Miss Jacobson's Music: THURSDAY, MAY 8, 2014

Thursday, May 8, 2014

THURSDAY, MAY 8, 2014

QUOTE:
"The pleasure we feel in music springs
from the obedience which is in it."
AUTHOR: Henry David Thoreau

MEANING OF THE QUOTE:

"One of the reasons human beings like

music is because of its innate structure."

COMPOSER

PROKOFIEV

CINDERELLA

Herbert Thomas Dicksee: Cinderella, 1906

CINDERELLA BALLET SUITES

Prokofiev compiled three orchestral suites:
Opp. 107, 108 and 109 from the ballet,
and also provided the following

guide to the ballet music:

"My music has three basic themes: first theme,

Cinderella, the abused and ill-treated; second

theme, Cinderella, the chaste, pure and pensive;

the third and main theme, Cinderella, in love,

radiant with happiness. I also took a great deal

of trouble to establish every character through

the music ... in such a way that the audience

felt caught up in their joys and sorrows."

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 1, OP. 107

Jac van Steen, Conductor

National Orchestra of Wales

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnMkUtgnFKE

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 1, OP. 107

1. Introduction

2. Pas de Châle

3. Quarrel

4. Fairy Godmother and the Winter Fairy

5. Mazurka

6. Cinderella Goes to the Ball

7. Cinderella's Waltz

8. Midnight

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 1, OP. 107

Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Conductor

USSR Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYmmCbwNWPs

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108

1. Cinderella's Dreams

2. Dancing Lesson and Gavotte

3. Spring Fairy and Summer Fairy

4. Bourree

5. Cinderella at the Palace

6. Galop

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108

I. Cinderella's Dreams
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor
Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8NN4zQWooY

CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108
II. Dancing Lesson and Gavotte
Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor
Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJfWktX29B4

CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108
III. Spring-Fairy and Summer-Fairy

Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor
Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKFa1PnbSWk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpHffmuK6is

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108

IV. Bourree

Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor

Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vphmAzd3VCs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHE1BRdv9eY

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108

V. Cinderella at the Palace

Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor

Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxspwcPhWiA

CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108
V. Cinderella at the Palace
VI. Grand Waltz
Theodore Kuchar, Conductor
Ukrainian State Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj8VWAeGFQ0

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 2, OP. 108

VII. Gallop

Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Conductor

Bolshoi Theater Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TPWUV3gFQE

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109

1. Pavane
2. Cinderella and the Prince
3. Three Oranges
4. Dance of Temptation
5. Oriental Dance
6. The Prince Finds Cinderella
7. Slow Waltz
8. Amoroso

CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109
I. Pavane

Neeme Jarvi, Conductor
Royal Scottish National Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQz8pyPu_tQ

CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109
II. Cinderella and the Prince

Neeme Jarvi, Conductor
Royal Scottish National Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXGaedBNNLI

CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109
III. Three Oranges
Neeme Jarvi, Conductor

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28C1xjZMTh4

CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109

IV. Dance of Temptation

Neeme Jarvi, Conductor
Royal Scottish National Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH-bD8NJWNc

CINDERELLA BALLET
SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109
V. Oriental Dance
Neeme Jarvi, Conductor
Royal Scottish National Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FP2SQdKzM

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109

VI. The Prince Finds Cinderella

(Unable to locate a video)

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109

VII. Slow Waltz

Thierry Fischer, Conductor

Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrücken

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcnCPJBcOEI

CINDERELLA BALLET

SUITE NO. 3, OP. 109

VIII. Amoroso (Finale)
Neeme Jarvi, Conductor

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycOsJpgXOvo

Edmund Dulac

ARTICLE FROM:
PITTSBURG SYMPHONY

PROGRAM NOTES
http://pso.culturaldistrict.org/pso_home/web/commentary/2011/mgc16-prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Born April 23, 1891 in Sontzovka, Russia;

Died March 5, 1953 in Moscow.
SUITE FROM CINDERELLA

(1941-1944)
PREMIERE OF WORK:

Moscow, November 21, 1945

Moscow Bolshoi Theater

Yuri Fayer, Conductor

Yuri Fayer

APPROXIMATE DURATION:
45 minutes

INSTRUMENTATION:

piccolos, three flutes, three oboes,

English horn, three clarinets, bass

clarinet, three bassoons, contra-bassoon,

four horns, three trumpets, three
trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion,
piano, celesta, harp and strings.

Immediately after the belated triumph
in Russia of his Romeo and Juliet

http://www.philatelicdatabase.com/topicals-
thematics/shakespeare-on-stamps/

with its production by
the Kirov Ballet
(also known today as the Mariinsky Ballet)

in Leningrad

Anna Petrovna Ostroumova-Lebedeva:

Suspension Bridge, St. Petersburg (Leningrad)

(In 1914 the name of the city was changed from
Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to
Leningrad, back to Saint Petersburg.)

1940, Prokofiev was commissioned

by that company to write another full-

length ballet; Cinderella

Walter Crane: Cinderella

was suggested as the topic. Prokofiev
jumped at the idea, and he began the
piece early the following year. He

worked quickly, and had largely finished
the first two acts in short score by
early summer. Then, however, bitter
reality burst into his fantasy world.

December 7, 1941: Parade on Red Square

"On 22nd June [1941],"

22nd of June 1941: Germany Invades USSR

he recalled in later years,

"on a warm, sunny morning, I was

installed at my work table. Suddenly,

the watchman's wife appeared and

asked me if it was true that the

Germans were attacking us and

bombing our towns. The news

staggered me. We went to

[Sergei] Eisenstein's place

David Burliuk: Sergei Eisenstein, 1932

[the director of Alexander Nevsky,

with whom Prokofiev had
developed a close association

Prokofiev and Eisenstein

after writing the score
for that monumental film],

and discovered that it was perfectly true.

On 22nd June, 1941, the German

Fascists attacked Soviet Russia."

Under the circumstance, Cinderella

seemed frivolous and unpatriotic,

and Prokofiev put the score away in

favor of work on some military

marches and an opera based on

War and Peace,

Tolstoy's

Repin: Leo Tolstoy

epic that uses an earlier European

invasion of Russia as its backdrop.

French Invasion of Russia ("Patriotic War of 1812")
Napoleon Watching the Burning Moscow

Prokofiev and other artists were
evacuated to the relative safety of

Nalchik in the Caucasus Mountains

and then to Tiflis,
(now called Tbilisi)

the capital of Georgia,

for the next two years, where, in

addition to War and Peace, he

composed his well-known Seventh

Piano Sonata, the Sonata for Flute

and Piano and the music for

Eisenstein's movie

Ivan the Terrible.

The difficulty of the war years,

however, had not expunged

Cinderella from the Kirov's plans,

and in 1943 Prokofiev was

invited to join the company at its

temporary home in Perm.

Despite the cramped conditions and
personnel limitations in Perm, the
Kirov was still staging production

(Khachaturian's Gayne Ballet

had been premiered there the
preceding December), and its

administrators told Prokofiev that

they would like to mount his ballet

before the end of the year. He

worked throughout the summer in

close collaboration with the librettist

Nikolai Volkov and the choreographer

Konstantin Sergeyev

(who had danced Romeo in the
Kirov's 1940 production of Prokofiev's
masterwork), but the ballet proved to be too

elaborate for the facilities available at
Perm, and it was postponed.

The tile panels depicting nursery rhymes were originally located in the John Nixon Ward of Cardiff Royal Infirmary (circa 1912). Cinderella was designed by Philip H Newman and made by W. B. Simpson & Sons of The Strand, London. The hospital originally had 36 tile panels, which included a series depicting Welsh History.

The orchestration was completed
during the summer of 1944 at a retreat
house in Ivanovo, near Moscow,

where Prokofiev,

Shostakovich,

Dmitry Shostakovich

Glière,

Reinhold Gliere

Miaskovsky,

Nikolai Myaskovsky

and other important composers
had been moved as the conditions

of war ameliorated.

Cinderella was premiered with

great success on November 21,

1945, not by the Kirov in Leningrad,

Kirov in Leningrad

however, but by the Bolshoi in Moscow,

Bolshoi Theater. The theater building. 1821-24. Osip Bove, A. Mikhailov. Rebuilt in 1855-56 AK Kavos.

Bolshoi in Moscow

since Galina Ulanova,

Galina Ulanova

the ballerina for whom
the title role was created,

G. S. Ulanova in 'Cinderella'_Gatob; 66. Photo M. M. Gershmana & E. Z. Lesova

Galina Ulanova as Cinderella

had recently transferred from
one company to the other.

Jennie Harbour: Cinderella

"The main thing I wanted to
convey in the music of Cinderella,"

wrote Prokofiev,

"was the poetic love of Cinderella

and the Prince — the inception

and flowering of the emotion,

the obstacles in its way, the

realization of a dream.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24778/24778-h/24778-h.htm#CINDERELLA

A major role in my work on
Cinderella was played by the fairy-

tale nature of the subject, which

faced me as the composer with a

number of interesting problems

— the mysteriousness of the good

grandmother fairy,

The Fairy Godmother Resembling a Butterfly

the fantasy of the twelve dwarfs
leaping at midnight from the clock

and beating out a tap-dance reminding

Cinderella to return home, the swift

alternation of the countries of the

world visited by the Prince in search

of Cinderella, the vivid and poetic

breath of nature in the figures of the

four fairies of the seasons of the

year and their attendants

CINDERELLA
The Seasons Fairies

Koen Kessels, Conductor

Birmingham Royal Ballet

Birmingham Royal Ballet Sinfonia, 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9oLaxaeOXk

…. Besides the dramatic structure, it
was very important to me that the ballet

Cinderella should be most danceable,

that the dances should flow from the
design of the plot, be varied, and that

the artists in the ballet should have

sufficient measure of opportunity to

dance and display their art.

I wrote Cinderella in the

traditions of the old classical ballet;
it contains a pas-de-deux,

Leonid Afremov: Pas de Deux II

an adagio, a gavotte, several waltzes,
a pavane, a passepied, a bourrée,

a mazurka, a galop. Every personage

has his variation. Although the fairy

tale of Cinderella is found among

many peoples, I wanted to take it up

as a genuine Russian fairy story."

Vera Smirnova: Cinderella

More than just a children's story
or a bit of theatrical escapism,

Cinderella touches on deeper

meanings and more universal themes.

Florence Harrison: Cinderella at the Hazel Tree

The work's librettist,
Nikolai Volkov, said that

"new images of the Prince and the

drudge [Cinderella] rose before my

eyes. The Prince acquired the

features of a passionate and

impetuous youth who longed to

escape from the confining influence

of the stagnant court life…. In our

imagination, Cinderella was

shrouded in the mists of dreams,

a girl who lived on the foretaste of

love. The result of this interpretation

of the chief characters was that the

ballet acquired the features

of a love story.

The fairy tale, while preserving its

mood of fantasy, was filled with a

psychological and lyrical content."

In his biography of Prokofiev,
Israel V. Nestyev wrote,

"The underlying idea of the ballet

is Cinderella’s modesty, industry

and spiritual purity over the greed,

heartlessness and crass arrogance

of her stepmother and stepsisters.

Following the original story, the

cruel characters are derided and

humbled, and the good Cinderella

is chosen by the Prince.

Pure love is the central theme of both the

libretto and the music of the ballet."

Kinuko Craft: Cinderella

BALLET MUSIC

COMPLETE

CINDERELLA BALLET OP. 87
ACT I
Andrè Previn, Conductor
London Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ize83QoDSb0

No 1 Introduction
No 2 Shawl Dance
No 3 Cinderella
No 4 The Father
No 5 The Fairy Godmother
No 6 The Sisters' New Clothes
No 7 The Dancing Lesson
No 8 Departure of the Stepmother and the Sisters for the Ball
No 9 Cinderella Dreams of the Ball
No 10 Gavotte
No 11 Second Appearance of the Fairy Godmother
No 12 Spring Fairy
No 13 Summer Fairy
No 14 Grasshoppers and Dragonflies
No 15 Autumn Fairy
No 16 Winter Fairy
No 17 The Interrupted Departure
No 18 The Clock
No 19 Cinderella's Departure for the Ball

Arthur Rackham: Cinderella Ironing the Sisters' Linen, 1919

CINDERELLA BALLET OP. 87
ACT II
Andrè Previn, Conductor
London Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-fabUB8HzY

No 20 Dance of the Courtiers
No 21 Passepied
No 22 Bourrée
No 23 Skinny's Variation
No 24 Dumpy's Variation
No 25 Dance of the Courtiers (Reprise)
No 26 Mazurka and Entrance of the Prince
No 27 Dance of the Prince's Four Companions
No 28 Mazurka
No 29 Cinderella's Arrival at the Ball
No 30 Grand Waltz
No 31 Promenade
No 32 Cinderella's Dance
No 33 Dance of the Prince
No 34 Refreshments for the Guests
No 35 Duet of the Sisters with the Oranges

(musical quote from the 1919 opera L'amour des trois oranges)
No 36 Duet of the Prince and Cinderella
No 37 Waltz-Coda
No 38 Midnight

CINDERELLA BALLET OP. 87
ACT III
Andrè Previn, Conductor
London Symphony Orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2z39Y3F3Qg

ACT III, SCENE I
The search for Cinderella
No 39 The Prince and the Cobblers
No 40 First Galop of the Prince
No 41 Temptation
No 42 Second Galop of the Prince
No 43 Orientalia
No 44 Third Galop of the Prince
ACT III, SCENE II
The Prince with Cinderella
No 45 Cinderella's Awakening
No 46 The Morning After the Ball
No 47 The Prince's Visit
No 48 The Prince Recognizes Cinderella
No 49 Slow Waltz
No 50 Amoroso