Program notes by J. Michael Allsen

This program opens and closes with famous sets of symphonic dances. In the first, by Bernstein, we have a collection of the great dance sequences from his masterpiece West Side Story. These are a potent mix of North American jazz, and dance rhythms from the Caribbean. Rachmaninoff’s symphonic dances, are a bit more abstract, culminating in quotations of Gregorian and Orthodox chant. In between, Spokane Symphony principal trombonist John Church does a little fancy dancing of his own in the virtuoso Creston Fantasy.

This medley from Bernstein’s Broadway masterpiece West Side Story, contains nearly all of the music for the show’s great dance sequences, set for a full symphony orchestra.

Leonard Bernstein

Born: August 25, 1918, Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Died: October 14, 1990, New York City.

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

• Composed: Bernstein’s West Side Story was composed in 1956-57, and this orchestral suite was completed in 1961.
• Premiere: Symphonic Dances was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in February 1961, with Bernstein conducting.
• Duration: 21:00.

Background

Bernstein, like many of his predecessors, was attracted to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as subject-matter for a stage work—the tragic story of lovers from two warring clans has universal appeal and relevance. Bernstein was particularly intrigued when playwright Arthur Laurents suggested that he write the music for an “updated” version of the tragedy, set not in 16th-century Verona, but in modern New York City. The doomed lovers in West Side Story are a Puerto Rican girl named Maria, and a Polish-American boy named Tony. In place of warring Montagues and Capulets, there are two rival gangs fighting for territory. The Sharks are recent Puerto Rican immigrants, and the Jets are Tony’s mostly Polish-American buddies. Using Puerto Rican culture in the characters of Maria, Anita, and the Sharks allowed Bernstein to introduce Caribbean style and instruments into the score. He also makes subtle use of Caribbean rhythms in many numbers—basing the hilariously sarcastic America on the huapongo and introducing the syncopated beguine in Tony and Maria’s love duet Tonight.

Bernstein was also attracted by the idea of writing a truly serious score for the Broadway stage. In 1956, when he had just begun work on West Side Story, he wrote in his diary: “Chief problem: to tread the fine line between opera and Broadway, between realism and poetry, ballet and ‘just dancing,’ abstract and representational. Avoid being ‘messagy.’ The line is there, but it’s very fine and sometimes it takes a lot of peering around to discern it.” Bernstein had already composed relatively “operatic” Broadway shows—his On the Town (1944) and Wonderful Town (1952) contained serious undercurrents and had an integrated approach to drama, music and dance. His opera Trouble in Tahiti (1952) and his operetta Candide (1956) approached the “fine line” from the opposite direction, adapting elements of jazz and popular song. West Side Story, completed in 1957, was an amazingly successful synthesis of classical and Broadway elements. It was also a thoroughly successful collaboration between Bernstein, Laurents, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, and choreographer Jerome Robbins. It was to be Bernstein’s greatest success on Broadway, opening on September 26, 1957, and running for 973 performances.

What You’ll Hear

Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” dates from 1961. The music is “symphonic” in a couple of ways. Bernstein takes the dance music of West Side Story out of the crowded confines of the orchestra pit and expands his score to a full symphony orchestra. It is also “symphonic” in that he uses a few basic musical ideas, transformed over and over, to represent the developing actions and emotions of the story. The score provides the following outline of the dramatic action portrayed in the Symphonic Dances:

Prologue (Allegro Moderato) — The growing rivalry between two teenage gangs, the Jets and Sharks. Somewhere (Adagio) — In a visionary dance sequence, the two gangs are united in friendship. Scherzo (Vivace leggerio) — In the same dream, they break through the city walls, and suddenly find themselves in a world of space, air and sun. Mambo (Presto) — Reality again; competitive dance between gangs. Cha-cha (Andantino con grazia) — The star-crossed lovers see each other for the first time and dance together. Meeting Scene (Meno mosso) — music accompanies their first spoken words. Cool, Fugue (Allegretto) — An elaborate dance sequence in which the Jets practice controlling their hostility. Rumble (Molto allegro) — Climactic gang battle during which the two gang leaders are killed. Finale (Adagio) — Love music developing into a procession, which recalls, in tragic reality, the vision of Somewhere.

Creston, a largely self-taught composer, was in the forefront of American music in the 1940s in 1950s. His 1947 Fantasy was among the first modern virtuoso solo works for trombone and orchestra.

Paul Creston

Born: October 10, 1906, New York City.

Died: August 24, 1985, Poway, California.

Fantasy for Trombone, Op. 42

• Composed: 1947.
• Premiere: February 12, 1948, by trombonist Robert Marsteller, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
• Duration: 13:00.

Background

Creston was born Giuseppe Guttoveggio, into a poor family of Sicilian immigrants in New York City. His father, a house painter, saw to that his talented son was able to take piano and organ lessons for a few years, and though Creston was writing music by the time he was a teenager, he was almost completely self-taught as a composer. In fact, his formal schooling ended altogether when he had to drop out at age 15 to help support his family. One thing he did get from his abbreviated public-school education was his name—like many second-generation immigrants in the early 20th century, Creston adopted an “Americanized” name. When he was in school, his friends called him “Cress” for a character he performed in a school play, Crespino. By the time he was in his 20s, he had taken “Creston” as his last name, and adopted “Paul” simply because he liked the name. After several years working in non-musical jobs, studying music and practicing when he could, he finally began working as a musician—eventually spending over 30 years as a church organist. With steady employment, and a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation in 1939, Creston blossomed as a composer and was among America’s most often-performed composers in the 1940s and 1950s. Works like his Symphony No.2, premiered by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1944, put him in the midst of a distinctively “American” school of composition that included his contemporaries Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Walter

Piston, Howard Hanson, and Vincent Persichetti. Though his works fell out of favor in the 1960s, when the prevailing fashion was more aggressively modernist, Creston remained a respected figure, serving as one of the directors of the composers’ and publishers’ association ASCAP.

Creston completed his Fantasy for Trombone in October 1947, for a commission by Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Alfred Wallenstein for his principal trombonist, Robert Marsteller. (Wallenstein was known as a champion of American music, and during his 13 seasons in Los Angeles, he played works by nearly 50 Americans, remarkable for the period.) Works featuring the trombone as a solo instrument were nothing new—though still rarely played by American orchestras at that time—but the Creston Fantasy, soon caught on among trombonists as a modern masterwork that called for considerable virtuosity. Marsteller, for example, asked the composer to write “nothing above high D,” which apparently prompted Creston to include a few prominent high D-sharps!

What You’ll Hear

Creston’s style was harmonically conservative—he has been labeled a “neo-romantic”—but his musical trademark was his inventive and driving use of rhythm, very much on display in the Fantasy. Creston provided the following description of the piece for the premiere:

It is in three sections of one continuous movement, based on one principal theme for the orchestra and one principal theme for the trombone. The first section, marked Moderately fast, opens with a very short, orchestral introduction, announcing the orchestral theme, mostly unaccompanied. After some scherzo-like dialogue between the soloist and the orchestra, the section subsides into a quiet interlude leading to the second section of the composition, quite lyrical. A short fugato introduces the final section of the work, which is fast and brilliant, and in which the trombone gets an opportunity to try the orchestral theme on his instrument, besides many other taxing chores.

The trombone largely dances on top of a rhythmically intense and sometimes jazzy rhythmic background in the opening section. An oboe solo leads into the middle section, in which the soloist reaches a few of those high D-sharps. Near the end of this, the orchestra falls into a kind of waltz rhythm beneath a lovely trombone filigree. The finale opens with an angry statement by the low strings, and an equally fierce fugal section starting with solo trumpet. Among the “taxing chores” assigned to the trombonist in this section is a ferocious passage at the end that culminates in a short cadenza and an abrupt ending.

The Symphonic Dances, Rachmaninoff’s last large composition, explores a series of dance rhythms, and culminates in references to Gregorian and Russian Orthodox chants.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Born: April 1, 1873, Oneg, Russia.

Died: March 28, 1943, Hollywood, California.

Symphonic Dances, Op. 45

• Composed: 1940.
• Premiere: January 3, 1941, by the Philadelphia Orchestra, directed by Eugene Ormandy.
• Duration: 35:00.

Background

Like many musicians from Europe and the Soviet Union, pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff found sanctuary in the United States during World War II. One of his most satisfying projects during these final years was a series of recordings of his complete works for piano and orchestra with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1940. This group had premiered and championed several of Rachmaninoff’s works, and its conductor, Eugene Ormandy, had long been a friend of the composer. His Symphonic Dances, written in September and October of 1940, was dedicated to Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, in gratitude for this longstanding musical relationship. Symphonic Dances was the first work he wrote in America, and would in fact be the last complete composition by Rachmaninoff.

The critics attacked this work from all sides. At a time when most new compositions were mos= modernist, Rachmaninoff’s strongly emotional, tonal writing seemed distinctly old-fashioned. On the other hand, staunchly romantic admirers of his early works loved the second theme of the first movement and the reference to the Dies irae in the third, but they were confused by much of the rest. Rachmaninoff directly addressed these critics in a 1941 interview: “In my own compositions, no conscious effort has been made to be original, or Romantic, or Nationalistic, or anything else. I write down on paper the music I hear within me, as naturally as possible…” He originally titled the three movements of this work “Midday,” “Twilight,” and “Midnight.” This underlying program may have been connected to a plan to use the Dances as a ballet score, for a ballet choreographed by Michel Fokine. (Fokine had already created a ballet to Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme by Paganini in 1938.) Rachmaninoff later denied that he had any such intentions, and published the Symphonic Dances without descriptive titles, allowing each movement to create its own associations for the listener.

What You’ll Hear

The opening movement (Non allegro) is set in a simple three-part form. The opening section begins with melodic fragments passed between members of the orchestra. There is a loud outburst, and the theme emerges fully. This melody is based almost entirely on a descending three-note motive and is developed above a constantly driving background. The middle section of the movement is much more sedate and opens with a solo by the alto saxophone. This lush romantic melody is eventually given to the strings. The mood changes abruptly, with a stormy passage that leads to a return of the opening theme. The movement tapers to a quiet ending.

The second movement (Andante con moto) begins with a wry introduction, alternating between muted brass and snatches of waltz music. Finally, Rachmaninoff introduces a fully-grown melody, a rather spooky little waltz introduced by the English horn and given a broader treatment by the strings. A contrasting middle section featuring the woodwinds intervenes, before the main waltz theme returns. The movement is rounded off with a faster-paced coda.

The third movement opens with a brief slow introduction (Lento assai), which soon leads into a faster tempo (Allegro vivace) and a fast-paced, jagged-edged dance. This section comes to a peak and the tempo slows once more, to let the cellos play a long, sensuous melody. The lengthy slow section that follows is at turns grotesque and extravagantly romantic in style. The Allegro vivace music returns, and builds over a long period, leading eventually to a reference to the ominous Dies irae in the brass. This Gregorian chant tune, drawn from the Latin Requiem, or Mass for the Dead, was something of an obsession for Rachmaninoff, and appears in several of his large works. The Dies irae gives way to a more hopeful tune, again a fragment of plainchant—in this case, a setting of the word Alliluya from the liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church. This tune was another favorite of Rachmaninoff’s, and had appeared previously in his Vesper Mass, Op. 37. Many writers have commented on the use of the Dies irae, with all the terrifying imagery it represents, in this, Rachmaninoff’s last work. If the composer attached a meaning to this gloomy tune, however, its pessimism seems to have been drowned out in shouts of “Alleluia” in the final measures of the Symphonic Dances.

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Program notes ©2025 by J. Michael Allsen