Beethoven, Clyne & Stravinsky: May 1-3, 2026
- May 1
- 7 min read
Updated: May 1
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I interviewed Colorado Symphony Principal Bassoonist Quincey Trojanowski about this program. We chat about the bassoon, this program, and how we were both bad children in this 18 minute video. Thank you for supporting my work by subscribing to Beeson's Backstage Pass so I can continue to make this and other content for our Nerd-o-sphere. 🤓
And now... The Program!
Ludwig van Beethoven
Coriolan Overture
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Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was a German composer who was born into the Classical Era, broke those conventions during his middle compositional period, and paved the way for the Romantic Era in his late compositional period. He's like three composers for the price of one! Beethoven is one of the most instantly recognizable composers of Western European classical music, and together with Franz Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, he helped template the compositional style known as the First Viennese School.
About the music
Beethoven composed the Overture to Coriolan, a play by Heinrich Joseph von Collin in 1807. It nearly immediately took on a life of its own.
Coriolan Overture was premiered on an all Beethoven concert that same year, which included premieres of the 4th piano concerto and the 4th symphony. That's a lot of brand new music for people to experience all at once!
The overture acts as a sort of Cliff's Notes of the play, introducing an aggressive sounding theme for the war hungry Coriolanus as well as a gentler theme representing his mother who convinces him not to attack Rome. It doesn't end well for Coriolanus. In Shakespeare's version of this play he is murdered. In Collin's version he commits suicide. Beethoven wraps up the overture with quiet resignation, leaving Coriolanus' end up to the listener to imagine.
A typical performance of Coriolan Overture lasts about 9 minutes.
Resources:
Anna Clyne
Glasslands Saxophone Concerto
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Anna Clyne (1980- ) is a British composer, currently based in New York after having gained dual citizenship. Clyne is one of the most celebrated, performed, and influential living composers today. She began composing at age 7, but didn't take it up seriously for study and development until she pivoted during her undergraduate college years. Now just 46 years old she already has over 100 published works and recordings in double digits.
A New York Times profile described Clyne as a “composer of uncommon gifts and unusual methods”. For her part, Clyne attributes her characteristic style in part to early exposure to many different genres of music including pop, folk, jazz, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, and Beethoven. She says "Melody is increasingly at the heart of my music. That sense of melody is important to me."
HIGHLIGHTS
Anna Clyne composed Glasslands in 2022 for saxophonist Jess Gillam, who premiered it with Detroit Symphony in 2023.
Clyne noted the piercing quality that the soprano saxophone can have and decided to exploit this by making the concerto about the Irish folkloric Banshee, known to announce the death of a family member by shrieking into the night.
Glasslands presents different realms of the Banshee in three movements. The first movement opens with this shrieking of the Banshee represented with wailing in the solo saxophone. The second movement is a slow buildup around a spare and beautiful repeated melody, in a sort of passacaglia. The third movement pits a frightening and dark chorale theme - like a new Dies Irae - against an unreasonably cute and joyfully jazzy theme which seems to serve life and death simultaneously.
A typical performance of Glasslands lasts about 25 minutes.
Resources:
Igor Stravinsky
The Rite of Spring
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Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a Russian composer, conductor, and pianist with citizenship in France (from 1934) and the United States (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 1900s and a pivotal figure in modernist music in part for his innovations in conceptualizing sound production, use of rhythm, and new harmonies. He found his greatest success early in his career with a significant artistic partner in Sergei Diaghilev of Ballet Russes. Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to write a series of 3 ballets which resulted in The Firebird of 1910, Petrushka in 1911, and the ground breaking 1913 work The Rite of Spring.
About the Music:
Even though The Rite of Spring is 113 years old it still sounds as raw and powerful and creepy and wild as it did on the night of its premiere, which famously produced an extreme shock reaction from the disturbed and angry audience. Oh to have a classical music riot today! One can always hold on to hope...
The Rite of Spring has a subtitle "Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts". This pretty much sums up the gist of the ballet and should've clued the audience in to what they were about to witness. Costume design and choreography was decidedly NOT from the classical ballet world, decisions which Stravinsky's music definitely influenced. He worked from a storyline of primitive cultural rituals around the beginning of springtime and worship of tribal elders, and ends with a ritual virgin sacrifice. Perfect for a wholesome family outing or date night! (That is a joke.)
To the knowledgable and discerning ear, there is Russian folk material to be found. However, Stravinsky has run it through so many alterations it leaves more of an impression than a statement of the material. Noted music critic Alex Ross wrote about this saying Stravinsky "proceeded to pulverize them into motivic bits, pile them up in layers, and reassemble them in cubistic collages and montages"
Part One: Adoration of the Earth opens with music depicting the awakening of spring, mostly expressed through independent woodwind melodies and fragmented motivic sounds which recall insects or birds or nature in general. The first notes we hear are from the very highest register of the bassoon, one of the naturally lowest pitched instruments in the orchestra. Some first time listeners may be confused about what instrument is playing or where it's coming from since the sound is so unusual and since there is only one instrument playing while there are approximately eleventy gazillion instruments on stage. It's a cool effect and definitely sends a strong message to Toto that we're not in Kansas anymore. After this introductory material the dances begin and continue in this order:
Augurs of Spring - The celebration of spring begins in the hills. An old woman enters and begins to foretell the future.
Ritual of Abduction - Young girls arrive from the river and begin the "Dance of the Abduction".
Spring Rounds - A dance of the young girls.
Ritual of the Rival Tribes - A dance with the people split into opposing groups.
Procession of the Sage: The Sage - A holy procession leads to the entry of the wise elders, headed by the Sage who brings the games to a pause and blesses the earth.
Dance of the Earth - The people break into a passionate dance, sanctifying and becoming one with the earth.
Part Two: The Sacrifice begins with the most deliciously creepy music in the entire piece. Here Stravinsky is playing with an idea that began coming forward with the French Impressionists - polytonality - which is a technique of using more than one key or tonal center at the same time (for example E major overlayed with E-flat major). This typically creates hyper structured complex harmonies that can sound jazzy and evocative. In this introductory material the music sounds eery and a bit like reality is melting before your very eyes. After this material the dances resume in the following order:
Mystic Circles of the Young Girls - The young girls engage in mysterious games, walking in circles.
Glorification of the Chosen One - One of the young girls is selected by fate, being twice caught in the perpetual circle, and is honored as the "Chosen One" with a martial dance.
Evocation of the Ancestors - In a brief dance, the young girls invoke the ancestors.
Ritual Action of the Ancestors - The Chosen One is entrusted to the care of the old wise men.
Sacrificial Dance - The Chosen One dances to death in the presence of the old men, in the great "Sacrificial Dance".
After all this raw emotional highly rhythmic music the piece ends with a brief suspension of time, silence, and then a final splash-bang.
Stravinsky's score requires an enormous orchestra with MANY additional winds, brass, and percussion, including the use of the "rasp" which is usually played by a notched metal can guiro and meant to be rhythmically scraped. Notably difficult to hear clearly against so many instruments, our percussion section has opted to use a large metal washboard to great effect! Something to look forward to and nerd out on for sure.
For even more nerding, just know that my personal favorite single bar in all of music is the 11/4 bar that immediately precedes Glorification of the Chosen One. It's an IN. YOUR. FACE. transition that operates like a mind eraser. With just one more (12/4), or two fewer (9/4) beats the listener could retroactively apply organization to it, but no!
THIS ONE GOES TO ELEVEN.
A typical performance lasts about 35 minutes, although the Disney Fantasia version with dinosaurs roaming the earth lasts just 22. RIP, majestic Jurassic and Cretaceous creatures.
Resources:
Last, I will never not share the lockdown boredom creative brilliance of percussionist Rocco Luigi Bitondo's gnome series. Enjoy the final dance of The Rite of Spring as performed by the VERY EXTREMELY IMPORTANT bass drum and timpani. They are the real conductors the orchestra relies upon in case of disaster in this section of the piece!
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Catherine you tried really hard to get me to like the Rite of Spring, but I cannot get on with the disonnance. I appreciated the video about the different types of disonnance that helped me realize what it is that I do not like, so there is that. I do appreciate the education, I missed this weekend's but it is nice to learn about it here.