Program Notes

by Dr. Marcia Fountain

September 2010

Richard Wagner
Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig
Died February 13, 1883, Venice

Ride of the Valkyries

Made even more famous by its use in the film Apocalypse Now, the "Ride of the Valkyries" vividly depicts the flight of the Valkyries, the famous women warriors in Wagner's opera Die Walküre. The storm and the gallop of the horses are clearly heard in the orchestra. In Norse legend, the Valkyries decide who will die in battle and then gather the dead to take them to Valhalla, home of the gods. Drafted in the 1850s, the opera premiered in 1870. Wagner's brilliant use of the orchestra is evident; listeners should find it interesting to compare the ways the instruments are used in the three works this evening.

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

Symphony no. 5 in C minor, op. 67

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is probably the single most-heard work in the entire orchestral repertoire. Nicholas Marston has called it the "quintessential symphony." Yet its premier on December 22, 1808 in Vienna was a less than auspicious occasion. It was part of an extraordinarily long concert of Beethoven's works that included both the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Fantasy for Piano Chorus and Orchestra, the aria "Ah, Perfido", and parts of the Mass in C major. Beethoven's difficult personality made the rehearsals a shambles; several excellent musicians refused to play or sing for him, so that lesser substitutes had to be found. The Fantasy fell apart at the performance and had to be re-started.

The history of the commissioning and dedication of the work are also characteristic. Beethoven initially promised the work to Count Oppersdorf; a letter of March, 1808 from Beethoven told the Count: "The last movement in the Symphony is with three trombones and piccolo--though not with three kettledrums, but will make more noise than six kettledrums and better noise at that." Beethoven had received some money in advance from the Count, but instead sold the Symphony to the publishing firm of Breitkopf und Härtel as part of a package deal. He wrote an apologetic letter to the Count promising him another symphony later! Like many another, the Count found that Beethoven's financial dealings were not always aboveboard.

But the genius that marks the Fifth Symphony makes one forgive any and all personal quirks of the composer. The opening motive of three short notes followed by a long note is the most famous musical gesture in the literature. It came to symbolize "V for victory" during World War II. This motive in one form or another dominates the entire symphony. It is never absent in the first movement. It can still be found rhythmically in the second movement, which is a set of variations on two themes. The scherzo is especially notable for the gymnastics demanded of the string basses in the middle section--one can almost hear Beethoven chuckling! The scherzo is directly linked to the last movement which is marked by the appearance of the three trombones for the first time in Beethoven's symphonies. Its triumphal mood is unmistakable. Indeed, the progression of mood in this symphony became the model for many of the symphonic works of the romantic era as the drama and conflict of the first movement are resolved in the triumph of the last movement. For the optimistic nineteenth century this was often interpreted as man's triumph in his struggle with fate.
The simplicity and at the same time the profundity of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony are the marks of true artistic greatness. Many nineteenth century musicians and music critics recognized the importance of this symphony and it soon began to be performed with frequency. E. T. A. Hoffman, an important romantic period writer, spoke of the opening of the last movement as being "like radiant, blinding sunlight which suddenly illuminates the dark night." The young Hector Berlioz persuaded one of his teachers, Jean-Francois Lesueur, who was no lover of Beethoven's music, to go and hear a performance in the late 1820s. Lesueur, who insisted on sitting alone among strangers for the performance to avoid being influenced by Berlioz, was stunned. When Berlioz rushed up to him after the performance, Lesueur could only say: "Hush! I want air; I must go outside. It is incredible, wonderful! It stirred and affected and disturbed me to such a degree that when I came out of the box and tried to put on my hat I could not find my own head! Do not speak to me till tomorrow."

Johannes Brahms
Born Hamburg, May 7, 1833
Died Vienna, April 3, 1897

Concerto for piano and orchestra no. 2 in B flat major op. 83

Finished in 1881, this concerto was first performed some twenty-one years after the composer's first piano concerto and a few years after his first two symphonies. It had been over sixty years since the first performance of Beethoven's Symphony no. 5 and eleven years since the premiere of Wagner's Die Walküre. This concerto is a very large work, breaking with the concerto tradition by adding a fourth movement to the standard three movements. It is often called a "symphonic" concerto both in the sense of having four movements (like most symphonies of the time) and in the sense that the orchestra is an equal partner with the pianist. It well illustrates Brahms's respect for traditional forms but also his willingness to expand and experiment with these forms. The extra movement is the second movement; Brahms called it a scherzo but it defies the normal light-hearted meaning of the term, and instead is an extensive serious movement. Brahms joked to friends, telling some "I have written a tiny, tiny piano concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo."

Brahms was the pianist when the concerto was premiered by the Budapest Philharmonic Symphony under Alexander Erkel on Novermber 9, 1881. For this performance he played a Boesendorfer piano. The pianos the composer favored in the late 19th century were the Viennese Boesendorfer, the Berlin Bechstein, and the American Steinway. It is clear from his earliest youth that he favored pianos with a heavier action and greater power, and that he was very conscious of keeping up with the latest innovations in the mechanism of the piano. This concerto starts on a note lower than any in his first concerto, illustrating the continued expansion of the keyboard. Brahms's large hands and formidable technique are obvious in the piano writing.

Brahms dedicated the concerto to his primary piano and composition teacher in Hamburg, Eduard Marxsen, long after his years of study with him. Privately Brahms was known to say that Marxsen had been an "uninspiring" teacher from whom he had learned little, thus illustrating the typically ambivalent attitude of students to their teachers! But Marxsen made his large library of books and music scores available to his pupil and Brahms certainly took full advantage of these and of Marxsen's teaching.

October 2010

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born Salzburg, January 27, 1756
Died Vienna, December 5, 1791

Overture to Don Giovanni, K.528

In October 1787 Mozart was in Prague for the premiere of the newly-commissioned opera Don Giovanni. Based on the Don Juan legend in which the quintessential philanderer gets his comeuppance, the opera was to be one of Mozart's sweetest successes. The opera itself, with its amazing mix of tragedy and comedy, stretched the boundaries of conventional opera plots in the time. Starting out as a comic presentation of the Don and his adventures in seduction it rapidly turns to the murder of the Commendatore. At the end of the opera a statue of the Commendatore comes to life and, upon Don Giovanni's invitation, appears at dinner. The gates of hell open up and swallow Don Giovanni.

The overture starts with a slow section using music from the scene in which the statue appears at dinner. Its ominous sounds give way to an allegro which manages to include frothy music and a hint of the pain that Don Giovanni has caused.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg
Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E minor, op. 64

We are indebted to the violinist Ferdinand David (1810-1873) for Mendelssohn’s superb violin concerto. The two met in 1826 when both were in their late teens and both already known as prodigies in their fields. When Mendelssohn was invited to Leipzig as the director of the Gewandhaus concerts in 1836, he had David engaged as the concertmaster; a few years later when Mendelssohn became the head of the Leipzig Conservatory, he was able to bring in David as head of the violin department there. In Leipzig, the two men often played sonata and chamber music concerts together.

As a violinist, David was viewed by his contemporaries as combining serious, relatively classical restraint with extraordinary technical brilliance. Albert Mell summed up the qualities that made him so important in Leipzig’s musical life: “He possessed all the attributes of the ideal leader: an energetic attack, full tone and solid technique, together with responsibility, quickness of perception and musical intelligence.” These qualities made him the ideal parallel to Mendelssohn himself; it is small wonder that the concerto produced by this friendship is probably the most popular concerto in the current violin repertory. David also edited many works in the violin literature and, like Mendelssohn, was important in bringing the works of J. S. Bach into the standard repertory; he frequently performed the unaccompanied violin works of Bach. Among the violins he owned was a Guarneri del Gesù which was later owned by Jascha Heifetz.

Mendelssohn expressed his thoughts about David in a letter to him during the time they were working on the concerto: “I realized that there are really not many musicians who pursue such a broad, straight road in art as undeviatingly as you do, or in whose active course I could feel the same intense delight that I do in yours. Such things are seldom said face to face, so let me write today how much your rapid and gratifying development during the last few years has surprised and rejoiced me. It is sometimes discouraging to see so many with the noblest aspirations but inferior talents, and others with great talents yet low tendencies; so that to see real talent with right determination is doubly cheering....As I said, therefore, the very thought of your character rejoices me, and may heaven permit us to succeed more and more in expressing our wishes and our inmost thoughts, and in holding fast all that is dear and sacred in art, so that it shall not perish!”
Mendelssohn on the Concerto in 1838; it was not finished until 1844. During the years in which Mendelssohn was working on it, he and David were in frequent consultation; indeed, David seems to have been responsible for much of the cadenza. The work was premiered on March 13, 1845 at the Gewandhaus concerts with David as the soloist. But because Mendelssohn was ill, the chance to conduct the premiere went to the Danish composer Niels Gade, then an assistant conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and a teacher at the Conservatory.

None of those involved could have foreseen that Mendelssohn would be dead within two years of this premiere. David was a pallbearer for the funeral and at the family's request became one of the editors of Mendelssohn's manuscripts. Nearly three decades later, one of Mendelssohn's works was a part of David's last public concert shortly before his own death.

Gustav Mahler
Born July 7, 1860, Kalist, Bohemia
Died May 18, 1911, Vienna

Adagietto from Symphony no. 5

Gustav Mahler is known primarily as a composer of lengthy symphonies; the two works on tonight's program are in fact from larger works but are occasionally performed individually. Mahler himself once conducted the Adagietto as a separate piece, and the assumption became general that he sanctioned such performances. It was conducted by Leonard Bernstein at Robert F. Kennedy’s funeral and is heard prominently in the film Death in Venice. It is perhaps most controversial in the choice of tempo; Michael Steinberg notes that “in the first three measures alone, Mahler tells the conductor three times and in two languages that he wants it ‘very slow.’" Recorded performances range from just over seven minutes in length to nearly fourteen minutes, making for interesting comparisons of conductors.

Some see this movement as a love song. The symphony was completed in 1902, the year of Mahler's marriage to Alma Mahler. The early twentieth century conductor Willem Mengelberg claimed to have heard from both the Mahlers that it was Mahler’s declaration of love to Alma. Others consider it more like an elegy or even a lament.
Totenfeier

The Totenfeier is the first draft of the first movement of Mahler's Symphony no. 2. The title means roughly "death rites" and it is often referred to as a funeral march, a common genre for romantic composers. Written some twelve years earlier than the Symphony no. 5, it became the opening of what is usually referred to as the "Resurrection" Symphony (Symphony no. 2), named for the final choral movement that moves from the first movement's funeral march of the hero to a transcendental moment of which Mahler said " …an almighty love shines through us with blessed knowing and being." Of the lengthy and dramatic funeral march, the composer said "…it poses the great question: To what purpose have you lived? To what purpose have you suffered?"

November 2010

George Gershwin
Born September 28, 1898 Brooklyn, N. Y.
Died July 11, 1937 Beverly Hills, California

Cuban Overture

Gershwin’s Cuban Overture was one result of a short visit to Cuba in February, 1932. He was later to describe the visit as “two hysterical weeks in Cuba, where no sleep was had.” But among other diversions, he was fascinated by the music he heard there and especially by the percussion instruments. Upon his return to New York he brought with him several of these instruments, among them claves, bongos, and maracas. The piece he wrote during the following July to utilize these instruments was initially called “Rhumba.” With this title it was first performed by the New York Philharmonic in a summer concert at Lewisohn Stadium on August 16, 1932. Some three months later it was performed again in a benefit concert at the Metropolitan Opera House. By now, Gershwin had changed the name to Cuban Overture, apparently feeling that it had a bit more dignity.

The composer had recently begun formal composition study with Joseph Schillinger in an effort to enhance his compositional skills. Fortunately, Schillinger’s highly mathematical approach to composition did not really change Gershwin’s originality and feel for popular idioms, but this overture is one of his most sophisticated works in many ways. Gershwin directed that the percussion instruments featured in the last section of the overture be placed at the front of the orchestra, but he also gives the brass section a chance to shine.

David Amram
Born November 17, 1930, Philadelphia

Ode to Lord Buckley (Concerto for Saxophone)

David Amram is an example of the best possible meaning of "eclectic," both as musician and composer. A horn player, he also studied trumpet and piano and but he took his BA from George Washington University in history rather than music. He was a member of the Seventh Army Symphony in Europe, where he was also active as a jazz musician, then returned to study at the Manhattan School of Music in 1955. Between 1956 and 1967 he composed the music for some twenty-five "Shakespeare in the Park" productions , as well as writing the music for Archibald MacLeish's play J. B. which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1959. His film scores include those for Splendor in the Grass and The Manchurian Candidate. He has toured extensively in Brazil, Kenya, Cuba, and the Middle East, sometimes under the sponsorship of the State Department. The tours stimulated his interest in music of other cultures and folk music as well as jazz. Most recently, in 2009 he appeared with Pete Seeger to celebrate Seeger's 90th birthday and in June 2010 he made several appearances at the Clearwater Festival showcasing a broad range of folk music.

Ode to Lord Buckley (also titled Concerto for Saxophone) was written in 1981. Lord Buckley (1906 - 1960) was a comedian/entertainer and scat singer who started his career in vaudeville; in the 1950s he worked in small jazz clubs and appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. Amram played piano for him and was with him the night before Lord Buckley died. Amram calls him a "consummate performer," "a combination of Walt Whitman, Charlie Parker, Baudelaire and Lawrence Olivier." The concerto exists in a version for saxophone and piano, saxophone with band, and saxophone with orchestra. The first movement is "Ballad" with a middle section that evokes a jazz club. The second movement is titled "Taxim." Taxim is an Arabic term and refers to a section of music in which the performer can display his technique in improvisation against standard scale forms and melodic formulas. Amram is thus able to impart a middle eastern flavor to this movement.

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

Music for a Scene from Shelley op. 7

When Barber wrote this composition in 1933, he had been reading Percy Bysshe Shelley's play Prometheus Unbound. His music illustrates lines in Act II, Scene 5 in which the chorus implores the goddess of love to let them hear the music which can bring back sympathy and love to mankind. In notes for the first performance Lawrence Gilman said that Barber sought "to convey something of Shelley's pantheistic rapture, his sense of the ideal love of all created spirits in a world too radiant for human eyes."

Conductor Werner Janssen chose this work from some 150 compositions by American composers for a performance at Carnegie Hall on March 24, 1935. It was the first time that Barber got to hear one of his orchestral works in performance. In a review of the performance Olin Downes mentioned the "special color and the evocation of mood" that Barber achieved. The music begins and ends quietly, rising in the middle to climactic moments, sudden silences and a dramatic drum roll. The success of the premiere led the publishing firm G. Schirmer to immediately publish it along with several other early works by Barber, the beginning of a fruitful relationship.

Ernest Bloch
Born July 24, 1880, Geneva
Died July 15 1959, Portland, OR

America: An Epic Rhapsody for Orchestra

Born in Switzerland, Ernest Bloch came to the United States in 1916. After working in New York he became director ot the Cleveland Institute of Music, and later director of the San Francisco Conservatory. During his time in Cleveland in the early 1920s he became an American citizen. Though best-known for the works that explore his Jewish heritage he also wrote in neo-classic and romantic styles.

Bloch said that as early as his arrival in the United States in 1916, "I felt the spirit of the country…I wanted to write an Anthem that should rightfully belong to and reflect the country for which it might stand. ….But my American friends were rather lukewarm and skeptical regarding this plan, and so the idea slept for ten years." In 1927, the magazine Musical America sponsored a competition for a symphonic work on an American theme by an American composer. Bloch's America: An Epic Rhapsody for Orchestra won over 92 entries and as a result of the win was performed in New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, as well as elsewhere, reaching some 50,000 listeners.

The work is divided into three sections - the first depicts England and the native Americans, the second the Civil War, and the third the present and future as seen by Bloch in the 1920s. The poetry of Walt Whitman was an important influence and is quoted in the score: "O America, because you build for mankind, I build for you." Numerous folk and popular songs are quoted in the music. Bloch said that "though this symphony is not dependent on a program, the composer wants to emphasize that he has been inspired by this very ideal … of America. The anthem which concludes the work as its apotheosis, symbolizes the destiny, the mission of America."