Program Notes

by Dr. Marcia Fountain

January 2008

Gioacchino Rossini
Born February 29, 1792, Pesaro, Italy
Died November 13, 1868, Paris, France

Overture to La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie)

Gioacchino Rossini was the foremost composer of Italian opera in the years between 1810 and 1829, but in recent times it is possible that his overtures are heard more often than his operas. There is good reason for the popularity of these overtures, as tonight’s opening work will demonstrate. It is a substantial overture, some ten minutes in length, and ranges in mood from the frothy to the portentous, echoing the plot of the opera. Supposedly the story was based on a true-life incident in which a servant girl was accused of stealing something which turned out to have been taken and hidden by a pet magpie. In the original play by two Frenchmen, the story is tragic - the servant girl is executed before the truth is discovered. In Rossini's operatic version, a happy ending is supplied. In spite of the contrivance of the ending, the opera represents a successful mix of comic and serious elements unusual for its times, and the overture gives an excellent foretaste of this mix.

La Gazza Ladra ("The Thieving Magpie") was premiered at La Scala on May 31, 1817; the composer was 25 years old at the time.

Louis Spohr
Born April 5, 1784, Brunswick, Germany
Died October 22, 1859, Kassel, Germany

Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra in A minor, op. 131

The composer of tonight’s concerto, Louis Spohr, is no longer a well-known name among concert goers. In the early nineteenth century, however, he was an important musician, with a good reputation throughout Europe and even in the United States. Initially prominent as a violinist, he won fame also as a composer and as a conductor. He traveled frequently to perform all three of these roles, but spent much of his career as an opera conductor in Kassel, Germany. Musicians of his day spoke highly of him, among them composers as diverse as Mendelssohn and Wagner. Wagner heard Spohr play the violin at a private gathering in Mendelssohn’s home and later described him as “…a tall, stately man, distinguished in appearance, and of a serious and calm temperament. He gave me to understand, in a touching, almost apologetic manner, that the essence of his education and of his aversion to the new tendencies in music had its origin in the first impression he had received on hearing … Mozart….” Indeed, Spohr and Wagner were about as far apart in musical styles as possible in two contemporaries. Wagner and Liszt were making their reputations as representatives of the “music of the future,” full of complex harmony and emotional content. Spohr instead held to very classical roots in Mozart and Beethoven; he even admitted to not quite comprehending Beethoven’s late works.

As a conductor, though, Spohr was important for presenting a wide diversity of music, including two Wagner opera productions in Kassel. He conducted some of Schumann’s music as well, but found his later works a bit “dissonant.” (Our audiences can make their own judgment on our February concert when Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 will be performed.) Spohr was among the first musicians to make a career as a conductor. The roles of composer/conductor/performer were just beginning to separate in the early nineteenth century. Prior to this time orchestras were led by either the first violinist or a keyboard player from within the orchestra. The increasing complexity of orchestral music (largely owing to Beethoven, also on tonight’s program) necessitated a separate conductor no longer doubling as a player. Spohr was also among the first to use a baton to conduct, though his claim in his autobiography to have been the first is not substantiated by the facts.

The Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra is a late work, composed between 1844 and 1845. It has often been likened to Beethoven’s Triple Concerto for piano, violin, and cello with orchestra. The comparison is apt; both are expansive, serious works. Though it is written for a large orchestra, the orchestra’s role is clearly subordinate to the soloists, as would have been typical at the time. Spohr’s abilities as a string player show in the excellent writing for these instruments, particularly in the singing, lyrical lines. A description of Spohr in private performance of some of his own compositions in 1844 (the year this concerto was started) survives; the author says “there is nothing at all effeminate or sentimental in his playing – rather something manly and serious; and the elegiac element which admittedly suffuses his compositions seems to become through his performance deeply thoughtful, noble, and beautiful.”

Ludwig van Beethoven
Born December 16, 1770, Bonn, Germany
Died March 26, 1827, Vienna, Austria

Symphony No. 6 in F major, op. 68 "Pastoral"

The last work on tonight’s program is the earliest in time of composition. Beethoven was some 14 years older than Louis Spohr; the two composers were often compared by their contemporaries and many considered Spohr the greater of the two. It will be an interesting comparison to hear them side by side tonight. Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony was a very influential work in the nineteenth century. Its combination of childlike naivete with complexity of musical resources is perhaps Beethoven's most characteristic trait.

To a composer who was so in love with the countryside, writing a "nature" symphony must have seemed a very logical thing to do. Beethoven often worked on his compositions during long walks in the rural areas surrounding Vienna. In his younger days he had listened with pleasure to bird songs and shepherd's pipes; by the time of the Sixth Symphony, however, his deafness was too far advanced to be able to hear such gentle sounds. He also took great pleasure in the music of the dance musicians of the country taverns around Vienna.

Though ideas for the Sixth Symphony begin appearing in Beethoven's notebooks as early as 1803, the real writing of it took what for him was an unusually short time – from the summer of 1807 to the summer of 1808. The first performance was in Vienna on December 22, 1808 on the same program as the Fifth Symphony and several other works. Typically for Beethoven's difficult personality, the rehearsals were marked by such dissension that the orchestra refused to continue unless Beethoven remained in a different room outside the rehearsal hall!

The strange combination of personality traits found in Beethoven were well described by Wilhelm Rust, a young musician just making his way in Vienna in 1808: "He is as original and singular as a man as are his compositions; usually serious, at times merry, but always satirical and bitter. On the other hand, he is also very childlike and certainly very sincere. He is a great lover of truth and in this goes too far very often; for he never flatters and therefore makes many enemies."

The first movement sets the tone of simplicity and happiness for the entire symphony. In the second movement, the murmuring of the brook and the calls of the birds are clearly depicted. The third movement is a light-hearted peasant dance that leads straight into the fourth movement, which is a wonderful and justly famous depiction of a thunderstorm. The storm movement in its turn leads straight into the last movement, the shepherd's song of thankfulness after the storm.

February 2008

Samuel Barber
Born March 9, 1910, West Chester, Pennsylvania
Died January 23, 1981, New York, New York

Overture to The School for Scandal

Samuel Barber is one of the most important twentieth-century American composers. His musical training was from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, which he entered at the age of 14. Subsequently he studied in Europe as well. Though he was already a recognized composer in his student years, he actively studied voice as well and considered a singing career seriously before settling on composition as his main activity.

The Overture to the School for Scandal is a product of his last year at Curtis as a student, when Barber was 21. Scarcely a student piece, however, it was premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra shortly later in 1933. The title comes from Robert Sheridan's 18th century satire on society and its gossiping ways, but it was not intended for any actual performance of the play. Instead, it is an independent concert overture meant to convey the mood of the play to which it refers. Though quite "classic" in spirit, it uses a fairly large orchestra including trombones, tuba, and plentiful percussion.

Edvard Grieg
Born June 15, 1843, Bergen, Norway
Died September 4, 1907, Bergen, Norway

Concerto for Piano in A minor, op. 16

Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto is an early work in this composer's career. He was 25 years old at the time of its writing in the summer of 1869. The work was premiered in Copenhagen in 1869 by the pianist Edmund Neupart and was an immediate success, which surprised everyone including Grieg. The following year the young composer had a chance to show the Concerto to the great nineteenth-century pianist, Franz Liszt. Liszt played it over as Grieg listened and assured Grieg that he had the gifts he needed; he urged the young composer to persevere. Liszt helped Grieg obtain support from Norway’s government.

When Tchaikovsky heard the Concerto he declared it “imperfect in musical logic and technique,” but he praised its “charm, richness of imagery, warm and passionate melodic phrases, vitality of harmony, ingenious originality of rhythm, novelty and independence of thought, perfect simplicity and lack of affectation.”

Ironically Grieg was never able to match the success of this early work in any of his other large scale works. But the Concerto has maintained its place in the repertoire and, indeed, the opening theme is among the best known of all concerto themes. Dramatic and lyrical by turn, it is a work especially enjoyable for the listener. In the years following its premiere, Grieg himself often played the piano part in performance.

Grieg held an important place in the nineteenth century as a nationalistic composer. His music was imbued with the spirit of his native Norway. One critic at the first performance of the Concerto said that it represented "all Norway in its variety and unity." But in spite of his importance in nationalistic musical circles of his time, he is not often considered to be among the greatest composers of all time. He himself seems to have had a strong sense of his place in musical history, for he once said: “Artists like Bach and Beethoven erected churches and temples on the heights. I wanted, as Ibsen expresses it in one of his last dramas, to build dwellings for men in which they might feel at home and happy.”

Robert Schumann
Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau, Germany
Died July 29, 1856, Endenich, Germany

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, op. 97 “Rhenish”

In 1850 the Schumann family moved to Düsseldorf in order for Robert to take the position as music director of the Allgemeiner Musikverein (roughly translated “General Music Union”). This position included directing both the chorus and orchestra of this organization and also the responsibility for the music at the churches of St. Maximilian and St. Lambertus, the main Catholic Churches of Düsseldorf, on the major feast days. The city lies on the Rhine River at the heart of the Rhineland. Schumann’s position there is representative of the changes which were occurring in musical life in the German-speaking world in the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century Düsseldorf’s music had centered in the court which was the seat of one of the electors of the Holy Roman Empire. In the wake of the Napoleonic wars, Düsseldorf became part of Prussia, and support for the arts began to have a different structure. The Allgemeiner Musikverein functioned with a mixture of private, city, and church support. Mendelssohn also had spent three years as the music director in Düsseldorf in the 1830s. At the time of Schumann’s arrival the organization was presenting 8 to 10 subscription concerts a year.

The first year of Schumann’s tenure at Düsseldorf was marked by optimism and success. Schumann had been recommended for the position by Ferdinand Hiller who had just left Düsseldorf for the more prestigious position at Cologne some twenty miles away. Robert and Clara Schumann traveled in the area happily, including a visit to the Cathedral at Cologne. The sight of the Cathedral, which Schumann visited twice during the fall of 1850, is said to have inspired the fourth movement of tonight’s symphony; this movement originally had the marking “in the character of an accompaniment to a solemn procession.”

It is known that Schumann had a program in mind for this symphony and that it involved references to the area around the Rhine River in which he now found himself. However, he suppressed the program upon publication. The most we know is that he indicated that he hoped people would hear in it something of the Rhineland. Schumann began work on the Third Symphony (which actually was the fourth symphony in order of writing) in November 1850. He was conscious of trying to write a “popular” symphony and of the need to appeal to broader public. Simultaneously he was considering the composition of an oratorio (which did not come to fruition) which he wanted to appeal to “peasants and burghers” alike. The premiere on February 6, 1851 was so immense a success that it was performed again on March 13.

The structure of the symphony is unusual in having five movements with the scherzo as the second movement; it is also unusual in that there is not a “real” slow movement. The third movement is marked “not fast” rather than a more traditional slow movement marking and the fourth movement marking translates as “solemn” or “festive.” Music critics and historians often speak disparagingly of Schumann’s symphonies and their orchestrations, but these works are consistently popular with audiences.

April 2008

Claude Debussy
Born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
Died March 25, 1918, Paris, France

Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune (Afternoon of a Faun)

The importance of Debussy to the stylistic changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries can scarcely be exaggerated. Coming from the traditional atmosphere and training of the Paris Conservatory, he set his feet on a path without precedent, inspired not so much by other musicians as by poets and, to a lesser degree, painters. Early in his career he asserted “I am more and more convinced that music is not a thing which can be cast naturally into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of tone colors and rhythms. The rest is a lot of humbug invented by frigid imbeciles riding on the backs of the Masters....”

One important source of influence for Debussy was the Tuesday evening get-togethers at the home of the poet Stephane Mallarmé. Here gathered poets, painters, sculptors, critics, musicians, and novelists, eager to exchange ideas with one another. As with other symbolist poets, Mallarmé strove to express himself through suggestion of feelings rather than naming of feelings. He also was one of the most music-conscious of these poets, a regular concert-goer, and one who maintained that poetry should both envy and aspire to the state of music – his reason being that music could convey the "naked flesh of emotion."

It was a poem by Mallarmé that inspired Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. In the lengthy poem the mythical faun, half man, half goat, is depicted waking from sleep, sensual and lazy on a summer afternoon, unable to decide whether a visit from the nymphs was a dream or a reality. The point of course was not the situation but the poet's use of words and imagery to set the mood. Debussy became acquainted with the poem in about 1887 and probably began the composition about 1892. He was fortunate in the orchestra and conductor for the premiere (the Société Nationale de Musique under Gustave Doret) for both seem to have been sympathetic to his aims. Debussy was allowed to experiment with the orchestration during rehearsals, and a number of changes were made before the premiere on December 22, 1894. At the premiere, the work was immediately a success and was encored. Mallarmé heard the performance and liked it very much.

The music breaks with past traditions because instead of being based on recurrences and developments of themes (melodies), it is a natural and organic unfolding of ideas with no real repetition of materials. From its famous opening flute solo to its end it represented a new concept of musical form.

Henriette Renié
Born September 18, 1875 Paris, France
Died Marach 1, 1956 Paris, France

Concerto for Harp and Orchestra in C minor

Henriette Renié was a precocious harpist. She took the first prize in harp at the Paris Conservatory at age 11 (and would have received it at age 10 had not one of the members of the jury felt it inappropriate that year). Her influence as a teacher is impossible to overestimate and is represented in part by her important harp method used by many harp teachers. Among her students was Marcel Granjany. The Concerto for Harp was first performed by Renié herself in Paris at the Concerts Lamoureux March 13, 1901. She wrote eloquently about the importance of both performing and teaching, “To be a great virtuoso and a great artist, one must not only feel deeply but express what one feels; it is necessary to give unceasingly, to touch others, to move their hearts and souls through contact with one’s own heart and soul, both roused by the music. Is there anything more beautiful than that? As a teacher, it is necessary to know how to express, to give oneself, and to seek the point of contact—the “socket” with the pupil’s heart and mind! Once found, it is necessary to send this hidden electricity to him, thereby galvanizing his intellectual, spiritual and sensitive powers. And since twelve years of age, this has been my life to varying degrees, with transformations and progresses. This is my life and my duty.”

Victoria Borisova-Ollas
Born 1969 Vladivostock, Russia

Open Ground

Russian born composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas currently lives in Sweden. Her growing reputation has been reinforced by performances of her compositions by the London Symphony, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Düsseldorf Symphony and many others, as well as by recordings on EMI and other labels.

Her composition Open Ground was written on commission from the Stockholm Radio Symphony Orchestra in Stockholm in 2006 and premiered by that orchestra on August 20, 2006. It was inspired by Salman Rushdie’s novel The Ground Beneath her Feet. The composer says of the work “[This book] is one of his most significant and complex novels where the fictitious reality goes side by side with real historic events. The collisions between the two worlds often have a most devastating effect on the fate of all characters involved. One of them, a legendary rock singer Vina Apsara, disappears under mysterious circumstances while an earthquake is raging in Mexico. I have found an emotional inspiration in the first chapter of the book containing the description of the earthquake. The title for the piece is my own though. "Open ground" is an expression which might be interpreted differently depending on the context. The ground beneath our feet, the reality in which we exist at the moment, how real and stable it actually is? Also who would have ever dared to imagine what it feels like when it suddenly starts to rock?”

Maurice Ravel
Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, Basses-Pyrenees, France
Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France

La Valse

Ravel's first thoughts about the music which was ultimately to become La Valse began about 1906. The original working title was "Wien," and it was meant to pay homage to Vienna and Johann Strauss. It was sometime later that the final impetus to complete the work came in the form of an offer from Sergei Diaghilev to produce the work as part of the 1920 Ballet Russes season. But when Ravel had a two-piano version played for Diaghilev, he reneged on this offer, saying the work was clearly a masterpiece but no ballet. Ravel walked out and permanently broke his friendship with Diaghilev over this rejection.

La Valse was ultimately presented as a concert piece on December 12, 1920; in the post-World-War-I atmosphere it was felt that this more neutral title rather than the original "Wien" was better.
Ravel left a description both of what he intended the work to convey and his own description of how he envisioned the staging as a ballet. “I had intended this work to be a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, with which was associated in my imagination an impression of a fantastic and fatal sort of dervish's dance. I imagined this waltz being danced in an imperial palace about the year 1855. From time to time, through rifts in turbulent clouds, waltzing couples can be glimpsed. The clouds gradually disperse and a huge ballroom is revealed, filled with a great crowd of whirling dancers. Gradually the stage grows lighter. The light of the chandeliers bursts out full."