Talk about starting with a bang.
The opening concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s 2013-2014 season will include with the CSO premiere of “The Warriors (Music to an Imaginary Ballet)” by Percy Grainger. The 1916 work is seldom performed because of its size and complexity. It requires three conductors, a large orchestra, including multiple pianos and a large percussion ensemble.
Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursday (September 12) and 8 p.m. Saturday at Music Hall.
Also on the program are Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with guest artist Olga Kern, Carl Maria von Weber’s Overture to “Oberon” and “In the South” by Edward Elgar.
Guest conductor Giancarlo Guerrero will lead the CSO in Grainger’s work, with help from associate conductor Robert Treviño and assistant conductor William White. The CSO will number 103, including three pianos (the minimum specified by the composer, it has been performed with as many as 19), two harps, celeste and a bar piano. Members of the brass section will play offstage at one point, led by Treviño. The work (adventurous and controversial for its time) is just 18 minutes long, “but, boy, does he pack a lot into it,” said Treviño.
Australian-born Grainger, who came to the U.S. in 1914 and became a U.S. citizen, was approached to write “The Warriors” by English conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. Hopes were that it would be staged by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, but the plan never materialized. It has no story line, but Grainger wrote it “to be danceable,” he said, anticipating perhaps a future ballet. He began work on it in London in 1913 and completed it in San Francisco in 1916. It was premiered at the Norfolk Festival in Norfolk, Connecticut in 1917, with the composer conducting.
Grainger’s warriors are not fighting men as ordinarily portrayed, upholding honor and country on the battlefield, but armed roustabouts, out as much for revelry as to engage the enemy. Though composed on the cusp of World War I and clearly an anti-war statement, no particular war or wars is envisioned. Grainger described it as follows: “No definite program or plot underlines the music, though certain mind pictures set it going. Often the scenes of a ballet have flitted before the eyes of my imagination in which the ghosts of male and female warrior types of all times and places are spirited together for an orgy of war-like dances, processions and merry-makings broken, or accompanied, by amorous interludes, their frolics tinged with just that faint suspicion of wistfulness all holiday gladness wears. At times, the love makers close at hand hear from afar the proud passages of harnessed fighting men, and for the final picture, I like to think of them all lining up together in brotherly fellowship and wholesale animal glee; all bitter and vengeful memories vanished, all hardships forgot, a sort of Valhalla gathering of childishly overbearing and arrogant savage men and women of all the ages.”
“The Warriors” is cast in one continuous movement with clearly marked sections. There are multiple themes, but they have no programmatic associations. The percussion section comprises steel and wooden marimbas, xylophone, glockenspiel, tubular bells, gong, drums, etc. Even the pianists are called upon to strike the strings of their instruments with mallets from time to time.
During one passage, the percussion falls out of sync with the orchestra, requiring a second conductor (White). Likewise, the offstage brass play at their own pace, but have to “catch up” with the orchestra. Those who know Grainger for his arrangements of English folk music – like Bartok, Grainger was an important ethnomusicologist – will be quite surprised by “The Warriors.” “Country Gardens” it is not. It is an experimental work in the manner of Charles Ives and Igor Stravinsky.
The CSO performs Grainger’s music frequently, said Treviño. “We play his small arrangements often at the CSO, but mostly for kids concerts. Just last week we performed ‘Shepherd’s Hey,’ and will be recording it for a kids CD. ‘The Warriors’ is a unique piece. I spoke with the CSO’s bass trombonist (Peter Norton). He said he has listened to it since he was in college, but thought he’d never get to play it in his career.
“It’s really a once-in-a-lifetime sort of experience.”
Giancarlo Guerrero leads the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in Percy Grainger’s “The Warriors” at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and 8 p.m. Saturday at Music Hall. Guest artist in Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is Olga Kern. Also on the program are Weber’s Overture to “Oberon” and “In the South” by Elgar. Tickets begin at $12. Call (513) 381-3300, or visit www.cincinnatisymphony.org