Madison Symphony Orchestra
Program Notes
January 19, 2020
94th Season / Beyond the Score
Michael Allsen
One of
our more popular features over the past few seasons have been
presentations in
the Beyond the Score® series developed by the Chicago Symphony
Orchestra. These
innovative programs combine live actors, multimedia, and the
orchestra to
present deep and entertaining background on a featured
work—followed by
performance of the full work. In the past five seasons the
Madison Symphony
Orchestra has presented Beyond the Score programs on Dvořák’s “New World” symphony,
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Elgar’s Enigma
Variations, and
Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 (“Italian”). At this
program MSO pianist
Dan Lyons, and actors James Ridge, Colleen Madden, Marcus
Truschinski, and
Tracy Arnold from American Players Theatre, will be on stage
to help tell the
story of Prokofiev’s grand patriotic wartime work, the Symphony
No.5.
Sergei
Prokofiev (1891-1953)
Symphony No.5 in B-flat Major, Op.100
Prokofiev composed his fifth
symphony in
1944. The work was first performed in Moscow, on January 13,
1945. This is our fourth
performance of the work: the first three took place in 1990,
2001 and 2011. Duration
43:00.
In Josef Stalin’s
Soviet Union,
composers served the State, and musical style was expected to
conform to the
political needs of the moment and the philosophy of artistic
authorities. Prokofiev’s
Soviet colleague Dmitri Shostakovich chafed against these
restrictions though
his whole career, and even in his big, patriotic wartime
symphonies (the
seventh and eighth), there are hints of sarcasm and
bitterness. For his part,
Prokofiev seems wholeheartedly to have supported the
government, and provided
unabashedly nationalistic works, such as the bombastic Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October
Revolution
(1937) and the cantata Hail
to Stalin
(1939). He made every effort to assist when the Soviet Union
entered the war in
1941, providing dozens of smaller patriotic works. However,
Prokofiev’s most
important artistic responses to the Great Patriotic War were
the two largest
scores completed in these years, the opera War
and Peace, and the Symphony No.5.
In a postwar interview, he discussed the composition of the
fifth symphony:
“When the Second World War broke out, I
felt that everyone
must do his share, and began composing songs and marches for
the front. But
soon events assumed such gigantic and far-reaching scope as to
demand larger
canvasses... Finally,
I wrote my Fifth
Symphony, on which I had been working for several years,
gathering themes in a
special notebook. I always work that way, and that is probably
why I write so
fast. The entire score of the Fifth was written in one month
in the summer of
1944. It took another month to orchestrate it, and in between,
I wrote the
score for Eisenstein’s film Ivan the
Terrible ... The
Fifth Symphony was
a very important composition to me, as it marked my return to
the symphonic
form after a long interval. I regard it as the culmination of
a large period in
my creative life.”
Several of
Prokofiev’s colleagues
and friends from these years have commented on his
businesslike approach to
composition—he apparently maintained a precise “9 to 5”
schedule, with
composition in the morning and orchestration in the afternoon.
Even periods
when his life was in turmoil seem to have left this schedule
intact. Beginning
in 1941, the Soviet government evacuated artists and composers
out of Moscow to
safer locations in the southern republics. Prokofiev moved
almost constantly
during the next five years, his marriage broke up, and he
suffered a series of
heart attacks, but still he remained extremely productive
throughout the years
of the war. One particularly fertile period was the summer of
1944, when
Prokofiev was staying in Ivanovo, an estate managed by the
Union of Soviet Composers.
It was during this stay that he completed the Symphony No.5, a work that had been in the
planning stage since the
1930s. Prokofiev conducted the premiere performance at a
concert of the Moscow
Philharmonic Orchestra in early 1945, and the symphony was
welcomed
ecstatically by both the audience and the official critics.
Tragically, this
was to be Prokofiev’s last performance. He suffered a
concussion soon
afterwards, and during his last eight years, he was prevented
from performing
by ill health, although he continued to compose. In 1948,
Prokofiev—who
considered himself a Soviet patriot—was censured by the
Politburo, along with
Shostakovich and Khachaturian. That same year his estranged
wife Lina was
arrested on trumped-up charges of espionage and sentenced to
20 years hard
labor. Prokofiev lived the rest of his life under a cloud of
suspicion and
largely withdrew from public life. In one of music history’s
great ironies, he
and Stalin died on the same day, March 5, 1953.
The
Symphony No.5 is
patriotic music on a
grand scale, though there are hints of uneasiness,
particularly in the
soul-searching third movement.
The opening
movement (Andante)
is in sonata form,
but it is also a succession of long, arching melodies—“slowly
singing strata,”
in the words of one early critic—above a constantly shifting
rhythmic and
harmonic background. The opening theme is an asymmetrical
melody that rises an
octave and a half in the space of two measures. A bridge
section, characterized
by a rising bass line leads to the second main theme, a dolce melody introduced by the flute and oboe.
The exposition’s
closing section contains two new ideas: a forceful melody in
dotted rhythms and
a nervous sixteenth-note figure. Prokofiev’s development is
concerned largely
with the first theme and material from the closing section.
There is a
conventional recapitulation, and the movement ends with an
exultant
transformation of the opening theme.
The two central
movements are a
study in contrast. The second movement (Allegro
marcato) is set in three-part scherzo form. The outer
sections are loosely
based upon two ideas: an ostinato-style
bass line, and a shrill Russian-flavored dance. Prokofiev
developed and varied
both ideas extensively. The central trio presents a more
lyrical melody that is
tinged with humor. Many of the musical ideas in this sardonic
movement were
apparently leftovers from his work on the ballet score Romeo and Juliet in the middle 1930s.
After the witty
scherzo, the Adagio
is pensive and somber. The long,
wandering first theme is presented by the clarinets and then
repeated and
varied. The dirgelike second theme contains references to both
the first theme
of this movement, and the main theme of the opening movement.
A development
section, which combines material from the transition and the
second theme,
builds gradually into a huge orchestral climax. The opening
triplet figure
returns, and there is a brief recapitulation of the first
theme only. The coda
introduces a final melody: a consoling answer to the first
theme.
The final movement
(Allegro giocoso) is
a rondo. The quiet
introduction gives no hint of what is to come. The violas
abruptly break in
with a rollicking eighth-note figure, and the sarcastic main
theme of this
movement is played by the clarinet. The next section contains
a pointed
staccato melody in the oboe and piccolo, and a lyrical figure
played by the
flute. After a return of the main theme, Prokofiev makes a
startling change of
pace. The central section is based upon a hymnlike melody that
recalls the
style of many of his patriotic vocal works. The movement
continues with
restatements of the main and second sections in the tonic key.
The symphony
closes with a massive coda, combining the hymn with elements
of the main theme.
Soviet victory was clearly in sight in 1944, and this
symphony’s triumphant
ending reflects optimism and joy after years of horrendous
struggle.
________
program
notes ©2019 by J.
Michael Allsen