Bolero!

From Classical Cafe:

Knoxville Symphony Orchestra this week - Bolero!

Rainbow Body -- Christopher Theofanidis
Concerto in D Minor for Violin and Orchestra, op. 47 -- Jean Sibelius
Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28 -- Richard Strauss
Bolero -- Maurice Ravel

I'll confess--I have not always been a fan of Maurice Ravel's Bolero. For a long time, I dismissed it as nothing more than a cheap crowd-pleaser that was often latched onto for the purposes of unsophisticated exploitation.  And, too, its use in Blake Edwards' 1979 film 10 (a film I did not like at all) certainly did not benefit its reputation in my eyes.  However, after years of ignoring and belittling it, I finally heard the LA Philharmonic perform it live in the early 90s.  Since then, I have become an admirer, albeit, sometimes a begrudging one.  How did this happen?  The key here is--a live performance versus a recording.

Recordings simply do not do justice to the piece.  Bolero must be heard in a live performance to take in the sense of it.  It begins with a simple theme that then repeats...and repeats...and repeats.  But with each iteration, instruments are added and subtracted, some textures emerge while others are absorbed.  To understand where the textures come from, one has only to look at the wind and brass instrumentation:  flutes, piccolo, oboe, oboe d'amore, English horn, E-flat and B-flat clarinets plus bass clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones, bassoons, contrabassoon, horns, trumpets including piccolo trumpet, trombones, and tuba.  Plus strings, percussion, and the snare drum that rat-a-tats throughout.  Yikes!  The layers of tone build one on top of another; the volume of the orchestra increases, little by little, until, unable to withstand a single more decibel or tone color, it crashes in on itself in a satisfying cataclysm of obliteration.

Christopher Theofanidis is a contemporary American composer, yet his Rainbow Body, a work of powerful beauty, is drawn from a medieval chant of Hildegard von Bingen, "Ave Maria, O auctrix vite."  However, audiences may choose to ignore this inspirational intent, and they can do so without detriment.  While the ethereal acoustic feeling of von Bingen's chant makes an intriguing point of departure and thematic base for a composer, it is probably an esoteric one for most audiences.  Whether the chant melody jumps out at you or not, it is  Theofanidis's sense of drama that makes this an enticing, beautiful piece for orchestra.

Also on the program is the happily engaging Richard Strauss tone poem Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche, Op. 28 ("Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks").  Til Eulenspiegel, the hero of a 16th Century folk tale attributed to a Thomas Murner, is a practical jokester whose luck eventually runs out and is executed.  However, Strauss probably felt he was, himself, playing a joke on an unsuspecting audience.  As he described it: 

"...it seems sufficient to point out the two motives [from the clarinet and horn], which in the most manifold disguises, moods, and situations, pervade the whole...let them guess at the musical joke which a Rogue has offered them." 

The joke, of course, is that in the folktale, the hero escapes the gallows, and dies peacefully in bed.

Just as in a Strauss tone poem, audiences should not be embarrassed to find themselves imagining a narrative or concocting mental images in the Concerto in D Minor for Violin and Orchestra, op. 47 by Jean Sibelius.   The work is unabashedly a part of the sensual romanticism of the 19th century, particularly the second Adagio di molto movement. Yet it illustrates a more modern sense of drama through its orchestration, a curious mix of nature and fin de siècle subjects, perhaps reflecting what some of his more southern European colleagues were feeling.  In the final movement, its rhythmic structure and dark melodic line even brought Sibelius to describe it as a "Danse Macabre."

Sibelius worked on the score in 1903 for a 1904 premiere in Helsinki.  Not completely satisfied, he withdrew it, publishing a revised version in 1905.  Guest violinist Elena Urioste joins Maestro Lucas Richman and the KSO for the performance.