Maurice Ravel (Originally for piano; orchestrated by the composer, 1919) (1875-1937)

Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914)

Scored for: two flutes including piccolo, two oboes including English Horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, two French horns, one trumpet, harp, and strings

Performance time: 17 minutes

First Grant Park Orchestra performance: August 10, 1977; John Nelson, conductor

As a young man, Maurice Ravel had been exempted from conscription in the army given his small stature. (He was reportedly five-foot-three and just over a hundred pounds.) Nevertheless, when war broke out in 1914, the 40-year-old composer was determined to serve. He applied numerous times to become a pilot but was rejected over his age and a newly diagnosed heart condition. His friend and colleague Igor Stravinsky said, “At his age and with his name he could have had an easier place, or done nothing.” But Ravel persisted, the war having sapped him of his creative energies. He eventually headed to the front lines in March 1916, serving as a truck driver in the Army Motor Transport Corps. This dangerous job required transporting munitions and fuel under heavy German bombardment. In September 1916, he contracted dysentery and was sent to a hospital in Paris to recover. While still recuperating in the hospital that winter, Ravel learned that his mother had died. The news sent him into a downward spiral, and after a brief return to his military post, he was eventually discharged following a mental breakdown. He waited out the remainder of the conflict in a village in Normandy, where he returned to compositions he had set aside during the war.

One of these compositions was a piano suite based on baroque dance forms. Initially titled Suite française, the piece was inspired by the composer and keyboard virtuoso François Couperin (1668–1733). Ravel takes Couperin as a stylistic touchpoint, fusing his own contemporary harmonic language with the rhythms, cadences, and ornamentation of Couperin’s time. But what began as a celebration of French musical history became a commemoration of those who had died in the war. Retitling the work Le Tombeau de Couperin (“Memorial for Couperin”), Ravel dedicated each movement to a friend who had perished in the conflict. That said, the work is surprisingly upbeat for a memorial, which Ravel explained by saying, “The dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence.”

The six-movement piano suite premiered in 1919. That same year, Ravel turned it into an orchestral suite, removing two movements and reordering the remaining four. In the “Prélude,” the swirling opening motif evokes the perpetual motion of Couperin’s harpsichord music. Here, Ravel demonstrates his mastery of colorful and clear orchestration, passing the melody between different combinations of wind instruments before building up layers of sound with the strings. “Forlane,” a Venetian folk dance that gained popularity in the courts of eighteenth-century France, skips along coyly, and the introspective “Menuet” nods to Couperin in the oboe’s graceful ornamentation. The contrasting middle section recalls a somber musette, a rustic dance traditionally accompanied by the drone of a bagpipe. Like “Menuet,” the otherwise playful “Rigaudon” features a dark yet pastoral middle section. “Rigaudon” is dedicated to Ravel’s childhood friends Pierre and Pascal Gaudin, two brothers who were killed by the same shell on their first day at the front.

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, op.43 (1934)

Scored for: three flutes including piccolo, three oboes including English Horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings, and solo piano

Performance time: 22 minutes

First Grant Park Orchestra performance: August 1, 1958; Milton Katims, conductor and Agustin Anievas, piano

Niccolò Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 contains one of the most recognizable themes in all classical music, having inspired countless variations by composers such as Schumann, Liszt, and Brahms. In Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Sergei Rachmaninov’s (1873–1943) ingenuity reaches a whole other level. For instance, by simply turning Paganini’s famous theme upside down, he crafts a melody that would become instantly recognizable and beloved in its own right. Appearing in Variation 18, this rapturous theme recalls Rachmaninov’s expansive pre-war lyricism. Noting its populist appeal, the composer quipped, “This one is for my agent.”

Paganini wrote his set of 24 Caprices for Solo Violin in 1805. Each Caprice demonstrates a different technical skill he had cultivated as the foremost violin virtuoso of his day. As a set, they revolutionized people’s ideas of what the violin was capable of. In fact, Paganini was so wickedly talented that rumors circulated that he had sold his soul to the devil, earning him the moniker “The Devil’s Violinist.” Just as Paganini’s 24 Caprices challenge the violinist, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini puts the pianist through their paces in a rapid-fire set of variations on the final Caprice. “Rhapsody” is a bit of a misnomer, suggesting lengthy exposition. After receiving scathing criticisms for the length of his Fourth Piano Concerto in 1927, Rachmaninov began tightening up his compositions. In Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, composed in 1934, most of the twenty-four variations are under one minute, and some are as brief as twenty seconds. In addition to rejecting the sprawling forms he had used pre-war, his late style employs more dissonance and sharper rhythms.

In what is likely a reference to the finale of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Rachmaninov opens the Rhapsody not with a statement of the titular theme but with a variation on it. Then, when he finally states the theme, he gives it to the violin section, not the piano soloist, who instead plays skeletal single notes. Rachmaninov introduces a secondary theme in Variation 7—the “Dies irae” (“Day of Wrath”) chant from the Latin Requiem Mass—played in slow chords in the piano under a plaintive rendition of Paganini’s theme in the bassoon. A particular favorite of Rachmaninov’s, the medieval chant has crept into countless works of classical music as a harbinger of death. Perhaps this quotation is a nod to Paganini’s “devilish” reputation. The “Dies irae” infiltrates the rest of the work, recurring in Variations 10 and 12 and in the finale in stentorian brass.

Though Rachmaninov composed Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini at his summer home in Switzerland, his time spent in New York City is evident in the grittier variations. When Rachmaninov and his family settled in New York in 1918, the hustle and bustle of the city began to infiltrate his musical language; you can almost hear the car horns in variation 9. What’s more, Rachmaninov was known to hit up clubs in Harlem to hear jazz legends such as Art Tatum and Fats Waller. In awe of Tatum’s technical facility, Rachmaninov said, “If this man decided to play classical music, we’re all in trouble.” You can hear the jazz pianist’s fleet-fingered technique in the swirling sixteenth notes of Variation 15.

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943)

Scored for: three flutes including piccolo, three oboes including English Horn, three clarinets including bass clarinet, three bassoons including contrabassoon, four French horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings

Performance time: 21 minutes

First Grant Park Orchestra performance: July 15, 1960; Theodore Bloomfield, conductor

German composer Paul Hindemith took a more literal approach to his inspiration for Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes after Carl Maria von Weber than Maurice Ravel did for Le Tombeau de Couperin. Whereas Ravel nods obliquely to the style of the French baroque composer, Hindemith takes themes almost exactly as Weber wrote them, along with much of the surrounding formal structure. In a way, the title is a misnomer in that the piece draws on whole works by Weber, not just themes. Yet, Symphonic Metamorphosis sounds nothing like Weber. Hindemith alters almost everything around the borrowed material, inserting different harmonies and countermelodies and extending phrases.

Despite his short life, Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) was a seminal figure in the Romantic era, particularly in the development of German opera. Though his works are not performed so much these days, he inspired generations of German composers, Hindemith included. In 1940, choreographer Léonide Massine suggested Hindemith write a ballet for his dance company based on themes by Weber. Though they ultimately abandoned the project over artistic differences, Hindemith resurrected the score in 1943, turning it into an orchestral suite in four movements.

The opening Allegro is full of militaristic bombast. Yet, its bravado feels off-kilter, with multiple gear shifts and a blithe oboe solo in the contrasting middle section. The movement draws on Weber’s Eight Pieces for Piano Four Hands, Op. 60, No. 4. The following Scherzo is based on the incidental music to Friedrich Schiller’s play Turandot (the very same play Puccini’s opera is based on). To evoke the ancient Chinese setting, Weber took a supposedly authentic Chinese melody from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1767 Dictionaire de Musique. Hindemith alters the theme significantly with chromatic inflections and syncopation, but he uses it incessantly, as Weber does in his incidental music. The effect is like a round, with the theme passing between different instruments and the texture building with each repetition. After the brass take up the theme as a jazzy fugue subject, a bevy of percussion instruments close out the movement, ultimately fading to nothing. The Andantino is relatively straightforward in comparison. The main theme comes from Weber’s Six Pieces for Two Pianos, Op. 10a, No. 2, while the flute solo that flits above the warm string sonorities is entirely Hindemith’s creation. Taking its Weberian material again from the Op. 60 piano duets, the final March is a bold fanfare that recalls the energy of the Allegro. Full of drama, the finale ends with a cinematic finish that just begs for a rousing ovation.

Program Notes by Katherine Buzard