By the summer of 1940, 67-year-old Sergei Rachmaninoff was tired. Having left his native Russia in 1917 at the start of the Russian Revolution, the virtuoso pianist, conductor, and composer had eventually arrived in New York, where he decided to devote himself to a performing career, working as both pianist and conductor. Although he had been composing since he was a teenager, Rachmaninoff had determined that trying to make a living as a composer was going to be too difficult. Fortunately, as one of the greatest pianists of his generation, he had options, and for the next 23 years, he devoted himself to touring - living in hotel rooms and on train cars, performing hundreds of concerts across the United States and Europe. It was exhausting, and there was simply no time for composition. Even if there had been, Rachmaninoff had lost his inspiration since leaving his homeland. “Losing my country, I lost myself also," he wrote. Between 1918 and his death in 1943, Rachmaninoff gave countless performances but composed only six works.

This makes it all the more remarkable that, in that summer of 1940 as he recuperated from minor surgery at an estate near Huntington, Long Island, he suddenly found himself wanting to compose again. Perhaps it was the location, which was large enough for him to write in private, or the proximity of good friends nearby, including Vladimir and Wanda Horowitz, but for the first time in a long time, Rachmaninoff found himself happily dividing his day between practicing for his upcoming winter concerts and composing a new work for orchestra.

Initially envisioned as a ballet score, Rachmaninoff finished the Symphonic Dances in August of 1940. He had hoped to interest his friend, the Russian choreographer Michel Fokine, in a second collaboration after Fokine’s ballet Paganini, utilizing Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini, had enjoyed great success. Unfortunately, Fokine died before any work on the ballet could be done, and the Symphonic Dances was premiered by Eugene Ormandy and The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1941. The work, which would be Rachmaninoff’s final composition, was received warmly by audiences.

Originally titled Fantastic Dances, the three movements of the work were at first called Noon, Twilight, and Midnight. From the very opening of the first movement, it is clear that this is indeed music designed for dance. A pulsing, rhythmic energy is the focus from the beginning as the violins tiptoe in, like dancers entering the stage. When everyone has arrived, there is a burst of energy as a muscular, energetic theme for the whole orchestra explodes. A slower, romantic section follows, featuring the woodwind section—augmented by an alto saxophone—playing a melancholy melody. This dreamy music is the equivalent of a pas de deux and develops into a soaring, majestic moment for the string section. The contrabassoon ushers the full complement of dancers back to the stage in a return to the opening, pulsating music. After a final, sentimental nod to the romantic theme, the movement concludes with the “dancers” leaving the stage the way they arrived, the violins slowly retreating, leaving the stage silent.

In yet another tribute to dance, the second movement is a somewhat diabolical waltz. The sneering brass at the opening let us know that this is not to be a good-natured, whirling Viennese dance, but rather a tragic, dark waltz that repeatedly sputters to life, then disintegrates in a series of haunting vignettes. Rachmaninoff was not the first to offer a ghostly, somewhat ominous version of the waltz; Sibelius had done it with his Valse triste in 1903 and Ravel with his La valse in 1920. Rachmaninoff’s waltz is cut from the same dark cloth as these, and at the end we are left feeling that we have just awakened from an unsettling dream.

The final movement is a hallucinogenic trip through darkened, dangerous streets. One can almost see the curtain rise on a moonlit courtyard. We hear church bells tolling, and the snappy rhythms lend the opening a Spanish flavor. The atmosphere seems charged, almost dangerous, as another dark, heavily rhythmic theme emerges in the unison strings. A lighter, almost dreamlike middle section transports us to a different scene entirely, although the music still feels heavy with drama. When the opening music returns, it is now in vintage Rachmaninoff style, overlayed with the Dies irae (Day of Wrath). A menacing snare drum and other percussion join as we race to a psychedelic conclusion. Much has been made of the fact that Rachmaninoff wrote the word “Alleluia” in the score near the end. It may have been an allusion to one of his earlier works, or simply an indication that the music had reached a triumphant conclusion. Either way, it is clear that Rachmaninoff felt redeemed. Whether or not he suspected that this would be his final work, we do not know, but after so many years of perpetual practice, exhausting performances, and endless travel, perhaps Rachmaninoff was simply feeling content to finally be reunited, late in life, with his creative muse. The last page of the score contains the words “I thank Thee, Lord” in Rachmaninoff’s hand—perhaps that says it all.

One of the hallmarks of greatness in any field must certainly be a continual urge to push outside of one’s comfort zone. Our most celebrated artists, athletes, and scientists seem to constantly keep exploring, risking failure and damage to their reputations by trying new and unfamiliar things. Benjamin Franklin did not need to stand outside with a kite and key; Jonas Salk could have been successful without spending the better part of a decade searching for a polio vaccine; Michael Jordan did not have to try his hand at baseball; and George Gershwin certainly did not need to write a piano concerto. By 1924, when Walter Damrosch approached Gershwin about writing a “classical concerto” for piano and orchestra, Gershwin was already a household name in the popular music realm, having enjoyed tremendous success with his 1919 song “Swanee” and “I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise” in 1920. Lady Be Good, which would become George and brother Ira’s first major Broadway success, was already in production. Gershwin had just premiered his Rhapsody in Blue with bandleader Paul Whiteman at a concert called “An Experiment in Modern Music,” but the orchestration for that work had been done by classical composer Ferde Grofé. Although it meant taking a professional risk, Gershwin was determined to complete this new concerto on his own. He wrote: “Many persons had thought that the Rhapsody was only a happy accident. Well I went out, for one thing, to show them that there was more where that had come from. I made up my mind to do a piece of absolute music. The Rhapsody was a blues impression. The Concerto would be unrelated to any program.”

Composed in a secluded “practice shack” at the Chautauqua Institution during the summer of 1925, Gershwin completed his “New York Concerto,” as he initially called it, without assistance, and the work was premiered in Carnegie Hall on December 3, 1925. The piece was well received by the public but largely dismissed by the New York critics as unworthy of serious attention. Olin Downes of The New York Times called the concerto “a dubious experiment” and noted that Gershwin had “neither the instinct nor the technical equipment to be at ease in … a work of symphonic dimensions.” But Samuel Chotzinoff of NBC understood that the work represented an important melding of classical tradition and popular culture. He wrote: “But all [Gershwin’s] shortcomings are nothing in the face of the one thing he alone, of all those writing the music of today, possesses. He alone actually expresses us … He writes without the smallest hint of self-consciousness, and with unabashed delight in the stridency, the gaucheries, the joy and excitement of life as it is lived right here and now.”

The work, infused with the rhythms and harmonies of jazz, is in the classical three-movement format. The first movement, Allegro, opens noisily with percussion giving way to the main theme based on a Charleston rhythm, which Gershwin said represented “the young, enthusiastic spirit of American life.” The movement alternates between episodes of high-energy jazz and more delicate, improvisatory interludes for the soloist. The second movement is firmly rooted in the blues tradition, opening with a lengthy, dark, and smoky solo for the trumpet, full of as much longing and pathos as any nightclub standard. The soloist offers an upbeat interlude, as if we’ve left the club and headed out onto the street for a bit, only to eventually return to the melancholy mood of the opening music and a nostalgic conclusion. The final Allegro agitato bristles with the urban energy that pervades so much of Gershwin’s orchestral music. Based loosely on the stride piano style of the ragtime era, Gershwin called the movement “an orgy of rhythms.” Energetic, virtuosic writing for both soloist and orchestra builds to a triumphant conclusion, providing a truly grand finale to a work that marked a major victory not only for its composer but for music lovers everywhere.

Born in 1941 in Rochester, New York, Adolphus Cunningham Hailstork III began his composition studies at Howard University and at the American Institute at Fontainebleau, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger, arguably the most important composition pedagogue of the 20th century. He would go on to receive bachelor's and master’s degrees from Manhattan School of Music and his doctorate in composition from Michigan State University. He has composed a wide variety of works for orchestra, chorus, opera, chamber ensembles, band, voice, and piano, and his music has been performed and recorded by major American orchestras, including The Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Detroit Symphony, among others. Hailstork resides in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and is a professor of music and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University in Norfolk.

Several of Hailstork’s works are centered on American history or events, including Rise for Freedom, an opera about the Underground Railroad, premiered in the fall of 2007, Set Me on a Rock, regarding Hurricane Katrina, for orchestra and chorus, and the requiem cantata A Knee on a Neck, composed in 2021 in response to the murder of George Floyd. An American Port of Call was composed in 1985 for the Virginia Symphony. Hailstork has provided the following description of the work:

“The concert overture, in sonata-allegro form, captures the strident (and occasionally tender and even mysterious) energy of a busy American port city. The great port of Norfolk, Virginia, where I live, was the direct inspiration.”

If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then few composers have been more posthumously flattered than Modest Mussorgsky. Unfortunately, the career civil servant and part-time composer died at age 41, never anticipating that the solo piano piece he wrote in 1874, in memory of a dear friend, would eventually go on to be among the most beloved and frequently arranged works in the entire classical repertoire. Even prior to Maurice Ravel orchestrating Pictures at an Exhibition in 1922, three other composers had made arrangements, and the list of great conductors who have since taken their own stab at orchestrating the colorful work is impressive. Ormandy, Stokowski, Toscanini, Ashkenazy, and Slatkin each created their own versions of the piece for full orchestra, and it has also been arranged for a huge variety of other ensembles, including brass ensemble, percussion ensemble, saxophone choir, tuba quartet, and heavy metal bands. Obviously, Mussorgsky’s evocative writing has struck a chord with countless musicians over the decades, and his vivid depictions of chickens, gardens, catacombs and castles continue to charm audiences in the 21st century.

Born into a noble Russian family, Mussorgsky’s early training was as a pianist. Although he studied music throughout his childhood, he followed the family tradition and enlisted in the military at a young age. Unlike Tchaikovsky and other conservatory-trained composers of the era, Mussorgsky was never a “full-time” musician. He was however, part of a circle of extraordinary “amateur” musicians dedicated to composing what they felt was more “authentically Russian” music. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, César Cui, Mily Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, and Mussorgsky, often referred to as “the Russian Five,” spent over a decade as friends, colleagues, and drinking buddies. Of the five men, Mussorgsky was generally derided as the least sophisticated, with even his friends criticizing his music as lacking cohesion. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that Mussorgsky's scores included “absurd, disconnected harmony, ugly part-writing, sometimes strikingly illogical modulation, sometimes a depressing lack of it, and unsuccessful scoring of orchestral things ...” Despite the rough edges, however, no one doubted Mussorgsky’s talent, and his contemporaries acknowledged that what he lacked in technical mastery was more than made up for by his extraordinary ability to evoke enchanting scenes and magical atmospheres through his music.

Pictures at an Exhibition, in its original solo piano version, consisted of ten movements, each depicting a work of art created by Mussorgsky’s friend, the architect and painter Viktor Hartmann. The two men had been friends for several years, and when Hartmann died suddenly at age 39, Mussorgsky was profoundly affected. The following year, a memorial exhibition of Hartmann’s works was mounted at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. Mussorgsky attended the exhibition and, a few weeks later, was inspired to compose Pictures at an Exhibition commemorating the experience. He composed rapidly, completing the entire work in under three weeks. Mussorgsky wrote to his friend that the work was “boiling” and that “sounds and ideas hang in the air. I am gulping and overeating, and can barely manage to scribble them on paper.” Although the work was never published during Mussorgsky’s lifetime, Rimsky-Korsakov eventually took the manuscript and “cleaned it up” for publication in 1886. Naturally, Rimsky-Korsakov attempted to “fix” some of his friend’s musical “mistakes” in the publication. It was not until 1931 that Mussorgsky’s original manuscript was published. Nine years prior to that, however, Maurice Ravel had taken pen to hand and transcribed the work for full orchestra. Of all the different orchestrations that have been made over the succeeding decades, Ravel’s is still the most often performed, primarily because of his unrivaled ear for orchestral color. With his uncanny ability to combine instruments in unexpected ways, creating perfectly balanced, exquisitely crafted colors, Ravel brings Mussorgsky’s music into 3-D brilliance. Although Ravel’s nature as a detail-oriented perfectionist is sometimes seen as being at odds with Mussorgsky’s more primitive compositional style, there can be no doubt that Ravel’s version of the work has brought an increased appreciation for the piece and for the power and intensity of Mussorgsky’s music.

The work opens with the Promenade theme, which will be heard repeatedly throughout the piece and is meant to be a depiction of Mussorgsky walking into the exhibit, then strolling from picture to picture. A solo trumpet, accompanied by brass choir, plays the melody in a commanding, self-confident version as the piece begins. The irregular meter of the melody is meant to imitate walking. This Promenade theme will change in character throughout the work as Mussorgsky’s frame of mind is altered by each picture he views.

The Gnome: This movement depicts a sketch Hartmann made of a ghoulish gnome, clumsily running about on crooked legs. It is thought that Hartmann intended the sketch as the design for a nutcracker with large, grotesque teeth. A fast, scampering idiom alternates with slower, more grandiose music, as if the gnome were strutting about grandly, then running quickly away so as not to be caught.

Promenade: A more subdued Promenade in the horns and woodwinds suggests Mussorgsky is already feeling more nostalgic.

The Old Castle: Two sketches of medieval castles were the inspiration for this movement, which is a troubadour song. In a stroke of brilliance, Ravel gives the haunting melody to the saxophone, an instrument not normally seen within the orchestra, but whose sound Ravel admired.

Promenade: Renewed energy characterizes this brief stroll to the next two pictures.

The Tuileries: Hartmann’s depiction of a group of children and their nannies in the gardens of the Tuileries is the inspiration for this movement. The woodwinds dash around with a theme clearly intended to mimic children taunting each other, then racing away.

Bydlo (Oxen): Ponderous low strings and solo tuba begin this movement, designed to depict a Polish cart on huge wheels, drawn by oxen. The slow-moving cart appears in the distance, lumbers past the viewer, and quickly recedes from view.

Promenade: The woodwinds offer a wistful version of the Promenade theme before the viewer’s attention is caught by the next quirky picture.

Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells: Hartmann had created the design for an eggshell costume to be worn by children in a new ballet production. Chirping woodwinds and high strings mimic the children scampering around the stage, pecking at their shells.

Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle: The two drawings upon which this movement is based were actually gifted to Mussorgsky by Hartmann. Mussorgsky supplied the names for each character, with Samuel Goldenberg, a wealthy Jewish man, represented here by a full, resplendent string section. Schmuÿle, the poor Jewish man in the second drawing, is brilliantly depicted by Ravel as a loud, whining, muted trumpet.

The Market at Limoges: Hartmann did over 150 watercolors of scenes around the French city of Limoges. In this movement, Mussorgsky depicts the women gossiping and arguing while they shop. In the margin of the score, Mussorgsky wrote: “Great news! M. de Puissangeout has just recovered his cow … Mme de Remboursac has just acquired a beautiful new set of teeth, while M. de Pantaleon’s nose, which is in his way, is as much as ever the color of a peony.” Frantic, brilliant string writing builds dramatically but is suddenly interrupted by a dark, foreboding chord in the low brass, signaling an abrupt change of mood.

The Catacombs: Hartmann had done a watercolor showing himself and a guide exploring the Paris catacombs by lamplight, a pile of skulls in one corner. Ravel evokes the vast emptiness of the space via huge brass chords, which are echoed by soft, low strings in a terrifying, lonely setting. This leads directly into the following movement:

Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (With the Dead in a Dead Language): Mussorgsky is himself drawn into the picture. He wrote: “The creative spirit of the departed Hartmann leads me to the skulls and invokes them: the skulls begin to glow faintly.” Here, trembling violins underscore a mournful version of the Promenade theme in the oboes, echoed by low strings. The entrance of the harp and flutes brings perhaps the most poignant moment in the entire piece, as Mussorgsky calmly and lovingly remembers his dear friend.

The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga): This movement evokes the child-eating witch Baba Yaga of Russian folklore, who was said to live in the woods in a hut on hen’s legs. Hartmann had sketched a clock of bronze and enamel in the shape of the hut. Screaming brass dominate this muscular, terrifying music, as Baba Yaga chases her victims through the forest. A mystical slow section seems to indicate that perhaps she has fallen asleep, but she quickly reawakens, and the reign of terror continues. The final measures of the movement sweep brilliantly into the first measure of the next movement:

The Great Gate of Kiev: Perhaps the most recognizable movement of the work commemorates Hartmann’s design for a massive gate at the entrance to the city of Kiev. Hartmann believed it was his finest work, and although the gate was never constructed, Mussorgsky’s music stands as a monument to Hartmann’s vision. Ceremonial brass sing out the main melody, which will later be taken up by the strings. Interspersed with the tune are two delicate moments in which the clarinets and bassoons quietly invoke a Russian Orthodox baptismal chant. This leads to the final return of the Promenade music, this time in a triumphant version. Ravel’s brilliant orchestration of the ending includes pealing church bells and ample percussion, marking the joyous conclusion of Mussorgsky’s homage to the power of friendship.