Second Concert of the 73rd Season

Bruce Broughton was born in Los Angeles, California, and has written music for films, television, and video games, the latest musical genre.  He is not only a prolific composer, but is very active in such musical organizations as ASCAP, where he is a member of the Board of Directors, Governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, former Governor of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and others. Currently, he is a lecturer at the Advanced Film Music Studies, University of California.

He has won many awards and nominations. He has ten Emmy Awards and thirteen nominations, and one Academy Award nomination for Silverado, a Clint Eastwood film.  You might have heard his music in such films as Lost in Space, Tombstone, The Rescuers Down Under, and Bambi II, as well as the overture to Miracle on 34th Street.

He has composed the opening credits for TV series such as JAG, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Dinosaurs, as well as the complete score for How the West was Won.

His first orchestral score for a video game was for Heart of Darkness.

He has also written concert music, including several concertos and chamber works.

John Rutter is an English choral director and composer who has become extremely popular in the last few years. Although he certainly has written some solemn music, he is best known for his lilting themes and syncopated rhythms, marking him as a composer well-acquainted with modern theatre music. The Shepherd's Pipe Carol is a case in point ... sprightly and melodious. Among his popular compositions are For the Beauty of the Earth, and All Things Bright and Beautiful. It may be of interest to our audience that Debra Lynn's own choir was directed by John Rutter on the occasion of their performance at Carnegie Hall not long ago (she also directed there!)

R.R. Terry, as he is usually known, was an English musicologist whose life-mission was to bring to light the best of early English liturgical music. He became organist and director of music at Westminster Cathedral, where he revived the works of Byrd, Tallis, Morley, and others, and developed a tradition for the performance of the Latin liturgy that became a model for Roman Catholics throughout the world. Although he is best known for his editions of early English motets and oratorios, he also wrote music himself, and this carol. As nearly as I can determine, Myn Lyking means "My Good Fortune," as I assume it is Middle English.

Rutter wrote this variant of an early Cornish carol while he was still an undergraduate. It is his version of The Holly and the Ivy, a traditional carol from Cornwall. "Sans Day" actually means "Saint's Day," and must be a local, Cornish dialectal version.

Gustav Holst was born in England in 1874 and died there in 1934. He was proficient in the playing of many instruments, but specialized in the organ (he was village organist while still in his teens). Later, he played trombone in various theater orchestras, and finally in the Scottish Orchestra. He was very successful as a teacher, and did service abroad during the First World War, where he worked with the troops in Greece and Turkey.

His most popular compositions are The Planets, an orchestral suite of astrological content (or which there are over forty recordings available), and two suites for band, still popular for demonstrations of the quality of audio systems. His music is mostly late Romantic, but some of it has clearly Neo-Classical characteristics (A Fugal Overture).

Christmas Day is a fantasy making use of several familiar carols . . . and some not so familiar.

Modern critics have not been kind to Rachmaninoff. For one thing, he was a Romantic. One is not supposed to write Romantic music in the twentieth century. And, as if that weren't bad enough, he wasn't even a conservative Romantic, so his music, besides being morbid and pessimistic, lacks the formal structure that makes a good bit of Tchaikovsky acceptable to the modern sophisticate. Poor Rachmaninoff fell between two stools; the Soviets banned his music for being "decadent," while avant-garde European and American critics condemned it for not being "modern" enough.

The charge that his music was morbid and pessimistic is not without foundation. There is something very Russian about Rachmaninoff's tendency toward melancholy, and from early childhood, he was concerned with issues of the sad and the happy. He lost two sisters before he was twelve, which did little to alleviate his sense of tragedy. Although he was capable of the most sublime of melodies, there is almost always a disturbing undercurrent - a sense of foreboding in his music. He died in California, shortly after attaining American citizenship.

The second piano concerto was the first major work to be successful after he recovered from a nervous breakdown caused, in part, by the failure of his first symphony (owing largely to a poor performance). He was so demoralized by this failure that he wrote nothing of consequence until after submitting himself to the treatment of a Dr. Dahl, who introduced Rachmaninov to the notion of auto-suggestion. This led to the popular fallacy that the concerto was written under hypnosis.

Though his confidence was restored by his treatment, he was shaken by the adverse criticism of an acquaintance, almost on the eve of the premiere of the work. At issue was the first theme of the first movement, which Rachmaninoff feared would be thought of as merely an introduction. After much agonizing, he let the work stand as it was, and it went on to be his most popular concerto.

While it is true that Rachmaninoff was of a mournful nature, he did have a ready wit. He was a superb pianist who had little patience with performers who seemed ill-prepared. Once, he was performing a piano-violin concert in New York, with the renowned Fritz Kreisler, who suddenly lost his place and whispered to Rachmaninoff, "Where are we?" Without missing a beat, Rachmaninoff replied, "Carnegie Hall."

I. Moderato. The movement begins dramatically, with eight chords of the piano going from pianissimo to fortissimo, leading to the first subject (which we are NOT to mistake for a mere introduction!). Many will be familiar with the second subject, which was long ago used as a popular song in a film, beginning, "I will give you music..."

II. Adagio sostenuto. The slow movement has another melody which will be recognized by some of the younger members of the audience as the theme used a few years ago by a pop-rock star who declined to credit Rachmaninoff. This star shall remain nameless.

III. Allegro scherzando. The principal theme of the finale is the best known of all. As a popular song, it became known as "Full Moon and Empty Arms." Of particular note is the fugato section with successive entries by horn and trumpet, and the beautiful integration of those entries with the piano part. The second part of the principal theme acts as a unifying device by being closely related to the second theme of the first movement.

A critic has said (remarking on what he took to be lack of structure) that this concerto is little more than a series of romantic songs. But what singing!