Les toréadors, from Carmen Suite No. 1

Georges Bizet is remembered chiefly as an opera composer—and, for that matter, chiefly as the composer of one opera, Carmen. Generations of music-lovers have recognized Carmen as the near-perfect opera, combining as it does an exotic setting in southern Spain with a tale of violent passion and a sublime musical score that offers hit after memorable hit. Its success seemed far from assured when it was new; in fact, many people assumed it would be quietly forgotten along with the rest of Bizet’s output. The tide turned quickly, but Bizet did not live to see that, as he died just three months after the premiere, at the age of 37. Within three years, however, Carmen became embraced internationally as a masterpiece, and as it grew in  popularity orchestras began presenting suites drawn from the score by various editors. The Carmen Suite No. 1 mostly comprises excerpts that were originally symphonic stretches within the opera. The suite closes with Les toréadors, but it is the music that opens the opera: the festive Act I Prelude, which sets the scene for a sunny day in Seville and a bullring that is never far from the tragedy of Carmen.

Overture No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 24

Louise Farrenc (née Dumont) entered the upper echelon of Parisian musicians at a time when French composers normally sought their fortune in the realm of opera, accepting that large-scale instrumental writing was a German domain. Farrenc, however, wrote no operas and instead produced highly esteemed chamber music and orchestral works. Her three symphonies, all produced during the 1840s, received multiple performances in Paris as well as in Brussels, Geneva, and Copenhagen. She had entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 15 to study with Antonín Reicha, teacher to Berlioz, Liszt, Gounod, and Franck. She later joined the Conservatoire faculty herself for a three-decade run beginning in 1842, gaining such respect that she convinced the school to pay her on a par with her male colleagues. A virtuoso pianist, she also collaborated with her husband on Le trésor des pianistes, an influential 23-volume collection of keyboard music from earlier times. In 1834 she composed a pair of overtures—one in the minor mode, one in the major (played here). She may have written these symphonic concert overtures—unconnected to stage works—to add to a flurry of discussion in the press concerning Mendelssohn’s concert overtures. One hears in this captivating piece traits we may consider Mendelssohnian or Schubertian; but while such analogies may help contextualize this work, they threaten to discount Farrenc’s individualism.

Rhapsody in Blue for Piano and Orchestra

On January 3, 1924, George Gershwin read in a newspaper that bandleader Paul Whiteman would shortly present a concert in New York to broaden concertgoers’ conception of what serious American music could be. “George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto,” the article stated—which was news to Gershwin. A phone call elicited Whiteman’s explanation that he had been planning such a concert for some time in the future; but a rival conductor had suddenly announced plans for a similar program of pieces drawing on classical and jazz styles, which forced Whiteman to move up his schedule if he didn’t want to look like a copycat. Given the short lead-time, a full-length concerto was out of the question. But Gershwin would commit to a free-form work, a rhapsody of some sort, that would spotlight him as pianist backed by Whiteman’s band, expanded for the occasion by quite a few instruments. Since Gershwin was uneasy about his skill in orchestrating his piece, Whiteman assigned his staff arranger Ferde Grofé to the task. Everything  fell together in time for Whiteman’s concert on February 12, the “Experiment in Modern Music.” The word “blue” in Gershwin’s title evokes “the Blues,” and, by extension, jazz; but at heart this work’s ancestry lies more in the direction of Liszt and Rachmaninoff than Jelly Roll Morton and W.C. Handy.

Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88
     Allegro con brio
     Adagio
     Allegretto
     Allegro ma non troppo

A late bloomer among composers, Dvořák remained little played outside his native Bohemia until the 20th century. In the Czech lands, however, Dvořák had earned considerable respect by the time he got around to his Eighth Symphony, in 1889, and the following year he dedicated it “for my installation as a member of the Czech Academy of the Emperor Franz Joseph for Sciences, Literature, and Arts,” which inducted him shortly after the premiere. When Dvořák finished this work, his longtime publisher, Fritz Simrock, offered him only 1000 marks, just a third of the fee for his preceding symphony. Dvořák was so insulted that he had the piece published instead by the London firm of Novello—a flagrant breach of his contract with Simrock, although eventually they reconciled.

Compared to Dvořák’s somber Seventh Symphony (in D minor), the Eighth is decidedly genial and upbeat. And yet, if we listen carefully, we may be surprised by how much minor-key music actually inhabits this major-key symphony, beginning with the richly scored, rather mournful introduction in G minor, which the composer added as an afterthought. But even here joyful premonitions intrude, thanks to the birdcall of the solo flute. This develops into the ebullient principal theme of the movement; and yet, the mournful music of the introduction keeps returning as the movement progresses.