Cinq Études-tableaux (orchestration Respighi)

Program notes

About the Work

The last piece in this programme of early Rachmaninoff is not early at all, and its orchestral dress is not by Rachmaninoff. He wrote two sets of piano pieces under the title ‘Études-tableaux’, study-pictures: Op. 33 at his country estate, Ivanovka, in 1911, and Op. 39 in 1916 and 1917, among the last music he composed before leaving Russia. Each is a study in some aspect of piano technique and, at the same time, the picture of something. What the pictures were he kept to himself. ‘I do not believe in the artist that discloses too much of his images’, he said, and he preferred to let listeners paint for themselves what the music most suggested.

He made one exception. Around 1930 the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who led the Boston Symphony Orchestra and also ran a publishing house, proposed that a group of the études be orchestrated, and that the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi should do it. Respighi was an obvious choice: the composer of ‘Pines of Rome’ was one of the great orchestrators of the day, and he had been a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. Rachmaninoff chose five pieces, one from Op. 33 and four from Op. 39, and in a letter he told Respighi what lay behind them, to help him find the right colours.

The result was published as ‘Cinq Études-tableaux’, with a title for each picture taken from Rachmaninoff’s hints: ‘La mer et les mouettes’ (The Sea and the Seagulls), ‘La foire’ (The Fair), ‘Marche funèbre’ (Funeral March), ‘Le chaperon rouge et le loup’ (Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf) and ‘Marche’. Respighi changed the order of the pieces but otherwise kept close to what Rachmaninoff wrote. The orchestra’s note quotes a telegram in which Rachmaninoff told him he could never have done it like that himself. The orchestra bills these performances as the Dutch premiere of Respighi’s version.

What to Listen For

There are five movements, each a separate scene. They are described here in the order in which the set is usually given.

The Sea and the Seagulls (Op. 39 No. 2) is a picture of gulls hovering over a heaving sea, and the bleakest of the five.

The Fair (Op. 33) is the one piece from the earlier set, bright, loud and festive, a market scene in full swing.

Funeral March (Op. 39 No. 7) is the most elaborate picture. It opens with the march itself; then comes music that suggests a choir singing, over a fine, persistent accompaniment that stands for rain. At the climax church bells ring out, and then the march returns.

Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf (Op. 39 No. 6) sets growling figures low in the orchestra, the wolf, against the hurrying steps of the girl.

March (Op. 39 No. 9) closes the set in D major, with a colouring that one programme note calls exotic and Eastern.

Throughout, it is worth noticing how much Respighi adds in drama and atmosphere while the music remains recognisably Rachmaninoff’s, which is what reviewers of the orchestral version have tended to admire in it.