This program features three works by immigrants to America. Sydney Guillaume, who was born in Haiti, is in fact, an old friend of the orchestra. During the 2022-23 season, we performed a very successful premiere of his A Taste of Freedom for Choir and Orchestra. During the next season, we performed his orchestral piece Lavil Okap. The work played here is another world premiere: a work in which James Lowe has asked Guillaume to respond musically to the other pieces on the program, by Rachmaninoff and Bartók. Rachmaninoff and Bartók were part of a wave of musical émigrés who escaped Europe in the years prior to World War II. The impact of these performers and composers was incalculable: Europeans took teaching roles in American universities, composed concert and film music, an enriched American musical culture in a myriad of ways. Sergei Rachmaninoff’s final great solo piano piece, the stunning Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini was written a few years before he left Switzerland for the United States, but it was written for American premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra. At these programs, pianist Evren Ozell tackles the phenomenally, difficult piano part. Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra was written in New York City in 1943, as he was depressed, broke, and already ill with the cancer that would kill him two years later. However, the Concerto is ultimately an optimistic, life-affirming piece, and was the beginning of a late burst of creativity for the composer.

SYDNEY GUILLAUME
Born: July 22, 1982, Port-au-Prince, Haiti Composed: 2025-2026
Premiere: This is the world premiere. May 9 & 10, 2026, with The Spokane Symphony at The Fox Theater, conducted by James Lowe
Background: Between Homelands explores what it feels like to carry more than one home in your heart. I left Haiti when I was 11, and as a Haitian-American immigrant, I feel a deep affection for both countries that have shaped who I am. Written to commemorate the United States’ 250th anniversary, this piece reflects on the journeys of those who have crossed borders to build new lives while staying deeply connected to their roots.

What you’ll hear:
The opening movement, The Lands We Love, blends American musical gestures with rhythms heard in Haitian music. It begins with a sense of openness and possibility, capturing the feeling of arriving in a new place full of hope. As the music unfolds, its joyful energy gives way to a more reflective mood, hinting at the lingering nostalgia that often comes with being far from home.

In The Struggles of Belonging, the music becomes more introspective. A cello solo introduces a persistent melodic figure heard throughout the movement. The uneven pulse creates a sense of imbalance, capturing the uncertainty and challenges of finding where you belong. The melody flows through a series of tonal shifts, suggesting a search for belonging, and eventually settles into an even pulse, hinting at the feeling of finding your place, though traces of tension and uncertainty remain.

The final movement, Onward, looks to the future with energy and determination. A steady drum pulse inspired by Native American drumming evokes a heartbeat, grounding the music and honoring the rich history of the land. From this pulse, a steady march-like theme emerges that embodies resilience. Haitian Rara and Konpa rhythms move through the music, celebrating the blending of cultures.

At its core, this piece acknowledges the many journeys that shape our communities and celebrates how our homes, cultures, and traditions travel with us across borders and generations. Between Homelands: my journey, my heart…
-Sydney Guillaume

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF

Like many composers, Rachmaninoff used the theme from the demonically difficult Caprice No. 24 by the 19th-century violinist Paganini as the basis for his own virtuoso variations. He also worked in references to the funeral chant Dies irae, a kind of personal musical signature, appearing in several of Rachmaninoff’s works.

Born: April 1, 1873, Oneg, Russia.
Died: March 28, 1943, Hollywood, California.

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 43

Composed: July-August, 1934.
Premiere: November 7, 1934, with Rachmaninoff as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting.
Duration: 22:00.
Background
By the 1930s Rachmaninoff was well-established as one of the leading pianists of his age, and spent much of his time touring successfully in Europe and America. In 1930 he visited Switzerland and decided to build a home in the village of Hertenstein, on the shore of Lake Lucerne. The name of his house, “Senar,” was derived from the names “Sergei,” “Natalia,” (his wife), and “Rachmaninoff.” Senar became a beloved retreat until the Rachmaninoffs sought refuge in the United States at the beginning of World War II. He composed two of his final large works while in Switzerland: his Symphony No.3 (completed in 1938) and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, his last great solo work for piano and orchestra.

The choice of Paganini was a telling one. Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840) was the model for countless virtuosos to follow. With his astonishing violin technique and powerful sound, he toured Europe for decades and was one of Classical music’s first “superstars.” In 1819, his published his ironically-named 24 Caprices for solo violin. Hardly capricious, this is a series of increasingly challenging technical solos, culminating in the phenomenally difficult No.24—a set of variations on an original theme that uses Paganini’s entire battery of advanced playing techniques. Even during Paganini’s lifetime, composers began to use the theme of No.24 as the basis for their own sets of variations: Liszt, Brahms, and literally dozens of others down to our own day. This theme became something more than just a tune—when it appeared, it was a symbol of virtuosity. Rachmaninoff, himself a towering virtuoso, turned to Paganini’s famous theme as the basis for one of his most challenging piano works. A couple of months before the premiere, Rachmaninoff wrote wryly to a friend about the Rhapsody: “It is rather difficult. I must begin learning it.”

It is unclear whether or not Rachmaninoff originally conceived of the Rhapsody as a piece of program music, but he later suggested a program in a letter to choreographer Mikhael Fokine, who used the Rhapsody for a ballet about Paganini. Rachmaninoff suggested to Fokine that he should “…resurrect the legend about Paganini, who sold his soul to an evil spirit in exchange
for perfection in his art and for a woman. All the variations which contain the Dies irae represent the evil spirit.” The composer identified Variations 11-18 as “love episodes,” and Variation 19 as “Paganini’s triumph,” but, true to form, the Devil wins in the end and claims the unhappy artist’s soul.

What You’ll Hear
In a move reminiscent of the final movement of Beethoven’s
“Eroica” symphony, Rachmaninoff presents the first “variation,” a skeletal version of the theme, before the theme is played in its entirety. When the theme finally appears, it is stated starkly by the strings, with minimal accompaniment from the piano and woodwinds. The succeeding 23 variations wring an amazing amount of musical material from this deceptively modest little idea. Variations 2 through 6 remain close to the outlines of the tune: the piano is supported by sparse orchestration, and the theme is varied with relatively simple ornamental and rhythmic means. In the next four variations (7-10), the mood becomes increasingly sinister, with reminiscences of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique: the ominous Dies irae (day of wrath) chant in Variations 7 and 10, and the ghostly string effects in Variation 9. This demonic tension is resolved in Variation 11, a lush cadenza-style treatment of the theme that must be a tribute to the style of Liszt. Liszt is there for the next few variations as well (12-15), which have a distinctly Hungarian flavor. The climactic point of this section is Variation 18—richly Romantic music familiar from several classic film scores—in which the piano uses the theme in inversion (upside-down) to create lush new harmonic possibilities. Variations 19-24 are a finale that peaks in a solo cadenza before the massive final variation, with its wild piano figuration and the Dies irae blasted by the entire brass section. The ending is one of Rachmaninoff’s rare flashes of humor, a flippant little gesture that gives the piano the last word.

BÉLA BARTÓK
Born: March 25, 1881, Sânnicolau Mare, Romania.
Died: September 26, 1945, New York City. Concerto for Orchestra BB123 Composed: Between August and October 1943. Premiere: December 1, 1944, by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Serge Koussevitsky.
Duration: 40:00.
Background
In late 1940, Bartók followed the path of many other European composers—Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Hindemith, Weill, Milhaud, and many others—to the United States. He had some initial successes in America, playing duo-piano concerts with his wife Ditta, and receiving temporary appointments at Colombia University and Harvard. There were few opportunities to compose however, and he wrote very little original music in this period, writing to his publisher:

I don’t know if and when I will be able to do some composing work. Artistic creative work generally is the result of an outflow of strength, high-spiritedness, joy of life, etc.  All these conditions are sadly missing with me at present. Maybe it is a breakdown. Until 60, I could marvelously bear all annoyances and mishaps. But lately, I often wondered how long I will be able to endure all those sad experiences I am continually exposed to.  Maybe I reached the limit.

In 1942, his health and finances began to deteriorate, and the American musical community began to step in with financial aid, generous “fake” record royalties, and, from Serge Koussevitsky, a commission for a new work. Koussevitsky, then conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was one of the most important champions of new orchestral music. The Koussevitsky Foundation, which he founded in 1942 in memory of his wife Natalie, funded (and continues to fund) music by composers on both sides of the Atlantic. One of its first commissions was offered to Bartók. In the summer of 1943, the composer was lying ill with leukemia when Koussevitsky offered him $1000 to write a Concerto for Orchestra to be dedicated to the memory of Natalie Koussevitsky. Bartók refused, but the conductor left a $500 check next to the bed, with a promise to pay the remainder on completion. Bartók’s cancer went into remission a few weeks later and he completed the Concerto in the space of three months. Though leukemia began to take its toll again in 1944, this was the beginning of a renewed period of creativity, when he completed a sonata for solo violin (for Yehudi Menuhin) and his third piano concerto (for Ditta). Work on a viola concerto was finally cut short by illness in 1945, and Bartók died in New York City that September.

In the Concerto for Orchestra and his other American works Bartók seems to have been working towards a new style. Works of the 1930s such as his fourth string quartet or the Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste are based upon strict, almost severe formal and mathematical plans. Though there are certainly stark moments in the Concerto for Orchestra, there are also moments that are almost romantic. In program notes written for the premiere, Bartók hints at a bit of autobiography in the Concerto: “The general mood of the work represents, aside from the jesting second movement, a gradual transition from the sternness of the first movement and the lugubrious death-song of the third, to the life-assertion of the last one.”

The “concerto for orchestra” has been a durable genre since it was introduced by Paul Hindemith in 1925. The Concerto for Orchestra by Béla Bartók (1943) is by far the most popular, but those by Zoltan Kodály (1940) and Lutosławski (1954) are also heard frequently today. Dozens of other 20th and 21st-century composers have composed in the genre as well: there are concertos for orchestra by Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, Elliott Carter, Malcolm Arnold, Leonard Bernstein, Steven Stucky (who wrote two of them), and Joan Tower, to name but a few. In his case, Bartók explained the title of the work as reflecting “its tendency to treat the single instruments or instrumental groups in a concertant or soloistic manner.” Most concertos are written with the capabilities and style of a specific soloist in mind. In this case, the intended “soloist” was Koussevitsky’s Boston Symphony Orchestra, at that time one of the finest orchestras in the world, with virtuoso performers in every section.

What You’ll Hear
The first movement begins quietly and mysteriously, with little woodwind flourishes above a melody in the low strings. Melodic material gradually expands until a lush string passage ends the introduction. A long crescendo and acceleration, above a string ostinato leads to the main body of the movement, which is in sonata form. After a fiery statement from the strings, Bartók uses soloists to introduce his main themes: a declamatory fanfare from the trombone and a tranquillo chant from the oboe. A final, more lyrical theme is played by the clarinet and English horn. In place of a development, there is a thrilling brass fugato that is the climax of this movement. A sudden thinning of the texture sets up a recapitulation of the main themes. The movement ends with a final brass flourish.

Bartók describes the second movement as a “game of pairs”—“games” of wind instruments playing in parallel intervals: bassoons in sixths, oboes in thirds, clarinets in sevenths, flutes in fifths, and finally trumpets in seconds. The center of the movement is a lush brass chorale, and the movement closes with a reprise of the opening material.

The Elegy—Bartók’s “lugubrious death-song”— opens with a brief reminder of the introduction to the first movement, which leads to a hazy texture of strings, harp, and woodwinds. After a birdlike piccolo solo, the strings introduce an impassioned theme that is developed extensively. The close of the movement returns to the shadowy character of the beginning.

The fourth movement is titled Intermezzo interrotto (“interrupted intermezzo”). Again there is a reference to the Concerto’s opening passage, but Bartók quickly turns to a rhythmically odd theme played by the oboe and picked up by the other woodwinds. The lovely melody that follows is a quotation of a Hungarian popular song, “You are lovely, you are beautiful,  O Hungary.” The “interruption” is probably the most famous example of musical nose-thumbing in the orchestral repertoire. Strings suddenly break into a simple-minded accompanimental figure, and the clarinet begins an insipid, repetitive little tune that is drawn directly from the scherzo of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.7. Bartók then responds with giggles from the woodwinds and a rude gesture from the trombones—what might, in polite company, be called a “raspberry”—and sets the tune in the best polka-band style. Again, the movement closes with a return of the opening mood. It is sometimes claimed that the little burlesque in the middle is actually a tune from Lehar’s The Merry Widow, but Bartók’s son confirmed that he was indeed making fun of Shostakovich.

One writer has called the finale a “boisterous roll-call of Bartók’s favorite folk styles.” The movement is in sonata form, and after an opening horn fanfare, the strings launch into a kind of sweeping perpetual motion that soon involves the woodwinds. The gentler contrasting theme is heard in the woodwinds, a third, more triumphant idea is introduced by the trumpets. This is this last idea that is most extensively developed, eventually in a blaze of brass at the end.

Program notes ©2025 by J. Michael Allsen