In Greek mythology, the Sirens were sea nymphs whose singing was so seductive that it lured ill-fated sailors onto the rocks near the islands where they lived. Their most famous symphonic representation is in “Sirènes,” the final movement of Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes (which we performed last year). This hypnotic music—“amid the waves silvered by the moonlight,” as the composer put it—represents the consummate beauty of their songs. Stacy Garrop (b. 1969) offers a very different perspective. In The Lovely Sirens (2009)—the central movement of her five-movement Mythology Symphony—she emphasizes their danger ...

In Greek mythology, the Sirens were sea nymphs whose singing was so seductive that it lured ill-fated sailors onto the rocks near the islands where they lived. Their most famous symphonic representation is in “Sirènes,” the final movement of Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes (which we performed last year). This hypnotic music—“amid the waves silvered by the moonlight,” as the composer put it—represents the consummate beauty of their songs. Stacy Garrop (b. 1969) offers a very different perspective. In The Lovely Sirens (2009)—the central movement of her five-movement Mythology Symphony—she emphasizes their danger and heightens our terror. True, as in the Debussy, there’s a vivid timbral imagination here, as you’d expect from an admirer of composer George Crumb. But Stacy is also drawn to the formal techniques of Shostakovich, and you can feel it powerfully in the way she plays with musical tension.

“The Lovely Sirens,” Stacy explains, “presents three ideas: the Sirens’ beautiful song” (calls on the woodwinds, echoing each other, with strings and percussion in the background); “an unfortunate group of sailors whose course takes them near the island” (slightly ominous music in brass and bassoons); “and the disaster that befalls the sailors. Right off the bat, you hear the sirens and the sailors. You have them interacting a bit, and then it calms down”—reaching what Stacy calls “the zero point” of the movement. Here, just a few instruments playing quietly, represent—as the score tells us—“the mesmerized sailors turn[ing] toward the island.” Then, from the depths of the orchestra, we hear the stirring of danger introduced by brake drums. “From there to the end of the piece,” says Stacy, “it’s just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, with the sailors’ peril represented by the Morse code S.O.S. signal (three dots, three dashes, and three dots—represented musically by short and long rhythms). That S.O.S. signal starts in the percussion and then gets picked up throughout the orchestra; by the end, the entire orchestra is screaming this signal to warn the sailors, ‘Wait! Don’t!’ But they move their ship towards the rocks and don’t see what’s about to happen.”

The work ends at its point of highest tension. If you hear it in the context of the entire Mythology Symphony (which I strongly recommend—I’ve provided a link at the end of these notes), that tension is released in the remaining movements. At tonight’s concert, it’s resolved in our closer—the Symphony No. 4 (1887-88) by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). Talk about tension: The Fourth features one of the most high-stress openings in the repertoire, announcing what’s generally called the symphony’s “fate motif”; and in its impact (described as “bold and terrifying” by conductor Larry Loh), it may well remind you of the ending of The Lovely Sirens. Granted, Tchaikovsky’s work is not explicitly referential—that is, it doesn’t have an official program. But in private correspondence with his patron Nadezhda von Meck—his financial supporter and closest confidante, although she insisted that they never meet in person—he suggested that the work represented a struggle against fate. And over the years, for reasons that become obvious once you’ve heard the piece, listeners have come to interpret the Fourth in those terms.

While any claim that the Fourth is autobiographical would be debatable, there’s no doubt that the symphony was written under the shadow of acute personal upheaval. Tchaikovsky’s problems centered on Antonia Miliukova, a former student who developed an overwhelming crush on her teacher. Although Tchaikovsky was gay, he agreed to marry her; when the relationship crashed, it left Tchaikovsky in a despair so deep that for a while he couldn’t compose. It was, to a large extent, his epistolary friendship with von Meck that lifted him from his anguish and allowed him to compose the Fourth, which he dedicated to her.

It’s not hard to hear the agony that fuels the symphony. The first movement, the longest of the four, is as intense as anything Tchaikovsky wrote. Although it’s written in 9/8, Larry hears it as a “macabre waltz crippled by dissonances and syncopations that provide rhythmic and harmonic tension.” The middle two movements, lighter in spirit, provide what he calls a “necessary relief,” but you can sense a certain despondency in the second and, perhaps, a trace of desperation behind the balletic third, marked by its reliance on pizzicato strings. As for the finale: it starts with a bang (literally), quickly moving on to the folk tune “In the Field Stood a Birch Tree,” which—in a variety of guises—serves as the thematic meat of the movement. About two-thirds of the way through, the fate motif from the first movement returns—but it is swept away by an exuberant close. Does this folksy spirit represent an escape—or is it simply a kind of manic denial? “You don’t know how he’s really feeling,” Larry points out. But there’s no doubt that the finale blows you away.

Serving as a buffer between these two high-tension works is the 1809 Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat by Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), universally known as the “Emperor” Concerto. It might seem strange for something by Beethoven to function in this way. After all, in the public imagination, isn’t Beethoven often pictured as the epitome of tension—“furious with his hair flying everywhere,” as tonight’s soloist Michelle Cann puts it? And wasn’t the Fifth Concerto written under the pressure of overwhelming circumstances, just as Tchaikovsky’s Fourth was? Indeed, one can argue that Beethoven’s circumstances were even more fraught. The work was composed during a tumultuous period in a war-torn Vienna that had just been captured by Napoleon—the man whom, when he declared himself emperor, Beethoven angrily removed as the dedicatee of the “Eroica” Symphony. (Needless to say, the concerto’s nickname does not originate with Beethoven himself!) This political trauma was combined with physical trauma. Beethoven’s deafness, hardly helped by the bombardment of his city, had proceeded so far that he couldn’t perform the work at its premiere.

And yet, despite this background—and even though it is the grandest of Beethoven’s piano concertos, and the one most influential on the Romantic composers who followed him—the Fifth Concerto eschews the grim tension that we find in its companions on tonight’s concert. As Michelle puts it, “This is a completely different side of Beethoven, so bright and happy. E-flat major is such a sunny key, full of light, optimism, and hope. Except in a few brief moments, darkness doesn’t really make an appearance. You’re going to smile throughout it.”

What should we be listening for? Beethoven was, says Michelle, “always innovative and ahead of his time”—and the work is full of surprises. Two of them—which launch the first and last movements—can stand for many.

Normally, concertos of the time begin with a “big orchestral tutti which introduces the themes” and which paves the way for the arrival of the soloist. This one begins with the orchestra playing just a simple E-flat Major chord—“then here comes the piano with an amazing cadenza.” That opening gesture—orchestral chord, followed by keyboard acrobatics—is repeated twice more before the movement proper begins. “It’s kind of wonderful that the pianist gets to bring the audience into what is going to unfold instead of having the orchestra do so with the piano sitting there waiting its turn.”

Similarly surprising is the move, without a break, into the finale: “It’s a very odd transition,” Michelle points out. Without any preparation, the orchestra drops a half step, a brief moment of vertigo that brings us to a new key and a new musical landscape, a buoyant rondo in Beethoven’s wittiest style. “What a fun ending!”

Yet the Concerto has sublimity as well as sunshine in the “transcendent” second movement. “Once the piano comes in,” says Michelle, “the orchestra is just pizzicato, and the pianist’s right hand gets to be a great singer, a wonderful soprano vocalist. It just floats.”

The “Emperor” Concerto is at or near the top of virtually every list of the most beloved piano concertos—and there’s a hazard in that popularity. After all, as Michelle reminds us, “A pianist can play a piece so many times they know it backwards and forwards, and get stuck in their ways.” Tonight’s performance, though, will not fall into routine. Although Michelle has known this concerto since her teenage years, she’s actually performed it very rarely, so she’s not coming to Syracuse with a rigid pre-conception of how it should go. “I know it well, but it still has a freshness to it. When I go to work with Larry in Syracuse, I’ll still be very open.” One quality of the performance, though, is predictable: However its details turn out, you can rest assured that, like all of Michelle’s performances, it will be an unforgettable experience.

Peter J. Rabinowitz
Have any comments or questions? Please write to me at prabinowitz@SyracuseOrchestra.org
NOTE: You can hear Stacy Garrop’s complete Mythology Symphony HERE
(https://www.garrop.com/Catalog/
Featured_Works/Mythology_Symphony/)