The New Hampshire Philharmonic

  2010-2011 season

Program notes (highlights)

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in c minor, opus 18

....The atmosphere in Moscow, where Tchaikovsky had previously taught, was decidedly more eclectic than that in St. Petersburg, and young composers there were more likely to appropriate the style and forms they used from venerated composers of the past.  A contemporary music critic described the Moscow atmosphere in which Rachmaninoff found himself: “Music here was a terrible narcosis, a sort of intoxication and oblivion, a going off into irrational planes . . . It was not form, or harmoniousness, or Apollonic vision that was demanded of music, but passion, feeling, languor, heartache.”   

…Increasing civil unrest caused him to flee Russia by 1909 and to establish residence in both Switzerland and the United States.  In 1931, he published a letter in the New York Times protesting against the Soviet government.  After that, the Soviets banned both performance and study of his works.  This action caused Rachmaninoff to make a complete break with his homeland and to continue living in the United States for the rest of his life....

The Second Piano Concerto exemplifies the sumptuous harmonies and lyricism that are the hallmarks of Rachmaninoff’s music.  The soloist, who throughout the concerto has ample opportunities for virtuosic display, opens the Moderato first movement with a short series of deep, solemn chords, which gradually grow in power as the music makes its way to the basic home key of the movement.  Then Rachmaninoff introduces the strings in the passionate and distinctively Russian first theme...

- Susan Halpern (copyright 2010)

Complete notes available in concert program book

Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Symphony no. 5 in e minor, opus 64

Tchaikovsky lived and worked outside the German symphonic tradition, but he succeeded at it as no other Russian of the nineteenth century did...

Tchaikovsky sought out his own ways of creating integrated, organic works that symphonies must be.  He observed the essential principle of presenting his ideas in a continuity that follows the musical logic, but he also used an additional procedure that was still new at the time, carrying an important theme forward through the symphony from one movement to another.  This cyclic use of the opening motto became very characteristic of Russian symphonies and was to be used for more than the next half-century...

The symphony’s slow movement, Andante cantabile, begins with low, somber, introductory chords, and then the horn plays one of Tchaikovsky’s most glorious melodies, Dolce con molto espressione.  In the manuscript, Tchaikovsky wrote in French above this theme: “O que je t’aime! O, mon amie.”  (“O how I love you. O my friend.”) ...

For contrast, the third movement is a Waltz, Allegro moderato, sweet and gracious, based on an elegantly fluid theme and a quick and busy one.  Tchaikovsky attributed this theme to a song he had heard a child in Florence, Italy sing.  Just before the song is complete, the fate motive reappears from obscurity, where it has been lurking, disguised in waltz rhythm.  It is then abruptly transformed into the somber and tense introduction to the last movement, Andante maestoso. 

The rest of this Finale, Allegro vivace, is a passionate struggle of many musical elements, several of which are distant derivations from the earlier movements, but the Fate motive marches on, becoming proud and exultant, majestic, finally completely triumphant in the coda where it is completely transformed into celebratory affirmation.

- Susan Halpern (copyright 2010)

Complete notes available in concert program book