Program Notes: Selaocoe & Tchaikovsky

JENNIFER HIGDON 
blue cathedral  
BORN: December 31, 1962, in Brooklyn, NY 
WORK COMPOSED: 1999 
WORLD PREMIERE:  May 1, 2000, at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the Curtis Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Robert Spano. 

Commissioned by The Curtis Institute of Music in 1999 to celebrate its 75th anniversary and currently one of the most frequently performed contemporary orchestral compositions in the U.S., blue cathedral is a personal, poignant work in which composer Jennifer Higdon poured her grief over the death of her younger brother. From the artist’s program note: “... Blue represents all potential and the progression of journeys. Cathedrals represent a place of beginnings, endings, solitude, fellowship, contemplation, knowledge and growth. As I was writing this piece, I found myself imagining a journey through a glass cathedral in the sky. Because the walls would be transparent, I saw the image of clouds and blueness permeating from the outside of this church. In my mind's eye, the listener would enter from the back of the sanctuary, floating along the corridor amongst giant crystal pillars, moving in a contemplative stance. The stained-glass windows’ figures would start moving with song, singing heavenly music. The listener would float down the aisle, slowly moving upward at first and then progressing at a quicker pace, rising towards an immense ceiling which would open to the sky … as this journey progressed, the speed of the traveler would increase, rushing forward and upward. I wanted to create the sensation of contemplation and quiet peace at the beginning, moving towards the feeling of celebration and ecstatic expansion of the soul, all the while singing along with that heavenly music.  

“These were my thoughts when The Curtis Institute of Music commissioned me to write a work to commemorate its 75th anniversary.  Curtis is a house of knowledge — a place to reach towards that beautiful expression of the soul which comes through music. I began writing this piece at a unique juncture in my life and found myself pondering the question of what makes a life. The recent loss of my younger brother, Andrew Blue, made me reflect on the amazing journeys that we all make in our lives, crossing paths with so many individuals singularly and collectively, learning and growing each step of the way. This piece represents the expression of the individual and the group … our inner travels and the places our souls carry us, the lessons we learn and the growth we experience. In tribute to my brother, I feature solos for the clarinet (the instrument he played) and the flute (the instrument I play). Because I am the older sibling, it is the flute that appears first in this dialog. At the end of the work, the two instruments continue their dialogue, but it is the flute that drops out and the clarinet that continues on in the upward progressing journey. This is a story that commemorates living and passing through places of knowledge and of sharing and of that song called life.” 

ABEL SELAOCOE 
Qhawe (Hero), Lerato (Love), Kea Morata (I Love Them So) 
BORN: 1992 in Sebokeng, a township in South Africa. 
WORKS COMPOSED: 2022  
 
South African cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe has been a force in music since well before he earned his International Artist Diploma at the Royal Northern College of Music in 2018. Alongside his numerous awards and recognition for his technique on cello, he’s a composer who merges classical influences with his African heritage and collaborates with other musicians and composers (such as Giovanni Sollima and Gwilym Simcock), in addition to giving concerto performances and solo classical recitals around the world. He’s described his musical journey partly as a merging of his dual identities as a classical musician and African man: “I’ve had to learn to allow classical music and my culture to live in one space rather than separate them.” 

In 2022, he released his debut album, Where Is Home (Hae Ke Kae), which featured original material reflecting his traditional South African and Tanzanian music influences alongside works by Baroque composers J.S. Bach and Giovanni Platti that he delivers with some non-traditional instrumentation. Qhawe (Hero) and Lerato (Love), are from Where Is Home, while Kea Morata (I Love Them So) was written in 2022 for The Oracle project with Manchester Collective, with which he’s had a partnership since 2018.   

Qhawe and Kea Morata are upbeat, rhythmic, fast-paced numbers that feature a form of South African overtone singing called umngqokolo, deep guttural utterances that join more melodic singing and chanting in the Sesotho language of his home township, beatboxing, growling and various other vocalizations; the former, according to Selaocoe, is “about the curiosity of children and the purpose our ancestors passed on to us,” while the latter “an ode to giving love to those that are still here with you.” In Lerato, “about an eternal love for peace amongst all beings, to understand that there are others that seek safety while we are likely in a privileged place ourselves,” Selaocoe’s intones are quiet, sweet and sublime ascensions that he’s described as reflecting the sound world of the South African hymn singing with which he is familiar. All three are set against an adept and varied style of cello playing — plucking, strumming, slapping and bowing of the strings — as well as percussive taps and thumps on his instrument’s body.

Leilani Polk © 2024 

GIOVANNI SOLLIMA 
Selections from When We Were Trees 
BORN: October 24, 1962, in Palermo, Sicily, Italy 
COMPOSED: 2007–2008 
WORLD PREMIERE: October 18, 2008, in Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw concert hall, the Netherlands, by Monika Leskovar and Giovanni Sollima, with the Netherlands Youth String Orchestra conducted by Bas Wiegers at the Amsterdamse Cello Biënnale Festival. 

Italian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima is classically trained but incredibly versatile, carving out a niche in the world of post-minimalism while fusing his classical sensibilities with influences from jazz, rock and Mediterranean folk traditions. A prominent voice in contemporary classical music and cello playing specifically, Sollima has collaborated with iconic artists ranging from Patti Smith to Ivan Fischer. Yo-Yo Ma once called him a super virtuoso, saying, “He makes me look like a pussycat… He has no fear, and that’s unusual in the classical world — we’re all terrified of wrong notes.” 

This program will include four movements from his work written for two cellos, When We Were Trees, combining elements of Baroque music, contemporary rock and metal along with world music styles, and finding his use of modal melodies and repetitive structures on full display. A mix of meditative moments and rhythmically energetic virtuosity are employed in the work’s first, second and third movements (Resonance Wood, The Architect and Leaves Postcards), with the dual cellos bowing and plucking, sometimes in sync, sometimes trading off on tempos. The fast-paced sixth and final movement, The Family Tree (Vivaldi), whips the cellists into a frenzy, the frenetic finale carrying traces of the work’s Vivaldi influence as the cellists shred and scratch their way to the work’s abrupt conclusion.

Leilani Polk © 2024

PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY  
Symphony No. 5 in F minor, Op. 36  
BORN: May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russia  
DIED: November 6, 1893, in Saint Petersburg, Russia  
WORK COMPOSED: 1888 
WORLD PREMIERE: November 17, 1888, in St. Petersburg, with Tchaikovsky conducting.
 
Tchaikovsky composed his Fifth Symphony during the summer of 1888. At age 48, he was more relaxed and confident than at any previous period of his life. His brief and disastrous marriage in 1877 to a young conservatory student had forced him to finally accept that a union with a woman and a conventional sort of domestic happiness would never be his, and though painful, this admission seems to have relieved the composer of a considerable burden, allowing him to immerse himself in his work. He had recently taken up residence in a country house outside Moscow, where the bucolic surroundings buoyed his spirits. “I cannot tell you what a pleasure it has been to watch my flowers grow and see daily, even hourly, new blossoms coming out,” he wrote to his patroness, the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck. “Meanwhile I have been working with good results, for half of the symphony is orchestrated.”  

But while enjoying a period of relative contentment, Tchaikovsky could hardly divorce his creative work from his own existential issues. Melancholic, hypersensitive and self-critical, Tchaikovsky also wrestled throughout his life with his homosexuality and unfulfilled longing for intimacy. His internal struggles affected especially the characters of his last three symphonies. The composition of each of these works was guided by a subjective program, a drama born of the composer’s psychic conflicts. Tchaikovsky had accompanied his Fourth Symphony with a written description of tension between tender longings and harsh reality, tensions he asserted the symphony’s music embodied. For his Fifth Symphony, he left only a short scenario concerning its first movement. In a brief note on the opening movement, Tchaikovsky wrote: “Introduction: complete resignation before Fate or, which is the same thing, the unfathomable workings of Providence. Allegro: (I) Murmurs, doubts, pleas, reproaches ... (II) Shall I throw myself in the embraces of faith?” 

This is certainly vague and incomplete, but it is enough to establish an autobiographical basis for the music. In any event, it seems doubtful that additional intelligence would heighten the impact of the drama inherent in the symphony, a drama already quite evident in purely musical terms.  

The first movement opens with a somber introduction whose tone accords with Tchaikovsky’s description of “complete resignation.” Its melody, announced by the clarinets in their low register, is a “motto” theme, one that will recur in each of the symphony’s four movements. (Some commentators refer to it as the “Fate” theme.) The main body of the movement begins with a march subject introduced also by the clarinets but quickly taken up by other instruments. Tchaikovsky counters this idea with several others of more genial character, the tension between them and the martial first theme accounting for much of the movement’s drama. 

The ensuing Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza unfolds under the spell cast by a melody presented as a horn solo in its opening moments. Its mood of enchantment twice is broken, however, by the return of the motto figure, now more menacing in tone. The third movement offers waltz melodies that seem to belong to one of Tchaikovsky’s fairy-tale ballets. Once again, near the close of the movement, the theme from the introduction is heard, but it seems tame and powerless in the ideally elegant world suggested by this music.   

In the Finale: Andante maestoso—Allegro vivace, Tchaikovsky comes to grips with the persistent motto theme. Here he transforms that melody into a triumphal march, the furious outbursts midway through the movement only serving to make its final apotheosis more impressive. There is also a brief remembrance of the march subject from the first movement during the closing moments. 

The metamorphosis over the course of the symphony of a single theme — in this case, the motto — from an expression of pathos to one of exultation has its original precedent, of course, in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Whether Tchaikovsky managed to make his finale as convincing as Beethoven’s has been widely debated. It is a matter that we have repeated opportunities to judge for ourselves, for the symphony’s perennial popularity assures its place in orchestral literature.

Paul Schiavo © 2011, revised 2024