#programme notes

The Sleeping Beauty is Tchaikovsky’s second ballet, and tells the story of Princess Aurora, cursed into a peaceful 100-year sleep on her sixteenth birthday. A hundred years later, Prince Désiré is on a hunting trip when the Lilac Fairy finds him, telling him the story of the Sleeping Beauty. With true love’s kiss, Prince Désiré awakens Aurora, and they live happily ever after. At almost three hours long, the ballet consists of a prologue followed by three acts, and it is unfortunate that Tchaikovsky never had the chance to witness its rise to international success.

The piece was transcribed by Mikhail Pletnev, a Russian pianist and conductor, struck by the realisation that there “seemed to be insufficient impressive works in the piano repertoire”. It alludes to the tradition of ballet rehearsal pianists, often unrecognised for their daily efforts realising impossible orchestral scores. Pletnev’s transcription of The Sleeping Beauty is largely faithful to the orchestral version, though surprisingly, Pletnev omits the “grand waltz” from Act I, seemingly renouncing grandiloquence for characterisation.

These Hungarian Dances are adapted from Hungarian folk tunes, and Johannes Brahms himself, ever so humble, considered them to be “arrangements” instead of original pieces. As such, these pieces were the embodiment of Nationalism in Europe at the time, giving the impression of a gypsy band prancing around a fire. 

Ironically, the tune which Brahms based No.5 on was not in fact a traditional folksong, but a work by another composer, csárdás by Kéler Béla. This piece can generally be divided into three large sections, but a deeper analysis would reveal smaller subsections. Characterised by its frequent and unpredictable tempo changes, this spirited dance keeps us ever on our toes with its capricious and whimsical mood. 

The piece starts off with a bold declaration of the theme in a firm forte, immediately evoking an inkling of gypsy music. It is coupled with steady chordal accompaniments in the seconda that are present throughout most of the piece in the same rhythm, giving the piece its strong beat. An intensification of the theme then follows, with primo moving to a higher register, proceeding which several sequences of whirring and delicate semiquavers descend, eventually easing into a chirpy cadence. These semiquavers, marked leggiero and piano, are a swift contrast to the bold quality of the main theme.  The music ultimately climaxes with an abrupt spiral of arpeggio semiquavers to the highest C#, again giving the piece it’s energetic nature. What comes next is a subtler motif, appearing first in a major key, then in a minor key, and lastly, again in a major key. It appears as if the music is indecisive, bewildered as to which side to choose, and this is further brought to the fore with apt tempo changes. The uncertainty is then seemingly resolved with a firm and resolute cadence. 

The foremost explanation would of course be the work’s bizarre narrative. Hugely discordant from the audience’s expectations of “spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the Rite of Spring portrays the story of a young girl who dances herself to death in sacrifice to pagan gods. The work focuses on portraying Pagan Russia, and as asserted by Igor Stravinsky himself, “What I was trying to convey in The Rite was the surge of spring, the magnificent upsurge of nature reborn.” 

The Rite of Spring is structured in two parts, the first being Adoration of the Earth(or Kiss of the Earth) and the second being The Sacrifice. There are thirteen separate episodes in total for the ballet score (excluding the Introduction), but the symphony score would have a total of three movements. It was originally written for a full orchestra, only later arranged for four hands; one of the downsides of playing this piece with only the piano is the inability to explore the distinct timbres different instruments produce. The Augurs of Spring is the first episode in this massive work, coming after the Introduction, and it conveys the tribal celebrations of spring. In the midst of these festivities, an elderly woman appears and begins foretelling the future. 

Instead of being unified by a single dominant motif, the episode consists of several fragmented motifs, often persisting in ritualistic repetition. The episode launches into a colourful start with its signature repeated Augurs Chord, a polychord that immediately creates harmonic dissonance. The relentless repetition of the chord reflects the ecstatic stomping steps of the dancers, much in the brutal nature of a tribal procession. Stravinsky further emphasises the brutish essence of the Rite by placing irregular and unpredictable jolting accents on the chords, giving the false impression of syncopations and stirring excitement, keeping listeners ever on the edge of their seats. Mimicking the strange calls of wildlife, angular melodies pile on propulsive rhythms, jarring with the thumping chords. A sense of frenzy and chaos is also created through the clever use of polyrhythm. However, right when the listener gradually finds himself settling into the unusual music, the mood is transformed completely when an element of surprise is introduced. All of a sudden, the music collapses into an abrupt silence with several harsh octaves in the bass; psychologically speaking, such a startling stop felt much more like a head-on collision. 

Thankfully, the music soon resumes with rapid descending semiquavers in primo, leading to incessant trills in seconda that closely echo the relentless tumult of nature. The mood, nevertheless, is lightened by cheerful tunes in primo, mirroring the jovial and carefree emotions of the people as they welcome the arrival of spring. The tribe celebrates the first rites of Spring, and the dancing continues as more and more members join in, until finally, all the members are present and the whole tribe comes together in a final jubilant dance.