Program Notes: 2022/2023 Season Opening Night Concert

Virtuoso pianist Jan Lisiecki performs Chopin's Andante spianato and Grand polonaise brillante at the Seattle Symphony's 2022/2023 Season Opening Night Concert. Photo by Christoph Köstlin/Deutsche Grammophon.

ANGELIQUE POTEAT 
Breathe, Come Together, Embrace 
BORN: January 8, 1986, in San Francisco, California 
WORK COMPOSED: 2022 
WORLD PREMIERE: September 17, 2022, with Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot at Benaroya Hall 

What to Listen For: 

• A brief brass fanfare led by the trumpets opens the middle and final section; listen for the throaty low notes in the bass trombone and tuba. 

• Splashy, flourishing figures in the harp herald changes in mood and sometimes tempo. 

Seattle Symphony Artist in Residence Angelique Poteat inaugurates our 2022/2023 concert season with music of energy and optimism. The composer hopes Breathe, Come Together, Embrace will evoke “breathing freely, coming together with people again and embracing the new.”  

Breathe defies stereotypical expectations of the title. Instead of labored exhalation, Poteat, who had planned to attend medical school, treats breathing as a lyrical, complex system. Immediately, darting inquisitive figures from the oboes, clarinets, bassoons and strings summon a playful flute melody. Against a discreet veil of string harmonics, the call-and-response builds. Piccolo and another flute join in a sprightly dance. The call of the flutes and response of strings and brass soon swirl together like swallows racing each other in the sky. 

A brief brass fanfare opens the middle section, Come Together. Marked “Gentle and Expressive” in the score, a brass chorale accompanies the once-vivacious flute line, now played by the oboe. This somber, reluctant anthem is gradually coaxed from the gloom by mellow brass chords and increasingly insistent interjections by the strings. 

Embrace begins with a slightly faster, more agitated version of the fanfare heard earlier at the start of Come Together. Undergirded by a long, low droning D in the double basses (the violas play the name note two octaves higher in a tension-building tremolo), a hushed, almost magical incantation ensues between the bassoon and cellos. Soon a luminous aura of serpentine motifs appears in the violins and violas. In the finale, the quickly darting figures from Breathe reappear, as if enchanted and happy to be heard and seen again.  

FRÉDÉRIC CHOPIN 
Andante spianato and Grand polonaise brillante, Op. 22 
BORN: March 1, 1810, at Zelazowa Wola, near Warsaw, Poland 
DIED: October 17, 1849, in Paris, France 
WORK COMPOSED: 1830-1831 (Grand polonaise brillante) and 1834 (Andante spianato) 
WORLD PREMIERE: April 26, 1835, in Paris, France, with the composer at the piano 

What to Listen For: 

• Fast flickering notes ornament the opening; Chopin’s friend Liszt described them as “falling like tiny drops of speckled dew.”  

• Chopin brackets the transition to the Grande polonaise brillante with a brief hymn and momentary silence. 

The Andante spianato and Grand polonaise brillante has a double identity, one as a virtuosic work for solo piano and another, heard this evening, as a condensed piano concerto. Furthermore, the two parts — the Andante and the polonaise — were composed several years apart and conjoined in 1834. Chopin performed this version for piano and orchestra only once, for a benefit concert in 1835. Despite his renown as a Romantic artist, Chopin was also practical. In subsequent recitals, Chopin employed the Andante spianato as a preamble to the Impromptu Op. 36, the third Ballade and his beloved B-flat Scherzo. 

Chopin’s practicality extended to writing for the orchestra; here, the instrumentation offers supportive and only occasionally colorful accompaniment. Another great piano recitalist, Franz Liszt, explained that his friend Chopin was truly interested in only one instrument and had “rejected all temptations in order to unleash all the power that an orchestra has, through the voice of the violin’s bow, the languishing unrest of the flutes, to the blaring of the trumpets.” 

A showcase for solo piano, Andante spianato is notable not only for its name — the Italian verb spianare means “to smooth out” — but for its gliding, tranquil grace. Fast flickering notes ornament a melody amid rippling chords in the left hand. These ravishing, palpitating phrases yield to a hymn that edges tentatively into plain, almost academic counterpoint. As if fearful of anything staid, Chopin hastily returns to the cascading rush of sound heard at the beginning. 

Chopin inserts another transition by returning momentarily to the hymn, which tolls quietly into the silence. Stately horns announce the Grand polonaise brillante. Another dramatic pause clears the way for six pizzicati — plucked notes — in the strings. Chopin quickly transforms the polonaise, the grand processional dance of his native Poland, into a showpiece. The orchestra occasionally interjects energetic tuttis and helps finish a phrase here and there, however, it is the pianist who welds expansive, often breathtaking phrases together. 

Camille Saint-Saëns, himself a virtuoso pianist, believed much of Chopin’s music should be played spianato, “without nuances or discontinuities in the rhythm” and warned that it is “impossible for those whose hands are not graced with perfect suppleness.” 
 
CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS 
La muse et le poète 
BORN: October 9, 1835, in Paris, France 
DIED: December 16, 1921, in Algiers, Algeria 
WORK COMPOSED: 1909–1910 
WORLD PREMIERE: June 7, 1910, in London, England 

What to Listen For: 

• The voice of “la muse” is the cello while the violin plays the role of “le poète.” 

• After the introduction, Saint-Saëns offers a lyrical trio for oboe, clarinet and horn. 

“I produce music as an apple tree produces apples,” quipped Camille Saint-Saëns. The composer — who lived long enough to regret missing a Chopin recital in his youth and in the next century condemn Debussy, Stravinsky and Milhaud — wrote a vast amount of music. One obituary estimated that Saint-Saëns’ complete catalogued output could reach 350 opus numbers. La muse et le poète seemed destined to get lost amidst the composer’s many concertos, symphonies and sheaves of chamber music. 

Originally titled Esquisses (“Sketches”), Saint-Saëns composed the work for a chamber trio of violin, cello and piano while on holiday in Egypt. A few months later, the composer revised it for violin, cello and orchestra. Durand, Saint-Saëns’s publisher, cannily renamed it La muse et le poète, much to the annoyance of the composer! 

Numbered opus 132 in the composer’s catalogue, La muse et le poète is an unusual piece, at once a double concerto and a symphonic (or tone) poem. Unlike the sparring and dueling among soloists and orchestra, Saint-Saëns has fashioned a dialogue between two complex characters. As the voice of the Muse, the violin leads the conversation while the cello, by turns wistful and gruff, responds tersely. Chatty and consoling, the violin becomes increasingly animated, prodding the cello into longer, expansive replies. Violin and cello gradually converge, shadowing and elaborating each other’s statements. United, they find balance, order and clarity in a conclusion reminiscent (and worthy) of Mozart. 

MAURICE RAVEL 
Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2 
BORN: March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France 
DIED: December 28, 1937, in Paris, France 
WORK COMPOSED: 1911–1912 
WORLD PREMIERE: June 8, 1912, in Paris, France 

What to Listen For: 

• Folk-like melodies played by the flute, alto flute, oboe and clarinet.  

• Smeared notes called glissandi, where one note glides to another. Ravel often deploys this effect in the harp to move into another mood or section of the music. 

Sergei Diaghilev, founder and maestro of the Ballets Russes, took pride in commissioning the leading composers of the day, notably Stravinsky (The Firebird and Petrushka among others) and Debussy (Jeux). Yet Daphnis et Chloé caused Ravel and Diaghilev no end of mutual irritation and agony. 

The impresario was indifferent to the music. But Durand, Ravel’s publisher, kept pleading and Diaghilev acceded, eventually losing interest in the ballet. Ravel’s opulent orchestration and rhythmic vigor didn’t mesh with the mythic Greek story of Chloé, a shepherdess kidnapped by pirates who is rescued by the god Pan and reunited with her true love Daphnis, a goatherd. Diaghilev reduced the number of rehearsals and, skimping further, reused costumes from a previous ballet. In subsequent performances, he didn’t even bother to hire a chorus. The composer was furious. 

Unbowed, Ravel bisected the ballet into two suites of continuous music. The second suite has proven more popular than the complete ballet. Arguably Ravel’s greatest achievement, Daphnis et Chloé ranks among the most lushly scored music of the 20th century. 

In Lever du jour (“Daybreak”), Ravel depicts a dawn chorus with rippling harp glissandi and fluttering flutes and clarinets. Amid this glittering pageant, a broad, languorous theme in the violas and cellos hovers and then emerges in the violins. The section ends with a lilting song played by the oboe, an instrument associated with shepherds, and continues into the middle Pantomime. The English horn joins the oboe while the harp chimes quietly in the background. Steady pizzicato strings accompany another frolicking flute tune which, after a cymbal crash, blossoms into a sumptuous, melancholy melody. 

Ravel crafted the Danse générale (“General Dance”) to celebrate the reunited Daphnis and Chloé. Most Western music is grouped in two, three, four or six beats, but Ravel uses groups of five to whip up frenzied joy. A fast tempo and shifting melodic lines from the strings to the trumpets and clarinets cloak these asymmetrical, exciting pulsations. Rehearsing before the ballet’s premiere, dancers coped with the stampeding divisi (divided) strings by counting aloud the five beats with five syllables: “Ser-gei-Dia-ghi-lev.” Daphnis et Chloé ends with the symphonic equivalent of a giant hurrah: an ebullient, roaring tremolo in which the orchestra shouts as one voice. 

All notes by Christopher DeLaurenti © 2022