Program Notes: Augustin Hadelich Plays Prokofiev

ALBERTO GINASTERA 
Malambo from Estancia 
BORN: April 11, 1916, in Buenos Aires 
DIED: June 25, 1983, in Geneva 
WORK COMPOSED: 1941 
WORLD PREMIERE: A suite of four dances from Estancia was introduced at the Teatro Coloacuten in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1943, though the ballet wasn’t actually premiered until 1952 by the Colón Theater Ballet in Buenos Aires.  

What to Listen For: 

• The fast-paced final movement of Estancia takes its title from a dance that has become a competition among Argentine cowboys, characterized by fast and constant movement in eighth notes and a constant 6/8 rhythm. 

The fast-paced final movement of Estancia takes its title from a dance that has become a competition among Argentine cowboys, characterized by fast and constant movement in eighth notes and a constant 6/8 rhythm. 

Argentine-born composer Alberto Ginastera combined indigenous musical motifs from his homeland with advanced European-based, 20th-century techniques. Born and trained in Buenos Aires, he established himself as both a composer and teacher. He taught at several conservatories in his native land before moving to Geneva, Switzerland, in 1971. He is best remembered for his astonishingly vital ballet, Estancia (“Ranch”), composed in 1941 for the American Ballet Caravan, which folded the following year. The complete ballet had to wait more than a decade for its premiere. In the interim, the composer extracted four movements as “Dances from the Ballet, Estancia,” which have become concert mainstays over the past half-century plus.  

An estancia is a farm or cattle ranch on the vast grassy Argentine pampas. The composer commented, “Whenever I have crossed the pampas or have lived in it for a time, my spirit felt itself inundated by changing impressions, now joyful, now melancholy, some full of euphoria and others replete with a profound tranquility, produced by the limitless immensity and by the transformation that the countryside undergoes in the course of a day." 

The four-movement work revels in orchestral color, embracing the spirit and rhythms of Argentina along with textures redolent of both Bartók and Stravinsky. The final section, Malambo, has enjoyed great popularity on its own. In the Danza Final, Ginastera summons all the rhythmic élan of the malambo, danced only by men in demonstration of their “machismo.” Traditionally, the winner of this physically taxing, frenzied exhibition is the last man to remain standing. Few pieces in the orchestral repertoire can rival Malambo for its unstoppable fervor. 

Steven Lowe © 2008, revised 2025 
 

SERGEY PROKOFIEV
Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Op. 19 
BORN: April 23, 1891, in Sontsovka, Ukraine 
DIED: March 5, 1953, in Moscow, Russia 
WORK COMPOSED: 1915–1917 
WORLD PREMIERE: October 18, 1923, in Paris, with violinist Marcel Darrieux and Serge Koussevitzky conducting the Paris Opera Orchestra. 

What to Listen For:  

• The first of Prokofiev’s two concertos for violin and orchestra blends clarity of form and texture with an original and idiomatic use of the solo instrument. The inverting of the usual fast-slow-fast three-movement design is another original touch. 

The first of Prokofiev’s two concertos for violin and orchestra blends clarity of form and texture with an original and idiomatic use of the solo instrument. The inverting of the usual fast-slow-fast three-movement design is another original touch. 

In 1915, Sergey Prokofiev — 24 years old and already established as one of Russia’s most talented composers — began writing a small-scale concertino for violin and orchestra. He had made only preliminary sketches for this piece, however, before setting it aside to begin an opera based on Dostoevsky’s story, The Gambler. Composition of that work occupied most of the succeeding two years, but with its completion, Prokofiev turned again to instrumental music with renewed enthusiasm. One of the first projects to claim his attention was the violin concertino, which he expanded into a full-length concerto. The score was completed in the summer of 1917 but, due to the political upheavals in Russia, was first performed six years later in Paris. 

Like Prokofiev’s well-known Classical Symphony, completed at almost the same time, the First Violin Concerto is distinguished by transparent textures and clear, uncluttered musical architecture, the latter derived in part from the composer’s re-workings of 18th-century forms. The work reveals, however, several original features, the most obvious being the layout of its three movements. Whereas the traditional concerto format calls for a relaxed central movement framed by two fast ones, Prokofiev reverses this formula, casting the second part of his concerto as an animated scherzo to contrast with more moderately paced outer movements.   

The concerto opens with what its composer described as a “pensive” melody, presented by the solo violin over a cushion of tremolo sonority provided by its orchestral colleagues. A second subject, with sinuous line and brusque countermelody (heard in the cellos), contrasts sharply with the lyricism of the opening. Prokofiev’s development of these ideas takes the form of an athletic fantasy, culminating in a cadenza-like solo for the violin. The return of the principal theme is accompanied with glistening harmonics (which produce high, glassy tones) in the solo part, a striking effect. 

Unusual violin timbres play an even more pronounced role in the succeeding movement, which calls forth an array of glissando (sliding the finger up a string to produce a swooping tone), harmonics, sul ponticello (playing near the bridge of the instrument, which produces a slightly metallic sound), and other extraordinary techniques from the soloist. These serve to heighten the fantastic, almost surreal, quality of the music, one that we encounter frequently in Prokofiev’s work. 

The finale offers a synthesis and reconciliation of the contrasting characters of the preceding movements. Its initial measures — dry accompaniment figures and an ironic, march-like melody for bassoon — promise to continue in the vein of the second movement. But the solo violin quickly steers the music in a lyrical direction reminiscent of the concerto’s opening. The ensuing music conveys something of each of these moods until, suddenly, the principal theme of the first movement reappears, as if in a dream, and leads the piece to a tranquil conclusion. 

Paul Schiavo © 2011, revised 2025 
 

SILVESTRE REVUELTAS  
La noche de los Mayas (The Night of the Maya) 
BORN: December 31, 1899, in Santiago Papasquiaro, Durango, Mexico 
DIED: October 4, 1940, in Mexico City, Mexico 
WORK COMPOSED: 1939 
WORLD PREMIERE: La noche de los Mayas is a film score for the 1939 film of the same name; Revueltas died less than a year after its release and it never had an official world premiere while he was alive. The score was first arranged for performance by German composer Paul Hindemith and Mexican conductor José Yves Limantour; the latter arrangement will be the one presented in this concert, and it had its world premiere January 30, 1961, by the Guadalajara Symphony Orchestra. 

What to Listen For:  

• Limantour made a four-movement suite from La noche de los Mayas, in which he “took every imaginable liberty,” including the addition of a concluding, extended “improvisation” of exotic percussion instruments, which is largely responsible for the music’s ongoing popularity. 

Limantour made a four-movement suite from La noche de los Mayas, in which he “took every imaginable liberty,” including the addition of a concluding, extended “improvisation” of exotic percussion instruments, which is largely responsible for the music’s ongoing popularity. 

What we know today as La Noche de los Mayas (The Night of the Maya) is the rare case of a soundtrack that has long outlived the movie for which it was composed. Great film scores are usually remembered and performed with at least an allusion to — sometimes an actual screening of — the movie. But that’s not the case with Silvestre Revueltas’ concert piece La Noche de los Mayas, originally composed for a 1939 Mexican film by director Chano Urueta that is all but forgotten. What we’re hearing tonight is a four-movement symphonic suite that was culled from the 36 cues that Revueltas composed for the film not long before his death in 1940, at age 40. 

Revueltas, whose spellbinding music follows primitivist rhythms, composed eight film scores in the last five years of his short life, starting with Redes (1936). These were movies of a patriotic bent, and Revueltas managed to capture the spirit of the country without resorting to kitsch. Shot in the jungles of Yucatán, La noche de los Mayas spins an improbable love triangle between a Mayan couple and an intruding white man who seduces the woman. The forbidden affair brings drought and famine to the people of Yucatán, followed by revenge, bloodshed and tragedy.  

Although the composer Paul Hindemith had arranged some of Revueltas’ music into a short two-movement suite in the 1940s, that version — like the film itself — has been eclipsed by the four-movement suite prepared by conductor José Yves Limantour in 1959. It’s an exciting, neatly assembled symphonic work that serves as a homage to pre-Hispanic civilizations, bursting with rhythmic interplay and exotic instrumentation, especially in the fourth movement. The piece was premiered by the Guadalajara Symphony Orchestra in 1961. 

The first movement, Noche de los Mayas, opens with a gong splash and bass drum that introduce the robust main theme for strings. The music immediately suggests imperial grandeur but also foreboding — the gods are about to be ruffled. There is a quieter contrasting theme in the middle with highlights from a solo flute. 

The party is on for Noche de Jaranas (Night of Revelry): a rhythmic scherzo based on the son, a type of folk song and dance from Mexico. Revueltas evokes the down-home flavor of the scene, with music set in alternating compound meters, and with interjections from tuba and horn. Like the other movements, the contrast between the themes and within the instrumentation — we go from tuba to piccolo in a breeze — is overt, yet the music flows gracefully and naturally.   

Noche de Yucatán (Yucatan Night) is a serene contemplation at the end of an eventful day. Revueltas draws pristine sounds from the woodwinds and horn over Mahlerian strings. About five minutes into the movement, there is a section for solo flute and percussion that quotes from “Koonex, koonex” (Let’s go, let’s go), a Mayan lullaby. “Let’s go, let’s go, children. The sun is already setting,” is the first line, in the original Mayan language. 

After a last nocturnal musing from solo horn and clarinet, the mood turns violent as Revueltas takes us directly into Noche de Encantamiento (Night of Enchantment). It opens with basses slapping the strings percussively against the fretboard, followed by a menacing oboe melody. The suite’s flashy section for extended percussion finally explodes. At least 11 players take over with teponaztli (slit drums), xylophone, bongo drums, congas, guiro and a large conch, among other percussion instruments. In the last few minutes of the onslaught, the theme from the very beginning returns to end the suite where it began. 

Esteban Meneses © 2025 

Esteban Meneses is a fellow of the 2022 Rubin Institute for Music Criticism, a freelance arts and music journalist, and a bilingual public relations consultant. Read his articles here.