Saint-Saëns & Rachmaninov

There will be a Starter prior to this concert. You can attend this in the Swing on the second floor to the left of cloakroom. The Starter starts 45 minutes before the concert begins.

Enrique Granados (1867-1916)
Liliana (1911; arr. Pau Casals) 

• Preludio y Salutación al sol 

• Liliana y los gnomos 

• Canto de las ranas 

• Coro de silfos y farándula 

The journey begins this afternoon in Spain with Lleida-born composer and pianist Enrique Granados. After studying in Paris and elsewhere, he settled in Barcelona where he performed his first compositions and gave recitals with such musical friends as Vincent d'Indy and Camille Saint-Saëns. His name and fame grew to unprecedented heights and Granados is still considered one of the most important composers in Spain. Although he was called "our Schubert" or the "Spanish Chopin" by his compatriots, he developed his own style with individual harmonic turns and rhythms.  

The enchanting Liliana is a 1907 lyrical poem by Apel.les Mestres inspired by Mother Nature and filled with fairies, gnomes in an enchanted forest in which water nymph Liliana falls in love with an air spirit. A theatrical version, with the mythical music of Granados, premiered in 1911. Ten years later, friend and cellist Pablo Casals created a symphonic suite of Liliana that he conducted himself. The composer did not live to see any of this. On the way back from New York, in March 1916, the ship on which Granados and his wife were traveling was sunk by a German submarine.  

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Piano ConcertoNo. 2 in g, op. 22 (1868) 

• Andante sostenuto 

• Allegro scherzando 

• Presto 

Camille Saint-Saëns was not only a composer, he also enjoyed fame as a piano virtuoso. He was seen as the new Chopin and Liszt, who had created a furor in Paris as keyboard lions before him. The occasion in 1868 for writing the Second Piano Concerto was extraordinary. The world-famous Russian piano hero Anton Rubinstein was in Paris at the time and had expressed a desire to conduct as well. Immediately Saint-Saëns organized a concert at which Rubinstein would take up the baton and he himself would solo in a newly written piano concerto. A reviewer wrote afterwards, with a sense of humor, that the work "began with Bach and ended with Offenbach. There was something in that. As an opening, Saint-Saëns had assigned himself a large solo that resembled the keyboard fantasies as Bach had once written them. The finale, on the other hand, was a rousing tarantella with a catchy melody that could have come straight out of an Offenbach operetta. 

In the intermission we serve a free drink

Amarante Nat (1995)
One Minute Symphony XL: Kyma, nevertheless (2023) 

The Dutch composition student Amarante Nat is writing this season's One Minute Symphony XL. She went looking for inspiration in the Rarities Cabinet The Hague, as collecting is one of her sources of inspiration. The title, κύμα (pronounced kyma), is a Greek word with the following meanings: swell/waves but also sprout (shoot) of a plant. "What attracted me to this title was the second meaning. Where a wave has something majestic, a sprout embodies the opposite; a humble effort, full of vulnerability and fragility. The wave crashes, the sprout is crushed. In a sense, this piece is a succession of kyma. Small gestures trying to take root, trying to become a wave.... Purposeful movements, but never quite succeeding.... Then trying again anyway." 

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
Symphonic dances, op. 45 (1940) 

• Non Allegro - Lento - Tempo I 

• Andante con moto (tempo di valse). 

• Lento assai - Allegro vivace 

It had cost Sergei Rachmaninov a lot of effort, but he had managed to establish himself as one of the best pianists and composers in Russia. This came to a sudden end when, with the Revolution of 1917, he lost everything he owned and had to leave the country. After some wandering in Western Europe, he decided to go to the United States, a country he knew because of some successful tours he had done there. 

These were not easy years for the composer. He had to rebuild his existence all over again, and since he was known as a great piano virtuoso, he did so by playing the piano. Thus, upon his arrival at the end of 1918, he immediately gave more than forty concerts in four months on a grand piano donated by Steinway. Almost nothing came of composing. This was reinforced by his enormous homesickness for his homeland. It gave him depressive moods that seriously hampered his inspiration. Only a handful of compositions flowed from his pen, of which the Symphonic Dances from 1940 was Last . 

The work is therefore somewhat akin to a musical testament. It contains the harsh, sometimes angular style that would characterize his work in his Last years. But it also contains the very romantic, long-spun melodies that had made him so famous in Russia. The finest example is the lyrical saxophone melody halfway through the first movement, which is later taken over by the strings. Rachmaninov himself quotes frequently in the work. For example, the first dance at the end contains the basic theme of his First Symphony, the work with which he had once intended to start his career so brilliantly, but which was completely whistled away at its premiere in 1897 and had caused the composer years of depression. It seems as if Rachmaninov is putting his youthful sin into perspective here. It is not a menacing motif as in the original symphony, but a lovely melody framed by the tinkling of the chimes. The second dance contains an excerpt from his Third Piano Concerto. Also, the way he plays with the waltz rhythm in this dance is reminiscent of Ravel's La Valse . At the conclusion of the Last dance, Rachmaninov uses two opposite motifs. The first is the beginning of the Gregorian "Dies Irae" from the traditional Catholic death mass. Would the composer have wanted to end his Last work only with death in mind? However, there is a second motif he takes from his own Russian Orthodox Vespers. In it, the chant deals with the resurrection of Christ. As if Rachmaninov wanted to use the Last notes he would commit to paper in his lifetime to give his living music the Last word.