Program Notes: Simon Trpčeski Plays Tchaikovsky

DONGHOON SHIN  
Of Rats and Men 
BORN: 1983 in Seoul, South Korea 
WORK COMPOSED: 2019 
WORLD PREMIERE: December 8, 2019, at the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin, Germany.  

What to Listen For:  

• The solo oboe and bassoon, each representing a literary character, and the conflicting, threatening sounds that swirl around them.  

The solo oboe and bassoon, each representing a literary character, and the conflicting, threatening sounds that swirl around them.  

Donghoon Shin, an exciting new voice in classical music, was born in South Korea and is based in London. He has received numerous awards including the UK Critics’ Circle Music Award for Young Talent in 2019 and the Claudio Abbado Prize in 2022. According to the Berliner Morgenpost, Shin “writes music with a comprehensible, almost language-like syntax, forming phrases and enriching them … to create fascinating sound paintings.”  

In 2019, Shin was selected to participate in a mentoring program established by the Peter Eötvös Contemporary Music Foundation, based in Hungary. Over the course of a year, he was given ample time to expand his portfolio while working with many notable conductors and composers. Shin’s work from this period, Of Rats and Men, was inspired by two short stories: Franz Kafka’s “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk” and Roberto Bolaño’s “Police Rat.” The protagonist of Kafka’s story is a mouse named Josephine with the rare ability to sing. Through music, she helps her community tolerate their hardworking lives, for they no longer remember songs. She wants to give up her regular work to devote more time to her art but she is denied her wishes by the mouse people. Josephine eventually disappears and the community forgets about her. The Chilean poet Bolaño based his story on the character of Pepe the Cop, the nephew of Kafka’s Josephine. Pepe is a police rat who suspects that a killer in their midst could be another rat. His superiors refuse to belief the idea that rats would kill other rats. 

Of Rats and Men is made up of two movements that flow together. The first movement, The Singer, begins with an oboe melody depicting Josephine’s song. The melody is continually threatened by the orchestra’s darker tones. The second movement, The Cop and Killers, portrays Pepe in the low register of the bassoon while various musical fragments are layered above with increasingly anxious and frightened energy.  

These performances by the Seattle Symphony mark the U.S. premiere of this work.  

PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY  
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23, TH 55 
BORN: May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russia 
DIED: November 6, 1893, in Saint Petersburg, Russia 
WORK COMPOSED: 1874–1875 
WORLD PREMIERE: October 13, 1875, in Boston 

What to Listen For:  

• The majestic opening theme, accompanied by massive chords from the soloist, is one of Tchaikovsky’s most beautiful and fleeting moments, appearing only once in the concerto.  

The majestic opening theme, accompanied by massive chords from the soloist, is one of Tchaikovsky’s most beautiful and fleeting moments, appearing only once in the concerto.  

Though Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto is one of the most recognizable works of its kind today, it did not receive a warm reception on its first outing. On Christmas Eve of 1874, Tchaikovsky played through his new Concerto for his friend, the eminent pianist Nikolai Rubinstein. In a letter to his patron, Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky described the humiliating incident: “I played the first movement. Not a single word, not a single comment!” Rubinstein, who had always supported Tchaikovsky and premiered many of his works, did not hold back after hearing all three movements. Tchaikovsky recounted that his friend deemed the work “worthless, absolutely unplayable; the passages so broken, so disconnected, so unskillfully written, that they could not even be improved.” Thankfully, Tchaikovsky stood his ground and refused to alter “a single note.”  

When Rubinstein refused to play it, the score was sent to Hans von Bülow, the famous German conductor and pianist, who declared the Concerto a “true gem” and premiered it in Boston to an adoring audience. After a few years, Rubinstein changed his mind and performed the work. Despite the initial disagreement, the two artists remained close friends throughout their lives.  

The first movement begins with a passionate introduction, with declamatory horns unleashing a powerful series of chords from the soloist and a sweeping melody in the strings. This is one of Tchaikovsky’s most famous themes, and yet it appears only once in the introduction and is never revisited. After the intensity tapers off, the piano enters with a jaunty theme based on a Ukrainian folksong. This transitions to a gentler theme first heard in the clarinets and taken up by the soloist. An extensive cadenza of dazzling virtuosity ends the movement.  

In the Andantino semplice—Prestissimo, a solo flute sings a delicate melody before passing it to the piano. Breaking from traditional slow-movement forms, Tchaikovsky inserts a lively middle section full of intricate virtuosity. The melody here is based on a French cabaret song, “Il faut s’amuser, danser et rire” (“One must have fun, dance and laugh”), a favorite of the opera singer Désirée Artôt, who was briefly engaged to Tchaikovsky.  

The breathless opening melody of the finale is based on another Ukrainian folk song. A lyrical second melody appears in the strings and the two themes alternate in a brilliant race to the finish.  

SERGEY PROKOFIEV  
Symphony No. 6 in E-flat minor, Opus 111 
BORN: April 23, 1891, in  Sontsivka, Ukraine 
DIED: March 5, 1953, in Moscow, Russia 
WORK COMPOSED: 1945–1947 
WORLD PREMIERE: October 11, 1947, in Leningrad, Russia, by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky. 

What to Listen For:  

• The dark austerity of Prokofiev’s post-war symphonic meditation was deemed “anti-Soviet” in nature and put the composer under much scrutiny.  

The dark austerity of Prokofiev’s post-war symphonic meditation was deemed “anti-Soviet” in nature and put the composer under much scrutiny.  

Sergey Prokofiev was born in a rural estate in Ukraine to a family of modest means. His mother devoted herself to music and would often practice the piano in the evenings while her son listened. Inspired by the great piano works of Chopin and Beethoven, the young Prokofiev began composing his own music at the age of 5 and attempted his first symphony by age 11. He was the youngest of his classmates at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition, and was well on his way to a vibrant career when he graduated.  

Prokofiev was one of many composers who fled Russia during the Revolution of 1917, yet unlike most of his colleagues, he eventually returned to his homeland to live in what had become the Soviet Union. For a number of years, he traveled freely between Russia and the West, but the strain of being a celebrated artist under Stalin’s reign eventually caught up with him. When Prokofiev returned from an American tour in 1938, his foreign-travel passport was taken away and never returned. He remained in Russia for the rest of his life, where he continued to compose within the restrictive confines of the Stalinist regime.  

Prokofiev had already begun sketches for his Sixth Symphony before the triumphantly successful premiere of his Fifth Symphony in 1945. Symbolizing the strength and generosity of the human spirit, the Fifth marked a highpoint in Prokofiev’s career and provided a glimpse of hope in the darkness of the Second World War. When the Sixth Symphony was premiered two years later in 1947, the reception was more moderate. Audiences, who were expecting an outwardly victorious symphony, instead heard a work of austerity and emotional complexity. Prokofiev told his biographer, the Soviet author Israel V. Nestyev, “Now we are rejoicing in our great victory, but each of us has wounds which cannot be healed. One man’s loved ones have perished, another has lost his health. This must not be forgotten.” These unresolved emotions are at the heart of the Sixth Symphony and proved to be an artistic risk for Prokofiev. Shortly after the Sixth’s premiere, Andrei Zhdanov, a secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party under Stalin, cracked down on composers and delivered guidelines for music that was “morally acceptable” and upbeat. Prokofiev’s new symphony was singled out for being too obscure and “anti-Soviet.”  

The first movement opens with snarling brass playing a dark, descending scale. A lilting theme enters in the strings but a sense of unease and menace linger. A second chant-like melody in the oboes creates a haunting atmosphere. Later, bassoons and piano initiate a march that leads to a sinister climax followed by a conclusion of quiet restlessness.   

The Largo begins with an anguished cry as chromatic woodwinds clash over a rumbling bass. An impassioned and forceful melody follows. The yearning tension dissipates and a more tender romantic melody unfolds in the cellos. These two lyric themes return later in reverse order, but before that comes an episode of sharp percussive hits and a contrasting moment of warmth featuring a quartet of horns. The tormented woodwind cries from the opening return before lapsing into a semblance of peace.  

In a departure from the first two movements, the finale starts with a flurry of boisterous activity. The energy persists with unflagging optimism and momentum until a solo bassoon and clarinet take over, winding down to a pause — the stillness made eerie after so much commotion. Prokofiev then brings back the austere oboe melody from the first movement in a soft and sparse setting. Out of this quiet calm comes a low tremolo and the cries of protest from the second movement. The symphony ends in a pulsating rush, its final outburst brief and surprising.   

All notes by Catherine Case © 2024