Amy Beach: Scene and Aria from Maria Stuart
Composed: 1892
Duration: c. 14 minutes
 

In her lifetime, Amy Beach was celebrated as the pre-eminent female composer in America. And, after some time away from concert programmes, Beach’s music is enjoying a renaissance today. 

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Beach was something of a musical prodigy. Born into a wealthy New England family, she dazzled as a pianist, eventually debuting with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1885. Born Amy Cheney, she married Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a physician and lecturer at Harvard University. At his instruction, she curtailed her performing career, and turned towards composition. 

Beach had a natural sensibility for long, luscious lines and swirling chromaticism, and created music of heavy emotional churn. Add in the influence of folk music—particularly the folk and mythic traditions of the British Isles—and her music grows closer to that of Dvořák, Vaughan Williams, or Arnold Bax.

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Maria Stuart, an early work in her output, comprises a scene and an aria for singer and orchestra, based on a verse play by Friedrich Schiller. The play concerns the final days of Mary, Queen of Scots, the same subject that Donizetti turned into his opera of the same name. It sets text from Act 3, Scene 1, a pivotal moment in the play; the music is suitably charged and thrilling. It’s performed here in a new edition by conductor Jon Gibson.
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Gustav Mahler: Rückert Lieder
Composed: 1901-2
Duration: c. 18 minutes

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1. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder

2. Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft! 

3. Um Mitternacht 

4. Liebst du um Schönheit

5. Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen

 

Whether writing symphonic music or setting texts, Gustav Mahler regularly turned to poetry for inspiration. His music embodies poetry in its fullest: epic, world weary sagas, devotional paeans to beauty and love, existential wondering about life, childhood and death, it’s music of consistently poetic expression.

 

One of the poets Mahler found particular solace in was Friedrich Rückert, a poet of searching German lyric texts. Their composition springs from one of the most productive summers of Mahler’s life: two movements of his Fifth Symphony were completed, as well as eight lieder. 

 

Mahler’s music treads a fine line between quiet joy and peaceful resignation. There are five movements. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder (Do not look at my songs) opens with an unusual theme, as a bashful poet commands a viewer not to gaze too closely on his act of artistic creation as it’s happening. Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft! (I breathed a gentle fragrance) is a fine example of Mahler’s pithiness, able to convey a multitude of meanings with the setting of a single phrase.

 

Um Mitternacht (At Midnight) is an unusual movement, which calls for no strings. The poet looks up to the sky at midnight, and finds few answers to his sorrows. Liebst du um Schönheit (If you love for beauty) is a declaration for love on its own merits—not for beauty, treasure, or youth. And finally, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the world) suggests that central struggle, between existential angst with the world, and peaceful withdrawal from it. There’s the sense of Mahler sinking here, in beautiful music that recalls the plush expanses of his symphonies in a concentrated burst.

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--- INTERVAL ---

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Igor Stravinsky: The Firebird Suite (1945 version)

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1. Introduction – Prelude and Dance of the Firebird – Variations (Firebird)

2. Pantomime I

3. Pas de deux (Firebird and Ivan Tsarevich)

4. Pantomime II

5. Scherzo (Dance of the Princesses)

6. Pantomime III

7. Rondo (Khorovod / Round Dance of the Princesses)

8. Infernal Dance of King Kashchei

9. Lullaby

10. Finale

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The year was 1909, and Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the Ballet Russes, faced a conundrum. His previous season had been praised for its design and movement, but Paris’s critics thought the musical choices lacked similar novelty. He also faced financial challenges, and sought to capitalise on a new Parisian interest in Russian music. He turned to a relatively unknown quantity in Igor Stravinsky. Their three big collaborations—first The Firebird, later Petrushka and Rite of Spring—became the bedrock of a new expressive musical language for ballet in the 20th century.

 

Of the three main Stravinsky’s artistic output—the Russian period, a neoclassical period (beginning with Pulcinella, another Diaghilev collaboration), and finally his serial period—his first period is best represented on concert programmes. Rather than a jolt in the steady progress of music (as the disgruntled crowd at the Rite of Spring premiere might have had it), much of Stravinsky in this period makes clear its roots in the traditions of Russian orchestral storytelling. Listening again to Firebird, it’s clear how much he inherited from Alexander Borodin and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, his teacher.

 

The majority of Firebird was composed in the first part of 1910, ahead of its premiere in June of that year. Set in the evil immortal Koschei's castle, the ballet follows Prince Ivan, who battles to save Koschei’s captors with the help of the magical, glittering Firebird. Good eventually prevails over evil, with the glowing chords of the final hymn signifying a journey at its end.

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