Concerts of Thursday, October 27, and Saturday, October 29, 2011, at 8:00pRobert Spano, ConductorTatiana Monogarova, SopranoSergey Romanovsky, TenorDenis Sedov, BassAtlanta Symphony Orchestra, Norman Mackenzie, Director of ChorusesEsa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958)Nyx (2011)Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Premiere, Co-Commissioned by Radio France, Carnegie Hall, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Barbican Centre and Finnish Radio Symphony OrchestraAlexander Scriabin (1872-1915)Le Pome de l'extase (The Poem of Ecstasy, Symphony No. 4), Opus 54 (1908)IntermissionSergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)The Bells, for Chorus, Orchestra and Solo, Opus 35 (1913)I. The Silver Sleigh Bells (Tenor solo and chorus); Allegro, ma non tantoSergey Romanovsky, TenorII. The Mellow Wedding Bells (Soprano solo and chorus); LentoTatiana Monogarova, SopranoIII. The Loud Alarum Bells (Chorus); PrestoIV. The Mournful Iron Bells (Baritone and Chorus); Lento lugubreDenis Sedov, BassAtlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus

Notes on the Program by Ken MeltzerNyx (2011)Esa-Pekka Salonen was born in Helsinki, Finland, on June 30, 1958. The premiere of Nyx took place at the Thtre du Chtelet, in Paris France, on February 19, 2011, with the composer conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Nyx is scored for two piccolos, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, piano, celeste, vibraphone, orchestra bells, tam-tam, tom-toms, bass drum, conga drum, wood block, tubular bells, sizzle cymbal, low tuned gongs and strings. Approximate performance time is seventeen minutes.Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Premiere, Co-Commissioned by Radio France, Carnegie Hall, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Barbican Centre and Finnish Radio Symphony OrchestraLe Pome de l'extase (The Poem of Ecstasy, Symphony No. 4), Opus 54 (1908)Alexander Scriabin was born in Moscow, Russia, on January 6, 1872, and died there on April 27, 1915. The premiere of Le Pome de l'extase took place in New York on December 10, 1908, with Modest Altschuler conducting the Russian Symphony Society. Le Pome de l'extase is scored for piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, eight horns, five trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, celeste, organ, two harps, triangle, cymbal, bass drum, tam-tam, keyboard glockenspiel, bell in C and strings. Approximate performance time is twenty minutes.First ASO Classical Subscription Performances: January 22, 23 and 24, 1970, Gunther Schuller, Conductor.Most Recent ASO Classical Subscription Performances: March 5, 6 and 7, 2009, Robert Spano, Conductor.ASO Recording: Telarc CD-32630, Robert Spano, Conductor.1903 marked a dramatic turning point in the life of pianist and composer Alexander Scriabin. A classmate of Sergei Rachmaninov at the Moscow Conservatory, Scriabin became a professor of piano at that institution, commencing in 1898. However, in 1903 Scriabin left the Conservatory to focus on his musical compositions and a series of concert tours. That same year, Scriabin abandoned his wife and family to live in Western Europe with a young admirer named Tatyana Schloezer. Schloezer, a devotee of cult philosophy, encouraged Scriabin in his messianic sense of creative omnipotence, based first upon his interpretations of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and later, the theosophy of Helena Blavatsky.The Poem of Ecstasy is the second work of a projected orchestral tetralogy depicting Scriabins mystical philosophy. Scriabin described the first composition in the series, The Divine Poem (1904), as portraying:the struggle between Man enslaved to a personal God and Man, who is himself God but lacking the will to proclaim his divinity. Thus frustrated, he immerses himself in the pleasures of sense, depicted in the second section of the work. But internal divine powers assist him toward liberation, and in the third and last section of the tone poem he gives himself up to the joys of untrammeled existence.Scriabin intended the final two portions of the tetralogy, Prometheus, The Poem of Fire (1910) and The Mystery to offer an unprecedented fusion of the arts and senses. Prometheus is scored for a large orchestra, piano, organ, wordless chorus and a keyboard that projects colors onto a screen. Scriabin envisioned the even more ambitious The Mystery as the tetralogys apocalyptic culmination: a grand religious event to be held in India, with both the chorus and audience clothed in white. Scriabin was unable to complete The Mystery before his death in 1915.In June of 1905, while living with Schloezer in Bogliasco, near Genoa, Scriabin began work on an intended multi-movement symphony entitled Pome Orgiaque. However, Scriabin encountered great difficulty with this original conception. In the spring of 1907, Scriabin announced he had completed his finest composition, the single-movement The Poem of Ecstasy. In the summer of 1907, conductor Modest Altschuler, a champion of contemporary Russian music, assisted Scriabin with revisions to the orchestration. Altschuler observed:Scriabin is neither an atheist nor a theosophist, yet his creed includes ideas somewhat related to each of these schools of thought. There are three divisions in his poem: (1) His soul in the orgy of love; (2) The realization of a fantastical dream; (3) The glory of his own art.Scriabin himself authored an accompanying and lengthy explanatory poem, the opening lines of which read:The spirit,Pinioned on its thirst for life,Soars in flightTo heights of negation.There in the rays of its fantasyIs born a magic worldOf wondrous images and feelingsThe playing spirit,The suffering spirit,The spirit that creates sorrow in doubt,Gives itself to the torment of love.The premiere, originally scheduled for February 16, 1908, in St. Petersburg, was delayed due to lack of sufficient rehearsal time. The first performance of Scriabin's The Poem of Ecstasy finally took place in New York on December 10, 1908, with Altschuler conducting the Russian Symphony Society.Musical AnalysisScriabins The Poem of Ecstasy is set in a single uninterrupted movement comprising numerous diverse episodes. During the slow opening section (Andante. Languido), the flute introduces a wide-ranging motif based upon triplets. A solo clarinet plays a melody over undulating string accompaniment. During a more agitated passage (Allegro non troppo), trumpets play the works central theme, a rising fanfare juxtaposed with a chromatic descending passage. The themes appear in various forms, couched in a wide variety of orchestral textures and colors. The presentation of conflicting moods throughout The Poem of Ecstasy finally resolves to a glorious C-Major apotheosis.The Bells, for Chorus, Orchestra and Solo, Opus 35 (1913)Sergei Rachmaninov was born in Semyonovo, Russia, on April 1, 1873, and died in Beverly Hills, California, on March 28, 1943. The premiere of The Bells took place in St. Petersburg, Russia, on December 13, 1913, conducted by the composer. The Bells are scored for soprano, tenor and baritone soloists, mixed chorus, piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, six horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, harp, piano, celeste, organ, orchestra bells, chimes, tam-tam, side drum, tambourine, cymbals, suspended cymbal, bass drum, triangle and strings. Approximate performance time is thirty-seven minutes.First ASO Classical Subscription Performances: February 24, 25 and 26, 1983, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Robert Shaw, Conductor.Most Recent ASO Classical Subscription Performances: November 2, 3 and 4, 1995, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Shaw, Conductor.ASO Recording: CD-80365, Atlanta Symphony Chorus, Robert Shaw, Conductor.From childhood to the graveIn his memoirs, Sergei Rachmaninov acknowledged:The sound of church bells dominated all the cities of Russia I used to knowNovgorod, Kiev, Moscow. They accompanied every Russian from childhood to the grave, and no composer could escape their influenceAll my life I have taken pleasure in the differing moods and music of gladly chiming and mournfully tolling bells. This love for bells is inherent in every Russian. One of my fondest childhood recollections is associated with the four notes of the great bells in the St. Sophia Cathedral of Novgorod, which I often heard when my grandmother took me to town on church festival days. The bellringers were artists. The four notes were the theme that recurred again and again, four silvery weeping notes, veiled in an everchanging accompaniment woven around themIf I have been at all successful in making bells vibrate with human emotion in my works, it is largely due to the fact that most of my life was lived amid vibrations of the bells of MoscowIn the summer of 1912, the composer received a letter from an anonymous source, urging Rachmaninov to read Konstantin Balmonts Russian translation of Edgar Allan Poes The Bells, published after the American poets death in 1849. Rachmaninov complied, and decided to use it for a Choral Symphony in four movements.Rome, Tchaikovsky and The BellsThe following year, Rachmaninov and his family traveled to Rome. As Rachmaninov informed Oskar von Riesemann:I was able to take the same flat on the Piazza di Spagna that Modeste Tchaikovsky had used for a long time and which had served his brother as a temporary retreat from his numerous friends. It consisted of a few quiet, shady rooms belonging to an honest tailor. I lived, with my wife and children, at a pension, and went to the flat every morning to compose, remaining at work there till evening.Nothing helps me so much as solitude. For me, it is possible to compose only when I am alone and nothing from the outside hinders the flow of ideas. These conditions were ideal in the flat on the Piazza di Spagna. All day long I spent at the piano or the writing desk, and not until the pines on the Monte Pincio were gilded by the setting sun did I put away my pen.While in Rome, Rachmaninov focused upon two compositionsthe Second Piano Sonata, and The Bells. In his memoirs, Rachmaninov recalled:In the drowsy quiet of a Roman afternoon, with Poes verses before me, I heard the bell voices, and tried to set down on paper their lovely tones that seemed to express the varying shades of human experience. And there was the added stimulus of working in the room where (Peter Ilyich) Tchaikovsky had worked, of writing on the table on which he had written.Here, Tchaikovskys influence in a portion of The Bells should be noted. Rachmaninov observed that the works haunting, slow-tempo finale had the precedent of Tchaikovskyin particular, the Adagio lamentoso of his 1893 Symphony No. 6, the Pathtique.Progress on the Piano Sonata and The Bells was interrupted when two of Rachmaninovs daughters contracted typhoid fever. The family traveled to Berlin to seek medical treatment. After the daughters recovered, the Rachmaninovs returned to Russia. There, Rachmaninov put the finishing touches on The Bells.Rachmaninov dedicated the score to conductor Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, who, some years earlier, had brilliantly accompanied Rachmaninov in a performance of his Second Piano Concerto. Rachmaninov himself conducted the successful premiere of The Bells in St. Petersburg, on December 13, 1913.Miss DanilovaOne reader took particular interest in newspaper reports that were published during the period of rehearsals for the premiere of The Bells. She was Miss Danilova, a cello pupil of one of Rachmaninovs friends, Mikhail Bukik. One day, Miss Danilova arrived for her lesson with Bukik:in great agitation; while she played, she seemed very excited and eager to tell me something. She finally revealed that Balmonts translation of Poes poem, The Bells, had once made a great impression on hershe could think of it only as musicand who could write the music but her adored Rachmaninov! That she must do this became her ide fixe, and she wrote anonymously to her idol, suggesting that he read the poem and compose it as music.When Danilova read that Rachmaninov had, in fact, composed a work based upon The Bells, and that the piece was scheduled for its premiere, she, according to Bukik:was mad with joy. But someone had to be told her secretand thats how all her emotions were unloaded during my lesson. She told me the whole story. I was astounded to think our reserved and quite unsentimental Rachmaninov could have been capable of being inspired by someone elses adviceto create so important a work! I kept my pupils secret until Rachmaninovs death.And so, Rachmaninov never learned the identity of the person who provided the impetus for The Bells, a piece he composed with feverish ardor Rachmaninov further commented, it remains, of all my works, the one I like bestAs previously noted, Konstantin Balmonts Russian translation of Edgar Allen Poes 1849 poem serves as the text for Rachmaninovs The Bells. Below is an English translation, by Fanny S. Copeland, of Balmonts Russian adaptation.I. The Silver Sleigh Bells (Tenor solo and chorus); Allegro, ma non tanto

Listen, hear the silver bells!Silver bells!Hear the sledges with the bells,How they charm our weary senses with a sweetness that compels,In the ringing and the singing that of deep oblivion tells.Hear them calling, calling, calling,Rippling sounds of laughter, fallingOn the icy midnight air;And a promise they declare,That beyond illusions cumber,Births and lives beyond all number,Waits an universal slumberdeep and sweet past all compare.Hear the sledges with the bells,Hear the silver-throated bells;See, the stars bow down to hearken, what their melody foretells,With a passion that compels,And their dreaming is a gleaming that a perfumed air exhales,And their thoughts are but a shining, And a luminous diviningOf the singing and the ringing, that a dreamless peace foretells.

II. The Mellow Wedding Bells (Soprano solo and chorus); Lento

Hear the mellow wedding bells,Golden bells!What a world of tender passion their melodious voice foretells!Through the night their sound entrances,Like a lovers yearning glances,That ariseOn a wave of tuneful rapture to the moon within the skies.From the sounding cells upwingingFlash the tones of joyous singingRising, falling, brightly calling; from a thousand happy throatsRoll the glowing, golden notes,And an amber twilight gloatsWhile the tender vow is whispered that great happiness foretells,To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells, the golden bells!

III. The Loud Alarum Bells (Chorus); Presto

Hear them, hear the brazen bells,Hear the loud alarum bells!In their sobbing, in their throbbing what a tale of horror dwells!How beseeching sounds their cryNeath the naked midnight sky,Through the darkness wildly pleadingIn affright,Now approaching, now recedingRings their message through the night.And so fierce is their dismayAnd the terror they portray,That the brazen domes are riven, and their tongues can only speakIn a tuneless, jangling wrangling as they shriek, and shriek, and shriek,Till their frantic supplicationTo the ruthless conflagrationGrows discordant, faint and weak.But the fire sweeps on unheeding,And in vain is all their pleadingWith the flames!From each window, roof and spire,Leaping higher, higher, higher,Every lambent tongue proclaims:I shall soon,Leaping higher, still aspire, till I reach the crescent moon;Else I die of my despair in aspiring to the moon!O despair, despair, despair,That so feebly ye compareWith the blazing, raging horror, and the panic, and the glare,That ye cannot turn the flames,As your unavailing clang and clamour mournfully proclaims.And in hopeless resignationMan must yield his habitationTo the warring desolation!Yet we knowBy the booming and the clanging,By the roaring and the twanging,How the danger falls and rises like the tides that ebb and flow.And the progress of the danger every ear distinctly tellsBy the sinking and the swelling in the clamor of the bells.

IV. The Mournful Iron Bells (Baritone and Chorus); Lento lugubre

Hear the tolling of the bells,Mournful bells!Bitter end to fruitless dreaming their stern monody foretells!What a world of desolation in their iron utterance dwells!And we tremble at our doom,As we think upon the tomb,Glad endeavour quenched for ever in the silence and the gloom.With persistent iterationThey repeat their lamentation,Till each muffled monotoneSeems a groan,Heavy, moaning,Their intoning,Waxing sorrowful and deep,Bears the message, that a brother passed away to endless sleep.Those relentless voices rollingSeem to take a joy in tollingFor the sinner and the justThat their eyes be sealed in slumber, and their hearts beWhere they lie beneath a stone.But the spirit of the belfry is a sombre fiend that dwellsIn the shadow of the bells,And he gibbers, and he yells,As he knells, and knells, and knells,Madly round the belfry reeling,While the giant bells are pealing,While the bells are fiercely thrilling,Moaning forth the word of doom,While those iron bells, unfeeling,Through the void repeat the doom:There is neither rest nor respite, save the quiet of the tomb!