Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. 

As required, the work displayed lyricism, a heroic tone and inspiration from Russian literature. Still, many hear a subtext of critical despair beneath the crowd-pleasing melodies.

[On the Fourth Movement, the recording of which appears below]

With his fate hanging in the balance, Shostakovich had to come up with an upbeat ending for his Fifth Symphony. Concluding with the melancholy of the third movement was not an option. However, the celebratory mood of the fourth movement sounds forced to some ears.

The movement begins with a string of march-like themes filled with swaggering attitude. The pace of the piece grows and the orchestra swirls with musical currents that burst with triumph – until all hope is dashed by another dead end.

The music that follows suggests quiet remembrance of those who are gone.

In a traditional symphony, we might expect a brisk march at this point, sweeping us on to victory. Instead, a dead slow march begins. Audiences recognized the musical reference toBoris Godunov – the opera in which crowds are forced to praise the Tsar.

Finally, with a great deal of effort, Shostakovich reveals his triumphant ending. As in the first movement, there is one expressively altered note, though. Not B natural, confirming the happy major version of the scale, but B flat, which delivers the sad minor version.

After so much time making his way to the major scale why does Shostakovich return to minor at the end? Perhaps it is his signal that the happy harmonies of the ending are as false as a Potemkin village.

Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 reflected his situation as an artist who would be judged by politics as much as by talent. Although some audiences heard condemnation of the government through inflections of despair, Stalin found the politics of the music acceptable and Shostakovich won a reprieve – at least for another decade.

None of the orchestrations, however, change the fundamental spirit of the piece. Mussorgsky imagines himself making his way down the hallway that showcased his late friend's work, with his stately procession represented by the Promenade that opens the piece and returns several times. Upon stopping at each image, he reflects on what he sees. Between the early movements, the promenade returns regularly, as Mussorgsky is conscious of moving from one scene to the next. As the work progresses, however, he becomes less aware of the interval between pictures, and more immersed in the continuous psychological experience of moving from one state of mind to the next. By the end, the composer sees himself transformed by the connection with Hartman through his visual expressions of Russian pride and humanity.

• Gnomus. This movement is fairly self-explanatory, although it would be fascinating to see the picture – reportedly of a gnome-shaped nutcracker – that inspired such thorny writing from Mussorgsky. Ravel, in his orchestration, uses a wide variety of percussion instruments, adding to the mysterious, otherwordly atmosphere.
• The Old Castle. The Hartman sketch evidently depicted a troubadour outside of an old castle, with his song here carried by the alto saxophone. The saxophone never really caught on as an orchestral instrument, and its rare appearances are usually in works by early 20th-century French composers (including Ravel) or jazz- influenced Americans (especially Gershwin). Here, the noble and exotic quality of the saxophone's sound makes it an ideal choice. The saxophone plays in no other movement of the piece.
• Tuileries. This movement is the shortest of the work (except for some of the promenades), and captures the simplicity of Paris gardens with their visitors.
• Bydlo. Bydlo means "ox-cart," and the movement seems to summon the spirit of peasant workers. The strain of the melody is captured by assigning it to a low brass instrument. Ravel specified "tuba" but wrote the part in a much higher range than the tuba player is asked to play in anywhere else in the piece. Some orchestral tuba players bring along a second, higher-pitched instrument for this movement only; the present performance assigns the solo to the euphonium.
• Ballet of Chicks in their Shells. This is the first movement for which the sketch has been positively identified. Hartman was assisting in the costume design for a ballet production, and the sketch shows two people wearing egg-shaped outfits and wearing chick "helmets." The agitated peeps of the chicks are captured in high woodwinds and pizzicato strings.
• Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle. Hartman created two independent sketches of Jewish men – one rich (with a fur hat) and the other poor (sitting by the street with a cane). The rich Jew is represented by the brash strings (and some woodwinds) in the opening of the movement, whereas the poor Jew, asking for money, is realized by the high trumpet in an annoying, repetitive figure. Rather than convey an anti-Semitic message, the composer probably sought to make a social commentary: the rich and poor live in separate worlds, and it is far too easy for the rich to take no notice of those who have been less fortunate.
• Limoges. Probably the most colorfully orchestrated movement, this lightfooted scherzo depicts women gossiping at a French market. The melody is passed back and forth between the violins and various woodwind instruments, all while a diverse group of percussion instruments contributes to the feeling of general chaos.
• Catacombae. From the bustle of the market place, the listener is plunged into the foreboding underground. Almost entirely focused on the brass, this movement moves with deathly slowness, making its way through eerily shifting harmonies. Because the sound of the piano necessarily starts to decay after the keys have been struck, making the instrument incapabale of a true sustained sound, this movement benefits more than many of the others from an orchestral treatment. The following section, Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua, is a transformation of the promenade melody; the Latin translates to "With the Dead in a dead language." Visible in the sketch for "Catacombae" is a cage full of skulls, and Mussorgsky wrote in the margin of his piano original, "The creative genius of Hartman leads me to the skulls and invokes them; the skulls begin to glow."
• The Hut on Fowl's Legs. Given such a bizarre title, the Hartman sketch is a disappointment. The "hut" is a clock, perhaps of a size to sit on a desk (although the scale of the sketch is hard to determine); the "fowl's legs" are small chicken legs, easily overlooked, incorporated into the body of the clock base. More important in understanding the character of the movement is Mussorgsky's subtitle, "Baba Yaga." Baba Yaga is a witch from Russian fairy tales, living ina hut with hen's legs which permit it to rotate in place. Each new victim (a lost child) is lured inside and crushed to death, to be later eaten by the witch. Hartman intended his sketch of the clock to be reminiscent of Baba Yaga's mysterious hut, so Mussorgsky used the sketch as a springboard to write a movement about the witch herself.
• The Great Gate of Kiev. In the spirit of greatest nationalistic affirmation, Mussorgsky drew inspiration from a patriotic competition for the final movement of the work. Hartman had submitted a design to be considered for the proposed new, grand entrance to Kiev, which was to commemorate Alexander II's successful escape from assassination there. No winner for the contest was ever selected, and no gate was ever built. Still, Hartman's impressive design received attention and a following, due to its resonance with the Russian people's pride of their nation and heritage. Hartman's sketch included a chapel, and Kiev had a long history of religious importance, so Mussorgsky adopted a sense of reverence in his tribute to the would-be gate and its city. The piano original is no match for the splendor of Ravel's orchestration, especially in the full chords that end the piece – leading some scholars to conjecture that Mussorgsky thought of his piece in orchestral terms from the very beginning.

In the introduction, the knight’s beclouded brain is suggested by the momentary use of mutes in all the instruments and strange harmonies, bordering on the atonal. In the first variation, we are introduced (via woodwinds and strings) to the Don’s unattainable love, Dulcinea, and there ensues the fight with evil giants, in fact windmills, ending with the Don’s graphic fall from his horse (harp glissando). Variation II is the infamous contest with the army of the “Great Emperor Alifanfaron,” in actuality a flock of sheep (you can’t miss them). Critics of Strauss’ time were particularly outraged by this all-too-realistic cacophony.

Variation III is a quiet dialog in which the Don reproves Sancho for his lack of ideals. IV is another battle scene, this time a losing battle against a procession of penitents, whom the Don mistakes for a band of robbers, bent on abducting a statue of the Virgin Mary. Variation V: The Don has been solidly trounced, but hardly defeated. He conjures up a vision of Dulcinea to give him courage (horn, harp, violins).

Variation VI “relates” a trick played on the Don by Sancho, who leads his master to believe that the first hip-swinging, tambourine-slapping señorita they encounter in the street is Dulcinea. The Don fulminates against the wizards who have turned his goddess into this floozy. Variation VII finds the Don and Sancho Panza seated on hobby-horses, imagining themselves flying through the air, the atmosphere created by a relative newcomer to the orchestra’s battery in 1897, the wind machine. VIII: In this wacky F-major barcarolle, the Don and Sancho are floating in an oarless boat toward a threatening water-mill (oboe and violin). The boat capsizes but the two manage to save themselves; they thank God in a passage marked religioso. Religion – a most confusing subject for the Don – is likewise a part of IX, where he encounters a pair of monks, conversing in the strict counterpoint of a pair of bassoons, who he thinks are evil wizards. He puts them to rout in his routing key, D minor.

In Variation X a townsman of the Don’s, Sanson Carasco, disguised as “The Knight of the White Moon,” challenges the Don to combat and emerges victorious. Sanson has in fact devised this as a way of leading Don Quixote back into sanity. In the Finale, the veil indeed lifts and the Don, sadly perhaps, is again in possession of his cognitive faculties. He is ready for death, and, as Cervantes writes, quoting the notary in attendance, “Never has a mind died so mildly, so peacefully, so Christianly.”

 A young musician of morbid sensitivity and ardent imagination poisons himself with opium in a moment of despair caused by frustrated love. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions, in which his experiences, feelings and memories are translated in his feverish brain into musical thoughts and images. His beloved becomes for him a melody and like an idée fixe which he meets and hears everywhere.

Part one
Daydreams, passions
     He remembers first the uneasiness of spirit, the indefinable passion, the melancholy, the aimless joys he felt even before seeing his beloved; then the explosive love she suddenly inspired in him, his delirious anguish, his fits of jealous fury, his returns of tenderness, his religious consolations.

Part two
A ball
     He meets again his beloved in a ball during a glittering fête.

Part three
Scene in the countryside
     One summer evening in the countryside he hears two shepherds dialoguing with their ‘Ranz des vaches’; this pastoral duet, the setting, the gentle rustling of the trees in the light wind, some causes for hope that he has recently conceived, all conspire to restore to his heart an unaccustomed feeling of calm and to give to his thoughts a happier colouring; but she reappears, he feels a pang of anguish, and painful thoughts disturb him: what if she betrayed him… One of the shepherds resumes his simple melody, the other one no longer answers. The sun sets… distant sound of thunder… solitude… silence…

Part four
March to the scaffold
    He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death and led to execution. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end, the idée fixe reappears for a moment like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

Part five
Dream of a witches’ sabbath
     He sees himself at a witches’ sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts. The beloved melody appears once more, but has now lost its noble and shy character; it is now no more than a vulgar dance-tune, trivial and grotesque: it is she who is coming to the sabbath… Roars of delight at her arrival… She joins the diabolical orgy… The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies Irae. The dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies Irae.

Scheherazade weaves her tales seamlessly, starting with "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship." We hear the waves undulating (audio), retreating and growing in intensity. Every modulation represents an unexpected turn in the story, and I try to maximize the surprise of these twists. My goal is to reflect Scheherazade's own storytelling: to capture the imagination and leave the listener in a constant state of disequilibrium. For me, it's important not to have too many obvious arrival points, but rather to steer towards a goal and then veer away from it like the music and the story both do.

The second movement opens with Scheherazade's voice again, but each time, it's more elaborate and more ornamented. This movement is called "The Tale of the Kalender Prince," and Rimsky-Korsakov uses exotic,Middle Eastern-sounding melodic solos (audio) for the woodwind instruments. Here, I want to exaggerate the foreignness of the sounds. I ask the solo players to take more time, play as though they are improvising.

The main love story in Scheherazade is found in the third movement, called "The Young Prince and the Young Princess." The trick here for me is not to overdo the sentimentality and detract from the innocence of this beautiful story. I try to keep the sound simple yet intimate and never overwrought. That way, when the final statement (audio) arrives, complete with cymbal crash, there's room to really go over the top.

Scheherazade shows her true genius in the final movement, "The Festival at Baghdad; The Sea; Shipwreck on a Rock; Conclusion." The music begins with an impatient Sultan, his theme hurriedly coaxing Scheherazade to finish the story. He can barely contain himself by this point, in his excitement to hear what happens next. Each morning, when the executioner has arrived at his door, the Sultan has sent him away, saying "Come back tomorrow," so that Scheherazade can continue her tale.

She continues to spin her tales of wonder while gradually bringing in every theme from the previous movements, deftly tying everything together. By this time, the Sultan has forgotten to tell the executioner to return the next day. We hear his low voice at the end, finally subdued and tamed.