Episode 14: Prokofiev's Scenes from Romeo and Juliet

Following multiple failed agreements with various ballet companies (including the Bolshoi, which declared the music impossible to dance to), Sergei Prokofiev reduced what would eventually become his most popular ballet to three orchestral suites.  Romeo and Juliet “is a great lyrical symphonic epic, one in which Prokofiev used his unique gift for beautiful melody to give life to all the characters,” says Michael Tilson Thomas.  Prokofiev’s work  uses character and emotional motifs to capture the dramatic action in Shakespeare’s classic love story.

John Adams' "Harmonielehre"

After a year-long writer’s block and amid feelings of uncertainty about how contemporary music would evolve, composer John Adams had a dream.  He dreamt that as he was driving across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and looking at the water, an oil tanker took off into the sky like a rocket ship.  He woke up the next day, and like a man possessed, began work on Harmonielehre.  The third movement was inspired by a second dream, in which Adams’ daughter  “rides perched on the shoulder of the Medieval mystic, Meister Eckhardt, as they hover among the heavenly bodies like figures painted on the high ceilings of old cathedrals,” Adams writes.  He veered off from many of his contemporaries in this work by moving from minimalism back to a more Romantic harmonic language. He viewed Harmonielehre, which shares a title with Arnold Schoenberg’s seminal text on harmony (it translates as “book of harmony”), as a way to teach himself not just about harmony in music, but in life as well.

John Adams's "El Niño"

After witnessing the whirling emotions of his wife’s pregnancy, the pain of labor, and their culmination in the birth of his daughter, John Adams was inspired to re-tell the story of the most famous birth of all: the birth of Jesus. Narrated by a woman, El Niño is a Nativity story you won’t find in the Bible. Commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony in 2000, the oratorio uses texts drawn from English, Spanish and Latin sources, ranging from mystic and author Hildegard von Bingen to the pioneering Mexican poet and novelist Rosario Castellanos.

Strauss’ 'Ein Heldenleben'

Richard Strauss’ tone poem Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) is regarded by many as a musical self-portrait. Its vivid sketches of the characters and events depict the hero himself, in a soaring E flat-major horn solo; his adversaries, played by stumbling tubas; and, in what is generally thought to be a portrait of Strauss’ opera diva wife, Pauline, a violin solo that runs from loving and playful to emotional and nagging. Written after winning a ten-year contract with the Berlin Court Opera, Strauss’ sky-high spirits are evident in this adventure of a work.

Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major

During a wildly successful tour of the United States in 1928, Maurice Ravel met American composer George Gershwin, and listened to jazz in Harlem and New Orleans.  These influences plus his Basque heritage (already exhibited in his Rapsodie espagnole and Boléro) are easily heard in his Piano Concerto in G major. Ravel modeled it after the light, divertimento-like concertos of Mozart and Saint‑Saëns. The Spanish-tinged jazz riffs of the first movement are followed by a gentle and delicate Adagio, and the concerto closes with a bang in its irresistible finale.

Orff's 'Carmina burana'

With a libretto based on a collection of poems discovered in a Benedictine monastery, Carl Orff’s Carmina burana (“Bavarian Songs”) elaborates on many topics familiar to both 13th century and current listeners:  springtime beauty, going out for a night on the town, and girls in red dresses and the boys who chase them.   Ever popular with audiences, Orff considered this cantata his best work.

Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1

Franz Liszt may have been one of the nineteenth century’s most exasperating underachievers, to say nothing of committing the unforgivable sin of success on a staggering scale. But he was a genius, as this concerto can remind us. It was begun in 1835 at the ripe old age of 24, but Liszt did not complete his first piano concerto until nearly twenty years later. A final draft appeared in 1849, which was revised before the 1855 premiere (conducted by Hector Berlioz), and then revised yet again before its publication in 1856. Béla Bartók called the concerto "the first perfect realization of cyclic sonata form, with common themes being treated on the variation principle."

Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1

After advocating for Beethoven's concerto, advising on the composition of Brahms', and performing Mendelssohn's more than two hundred times, celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim lent his musical talents to a fourth great German violin concerto: Max Bruch's.  Described by Joachim as the "richest and most seductive" of the four works, this emotional, sensual music is Bruch’s most popular composition.

Walton's Symphony No. 1

The tumult and melancholy in William Walton’s first symphony have roots in perhaps the most familiar of all artistic inspirations: unrequited love.  He wrote the first three movements after his girlfriend left him (including markings such as con malizia and con malinconia). Finally, Walton could compose no further, and the work was performed several times in its incomplete state. Luckily for several conductors who were anxiously awaiting a completed symphony, Walton soon was romancing a new lady, and he finished the finale in a tone markedly different from the heartbroken opening.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 7

The premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 was perhaps his greatest rock-star moment. Buoyed by the excited troops in whose honor the concert was being performed, Beethoven “tore his arms with a great vehemence asunder ... at the entrance of a forte he jumped in the air” (according to orchestra violinist and composer Louis Spohr).  The work’s explosive energy and Beethoven’s expansion of symphonic structures to emphasize certain key areas make Symphony No. 7 an important stepping stone on his path towards Romanticism.

Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4

Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony is a musical diary of his emotional life during a period of intense personal crisis.  “I was down in the dumps last winter when the symphony was in the writing, and it is a faithful echo of what I was going through at that time,” he wrote to the work’s dedicatee, Nadezhda von Meck. Though his external life was not extraordinarily tumultuous, Tchaikovsky’s hypersensitive nature made him feel every event keenly, and this intensity of experience forms his first orchestral masterpiece from beginning to end.

Michael Tilson Thomas on Mahler's Symphony No. 5

San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, a passionate interpreter of Mahler's music, describes the composer's Symphony No. 5. The San Francisco Symphony is part of the global commemoration of Mahler's birth and death anniversaries during the 2010-11 season, including performances at home and abroad of Mahler's music, the release of Songs with Orchestra, its final CD of the Grammy-winning Mahler recording cycle, and new Mahler episodes for its acclaimed Keeping Score national PBS television series.