Concerts of Thursday, October 27, and Saturday, October 29,

2011, at 8:00p
Robert Spano, Conductor
Tatiana Monogarova, Soprano
Sergey Romanovsky, Tenor
Denis Sedov, Bass
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra,
Norman Mackenzie, Director of Choruses
Esa-Pekka Salonen (b. 1958)
Nyx (2011)
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Premiere, Co-Commissioned by
Radio France, Carnegie Hall, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra,
Barbican Centre and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)
Le Pome de l'extase (The Poem of Ecstasy, Symphony No. 4),
Opus 54 (1908)
Intermission
Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
The Bells, for Chorus, Orchestra and Solo, Opus 35 (1913)
I. The Silver Sleigh Bells (Tenor solo and chorus); Allegro, ma non tanto
Sergey Romanovsky, Tenor
II. The Mellow Wedding Bells (Soprano solo and chorus); Lento
Tatiana Monogarova, Soprano
III. The Loud Alarum Bells (Chorus); Presto
IV. The Mournful Iron Bells (Baritone and Chorus); Lento lugubre
Denis Sedov, Bass
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus

Notes on the Program by Ken Meltzer

Nyx (2011)
Esa-Pekka Salonen was born in Helsinki, Finland, on June 30,
1958. The premiere of Nyx took place at the Thtre du
Chtelet, in Paris France, on February 19, 2011, with the
composer conducting the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio
France. Nyx is scored for two piccolos, three flutes, three
oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, three clarinets, bass
clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three
trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, piano, celeste,
vibraphone, orchestra bells, tam-tam, tom-toms, bass drum,
conga drum, wood block, tubular bells, sizzle cymbal, low
tuned gongs and strings. Approximate performance time is
seventeen minutes.
Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Premiere, Co-Commissioned by
Radio France, Carnegie Hall, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra,
Barbican Centre and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Le Pome de l'extase (The Poem of Ecstasy, Symphony No. 4),
Opus 54 (1908)
Alexander Scriabin was born in Moscow, Russia, on January 6,
1872, and died there on April 27, 1915. The premiere of Le
Pome de l'extase took place in New York on December 10,
1908, with Modest Altschuler conducting the Russian
Symphony Society. Le Pome de l'extase is scored for piccolo,
three flutes, three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass
clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, eight horns, five
trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, celeste, organ, two
harps, triangle, cymbal, bass drum, tam-tam, keyboard
glockenspiel, bell in C and strings. Approximate performance
time is twenty minutes.
First ASO Classical Subscription Performances: January 22, 23
and 24, 1970, Gunther Schuller, Conductor.
Most Recent ASO Classical Subscription Performances: March
5, 6 and 7, 2009, Robert Spano, Conductor.
ASO Recording: Telarc CD-32630, Robert Spano, Conductor.
1903 marked a dramatic turning point in the life of pianist and
composer Alexander Scriabin. A classmate of Sergei Rachmaninov at

the Moscow Conservatory, Scriabin became a professor of piano at that

institution, commencing in 1898. However, in 1903 Scriabin left the
Conservatory to focus on his musical compositions and a series of
concert tours. That same year, Scriabin abandoned his wife and family
to live in Western Europe with a young admirer named Tatyana
Schloezer. Schloezer, a devotee of cult philosophy, encouraged
Scriabin in his messianic sense of creative omnipotence, based first
upon his interpretations of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche and later,
the theosophy of Helena Blavatsky.
The Poem of Ecstasy is the second work of a projected orchestral
tetralogy depicting Scriabins mystical philosophy. Scriabin described
the first composition in the series, The Divine Poem (1904), as
portraying:
the struggle between Man enslaved to a personal God and
Man, who is himself God but lacking the will to proclaim his
divinity. Thus frustrated, he immerses himself in the
pleasures of sense, depicted in the second section of the
work. But internal divine powers assist him toward
liberation, and in the third and last section of the tone
poem he gives himself up to the joys of untrammeled
existence.
Scriabin intended the final two portions of the tetralogy, Prometheus,
The Poem of Fire (1910) and The Mystery to offer an unprecedented
fusion of the arts and senses. Prometheus is scored for a large
orchestra, piano, organ, wordless chorus and a keyboard that projects
colors onto a screen. Scriabin envisioned the even more ambitious
The Mystery as the tetralogys apocalyptic culmination: a grand
religious event to be held in India, with both the chorus and audience
clothed in white. Scriabin was unable to complete The Mystery before
his death in 1915.
In June of 1905, while living with Schloezer in Bogliasco, near Genoa,
Scriabin began work on an intended multi-movement symphony
entitled Pome Orgiaque. However, Scriabin encountered great
difficulty with this original conception. In the spring of 1907, Scriabin
announced he had completed his finest composition, the singlemovement The Poem of Ecstasy. In the summer of 1907, conductor
Modest Altschuler, a champion of contemporary Russian music,
assisted Scriabin with revisions to the orchestration. Altschuler
observed:
Scriabin is neither an atheist nor a theosophist, yet his
creed includes ideas somewhat related to each of these
schools of thought. There are three divisions in his poem:

(1) His soul in the orgy of love; (2) The realization of a

fantastical dream; (3) The glory of his own art.
Scriabin himself authored an accompanying and lengthy explanatory
poem, the opening lines of which read:
The spirit,
Pinioned on its thirst for life,
Soars in flight
To heights of negation.
There in the rays of its fantasy
Is born a magic world
Of wondrous images and feelings
The playing spirit,
The suffering spirit,
The spirit that creates sorrow in doubt,
Gives itself to the torment of love.
The premiere, originally scheduled for February 16, 1908, in St.
Petersburg, was delayed due to lack of sufficient rehearsal time. The
first performance of Scriabin's The Poem of Ecstasy finally took place in
New York on December 10, 1908, with Altschuler conducting the
Russian Symphony Society.
Musical Analysis
Scriabins The Poem of Ecstasy is set in a single uninterrupted
movement comprising numerous diverse episodes. During the slow
opening section (Andante. Languido), the flute introduces a wideranging motif based upon triplets. A solo clarinet plays a melody over
undulating string accompaniment. During a more agitated passage
(Allegro non troppo), trumpets play the works central theme, a rising
fanfare juxtaposed with a chromatic descending passage. The themes
appear in various forms, couched in a wide variety of orchestral
textures and colors. The presentation of conflicting moods throughout
The Poem of Ecstasy finally resolves to a glorious C-Major apotheosis.
The Bells, for Chorus, Orchestra and Solo, Opus 35 (1913)
Sergei Rachmaninov was born in Semyonovo, Russia, on April
1, 1873, and died in Beverly Hills, California, on March 28,
1943. The premiere of The Bells took place in St. Petersburg,
Russia, on December 13, 1913, conducted by the composer.
The Bells are scored for soprano, tenor and baritone soloists,
mixed chorus, piccolo, three flutes, three oboes, English horn,
three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon,

six horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani,

harp, piano, celeste, organ, orchestra bells, chimes, tam-tam,
side drum, tambourine, cymbals, suspended cymbal, bass
drum, triangle and strings. Approximate performance time is
thirty-seven minutes.
First ASO Classical Subscription Performances: February 24, 25
and 26, 1983, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, Robert
Shaw, Conductor.
Most Recent ASO Classical Subscription Performances:
November 2, 3 and 4, 1995, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra,
Robert Shaw, Conductor.
ASO Recording: CD-80365, Atlanta Symphony Chorus, Robert
Shaw, Conductor.
From childhood to the grave
In his memoirs, Sergei Rachmaninov acknowledged:
The sound of church bells dominated all the cities of Russia
I used to knowNovgorod, Kiev, Moscow. They
accompanied every Russian from childhood to the grave,
and no composer could escape their influence
All my life I have taken pleasure in the differing moods and
music of gladly chiming and mournfully tolling bells. This
love for bells is inherent in every Russian. One of my
fondest childhood recollections is associated with the four
notes of the great bells in the St. Sophia Cathedral of
Novgorod, which I often heard when my grandmother took
me to town on church festival days. The bellringers were
artists. The four notes were the theme that recurred again
and again, four silvery weeping notes, veiled in an
everchanging accompaniment woven around them
If I have been at all successful in making bells vibrate with
human emotion in my works, it is largely due to the fact
that most of my life was lived amid vibrations of the bells
of Moscow
In the summer of 1912, the composer received a letter from an
anonymous source, urging Rachmaninov to read Konstantin Balmonts
Russian translation of Edgar Allan Poes The Bells, published after the
American poets death in 1849. Rachmaninov complied, and decided
to use it for a Choral Symphony in four movements.

Rome, Tchaikovsky and The Bells

The following year, Rachmaninov and his family traveled to Rome. As
Rachmaninov informed Oskar von Riesemann:
I was able to take the same flat on the Piazza di Spagna
that Modeste Tchaikovsky had used for a long time and
which had served his brother as a temporary retreat from
his numerous friends. It consisted of a few quiet, shady
rooms belonging to an honest tailor. I lived, with my wife
and children, at a pension, and went to the flat every
morning to compose, remaining at work there till evening.
Nothing helps me so much as solitude. For me, it is
possible to compose only when I am alone and nothing
from the outside hinders the flow of ideas. These
conditions were ideal in the flat on the Piazza di Spagna.
All day long I spent at the piano or the writing desk, and
not until the pines on the Monte Pincio were gilded by the
setting sun did I put away my pen.
While in Rome, Rachmaninov focused upon two compositionsthe
Second Piano Sonata, and The Bells. In his memoirs, Rachmaninov
recalled:
In the drowsy quiet of a Roman afternoon, with Poes
verses before me, I heard the bell voices, and tried to set
down on paper their lovely tones that seemed to express
the varying shades of human experience. And there was
the added stimulus of working in the room where (Peter
Ilyich) Tchaikovsky had worked, of writing on the table on
which he had written.
Here, Tchaikovskys influence in a portion of The Bells should be noted.
Rachmaninov observed that the works haunting, slow-tempo finale had the
precedent of Tchaikovskyin particular, the Adagio lamentoso of his 1893
Symphony No. 6, the Pathtique.
Progress on the Piano Sonata and The Bells was interrupted when two
of Rachmaninovs daughters contracted typhoid fever. The family
traveled to Berlin to seek medical treatment. After the daughters
recovered, the Rachmaninovs returned to Russia. There, Rachmaninov
put the finishing touches on The Bells.
Rachmaninov dedicated the score to conductor Willem Mengelberg and
the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, who, some years earlier,
had brilliantly accompanied Rachmaninov in a performance of his

Second Piano Concerto. Rachmaninov himself conducted the

successful premiere of The Bells in St. Petersburg, on December 13,
1913.
Miss Danilova
One reader took particular interest in newspaper reports that were
published during the period of rehearsals for the premiere of The Bells.
She was Miss Danilova, a cello pupil of one of Rachmaninovs friends,
Mikhail Bukik. One day, Miss Danilova arrived for her lesson with
Bukik:
in great agitation; while she played, she seemed very
excited and eager to tell me something. She finally
revealed that Balmonts translation of Poes poem, The
Bells, had once made a great impression on hershe could
think of it only as musicand who could write the music
but her adored Rachmaninov! That she must do this
became her ide fixe, and she wrote anonymously to her
idol, suggesting that he read the poem and compose it as
music.
When Danilova read that Rachmaninov had, in fact, composed a work
based upon The Bells, and that the piece was scheduled for its
premiere, she, according to Bukik:
was mad with joy. But someone had to be told her secret
and thats how all her emotions were unloaded during my
lesson. She told me the whole story. I was astounded to
think our reserved and quite unsentimental Rachmaninov
could have been capable of being inspired by someone
elses adviceto create so important a work! I kept my
pupils secret until Rachmaninovs death.
And so, Rachmaninov never learned the identity of the person who
provided the impetus for The Bells, a piece he composed with feverish
ardor Rachmaninov further commented, it remains, of all my
works, the one I like best
As previously noted, Konstantin Balmonts Russian translation of Edgar
Allen Poes 1849 poem serves as the text for Rachmaninovs The Bells.
Below is an English translation, by Fanny S. Copeland, of Balmonts
Russian adaptation.
I. The Silver Sleigh Bells (Tenor solo and chorus); Allegro, ma non
tanto

Listen, hear the silver bells!

Silver bells!
Hear the sledges with the bells,
How they charm our weary senses with a sweetness that compels,
In the ringing and the singing that of deep oblivion tells.
Hear them calling, calling, calling,
Rippling sounds of laughter, falling
On the icy midnight air;
And a promise they declare,
That beyond illusions cumber,
Births and lives beyond all number,
Waits an universal slumberdeep and sweet past all compare.
Hear the sledges with the bells,
Hear the silver-throated bells;
See, the stars bow down to hearken, what their melody foretells,
With a passion that compels,
And their dreaming is a gleaming that a perfumed air exhales,
And their thoughts are but a shining,
And a luminous divining
Of the singing and the ringing, that a dreamless peace foretells.
II. The Mellow Wedding Bells (Soprano solo and chorus); Lento
Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of tender passion their melodious voice foretells!
Through the night their sound entrances,
Like a lovers yearning glances,
That arise
On a wave of tuneful rapture to the moon within the skies.
From the sounding cells upwinging
Flash the tones of joyous singing
Rising, falling, brightly calling; from a thousand happy throats
Roll the glowing, golden notes,
And an amber twilight gloats
While the tender vow is whispered that great happiness foretells,
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells, the golden bells!
III. The Loud Alarum Bells (Chorus); Presto
Hear them, hear the brazen bells,
Hear the loud alarum bells!
In their sobbing, in their throbbing what a tale of horror dwells!
How beseeching sounds their cry
Neath the naked midnight sky,
Through the darkness wildly pleading

In affright,
Now approaching, now receding
Rings their message through the night.
And so fierce is their dismay
And the terror they portray,
That the brazen domes are riven, and their tongues can only speak
In a tuneless, jangling wrangling as they shriek, and shriek, and shriek,
Till their frantic supplication
To the ruthless conflagration
Grows discordant, faint and weak.
But the fire sweeps on unheeding,
And in vain is all their pleading
With the flames!
From each window, roof and spire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
Every lambent tongue proclaims:
I shall soon,
Leaping higher, still aspire, till I reach the crescent moon;
Else I die of my despair in aspiring to the moon!
O despair, despair, despair,
That so feebly ye compare
With the blazing, raging horror, and the panic, and the glare,
That ye cannot turn the flames,
As your unavailing clang and clamour mournfully proclaims.
And in hopeless resignation
Man must yield his habitation
To the warring desolation!
Yet we know
By the booming and the clanging,
By the roaring and the twanging,
How the danger falls and rises like the tides that ebb and flow.
And the progress of the danger every ear distinctly tells
By the sinking and the swelling in the clamor of the bells.
IV. The Mournful Iron Bells (Baritone and Chorus); Lento lugubre
Hear the tolling of the bells,
Mournful bells!
Bitter end to fruitless dreaming their stern monody foretells!
What a world of desolation in their iron utterance dwells!
And we tremble at our doom,
As we think upon the tomb,
Glad endeavour quenched for ever in the silence and the gloom.
With persistent iteration
They repeat their lamentation,
Till each muffled monotone

Seems a groan,
Heavy, moaning,
Their intoning,
Waxing sorrowful and deep,
Bears the message, that a brother passed away to endless sleep.
Those relentless voices rolling
Seem to take a joy in tolling
For the sinner and the just
That their eyes be sealed in slumber, and their hearts be
Where they lie beneath a stone.
But the spirit of the belfry is a sombre fiend that dwells
In the shadow of the bells,
And he gibbers, and he yells,
As he knells, and knells, and knells,
Madly round the belfry reeling,
While the giant bells are pealing,
While the bells are fiercely thrilling,
Moaning forth the word of doom,
While those iron bells, unfeeling,
Through the void repeat the doom:
There is neither rest nor respite, save the quiet of the tomb!