Introduction

Having worked together quite a lot in previous years, I am extremely familiar with the magnificent City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. I’m really looking forward to returning with them for this concert to play Dvořák’s Cello Concerto alongside my brother, Joshua Weilerstein.

Josh and I have been playing together ever since he started conducting. We are, of course, close as siblings but very close musically too. Our musical values are very similar and we both feel music in an organic way so it’s really great to be playing together in this concert.

I know Dvořák’s Cello Concerto well – it is arguably the greatest masterpiece written for cello. We know that Dvořák wrote nine symphonies but I like to think of his cello centro as the tenth, in the sense that it really has everything. It is symphonic in nature with its beautifully rich writing for the winds, glorious thematic material throughout the concerto and heartbreaking harmonies.

To me, it also feels like a tone poem, illustrating a hero’s life. The cello acts as the voice of the hero and enters after 87 bars of orchestral tutti, where the orchestra has laid the groundwork for the story to come. The hero’s voice begins very strong and confident, ready to take life, grabbing it with both hands. Throughout the concerto you hear the ups and downs of the hero’s life until the hero’s life comes to an end. You can literally hear the hero’s soul leave its body – the penultimate sustained note flatlined by the cello begins to rise and rise, making for an incredibly moving end to the piece.

Dvořák actually changed the original ending that he wrote for this concerto after he found out that his sister-in-law was dying. Dvořák was rumoured to have been secretly in love with her and so he incorporated her favourite folk song into the piece, Kéž duch můj sám, which translates to ‘leave my soul alone’. It first appears in the middle of the second movement and then returns in a beautiful and bittersweet way at the very end of the piece establishing this feeling of the hero’s soul rising.

You really are being treated to such a Romantic programme of music in this concert and Josh and I are really excited to present it to you together.

Alisa Weilerstein
Cello

Programme Notes

The earth is reborn from darkness in Still’s stirring Poem. Rachmaninoff remembers his homeland in his energetic last work, The Symphonic Dances, while Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is full of beautiful, nostalgic ‘songs’. Brother and sister Joshua and Alisa Weilerstein are conductor and soloist for this afternoon's programme.

Poem for Orchestra

William Grant Still (1895-1978)

Still’s Poem for Orchestra was written during a period of great professional success for the composer. He was fulfilling numerous commissions, for both concert works and incidental music, as well as conducting high-profile orchestras (he became the first Black conductor of an all-white orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl). Poem was commissioned by the Cleveland Orchestra and premiered in 1944 during the dwindling but still horrific months of World War II. Still’s wife Verna Avery wrote a poem, at Still’s request, describing the work’s trajectory from darkness to light, beginning with the words ‘Soul-sick and weary/Man stands on the rim of a desolate world’. The musical world of the Poem certainly begins in darkness, with an insistent motif (part whistle, part warning) developing into thick, sometimes deliberately harsh harmonies. Obsessive repetitions of thematic fragments build to a somewhat militaristic peak, helped along by timpani thumps. But the texture finally melts into a soaring, gloriously noble melody, a little reminiscent of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’. It emerges gracefully from the hectic surroundings as if simply waiting for the right moment. Avery’s poem concludes with the lines ‘Where once greed and lust for power flourished/ The earth is young again, and on the verge of its rebirth/ Man draws closer to God.’ The work ends hopefully, even optimistically; the ‘warning’ motif effectively softened by the warm glow of its new surroundings.

Cello Concerto

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904)

Dvořák composed his Cello Concerto in 1894 towards the end of his three-year teaching commitment in the United States. While he had initially enjoyed his time in the US – the money was plentiful, and he was lauded for such works as his New World Symphony – the third year was a struggle for him. His wealthy American sponsor was running out of money, he was having trouble with his Concerto, and was deeply homesick (as he wrote to a friend ‘it would be best to be back in Vysoká – I am refreshed there, I rest, I am happy. Oh, if only I were home again!’). He and his wife finally returned to Bohemia in April 1895.

Despite such challenging circumstances, the difficulties with the Concerto are barely detectable. One of the more practical problems was due to his initial misgivings about the cello as a solo instrument. He believed that its low register would be unable to compete against a full ensemble. (Perversely, given such scepticism, Dvořák chose to bolster the heavier side of the orchestra, adding a tuba and insisting on three trombones.) However, the work as a whole makes a feature of the cello’s singing upper register, and also renders it a comradely affair, with generous additional solos for – at different times – clarinet, horn, flute and violin. It was composed for the cellist Hanuš Wihan, with whom the composer periodically quarrelled: Wihan was keen for more exhibitionist fireworks, while Dvořák preferred elegiac restraint (there is only the briefest ‘cadenza’ in the middle of the slow movement).

A stirring and instantly memorable theme opens the work, part of a lengthy orchestral introduction which includes a simply beautiful solo for horn. The soloist enters after around four minutes with the first theme, then participates in – rather than dominates – this darkly lyrical, yet tender, opening movement. The Adagio that follows is one of Dvořák’s most personal musical statements. Its peaceful beginning is interrupted by a sudden minor chord, as if announcing bad news. Dvořák then quotes one of his own songs (‘Lasst mich allein,’ from his op. 82 songs) which had been a favourite of his sister-in-law Josefina Kaunitzová. Dvořák had been in love with her as a young man, but she rejected him and he eventually ended up marrying her sister Anna. She had become seriously ill while Dvořák was writing the concerto and died shortly afterwards; Dvořák added an echo of the song’s melody, ‘sung’ by the cello, to the Concerto’s coda, touchingly transforming it into a major key.

The finale begins somewhat stormily, but evolves into a sparkling major key theme, and the cellist shares some of the solo duties with a single violin. The theme from the opening movement returns again, along with the recurrence of ‘Lasst mich allein’, and a gradual fading away. The high spirits, however, have the final word in this emotionally rich, ultimately joyful concerto.

Symphonic Dances

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

The Symphonic Dances (1940) was the last piece Rachmaninoff completed yet its high spirits bely the composer’s ill-health and exhaustion (he died only three years later). Although Rachmaninoff was known for his magically long-breathed melodies – and there are several here – his Dances are also rich in imaginative orchestration including, for the first time in one of his scores, a saxophone. (Rachmaninoff, who since 1918 had lived in the US, consulted Broadway composer Robert Russell Bennett regarding which register of saxophone to use. Bennett, listening with some amusement to Rachmaninoff performing the draft score down the telephone, advised the alto.)

The opening rise-and-fall theme dominates much of the first dance, initially vigorous and march-like with some punchy interjections from the piano. In a complete change of mood and texture, the clarinet and oboe introduce the beautiful alto saxophone solo, based on a serene version of the opening motif. Piano and strings later take over, bringing a touch of Hollywood ‘swoon’ to the sound world. A sepulchral bass clarinet and contrabassoon herald a return of the opening vigour. In the final moments of this movement Rachmaninoff quotes from his own ill-fated First Symphony, the disastrous premiere of which had caused a serious attack of composer’s block. Here, he converts the Symphony’s grave, minor key theme into the major mode, bells twinkling festively in the background – possibly something of a therapeutic moment for the composer.

Rachmaninoff’s cousin Sophia recalled that the Dances had originally been subtitled ‘Noon, Twilight and Midnight’. If the liveliness of the first movement belongs to the day, the sinister opening of the second dance, associated originally with Twilight, seems apt indeed. From muted brass, the music shifts into a curdled waltz, led by an exploratory solo violin. The rhythm initially suggests hesitancy, or flat footedness, but it builds to a kind of diabolical intensity, the harmonies periodically sliding into wooziness.

The characterful final dance travels through a rapidly shifting series of moods, as if comprising a medley of separate dances. Included in the mix are a number of personal call-backs, notably the ‘Dies Irae’ (day of wrath) plainchant theme, which Rachmaninoff had used in several works during his life, including his famous Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. As the First Symphony’s theme was leavened by bells, Rachmaninoff counters the solemnity of the Dies Irai with an ‘Alleluia,’ quoting from yet another work: his choral Vespers from 1915. The dance’s ‘Midnight’ quality can be heard in the almost stereotypical whirls of harp and strings around the five-minute mark, followed by growls from the low wind and strings. A substantial, lushly scored passage for strings follows, interrupted by a breezy change of mood with trumpets and wind, with brief hints of the ‘dies irae’. The latter theme does battle in the final minutes, but is ultimately taken over by the Vespers’ ‘Alleluia’ theme, which generates the glorious momentum of the final bars - and a celebratory final word from their composer.

© Lucy Walker