Mykola Lysenko (1842–1912)
Overture to Taras Bulba (1880)
Scored for: three flutes including piccolo, three oboes including English Horn, three clarinets including bass clarinet, three bassoons including contrabassoon, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings
Performance time: 5 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance

Ukrainian composer Mykola Lysenko never got to see his opera Taras Bulba performed during his lifetime. His insistence on using Ukrainian text and folk music prevented its production in what was then the Russian Empire, which sought to suppress the Ukrainian language and culture. Nicknamed “the father of Ukrainian classical music,” Lysenko composed several operas as well as works for choir, orchestra, piano, and chamber ensembles. He also founded the Ukrainian National School of Music, where he taught a generation of Ukrainian composers.

Based on the novella Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol, the opera takes place in 17th-century Ukraine when Poland was fighting for supremacy in the region. In fighting for his people’s freedom, the Cossack patriarch Taras Bulba ends up killing his son for treason after he falls in love with the daughter of the Polish governor. The opera was performed for the first time in 1924 in Kharkiv. After undergoing significant revisions in the 1930s and 1950s, the opera now traditionally closes out each season at the Kyiv Opera House, though it is still rarely performed in the West.

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Concerto in D major for Violin & Orchestra, op. 35, TH 59 (1878)
Scored for: two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four French horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings, and solo violin
Performance time: 33 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: September 5, 1936; Joseph Raffaelli, conductor and Mischa Elman, violin

Just four years after pianist Nikolai Rubinstein’s notorious condemnation of his First Piano Concerto, Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky again faced damning criticism for a work that would later become an audience favorite. In the spring of 1878, Tchaikovsky escaped the fallout from his failed marriage by absconding to the Swiss resort town of Clarens on Lake Geneva. There, he composed his Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, with the help of violinist Iosif Kotek, a former student from the Moscow Conservatory. The two had become close friends and collaborators after Kotek’s graduation in 1876. The young violinist proved a useful resource not only in helping Tchaikovsky workshop the Violin Concerto but also in connecting the composer with his future patron, the reclusive widow Nadezhda von Meck. Her patronage would give Tchaikovsky the financial security to quit teaching and compose full-time.

Tchaikovsky dedicated the Violin Concerto to violinist Leopold Auer, a colleague at the conservatory who had lobbied to premiere the work. However, Auer was not exactly thrilled when Tchaikovsky presented him with the completed score. In an interview in 1912, Auer said, “I regretted that the great composer had not shown it to me before committing it to print. Much unpleasantness might then have been spared us both.” According to Tchaikovsky, Auer said the concerto was “impossible to play” and “a mockery of the public”—much like the comments he had received from Rubinstein on his Piano Concerto. Auer insisted his criticism was more measured, his main complaint being that certain solo passages were not idiomatic for the instrument. Regardless of what words were actually exchanged, Tchaikovsky was hurt and the situation got messy. Auer’s lack of support meant the concerto was not performed until 1881, when it premiered to an unsympathetic audience in Vienna. Auer eventually came around to the Violin Concerto after making some edits to the violin part. He not only became a celebrated interpreter of the work but also taught it to his many illustrious students, including Jascha Heifetz.

The first movement begins simply with a minimally accompanied melody for the violins. A suspenseful dominant pedal in the low strings anticipates the solo violin’s entrance with a quiet iteration of the noble first theme. This melody alternates with a more sinuous second theme. These two themes are developed throughout the movement, with transitional passages providing the soloist ample opportunities for virtuosic display. Tchaikovsky did make one substantial edit after Auer’s comments: completely rewriting the slow movement. (He would recycle the original Andante in his suite for violin and piano Souvenir d’un lieu cher.) Titled “Canzonetta,” the movement’s sorrowful song-like melody is first presented over muted strings, then in duet with the flute and clarinet. A transitional cadenza flows straight into the spirited finale. Recalling the violin’s roots as a folk instrument, the rondo-form finale evokes a Slavic dance, again allowing the violinist plenty of opportunities for soloistic bravura.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, op. 100 (1944)
Scored for: three flutes including piccolo, three oboes including English Horn, four clarinets including bass clarinet, three bassoons including contrabassoon, four French horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, and strings
Performance time: 46 minutes
First Grant Park Orchestra performance: August 9, 1961; Irwin Hoffman, conductor

Just as Sergei Prokofiev took the stage on January 13, 1945, to conduct the premiere of his Fifth Symphony, news reached Moscow that the Red Army had crossed the Vistula River into German-occupied Poland, marking the beginning of the defeat of the Nazis on the Eastern Front. In the silence of the auditorium, celebratory gunfire could be heard outside. Pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who was in attendance, recalled the scene: “When Prokofiev mounted the podium and silence set in, artillery salvos suddenly thundered. His baton was already raised. He waited, and until the cannon fire ceased, he didn’t begin. There was something very significant, very symbolic in this. It was as if all of us—including Prokofiev—had reached some kind of shared turning point.”

The tide was already starting to turn in favor of the Allies when Prokofiev set to work on his Fifth Symphony, hope for the war’s end in the air. Prokofiev composed the symphony—his first in 16 years—while staying at the Composers’ House in Ivanovo. Established by the Union of Soviet Composers, it was designed to give artists a quiet place to work away from the war-torn cities. This symphony ended up being one of his finest creations, with Prokofiev calling it “the culmination of an entire period of my work.” The Fifth Symphony marked the pinnacle of both his career and his standing with the government, earning him the Stalin Prize, First Class, in 1946. It was soon recorded and adopted by orchestras around the world. He was even featured on the cover of Time Magazine shortly after the American premiere by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra in November 1945.

Prokofiev said his Fifth Symphony was “a hymn to free and happy man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.” While this statement was likely curated to appease Soviet officials, the work does carry an air of defiance and celebration. The opening melody of the Andante, presented with austere accompaniment at first, eventually builds in confidence, prevailing in hulking fortissimo by the end of the coda. Two other themes feature in the first movement: a more lyrical theme with sumptuous chromatic inflections, introduced by the flute and oboe, and a jittering theme of leaping and repeated 16th notes. The Allegro moderato is a witty scherzo and trio. After the scherzo’s jaunty clarinet theme, the clarinet and viola offer a snaky, sinuous melody in the trio, punctuated by snare drum and tambourine. When the scherzo returns in tiptoeing brass, it takes on a more sinister quality.

The following Adagio is dense and somber. A long-lined woodwind melody emerges from hefty bass chords and triplet string arpeggios. The lyrical melody swells in full strings before a funereal march takes over in the dark middle section. After a tortured climax of percussive bombast, the opening material returns, the movement ending gently with an ascending clarinet arpeggio. The finale begins with a graceful yet curious wind melody. Divided cellos soon restate the opening movement’s first theme. After this quiet introduction, the musical material becomes more excited, living up to the movement’s “giocoso” (or “playful”) marking. Prokofiev continually ratchets up the intensity, the coda spinning into a dizzying frenzy and ending with a bang.

—Katherine Buzard