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Notes from Edwin Outwater, KWS Music Director
Edwin writes about the details that go into the concerts of the Signature Series.
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Spanish Origins: Boléro and Rodrigo
February 13, 2012:What I love about this concert is that all four of these pieces revel in exquisite effect. Each piece has a certain lightness, a certain elegance, a kind of sheen. Of course, this all comes from Ravel, whom Stravinsky called "That most perfect of Swiss watchmakers." Ravel creates beauty through precision, and you can hear this in his understated Mother Goose suite as well as the enormous climax of Boléro. Certainly the Impressionist style of Ravel influenced Rodrigo which is only fair, since Spanish music lived in the soul of some of his most famous work. Nico Muhly also has a lovely sheen to his music, though I don't recall discussing French music that much with him. I know Britten is a big influence for Nico, and you can see that in this score. But Britten himself was captivated by the French sheen - even as it became in his hands an English foggy dew. So enjoy the music of Ravel and the results of his influence. Enjoy the sound and color.
- Edwin Outwater |
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Musical Fireworks: Prokofiev 5 and Brahms' Concerto for Violin
January 6, 2012:It's so easy to be swept away by Prokofiev's music that it's easy to forget what it's actually about. The Fifth Symphony is a great example of this. It's full of wit, soaring melodies, pulsating mechanical rhythms -- but it really is a war symphony, composed in the midst of World War II. It's a hymn to the spirit of the Russian people, full of heroism and a lament for the same people, decimated by war. The very opening of the piece is a pastoral melody the spirit of nobility and peace. But what will become of these farmers, these workers, these everyday people? After the opening statement, the entire first movement is an awakening to war in all its triumph and horror. The noble pastoral theme is transformed by the end of the movement into a slouching, brutal military juggernaut. It's thrilling, but also terrifying. The two quick movements of the symphony alternate between dizzying musical acrobatics and maniacal mechanism. Russian artists were fascinated with machines and this sense of Futurism pervades this music. It's a great ride, but there is always a hint of danger, of things getting out of control, of the machine going off the rails. The third movement is the most personal, starting as a dirge, descending into madness and ending with a long coda that echoes Wagner's sleep music from Die Walküre. An entire civilization, exhausted.
- Edwin Outwater |
Russian Fire
November 16, 2011:Shotakovich, Stravinsky, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky: they are Russian masters. They all composed epic sprawling symphonies and ballets, full of unbridled passion both tender and violent. They're musical versions of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. These are the works of these composers we know well ... Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Shostakovich's wartime symphonies, and Rachmaninoff's massive piano concertos.
In this concert you won’t hear any of these works.
What you're going to hear is that most exquisite of musical forms, the Russian Minature. All of these composers worked beautifully in the small scale as well as the grand. Think of the incredible tone-painting of The Nutcracker, or the beautiful short Preludes for Piano by Rachmaninoff. Folk tales, subtle emotion, beautiful neoclassical symmetry and a Mozartean sense of detail await you at this beautiful December concert. Enjoy the color, the charm and the warmth of this special corner of Russian music.
- Edwin Outwater
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The Magic of Hugh Russell
October 21, 2011: Brahms wrote of his Second Symphony, "It is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it. I have never written anything so sad, and the score must come out in mourning." Brahms was joking. It is a pastoral work, written one summer by a beautiful lake. It's an exhale after the tremendous weight and anxiety of influence Brahms felt following Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with his own First. At times serene, at times jovial, it rarely lingers on the overtly melancholy. But everything Brahms says has many layers of meaning. I love reading over Brahms's letters to Clara Schumann and others. The close readings of the scores they send each other, the care with which they craft their responses is a lost art today. Often a line is ironic several times over. So I wonder if Brahms was really happy when he wrote this symphony, whether there was some irony within irony here. Brahms lived his life without companionship, only with an endlessly yearning love for Clara Schumann. As he ages his works become increasingly inward, lonely, and final. I don't think Brahms's music is possible without sadness. Even the Second Symphony, one of his sunniest works seems filled, at its most beautiful moments, with an overwhelming awareness that this beauty will pass. This feeling of temporality adds beauty to this peace as well as sadness, but this sadness is somehow more real and satisfying, happier. So many levels of meaning, whispering like leaves in a summer breeze.
- Edwin Outwater |
The Virtuoso Piano
September 19, 2011: It's hard to play Liszt in the 21st Century. His pieces automatically take on a sense of irony that Liszt would never have intended. Today, we might call his music melodramatic, overwrought, or even (the dreaded) cheesy. That's because Liszt was using vehicles for his music that have become cliché in our time. We've heard his music in Flash Gordon TV serials, accompanied by the sight of model spaceships powered by sparklers. We've heard Liszt in the Japanese Noodle Western Tampopo (which I highly recommend) as a musical apotheosis of the perfect bowl of ramen. Let's face it: this music has been used ironically for a long time. But can we get beyond this? As listeners, can we tap into the Romantic Spirit? And don't we all really want that Romantic Spirit back? These artists, Liszt, Wagner, Schumann, Coleridge, Shelly, Keats, believed that Art was Everything, that the Artist was God, that Music was a Demon that Possessed You, that a Piano Concerto could Unleash your Deepest Fantasies. And they did, in those days. To play Liszt in the 21st century one must transport oneself, and believe in the music in a way that we don't today. One has to conjure the Romantic Spirit in a way that can't be made ironic or shrugged away. André Laplante can do this, and he will open our season playing both Liszt concertos, the dramatic, earth-shaking First Concerto, and the shockingly intimate Second. He is a true believer, and so am I, and so is our orchestra. Be prepared for your ironic distance to be burned away and to leave the concert infused with the Romantic Spirit. You'll be filled with Liszt-O-Mania.
- Edwin Outwater
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