THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA | 2019-2020 65
Program Notes
would be easier, but in my profession it is a terrible
handicap.’’
Beethoven revered Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24,
also in the key of C minor, and the similarities are
intended. But Beethoven – ever the protagonist
of change – goes further. His concerto is more
symphonic, his piano more virtuosic, his
development more integrated, complex, and
dramatic. With Mozart, soloist and orchestra
cooperate. With Beethoven, they compete.
The C Minor Concerto helped usher in a Romanticera
voice, replacing the polite with the imposing
and setting the stage for the soloist as a keyboard
wizard. A tumultuous first movement and
boisterous finale flank an exquisite largo in E major,
what the Allegmeine Musikalische Zeitung in 1805
described as “one of the most expressive and richly
sensitive instrumental pieces ever written.’’ As he
did later in his Fifth Symphony, Beethoven resolves
all tension in the end, the C minor storm giving way
to C major sunlight.
IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882-1971)
PULCINELLA, BALLET IN ONE ACT
Duration: ca. 42 minutes
Imagine hitting three home runs to win the World
Series – in your rookie year. That’s how a young Igor
Stravinsky must have felt after knocking it out of the
park with a trio of huge hits: Firebird, Petrushka, and
Rite of Spring. Overnight, Stravinsky became the
darling of the music world, and Serge Diaghilev, the
impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes who
staged Stravinsky’s three masterpieces, wanted to
stay in the game.
So Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to write
a one-act ballet based on the play Four Identical
Pulcinellas, featuring a stock character from the
commedia dell ‘arte, an early form of theater and
street puppet show. Diaghilev borrowed copies of
manuscripts by an 18th century Neapolitan composer
named Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, whose Stabat
Mater and La Serva Padrona were performed across
Europe. Pouring over the scores, Stravinsky said he
“fell in love’’ with Pergolesi, and using a mélange
of works – chamber music, cantatas, opera – he
created what would become Pulcinella, his most
popular neo-classic composition, with sets and
costumes designed by Pablo Picasso.
Stravinsky based his work for voices and small
orchestra on a set of 12 trio sonatas published
in London 35 years after Pergolesi’s death. The
music, however, was not by Pergolesi but a minor
composer named Domenico Gallo. One likely reason
for this is that Pergolesi – considered a musical
genius – died in 1736 at the age of 26, cutting short
a brilliant career and potential profits for sellers of
sheet music. So, in the absence of more genuine
works, “new’’ pieces by Pergolesi kept popping up
throughout the 19th century, fueling the “wholesale
production of false Pergolesiana by unscrupulous
publishers,’’ according to the opera translator and
librettist Amanda Holden.
But no matter. With Pulcinella, listeners are in
Stravinsky’s stylized world, not Pergolesi’s. This
weekend, TFO teams up with Tampa City Ballet,
soprano, tenor and bass in the original one-act
ballet with 21 brief sections (as opposed to the
orchestral suite often performed). The ballet takes
place on a street in Naples and tells of the story of
Pulcinella and his estranged girlfriend, Pimpinella,
who is not happy with his cheating ways. Pulcinella
and his buddies create an elaborate ruse to trick
her into forgiveness, and in the end the two reunite,
while Pulcinella’s pals marry their own sweethearts.
Stravinsky begins with a simple tune that sounds
like an 18th century dance, but isn’t, because these
abrupt tempo changes, edgy harmonies and colors
were unimaginable back then Stravinsky wanted
audiences to see the past through a modern lens,
refocusing the music through what he called a
“disequilibrium of instruments’’ rather than a
balance of instruments.
Toward the end of his career, Stravinsky called
Pulcinella “the epiphany through which the whole
of my late work became possible. It was a backward
look … but it was a look in the mirror, too.’’
Program notes © 2019 by Kurt Loft, a freelance writer
and former music critic for The Tampa Tribune.