the forbidden “La Marseillaise” past the Viennese censors in his “Faschingsschwank aus Wien.” Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony owes, as is the case with much of his other music, a debt of gratitude to the color and sardonic wit found in the music of Gustav Mahler. The powerful opening Moderato begins with a jagged figure treated imitatively in the strings. This paves the way for music of a haunting lyricism. After the first climax, a broad song emerges over a throbbing accompanying figure in dactyls. The gentle pulsation turns outright threatening with the introduction of the percussive sound of the piano and a quickening of speed. The music becomes increasingly frenetic, reaching shattering climaxes before returning to its majestic opening speed and demeanor. It ends shrouded in mystery as the celesta plays its haunting chromatic scales. The second movement, Allegretto, is a saucy scherzo that dresses itself as a kind of sardonic waltz. Its cheeky character is highlighted by the color of the soprano clarinet and solo violin. The high spirit of this movement yields to the dramatic poignancy of the ensuing Largo. This movement begins soulfully in the divided strings. The highest violins soon introduce a new theme based upon a repeated-note figure. An ethereal duet for flutes over an undulating harp ostinato accompaniment follows. Later, the solo oboe introduces yet another haunting tune. A climax of terrific intensity is achieved based upon the high violin theme, but the tension finally breaks. The movement ends with the oboe theme, now played by celesta and harp (in bell-like harmonics), melting into a more optimistic major chord in the hushed strings. The finale, Allegro non troppo, is famous for its rousing opening theme, played by trumpets, trombones and tuba over the pounding kettledrums. This theme may have pleased Shostakovich’s socialist-realist critics, but they would have been less enthusiastic if they knew that its opening notes were derived from the first song, “Rebirth,” from the composer’s Four Pushkin Romances. Even more telling is later theme in the movement bearing material that Shostakovich had set to the following words: “Thus delusions fall off/ My tormented soul/ And it reveals to me visions/ Of my former pure days.” A tumult of new themes follows, some of which are evocative of themes heard earlier in the symphony. A slowly oscillating ostinato in the violins takes over, leading to one of the real strokes of genius in the movement — the slow, soft reintroduction of the opening martial theme. The movement ends in a dignified blaze of glory as this theme arrives at its apotheosis in the resplendent brass. Perhaps this is what Shostakovich had in mind when he spoke of his Fifth Symphony as “the stabilization of a personality.” Few works can match these concluding pages for depicting the sheer triumph of the human spirit over adversity.