Program Notes: Transcendental Bliss

RICHARD STRAUSS 
Don Juan, TrV 156, Op. 20 
BORN: June 11, 1864, in Munich, Germany 
DIED: September 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany 
WORK COMPOSED: 1888 
WORLD PREMIERE: November 11, 1889, in Weimar, Germany 

What to Listen For: 

• After a brief introductory flourish by the entire orchestra, a brash, swaggering theme portrays Don Juan, a rakish heartthrob with an unquenchable thirst for romance.  

• Midway through the music, our hero acquires another theme, a valiant horn call. 

• Tranquil passages led by the winds and strings depict romantic longing. 

Richard Strauss was a late-blooming rebel. His father, a professor and principal horn of the Munich Court Opera orchestra, encouraged his gifted and obediently conservative son. Steeped in Mozart and Beethoven, the young Strauss poured out songs, chamber music, overtures and even two symphonies. But structural constraints seemed not to be a perfect fit for Strauss: in 1885, after hearing the young composer’s Symphony in F Minor, Johannes Brahms warned him against “thematic irrelevancies.” The great composer’s counsel was welcomed by Strauss, but hardly decisive. 

Two subsequent events transformed his music. The mentorship of conductor Hans von Bülow led to an appointment as his deputy at Meiningen, a prosperous provincial capital in Germany. A dutiful Strauss played chamber music, directed the choir and taught piano to the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen’s daughter. Declared “a born conductor” by his mentor, Strauss nonetheless camouflaged his inexperience by bidding the musicians to run through entire symphonies at daily rehearsals. Few composers — then and now — have gained such intense, up-close experience hearing and balancing the instruments of the orchestra. 

At Meiningen, Strauss met the violinist and composer Alexander Ritter, the husband of one of Richard Wagner’s nieces. Ritter’s advocacy of the radical ideas of Wagner reversed the wary and sometimes snide opinion Strauss held in his teenage years when he was “bored stiff” by the opera Siegfried. Decades later, he likened Ritter’s influence to a whirlwind. 

Believing that new ideas must inhabit new forms, Strauss began experimenting with expanded and elastic forms akin to Wagner’s continuous tapestries of sound. Influenced by the symphonic poems of Franz Liszt, Strauss revived the term “tone poem” to describe music that embodies emotional responses to a scene, narrative or philosophical principle. 

Don Juan established the composer’s reputation in Germany. In place of “thematic irrelevancies,” two sweeping, memorable themes portray the legendary lothario. Musical episodes not only illustrate the hero’s amorous and rumbustious escapades but convey the fateful consequences of unbridled obsession. Inspired by Nikolaus Lenau’s play Don Juan, Strauss prefaced the score with several lines spoken by the drama’s titular protagonist — perhaps most tellingly, “A beautiful storm urged me on; it has spent its rage, and silence now remains.” 

REENA ESMAIL
BORN: February 11, 1983, in Chicago, Illinois 
KALA RAMNATH 
BORN: May 29, 1967, in Chennai, India 
Concerto for Hindustani Violin and Orchestra 
WORK COMPOSED: 2022 
WORLD PREMIERE: March 20, 2022, at Celebrate Asia in Seattle, Washington, by the Seattle Symphony, with Kala Ramnath performing as guest soloist. 

What to Listen For: 

• In Hindustani tradition, the violinist is seated on the floor or other flat surface and balances the instrument between the collarbone and right foot. 

• At the conclusion of the concerto, the soloist sings a traditional invocation. 

Composers certainly benefit from closely working with virtuosos, especially when writing a violin concerto. But unlike notable pairings of soloist and composer such as Joseph Joachim and Johannes Brahms, this collaboration between two composers, Reena Esmail and Kala Ramnath, uniquely melds the beauty, strengths and sophistication of Hindustani (North Indian) music with the symphony orchestra.  

Each movement in the Concerto explores climate change through the Five Elements of the Hindu philosophic tradition. From the outset आकाश (Aakash, “Space”) reflects the co-composition of the Concerto, requiring the violin soloist to improvise on a raag — a set of notes and melodic components connected to a season (in some cases, time of day) and mood. Framed by shimmering lines in the winds and strings, the whirling violin solo in वायू (Vayu, “Air”) is fully notated; Kalmath composed the violin melodies, which according to Esmail “form the backbone of this concerto.”  

अग्नि (Agni, “Fire”) pairs a seductive violin line with the Hindustani violin against a swaying, serpentine 7/8 rhythm. Delicate rustlings of a cymbal and percussively bowed ricochets by the violins seep into the formidable जल (Jal, “Water”); colorful flourishes in the winds and touches of marimba eventually yield to majestic passages heard in Kalmath’s lower register. Marked “Grounded” in the score, पृथ्वी (Prithvi, “Earth“) begins with a horn solo and a solemn chorale. The somber atmosphere continues attacca (“without pause”) into the concluding Postlude, a showcase for Kalmath’s regal, incantatory voice. 

Shortly before the premiere last year, Esmail expressed her hope that the Concerto “expresses the vast beauty of the natural works, acknowledges the gravity of our impact on it, and ultimately asks for forgiveness — with the hope that we might change our own actions before it is gone forever.” 

SOFIA GUBAIDULINA 
Fairytale Poem 
BORN: October 24, 1931, in Chistopol, USSR 
WORK COMPOSED: 1971 
WORLD PREMIERE: November 21, 1971, in Moscow, USSR 

What to Listen For: 

• Continually changing instrumental combinations conjure moods of mystery, resignation, and joy. 

Continually changing instrumental combinations conjure moods of mystery, resignation, and joy. 

While a student at the Moscow Conservatory in 1959, Sofia Gubaidulina had the good fortune to show Dmitri Shostakovich the score of her first symphony. She never forgot his enigmatic advice: “Be yourself. Don’t be afraid of being yourself. My wish for you is that you should continue on your own, incorrect way.” 

Months later, Shostakovich advocated for Gubaidulina at her graduation examination, which also included questions about Don Juan by Richard Strauss. She maintains a profound gratitude for Shostakovich’s parting words: “I needed them at that moment, and felt fortified by them to such an extent that I feared nothing, any failure or criticism just ran off my back, and I was indeed able to pursue my own path.” 

Gubaidulina stuck to her “incorrect way.” Rather than accept a teaching position, she ventured into composing for film and radio. As an ardent yet secret Orthodox Christian in the officially atheist Soviet Union, this path offered greater freedom and opportunity for experimentation. When pressured and censured, Gubaidulina remained true to her principles. She refused a prestigious commission from the Communist Youth League — a decision that resulted in decades of poverty. Unbowed, she later remarked, “You prostitute yourself once, and you’ve lost everything.” 

Originally written for radio and premiered by Shostakovich’s son Maxim and the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, Fairytale Poem accompanied a Czech children’s story, “The Little Chalk.” In this allegory, the chalk symbolizes the artist who, despite dreaming of creating astonishing images, must write words and numbers on a classroom blackboard. Finally worn to the nub, it cowers in fearful darkness. From the deep folds of a pocket, a child fishes the stubby remnant out and begins to draw fantastic castles and gardens. 

Near the end, an upwards rippling of harp and piano along with fluttering winds and strings affirm a joyous, transcendent fate; the composer writes, “The chalk is so happy that it does not notice how it meets its end while drawing this beautiful world.” 

RICHARD STRAUSS 
Tod und Verklärung, TrV 158, Op. 24 (“Death and Transfiguration”) 
WORK COMPOSED: 1888–1889 
WORLD PREMIERE: June 21, 1890, in Eisenach, Germany 
FUN SEATTLE SYMPHONY FACT: After its Seattle Symphony premiere on February 10, 1927, “Death and Transfiguration” was performed again in 1928, 1929 and 1930. All performances were conducted by Karl Krueger. 

What to Listen For: 

• From gentle pulses to ferocious pounding, the timpani pattern represents the heartbeat of the dying artist. 

From gentle pulses to ferocious pounding, the timpani pattern represents the heartbeat of the dying artist. 

On the brink of death, Richard Strauss told his daughter-in-law, “It’s a funny thing but dying is exactly like I composed it 60 years ago in Tod und Verklärung.” Yet Strauss did not intend to foreshadow his end; before the premiere, he had enlisted Alexander Ritter to write a short poem for the concert program. 

Although the composer deemed his friend’s verses “an excellent guide” to the music, Strauss outlined his intentions in a straightforward letter to a noted critic: “The idea occurred to me to represent the death of a person who had striven for the highest ideals, therefore very possibly an artist, in a tone poem.” 

Cast in a single movement, Tod und Verklärung has four distinct sections, each described in his letter. A solo horn, muted strings and reed instruments open the Largo, characterizing someone who is ill and “lies in bed, asleep, with heavy irregular breathing.” Resembling a beating heart, gently thumping timpani imitates the same rhythmic pattern. Wistful, almost weeping melodies on the flute, oboe and violin hint at the “agreeable dreams” of childhood. 

Tremolo strings lead to the Allegro molto agitato, where a thunderous timpani strike followed by churning cellos and double basses tell us the dying artist whose “limbs shake with fever” is again “racked by terrible pain.” Frantic, at times convulsive, exchanges among the orchestra highlight the imposing theme of “the Ideal” announced by the brass. The propulsive figures in the violins, violas and harps of the Meno mosso (“not as fast”) trace the artist’s “path through life.” 

In the valedictory Moderato, a guttural drone signals “The hour of death.” Contentedly intertwined, the childhood melody and motive of “the Ideal” return to embark on a final, luminous ascent: “The soul leaves the body, in order to find perfected in the most glorious form in the eternal cosmos that which he could not fulfill here on earth.” 

All notes by Christopher DeLaurenti © 2023