Aram Khachaturian (1903-1978)
Masquerade Suite
Composed in 1944
Written in 1941, Masquerade Suite began as incidental (background) music for the play Masquerade. Written by Mikhail Lermontov, the play revolves around a false accusation of infidelity. When a married woman loses a distinctive bracelet at a ball, a Baroness finds the bracelet and offers it as a token of her affection to the Prince, whom she secretly loves. This gift sets in motion a tale of jealousy and murder.
The play debuted at the Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow on June 21, 1941, one day before the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. Needless to say, the production had a short run. On July 23, 1941, German bombs destroyed the Vakhtangov Theater. In addition to the destruction of stage decorations, many actors and theater personnel were killed in the bombing. Director Andrei Tutyshkin was able to continue the production after evacuating to Siberia.
In 1944, Khachaturian turned the music into a suite with five movements – Waltz, Nocturne, Mazurka, Romance, and Galop.
The suite differs from Khachaturian’s usual Armenian-flavored music. Since the music was composed specifically for a play, it is filled with romance and emotion, rather than his usual folk rhythms.
According to Billboard in 1948 the Masquerade Suite was composed by “Khachaturian, the Russian, brooding, colorful, nationalistically melodic” and not “[Khachaturian], the Armenian, swirling, rattling and temperamentally heady.”
The St. Petersburg Times (March 25, 1948) noted that in writing the suite Khachaturian was “influenced by Russian composers” and called it “swirling [and] flamboyant.” It noted that the five pieces are “so different from each other as to mark them as individual entr’actes rather than as an entire suite. The graceful melting rhythm predominant in both the ‘Waltz’ and ‘Romance’ gives way to wistfulness in the brooding sentiment shadowing the ‘Nocturne’ and ‘Romance.’ The final part of Masquerade called ‘Galop,’ runs rampant with irresistible joyousness.”
“The Waltz” quickly became popular and was often heard on the radio during the war and continues to be played every New Year’s Eve on Russian television. The piece has also been featured in ballets, rock music, commercials and movies. It was most recently used in the 2019 biopic “Halston.”
Known as one of Khachaturian’s most famous works, “The Waltz” was performed by the Russian State Symphony Orchestra at his funeral service in May 1978.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957)
Violin Concerto
Composed in 1945
Erich Korngold, a child prodigy, matured into a successful opera composer and teacher in Vienna. Starting in 1934, he began to shuttle between Vienna and Hollywood, and the techniques he brought from opera
(especially the Wagnerian device of the leitmotif, wherein a memorable snippet of music accompanies a particular character or idea) reshaped the art of film scoring, earning him several Oscars in the process.
Korngold was in California when the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938. From then on he made Hollywood his home, taking American citizenship in 1943. He ceased composing “serious” music for the duration of the war, until he finally agreed in 1945 to begin a violin concerto for his friend Bronislaw Hubermann. The work stalled after a young violinist gave a disastrous reading of a draft, leaving Korngold to wonder if the violin part was too difficult; meanwhile, Hubermann balked on scheduling a premiere, hedging until he could see a finished score. The impasse was broken by another European émigré, Jascha Heifetz, who actually encouraged Korngold to ratchet up the virtuosity, and who became the concerto’s greatest champion.
The Violin Concerto borrows most of its main themes from the movies. In the first movement, the alluring opening melody—with the soloist entering right away, as in Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto—comes from the film Another Dawn (1937). A poignant secondary theme originated in the Juaréz (1939). The middle movement, a Romanze, takes its main theme from Korngold’s Oscar-winning score to Anthony Adverse. The finale’s musical material, extracted from The Prince and the Pauper (1937), provides ample opportunities for the violin to show off its sprightly filigree. – by Aaron Grad
Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
Symphony No. 2
Composed in 1876
Alexander Borodin defies the notion of a typical composer. The illegitimate son of an Armenian Prince and young Russian woman, he chose chemistry over music. In 1850, he enrolled at the Medico-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg. He became famous for his career in chemical research, especially his work on organic synthesis.
Despite his success, Borodin’s love of music never diminished. With the help of his mentor, composer Mily Balakirev, Borodin wrote his first symphony. The positive reviews led him to quickly begin another symphony. However, this endeavor would take seven years to complete.
Composing began in 1869, but Borodin was often distracted by his work as an adjunct professor of chemistry in the Medico-Surgical Academy. After Tsar Alexander II’s government allowed women to take advanced medical courses in the fall of 1872, Borodin, who was influential in that movement, became the founder and professor of a School of Medicine for women.
He was also asked to work on the operas Prince Igor and Mlada. While the operas were not completed to his satisfaction, the motifs of Prince Igor can be found in Symphony No. 2. Borodin’s symphonic vision encompassed an assembly of Russian warriors preparing for war, a mythical Slavic bard, and a feast for heroes in a grand finale.