Traveling the World Through Music

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In the next MusicaNova program-on Sunday October 23rd at 4PM at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts-we are indulging in a little musical tourism. Traveling through music is not only fun, it is a great way to evoke memories, or create false memories, of places you have been or you have imagined being. As a child, I wanted nothing more than to visit Britain, and this desire was fueled by the evocation of a highly romanticized fantasy created by repeated listening to the Second and Third Symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Hearing the opening of the London Symphony, I imagined, with absolute clarity, the awakening of the city. It was a tremendously vivid experience, one that came rushing back to me many years later, when, on my first, jet-lagged morning in London, I awoke at dawn and walked through South Kensington and Chelsea with a feeling of wonder and joy that was directly related to my love of that music.

 This idea that the music itself can preceed the experience of the place and enliven the idea of the place is one that I find especially wonderful, and one that is directly related to the musical tourism implied in the evocation of Siberia and Spain that we will have in our concert. Ravel's first visit to Spain was several years in the future when he wrote the Spanish Rhapsody. For the composers, this was traveling through the music, and for the audience the experience can be much the same. The Wind of Siberia manages to create, within its apparently fragmented structure, a feeling of wide open space, of cold, and of mystery. He also suggests, in the extraordinary, relentless motion that leads to the overwhelming climax near the end, the notion of Siberia as the land of no return, where prisoners went and were never heard from again. It is music of a strange, simple beauty, and tremendous power, unlike the work of any other composer. To me, Tchaikovsky is one of the great neglected geniuses of the 20th century, and no more so than in this masterpiece.

 The Rapsodie Espagnole, in contrast, is a very well known piece; it represented, to Ravel, an imagined Spain, a place of vivd colors and sultry women, of passion and chaos-a world that, because it was so different from his controlled and regulated personality, was extremely attractive. I am sure the Spain of his imagination made the experience he had of the real Spain some years later more vivid, and more enjoyable, just as my imagined London awaking made my experience of the real early morning of the city magical. But what could be more magical than the Spain of the Rapsodie? The Prelude suggests the heat of a summer night, the Habanera and Malagueña have all the suggestiveness of Spanish Dance and the Celebration of the spectacular Feria that ends the work could only be created by a composer in love with his subject-and true to that, when Ravel finally saw Spain, he said "it is all I imagined!"

 Come and hear these works; they will inspire your imagination, and you will feel that you are there. And going to a concert is a lot easier than traveling thousands of miles!