Danzón No.

2
Arturo Márquez

The music of Mexican composer Arturo Márquez has been gaining currency with orchestras and
audiences throughout his homeland and around the world. He is best known for his series of
danzóns, works based on a Cuban dance that migrated to Veracruz, Mexico. Márquez’ Danzón
No. 2, in particular, is one of the most popular and frequently performed works written after
1950 from Latin America.

In February 2006, Arturo Márquez received the Medalla de Oro al Mérito de Bellas Artes (Gold
Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts), the highest honor given to artists by Mexico’s Bellas Artes.

Marquez wrote the following notes for the premiere of Danzón No. 2:

“The idea of writing the Danzón 2 originated in 1993 during a trip to Malinalco with the
painter Andrés Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martínez, both of whom [have] a special
passion for the danzón, which they were able to transmit to me from the beginning, and
also during later trips to Veracruz and visits to the Colonia Salon in Mexico City. From
these experiences onward, I started to learn the danzón’s rhythms, its form, its melodic
outline, and to listen to the old recordings by Acerina Mariano Merceron and his
Danzonera Orchestra. I was fascinated and I started to understand that the apparent
lightness of the danzón is only like a visiting card for a type of music full of sensuality
and qualitative seriousness, a genre which old Mexican people continue to dance with a
touch of nostalgia and a jubilant escape towards their own emotional world; we can
fortunately still see this in the embrace between music and dance that occurs in the
State of Veracruz and in the dance parlors of Mexico City.

“Danzón 2 … endeavors to get as close as possible to the dance, to its nostalgic

melodies, to its wild rhythms, and although it violates its intimacy, its form and its
harmonic language, it is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my
emotions towards truly popular music.”

Concierto de Aranjuez
Joaquín Rodrigo

Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez established him as one of Spain’s
foremost composers of the mid-20th century. Rodrigo is also largely responsible for extending
and popularizing the repertoire of the classical guitar, although, interestingly, Rodrigo did not
play guitar (he was a pianist). His guitar music, and the Concierto de Aranjuez in particular,
reflects the rich legacy of Spanish musical history. It features suggestions of traditional vihuela
music (the vihuela, considered the precursor to the modern classical guitar, was popular in 15th
and 16th century Spain), as well as the stylized dance forms of Baroque music.
Rodrigo’s specific inspiration for the Concierto came from the Palacio Real de Aranjuez, the
palace and gardens built by Philip II in the 16th century, not far from Madrid, and rebuilt two
centuries later by Ferdinand VI; only the gardens survive today. Rodrigo lost his sight at age
three after contracting diphtheria, and therefore could not perceive the visual beauty of the
gardens. Instead he sought, in his words, to depict “the fragrance of magnolias, the singing of
birds and the gushing of fountains.” Rodrigo added that the concerto “is meant to sound like
the hidden breeze that stirs the treetops in the parks; it should be as agile as a butterfly, and as
tightly controlled as a veronica [a term from bullfighting referring to a pass with a cape]; a
suggestion of times past.” Rodrigo’s emphasis on “times past” may have been a conscious
effort on his part to avoid associations with Spain’s present: the turbulent aftermath of the
Spanish Civil War, and the rise of Hitler across Europe.

In the Concerto, Rodrigo pays particular attention to orchestration, ensuring that the solo guitar
is not overwhelmed by the orchestra. Much of the accompaniment has the quality of chamber
music, as when a single instrument or section partners the soloist. Rodrigo only unleashes the
full orchestra when the soloist is silent.

The Allegro con spirito features the fandango, an aristocratic dance of the Spanish court,
characterized by rhythmic shifts between ¾ and 6/8 time. Victoria Rodrigo’s biography of her
husband notes that the Adagio reflects both happy memories of the couple’s honeymoon, and
Rodrigo’s heartbreak over the miscarriage, at seven months, of their first child. The yearning
beauty of the main theme, heard first in the English horn, expresses both Rodrigo’s wistfulness
and his pain; Rodrigo once said of the Adagio, “If nostalgia could take form, the second
movement would be its tightest mold.” Like the opening movement, the Allegro con spirito
showcases both Baroque-style dances with shifting meters and with Spanish folk songs.

Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

“I desperately want to prove, not only to others, but also to myself, that I am not yet played out
as a composer,” wrote Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to his patron Nadezhda von Meck in the spring
of 1888. With the benefit of hindsight, the idea that Tchaikovsky could think himself “played
out” is puzzling; after he completed the Fifth Symphony he went on to write Sleeping Beauty,
The Nutcracker, and the “Pathétique” Symphony. All artists go through periods of self-doubt,
however; and Tchaikovsky was plagued by creative insecurity more than most.

If you ask a Tchaikovsky fan to name their favorite symphony, they’ll most likely choose either
the Fourth, with its dramatic “Fate” motif blaring in the brasses, or the Sixth (“Pathétique”).
Sandwiched in between is the Fifth Symphony, often overlooked or undervalued when
compared to its more popular neighbors. But the Fifth is a monument in its own right,
showcasing Tchaikovsky’s undisputed mastery of melody; indeed, the Fifth rolls out one
unforgettable tune after another. Over time, the Fifth Symphony has earned its place in the
canon of orchestral repertoire itself, but Tchaikovsky, along with 19th century music critics,
wavered in his opinion of its worth. At the end of the summer in 1888, Tchaikovsky wrote to
von Meck, “It seems to me that I have not blundered, that it has turned out well,” and to his
nephew Vladimir Davidov after a concert in Hamburg, “The Fifth Symphony was magnificently
played and I like it far better now, after having held a bad opinion of it for some time.” After a
performance in Prague, however, Tchaikovsky wrote to von Meck, “I have come to the
conclusion that it is a failure. There is something repellent in it, some over-exaggerated color,
some insincerity of fabrication which the public instinctively recognizes.”

Critics dismissed the new symphony as beneath Tchaikovsky’s abilities, and one American critic
damned the composer with faint praise when he opined, “[Tchaikovsky] has been criticized for
the occasionally excessive harshness of his harmony, for now and then descending to the trivial
and tawdry in his ornamental figuration, and also for a tendency to develop comparatively
insignificant material to inordinate length. But, in spite of the prevailing wild savagery of his
music, its originality and the genuineness of its fire and sentiment are not to be denied.”

The Fifth Symphony features a theme that recurs in all four movements. We hear it first in the
lowest chalumeau register of the clarinet, which conveys an air of foreboding. The late critic
and scholar Michael Steinberg described the theme’s effects in all the movements: “It will recur
as a catastrophic interruption of the second movement’s love song, as an enervated ghost that
approaches the languid dancers of the waltz, and … in majestic and blazing E major triumph.”

Tchaikovsky’s gift for melody reached beyond the classical music world in 1939, when the
poignantly wistful horn solo in the Andante cantabile morphed into the popular song Moon
Love, which became a hit for big band leader and trombonist Glenn Miller.

© Elizabeth Schwartz

NOTE: These program notes are published here by the Salina Symphony for its patrons and other
interested readers. Any other use is forbidden without specific permission from the author, who may
be contacted at www.classicalmusicprogramnotes.com.”

Elizabeth Schwartz is a writer and music historian based in Portland, OR. She has been a program
annotator for more than 25 years, and her clients include the Oregon Symphony, the Spokane
Symphony, Chamber Music Northwest, and a number of other ensembles around the country. Ms.
Schwartz has also contributed to NPR’s “Performance Today,” (now heard on American Public
Media). www.classicalmusicprogramnotes.com