Subscription Concerts 2024-2025Program B
No. 2026 Subscription (Program B)

From the mid-19th century onward, the classical music world saw an increasing momentum toward nationalism. Composers from Northern and Eastern Europe, Spain and Russia derived inspiration from their nation’s folktales, nature, history and so forth. Existing folksongs or/and folkdances served frequently as their compositional materials.
A crucial figure of this movement was the Bohemian composer Bedřich Smetana (1824–1884). Born in Litomyšl, a Czech town then ruled by the Austrian Empire, he is considered the father of the Czech nationalist school in music. He is remembered especially with his patriotic orchestral cycle My Fatherland and eight Czech-language operas: the most popular among them is The Bartered Bride, a comic opera first staged in 1866 in Prague.
Set in a Bohemian countryside, the opera’s story features the peasant’s daughter Mařenka and her boyfriend Jeník who conceals his real identity. Mařenka’s parents try to marry her to Vašek, the wealthy landowner’s son. However, Jeník’s quick-wittedness leads to a happy ending for the young couple. The vivacious Overture at a tremendous velocity is a sonata with the F-major first subject and the C-major second subject, both introduced by the whole orchestra. This music will return at the second act’s finale where, in the presence of amazed villagers, Jeník signs a contract for money. Although it specifies that Mařenka must wed “the landowner’s son,” Jeník will later reveal that he is actually the landowner’s missing son by a former marriage.

[Kumiko Nishi]

Born into a Russian noble family, Sergei Rakhmaninov (1873–1943) lived a stormy life. He passed away in California, USA, a quarter of a century after he bid forever farewell in 1918 to his motherland ruled by the Soviets. Of all his piano concertos including Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (1934), the first three (Nos. 1 to 3) were penned before he escaped his beloved native land. Interestingly enough, these works of his pre-exile period already brim with a distinctive melancholy of the composer that commentators have often associated with his homesickness in exile.
Rakhmaninov, one of the greatest concert pianists in history as well, wrote the Piano Concerto No. 3 for himself in the summer of 1909 at his summer residence in Ivanovka, Russia. His plan was to play the work during his upcoming first American tour. He indeed premiered it with the New York Symphony Orchestra led by Walter Damrosch in November 1909 in New York. Rakhmaninov famously played it again there in January 1910 with Gustav Mahler conducting the New York Philharmonic. A well-known and astonishing episode says that Rakhmaninov learned the ultra-virtuosic solo part on board a transatlantic ship with a silent dummy keyboard for lack of preparation before the voyage.
The Piano Concerto No. 3 is an eloquent witness of Rakhmaninov’s reliance on the Western 19th-century Romantic idioms. This was unswerving during his long life treading in the footsteps of Tchaikovsky who trained Rakhmaninov’s composition teacher Taneyev. The Piano Concerto No. 3 casts in the classical three-movement form. What gives the whole piece a sense of unity is the opening sonata movement’s principal theme: this melody with a touch of pathos, introduced by the pianist immediately after the short orchestral introduction, will recur through the entire work undergoing perceptible or imperceptible metamorphosis. The middle movement is followed seamlessly without break by the finale which leads D-minor to D-major.

[Kumiko Nishi]

Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881) is well-known as a member of The Mighty Handful a.k.a The Five, along with Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Cui and their leader Balakirev. The most active around 1870, this Saint-Petersburg-based circle of young composers shared an aspiration to form and develop a nationalist school of Russian classical music following their precursor Glinka (1804–1857). One of the group’s stances was the anti-academic one: Mussorgsky was indeed self-trained except for some short-term instruction he received from Balakirev. As a result, Mussorgsky’s highly individual style and idioms were nurtured to the extent of guiding future generations to modernism: Debussy (1862–1918) and Shostakovich (1906–1975) famously modeled themselves after him with admiration.
Mussorgsky originally wrote the Pictures at an Exhibition for piano solo in 1874, shortly after visiting the memorial exhibition of the late architectural designer and painter Victor Hartmann, his close friend. In fact, this suite consists of several short movements evoking different pictures, inserting the recurring Promenade movement between them. This structure makes us feel as if someone—or we—rambled at a gallery and stopped in front of each work of art.
This masterwork-to-be was never performed publicly nor published during the composer’s lifetime. It appeared in print for the first time in 1886 with revisions by Rimsky-Korsakov. Though there exist numerous orchestral arrangements of this work, the ingeniously colorful one by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) (based on the Rimsky-Korsakov version) surely provided it with a high popularity.
Ravel the Magician of Orchestration had a creative idea of entrusting the first statement of Promenade to a trumpet solo and putting forward the brass section during this opening piece. I Gnome is described with staggering-like melodies. After the second Promenade, Ravel lets an alto saxophone sing a medieval troubadour’s song at II The Old Castle. The third Promenade and III Tuileries (Children’s Quarrel after Games) are followed by IV Cattle, a heavy movement with a tuba (replaced by a euphonium for today’s concert). The fourth Promenade comes in a minor mode. Ravel makes good use of flutes at lilting V Ballet of Unhatched Chicks, before VI Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle where forceful strings in unison embody Samuel, rich and arrogant, and a muted trumpet Schmuÿle, poor and servile. VII Limoges,The Market is a sort of scherzo. The brass play an active part in eerie VIII Catacombs (Roman Tomb), followed seamlessly by With the Dead in a Dead Language, a variation of Promenade. For IX The Hut on Hen’s Legs with tic tac rhythm, Mussorgsky was inspired by Hartmann’s drawing of a clock in the shape of the Russian witch Baba Yaga’s hut. X The Great Gate of Kiev is based on Hartmann’s design for Kiev’s city gates. In an almost sacred central part, church-like bells are heard and the Promenade’s theme is recalled evoking Russian Orthodox hymns, which effectively prepares the majestic conclusion of this finale.

[Kumiko Nishi]