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ANGÉLICA NEGRÓN
Color Shape Transmission
BORN: July 5, 1981, in Santurce, Puerto Rico
WORK COMPOSED: 2021-2022
WORLD PREMIERE: April 7, 2022, with Seattle Symphony conducted by Ludovic Morlot at Benaroya Hall in Seattle

What to Listen For:

• Unusual instruments including the melodica, a vibraphone prepared with aluminum foil and crumpling wax paper.
• Otherworldly “pitched air sounds” and hollow tones made with additional breaths in the piccolo, flutes, clarinets, and horns.

As a composer who writes for an astonishing variety of instruments and ensembles, Angélica Negrón hopes Color Shape Transmission will open “new portals to hear the orchestra in a different way.” In her preface to the score, the composer envisions the orchestra as “a massive software instrument” with delayed echoes “moving from smaller subsets of the ensemble bouncing off each other.”

To create this unusual sense of space, Negrón divides the orchestra into three groups. Each group has a reduced complement of strings, winds and brass. Rather than position the musicians antiphonally as in countless churches around the world, or scatter instruments throughout the hall in the manner of Benedict Mason's Meld (2014), Negrón keeps the orchestra in one place. This fixed position enables these continually morphing melodic cells to be heard by everyone as a seamless, collective texture. One group functions as the main ensemble. The other two groups, heeding directions “as an echo” and “as a distant echo” create reverberation that thickens individual notes or spawns distinct, drifting echoes.

Color Shape Transmission begins with a quiet processional. The score calls for a hollow tone in the flute and "pitched air sounds" in the winds, horns, and trombones. The strings play divisi (“divided”) – pairs and small groups play distinct parts instead of in unison. Scattered notes coalesce into a shimmering murmur of trilling winds and, in the score, the string players are directed to play clusters “gradually going in and out of pitch.”

The middle section echoes the processional but in warped fragments, akin to glints of sunlight seen against the water. Rhythms are reflected too, unexpectedly rebounding from one group to another, only to converge in a moody chorale. A melodica – a kind of louder, gutsier harmonica topped with piano keys gracing classic dub albums by Augustus Pablo – joins fizzing chords on the vibraphone in a gloomy, unresolved cadence.

Fragile harp harmonics and bowed vibraphone open the last section which is marked in the score as “Slower, dreamy.” An undulating drone of string harmonics dissolve into the rebounding rhythms heard earlier, which in turn yield to a closing cathartic processional.

IGOR STRAVINSKY
Concerto in D for Violin and Orchestra
BORN: June 17, 1882, in Oranienbaum, Russia
DIED: April 6, 1971, in New York
WORK COMPOSED: 1931
WORLD PREMIERE: October 23, 1931 in Berlin, Germany with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer and featuring soloist Samuel Dushkin

What to Listen For:

• The famed “passport” to the Concerto is a slashing chord played by the violin soloist at the start of each movement.
• A sly duet between the soloist and the concertmaster in the middle of the fourth movement becomes a friendly duel.

Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for Violin and Orchestra at once heeds and flouts the tradition of great composers – notably Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Sibelius – who wrote only one violin concerto. Composed in 1931, the concerto has four movements instead of the usual three. The work also lacks a cadenza, a virtuosic solo section where the violinist displays technical brilliance, élan and uninhibited lyricism. In his autobiography, Stravinsky had a dour suspicion of virtuoso performers and their “sensational effects.” He only considered writing a violin concerto at the urging of his publisher.

Still doubtful, Stravinsky consulted with composer (and violist) Paul Hindemith who assured him that a “slight knowledge of the instrument” would lead to ideas outside of routine technique and standard fingering. Nevertheless, Stravinsky did heed one tradition followed by many concerto composers. He consulted with a virtuoso violinist. The first page of the score includes a brief note, “Violin part in collaboration with Samuel Dushkin.”

It was Dushkin who confirmed Stravinsky’s idea for the “passport” to the concerto, his name for a three-note chord (D-E-A), with each note spanning more than an octave from the last and requiring an uncomfortable stretch for the player’s hand. While lunching together in Paris, Stravinsky wondered if it was playable; after Dushkin said no, Stravinsky replied “Quel dommage” (“What a pity.”). Dushkin, who relished a challenge, later tried the chord at home. Realizing that it was indeed possible to play, he phoned Stravinsky with the good news. Dushkin became Stravinsky’s collaborator, and eventually a touring partner and friend (whose letters from the composer begin “Dearest Samsky”).

The violin’s passport chord launches each movement of the concerto. It opens the Toccata followed by three slashing down-bows, dissonances which announce a jaunty promenade. Stately horns and crisp scales played by the oboe establish a mood that is courtly and dance-like as well as a bit mischievous. Stravinsky’s idea of virtuosity becomes evident immediately; he later wrote “the whole spirit of the violin must be in every measure of the composition” which explains why the violin seldom rests in this work.

The two middle movements, Aria I and Aria II, sing more than dance. The wistful violin melody of Aria I sings and sighs, but eventually succumbs to cheery exhortations from the strings and burbling scales in the clarinets and bassoons. Set in the close yet contrasting key of F-sharp minor, the pensive Aria II is the true slow movement of the concerto. The brooding violin takes center stage with discreet support from the strings. Brief note-clusters reappear here too, though unlike the rakish dissonances in the first movement, what we hear is cheerless and morose. Suddenly, the passport chord reappears but rather than rejuvenate the mood, one of Stravinsky’s greatest melodies concludes the movement: an inconsolable lament quietly played flautando (“flute-like”) by bowing lightly near or over the fingerboard of the violin.

The concerto returns to high spirits of the Toccata in the finale. Whinnying cascades of notes in the violin and chugging bassoon figures lead to several surprising detours, including a momentary duet for timpani and horn, and later a duet between the soloist and the concertmaster. The closing Presto of this aptly named Capriccio plunges ahead with a thumping bass drum and another lovely interlude showcasing high harmonics on the violin before vaulting into an exhilarating ending.

JEAN SIBELIUS
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43
BORN: December 8, 1865, in Hämeenlinna, Grand Duchy of Finland
DIED: September 20, 1957, in Järvenpää, Finland
WORK COMPOSED: 1901-1902
WORLD PREMIERE: March 8, 1902 in Helsinki, Finland with the Helsinki Philharmonic conducted by the composer

What to Listen For:

• Sibelius expands short melodic fragments and elemental rhythmic patterns (such as a held note or chord into a trilling figure) into long-limbed melodies
• A deliciously creeping, almost serpentine trail of double basses and cellos playing pizzicato – plucked instead of bowed notes at the start of the second movement.

Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43 was welcomed by the Finnish public as a missive of nationalist resilience against their Russian overlords. Conductor Robert Kajanus, a close friend who had debuted Sibelius's first symphony in 1900, concocted an essay explaining how the second symphony was “a broken-hearted protest against all the injustice that threatens at the present time to deprive the sun of its light and our flowers of their scent.”

Sibelius displayed no interest in his friend's concoction. Writing his diary several years later, Sibelius declared that “a symphony is not just a ‘composition’ in the ordinary sense of the word. It is more of an inner confession at a given stage of one’s life.”

Whether the symphony is an inner confession or a political allegory, Sibelius begins with a leisurely pastoral scene. Gently pulsing strings emerge from nowhere, as if unexpectedly finding a valley after summiting a prominent hill. Winds and horns enliven this ambiance with a short, melodic fragments that saunter and frolic. The sunny mood darkens as flutes and bassoons yield to an aching theme in the violins. Here Sibelius begins to interrupt himself, alternating keening trills and other fragments with glimpses of bucolic calm. These fragments eventually coagulate into a theme Sibelius later described as “the most joyful I have ever written.” The movement ends with a heroic return to the opening string motive which resounds mightily and then settles back into gentle pulsations.

The second movement follows a similar, sweeping trajectory where idyllic moments build, fragment, then dissolve into grand, emotionally raw melodies. Sibelius brackets these tidal swells with brief moments of silence, as if to allow time to contemplate this gigantic accumulation of intense section. Sibelius’ joyful theme finally returns, only to dissipate in anguish. Closing pizzicato chords harken back to the first movement.

The relatively short Scherzo immediately evokes Mendelssohn; yet the gamboling, fleet-footed strings and lithe, open textures soon end, leaping attacca (literally “to attack” without pause) into the fourth and final movement. Structured on three grand, tidal swells, this movement consolidates earlier themes and motives into a heroic peroration.

© 2022 Christopher DeLaurenti