Repertoire & Program Notes

Notes on the Program by Dr. Richard E. Rodda:

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) | Suite from Billy the Kid

Aaron Copland was born on November 14, 1900 in Brooklyn, New York and died on December 2, 1990 in North Tarrytown, New York. He composed Billy the Kid during the summer of 1938 in Paris and the MacDowell Colony in Peterboro, New Hampshire. The American Ballet Caravan gave the premiere at the Chicago Civic Opera House on October 16, 1938. Early the following year, Copland extracted a concert suite from the score. William Steinberg conducted the first performance of that version on November 9, 1940 on a broadcast with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The score calls for piccolo plus woodwinds in pairs, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, and strings. Duration is about 21 minutes.

In the mid-1930s, at the time when he was trying to find an approachable, distinctly American style that would alleviate what he called ”an increasing dissatisfaction with the relations of the music-loving public and the living composer,” Aaron Copland met Lincoln Kirstein, director of the American Ballet Caravan, the adventurous predecessor of the New York City Ballet — when Kirstein asked him to write a ballet about Billy the Kid, the notorious outlaw of the Old West famed in ballad and legend, Copland jumped at the opportunity. For inspiration, Kirstein gave him a book of cowboy tunes, though Copland admitted a marked antipathy to such music at the time. As he studied the simple, unaffected songs, however, he came to realize that they were not only an excellent source of material for the new ballet, but that they also opened a path to the more straightforward, popular style he sought. His fondness for those songs grew as he worked with them, and he later admitted that he could not imagine Billy the Kid without them. Among those he included in the score were The Old Chisholm Trail, Git Along, Little Dogies, Great Granddad, Good-bye, Old Paint, and Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie, but he omitted Home on the Range. “I had to draw the line somewhere,” he said. Alfred Frankenstein, a noted critic and the long-time program annotator for the San Francisco Symphony, wrote of the factual Billy the Kid, “His real name was William Bonney. He was born in New York City in 1859, but grew up in Silver City, New Mexico, where his mother kept a boarding house. He murdered his first man in a saloon in Silver City when he was twelve years old, and for the next nineteen years was one of the most industrious and generally admired bandits of the Southwest. Eventually he was captured, tried for murder, and condemned to death. He made a sensational escape from the sheriff’s deputies, but one day he was shot down by Pat Garrett, a sheriff, who was once his friend.” Copland prefaced the score with a synopsis of the ballet’s plot: “The action begins and closes on the open prairie. The central portion of the ballet concerns itself with the significant moments in the life of Billy the Kid. The first scene is a street in a frontier town. Familiar figures amble by. Cowboys saunter into town, some on horseback, others with their lassoes. Some Mexican women do a Jarabe that is interrupted by a fight between two drunks. Attracted by the gathering crowd, Billy is seen for the first time as a boy of twelve with his mother. The brawl turns ugly, guns are drawn, and in some unaccountable way, Billy’s mother is killed. Without an instant’s hesitation, in cold fury, Billy draws a knife from his cowhand’s sheath and stabs his mother’s slayers. His famous career has begun. In swift succession we see episodes from Billy’s later life. At night, under the stars, in a quiet card game with his outlaw friends. Hunted by a posse led by his former friend Pat Garrett. Billy is pursued. A running gun battle ensues. Billy is captured. A drunken celebration takes place. Billy in prison is, of course, followed by one of Billy’s legendary escapes. Tired and worn in the desert, Billy rests with his girl. Starting from a deep sleep, he senses movement in the shadows. The posse has finally caught up with him. It is the end.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) | Facsimile, Choreographic Essay for Orchestra

Leonard Bernstein was born on August 25, 1918 in Lawrence, Massachusetts and died on October 14, 1990 in New York City. The ballet Facsimile was composed in 1946 and premiered on October 24, 1946 in New York and the “Choreographic Essay” based on it was premiered on March 5, 1947 in Poughkeepsie, New York; both performances were conducted by the composer. The score calls for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, E-flat clarinet, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, cornet, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, and strings. Duration is about 19 minutes.

In 1944, the 26-year-old Leonard Bernstein composed Fancy Free for New York’s Ballet Theatre, a production that marked Jerome Robbins’ début as a choreographer. Fancy Free was a smash, playing 99 times in New York that season and serving as the basis of the hit Broadway musical On the Town later that year. In 1946, Bernstein agreed to collaborate with Robbins again and they hammered out the scenario for the new ballet — Facsimile — in five days; Bernstein finished the score in just three weeks. He made a piano recording of the music for Robbins and the dancers to work out the choreography soon thereafter, and conducted the premiere at the Broadway Theatre, on October 24, 1946. Facsimile, with its unsettling theme of loneliness and its explosive interpersonal relations (i.e., a “facsimile” of a true, meaningful relationship), did not draw the warm critical and public responses that had greeted Fancy Free, however, and it has been infrequently revived as a ballet. Bernstein, eager to promote his career as a concert composer, revised the ending of the score to create what he called a “Choreographic Essay for Orchestra,” and conducted the Rochester Philharmonic in the work’s premiere at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York on March 5, 1947.

The composer provided the following synopsis of the ballet’s music and plot:

“The action of the ballet is concerned with three lonely people — a woman and two men — who are desperately and vainly searching for real interpersonal relationships. The music can be divided roughly into four sections, which follow closely the action:

“I. Solo: The woman is alone in an open and desolate place [a deserted beach in Oliver Smith’s design for the premiere], trying (and failing) to escape from herself.

“II. Pas de Deux (in two sections):

“A. Meeting with the first man, flirtation (waltz), and sudden passionate climax.
“B. Sentimental scene (muted strings with two solo violins and solo viola). The love interest peters out, leaving the pair bored and hostile.

“III. Pas de Trois (in two sections):

“A. Entrance of a second man (scherzo, featuring extended piano solo passages). Forced high spirits, triangular intrigue, brittle, and sophisticated interplay, leading to ...
“B. Denouement: Discovery of a triangle-situation, reproaches, abuses, imprecations, threats. The three are now convinced that they are ‘really living’ — or at least emotionally busy — only to arrive at a point of painful recognition of the absurdity of their behavior, and the emptiness of their feelings.

“IV. Coda: One after the other, the men make embarrassed exits, the relationships obviously exhausted, leaving the woman alone, no richer in real experience than she was at the start. “The score is played without pause, in one movement.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) | Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30

Sergei Rachmaninoff was born on April 1, 1873 in Oneg (near Novgorod), Russia and died on March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, California. He composed his Third Piano Concerto in 1909 at his summer home in Ivanovka, a village north of the Black Sea, and was soloist in the first performance, on November 28, 1909 with Walter Damrosch and the New York Symphony Orchestra. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. Duration is about 40 minutes.

The worlds of technology and art sometimes brush against each other in curious ways. In 1909, it seems, Sergei Rachmaninoff wanted one of those new mechanical wonders — an automobile. And thereupon hangs the tale of his first visit to America.

The impresario Henry Wolfson of New York arranged a thirty-concert tour for the 1909-1910 season for Rachmaninoff so that he could play and conduct his own works in a number of American cities. Rachmaninoff was at first hesitant about leaving his family and home for such an extended overseas trip, but the generous financial remuneration was too tempting to resist. With a few tour details still left unsettled, Wolfson died suddenly in the spring of 1909, and the composer was much relieved that the journey would probably be cancelled. Wolfson’s agency had a contract with Rachmaninoff, however, and during the summer finished the arrangements for his appearances so that the composer-pianist-conductor was obliged to leave for New York as scheduled. Trying to look on the bright side of this daunting prospect, Rachmaninoff wrote to his long-time friend Nikita Morozov, “I don’t want to go. But then perhaps, after America I’ll be able to buy myself that automobile.... It may not be so bad after all!” It was for the American tour that Rachmaninoff composed his Third Piano Concerto.

The Concerto consists of three large movements. The first is a modified sonata form that begins with a haunting theme, recalled in the later movements, that sets perfectly the Concerto’s mood of somber intensity. The espressivo second theme is presented by the pianist, whose part has, by this point, abundantly demonstrated the staggering technical challenge that this piece offers to the soloist, a characteristic Rachmaninoff had disguised by the simplicity of the opening. The development section is concerned mostly with transformations of fragments from the first theme. A massive cadenza, separated into two parts by the recall of the main theme by the woodwinds, leads to the recapitulation. The earlier material is greatly abbreviated in this closing section, with just a single presentation of the opening melody and a brief, staccato version of the subsidiary theme. The second movement, subtitled Intermezzo, which Dr. Otto Kinkleday described in his notes for the New York premiere as “tender and melancholy, yet not tearful,” is a set of free variations with an inserted episode. “One of the most dashing and exciting pieces of music ever composed for piano and orchestra” is how Patrick Piggot described the finale. The movement is structured in three large sections. The first part has an abundance of themes which Rachmaninoff skillfully derived from those of the opening movement. The relationship is further strengthened in the finale’s second section, where both themes from the opening movement are recalled in slow tempo. The pace again quickens, and the music from the first part of the finale returns with some modifications. A brief solo cadenza leads to the coda, a dazzling final stanza with fistfuls of chords propelling the headlong rush to the dramatic closing gestures.

©2019 Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Featured Artists

Colorado Symphony
Brett Mitchell, conductor
Lukáš Vondrácek, piano
Domenico Luciano, choreographer
Sherdian Guerin, dancer
Alejandro Perez, dancer
Jacob Ray, dancer

Preludes & Talkbacks

Join Rebecca Hamel, a graduate student from the University of Colorado - Boulder, for a deep-dive into the music of this weekend's performances.

There will be a Talkback on Friday, January 24, 2020.

Transportation & Parking

Boettcher Concert Hall is at the southwest end of the Denver Performing Arts Complex (DPAC) located at 14th and Curtis Streets in downtown Denver. It's easy to find and there are two large parking garages available within walking distance: the DPAC Garage and the Colorado Convention Center Garage. Please arrive early to ensure ease of parking and an on-time arrival. With numerous other events happening at the DPAC all the time, parking fills up quickly. Late arrivals will be seated during the first available break. We strongly encourage alternate forms of transportation.

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