Notes for: August 14, 2012
Its name notwithstanding, the Overture on Hebrew Themes, composed in 1919, is really a sextet for clarinet, string quartet and piano. Fifteen years after its composition, Prokofiev arranged the work for chamber orchestra, and today it is known in both versions.
From 1918-1922, Prokofiev lived temporarily in the United States, a refugee from the Communist Revolution and the unsettled conditions it produced in Russia. In the fall of 1919, he was asked by a group of former classmates from the St. Petersburg Conservatory, then living as refugees in New York City, to write a piece for them based on Jewish themes. Consisting of a string quartet, clarinet and piano, the group, called Zimro, was raising money through concerts of Jewish chamber music to establish a conservatory in Jerusalem.
Since Prokofiev was not Jewish and had no knowledge of Jewish folk songs, Zimro gave him a collection of traditional Jewish melodies. He initially refused their request -- he had never before used “borrowed” folk material. While glancing through the book, however, he was impressed by the songs and began improvising on the themes at the piano. In two days he had completed the score, and Zimro gave the successful first performance in New York in January 1920.
The overture is based on two themes. The first is a playful, almost grotesque, dance tune, introduced and expanded by the clarinet over a thumping rhythmic accompaniment. The second is a melancholy lament introduced by the cello high in its range; its introspective, improvised quality suggests a liturgical root. The first theme is briefly developed, and the themes are restated. These materials are, of course, seasoned by Prokofiev’s dry wit and gift for unusual tone color.
Notes for: August 9, 2022
Prokofiev came to the United States in 1918 to escape the Russian Revolution, which he feared would lead to the persecution of artists. At around the same time, six conservatory-trained Russian-Jewish musicians who called themselves Zimro arrived in the United States on the last leg of a tour devoted to bringing authentic Jewish folk music to audiences around the world. In November 1919 Zimro made a successful Carnegie Hall debut, in a concert that was heralded as showing the artistic possibilities of a genuine Jewish folk tradition. What happened next depends on who was telling the story.
According to Prokofiev, Zimro – whose members had been his fellow students at the Petersburg Conservatory – “asked me to write an overture for six instruments for them and gave me a notebook of Jewish melodies. At first, I didn’t want to take it because I was accustomed to using my own themes. But finally I kept it and one evening I chose a couple of nice melodies from it and began to improvise on them on the piano.” But according to the group’s clarinetist, Simeon Bellison (who went on to become principal clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic), after the Carnegie concert it was Prokofiev who approached him and offered to write a “Jewish piece” for them. The next day, said Bellison, Prokofiev visited him and picked two melodies from his collection of folk and traditional Jewish themes.
Whichever version is correct, Prokofiev’s Overture is a wonderful blend of folk and so-called “art” music. A piece with two parts, it opens with a melody in the klezmer tradition, an atmospheric, infectiously rhythmic tune introduced by the cello’s plucked strings and played by the clarinet. (A klezmer was an itinerant musician whose instrument was usually a clarinet or a violin.) The klezmer melody leads into a plaintive second melody, with the cello taking the lead over a rippling piano. The first theme returns in a short development section in which the melody is fragmented, inverted, and contrapuntally enriched. The first section then repeats, with the klezmer theme returning one last time for a brief appearance before the music speeds to a final flourish of chords.
Prokofiev was the pianist for the premiere of Overture on Hebrew Themes in January 1920 in New York. The work became so popular that in 1934 Prokofiev arranged it for a full orchestra.