Program Notes: Bernstein & Rachmaninov

SAMUEL BARBER 
Intermezzo from Vanessa 
BORN: March 9, 1910, in Westchester, Pennsylvania 
DIED: January 23, 1981, in New York City 
WORK COMPOSED: 1956–1957 
WORLD PREMIERE: January 15, 1958, by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City under the baton of Dimitri Mitropoulos in a production designed by Cecil Beaton and directed by Gian Carlo Menotti.  

One of the most celebrated American composers of the mid-20th century, Samuel Barber earned the Pulitzer Prize in Music twice. The first was in 1958 for his opera Vanessa, based on a libretto by the composer’s (romantic and professional) partner of more than 40 years, Gian Carlo Menotti. Menotti, in turn, took inspiration from the ambiance of Isak Dinesen’s eerie, atmospheric Seven Gothic Tales.  

The title character of Barber’s dark, dramatic work of longing is a middle-aged woman who was abandoned by her lover Anatol 20 years earlier and has retreated from the world, awaiting his return while living in an isolated country estate with her niece, Erika, and mother. When a stranger shows up claiming to be Anatol’s son, he disrupts their delicate harmony, befriending the at-once-infatuated Vanessa and seducing Erika, who he gets pregnant and proposes to, though he ultimately ends up marrying and running away with Vanessa instead. Meanwhile Erika, who turned down his proposal, loses the baby and remains at the estate, hoping she will find her own true love one day. 

The haunting orchestral Intermezzo falls between two scenes in the final act, following Erika’s tragic miscarriage, and expresses the angst, dissonance and turbulence of the opera with ornate melancholic tonality. The Intermezzo provides a moment of quiet emotional release and a lyrical reflection on the characters’ struggles with love, loss and reality.   

Leilani Polk © 2025 

LEONARD BERNSTEIN 
Serenade, after Plato’s Symposium 
BORN: August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, Massachusetts 
DIED: October 14, 1990, in New York City 
WORK COMPOSED: 1954 
WORLD PREMIERE: September 12, 1954, in Venice, with Isaac Stern on violin and Bernstein conducting. 

More than three decades after his death, Leonard Bernstein’s name and reputation as a 20th century musical icon are secure. Songs from his landmark Broadway musical West Side Story are universally known. The Overture to Candide renews itself in countless performances as both an opening piece on concert programs and as encore just as often. Even Mass, initially panned as a hopeless pastiche of trendy stylistic tendencies, has acquired a lustrous patina in recent years. But among his works that are currently performed more than others is Bernstein’s concerto-like five-movement Serenade, after Plato’s Symposium, deftly scored for solo violin, string orchestra, harp and percussion. The much-played work resulted from a Koussevitzky Foundation commission, with the composer dedicating Serenade “to the beloved memory of Serge and Natalie Koussevitzky.” Since its premiere in 1954, it has become one of the most frequently performed American works for violin and orchestra. 

Bernstein rejected the notion of providing a program note for the Serenade, yet he permitted the following annotation to be used at the front of the printed score: 

“There is no literal program for the Serenade, despite the fact that it resulted from a re-reading of Plato’s charming dialogue, The Symposium. The music, like the dialogue, is a series of related statements in praise of love and generally follows the Platonic form through the succession of speakers at the banquet. The ‘relatedness’ of the movements does not depend on common thematic material, but rather on a system whereby each movement evolves out of elements in the preceding one. For the benefit of those interested in literary allusion, I might suggest the following points as guideposts: 
 
“I. Phaedrus—Pausanias: Lento—Allegro. Phaedrus opens the symposium with a lyrical oration in praise of Eros, the god of love. (Fugato, begun by the solo violin.) Pausanias continues by describing the duality of lover and beloved. This is expressed in a classical sonata-allegro, based on the material of the opening fugato. 

“II. Aristophanes: Allegretto. Aristophanes does not play the role of the clown in this dialogue, but instead that of the bedtime storyteller, invoking the fairytale mythology of love. 
 
“III. Eryximachus: Presto. The physician speaks of bodily harmony as a scientific model for the workings of love-patterns. This is an extremely short fugato scherzo, born of a blend of mystery and humor.  
 
“IV. Agathon: Adagio. Perhaps the most moving speech of the dialogue, Agathon’s panegyric embraces all aspects of love’s powers, charms and functions. This movement is a simple three-part song.  
 
“V. Socrates—Alcibiades: Molto tenuto—Allegro molto vivace. Socrates describes his visit to the seer Diotima, quoting her speech on the demonology of love. This is a slow introduction of greater weight than any of the preceding movements; and serves as a highly developed reprise of the middle section of the Agathon movement, thus suggesting a hidden sonata form. The famous interruption by Alcibiades and his band of drunken revelers ushers in the Allegro, which is an extended Rondo ranging in spirit from agitation through jig-like dance music to joyful celebration. If there is a hint of jazz in the celebration, I hope it will not be taken as anachronistic Greek party music, but rather the natural expression of a contemporary American composer imbued with the spirit of that timeless dinner party.” 

No question that his well-chosen mini-essay provides the listener — and performers — a sense of what the music is “about.” Yet no written program can ultimately provide “legs” for a piece of music; it must stand on its own as a non-referential work of art. Indeed, the unforced lyricism, skilled counterpoint, fresh, often piquant orchestration and idiomatic writing for the solo violin all work in favor of the continuing presence of Serenade in the concert hall and on recordings.  
 
Steven Lowe © 2012, revised 2025 

SERGEY RACHMANINOV  
Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 44  
BORN: April 1, 1873, in Semyonovo, Russia  
DIED: March 28, 1943, Beverly Hills, California  
WORK COMPOSED: 1935–1936  
WORLD PREMIERE: November 6, 1936, in Philadelphia, by The Philadelphia Orchestra, with Leopold Stokowski conducting. 

Sergey Rachmaninov completed his Third Symphony in the summer of 1936, after a year of intermittent work. Twenty-nine years had passed since the composer had written his Second Symphony, a period that saw a general decrease in his creative productivity. In contrast to the prolific years between 1900 and 1910 — which brought not only the Second Symphony but also the Second and Third piano concertos, the tone poem The Isle of the Dead, two operas, several choral works, and numerous songs and pieces for solo piano — the second decade of the century yielded little more than the choral cantata The Bells and the Etudes-Tableaux for piano. The 1920s were even less fertile, their only significant product being the not entirely successful Fourth Piano Concerto. 

Several factors account for Rachmaninov’s relative silence during this time. He was now exiled from his native Russia, having cut ties to his homeland permanently following the revolution of 1917. In addition to feelings of loneliness and isolation brought on by this situation, his exile meant that he could no longer depend on his family’s estate or the lucrative conducting positions he had enjoyed in Russia. As a result, he was obliged to undertake a heavy schedule of piano concerts in order to support his family, leaving less time for composition.  

Perhaps more important though was Rachmaninov’s desire for artistic growth. His most successful works had partaken of a lush Romanticism no longer congruent with the spirit of modernism that prevailed in the cultural centers of Europe and America at that time. Even though large segments of the concert-going public would have been happy with further manifestations of the style of his Second Symphony and Second Piano Concerto, Rachmaninov himself sought to demonstrate a more rigorous and thoughtful approach to composition. He achieved this in two pieces written during the early 1930s, both cast in theme-and-variations format: the Variations on a Theme of Corelli, for solo piano, and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, for piano and orchestra. 

But while adopting the new relative constraint, concision and leaner textures of the Rhapsody, his Third Symphony hardly gives itself over to the spare neo-classicism that Prokofiev and another exiled Russian, Stravinsky, embraced in the 1920s and ’30s. By any standard but those of Rachmaninov’s own earlier works, this is still a symphony in the Romantic manner.   

The dramatic character of the first movement is apparent from its opening measures. Here, hushed and tentative musing on a three-note figure suddenly erupts explosively with an ascending scale. That startling gesture clears the air, as it were, for the movement’s principal theme, a chant-like melody first stated by the oboes. A second subject, lush and warm, soon follows in the cellos. These two themes are extensively transfigured in the ensuing development episode but emerge intact when recalled near the end of the first movement. 

Rachmaninov combines slow movement and scherzo, which traditionally occupy the middle of a symphony, into a single movement. The Adagio begins and ends quietly, and with a lavish display of instrumental colors. (There are conspicuous solo passages for horn, violin, clarinet and flute, and a picturesque use of harp, string pizzicato and percussion.) The central section is a wild and ironic march in a manner clearly descended from Tchaikovsky.  

The finale again juxtaposes two contrasting themes: the driving subject heard at the outset and a sweeping melody in the strings. As in the first movement, Rachmaninov recalls both themes following a far-flung development. But the restatement of the second melody is interrupted by something new, a variant of the Dies irae, an ancient ecclesiastical chant for the dead. With what seems to have been a peculiar fatalism, Rachmaninov adopted this melody as a personal motto, quoting it in several of his compositions. Here it leads to the lively coda that closes the symphony. 

Paul Schiavo © 2011, revised 2025