Entr’acte 

Caroline Shaw

American composer, Caroline Shaw, was born on August 1, 1942 in Greenville, NC. She comes from a musical family. Her mother is a talented singer and violinist, who started teaching violin to her daughter when Caroline was very young. Reluctant to call herself a composer (she sings and plays violin, among her many other musical activities), she was, at age 30, the youngest musician to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2013 for her Partita for unaccompanied voices. The work was recorded by Shaw’s ensemble, A Room Full of Teeth. She holds degrees in violin performance from Rice University, Yale, and has studied at Princeton. According to her website (carolineshaw.com), she also has received several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She has worked with a range of artists including Rosalía, Renée Fleming, and Yo Yo Ma, and she has contributed music to films and tv series including Fleishman is in Trouble, Bombshell, Yellowjackets, Maid, Dark, and Beyonce’s Homecoming. Her favorite color is yellow, and her favorite smell is rosemary. Her Entr’acte was originally composed for string quartet in 2011 and received its first performance in this version by the Brentano Quartet at Princeton in April of that year. The string orchestra adaptation was commissioned by the ensemble, A Far Cry, made in July 2014.

Caroline Shaw is a composer who defies categorization. She has distinguished herself equally in classical and popular music realms and continues to follow her own free spirit. Shaw describes the inspiration for Entr’acte as follows:

“Entr’acte was written in 2011 after hearing the Brentano Quartet play Haydn’s Op. 77 No. 2 — with their spare and soulful shift to the D-flat major trio in the minuet. It is structured like a minuet and trio, riffing on that classical form but taking it a little further. I love the way some music (like the minuets of Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, technicolor transition.

Entr’acte doesn’t overtly sound like Haydn (Listen to the Op. 77, No. 2. The “soulful shift” to D-flat major takes place at 2:10. Also notice the slyly comic way Haydn returns to the “A” section between 3:34 and 3:44). Throughout the piece we get subtle glimpses of classical and baroque music that has suddenly found itself in the wrong century. At moments, these fragments from an earlier time get a little unruly (the unchained baroque sequences around 6:22).

The opening is built on a descending ostinato bass line which breaks down into irregularity at the end of the phrase. The instruments seem to be sighing, mournfully and perhaps with exhaustion, foreshadowing later “sighs” which sound surprisingly vocal.” (https://timothyjuddviolin.com/2015/09/through-the-looking-glass-caroline-shaws-entracte/)

Symphony no. 1 in F Minor, Op. 10 

Dimitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, one of the Soviet Union’s greatest composers, was born in Saint Petersburg on September 12, 1906 and died in Moscow on August 9, 1975. Although he composed in a wide variety of genres, he is best known for his fifteen symphonies, works that stand among the finest examples of the genre from the mid-twentieth century. Composed in 1925, his First Symphony received its premiere performance on May 12, 1926 the Leningrad Philharmonic (now St. Petersburg conducted by Nikolai Malko). It is scored for 2 piccolos, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, alto trumpet in F, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, and strings.

Had the title not already been used for Prokofiev’s First Symphony, the title “Classical” might have fit nicely on Shostakovich’s first effort in the genre. This extraordinarily accomplished work represented his senior project at the Leningrad Conservatory. Shostakovich was admitted into this institution as a mere 13-year-old lad thanks to Alexander Glazunov’s recognition of the youth’s exceptional talent. Already a brilliant piano student, he added counterpoint, orchestration, and harmony to his curriculum, all of which earned him permission to write an original composition in his sixth, and final, year of study. When the work was first performed on May 12, 1926 in Leningrad, the now 20-year-old composer was immediately launched into musical celebrity. This fame was not just localized. Bruno Walter conducted it in Berlin in 1927 and Leopold Stokowski followed suit twelve months later with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Young Shostakovich had become an international star. This is not to say that life became easy for him. Coming from a poor background, Shostakovich was forced to do considerable hack work to make a living. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that his Symphony no. 1 marked an auspicious start to the career of one of the twentieth century’s most important compositional careers.

Composed in the traditional four movement scheme of the symphonic tradition, the work, while classically conceived in structure, is anything but classical in content. We can hear, even at this early stage in his development, the sarcastic wit, brilliant orchestration, and lyrical gift that are hallmarks of his style. The wit, some have observed, may have derived from a desire to emulate Prokofiev. While this may be true, it would be just as big a mistake to label Shostakovich as a mere imitator as it would be to dismiss the youthful Beethoven of his First Symphony as a mere imitator of Haydn and Mozart. From the opening conversation of the muted trumpet and bassoon with the Allegretto, Allegro non troppo first movement, Shostakovich forces us to play a guessing game of “what next?” Only when the droll march theme played by the solo clarinet begins do we realize that everything leading up to this point has been introductory. A second, more lyrical tune is presented in the solo flute. After a dramatic development section, the themes are recapitulated in reverse order—a continuation of the guessing game—capped off by sly hints at material from the introduction.

The wit continues unabated in the brief second movement that functions as the symphony’s scherzo. Its mocking theme (Allegro) yields to a quasi-religious and folklorish middle section (Meno Mosso) of haunting beauty. When the scherzo resumes, the two themes are superimposed on each other. The listener should also notice the way Shostakovich makes excellent use of the piano as an equal member of the orchestral palette. Indeed, his writing for the instrument in this movement anticipates his First Piano Concerto (1933). The third movement (Lento, Largo) begins with an evocative melody sung by the solo oboe. which is soon taken up by solo cello, followed by the violins. The music grows in volume and intensity, as a new fanfare figure begins to assert itself. As things calm down, the plaintive voice of the oboe returns, only to be interrupted by repeated statements of the fanfare. The entire movement is colored with a sense of mystery and drama, punctuated at the end by a sinister drum roll that leads without interruption into the finale. This movement begins slowly and dramatically and is marked by many changes of tempo, giving it a curiously episodic shape. Once the Allegro molto main body of the finale begins, we hear various transformations of themes from the earlier (especially first) movements. The climax of the movement features three dramatic measures of timpani solo. Nervous energy, drama, and, ultimately, sheer excitement, are brought to the fore here, with the last of these bringing the work to its whirlwind conclusion.