Born in Karevo, March 21, 1839
Died in St. Petersburg, March 28, 1881

The witches’ sabbath of St. John’s Eve (June 23/24) is a popular legend in many European countries. The location is usually on the heights of an isolated mountain: the Brocken in Germany, Blokula in Sweden or Lysá Hora (“Bald Mountain”) near Kiev. There, witches, sorcerers, demons and hideous imps gather for a night of revelry and orgiastic abandon.

Mussorgsky finished the first version of Night on Bald Mountain in June 1867, appropriately enough, right on St. John’s Eve (June 23), according to the composer himself. He revised the score in 1872, to which he added a chorus, and again when he incorporated it into his opera Sorochinsky Fair. On October 27, 1886, five years after his death, Night on Bald Mountain was finally heard in a version collated from three earlier sources and orchestrated by his colleague Rimsky-Korsakov, who conducted the Russian Symphony Society in St. Petersburg. It was only sometime in the 1920s that Mussorgsky’s original was first performed, by the Leningrad Philharmonic, and not until 1968 that it was finally published. Many conductors today opt for the Rimsky-Korsakov version, but we hear the score tonight in its original form.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s involvement amounted to smoothing out what he considered to be Mussorgsky’s stylistic irregularities and “problems” of orchestration. He also shortened it by about two minutes and completely changed the ending, which in the original is savage and furious. However, the musical world is slowly realizing that Mussorgsky’s own style, rough-hewn and unpolished as it may be at times, has its own unique appeal.

– Program notes by Robert Markow

I. Allegro moderato
II. Canzonetta: Andante
III. Finale: Allegro vivacissimo

While his homosexuality was known to close friends and family members, Tchaikovsky’s (1840–1893) concern about flouting societal convention alongside his burgeoning fame as a composer led him to marry Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova in July 1877. Not surprisingly, it was a disastrous decision—within two months, they were separated. His marriage debacle became a turning point: in 1878, Tchaikovsky left his position at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and was able to pursue composition full time due to a regular allowance given to him by Nadezhda von Meck, a wealthy widow and admirer of the composer. (Their association, conducted solely by correspondence, lasted for 14 years.) The Violin Concerto in D major was the first work he conceived and completed following his crisis.

Tchaikovsky was often plagued by insecurity when he composed, thus causing him to labour for months on a work, but the Violin Concerto came to him quickly and easily. In March 1878, while staying at a hotel in Clarens, near Lake Geneva, he was visited by the violinist Iosif Kotek, a close friend and a former student of his. Kotek showed Tchaikovsky several new works for violin, including Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, which the composer admired. Almost immediately, Tchaikovsky was inspired to write his own violin concerto and in 11 days, he had drafted it in its entirety. He soon replaced the original second movement with a new one (on the advice of his brother Modest and Kotek, who played through the concerto as the composer wrote it), and after another nine days, the concerto was finished and fully orchestrated.

The route to the work’s premiere, however, was more convoluted. Tchaikovsky had dedicated it to Leopold Auer, the acclaimed virtuoso and professor of violin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, hoping that Auer would give the first performance. Auer declined—as the composer remembered, “he never wanted to master the difficulties of this concerto and deemed it awkward to play”—but apparently also blocked other violinists’ attempts, including Kotek’s, to perform it. Eventually, in December 1881, the concerto’s premiere was given by the young violinist Adolf Brodsky with the Vienna Philharmonic. Reactions to the work were hostile and the Viennese press panned it with colourful insults—the critic Eduard Hanslick wrote, “It gives us, for the first time, the hideous notion that there can be music which stinks to the ear.” Over time, the concerto gained acceptance through various violinists championing it, including Auer who created and played his own edition of it. Today, it continues to be frequently performed in the concert hall. 

Like most 19th-century concertos, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto is a vehicle for virtuoso display, though it’s full of memorable melodies which are inventively varied and transformed as the movements progress. There’s a feeling of playful discovery in the unfolding of the first movement, the themes of which Tchaikovsky remarked in a letter to Meck “were not forced”, and that in fact, “generally speaking the plan of this movement came into my head at once, poured forth on its own, spontaneously.” Within an otherwise standard structure, there are some unusual features. For one, the conventional orchestral exposition has been replaced by a short introductory lead-up to the solo violin’s entrance, itself a winding cadenza, after which it introduces the graceful main melody. Only after progressing through the themes and pyrotechnics of the solo exposition does the orchestra play its first extended episode. Tchaikovsky also inserted the soloist’s main cadenza in the middle of the movement (like Felix Mendelssohn did in his), just before the return of the main melody (played by flute) in the recapitulation, rather than near the end. The violin thus continues with the orchestra into the coda, where together, they rush headlong to a thrilling conclusion.

A canzonetta of tender melancholy follows. After woodwinds intone a sombre chorale, muted solo violin presents a lamenting theme in G minor, accompanied by muted strings. Later, the mode brightens to major, and the violin sings a melody tinged with warm nostalgia, as if recalling a happy memory. But the lament returns, the sadness a little weightier now, with poignant countermelodies in the clarinet and flute. It ends unresolved, as the wind chorale returns and muted strings play a series of turning motives on questioning harmonies…

Suddenly, the entire orchestra bursts in with a sped-up version of the motive which evolves into an introductory passage. Solo violin enters similarly, and toys with the motive briefly in a short cadenza that mirrors the one at the opening of the first movement. At last, it starts the dance with a merry tune that races upwards and skips back down. After continuing with quicksilver runs and leaps, the dance is brought to a halt by drone chords in the cellos, over which the violin introduces a robust theme. It gradually speeds up, suggesting a return to the merry tune might be coming, but instead, we encounter a plaintive melody of contrite tenderness, played by the oboe. The violin picks up the song and muses for a moment on its phrases, but then finds its way back to the merry dance. Thereafter, the three themes are recapped with greater virtuosic and lyrical intensity. Following the final return of the merry tune, a great orchestral crescendo culminates in an exuberant back-and-forth between soloist and orchestra that brings the concerto to an exhilarating finish.

Program note by Hannah Chan-Hartley, PhD