Gala Flagello: Bravado (2023)

Gala Flagello (b. 1994) is a composer, educator, and one of the co-founding directors of the Connecticut Summerfest, a nonprofit contemporary music festival held in West Hartford since 2015. Flagello holds a PhD in Musical Arts from the University of Michigan and has been awarded composition fellowships at the Aspen Music Festival, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and the Tanglewood Music Center, where she composed Bravado in 2023. Along with being inspired by teaching and the collaborative process, Flagello also finds inspiration in fostering social change through her compositions in areas such as gender equality and environmental and mental health advocacy. According to her composition notes on Bravado, the work “explores the many connotations of the word ‘bravado,’ a descendent of the Old Italian adjective bravo, meaning ‘wild’ or ‘courageous.’ A person with bravado can be seen as bold or reckless, daring or arrogant, confident or overbearing. The orchestra musically embodies this range of traits through the transformation of the piece’s primary melody.”

Aram Khachaturian: Violin Concerto in D minor (1940)

Known today as one of the titans of Soviet music alongside Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian (1903–1978), like his predecessor Tchaikovsky, also received a bad rap from critics of his day who referred to him as a “watered-down Prokofiev” and “the Rimsky-Korsakov of the Caucasus.” As is often the case, music panned by the critics as too emotional, pedestrian, and/or showy, is often the very same music most embraced by the concert-going public. Much less grim and more accessible than most of his contemporary’s music, Khachaturian’s appeal is found in the fiery, energetic blending of Armenian folk rhythms with a lush Romantic sentiment.

Khachaturian began composing the second of his three concertos in the summer of 1940. The Piano Concerto was written in 1936, the Cello Concerto ten years later. The Violin Concerto in D minor, which was composed for and dedicated to Soviet violinist David Oistrakh, was completed in just two months. According to the composer: “I wrote music as though on a wave of happiness; my whole being was in a state of joy. . . . I worked quickly and easily; my imagination seemed to fly. Themes came to me in such abundance that I had a hard time putting them into some sort of order.”

The Violin Concerto, with its two passionate outer movements, lyrical central movement, and virtuosic solo part, is one of the highpoints of the violin repertoire. The work reflects Khachaturian’s interest in incorporating Armenian folk elements into classical forms. This embrace of “Orientalism,” as it was called, was pervasive in the 19^th century, particularly in the music of Russian Romantics such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka, Borodin, and Rachmaninoff. For Khachaturian, it was less from the perspective of the musicologist collecting and incorporating actual folk tunes into his work than it was about embracing the exotic flavor of Armenian dance rhythms and melodies.

The first movement of the Violin Concerto, marked “Allegro con fermezza,” opens with a dramatic and assertive introduction—“fermezza” indicating to play firmly. The violin’s entrance is bold and expressive, setting up a dialogue with the orchestra that is both vigorous and lyrical. The second movement, “Andante sostenuto,” is more sentimental and introspective than the two outer movements, presenting a beautiful, flowing melody in the violin part, accompanied by lush, harmonically rich orchestration. The closing movement returns with rhythmic energy, incorporating folk-like themes with a lively dance-like quality.

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 (1940)

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) was an important transitional figure between the emotional lushness of Romanticism and atonal experimentation of the early 20^th century. He was also one of the most important, and perhaps last, of the great composer-virtuosos following in the footsteps of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt. Rachmaninoff was hesitant to embrace modernism, insisting on nostalgically conveying emotion through traditional sounds and forms, while at times gently exploring some of the early 20^th century trends in rhythm and harmony. His music, which was more popular and melodic than his peers such as Stravinsky and Prokofiev, runs the emotional gamut from somber introspection to triumphant celebration. His was a symphonic language inherited from Tchaikovsky, who he met when he was just sixteen. While his tonal, classically-structured music full of beautiful harmonies and melodies did not contribute anything groundbreaking to the new century, his highly personal use of then-becoming-outmoded forms still keeps audiences enthralled today, which is more than many early 20^th century composers of a more experimental bent can say.

Symphonic Dances, Op. 45, which was Rachmaninoff’s last major work, was composed in Long Island, New York in 1940. The previous year, with the threat of war once again looming across Europe, Rachmaninoff returned to the US with his family to live for a second time; the first was in 1918, when he fled his homeland to escape the October Revolution. Nearing seventy years of age, Rachmaninoff decided that his 1942–43 touring season would be his last, which it indeed was, as he died in Beverly Hills that March.

Symphonic Dances is an orchestral suite, a form dating back to the late 14^th century. The suite, which is a set of instrumental pieces based on dances, became popular in the Baroque era with composers such as Telemann and Bach. In Mozart’s time, the form fell out of favor in place of sonatas, symphonies, and concerti. The suite made a comeback in the 19^th century with works such as Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and Grieg’s Holberg Suite. Along with Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, the 20^th century saw several other notable suites, including Holst’s The Planets and Ravel’s Miroirs. The form even found its way into jazz and rock with the music of Duke Ellington and Pink Floyd.

The three movements of Symphonic Dances can be read as a kind of summation of Rachmaninoff’s compositional style—lush harmonies, complex and energetic rhythms, emotional depth, and a sense of nostalgia. The work was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Eugene Ormandy on January 3, 1941. The first movement opens quietly with a three-note motif, which is reinforced by a bold rhythmic theme introduced by the brass and developed throughout the movement. The slow middle section features a sweeping melody on the alto sax which in turn is carried on by the strings. After revisiting the main material, the central theme is briefly recalled before the movement comes quietly to a close. The second movement features a waltz, which speaks to Rachmaninoff’s sense of nostalgia for an aristocratic past. The movement’s middle section introduces a more energetic contrasting theme before returning to the introspective mood of the opening. The finale starts with leisurely winds, gradually building momentum into a brisk section with jazz-inspired rhythmic accents. A poignant trumpet rendition of the Gregorian Dies irae, first heard in the 13th century Requiem Mass, brings a moment of profound gravity, but the lively spirit soon resumes. The Dies irae, which Rachmaninoff incorporated into several compositions throughout his lifetime, finds a fitting place in this, his culminating work. Although the chant lingers, the movement concludes with a triumphant and energetic coda, bringing the work to a powerful and celebratory end.