Subscription Concerts 2022-2023Program C
No. 1978 Subscription (Program C)

In the 20th-century American music scene, there was no one else with as much charisma and versatility as Bernstein, who was the world's leading composer-conductor-pianist. He was also a dedicated educator and a national TV icon.
Premiered in 1957, West Side Story is one of the composer's best-known works and the biggest Broadway musical hit in history. Retelling Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, it is a tragic love story set in modern New York featuring Tony (ex-member of the youth gang, the "Jets") and Maria (sister of the leader of the "Sharks" gang). A great example of Bernstein's musical open-mindedness, his score embraces jazz and Latin music, contains varying rhythms and meters, and makes full use of a multicolored powerful orchestra with a large variety of percussion.
From this score full of immortal tuneful melodies, Bernstein prepared the orchestral suite Symphonic Dances in 1960. Performed without pause, these nine numbers are laid out regardless of the plot. The jazzy Prologue, enlivened by finger clapping and ended with a police whistle, depicts the antagonism between the two gangs. The dreamy Somewhere is to be recalled during Finale. Central two Latin dances, electrifying Mambo and calm Cha-cha, are from the musical's dance scene at a gym where Tony and Maria first meet and dance together. Finale pictures the sorrowful, eternal farewell of the star-crossed couple: Maria kisses dead Tony, and his body is carried by both gangs like a funeral procession.

[Kumiko Nishi]

Symphonic Dances, penned in 1940 in the USA, is Rakhmaninov's swan song. Upon completion of it, he foretold that it was presumably his "last sparkle" as he had no energy and fire left in him. And it became a reality when he passed away in California in 1943, a quarter of a century after he bid forever farewell to his beloved motherland ruled by the Soviets.
Although the work was premiered in 1941 as a pure instrumental piece, the Russian composer seemed likely to intend these "Dances" to be real dances with the help of his compatriot Michel Fokine. This legendary dancer and choreographer had created a successful ballet in 1939 using Rakhmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, however this time the idea didn't come true as Fokine died in 1942.
Rakhmaninov had initially given the three movements of Symphonic Dances the descriptive or possibly figurative titles Midday, Twilight and Midnight that he retracted before the premiere. The first C-minor Dance is in ternary form. Its middle section lets the alto saxophone sing a pensive tune which is known as the first melody Rakhmaninov wrote for the instrument in his life. The coda abruptly cites his Symphony No. 1 (1895) of which the first performance ended in fiasco. The next slower Dance is an eerie, even macabre waltz. The third Dance has a dismal introduction followed by the powerful main section in ternary form. After the two primary themes are heard, Rakhmaninov brings the mortality to mind, making the orchestra repeat the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) melody from the Catholic Mass for the Dead. He had obsessively quoted this sinister melody in several of his previous works including the above-mentioned Paganini Rhapsody. Then immediately before the coda, he revisits his own choral composition All-Night Vigil (1915) evoking the Resurrection. This final Dance's conclusion is in a state of extreme excitement to end the composer's quasi-autobiographical, quasi-testamentary music.

[Kumiko Nishi]