SUPPORT YOUR SYMPHONY

Andrew Litton conducts the Ravel & Debussy concerts on November 3, 5 and 6, with guest violinist Pekka Kuusisto sitting in to perform Enrico Chapela's Antiphaser Concerto for Electric Violin and Orchestra. Litton will replace previously scheduled conductor Alexander Shelley, who was unable to be here due to artist visa processing delays. In addition, Debussy's La mer replaces Ravel's Piano Trio. (Photo by Steve J. Sherman)

MAURICE RAVEL
La valse
BORN: March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, southwest France
DIED: December 28, 1937, in Paris, France
WORK COMPOSED: 1919–1920
WORLD PREMIERE: December 12, 1920, in Paris, France

What to Listen For:

• Ravel adored the swaying 1-2-3 (or “oom-pah-pah”) pattern of the waltz, but he also creates a sense of rhythmic levitation (and later, dislocation) by shifting our anticipation of the first beat.
• The calliope-like melody in the first part of La valse (French for “The waltz”); the bass clarinet plays a low, rumbly scale- seamlessly continued by the clarinet, whose rising notes quickly descend and return to the bass clarinet.

Ravel conceived La valse in 1906 as Wien, the Austrian name for Vienna. Ravel wanted to honor Strauss — not, as he mischievously wrote in a letter, Richard Strauss, but “the other one, Johann.” Hailed as “The Waltz King of Vienna,” Johann Strauss II (1825–1899) was one of the most popular performers in Europe in the 19th century. Ravel loved Strauss waltzes for their joie de vivre and “wonderful rhythms.”

Ravel didn’t begin La valse until after World War I. Reimagined as a choreographic poem set in “an Imperial Court, about 1855,” the composer sketched out a program that now reads like a dream sequence swiped from a film script: “Through breaks in the swirling clouds, waltzing couples may be glimpsed... Little by little they disperse: one sees an immense hall filled with a whirling crowd. The stage is illuminated gradually. The light of the chandeliers peaks at the fortissimo…”

In 1920, Ravel hoped that this unabashedly romantic and sumptuously costumed scenario would appeal to Sergei Diaghilev, founder and astutely finicky maestro of the Ballets Russes. Apart from his friends and rivals Stravinsky, Debussy, Satie and Manuel de Falla, Ravel had yet to enjoy a triumph in Paris with what was then the most famous ballet company in the world.

Setting aside his fury at Diaghilev’s sabotage — and the ensuing failure — of Daphnis et Chloé in 1912, Ravel previewed La valse in a two-piano version for the impresario and his coterie. In the presence of Stravinsky, Francis Poulenc and other artists, Diaghilev grudgingly praised the work as a “masterpiece,” and dismissed it as merely “a portrait of a ballet.” Humiliated, the composer departed in hushed anger. Ravel never forgave Diaghilev.

Although Ravel consistently rejected any thematic connection to the horrors of World War I — Ravel had volunteered as an ambulance driver — La valse is much more than an homage to bygone Vienna. The conflict between opulent sentimentality and looming malevolence opens immediately with the intestinal growling of double basses and cellos. A muffled tune emerges in the bassoons and clarinets, and finally flowers into a waltz by the strings.

The music submerges again, though momentarily. Buoyant, gliding melodies played by the strings and winds (with two sunny oboe solos) prance with joyful abandon and culminate in several festive interjections from the entire orchestra (including a nod to the Molto vivace of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony). The manic form of La valse becomes apparent: A procession of ebullient waltzes endures interruptions and increasing disfigurement. Ravel annihilates his homage to old Vienna with increasingly bitter orchestral exclamations, careening scales, and at the end — malignant, flaring brass chords cramming in four defiant beats where we still hope for three.

Christopher DeLaurenti © 2022

ENRICO CHAPELA
Antiphaser Concerto for Electric Violin and Orchestra
BORN: January 29, 1974, in Mexico City, Mexico
WORK COMPOSED: 2019–2020
WORLD PREMIERE: November 3, 2022, by Seattle Symphony

What to Listen For:

• The futuristic yet funky violin solo heard through a wah-wah pedal (marked in the score as arco con wa wa).
• The first movement runs attacca (literally “to attack” without pause) with no stopping in the second movement: Keep your ears open for a quiet, whinnying sound from the percussion (caused by Super Balls rubbed against the timpani and bass drum) and throaty chords on the harp.

Antiphaser originated with the composer asking a simple question: What would you see if you were on the moon during an eclipse? The composer was not only interested in depicting what he imagines as a “fiery ring of sunsets and sunrises encircling the Earth” seen while standing on Lunar soil, but evoking the wonder of such a stupendous sight. Referring to the relative orbital positions of the Earth and Moon, Chapela explains the phenomenon behind the title of Antiphaser:

“Gravity imposes a tidal lock on the Moon, forcing one side to constantly face the Earth. Lunarians, dwelling at the equator, would see the globe fixed at the zenith, slowly changing phases as the synodic cycle [a full rotation from day through night] progresses. Planetary phases are complementary to lunar ones; if the world wanes, the satellite waxes … When the Earth casts her shadow over the Moon, Earthlings witness a lunar eclipse whereas Lunarians attend to a solar one.”

Antiphaser is a conjunction of driving, rock-influenced pulsation and the ethereal aura of a nocturne. Chapela achieves this synthesis by combining a traditional corps of orchestra players with a virtuosic soloist willing to embrace a violin outfitted with electromagnetic pickups. The composer believes, “It’s important to bring new instruments into the orchestra,” noting that symphony musicians have always played a mix of old and new instruments.

The vast timbral palette of the electric violin is central to the work: “Antiphaser can only be performed with an electric violin,” he says, mainly for its various rock guitar-inspired effects permeating the concerto: seemingly weightless echoes and a phaser unit’s spacey, whooshing atmospheres. Chapela tests every effect himself — a reflection of his drive to discover unusual soundscapes through experimentation and careful research.

Christopher DeLaurenti © 2022

CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, L. 86 (“Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun”)
BORN: August 22, 1862, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a suburb of Paris, France
DIED: March 25, 1918, in Paris, France
WORK COMPOSED: 1894
WORLD PREMIERE: December 22, 1894, in Paris, France

What to Listen For:

• The harp serves a crucial role garlanding various solos by the flute, clarinet and oboe throughout the Prelude.
• Tremolo (“trembling”) strings bow on the fingerboard of the violin, resulting in a somewhat reedy, slightly raspy texture.

“Mon plaisir!” was Debussy’s insolent reply to his professor at the Paris Conservatoire. The rallying cry of “my pleasure!” shocked the smug instructor, who wanted to know which laws of harmony his headstrong student planned to follow. Refusing to heed teachers, textbooks and tradition, the budding composer made his own musical rules for the rest of his life. Aaron Copland identified Debussy as “the first composer of our time who dared to make his ear the sole judge of what was good harmonically.”

Debussy was captivated by the hallucinatory imagery of Stéphane Mallarmé’s L’après-midi d’un faune and composed a prelude to the 1876 poem. Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune begins with a languid flute solo against a backdrop of yearning strings. The orchestra elongates part of the flute’s theme into a paean of sensuous desire. Soft harp notes signal the gradual dissipation of the Prelude, which concludes discreetly with chiming antique cymbals and sleepy, plucked notes on the cellos and double basses.

The vaporous haze of the Prelude still confounds analysis and enchants listeners, especially composers: Maurice Ravel — whose Daphnis et Chloé was overshadowed by the scandalous Ballets Russes performance of the Prelude 10 days earlier — stunned an interviewer by declaring that he hoped to die gently in the “tender and voluptuous embrace” of Debussy’s tone poem.

Christopher DeLaurenti © 2022

CLAUDE DEBUSSY
La mer
WORK COMPOSED: 1903–1905
WORLD PREMIERE: October 15, 1905, in Paris, France

It may surprise you that Debussy referred to La mer as “three symphonic sketches,” considering the composer prioritized sonic painting over adherence to traditional forms. Debussy composed La mer between 1903 and 1905; the 1905 edition of La mer featured the famous Hokusai print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, on its cover at the urging of the composer.

La mer is divided into three movements, each with a title clearly evoking a specific situation and location. The first is De l’aube à midi sur la mer (“From dawn to midday on the sea”), full of aural swells and gossamer timbres (its famous melody, first heard in the cellos, comes later). Moments of pentatonicism harken to the European obsession with a real and imagined East Asia at the turn of the 20th century. Jeux de vagues (“Play of the waves”) leaves little to the imagination: the exuberance and polyphonic interplay brings to mind the spluttering, splashing and swirling of water. Dialogue du vent et de la mer (“Dialogue of the wind and the sea”) takes a dark, foreboding turn; like the first movement, Debussy delays the first melodic statement in the solo oboe, grabbing the ear through its isolation and structural cohesiveness. What emerges is a multifaceted and triumphant conversation, deceptively simple via its textural clarity. In size and scope, La mer is indebted to the symphony; in theme and story, it is an outgrowth of Debussy’s poetic and impressionistic vision of what music should communicate.

A. Kori Hill © 2022