Program Notes
NIKOLAI RIMSKY-KORSAKOV (1844-1908)
THE GOLDEN COCKEREL (INTRODUCTION
AND WEDDING MARCH)
Duration: ca. 9 minutes
Some composers excel at crafting tunes, while
others are rhythmic innovators. Then there are
those with a knack for lining up all of an orchestra’s
moving parts. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov had this gift,
a master orchestrator who gave us works of rich,
opulent coloring and Oriental exoticism, notably
Scheherazade, the Russian Easter Festival Overture,
and Capriccio Espagnol. And let’s not forget his
most famous nugget, Flight of the Bumblebee,
which might pop up as an encore at your next piano
recital.
Rimsky-Korsakov was a member of The Mighty Five,
a group of Russian composers that included Modest
Mussorgsky, Cesar Cui, Alexander Borodin, and
Mily Balakirev. Their aim was a Russian nationalist
tradition in music, free of the influence of Germany,
France and Italy. Rimsky-Korsakov, however, was
frustrated by the inconsistent skills of his friends,
and was not shy in dabbling in or “correcting’’
their uneven or incomplete works. His fingerprints,
for example, are all over Mussorgsky’s Night on
Bald Mountain and Boris Godunov, and Borodin’s
Prince Igor. Alert listeners can hear his influence in
the early compositions of two of his most famous
pupils, Prokofiev and Stravinsky.
After attending the first Russian performances of
Wagner’s Ring cycle, Rimsky-Korsakov devoted
himself to writing a dozen operas, the last being
The Golden Cockerel. Composed in 1907 and
based on a satirical poem by Pushkin, the opera
involves a magic bird that sings of peace in good
times and nasty things in bad times. Censors and
Russian authorities saw the opera as an insult to
the state and halted productions. The first public
performance was given a year after Rimsky-
Korsakov’s death.
Tonight you will hear the composer’s concert
arrangement of two short sections from the opera,
the Introduction and Wedding March. The first
opens with a piercing trumpet call, followed by
a mysterious, whirling theme in the low strings
that sets up an exotic tune from the clarinet. The
THE FLORIDA OR 64 CHESTRA | 2019-2020
music slows almost to a dirge, with plucked strings
suggesting something new about to happen. This
gives way to the procession, a lighthearted romp
that builds a head of steam and turns into a surreal
march not unlike Ravel’s La Valse.
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 IN C MINOR, OP. 37
Duration: ca. 34 minutes
Thirty-five years ago, before a performance at the
University of Tampa’s McKay Auditorium, Byron
Janis sat down to talk about playing Beethoven’s
Third Piano Concerto. Janis was soloist with the
Florida Gulf Coast Symphony – now The Florida
Orchestra – and had performed the work countless
times over his career. He knew it from the heart, and
never tired of its rumble and wonder.
“It’s really the first concerto where Beethoven
shakes his fist at the world,’’ Janis said in an
interview for The Tampa Tribune. “It’s when he
leaves Mozart behind and becomes Beethoven.’’
Those words stuck. Here is music of an awakening
giant, a journey before him as he steps from his
youthful Viennese past into uncharted territory he
would view in the light of the heroic ideal. It also
would reveal much about Beethoven’s power in
creating mood through key relationships.
“Beethoven in C minor has come to symbolize his
artistic character,’’ writes pianist Charles Rosen,
author of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas: A Short
Companion. “In every case, it reveals Beethoven
as a Hero. C minor does not show Beethoven at
his most subtle, but it does give him to us in his
most extrovert form, where he seems to be most
impatient of any compromise.’’
What might be most remarkable about the Third
Piano Concerto is the context in which it was
composed. By 1800, the 30-year-old composer
began to notice problems with his hearing and,
realizing his condition was both serious and
particularly cruel, given his art, he wrote to a friend:
“I must confess that I am living a miserable life. For
almost two years I have ceased to attend any social
functions, just because I find it impossible to say to
people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession it