classics finale

Saturday, May 5, 2012 - 8 pm
Christopher Cohan Center, San Luis Obispo
Featuring Norman Krieger, Piano

Tickets: $18-$68
Call (805) 756-2787

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) - Overture to La clemenza di Tito, K. 621 (1791)

Americans have grown accustomed to casual mealtimes; in many households, the routine of a regular family dinner hour is long forgotten.  Nevertheless, some formal dining rituals remain, such as the traditional Thanksgiving dinner: out come the fabric napkins and tablecloth, the silver is polished, the china is set out, and dinner guests often come clad in jacket and tie.  Similarly, during a royal coronation, old rituals often supersede more modern practices—and this was certainly true when Emperor Leopold II was crowned monarch of Bohemia in 1791.  For the occasion, the Bohemian nobility (known as the “Estates”) did not want a new-fangled opera buffa (comic opera); instead, they felt the older, stately opera seria (serious opera) would strike the right tone—and a venerable fifty-year-old story about the remarkable mercy of Emperor Titus (La clemenza di Tito) would be the right libretto.

Just as one gathers the choicest ingredients for one’s Thanksgiving feast, the Estates sent the impresario Domenico Guardasoni to Vienna, where he hired Mozart as composer.  Guardasoni was also ordered to obtain the best Italian singers possible, including a castrato.  The sound of male sopranos—castrated before puberty to preserve their high vocal range—had long since faded in popularity within “modern” operas, but the tone color was another traditional feature of the old-fashioned opera seria.  Understandably, Mozart wasn’t thrilled about writing such out-of-date material, but the commission from the Estates was quite generous, and his financial circumstances were increasingly dire.  But, just as a fine chef rises above the tedium of “turkey AGAIN!” and experiments with innovative seasoning, Mozart found himself adding those small, special touches that always seem to distinguish his works.

The Mozartean gift is apparent even in the opera’s overture, finished at dawn on the day La clemenza di Tito was to premiere.  Although Mozart did not borrow directly from the aria melodies he had written for the singers, it is easy to believe that he had the opera’s overall plot in mind: the opening fanfare sounds noble and majestic, and it is followed by various energetic themes that intertwine in complicated ways.  A portion of the overture is particularly stormy and dramatic, much as the opera contains intrigue and peril.  The noble fanfare returns, followed by general exultation, again resembling the joyous celebration after Titus performs his final generous act of clemency.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)—Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 19 (1795) 

Most aspiring young stage actors in the United States set their sights on Broadway, since that theater district has long been viewed as America’s finest training ground.  For most European musicians in the late eighteenth century, the “Big Apple” was Vienna, where the Hapsburgs ruled over the powerful Austrian empire.  Mozart spent the last decade of his life in Vienna, and all of Haydn’s last works were written there.  A not-quite-22-year-old Beethoven, therefore, headed straight to Vienna in November 1792 when Haydn made it clear that he would be willing to teach the young man. For a while, Beethoven kept a diary, and it is no surprise to learn that one of his first tasks in the metropolis was to rent a piano (costing six florins and forty kreuzers).  What may come as a surprise is that the instrument he rented was not the 88-key piano we know today; instead, it contained only 61 keys, and it did not yet have the iron frame that would become the norm in the nineteenth century.  In short, the instrument that Beethoven was using was much closer to the pianos that Mozart had known—and, thus, Beethoven’s first keyboard works were also closer in spirit to those of Mozart than to the titanic pieces that Beethoven would compose later in his life. Indeed, when Beethoven began work on his earliest piano concertos in the 1780s, Mozart was still alive.

Beethoven brought the manuscript of one of those first concertos with him from Bonn to Vienna, where he kept tinkering with it; he used it for his public debut in Vienna in 1795, but he then kept revising it until 1801, when he published it at last.  However, this Piano Concerto in B-flat is called Beethoven’s second piano concerto, because, in the meantime, he had already delivered another concerto to a printer, and that work had been given the “No. 1” designation. 

Shadows of both Mozart and Beethoven can be found in the B-flat concerto. The relaxed graciousness of the orchestral opening seems fully Mozartean, but after the piano enters, Beethoven begins to steer the ensemble into some unexpected harmonies, including a passage in D-flat major, a tonality that musicians know is far, far away from B-flat major. 

The second movement again evokes Mozart with its opening “floating” quality, but here, too, Beethoven’s touch is evident in the sudden surges in the volume.  Moreover, near the end of the “Adagio,” in a passage marked ‘Con gran espressione’ (With great expressiveness), Beethoven directs the pianist to hold down the sustaining pedal continuously for ten bars, creating a soft wash of sound that resembles twentieth-century impressionism far more than anything Mozart wrote.

The closing “Rondo” is the most Beethovenian movement, and it was one of the newest aspects of the concerto, having been a complete substitution for an earlier finale. Its bouncy refrain is filled with off-beat syncopations, meaning that our tapping feet stumble over themselves as they try to keep up with the energetic romp.

Johannes Brahms (1833¬–1897)—Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 (1877) 

When Brahms was born, Beethoven had been dead for six years, but his influential nine symphonies lived on.  It took Brahms a long, long time to work up the courage to attempt his own first symphony, and he labored on it for almost fifteen years; he was 43 years old when it made its premiere in 1876.  In general, the reception to Brahms’s first orchestral effort was very favorable.  Buoyed by the positive response, Brahms moved to the remote Austrian village of Pörtschach-am-Wöthersee during the summer of 1877, where he threw himself into his second symphony.  Work proceeded much more easily this time, and he told Eduard Hanslick, “So many melodies fly about, one must be careful not to step on them.” 

When Brahms began sharing his summer’s achievement, performing the Symphony No. 2 in D Major on the piano for close friends, the response was immediate and uniform: they loved it.  Clara Schumann noted in her diary that the first movement “greatly delighted me,” adding, “I also heard part of the last movement and am quite overjoyed with it.”  Similarly, Theodor Billroth described the new work as “all rippling streams, blue sky, sunshine, and cool green shadows.  How beautiful it must be at Pörtschach!”  Doubtlessly buoyed by these ecstatic reactions, Brahms seems to have taken some pleasure in trying to fool people who had not yet heard the piece; he told his publisher Fritz Simrock, “The new symphony is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it.  I have not yet written anything quite so sad, so ‘minor-ish’; the score must be printed with a black border,” and he suggested to another friend that the orchestra would need to wear black armbands while performing.

In some ways, Brahms was not teasing at all.  Although the symphony opens with a great deal of warmth, somber overtones are not far away.  Brahms told a friend that he had tried to resist using trombones, but had to yield in order to convey “the black wings [that] flutter constantly over us.” Percussion and low strings add to the dark atmosphere in many places, but the sunny qualities also make repeated appearances, especially in the use of a waltz-like triple meter.  Moreover, the second theme of the “Allegro non troppo” bears a marked resemblance to Brahms’s own Wiegenlied, better known as “Brahms’s Lullaby.” 

Brahms had a special fondness for “inner” voices—those in the alto and tenor range—which may account for the prevalent cello solos in the second movement.  Brahms changes the mood significantly in the third movement; it has an almost irresistible charm, produced by the pizzicato accompaniment and an unexpected shift to a quicksilver “Presto” tempo in the middle of the movement.  (It is no wonder that audiences demanded an encore of the movement at the symphony’s premiere.)  Brahms again mixes sunshine and shadows for the finale; moreover, he shows off nearly every contrapuntal technique he can think of, but with joyful exuberance emerging over and over again.

Copyright 2012 by Dr. Alyson McLamore

suite serenades 

Saturday, February 4, 2012 • 8 pm
Christopher Cohan Center, San Luis Obispo
Featuring Richard Todd, Horn and Christopher M. Cock, Tenor

Tickets: $18-$68
Call (805) 756-2787

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)—Symphony No. 4 in D Major, K. 19 (1765) 

Any parent raising a child is aware of the perils of television—not so much the influence of the programming itself, but rather the inescapable commercials that persuade young consumers that they cannot live unless their parents purchase the advertised item immediately. In short, children are very susceptible to what they see and hear, and the same was true for a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was squired around Europe with his family so he and his sister could display their talents. During an extended stay in England, young Mozart heard many symphonies by composers such as Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel—and it wasn’t long until he insisted on writing symphonies of his own.

Symphony No. 4 in D Major, K. 19, is one of those earliest efforts, and of course, even though Mozart was a child when he composed the piece, it is not a childish work. Mozart employed the same kind of orchestra—two oboes, two horns, and strings—that was used by Bach and Abel, and Mozart also constructed the piece in three movements, just as those older composers were doing. The first movement begins with a striking fanfare, and it contains some appealing (and unexpected) shifts to the minor mode. The “Andante” is relaxed (with the oboes sitting out altogether), perhaps to rest up before the energetic “jig” finale—another typical feature of English taste. 

Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)—Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings, Op. 31 (1943) 

What better way to pass the time when recovering from the measles than by writing a Serenade for two wonderful talents: Britten’s longtime companion Peter Pears and the celebrated young horn player Dennis Brain? Britten chose six wide-ranging English poems and book-ended them with a hollow, eerie horn call. The “Prologue” and “Epilogue” employ only the horn’s natural harmonics, which add to the eerie quality: some of these harmonics sound “out of tune” to our modern ears.

Reflecting the setting sun in “Pastoral,” the voice makes repeated melodic descents, and the horn ‘shadows’ the tenor by echoing a few beats behind. “Nocturne” showcases virtuosic horn-playing during the text ‘Blow, bugle, blow,’ and the tenor's gradual diminuendo underscores the bleak words ‘dying, dying.’ During the opening and conclusion of Blake’s famous “Elegy” (‘Rose, thou art sick’), the horn twists and turns like the fatal worm that is killing the rose. At the end, the horn fluctuates between open and stopped notes, producing an incredible, horrifying manifestation of the evil worm.

The dark mood continues in the ancient “Lyke-Wake Dirge,” with its harrowing incantation of ‘Christ receive your soul.’ The dirge opens with the solo voice, but gradually adds strings that build to a peak, climaxing with a strident, macabre horn fanfare. The horn and strings fade away, leaving the voice all alone again. Christopher Palmer compares this arch to a distant funeral procession that approaches to strike mortal terror into our hearts, and then marches inexorably onward.

In contrast, Jonson's “Hymn” to the goddess Diana celebrates the evening. The tenor and the horn interweave their melodies in a quicksilver display, which Edward Sackville-West—the Serenade’s dedicatee—called “an embroidery of stars.” The horn is silent during the sonnet “To Sleep,” but the tenor and strings evoke the nighttime’s calm beauty.  In the “Epilogue,” the horn plays offstage to frame the piece as it began, fading off in the distance and making the whole Serenade seem like a dream.

WORLD PREMIERE  •  Allegro for Horn & Orchestra, KV494a (1786/2006, rev.2011)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791); Completion by Craig H. Russell (b.1951)

At Mozart’s death, he left behind manuscripts with snippets of themes, abandoned sketches, and unfinished works.  Among these incomplete torsos is a Horn Concerto in E-major (KV 494a).  It begins magnificently but then ends in midstream.  How frustrating.  “Wouldn’t it be grand,” I thought to myself, “if we could hear the whole piece!”  So, in 2006, I decided to try to finish what Mozart had started.  It felt to me as if Mozart had left the ball on the 30-yard-line, and it was my task to see if I could push the whole piece forward and nudge it over the goal line.  As much as possible, I wanted this piece to remain “Mozart’s” and not bear the trace of my own compositional traits or idiosyncrasies.  To be successful, I hoped to make the “Russell” invisible and the “Mozart” highlighted.   I’ll leave it to the audience to see how close I got to that goal.
Mozart’s manuscript pages for this horn concerto are presently housed at the Deutschen Staatsbibliothek Berlin under the call number “Mus. ms. autogr. W. A. Mozart Anh. 98a.”  On the first page, Mozart scribbled out in red ink his title, Concerto a Corno principale (Concerto for a Featured French Horn). The beginning measures are complete and polished in every detail: Mozart has all of the lines written out, and he adds detailed dynamics, bowings, and articulations.  But little by little, and rather early on, the information begins to diminish, until—when the solo horn enters—the accompaniment begins to evaporate altogether.  Soon the horn abruptly stops in mid-phrase.  At that point, I “pick up the ball” and move forward.

The scholarly research of Alan Tyson has shown that Mozart obtained the paper for this work in the spring or summer of 1785, shortly before he began composing The Marriage of Figaro.  For whom did Mozart write this piece?  No one really knows, but there are some believable theories.  The scholar Franz Giegling suggests that this movement may have been destined for Jacob Eisen—the principal hornist for the National Theater in Vienna.  Giegling cites as supporting evidence a letter from Constanze Mozart to Johann Anton André in which she states, “the widow of Jacob Eisen has in her possession a single [Mozart] score for solo horn.”  In the 1960s, Richard Dunn proposed that Mozart might have begun this E-major concerto for Giovanni Punto, the horn soloist who premiered Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante, KV 297b.  A third possible candidate for the potential dedicatee of this concerto would be Joseph Leutgeb for whom Mozart wrote most of those gorgeous horn concertos that we know and love.  Giegling thinks Leutgeb is not a viable candidate and builds a plausible case for his view.  Alfred Einstein thought this E-major concerto movement was probably a middle-movement sketch intended for Mozart’s Concerto in D-major (KV 412), a theory that seems nonsensical to me, since that would produce a pattern with two fast movements plus a rondo—and no slow movement at all.  That structure simply does not match up with any other known Mozart work.  Also, a typical classical concerto in D would never have a contrasting middle movement in the key of E-major.

So, we have several candidates for Mozart’s choice of horn soloist: Eisen? Punto? Leutgeb?  In the end, no one really knows with certainty either the occasion or the person that Mozart had in mind.  But I have my own flawed but enchanting theory—maybe Mozart was simply waiting for Rick Todd to come along and play this concerto!  Certainly, nobody has ever played the horn any better. 

Notes provided by the composer, © 2012 by Dr. Craig H. Russell

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)—Pulcinella Suite (1922)  

Impresario Sergei Diaghilev and composer Igor Stravinsky had launched three tremendous ballets: The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring (which had sparked a riot in 1913). Six years later, Diaghilev enticed Stravinsky to compose yet another dance for the Ballets Russes, promising that Picasso would design the stage sets and costumes. The catch? Diaghilev wanted Stravinsky to adapt various Italian manuscripts by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) and his peers. Diaghilev reasoned that this old music would suit the ballet scenario, which depicted the traditional Italian stock comic characters known as the commedia dell’arte. Stravinsky, initially resistant, got hooked by the Baroque melodies, and he blended the old materials with twentieth-century techniques.  The resulting Pulcinella was Stravinsky's first venture into the style now called “neoclassicism,” and it prompted a whole series of later neoclassic works.

Like Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Pulcinella was later revised as a suite for concert performance. Stravinsky made the adaptation himself, transferring the ballet's unusual three vocal parts to instruments, and incorporating eleven of the eighteen musical sections. Even without dancers, it is still possible to envision the adventures of Pulcinella, an all-too-successful suitor who must use disguises and stratagems to survive the attacks from jealous rivals.

Copyright 2012 by Dr. Alyson McLamore  

  modern masterpieces

Saturday, November 12, 2011 • 8 pm
Christopher Cohan Center, San Luis Obispo
Featuring Roger Wilkie, Violin

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)—Overture to Fidelio (1814)  
By many measures, Bach was more productive than Beethoven: he composed over 1,120 works, while Beethoven generated only around 350.  (Bach also outshone Beethoven in matrimony and parenthood, having wed twice and fathered 20 children; Beethoven never married at all, and if he produced any offspring, posterity has successful suppressed that scandal!)  Beethoven did achieve at least one thing that Bach never accomplished, however: he composed an opera—a genre that Bach never attempted.  Beethoven might have wished that he had followed Bach’s lead, because that one opera, Fidelio, cost Beethoven an awful struggle; over the course of a decade, he developed three different versions of the opera and four different overtures for the work. 

Beethoven’s long labor to perfect his opera reflected how deeply he cared about the subject matter—the triumph of fidelity and love over injustice.  “Fidelio” is the pseudonym of the heroine, Leonore, who disguises herself as a man in order to help free her unjustly imprisoned husband Florestan.  We know from Beethoven’s other works, such as the “Eroica” Symphony, that he felt very strongly about justice and freedom, and he wanted the opera to express those values.  In each revision of the opera, he came closer to achieving his ideals.  However, he decided that the third overture version (called “Leonore No. 3,” using the opera’s original title) gave away too much of the story; the writer Irving Kolodin has quipped, “As a curtain raiser, it almost made the raising of the curtain superfluous.”  So, Beethoven worked hurriedly through the night before the premiere of the opera’s third version to craft the fourth overture, the piece to be played this evening.  This time, Beethoven did not use any of the melodies from the subsequent opera; instead, he juxtaposed two new motifs to avoid the “spoiler”-effect of his earlier attempts.  The full orchestra is showcased much of the time in majestic, often joyful fanfares; the contrasting passages are quieter, with meditative features for the winds.

Max Bruch (1838–1920)—Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 (1866) 

It is a sad case when a piece that brings considerable joy to its listeners also brings considerable grief to its composer, but this was the situation with Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1.  Moreover, the pain resulted from two distinct causes: one was naïveté; the other was betrayal.  The naïveté was simply inexperience; Bruch was still a teenager when he signed a contract with a publisher—not realizing that he should also request royalty payments in addition to the flat fee he was given.  Over the years, then, Bruch experienced sustained irritation when that first concerto soared into popularity and performers chose to play it in preference to his later (and more profitable) compositions. 

The second cause for grief was more hurtful because it arose from dishonesty.  Although Bruch had missed out on years of income from his disadvantageous contract, he did still own the autograph manuscript of the score itself.  During World War I, when his financial situation had grown desperate, he entrusted the score to two American sisters, Rose and Ottile Sutro, who vowed to send him the proceeds from the sale of the score back in the United States.  Bruch went to his death, still waiting for the promised payment, and only after he had died did the sisters send a token amount to Bruch’s heirs—and to add to the insult, the Sutros sent the payment in the form of worthless German paper money, which had been completely devalued during the war.  The Sutros stonewalled the Bruch family, since they had indeed secretly kept the score, and they sold it—thirty years later—to a prominent American collector.

The concerto itself transcends any monetary value, which is evident from the very beginning.  Bruch called the first movement a “Vorspiel” (Prelude), and uses the unconventional opening to give the soloist a series of brief cadenzas before the orchestra’s heart-beat pulse begins.  Those mini-cadenzas later ease the concerto into the “Adagio”—a songlike respite before the fireworks to come in the “Finale.”  The closing movement taxes the soloist in just about every way it can, and the recurring gypsy-like refrain clearly influenced Brahms in his violin concerto. 

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)—Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 82 (1919)  

December 8, 1915, was a national holiday in Finland.  The occasion?  It was the fiftieth birthday of their beloved native son, Jean Sibelius—a level of public recognition enjoyed by very few living composers. Sibelius hastened to finish his Symphony No. 5 in time for a birthday concert in Helsinki; the crowd enjoyed it, but Sibelius was dissatisfied.  He withdrew the symphony and set to work on revisions.  It was not an easy time for Sibelius; he was undergoing a series of fourteen surgeries to treat a misdiagnosis of throat cancer, and a planned performance in Stockholm of the second version was cancelled because of the outbreak of World War I.  Instead, Sibelius arranged for another Finnish performance in December 1916—and again, Sibelius was dissatisfied. Once more, he withdrew the work to make further changes.

The difficult conditions that had prevailed during his first set of revisions must have seemed like a cakewalk in comparison to Sibelius’ environment over the next two years. Russia’s October Revolution in 1917 prompted Finland to declare independence in December, which led to the outbreak of civil war in 1918. When Russian troops stormed Sibelius’s home, he fled with his family to Helsinki, where his psychiatrist brother gave them refuge in his mental hospital by inventing a mock diagnosis that the entire family was “borderline psychotic.”  Sibelius lost forty pounds during their stay.

Despite these horrific challenges, Sibelius arrived at the definitive version of the fifth symphony at last.  It now possessed three movements, not four; Sibelius had merged the first two into one grandiose slow-to-fast progression, and he balanced this greater weight with an expanded finale that reverses the speeds.  The central movement’s theme and variations are an idyllic interlude during the grandeur, but the greatest joy of the symphony is the finale’s magnificent “swan theme,” inspired by the sight of great swans flying over his home.

Copyright 2011 by Dr. Alyson McLamore

Opening Night

Saturday, October 8, 2011 • 8 pm
Christopher Cohan Center, San Luis Obispo
Featuring Robert Edward Thies, Piano

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869)—Overture to Beatrice and Benedict (1862)

The physician Louis-Joseph Berlioz oversaw virtually the entire education of his son Hector, including—probably to his eternal regret—an introduction to a recorder-like instrument called the flageolet.  The younger Berlioz soon developed a lasting passion for music.  Nevertheless, Berlioz agreed to follow his father’s footsteps, and at age seventeen he traveled to Paris to study medicine. Berlioz was quickly sidetracked by the city’s rich musical life, and his medical studies grew more and more neglected, much to his family’s consternation.  Berlioz tried to live a “double life” for several years, but one of the final blows to Berlioz’s doomed medical career came in 1827, when he saw Hamlet performed.  This experience launched dual passions—one for Shakespeare in general, and another for Harriet Smithson, an actress in the production.  (Those who know the background of Berlioz’s most famous work, the Symphonie fantastique, will recognize her as the woman who inspired that macabre program symphony.)

Although Berlioz’s long matrimonial pursuit of Smithson ultimately triumphed, he discovered that the real woman was quite different from the roles she played on stage; their marriage verged on disastrous.  However, Berlioz’s love of Shakespeare never wavered, and he turned to Shakespearean settings over and over again during his career.  His last major work was an opera, Béatrice et Bénédict (1862), based on the comedy Much Ado About Nothing.  The opéra comique was only a modest success, but its overture has found a lasting place in the concert hall.

The overture’s mirthful spirit is clear from the opening notes—not only does their bounciness express musical laughter, but Berlioz also brings the music to a sudden halt not once but twice, as if pausing before delivering a hilarious punchline.  The middle of the overture changes to a song-like romantic interlude, borrowing an aria melody from the opera in which Beatrice first realizes that Benedict loves her.  The return of the sprightly opening tune clearly foreshadows the happy resolution of their story.

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)—The Firebird Suite (1910; rev. 1919)

Sergei Diaghilev's 1910 ballet The Firebird, first danced in Paris by the Ballets Russes, launched Igor Stravinsky's international career, establishing a reputation Stravinsky would sustain for the next sixty years.  However, Stravinsky had not been Diaghilev's first choice as composer—nor was he the second, the third, nor perhaps even the fourth choice.  Nevertheless, Stravinsky turned the assignment into a tour-de-force of orchestral effects and phantasmagoric writing, and audiences went wild at every performance.  The following year, he extracted portions of the dance music into the first of three concert suites.  However, the ballet demands a very large orchestra (as well as a massive ballet corps, which accounts for the relative rarity of Firebird stagings), and the first suite used virtually the same orchestral scoring.  In order to make a more performable concert work, Stravinsky devised a second suite in 1919 that employed a smaller ensemble. He extracted a new selection of the ballet’s dances in 1945, primarily to refresh his copyright, but the 1919 version—to be performed this evening—remains the most popular of the three suites.

The Firebird is not your ordinary avian, and even her feathers contain magical powers.  In the course of the ballet, this fabulous creature—a traditional figure of Russian folklore—is snared by the Tsarevich Ivan, so she gives him one of those feathers in exchange for her release.  In turn, when Ivan is captured by the evil Kashchey, a green-taloned monster, he uses the feather to summon the Firebird’s aid. (The Kashchey, despite his diabolical nature, is given some of the ballet's most thrilling music).  After destroying the Kashchey's soul, which had been hidden in an egg-shaped casket, Ivan is free to marry Princess Unearthly Beauty, another now-released prisoner of the Kashchey. The suite’s “Finale” contains the magnificent music for their union, but you won't hear it at many weddings today—because Stravinsky set much of this processional in a tricky 7/4 meter.

Serge Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)—Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 (1901)  


“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”—yet even children know that playground name-calling can be achingly painful.  So, it is not surprising that a 24-year-old Serge Rachmaninoff was devastated to read Cesar Cui's 1897 review of his first symphony: “If there were a conservatory in Hell, if one of its talented students were instructed to write a program symphony on ‘The Seven Plagues of Egypt,’ and if he were to compose a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff’s, then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and delighted the inmates of Hades.”  The demoralized Rachmaninoff virtually abandoned composition for almost three years.

Early in 1900, however, Rachmaninoff began to visit Dr. Nicolai Dahl, an early practitioner of psychotherapy and hypnotism.  Whether it was the treatments or Dr. Dahl's genuine interest in music, Rachmaninoff found the visits highly therapeutic.  It was not long before he was able to start scribbling away on music paper once again, and the result was his second piano concerto.  Although Rachmaninoff nearly suffered a relapse of his old anxieties shortly before its premiere, the work was widely acclaimed, and Rachmaninoff's self-confidence was once again on a solid footing; he would never again suffer such severe self-doubt.  A grateful Rachmaninoff dedicated Piano Concerto No. 2 to Dr. Dahl, and the doctor—an amateur violist—played in the orchestra in some performances of the work. 

The concerto is not programmatic, but it is easy to imagine that the “Moderato's” slow, measured opening chords are marching forward into an unfolding drama.  The sweeping, passionate melodies—some martial, others lyrical—sustain the solemnity.  Almost magically, the mood changes to a peaceful serenity during the “Adagio sostenuto,” which swells to a dramatic and energetic peak, but calms down almost as quickly as it had crested.  The most famous movement is undoubtedly the “Allegro scherzando,” in part because of its second theme, appropriated as the melody for “Full Moon and Empty Arms” in the 1940s.  Even without that extramusical association, however, the second concerto still stands today as one of the most popular piano concertos ever written. 

Copyright 2011 by Dr. Alyson McLamore

classical sketches

Saturday, March 10, 2012 • 8 pm
Christopher Cohan Center, San Luis Obispo
Featuring Phillip Levy, Violin and Andrew Duckles, Viola

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) – Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 "Unfinished" (1822)

Many “incomplete” works of art are treasured despite their fragmentary state:  the Venus de Milo stands proudly in the Louvre in Paris, while Gilbert Stuart's unfinished “Athenaeum” portrait of George Washington is the basis for the image that now appears on every dollar bill.  In the field of music, one of the most beloved unfinished works is Schubert's Symphony No. 8, seemingly abandoned in 1822 after two movements and a fragment of a third had been written. Why didn't Schubert finish this symphony?  He was beginning to suffer acutely from an illness at the time he was working on this piece, and it seems pretty clear from the medical evidence that the illness was syphilis.  The symptoms eased the following year, and one theory is that Schubert associated this symphony with that earlier, unhappy time, and therefore set it aside when he was feeling better.  Other people maintain that Schubert “painted himself into a corner”—he just didn't know how to proceed after two such outstanding movements!

In any event, Schubert had sent the manuscript as a thank-you gift to his friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner via Anselm's brother Josef.  It took Josef some years to deliver the score to Anselm, and even then, it languished unperformed for decades.  Only in 1865—almost forty years after Schubert's death—did it come to light again.  During a chat, Hüttenbrenner showed the manuscript to the conductor Johann Herbeck.  Herbeck persuaded Hüttenbrenner to let him present the two complete movements in a December concert in Vienna.  Audiences were thrilled by this hitherto unknown work, and although some conductors add two other pieces by Schubert to create a “complete” symphony, most listeners find Schubert's incomplete version fully satisfying.

In some ways, the work was quite daring: symphonies just weren't written in B minor in 1822. After the famous hushed, mysterious opening, it quickly reaches a stormy climax—the first of several peaks to come in this work.  The second movement follows a similar path—it starts quietly and builds into greater drama—but its opening mood seems serene, and the climactic moments are more stately than foreboding.

  Béla Bartók (1881–1945)—Hungarian Sketches, BB 103 / Sz 97 (1931) 

The First World War reflected European tensions, but throughout much of the twentieth century, smaller countries were acutely aware of their vulnerability.  This awareness may account for the popularity of “nationalism” among many composers, who sought to celebrate their homelands through music. New audio technologies, such as wire or wax cylinder recordings, made it possible to preserve folk performances more faithfully than ever before. These exciting tools were tremendous boons to ethnomusicologists, who began to fan through the countryside, collecting recordings from folk singers before the memories of the old traditions had completely faded.  One of the pioneering ethnomusicologists in Hungary was Béla Bartók, who employed many of these folk materials in his own compositions, sometimes arranging the melodies in new ways, or sometimes using merely the rhythms or harmonies as inspiration.  Most of his earliest compositions of this sort were for piano; in later years, he borrowed from himself, orchestrating his keyboard works so that they were playable by larger groups of instrumentalists.

 Hungarian Sketches, Sz. 97, was one of Bartók’s compositions to follow this circuitous path. The first movement, “An Evening in the Village,” had first appeared as Number 5 of his Ten Easy Pieces of 1908. It references the Székely who are Hungarian natives of Transylvania, so it is sometimes also translated as “An Evening in Transylvania” or “An Evening with the Székely.”  Its melodies were original, but one was based on the half-singing, half-speaking style called parlando-rubato, and a second tune mimicked peasant flute playing. The “Bear Dance” had also originated as the closing piece in the same piano set; Bartók sought to convey not only the bear’s dancing but also its growling.

 The somewhat mournful cast to “Melody” is understandable, since it had been the second of Bartók’s Four Dirges of 1910.  “A Bit Tipsy” also sustains the jovial mood of its original piano piece, the second of Three Burlesques (1911).  “Swineherd’s Dance” was No. 40 in the second volume of For Children (1909); unlike the other movements, it is based on a pre-existent folk tune, to which Bartók added a bagpipe-like effect.

As an under-appreciated “inner-voice” of the orchestra, the viola suffers chronic disparagement in the form of “viola jokes.”  Mozart, however, certainly knew the viola's full worth, allowing it to co-star in this sinfonia concertante (a cross between a symphony and a concerto).  It is very possible that he composed this work to feature his own considerable talents on the viola—and would his father have played the violin solo?  Interestingly, Mozart asks the violist to retune the strings a half-step higher.  It is conjectured that this brighter tuning was designed to help the viola project more easily against the already-brilliant violin tone.  However, this string tightening puts considerable stress on the instrument, and modern performers generally choose to transpose the viola part rather than follow Mozart's instructions.

The transposition is well worth the violist's effort, for this sinfonia concertante is considered by many to be Mozart's finest composition of its period; Mozart was 23, with almost twenty years of compositional experience under his belt. The musicologist Alec Hyatt King dubbed K. 364 the “Matterhorn,” in contrast to other works that he called “gentle foothills.”  Written after visits to Paris and Mannheim, it is as if Mozart needed to cram it full of all the inspiration he had absorbed during his journeys.  The “galant” Allegro maestoso incorporates at least a dozen distinct motifs (evenly divided between the violin, viola, and the orchestra). It has been suggested that the contrasting Andante's minor mode and austere setting may reflect Mozart's memories of his mother, who had died during the last Parisian trip, but there is no evidence to support this speculation.  Shaking off the melancholy mood, the Presto sounds like an exuberant folk dance, giving various pairs of instruments brief opportunities to shine before yielding the stage to the violin and viola stars, who dance individually, in tandem, and in close-knit alternation. 

Copyright 2012 by Dr. Alyson McLamore