Program Notes: Opening Night Concert with Lang Lang and the Seattle Sympony

JOHN ADAMS
Short Ride in a Fast Machine 
BORN: February 15, 1947, in Worcester, Massachusetts 
WORK COMPOSED: 1986 
LAST TIME PLAYED BY SEATTLE SYMPHONY: January 8, 2022, with John Adams conducting 

What to Listen For: 

• The woodblock — a humble, hollowed-out box of wood — propels the entire piece. 

• Percussion instruments that thunder (bass drum, tympani) and glitter (glockenspiel, crotales, triangle, a sizzle cymbal) at key moments. 

Short Ride in a Fast Machine was inspired by a late-night jaunt in a revved-up Ferrari. Adams was a very reluctant passenger and remembered the drive as a “thrilling” but regrettable “white knuckle ride.” Remaining true to the unforgettable feeling of gripping the armrest while swerving around corners, Adams deploys shifting rhythms that mimic frantic traffic: instruments seem to speed up, slow down (sometimes suddenly) and threaten to skid out of control. Yet this exciting, four-minute piece begins with perhaps the most unglamorous instrument in the orchestra, the woodblock; strike it anywhere and you will hear a clear, penetrating knock. Amid whirling melodies in clarinets, flutes and oboes, the woodblock persists, oblivious to the rest of the orchestra. Pulsing strings and brass dodge around the woodblock with increasing urgency. The woodblock downshifts to a lower, hollow tone just before the tuba, trombones and contrabasses lumber towards a massive pileup of percussion and exclamatory chords from the entire orchestra. Finally relenting, the woodblock stops and a ringing triangle heralds the fanfare: a short hymn that soars, struts and ends with an exhilarating boom.  

CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS 
Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 
BORN: October 9, 1835, in Paris, France 
DIED: December 16, 1921, in Algiers, Algeria 
WORK COMPOSED: 1868 
SEATTLE SYMPHONY PREMIERE: March 14, 1905, conducted by Harry F. West, with guest pianist A.F. Venino 

What to Listen For: 

• Cadenzas — solos designed to showcase the pianist’s skill and finesse — appear at the very beginning and again in the middle of the first movement. 

• The three-note groupings in the final Presto are based on a tarantella, a fast upbeat Italian folk dance. 

While on one of his countless concert tours, Camille Saint-Saëns met Ottorino Respighi in Rome. As a much younger artist with not much power and scant prestige, Respighi was delighted to witness the renowned 84-year-old French composer dismiss the pleadings of concert organizers to rehearse the musicians he was about to conduct. Preferring to tour monuments and ruins, Saint-Saëns blithely informed his hosts, “But there are many more beautiful and interesting things in Rome than my music. Besides, they all know it, so it will just play itself.”  

When the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor premiered in Paris on May 13, 1868, the music was hardly known and certainly did not play itself. The unusual and varied form of the Concerto gave the soloist — who was also the composer — some trouble, and understandably so. Saint-Saëns composed the Concerto in 17 days, which meant that he had spent more time writing than practicing his part.  

The composer also drew upon his skill as an organist. The Concerto’s Andante sostenuto opens with a solo piano cadenza based on an earlier organ improvisation. After this brief homage to J.S. Bach, soloist and orchestra engage in a call and response of lyrical passages that develops into the first theme — a melody borrowed from his friend and fellow composer, Gabriel Fauré. A second tumultuous cadenza unfolds into a melancholy lament and ends with a brief echo of the florid beginning.  

“The solo of a concerto,” Saint-Saëns once wrote, “is a role which ought to be conceived and rendered as a dramatic personage.” Here, the Allegro scherzando casts the soloist as a puckish prankster. Instead of a traditional slow movement, the piano leads a frisky jeu d’esprit among piano, winds, strings and timpani. A loping, broad-shouldered music hall tune dispels the few and fleeting melancholy moments that try — and fail — to dampen the sunny mood.  

Insistent, rippling bass notes launch the Presto. Fast, jaunty triplet figures bound up and down the keyboard, transforming what threatens to become a dour, dire struggle into a fun, propulsive finale.  

OTTORINO RESPIGHI 
Pini di Roma (“Pines of Rome”) 
BORN: July 9, 1879, in Bologna, Italy 
DIED: April 18, 1936, in Rome, Italy 
WORK COMPOSED: 1923–1924 
SEATTLE SYMPHONY PREMIERE: January 29, 1986, at Seattle Center Opera House, with Gerard Schwarz conducting 

What to Listen For: 

• The composer makes extensive use of glissandi — gliding between notes — in the harp as well as manic tremolo (Italian for “trembling”) passages in the piano, strings and percussion to create tension and excitement. 

• The evocation of distance, notably with an offstage trumpet and other brass instruments in the third and fourth movements. 

One of the seeds of Ottorino Respighi’s most popular work, Pines of Rome, can be traced to March 11, 1917, immediately after the premiere of Fountains of Rome. In her diary, the composer’s wife Elsa noted a “rather cold reception with some hissing at the end of the work.” Later that night, violinist Mario Corti watched the frustrated composer throw the score to Fountains and shout, “Bah, this has been a failure, I shall write another!” 

But spurred by the belated success of Fountains in Milan the following year, “another” resulted in Pines of Rome. Respighi worked on Pines piecemeal, which included taking lessons on Gregorian chant from his wife, herself a singer and composer. 

Greeted with acclaim at its premiere on December 14, 1924, Pines of Rome brought the composer international fame and became the centerpiece of what is known today as the Roman Trilogy — though while on tour in Los Angeles Respighi stated a preference for “Triptych,” perhaps for its connotation of three devotional paintings grouped (and in some instances hinged) together that can also exist as stand-alone works of art. Each part of the Trilogy from Fountains of Rome to Roman Festivals (1928) depicts vivid images of Rome, “The Eternal City.” 

Described by the composer as a “symphonic poem,” Pines hews to the four-movement form of Fountains. Respighi, who briefly lived in Russia and studied with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, honors (and at times outdoes) his teacher with panoramic orchestral textures and picturesque titles. 

Giddy and glittering, I pini di Villa Borghese (“The Pines of the Villa Borghese”) erupts in a pageant of color set in a park at the heart of Rome. Led by a trumpet fanfare, careening harp glissandi and tremolo strings evoke what the composer imagined in his program note as rambunctious children “at play in the pine groves.” Egged on by the brass, the kids march and fight; Respighi compared them to “swallows at evening” who “come and go in swarms.” They run riot with loud, obnoxious toys, too, as illustrated by harrying plucked notes in the violins and a crackling ratchet in the percussion section.  

The mood shifts abruptly in Pini presso una catacomba (“Pines Near a Catacomb”). As if heard from an underground tomb, low strings with clarinets and muted horns exchange a mournful fragment of Gregorian chant. Against a tam-tam and guitar-like harp strums, the plangent combination of flute and bassoon develop the hymn further. An offstage trumpet, marked in the score il più lontano possibile (“as far away as possible”), adds a momentary glimmer of hope. Double basses and divisi cellos (“divided” here into three groups) emerge with a repeated brooding figure. The rest of the strings and brass enter, elevating the gloomy pulsation into a defiant peroration that soon recedes into the shadows. 

Respighi set I pini del Gianicolo (“The Pines of the Janiculum”) atop one of the tallest hills in Rome where, according to his note, “the pine-trees of the Janiculum stand distinctly outlined in the clear light of the full moon. A nightingale is singing.” A quiet yet florid piano line introduces a haunting clarinet as the nightingale come in sogno (“as if in a dream”). A flute followed by sumptuous strings takes up the melody, which floats among the instruments through a delirious haze of cascading notes in the celeste and harp. The chiming piano marks the return of the clarinet, which is joined by the sound of a recorded nightingale. Older editions of the score call for a specific 78 rpm record issued in 1913 — this was the first such usage of recorded sound in orchestral music. Rather than rely on a fragile, noisy shellac disk and an antique gramophone, the publisher has updated Respighi’s innovative idea by supplying a digital sound file for contemporary performances. 

The concluding I pini della Via Appia (“The Pines of the Appian Way”) harkens back to the height of the Roman Republic, when legions tramped home along the main road to Rome. Lumbering, left-right, left-right string patterns and a low, glowering B-flat on the organ portray what the composer envisioned as “the muffled, ceaseless rhythm of unending footsteps.” Offstage brass instruments intended to resemble a choir of buccine — ancient horns used by the Romans to signal soldiers in combat and announce the presence of the commander — paint “a fantastic vision of bygone glories” where a long march becomes a victorious, exultant parade into The Eternal City. 

All notes by Christopher DeLaurenti © 2023