Backstage / Gil Shaham

The Argentinian Tango has been evolving quietly for approaching 100 years and, with composers such as Astor Piazzolla and José Bragato, is now a sophisticated musical form. The violin has always been at its heart, be it in a trio with a bandoneón and double bass, or a quintet where piano and guitar would be added. Rarely written down, the tango has always been very adaptable; the development of the musical material and scoring is often left to performers on the day. In tonight's programme, four ostensibly unrelated Piazzolla tangos have been arranged into a suite for four violins and double bass. The first of these, Retrato di Alfredo Gobbi is a poignant portrait of one of the most acclaimed tango violinists and composers of pre-war Argentina, whereas the second, an altogether darker piece called Vayamos al Diablo (We're all Going to Hell), is more of a social commentary on Argentinian psyche. The third and fourth movements are more straightforward though no less emotive: Oblivión is a sultry, slow tango reflecting the hopelessness in the title and the Suite ends in more positive vein with the famous Libertango.

"Summertime" and "It Ain't Necessarily So"

from Porgy and Bess

"If I am successful" wrote George Gershwin of his opera Porgy and Bess " it will resemble a combination of the drama and romance of Carmen and the beauty of Meistersinger". Although Gershwin had corresponded in 1926 with DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel and subsequent play, Porgy, he did not follow up the idea until 1932 and it took him another two years to start serious work on it. Porgy and Bess was completed the following year, however, and received its première on September 30, 1935 in Boston. Despite not being a critical success, its first run in New York's Alvin Theatre stretched to 124 performances and it has arguably become the only American opera to have fully established itself in the repertoire. The two excerpts played tonight are "Summertime", a lullaby from the beginning of Act 1 and "It Ain't Necessarily So", a ballade from later in the opera and given a very "bluesy" treatment in this particular arrangement .

Three Russian Dances

Igor Stravinsky: Danse Russe (Petrushka)
Sergei Prokofiev:Waltz (War & Peace)

Dmitri Shostakovich: Galop (Cheryemyushki)

The three composers represented in this group of Russian Dances were not only at the forefront of  twentieth century music in their native Russia, but were also crucial to the direction of western music in general, indeed two of them (Stravinsky and Shostakovich) could be considered as the finest composers of their generation. The slight liberty taken in presenting these three composers in such close proximity comes from the fact that they are able to catch perfectly the essence of all things Russian in whatever form they chose. From the deceptive simplicity and naivety of Stravinsky's "Petrushka" and the yearning melancholy and sheer scale of Prokofiev's epic musical drama, "War and Peace", to the biting wit and satire of Shostakovich's operetta "Cheryemyushki", each of these quintessentially Russian dances show the rich diversity of that country's  musical heritage .

In 1728, an audience at London's Lincoln Inn Theatre heard the first performance of John Gay's 'The Beggar's Opera'. An earthy and somewhat proletarian work, it was intended as a parody of the Grand Opera at the time and it became an unlikely hit, running uninterrupted to packed houses for more than three years. Exactly 200 years later, in 1928, an audience in the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin were present for the première of Kurt Weill's opera based on the John Gay original, Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). The similarities were endless; the down to earth storyline was just as relevant as it was two centuries previously; they were both intended as an antidote to the bloated operatic forces of the day; and the music was written in a more contemporary idiom. In the Kleines Dreigroschenoper, we hear the Ballade of Mack-the-Knife, the 'Instead of' song, the 'Salomon' song, Peachum's Morning Chorale, the Tango-Ballad and finally, Lucy's aria.

The final item in this evening's concert is based on the opera Carmen by French composer, Georges Bizet. From the moment Bizet finished his opera in 1874, its best-known melodies were used for countless transcriptions and arrangements for many instruments, the most famous for the violin being that of Pablo de Sarasate, although violinists such as Jenö Hubay and Efrem Zimbalist and the Hollywood film composer Franz Waxman also wrote pieces based on the opera. Tonight's Carmen Fantasy has most of the good tunes and one highly unusual one; the dance that one occasionally hears at the beginning of Act IV was written two years previously as part of the Farandole from the incidental music to L'Arlésienne, and was slipped into an early edition of the opera, presumably to show off a dance troupe.