Shchedrin's 'Carmen' for strings and percussion

Another of my program notes:

Rodion Shchedrin (born 1932),

after Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Carmen Suite – Ballet for string orchestra and percussion

Russians have carved out quite a significant role in the history of ballet since the days of Tchaikovsky and Petipa and they continue to do so to this day. The ballet of Carmen by choreographer Alberto Alonso and composer Rodion Shchedrin is possibly one of the best-known Russian ballets of the past 50 years.

In 1964, the Russian prima ballerina Maya Plisetskaya wanted to produce a ballet on the theme of Carmen, the seductress who plays lustful men off each other. She asked the famous Russian composer Shostakovich if he wouldn’t compose the music for her. But Shostakovich refused, saying, ‘Everyone is so used to [Bizet’s] opera that whatever you write, you’ll disappoint them.’ Plisetskaya then asked Aram Khachaturian, composer of the ballets Spartacus and Gayane, but he refused: ‘You have a composer at home,’ he said, clinching his argument. Only then did she ask her husband, Rodion Shchedrin.

Shchedrin originally intended to write an original score. But he too said he couldn’t think of Carmen without Bizet’s music, and so he decided ultimately to rethink Bizet.

Perhaps the most noticeable difference you’ll notice between Bizet’s and Shchedrin’s versions is in the orchestration – Shchedrin uses strings and a large battery of percussion. You will hear all your favourite themes of course, but sounding not quite like they did before. Witness the opening, the familiar Habañera, on bells with long string notes providing a note of expectation. But Shchedrin’s version is more than just orchestration; there are rhythmic differences and restructurings as well. At one stage Shchedrin uses the Bolero from Bizet’s L’Arlésienne in his score.

The ballet’s scenario was provided by the Cuban choreographer, Alberto Alonso, who had been commissioned during a visit to Moscow, and is similar to that of the opera. It tells of Carmen’s seduction of the straight-laced soldier Don José, whom she throws over for the more dashing toreador, Escamillo; and of Carmen’s subsequent murder at the hands of the jealous Don José. Along the way other characters have included Fate, a ballerina dressed in black who tells Carmen’s fortune, and Captain Zúñiga, José’s superior and perhaps also a competitor for Carmen’s affections.

The Naxos recording of this suite talks about the ‘white heat’ of Shchedrin’s arrangement. Poor uptight Don José can’t handle the heat of passions the sultry Carmen unexpectedly unleashes in him; the Carmen story adds another dimension to the meaning of ‘getting too close to the flame’.

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2012 

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:
 
Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013
Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013
Scriabin's Piano Concerto, published 18 August 2013
Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich, published 27 August 2013
Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier selections, published
Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, published 30 August 2013
'Traditional terms' - an interview with John Adams, published 5 Sep 2013
Berlioz' Waverley Overture, published 9 Sep 2013
Tchaikovsky's Fatum, published 17 Sep 2013
Wagner, arr. Henk de Vlieger A Ring Adventure, published 29 Sep 2013
Tchaikovsky's 'Pathetique', published on 29 Sep 2013
Shostakovich's Ninth Symphony, published 13 October 2013 
Wagner's Flying Dutchman Overture, published 21 October 2013

Articles on mine on composers include:


Sousa and the Sioux, 19 August 2011

"...above the canopy of stars..." - Beethoven's Ninth, 28 May 2012
Percy Grainger, the chap who "wanted to find the sagas everywhere", 17 June 2012
A Star and his Stripes - Bernstein, the populist, 29 June 2012
Igor in Oz: Stravinsky Downunder, 17 July 2012
Wagner - is it music, or is it drama? 27 July 2012
"Beautiful...sad": Puccini's La boheme, 29 July 2012
Philippa - an opera [blog 1], ideas for an opera on Philippa Duke Schuyler, 16 Sep 2012 
'Traditional terms?' - an interview with John Adams, published 5 Sep 2013

On my website, click on "USA blog" to scroll down the full range.

Franz Waxman's "Carmen Fantaisie"

Continuing my series of program notes:

Franz Waxman (1906-1967)

after Georges Bizet (1838-1875)

Carmen Fantaisie

‘Fannie Hurst’s MOST DYNAMIC CHAPTERS SURGE TO Glowing LIFE!’ So said the trailer for the 1946 Warner Bros. movie adaptation of Fannie Hurst’s novel Humoresque. The ‘most vibrant LOVE STORY EVER TOLD’ (to quote again from the trailer), it was meant to dramatise the three-way tug of Paul Boray’s love for music and the women in his life.

Around the time of the Great Depression, Paul (John Garfield), a kid from New York’s East Side, determines to become a violinist despite financial disadvantages. He falls in love with Helen Wright (Joan Crawford), a rich socialite who becomes his patron. But Paul’s mother disapproves of Paul’s neglect of Gina, a girl his own age, and persuades the oft- married Helen that she would only be a bad influence on Paul.

At one stage Helen tries to see Paul, proclaiming good news (her divorce from Victor), but he will not disrupt rehearsal. It is at this point in the plot that he is playing Waxman’s fantasy on themes from Bizet’s Carmen. ‘THE MOST GLORIOUS Music EVER WRITTEN!’ boasted the studio, but whether or not all of it was ‘the most glorious’, this was the period when classical music was part of American popular culture. Not only did the score contain Waxman’s Carmen-fantasy, but Sarasate’s as well, and there was even a reworking of the ‘Liebestod’ from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. The music could be thought to fulfil Hollywood’s idea of romantic music, from its evocation of Bizet’s femme-fatale Carmen to the idea of a Tristaneque ‘love death’. ‘Vibrant love story’? Certainly tragic: Helen ends the film by walking into the ocean, sparing Paul her romantic attention.

The music for the film was arranged and written by Franz Waxman, one of the numerous European émigrés in Hollywood whose late-romantic style suited films during the Golden Years. Waxman had been born in Königshütte and completed music studies in Dresden and Berlin. It was his success in arranging Holländer’s music for The Blue Angel that led him to Los Angeles in 1934. There he scored films such as The Bride of Frankenstein and won Academy Awards two years running for Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951). In 1948, he founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival and gave important premieres of works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Vaughan Williams and Walton.

The idea of the ‘fantasy’ or ‘paraphrase’ on themes from another work is a phenomenon associated with virtuosos dating back to the 19^th century. Liszt, Chopin and Thalberg, for example, demonstrated their technical brilliance in piano fantasies based on famous operas. Bizet’s Carmen (1875) is, of course, one of the most popular operas of all time. Story-wise, its subject was appropriate to a film about the diverting power of love because in the opera the sergeant of the local barracks, Don José, is distracted to madness and murder by the allure of Carmen. Musically, even the regular audience would recognise their favourite moments – the habañera (Carmen’s ‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle’) say, or The March of the Toreadors, which opens Waxman’s version.

But was John Garfield a musician of the order of Sarasate, Liszt or Chopin? No, the violin part was originally meant to be played by Jascha Heifitz, another of the great European émigrés to Hollywood (he did record it for vinyl), and was actually played Isaac Stern. They are Stern’s hands on the fingerboard in the film.

Waxman wrote a number of works outside of film that have come to be recognised in latter years, among them the oratorio, Joshua, and The Song of Terezin, a setting of poems by children interned at Theresienstadt concentration camp. But this Carmen Fantasie (whether or not truly ‘SWELLED TO Breathtaking INTENSITY BY Warner Bros.’) is still one of his most frequently-performed works on the concert platform.

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2011

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet.