LA Phil Live in HD: Balakirev's Ice-Cream and Tchaikovsky's Overture-Fantasia on Hamlet

Tchaikovsky's Overture-Fantasia on Hamlet is a work that many have unfairly dismissed. "Hamlet pays Ophelia compliments," wrote Russian composer Mily Balakirev in the margin of his own copy of the score, "then hands her an ice-cream."

Gustavo Dudamel will conduct this infrequently played work, along with the two Tchaikovsky other overtures inspired by in the next LA Phil Live in HD transmission into movie theaters on Sunday March 13. But with a map that charts the trajectory of this restless Overture-Fantasia, you will soon hear that there is more to this work than compliments and ice-cream:



This is a work of contradictions. It has no separate development section but is prefaced by an intensely developmental introduction that spans almost five minutes. The music opens with a presentation, then three developmental restatements of a passage often called the Fate theme, separated by parallel sequential interludes:

[0:05]: Fate Theme
[0:40]: Fate Theme with tail motive developed and extended
[1:18]: Interlude I
[1:43]: Fate Theme further developed
[2:17]: Interlude II
[2:43]: Fate Theme developed with figuration from the interlude

[3:27]: A memorable passage in which the hour of midnight is symbolically tolled. Twelve times in regular succession the stopped horns toll an octave G.

[4:17-4:51] After a loud articulation on the tam-tam, the fate motive is played by trombones with a rich background of triplets. Many writers have heard this passage as representing the interaction of Hamlet and the ghost of his father. The passage dissolves in triplets and fragmented gestures and ends in total silence.

[4:52] The exposition begins with a theme in F minor with a rising contour that contradicts the primary shape of the fate theme. The theme is presented again in sequence [5:05].

[5:24] The transition opens in the bassoons and is further articulated by brass and cymbals. The music becomes obsessed with chromatic melodic motion until it blurs and dissolves into another separative silence.

[6:49] Solo oboe articulates the second theme group, which begins in the key of B Minor; a tritone away from the F minor in which the first theme group is set. This is the passage that most writers have associated with Ophelia. Far from paying her "compliments," this is music that shows her character to be isolated and set apart.



[0:00] This second part of the YouTube video opens with the famous "ice-cream" passage to which Balakirev referred. In a style that Tchaikovsky mastered, D major is articulated without ever being present in root position, largely through the insistence of a ringing octave A that saturates the entire passage.

[0:28] The tune shifts to the strings and [0:56] a developmental passage marked "Animando poco a poco" shifts the music around corners.

[1:17] On a G pedal we hear a grotesque march that intensifies until a retransition is made from the opening tune of the first theme group.

[1:50] The recapitulation begins as an intensification. The transition [2:20] jumps immediately to the music of chromatic blur and bypasses the passage played by bassoons in the exposition.

[3:07] There is no pause. The Ophelia music is heard in B-flat minor in a clever texture into which several developmental ideas are woven. Even when Ophelia interacts with other ideas her music remains remote and unresolved.

[4:39] A grand pause is heard just before this presentation of the lyrical music that continues the second theme group; this time in D-flat major.

[5:42] The texture breaks suddenly and the music intensifies until [6:17] the fate theme from the introduction is played several times by the trombones.

[6:38]Parallelism with the exposition is re-established as the grotesque march is heard over a C pedal. This passage is sequenced higher in chromatic motion and leads to a fanfare based on the Fate theme.

[7:25] The coda, marked Poco più animato, begins with a development from the rising motive of the first theme group. There is a fermata on a fffff chord scored low in winds…certainly one of the most intense chords in all of Tchaikovsky's music.

[7:52] The interlude from the introduction appears again and a falling cello line [8:15] marks the closing gestures of the work. Muted cellos sing [8:37] the opening fate theme in a passage that sounds like a funeral march in F minor.

The process of contemplating even the simplest description of the events in this piece allows one sympathy for those who got lost along the way. The overture-fantasia is filled with tensions, broken sequences, and lyrical episodes that float outside norms. Balakirev's ice-cream fantasy is funny, but its impatience shows us how easy it is to give up on complexities worth hearing.

This is not music that panders to the masses. I will be happy to hear what Dudamel does with this work of contradictions on Sunday...

Little Star; Mussorgsky invokes music of the past

Mussorgsky had an uncanny ability to shape the simplest of materials into highly individualized musical constructions. One can observe this gift in almost every detail of his first surviving song, written at the age of 18 in 1857. Called "Gde ty, zvjozdochka," this song title is often translated "Little Star" in English.

The text is based on parts of a short poem by Nikolai Porfiryevich Grekov (1810-1866). Grekov was a misfit who eked out his living as a translator. Never highly respected, his poems nonetheless were set with some frequency by composers like Tchaikovsky and Anton Rubinstein.

Gde ty, zvjozdochka, (Where are you little star?)(akh,) gde ty, jasnaja? (Ah, Where are you pretty one?)
Il' zatmilasja (Or are you covered)
tuchej chjornoju, (by a dark cloud)
tuchej chjornoju, (dark cloud
tuchej groznoyu? (dark, and menacing?)

Gde ty, devitsa, (Where are you maiden?)
gde ty, krasnaja? (Where are you fairest?)
Il' pokinula (or have you abandoned)
druga milogo? (thy beloved)
Druga milogo, (thy beloved,
nenagljadnogo? (one and only?)

Tucha chjornaja (A black cloud)
skryla zvjozdochku, (covered the little star)
Zemlja khladnaja (Cold Earth)
vzjala devitsu. (covers my maiden)

I've arranged the lines differently than they appear in anthologies to show that they are comprised of 5-syllable groupings. We have lost the ability to think in poetic meters, but the ancient feel communicated by this formality is structural to the setting: the texture of the piano writing evokes the bard's harp.

Mussorgsky varies the emphasis of each 5-syllable set using melismas that allow the lines to float. The second line contains an extra exclamation common to the oral tradition and heard from time-to-time in the Milman Perry recordings.

The song opens with an unaccompanied piano line; a most unusual texture. One might expect a line like this to be doubled at the octave below, perhaps set against a simple drone. The spareness evokes broken loneliness.

The chords in the opening stanza explore the relationships between progressions by fifth and linear motions in thirds, particularly as the section approaches its cadence.

The middle stanza [1:09] brightens into the relative major with rustic drones and internal cadences on the mediant (the dominant of the larger tonal structure).

There is a wonderful collision as the last pitch of the central section rests on F-sharp [1:56], which becomes a dissonance as the music shifts back into G-sharp minor. Somehow our minds find a resolution that is unvoiced; a powerful symbol within the matrix of images in this song.

The final stanza [1:57] alters the pattern established in the first stanza. The powerful crystal-clear high G-sharp [2:23] sung and sustained clears away a space for the final phrase to quietly flow. The music shifts to the parallel major as the death of the maiden becomes clear to the listener [2:48], and as soon as the major tonality is understood it is taken away [3:00]. The highest note of the piece is the minor third, voiced in octaves on B-natural, just before the closing line.

This song intentionally invokes a music of the past to illuminate a grief that remains connected to nature. Its realizations come through images of stars and clouds and finally of Earth.

Met Live in HD Review; Iphigénie en Tauride. An Opera of Opposites that Attracted

Stephen Wadsworth's production of Iphigénie en Tauride did not start with music. It started with the opposite of music; a silent dream. In the dream Iphigénie recalled that she was sacrificed by her father in order to gain favorable winds for the army to sail back from Troy. The Goddess Diane descended on a cable. Seconds later she and Iphigénie gracefully ascended until they vanished from sight. Then music; momentarily calm and sweet in D major.

More than simply detailing the back story, Wadsworth helped us to feel these events from the past in the present. When the storm music in the opening orchestral passage broke we were reminded of the winds that motivated the dream-like sacrifice we had just witnessed.

There is no overture to this opera. The opera opens with the opposite of an overture. Susan Graham, as Iphigénie, sang her opening lines; "Grands dieux! soyez-nous secourables!" within the energy of the storm itself. This production made an important distinction: this is no ordinary musical storm...it is a storm of emotions.

Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride is an opera immersed in the darkest psychology of guilt, mourning, and the trappings of unfolding consequences. Emotion and its opposite: fate.

The intensity of the emotional states required a patient, slow unfolding that, in perfection, would hover just north of boredom. Wadsworth kept us in the right places without distracting from an essential stillness. Yet he also interjected fascinating projections, presented a ghostly visitation by Clytemnestre who is able to magically embrace both her children from within a barrier wall, and he also silently re-enacted the family murders that torment Orestes and Iphigénie.

"Perhaps more complicated than the plot of our opera today is the health of the Met singers," said Met General Manager Peter Gelb in a special announcement just moments before the Live in HD transmission started. "Both Ms. Graham and Mr. Domingo have been suffering from bad colds...[but] they are bravely soldiering on. However, the occasional cough from the audience might be supplemented by one or two from the stage."

One would never have guessed that Graham was working against a cold. Her voice was clear and still flexible as it came pouring into the movie theater. One could hear interference in Domingo's voice, but it was still a pleasure to hear him sing this role. Tenor Paul Groves, apparently healthy and singing Pylade, was also able to convince with effective and lovely lyrical colors in his voice.

The act two ballet/pantomime of the furies was done without dancing or pantomime. Orestes is not supposed to be able to see these furies, they torment him on a purely psychological dimension. But we are supposed to be able to see them; and we did not because Wadsworth chose to have the music sung off-stage while we focused on Orestes. This unnecessary inactivity made the second act seem too long.

Yet, I found it curious that the chorus 'Contemplez Ces Tristes Apprets' was not played just before the close of the second act. It is gorgeous music and was cut. In this sense intermission also came too soon.

Conductor Patrick Summers took quick tempos that produced a buoyant quality. He took the act one aria for Iphigénie: "O Toi, Qui Prolongeas Mes Jours," at such a quick tempo that the music felt like a dance. Graham benefited from these tempi and was able to shape phrases with delicious rhythmic delicacies.

Graham and Domingo had great chemistry and the third and fourth acts further intensified as a result of their ability to interact. When Diane descended from the rafters to call the action of the opera to a close it felt balanced and strangely logical.

Iphigénie en Tauride is an opera where all the main characters escape alive; where there is no comedy at all, no romantic entanglements, no courtesan, no seductress, no masks. It is an opera about the opposite of opera.

But this opposite attracted.

Recitative from the Shostakovich Aphorisms; A short meditation on February 25

1. Recitative

There is hope of a better time not farre off, for this in it selfe is little comfortable: and for the small pleasure that I find in it, I will this briefly conclude of it: It is the poor mans pick-purse, and the misers cut-throat, the enemy of pleasure, and the time of patience. Farewell.

Nicholas Breton understood February. This short quotation about February, from a work written just before he died in 1626, was called “Fantasticks.” Breton saw the cyclic year with immediacy, a wheel in turns tender and treacherous. Unsafe.

Dimitri Shostakovich wrote the opening movement of his Aphorisms, Op. 13 for solo Piano, on February 25, 1927. “I conceived these pieces in the beginning of February,” he confided, “while I was going to bed, in Berlin. During that time, I was thinking a great deal about a particular law of nature, that served as an impulse for composing Aphorisms, which are all united by the same idea. I don’t want to say right now what that idea was.”

"The waters now alter the nature of their softnes," wrote Breton "and the soft earth is made stony hard: The Ayre is sharp and piercing, and the winds blow cold."

Not from within the language of opera, Shostakovich's recitative sings the language of the unconscious: a series of cabaret gestures, broken toys, floating within a chromatic stream. It closes with syncopated dancing music. No point in articulating a unifying idea during February.