Stravinsky: The Firebird - Suite / Falla: El amor brujo; El Sombrero de tres Picos - Dances

In this recording the Mezzo-Soprano is Grace Bumbry, the orchestra is the Berlin Radio Symphony and the conductor is Lorin Maazel.

## Falla: El amor brujo

El amor brujo (Love, the Magician, literally, Spell-bound Love or The Bewitched Love, sometimes translated as Wedded by Witchcraft) is a ballet composed in 1914–15 by Manuel de Falla to a libretto by Gregorio Martínez Sierra. In 1916, Falla arranged a rendition of the work for sextet and small orchestra and the following year he made a concert version, also for small orchestra. Later, he fashioned a piano suite from it and finally, a second ballet version (1925) that features expanded orchestration, elimination of the narration, small cuts and plot changes, and a different order to the numbers. The work is distinctively Andalusian in character with the songs in the Andalusian Spanish dialectal modality. The music contains moments of remarkable beauty and originality; it includes the celebrated "Danza ritual del fuego" (Ritual Fire Dance), "Canción del fuego fatuo" (Song of Wildfire, or Song Of The Will-o'-the-Wisp), and the "Danza del terror" (Dance of Terror).

### Synopsis

*El amor brujo* is the story of an Andalusian gypsy woman called Candela. Although her affection is for a man named Carmelo, as a girl she was promised to be married to another man (then a boy). After many years Candela's husband has died (at the hands of the husband of a woman named Lucia), but he continues to haunt his wife.

The entire village knows about the haunting, but still brands Candela as crazy because she dances every night with her husband’s ghost ("Danza del terror"). Candela, now a widow, is free to establish a relationship with Carmelo, but continues to be haunted by her husband's ghost.

After a conversation with other women of the village, Candela finally comes to realise that her husband was unfaithful to her, despite all her efforts to make their marriage work; her husband's lover is revealed to have been Lucia.

Candela and Carmelo get advice that a ritual dance is necessary to cast the ghost off ("Danza ritual del fuego"), but it does not work. The ghost is still obsessed with Candela's soul.

Candela manages to trick Lucía to come that night, with the excuse of hooking her up with Carmelo. As she turns up, the nightly ritual of Candela's dance with her husband's ghost begins, but at the last moment Candela moves away from her husband and Lucía is taken away by her now dead lover ("Danza del juego de amor").

Dawn breaks, Candela and Carmelo are now truly free to enjoy their love.

### Movements

The movements are named in English as follows:

1. Introduction and Scene
2. In the Cave. Night
3. Song of Suffering Love
4. The Apparition
5. Dance of Terror
6. The Magic Circle. Song of the Fisherman
7. Midnight. The Spells
8. Ritual Fire Dance, to Chase Away the Evil Spirits
9. Scene
10. Song of the Will-o'-the-wisp
11. Pantomine
12. Dance of the Game of Love
13. Finale. The Bells of Dawn

## Falla: Dances from "El sombrero de tres picos"

El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat or Le tricorne) is a ballet choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Manuel de Falla. It was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and premiered in 1919. It is not only a ballet with Spanish setting but one that also employs the techniques of Spanish dance (adapted and somewhat simplified) instead of classical ballet.

### Synopsis

#### Act I

After a short fanfare, the curtain rises revealing a mill in Andalusia. The miller is trying to teach a pet blackbird to tell the time. He tells the bird to chirp twice, but instead it chirps three times. Annoyed, the miller scolds the bird and tells it to try again. The bird now chirps four times. The miller gets angry at the bird again and his wife offers it a grape. The bird takes the grape and chirps twice. The miller and his wife laugh over this and continue their work.

Soon the magistrate, his wife, and their bodyguard pass by, taking their daily walk. The procession goes by and the couple returns to their work. The dandified, but lecherous, magistrate is heard coming back. The miller tells his wife that he will hide and that they will play a trick on the magistrate. The miller hides and the magistrate sees the miller's wife dancing. After her dance, she offers him some grapes. When the magistrate gets the grapes, the miller's wife runs away with the magistrate following her. Finally, he catches her, and the miller jumps out of a bush with a stick. The miller chases the magistrate away and the miller and his wife continue working.

#### Act II

That night, guests are at the miller's house. The miller dances to entertain them. His dance is interrupted by the magistrate's bodyguard, who has come to arrest him on trumped-up charges. After the miller is taken away, the guests leave one-by-one. The miller's wife goes to sleep and soon the magistrate comes to the mill. On his way to the door, the magistrate trips and falls in the river. The miller's wife wakes up and runs away.

The magistrate undresses, hangs his clothes on a tree, and goes to sleep in the miller's bed. The miller has escaped from prison and sees the magistrate in his bed. The miller thinks that the magistrate is sleeping with his wife and plans to switch clothes with the magistrate and avenge himself by seducing the magistrate's wife. The miller leaves, dressed as the magistrate, and the magistrate soon wakes up. He goes outside and sees that his clothes are gone, so he dresses in the miller's clothes.

The bodyguard comes and sees the magistrate dressed as the miller and goes to arrest him. The miller's wife sees the bodyguard fighting with what looks like her husband and joins in the fight. The miller comes back and sees his wife in the fight and joins it to protect her. The magistrate explains the entire story and the ballet ends with the miller's guests tossing the magistrate up and down in a blanket.

### Movements

These movements are only excerpts. They are named as follows:

1. Dance of the Miller's Wife
2. Dance of the Neighbours
3. Dance of the Miller
4. Final Dance

## Stravinsky: The Firebird - Suite (1919 Version)

The Firebird (French: L'Oiseau de feu; Russian: Жар-птица, romanized: Zhar-ptitsa) is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company. The original choreography was by Michel Fokine, who collaborated with Alexandre Benois on a scenario based on the Russian fairy tales of the Firebird and the blessing and curse it possesses for its owner. Its premiere at the Opéra de Paris on 25 June 1910 was an immediate success, catapulting Stravinsky to international fame. The ballet was not only Stravinsky's professional breakthrough, but also the beginning of his partnership with Diaghilev, which would subsequently produce Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, Pulcinella, Mavra, and Les noces.

### Sypnosis

The ballet centers on the journey of its hero, Prince Ivan. While hunting in the forest, he strays into the magical realm of the evil Koschei the Immortal, whose immortality is preserved by keeping his soul in a magic egg hidden in a casket. Ivan chases and captures the Firebird and is about to kill her; she begs for her life, and he spares her. As a token of thanks, she offers him an enchanted feather that he can use to summon her should he be in dire need.

Prince Ivan then meets thirteen princesses who are under the spell of Koschei and falls in love with one of them. The next day, Ivan confronts the magician and eventually they begin quarrelling. When Koschei sends his minions after Ivan, he summons the Firebird. She intervenes, bewitching the monsters and making them dance an elaborate, energetic dance (the "Infernal Dance").

Exhausted, the creatures and Koschei then fall into a deep sleep. While they sleep, the Firebird directs Ivan to a tree stump where the casket with the egg containing Koschei's soul is hidden. Ivan destroys the egg, and with the spell broken and Koschei dead, the magical creatures that Koschei held captive are freed and the palace disappears. All of the "real" beings, including the princesses, awaken and with one final hint of the Firebird's music (though in Fokine's choreography she makes no appearance in that final scene on-stage), celebrate their victory.

### Instrumentation

The instruments are named as follows: 2 piccolos (2nd doubling 3rd flute), 2 flutes, 3 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets in A (3rd doubling clarinet in D), bass clarinet in Bb, 3 bassoons (3rd doubling 2nd contrabassoon), contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in A, 3 trombones, tuba, 3 onstage trumpets, 2 onstage tenor Wagner tubas, 2 onstage bass Wagner tubas, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, tam-tam, glockenspiel, xylophone, piano, celesta, timpani, 3 harps and strings.

### Movements

The movements are named as follows:

1. The Firebird and its Dance
2. Variation of the Firebird
3. The Princesses' Round
4. Infernal Dance of King Kaschei
5. Lullaby
6. Finale

## Program Note - The music afresh

Lorin Maazel was just 27 years old when he took the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra into the "studio" - the city's Jesus-Christus-Kirche - in November 1957 to make a recording of The Firebird Suite that would rocket him to fame throughout the world. Already, however, he was a veteran. His remarkable career had begun with a conducting début at the age of seven, and he was on the podium in front of the New York Philharmonic by the time he was twelve. By then he had conducted most of the other top American orchestras as well.

Later he went to Italy to study conducting, but he was also a gifted violinist and played in the rank-and-file of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for a short period. His fame in Germany spread almost as fast as in America. In 1960 he became the youngest conductor - and the first American - to appear at the Bayreuth Festival. From 1965 until the early 1970s he was concurrently music director of the Deutsche Oper and the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Berlin. It is from June 1965 that the Falla recordings date. Later Maazel would become music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, the Vienna State Opera, the Pittsburgh and Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestras.

As these performances demonstrate, he possesses a phenomenal conducting technique. His control over an orchestra is almost intuitive, and this gives him room for interpretative freedom - although he is generally at his finest (as in these recordings) when he concentrates on executing the composer's intentions with the utmost fidelity and breathtaking precision. Today orchestras are almost as familiar with Stravinsky's popular ballets as they are with Beethoven's symphonies. That was not the case in the 1950s. One distinction of these recorded performances is their technical accomplishment. To achieve this level of fluency - to say nothing of the sheer élan and idiomatic awareness in the Berlin's orchestra's playing - Maazel clearly rehearsed the music with astonishing vigour and conducted it inspiringly. Even to our ears now, the way he confronts us with the pounding force of Stravinsky's ostinatos is invigorating. We listen to the music afresh, and can well imagine the startled reaction of audiences attending the first performances of Fokine's epic ballet in 1910.

The interpretations of the Falla ballets are equally fascinating - Maazel sacrifices nothing in clarity and adds a tremendous sense of atmosphere. This is tense, foreboding, smouldering, and at times almost sinister music-making, and it suits the work's well, particularly El amor brujo. The story of a girl haunted by the spectre of a dead lover, it includes the famous "Ritual Fire Dance"; by contrast, El sombrero de tres picos, written for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1919, is a lighter work, which was first performed with choreography by Massine and scenery and costumes by Picasso. Besides the opportunity to hear the young Maazel at work, this Falla recording also offers a reminder of the early work of another brilliant American musician. The mezzo-soprano solos in El amor brujo are sung by Grace Bumbry, who was just 28 at the time and fresh from her début at the Metropolitan Opera, New York - but already the voice is as sultry and sensuous as a night in a garden of Spain.

*Richard Morrison*

## Reviews

This disc presents vivid performances of three great 20th-century ballet scores, all infused with the folk rhythms of their respective composers' native lands - Manuel de Falla's Andalusia and Stravinsky's Russia. Both composers also exploited the most sophisticated orchestral textures available to the late Romantics, creating virtuoso showpieces of kaleidoscopic variety. They are interpreted here by the young Lorin Maazel and his Berlin radio orchestra, in recordings whose orchestral splendour astounds the ear today just as the original releases dazzled critics and the public decades ago.

## Links

For the playlist of the album, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fm7QD9cR9c&list=OLAK5uy\_kwTn4o0wG\_wAUvMeLpK0EEG3iK6wQxsOM

For more details on the album, click here: https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/de-falla-stravinsky-bumbry-maazel-2513

For the official Deutsche Grammophon website, click here: https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en

## Notes

* Art Direction - Hartmut Pfeiffer
* Composers - Igor Stravinsky, Manuel de Falla
* Conductor - Lorin Maazel
* Engineers - Günter Hermanns, Werner Wolf
* Executive-Producers - Elsa Schiller, Otto Gerdes
* Liner Notes - Richard Morrison
* Mezzo-Soprano - Grace Bumbry
* Orchestra - Berlin Radio Symphony
* Producers - Karl Faust, Wolfgang Lohse
* Sound - Stereo
* Recording dates - June 1965 (Falla), November 1957 (Stravinsky)
* Recording venue - Berlin, Jeus-Christus-Kirche
* Total duration - 65'10