Program Notes

by Dr. Marcia Fountain

September 2011

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

Symphony no. 32 in G major K. 318

Written in 1779, Mozart's Symphony no. 32 dates from his last residency in Salzburg where he had grown up. Mozart had a very low opinion of the Salzburg orchestra, complaining both of the quality and availability of musicians. In a letter to his father in 1778, just before his return to Salzburg from a tour in Paris and various areas of Germany, he said "Ah, if only we too had clarinets [instruments available at the Mannheim court where the young Mozart was visiting]….I shall have much that is new to tell the Archbishop [who was in charge of the government in Salzburg] at my first audience, and perhaps a few suggestions to make as well." Mozart's suggestions about this and many other topics were not welcomed by the Archbishop, and a bare two years later they parted company.

The form and structure of the late eighteenth-century symphony have roots in the Italian opera overture which often took the form of three sections in the order of fast-slow-fast. Scholars speculate that Mozart intended using this work for an opera he planned to write, but the proof does not exist. The date and place of the first performance are also not known, and the exact instrumentation of the orchestra for that first performance is not clear. Given what we know about the Salzburg orchestra, there were probably about 26 strings; the wind scoring includes 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, and 4 horns; the number of horns is unusual - 2 horns would have been the norm. Parts exist for trumpet and timpani but they may not have been used in the first performance.

Camille Saint-Saens
Born October 9, 1835, Paris, France
Died December 16, 1921, Algiers, Algeria

Concerto for Piano and orchestra no. 2 in G minor, op. 22

Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto no. 2 was written in the space of seventeen days in the spring of 1868 and was premiered on May 13 of that year in Paris. It was composed at the request of Anton Rubinstein, also a great pianist, who was establishing a second career as a conductor and wanted a new work to conduct. Saint-Saens himself was the soloist, as he was for the premieres of all five of his concertos. Rubinstein and Saint-Saens were close friends who often traded roles as pianist and conductor in performances. Saint-Saens said that they "made music with passion simply for the sake of making it" and that it was in working with Rubinstein that he acquired his final education as a conductor.

The concerto clearly was written to display Saint-Saens' brilliant technique on the piano. The first movement opens with a cadenza for the soloist and the last two movements are both rapid and graceful. As a pianist, Saint-Saens was noted for a clear, dry touch and a tendency towards speed. Some called his dynamic palette restricted, and he was not known for emotional displays. Instead, his playing was poised, graceful, and clean. He made a revealing statement of both his approach to composition and to performance: "What gives Sebastian Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression. As high as their expression may soar, their musical form remains supreme and all-sufficient."

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

Symphony no. 1 in D major "Titan"

Gustav Mahler made his living as a conductor. He knew the orchestra intimately both as composer and as conductor, and his approach to both roles was similar – as Steinberg has said, it was “passionate, personal, electrifying….he never came down on the side of caution.”

At the time Mahler wrote the First Symphony, he was also writing his famous song cycle, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer). The impetus for both may have been a tempestuous affair with a singer from the opera where he was conducting. One commentator has noted that Mahler was usually involved with a soprano from the opera house wherever he was! Melodies from the song cycle are also heard in the symphony.

"A symphony should be a world." This statement by Mahler is the key to his symphonic works. In them are combined the most diverse of elements, from simple children's songs to the most complex of contrapuntal passages. Passages of extraordinary intensity are interrupted by almost banal and trite melodies. The critics of his own time often found this disconcerting; but the listener who is able to hear past the seeming incongruities to the larger union of elements will find unique rewards and visions of the human condition. Indeed, Mahler has become almost a cult figure in recent decades.
The first movement opens with a sustained note against which the interval of a falling fourth emerges as the main motive of the entire symphony. The direction from Mahler at this point is "Wie ein Naturlaut," usually translated as "like a sound of nature," or sometimes "like a primeval sound." In explaining this marking Mahler later said: "That nature embraces everything that is at once awesome, magnificent, and loveable, nobody seems to grasp. . . . Nobody seems to think of the mighty underlying mystery, the God Dionysus, the Great Pan; and just that mystery is the meaning of my phrase "Wie ein Naturlaut." Like many other artists of his generation, Mahler was conscious of Nietzsche's views on the importance of the Dionysian (frenzied, abandoned) element as well as the Apollonian (balanced, calm) element in arts. His music runs this full gamut.

The main theme of the first movement which emerges after the lengthy introduction is from a song by Mahler whose opening words are "This morning I went across the meadow." It sets the generally simple and pastoral mood of the opening movement.

The second movement is a vigorous Austrian Ländler - a sort of peasant waltz, very heavy-footed. The dance is interrupted by a lyrical middle section and then returns.

By far the most obvious example of Mahler's juxtaposition of disparate elements is the third movement. It is a funeral march which takes as its unlikely theme the familiar melody "Frère Jacques" ("Are you sleeping Brother John?"). The only changes made are in the tempo, which is slowed down considerably, and the mode, which is changed from major to minor. A clearer example of romantic irony could scarcely be found. Mahler said that the initial impetus for the movement came from a woodcut commonly found in children's books in Austria of "The Hunter's Funeral Procession." It shows the casket containing the hunter being escorted by a motley collection of animals carrying torches. The mock serious nature of the engraving carries over into the music. The funeral march is interrupted by banal, almost derisive, melodies, occasionally marked by unusual dissonances. Yet underlying all the mocking irony lurk unexpected glimpses of true tragedy. In the middle section Mahler quotes from another of the songs from the Wayfarer cycle a passage whose words in the original song speak of peace at the end of a long journey, with some implication that this peace is death.

The last movement Mahler initially entitled "Dall'Inferno al Paradiso" - From the Inferno to Paradise. It opens with an extraordinary cry from the depths. By the end, as it progresses through a wild diversity of moods, it has synthesized the entire symphony, both figuratively in the summation of moods and literally in the recalling of various themes from early movements. It ends finally with a section marked triumphal, thus continuing the nineteenth-century tradition of beginning a symphony in tragedy and ending in joyful resolution.

Mahler began work on this Symphony as early as 1884. Its first performance was in 1889 in Budapest. Afterwards it underwent extensive revision, with the final version dating from about 1892 - 1893.

October 2011

Carlos López Buchardo
Born October 12, 1881, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Died April 21, 1948, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Escenas Argentinas

López Buchardo studied piano and violin in his native Argentina and composition with Albert Roussel in Paris. He was a founder of the National Conservatory in Buenos Aires in 1924 and taught there as well as at the University of La Plata. Part of a group of Argentine composers who sought to include the popular and folk music of Argentina into the European art music tradition, he was an important influence on many young composers, among them the now better-known Alberto Ginastera.

Escenas Argentinas was composed in 1919-20 and premiered in Buenos Aires by the Vienna Philharmonic under Felix Weingartner while that orchestra was on a South American tour. The first movement depicts a celebration occurring after the branding of cattle and also a pair of lovers trying to find some time for themselves during the feast. The second movement is called "Arroyo," presumably during a time when it has water in it! The last movement includes habanera rhythms characteristic of many Spanish and South American idioms, in this case those of a type of milonga, a predecessor of the tango. The score calls for a large orchestra for which the composer writes skillfully.

Joaquín Rodrigo
Born November 22 1901, Sagunto, Spain
Died July 6 1999, Madrid, Spain

Concierto de Aranjuez

Justifiably Rodrigo's best-known work, and probably the best-known of any guitar concerti, this work pays homage to Andalucia and its flamenco tradition. The second movement was used in Miles Davis's famous Sketches of Spain jazz album; it is the most often heard. The origins of this movement lay in Rodrigo’s sadness over the miscarriage of his first child and the near death of his wife in the wake of the miscarriage. According to Sharon Isbin, a guitarist who became well-acquainted with Rodrigo and his family, “Rodrigo returned from the hospital in despair, mourning the loss of his child and unsure if his wife was going to live or die. He was unable to sleep, so he sat at the piano and began to play, and what emerged was this beautiful theme, which became the slow movement of the concerto. He titled it Concierto de Aranjuez because Aranjuez is where he and his wife had taken their honeymoon.”

The first and last movements demonstrate the shifting two-beat and three-beat accents that we associate so strongly with Spanish music. Written in 1939, the concerto was premiered in Barcelona in 1940 by guitarist Refino Sainz de la Maza. Rodrigo said of it: "It would be unjust to expect strong sonorities from the Concierto; they would falsify its essence and distort an instrument made for subtle ambiguities. Its strength is to be found in its very lightness and in the intensity of its contrast. The Aranjuez Concierto is meant to sound like the hidden breeze that stirs the treetops in the parks, and it should be only as strong as a butterfly...." Aranjuez is a small town south of Madrid; since the mid-eighteenth century, it was a summer home to the Spanish royalty. Rodrigo said that in writing the Concierto he envisioned the town in the early nineteenth century.

Hector Berlioz
Born December 11, 1803, Cote-Saint-Andre, Isere, France
Died March 8, 1869, Paris, France

Symphonie Fantastique

The Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz is a quintessentially romantic work. As a "program symphony" it is intended to express a more or less explicit story, which was provided in a printed program (hence the term “program music”). It resulted from the young composer’s love for an English Shakespearian actress, Harriet Smithson. Written in 1830, when the composer was still a student at the Paris Conservatory, it premiered on December 5 of that year. Berlioz sent the program to the newspapers to be printed in order to attract as much attention as possible.
In the supposedly autobiographical story, the young lover, rejected by his loved one, attempts suicide with opium. The work is of course not truly autobiographical. At the time of its writing, Berlioz had not even met Smithson. Instead it is a series of imagined scenes.

Berlioz’s own written program included the following descriptions:
“A young musician of morbidly sensitive temperament and fiery imagination poisons himself with opium in a fit of lovesick despair. The dose of the narcotic, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a deep slumber accompanied by the strangest visions, during which his sensations, his emotions, his memories are transformed in his sick mind into musical thoughts and images. The loved one herself has become a melody to him, an idée fixe as it were, that he encounters and hears everywhere."

I. Reveries, Passions . "He recalls first that soul-sickness, those intimations of passion, those seemingly groundless depressions and elations that he experienced before he first saw the woman he loves; then the volcanic love that she suddenly inspired in him, his frenzied anguish, his jealous furies, his returns to tenderness, his religious consolations.”

II. A Ball. "He meets his beloved again during the tumult of a brilliant fete."

III. Scene in the Country. "On a summer evening in the country, he hears two shepherds piping back and forth to each other a ranz des vaches (traditional tune played by Swiss shepherds to call their flocks); this pastoral duet, the scenery, the quiet rustling of the trees gently stirred by the wind, some prospects of hope he has recently found—all combine to sooth his heart with unaccustomed calm, and lend a more smiling color to his thoughts. But she appears again, he feels a tightening in his heart, painful presentiments disturb him—what if she were to deceive him? One of the shepherds takes up his simple tune again; the other no longer answers. The sun sets—distant roll of thunder—solitude—silence."

IV. March to the Execution. "He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned to death and is being led to execution. The procession moves forward to the sound of a march that is now somber and wild, now brilliant and solemn, in which the muffled sound of heavy steps gives way without transition to the noisiest clamor. At the end, the idée returns for a moment, like one last thought of love interrupted by the death blow."

V. Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath. "He sees himself at the Sabbath, in the midst of a frightful troop of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every kind, come together for his funeral. Strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries which other cries seem to answer. The beloved melody appears again, but it has lost its character of nobility and shyness; it is no more than a dance tune, base, trivial, grotesque: it is she, coming to join the Sabbath.—A roar of joy at her arrival.—She takes part in the devilish orgy.—Funeral knell, burlesque parody of the Dies irae." The Dies irae quotes the melody of the chant accompanying the text "Day of wrath" in the Latin Requiem Mass.

November 2011

Hector Berlioz
Born December 11, 1803, Cote-Saint-Andre, Isere, France
Died March 8, 1869, Paris, France

Roman Carnival Overture

Berlioz’s "Roman Carnival Overture" was written to serve as the overture to the second act of his opera Benvenuto Cellini. The opera itself was premiered in 1838, but the second act overture was a later idea, written in 1843 and premiered in Paris in 1844 under the composer’s baton.

The initial performance of the opera had been an almost total failure, a fact which Berlioz attributed to the poor job done by the conductor, Francois Habeneck. A particular thorn in the composer’s side was Habeneck’s inability to take the saltarello in the second act at a fast enough tempo. This saltarello ( a fast dance), along with material from an aria in the first act, provides the material for the overture.

The first performance of the overture was a rousing success. Berlioz described it gleefully: "...Habeneck happened to be in the green-room [back-stage room] of the Hertz concert-hall the evening that this overture was to be played for the first time. He had heard that we had rehearsed it in the morning without the wind instruments, part of the band having been called off for the National Guard. 'Good!' said he to himself. 'There will certainly be a catastrophe at his concert this evening. I must be there.' On my arrival, indeed, I was surrounded in the orchestra by all the wind players, who were in terror at the idea of having to play an overture of which they did not know a note. 'Don’t be afraid,' I said. 'The parts are correct; you all know your jobs; watch my baton as often as you can, count your bars correctly, and it will be all right.' Not a single mistake occurred. I launched the allegro in the whirlwind time of the Trasteverine dancers. The public cried 'Bis [encore]!' We played the overture over again; it was even better done the second time. And as I passed back through the green-room, where Habeneck stood looking a little disappointed, I just tossed these few words at him: 'That is how it ought to go!', to which he took care to make no reply."

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

Concerto for 2 pianos K. 365 (316a)

This Concerto for two pianos was written at almost the same time as Mozart's Symphony no. 32 heard earlier this season. Mozart had returned to Salzburg, having been unsuccessful in finding a position elsewhere, and was unhappily employed as part of the Archbishop's musical establishment. There is evidence that the Mozart family presented a number of private concerts during this time, and it is likely that this concerto was presented on one of these occasions. The second piano part was probably played by his sister Maria Anna Mozart (called "Nannerl" by the family). She was an excellent pianist who had toured with her brother until she was about 19 years old. Though she remained in Salzburg rather than accompanying her brother on his tours after that time, she was active as a pianist and recognized for her ability. Her father called her "one of the most skilful pianists in Europe," and the equality of the parts shows her ability.

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

Symphony no. 2 in D major, op. 73

All of the Brahms Symphonies are mature works; the first Symphony was written when Brahms was in his early forties and premiered in 1876. The Second Symphony followed very soon after, premiering on December 30, 1877, in a performance by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter. It was enthusiastically received and the third movement was repeated in response to encore requests.

The first and second Symphonies relate to each other as night and day. Against the seriousness and tragic conflict of the first Symphony, the second seems sunny, bright, and open. It is often called his "Pastorale" Symphony from the similarity in mood to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, the "Pastorale."

Brahms did most of the work on the Symphony during the summer of 1877 at Pörtschach, a summer resort village on Lake Wörth in Austria. He wrote to friends: "Pörtschach is an exquisite spot, and I have found a lovely, and apparently, pleasant abode in the Castle! You may tell everybody just this; it will impress them. But I may add in parentheses that I have only two rooms in the housekeeper's quarters. They could not get my piano up the stairs, it would have burst the walls." The beauty of the setting perhaps had some influence on the mood of the work. Brahms said that in the village the air was so full of melodies that he had to "be careful not to tread on them." His close friend, Billroth, said of the Symphony:"It is all rippling streams, blue sky, sunshine and cool green shadows."

Malcolm MacDonald, one of Brahms' biographers, however views this "sunny" nature as only a surface. Calling it the "darkest of the major key symphonies," he says: "The Symphony's very broad designs, the intricately forking paths of development, allow a constant play of light and shade; and we glimpse the light as if from the heart of a forest, where we must perforce stray through some very tenebrous regions." As always, each listener brings a unique perspective to the music!

The Symphony's simple three-note opening in the low strings is the motive which generates almost everything else. But it does so in ways so subtle that they are rarely revealed on a first listening. What is likely to stand out more is the beauty of the lyrical melodies, particularly in the first and second movements; the lovely folk-like melody of the third movement; and the obvious joy of the last movement. About the last movement, MacDonald says it "begins in sotto voce twilight, with grey, misty motion that could bring forth anything. What it eventually reveals is the blazing sunrise of the most athletic and ebulliently festive movement Brahms ever wrote, a virtuoso celebration of sheer orchestral power without parallel in his output. . . "

In writing about the Symphony to friends Brahms was coy, one minute characterizing his new work as frothy, another speaking of it as tragic and lugubrious. The trombones play an important role in the moments when darkness comes into play, and Brahms himself said of a trombone passage in the first movement, “I would have to confess that I am, by the by, a severely melancholic person, that black wings are constantly flapping above us….”

Though the success of the Symphony in its premiere in Vienna was gratifying to Brahms, the performance which occurred the following year in Hamburg, Germany, was probably the most satisfactory. Hamburg was his hometown and the occasion was the fiftieth anniversary of its orchestra. The Hamburg musical community had always regarded Brahms with some disfavor because of his relatively low-class origins. Twice Brahms had applied for the post of conductor there and twice he had been passed over. Indeed, he initially had refused to return for the celebration; but at the last minute he changed his mind and went to enjoy an especially sweet total success with the Second Symphony.

January 2012

Johann Sebastian Bach
Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach, Germany
Died July 28, 1750, Leipzig, Germany

Concerto for two violins, strings and continuo in D minor BWV 1043

Bach worked as organist, violinist, and composer throughout his career. One job in particular that involved him in instrumental composition was the time he spent in Cöthen between 1717 and 1723. Many music historians ascribe the two-violin concerto to those years. However, the years he spent in Leipzig working at the St. Thomas Church from 1723 to his death in 1750 were not exclusively involved with liturgical music, though that was his main job. For part of his time there he was also the director of the Collegium Musicum, a group of musicians who met weekly to present performances in a coffee house. It is almost certain that this concerto was played at one of these performances, thought it is unclear whether it was newly-written or simply re-worked. Wherever and whenever it was written, it is a concerto whose popularity is well-deserved. The interaction of the two violin parts shows Bach's skill as a composer both in the very active outer movements and the particularly beautiful slow movement.

Russell Peck
Born January 25, 1945 Detroit, Michigan
Died March 1, 2009 Greensboro, North Carolina

The Glory and the Grandeur - Concerto for Percussion Trio

Russell Peck studied composition with a number of important teachers including Clark Eastham, Leslie Bassett, Ross Lee Finney, Gunther Schuller, and George Rochberg. A native of Detroit, he received his doctoral degree in composition from the University of Michigan and he later became a Ford Foundation composer-in-residence for Indianapolis. Describing his influences, he said his father "wanted me to be a composer like Beethoven, even if, of course, far inferior. Another influence in my youth was Motown Records, then in its Detroit heyday. I loved it. It inspired me just as the great composers did. In sum, my musical beginnings were in Mozart and Motown." His compositions have been widely played and recorded. The Glory and the Grandeur was commissioned by the Greensboro Symphony which performed the premiere in 1988; Peck based the new composition on one of his earlier works for percussion ensemble called Lift-Off. The opening is indeed a rousing lift-off. Featuring three percussionists from the El Paso Symphony the work is visually exciting as well as musically interesting and has brought from reviewers such words as "evocative" and a "thrilling roller coaster ride." Peck himself, in notes for a recording, emphasized the importance of live performance. "I'll admit that the Glory and the Grandeur, like my other music, is really designed to have greatest impact as a concert experience. In the creative process I don't imagine pure sound; I imagine myself seated in the audience at the actual premiere. Recording is wonderful for many purposes and makes an abstraction of the sound, which has certain advantages. Yet for me nothing compares with hearing and seeing orchestral musicians on stage making music live with all its drama and immediacy."

Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky
Born May 7, 1840, Votinsk, District of Viatka, Russia
Died November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg, Russia

Symphony No. 5 in E minor, op. 64

Tchaikovsky had one of the greatest gifts for melody of any composer. Even listeners who may never have heard the Fifth Symphony are likely to discover that they have heard some of its main themes, for these themes have been repeatedly arranged for other contexts.

These themes become part of a much larger structure which, quite consciously on Tchaikovsky's part, has Fate as it subject—confrontation with Fate and, through acceptance of it, final victory (at least according to some listeners). Others hear in the ending the triumph of fate over man. The theme heard at the opening is the Fate motive; in various guises it will appear in every movement. It is especially prominent in the first and fourth movements; the second and third movements seem to seek to escape it, with the famous love theme in the second movement and the waltz theme in the third. In these two movements, the interruptions of the fate motive seem rather ominous. But in the last movement the motive, originally in the minor mode, bursts forth in the brightness of the major mode, and the general mood becomes triumphant.

Throughout the time in which he was writing this symphony, the summer of 1888, Tchaikovsky was tormented by self-doubt. He became convinced that he was "written-out," that his great works were all behind him, and expressed this thought to Madame von Meck, his patroness, in a letter: " I am trying with difficulty to squeeze a symphony out of my poor tortured brain. I shall work hard, for I want very much to prove that I am not yet written out. Often I ask myself, 'Isn't it time to stop writing music? Haven't I overstrained my imagination?'" Not even its full success at its premiere in November 1888, which Tchaikovsky conducted, convinced him of its worth. He felt the audience was applauding the memory of his past works rather than the work then before them. "I have come to the conclusion that it is a failure. The applause and ovations were for my other works. This Symphony will never please. Perhaps I am all done, as they say." He even went so far as to call the work "insincere;" but gradually after further successes in conducting it in Germany, he came to feel that perhaps it was not so bad after all. Today it is one of his most frequently played works.

Tchaikovsky found himself caught between two camps. In his native Russia, he was viewed by the new generation of nationalistic composers with suspicion and even disdain, because he continued to write in the style of the predominantly German romantic mainstream. This meant that he wrote abstract symphonies in traditional forms rather than the programmatic works of the younger composers. But German musicians were also pulling Tchaikovsky in a direction in which he did not want to go: the Chairman of the Board of the Hamburg Philharmonic Society, begged him to settle in Hamburg so that he could be fully converted from “Russian savagery” to more civilized music composition. This symphony is dedicated to this man, but Tchaikovsky ignored his invitations and suggestions. The Symphony no. 5 indeed seems quite Russian in effect.

February 2012

John Adams
Born February 15, 1947, Worcester, Massachusetts

The Chairman Dances

"The Chairman Dances" comes from John Adams' opera Nixon in China. In the operatic scene Madame Mao has crashed a state banquet in the Great Hall in Beijing. Gesturing to the orchestra to play, she dances in provocative costume and Mao steps down from his portrait on the wall to dance with her. It is a dream-like scene evoking memories of youth. The substantial orchestral version of the music was written in 1985 and was premiered by the Milwaukee Symphony under the baton of Lukas Foss on January 31, 1986. Many of the traits of minimalism are exhibited by this work; particularly obvious are the basic building blocks of short repetitive ostinatos. The music alternately builds tension in long crescendos and backs away. It ends quietly as the dream seems to fade away.

Jean Sibelius
Born December 8, 1865, Tavastehus, Finland
Died September 20, 1957, Jarvenpaa, Finland

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor, op. 47

Jean Sibelius came from a family of musicians and did not at first stand out from any of the rest of the family as more talented. He studied the violin from the age of fourteen and initially wanted to become a concertizing virtuoso violinist. He later told a friend: "I wanted to be a celebrated violinist at any price. From the age of fifteen, I played my violin for ten years practically from morning to night. I hated pen and ink and, unfortunately, preferred an elegant violin bow. My preference for the violin lasted quite long, and it was a very painful awakening when I had to admit that I had begun my training for the exacting career of an eminent performer too late." But this training meant that when he came to writing his Violin Concerto, he could write with a very intimate knowledge of the instrument. It is no accident that the concerto has become a favorite with modern performers; it is a soloist's concerto with the orchestra playing a clearly subordinate role. Initially, though, acceptance of the concerto by violinists was somewhat slow. The great violinist Joachim called it "abominable and boring." (Sibelius responded by saying that Joachim was out of touch with the times!)

The concerto was probably initially conceived for the violinist Willy Burmester, the concertmaster of the Helsinki Orchestra in Finland. But he was unable to do the concerto at the time that Sibelius wanted it played in Finland and a lesser violinist struggled through the first performance on February 8, 1904; it was not well-received. Burmester wanted to do it the following autumn, but Sibelius withdrew the work for revision. When he sent the revision to be published, the publisher asked that it be premiered in Berlin, and the solo part was given to the Berlin concertmaster, Karl Halir. Burmester was insulted and refused to play the concerto at all after being ignored twice. The premiere of the final version of the concerto was given in October 1905. Richard Strauss was the conductor, and Sibelius was impressed that three rehearsals were allowed before the performance. Strauss was attracted by Sibelius' music and said: "Sibelius is the only Scandinavian composer who has real depth. Though he lacks a total mastery of instrumentation, his music has a freshness that presupposes a virtually inexhaustible fund of melodic invention."

Antonin Dvořák
Born September 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, Czech Republic
Died May 1, 1904, Prague, Czech Republic

Symphony No. 9 in E minor, op. 95 "From the New World"

In 1891 Dvořák was invited to come to the United States. The invitation, issued by Mrs. Jenette Thurber, founder of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, was for Dvořák to become director of this conservatory for a period of two or three years. Dvořák accepted the invitation, arriving in New York in September of 1892. It is worth noting that he was helped in making his decision by the fact the New York at this time had a large Czech population. Dvořák’s discovery of the small Iowa town of Spilville, whose population of about 300 at the time was almost entirely Czech, helped him to deal with his dislike of New York itself by spending summers in Spilville.

Even in his native Czechoslovakia, Dvořák disliked the larger cities. His place for rest was a "country place" at Vyosoka. This was a simple shepherd's cottage where Dvořák spent the time from spring to autumn away from big cities and from touring as conductor and composer. And it was here that he was happiest, near the country-side and forest, making nightly trips to the inn for conversation with peasants and miners. In the United States, his visits to Spilville served the same purpose; he played the organ or directed the choir at the local Catholic church every Sunday he was there.

One of Dvořák's students at the Conservatory was Henry T. Burleigh, a Negro baritone, arranger and songwriter. Dvořák often prevailed upon Burleigh to sing for him Negro melodies and spirituals. Indeed Dvořák was later to say: "I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition to be developed in the United States. When first I came here, I was impressed by the idea, and it has developed into a settled conviction. These beautiful and varied themes are a product of the soil. They are American and your composers must turn to them."

Dvořák was also fascinated by American Indian music. At the time of the premiere of this Symphony on December 16, 1893 there was avid discussion of whether or not Dvořák used Indian and Negro melodies in the work. Dvořák attempted to lay these statements to rest when he spoke about "...that nonsense about my having made use of ‘Indian’ and ‘American’ themes—that is a lie. I tried to write only in the spirit of those American melodies." The sub-title "From the New World" was not attached to the Symphony until several months after its completion, but it is Dvořák's own title. The note which he wrote for the program of the premiere by the New York Philharmonic was: “On his arrival in America the composer was deeply impressed by the conditions peculiar to this country and the spirit of which they were the outward manifestation. In continuing his activity he found that the works which he created here were essentially different from those which had sprung into existence in his native country. They were clearly influenced by the new surroundings and by the new life of which these were the material evidence.”

For all the discussion of the American elements in the Symphony, Dvořák remained a Czech, and elements of the Czech music which was the fountainhead of his creativity also abound in the music. Some have called his attention to Black and Native American music “opportunist” and it has to be admitted that his acquaintance with Native American traditions and music was quite meager. Likewise Dvořák’s acquaintance with black music depended primarily on a single person. But whatever the sources, the symphony became one of the most popular in the literature. As Robert Layton has said, it “has an indestructible freshness, and an inexhaustible directness that enables it to withstand intensive exposure and emerge unscathed.” Johannes Brahms admired the symphony, saying to a friend that while he certainly would have written it differently, “…it is so unspeakably gifted, so healthy, that one must rejoice in it.”

April 2012

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka
Born June 1, 1804, near Smolensk, Russia
Died February 15, 1857, Berlin, Germany

Overture to Russlan und Ludmilla

Mikhail Glinka is considered the father of the Russian nationalist movement of the nineteenth century. Though actually educated for a political career, he studied music in both Russia and Italy, and ultimately turned to music rather than politics. Russlan and Ludmilla, his second opera, premiered in December 1842. The libretto by Pushkin was based on Russian folk tales. Russlan is a suitor for Princess Ludmilla's hand. She has been abducted by an evil wizard and later by a wicked fairy. Both times, after considerable struggle, Russlan rescues her; one can only hope she was worth all the trouble! The themes used in the overture come from the scenes of rejoicing at the wedding of the two lovers at the end of the opera. Glinka's use of folksong was very influential with later Russian composers; some of the melodies used in the opera have been traced to Caucasian, Arabian, Persian, Finnish, and Turkish sources.

Edward Elgar
Born June 2, 1857, Worcester, England
Died Feb. 23, 1934, Worcester, England

Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in E minor, op. 85

Poverty forced Elgar to be primarily self-taught, though he longed for the chance for regular study. He left school at fifteen in order to earn his way. His early career was spent in Worcester, his home town, eking out a living as a violinist and organist and working in his father's music store. Ultimately he played violin with the Worcester and Birmingham Symphonies and succeeded his father as organist at St. George Cathedral in Worcester.

His years as an orchestral player gave him a particularly strong ear for orchestral sound; musical ideas often came to him with orchestral color already attached. A friend said: "I do not think he ever altered or modified any single note of anything he had once set down in the score . . . Nothing in his own work ever surprised him when he heard it coming from the orchestra, or choir and orchestra, for the first time: he just knew how it would sound, and was never disappointed."

The Cello Concerto was to be Elgar's last major work, though the remaining fifteen years of his life saw the composition of a number of smaller works. Begun in 1918 at the end of World War I, it was initially not conceived as a concerto but rather as an orchestral work. When Elgar returned to it in 1919 he recast it as a cello concerto. Asked to describe it, he said it was "a man's attitude toward life." Others have called it his "war requiem" dominated by sorrow. It was "such a concerto of isolation, loneliness, farewell even, as had never yet been written" wrote J. N. Moore. "The requiem here is not so much for the dead in Flanders' fields as for the destruction of a way of life" says Michael Kennedy. The work is in four movements with the first two and last two played without pause. The last movement seems to start as a happy ending but gradually slows into a return of themes from the slow movement. This return is followed by a rapid rush to the end "in almost indecent haste as if too much has been revealed" observes Kennedy.

The Concerto was premiered on the first post-war concert by the London Symphony. Elgar conducted and Felix Salmond was the cellist. The critic Ernest Newman wrote it was "lovely stuff, very simple  that pregnant simplicity that has come upon Elgar's music in the last couple of years  but with a profound wisdom and beauty underlying its simplicity . . . the realization in tone of a fine spirit's lifelong wistful brooding upon the loveliness of earth."

Wojciech Kilar
Born July 17, 1932, Lvov, Poland [now in Ukraine]

Krzesany

Though he is not so well-known outside Poland, Wojciech Kilar is a prolific composer; in addition to concert music he has been an active composer of film music, including working with such figures as Frances Ford Coppola and Roman Polanski. The tone poem that will be heard tonight is probably the best known of his compositions. Supposed to be inspired by the Polish mountains, it is a work full of contrasts which features especially the string section. The contrasts in dissonance and consonance are striking from the dramatic opening to the peasant dance-like section that ultimately brings it to an abrupt ending. As his countryman, clarinetist and conductor Jan Jakub Bokum has said, "The music in Krzesany, romantic in spirit, yet dressed in a contemporary language of sound, speaks to us in a musical language used by 19th-century composers."

Sergei Prokofiev
Born April 23, 1891, Sontsovka, Ekaterinoslav
Died March 4, 1953, Moscow

Suite from Romeo and Juliet, op. 64

Getting the ballet Romeo and Juliet to stage was a long process for Prokofiev. He was first approached about setting the Romeo and Juliet story as a ballet in 1934 by Radlov of the Leningrad ballet. However, in the aftermath of the assassination of Kirov, Radlov was removed from his position and the signed contract for the work was broken. In 1935 the Bolshoi of Moscow contracted with Prokofiev for the ballet, but again the contract was broken after the ballet had actually gone into preliminary rehearsals. The piano score was finished on September 8, 1935. With the ballet finished, and no performance in sight, Prokofiev arranged two suites from the music in 1936. The world premiere of the First Suite was given in November, 1936 in Moscow, the Second Suite in Leningrad in early 1937. Tonight's performance will include excerpts from both suites.

The full ballet was finally staged in Czechoslovakia on December 30, 1938. On January 11, 1940 the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad gave the first Russian performance. The dancers complained bitterly about the complexity of the score and a number of changes were made in the music against Prokofiev's wishes. All the parties involved were so angry that they were publicly predicting a disaster; the great success of this Leningrad performance came as a total surprise. In the spring of 1941 the production was taken to Moscow. The ballerina who danced the role of Juliet, Ulanova, told a characteristic story about the composer at a party after the Moscow performance: "I was very embarrassed when Prokofiev asked me to dance. It was a very ordinary foxtrot, but ... [he] seemed always to be hearing some rhythm of his own, somehow stepping 'out of the rhythm of the music,' somehow lagging behind. I got confused, fell out of step and was afraid I wouldn't be able to find the rhythm, that I would step on my partner's toes, lose the beat--in a word, reveal that I couldn't dance at all. But the dance gradually gathered momentum, and I started to feel confident and free. At last, I caught my partner's unusual and utterly marvelous rhythm. The evening passed in a very friendly manner."

Prokofiev said that he had “taken special pains to achieve a simplicity which will reach the hearts of all listeners.” The music you will hear tonight shows that he was successful in this effort, in spite of the difficulties the dancers had initially with the complex rhythms.