All Rachmaninoff - Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra

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6 mixed chorus, this thirty-five minute work employs and orchestra of three flutes and piccolo, three oboes and English horn, three clarinets and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, six horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, five percussionists (bass drum, cymbals, suspended cymbal, snare drum, tambourine, tam-tam, triangle, glockenspiel, bells), harp, celesta, upright piano (pianino), organ (optional) and strings. Zdenek Macal led the most recent series performances of the work in March 1993. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is a particularly attractive figure to American artists, for, in addition to the intrinsic value of his poems and short stories, he was the first American whose works had a profound influence in Europe. The musical quality of Poe’s poetry gave it particular appeal to composers. Certainly one of Poe’s most musical poems is The Bells, written in 1848, just one year before the hard-living poet’s death (probably from encephalitis). Born of anguished genius, his poem magically evolves with word, rhythm, image and sound from the silver bells of childhood to the graveside’s clanging iron knell. Recalling the genesis of his 1913 choral symphony on this poem, Rachmaninoff said: “The inspiration for The Bells came from an unusual source. I had already during the previous summer sketched a plan for a symphony. Then, one day I received an anonymous letter from one of those people who constantly pursue artists with their more or less welcome attentions. The sender begged me to read [Constantin] Balmont’s wonderful [Russian] translation of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, ‘The Bells,’ saying that the verses were ideally suited for a musical setting and would particularly appeal to me. I read the enclosed verses, and decided at once to use them for a choral symphony. The structure of the poem demanded a Symphony in four movements. Since Tchaikovsky’s example [Symphony No. 6, “Pathetiqué”], the idea of a lugubrious and slow finale, which seemed necessary, held nothing strange. This composition, on which I worked with feverish ardor, is still the one I like best of all my works; after it comes my ‘Vesper Mass’—then there is a long gap between it and the rest. But this is only by the way.” In his biography of the composer, Rachmaninoff—The Man and His Music (Oxford University Press, NY, 1950), John Culshaw writes: Ironically, it was this work, more than any other, that caused the Soviet attack of 1931. Pravda, in that year, published a bitter article describing the composer as “the former bard of the Russian wholesale merchants and the bourgeoisie—a composer who was played out long ago and whose music is that of an insignificant imitator and reactionary.” Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote the famous text, is very gently treated in comparison with the unfortunate Balmont, who is called “half-idiotic, decadent, and mystical.” Whether, in view of Rachmaninoff’s recent acquittal by the Soviet authorities, The Bells is among those works now reinstated in the U.S.S.R. is unknown. In any case, its lavish scoring has proved an obstacle to its regular performance anywhere. Poe’s poem is far too well known to call for any lengthy comment, but it must be remembered that Rachmaninoff’s music is based on Balmont’s version of the words, which differ considerably from the original. The difference is interesting and revealing; the original is a masterly piece of imagination, vivid, strong, and a fearfully objective as the bells whose spirit it seems to capture.… Balmont’s version is more of a paraphrase taking for its basis only the superficial story and the birth-death symbolism of Poe’s original. Where Poe is bitter and objective, Balmont is melodramatic and tending toward subjectivity. It says much for Rachmaninoff in that his setting reaches at times a degree of imagination worthy of the original. The poem is clothed in music of remarkable power, and the setting is only a failure on one point—it loses at once the urge, the unfailing progress of the original poem. The Bells as a poem is short not in length but in the terrible, almost hysterical momentum with which it carries the reader from the naïve opening to the cynical fatalism of the end. Balmont lost that momentum in a welter of melodrama, and Rachmaninoff nearly, but not quite, restored it. He maintains the tension and excitement by his use of the chorus, which for the larger part of the work is the most important continued
7 factor, even when supporting the soloists, whose words it echoes with quiet, penetrating insistence. It is fascinating that this work was largely composed while the composer and his family were on an extended vacation in Rome; Rachmaninoff worked in the same apartment on the Piazza di Spagna that was once occupied by Modest Tchaikovsky, and was often visited by his brother, the famed composer Peter Ilyich. In four movements, corresponding to the four stanzas of Poe’s poem, The Bells begins with an Allegro ma non tanto that features solo tenor. With soprano solo, the second movement is slow (Lento); the third is a large scherzo (Presto) and the finale features solo baritone in another slow movement, Lento lugubre. These performances will utilize Belmont’s Russian translation, for this is the way that Rachmaninoff originally composed the work. When the composer conducted this work in Chicago in 1941, he requested that the program contain Poe’s original poem; here, therefore, is that original poem: The Bells Edgar Allan Poe I Hear the sledges with the bells— Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars, that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight, Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. II Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats The turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gust of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing continued
Page 1 and 2: All Rachmaninoff Edo de Waart, cond
Page 3 and 4: 3 GUEST ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES RICHARD
Page 5: 5 Concerto No. 1 in F-sharp minor,
Page 9 and 10: 9 And the people—ah, the people
Page 11: 11 Else I die of my desire in aspir

All Rachmaninoff - Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra

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