Program Notes: Ravel & Shostakovich

PIERRE BOULEZ  
Livre pour cordes (Book for Strings) 
BORN: March 26, 1925, in Montbrison, France 
DIED: January 5, 2016, in Baden-Baden, Germany 
WORK COMPOSED: 1968 
WORLD PREMIERE: December 1968, with the New Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by the composer. 

What to Listen For:  

• A complex web of overlapping sonorities — plucks, strikes, trills, lyrical lines — playfully collide and coalesce.  

A complex web of overlapping sonorities — plucks, strikes, trills, lyrical lines — playfully collide and coalesce.  

Pierre Boulez was the son of a steel manufacturer and studied mathematics and engineering in Lyon before moving to Paris in 1943 to devote himself to music. His remarkable career lasted over 60 years, and his influence as a composer, conductor and innovator left an indelible mark on 20th-century music. This performance honors the centenary of his birth. 

Livre pour cordes (Book for Strings) is derived from Boulez’s earlier work, Livre pour quatuor (Book for Quartet), a string quartet that he initially composed between 1948–1949. This was his first foray into writing for instruments other than the piano and the string parts were viciously difficult. He left the work unfinished, revisiting it 10 years later to add another movement. Still incomplete, the project was abandoned as Boulez focused on developing his conducting career. In 1968, he turned again to his Livre pour quatuor, this time revising and re-scoring the dense quartet for a larger string ensemble. He was able to complete the first movement before the demands of his conducting schedule took over and the work was left in its now final version.  

Though Livre pour cordes is fragmentary and angular in nature, a delicate lyricism runs throughout. Sustained melodic motifs add cohesion within an elaborate texture of plucked, percussive sounds, tremolos and sharp accents. Moments of silence punctuate the music and add to the abstract sense of drama. Overall, this work is an expert study of the nuances in texture and color to be found within each string instrument. 

MAURICE RAVEL  
Concerto in D major for Piano (Left Hand Alone) and Orchestra 
BORN: March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France 
DIED: December 28, 1937, in Paris, France 
WORK COMPOSED: 1929-1930 
WORLD PREMIERE: January 5, 1932, with soloist Paul Wittgenstein and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.  

What to Listen For:  

• This powerful work is structured as one movement with two distinct sections: a rhapsodic opening and a menacingly dramatic march.  

• Ravel makes brilliant use of dark orchestral sonorities to match the low register of the piano.  

Throughout his career, Maurice Ravel composed many brilliant works for solo piano, yet it wasn’t until the age of 55 that he attempted a piano concerto upon the request of Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was born into one of the wealthiest families in Europe and had just begun a promising career as a soloist when World War I broke out. Within a month of joining the military, he lost his right arm after his troupe was ambushed by the Russians. When the war finally ended, Wittgenstein was determined to salvage his career and commissioned many prominent composers of the day to write pieces that would require only the left hand. Though Richard Strauss, Sergei Prokofiev, Benjamin Britten and Paul Hindemith all contributed to the repertoire, it is Ravel’s concerto that has had a lasting impact.  

The Concerto in D major is a brooding piece with a darkness and power alluding to the tragedies of the war that brought about its commission. Ravel embraced the challenge of writing for one hand: the piano part covers the full range of the instrument with such depth that your ear would never guess the limitations placed on the composer and performer.  

The piece begins with low rumbles in the basses from which the contrabassoon emerges, followed by a subtle jazzy melody in the horns. The orchestra builds to a breaking point before the piano bursts forth with energetic force. After a second orchestral climax, the piano plays the tender theme that was first introduced by the horns. Another exquisite buildup leads to a riotous release of tension and the onset of the frenzied dance-like Allegro section. The relentless pulse and descending chords that puncture the texture carry a hint of menace. A final cadenza riffs on each theme before the orchestra enters for a brief and thrilling coda.  

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH  
Symphony No. 8 in C minor, Op. 65 
BORN: September 25, 1906, in Saint Petersburg, Russia 
DIED: August 9, 1975, in Moscow, Russia 
WORK COMPOSED: September 1943 
WORLD PREMIERE: November 4, 1943, with the State Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky, to whom the score was dedicated.  

What to Listen For:  

• The boldness of the slow pacing in the lengthy first movement and the seamless transition from the bleak fourth movement into the brighter final movement.  

• Shostakovich commented that his Eighth Symphony “contains tragic and dramatic inner conflicts. But on the whole, it is optimistic and life-asserting.” 

Dmitri Shostakovich completed his First Symphony at age 19 as a graduation exercise for his composition class at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. The work immediately garnered praise and established him as an important and revered composer. In the following years, he wrote music that was celebrated for its modernism before his status fell prey to the whims of the Soviet regime. When Stalin stormed out of a performance of his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in 1936, Shostakovich was shunned as an enemy of the people for writing what the dictator declared was immoral music with no true melodies. He managed to win back the government’s approval with the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, which was viewed at the time as a sign of his obedience to the new cultural mandates.  

Shostakovich composed his Eighth Symphony over two months in 1943 during a countryside retreat sponsored by the Soviet Composers’ Union. Due to the immense success of his Seventh Symphony (the “Leningrad”), which was exalted as a symbol of perseverance in the face of oppression, Shostakovich was deemed a composer of the people who could do no wrong. Thus, when this unconventional Eighth premiered — Shostakovich described this work as an expression of “the grim tragedy of war” — it was reviewed with respect and received warmly, as expected. This response changed drastically in 1948 because of the Zhdanov Doctrine. 

During this time, the Central Committee of the Communist Party, led by Andrei Zhdanov, was systematically attacking artists and composers for creating work that the Committee considered incomprehensible and overly formal. The Eighth was singled out as an example, leading Vladimir Zakharov, a member of the Composers’ Union who fell in line with the new restrictions, to declare: “From the point of view of the People, the Eighth is not a musical work at all; it is a ‘composition’ which has nothing whatever to do with art.” Ten years later, after Stalin’s death, the Central Committee changed its tune again and noted that Shostakovich and others had been wrongly denounced. The Eighth was revived and finally acknowledged for its musical reflection of the trauma that war brings. 

The first movement opens with a massive Adagio whose opening jagged rhythm and stretched-out phrases recall the start of his famous Fifth Symphony. The hushed violin melody that follows is a lament that grows in intensity as flutes and trumpets join in. A second yearning violin melody begins over a gentle rhythmic accompaniment in an anxious, uneven 5/4 meter. The music builds in complexity until a snare drum and brass fanfare bring the orchestra to a terrifying climax that grinds the ensemble to a halt. From here, the English horn offers an extended recitative as if reflecting on the horrors that came before, bringing the movement to a quiet close.  

The remaining movements are all shorter than the first, with the second and third movements forming a pair of grim yet vigorous marches. The second movement plays like a parody of a traditional scherzo with its clownish energy. A solo piccolo stands out with a jocular theme while its fellow woodwinds interject tauntingly. The unrelenting third movement features the violas toiling through a perpetual motion with robotic insistence. Woodwinds screech above the commotion in anguished cries. In shocking contrast, a cheery trumpet enters with a fanfare, and a military band playing oompah rhythms swoops in as if commanding officers have arrived to survey the scene. The band fades away and the brutal ostinato returns without hesitation, leading to a giant outburst that collapses directly into the fourth movement.  

The fourth movement’s Largo is another march, but one of funereal solemnity. It takes the form of a passacaglia, or variations over a repeated bassline. The pattern is first stated with force before decreasing to a haunting stillness. Violins eke out a melody above the bassline, but it feels exhausted and restricted. The horn plays a vague reminder of a melody from the first movement and the piccolo and clarinet weave through the dirge as though wandering through a wasteland.  

Then, magically, the clarinets transition seamlessly into the final movement, shifting the harmonic landscape from G-sharp minor into the openness and warmth of C-major. The bassoon enters quietly before jumping into a lively solo and a flute echoes this mood. Violence returns with its screams and ominous drum rolls, but retreats after a final clash, making room for a pared-down orchestra to explore lighter moments. With hints of dissonance lurking, the movement concludes in a whispered, otherworldly tone. Shostakovich summed up his magnificent work with these words: “Life is beautiful. All that is dark and evil rots away, and beauty triumphs.” 

Catherine Case © 2024 

Catherine Case is a writer and editor based in the Midwest. Her program notes appear in publications for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Seattle Symphony, among others. As a professional harpist, Catherine has held positions with the São Paulo State Symphony, Singapore Symphony and Sarasota Orchestra.