Osvaldo Golijov

(Born in La Plata, Argentina on December 5, 1960)

Last Round

1. Movido, Urgente – “Macho, Cool, and Dangerous”

2. Lentissimo – “Deaths of the Angel”

The Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round is a chamber work that honors the tango, Argentina’s beloved song and dance form, and serves as an elegy for two of tango’s greatest composers. Golijov is one of the world’s most sought-after new composers. Born and raised in Argentina (now residing in Massachusetts), Golijov grew up under the influence of the “tango of the old guard,” which was lyrical, urbane, and gentlemanly, and which was exemplified by the actor, singer, and composer Carlos Gardel (1890–1935), who especially endeared the world to the beauties of tango with his famous 1930s tango song, Mi Buenos Aires Querido (“My Beloved Buenos Aires”). After Gardel came the Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992), whose tangos in the 1960s challenged the “old guard” tangos with a new approach that he called the Nuevo tango. As Piazzolla explained, “Nuevo tango = tango + tragedy + comedy + whorehouse.” One of Piazzolla’s most famous, early tangos, La muerte del ángel (“Death of the Angel”), with its highly syncopated rhythms and its complex harmonies, epitomized this Nuevo tango philosophy, and his highly popular approach won him national hero status in Argentina and worldwide acclaim.

At the peak of his fame, Piazzolla unexpectedly suffered a major stroke in 1991 (leading to his death the following year), and this tragic loss led Golijov to sketch a musical elegy for this great tango hero. In 1996, this elegiac sketch would become the second movement, Lentissimo, of a larger work, Last Round. Golijov described its development:

I composed Last Round in 1996, prompted by Geoff Nuttall and Barry Shiffman [two of the founding members of the celebrated St. Louis String Quartet, who]… encouraged me to finish [the Lentissimo] and write another movement to complement it. The title is borrowed from a short story on boxing by Julio Cortázar, the metaphor for an imaginary chance for Piazzolla’s spirit to fight one more time (he used to get into fistfights throughout his life).

Part of Last Round’s charm is Golijov’s unique orchestration, which tips its hat to tango’s dance hall orchestra origins — here, two small string ensembles (two string quartets) face each other on stage, moderated and anchored by a double bass in the middle. Golijov also wanted his string ensemble to mimic a bandoneón — a button accordion — which is one of the tango’s integral instruments, and the one that Piazzolla so often wrote for. Last Round’s premiere in 1996 was hugely successful and the work has remained popular.

The first movement, Movido, Urgente (restless and urgent), has as its subtitle “Macho, Cool, and Dangerous” and suggests the tangos from the rough-and-tumble musicians of Buenos Aires’s underbelly. Wheezing and snapping, Golijov’s “string-bandoneón” creates a jangled, and altogether joyful, roughneck dance. Occasional increases in tempo invite machismo from the competitive tango dancers, while the movement’s jaunty, almost chaotic, rhythms echo the same kind of rhythms that Piazzolla adored and exploited in his 300-plus tangos. The movement dances dangerously to its final, exciting bars, and then, at about six and a half minutes, a long, mournfully descending sigh transitions the music into the next movement without a pause.

The second movement, Lentissimo (very slowly), is a threnody for Argentina’s two great tango composers and is hauntingly lamenting. Its subtitle, Muertes del ángel, does not so much quote Piazzolla’s groundbreaking 1960s tango of that name as riff on his title, using the plural “deaths,” in homage to the two departed composers, Gardel and Piazzolla, who have themselves become “ángels.” Golijov begins by imagining what a bandoneón could do if it never had to change between compression and expansion, how it might sing in one gigantic, long pull. At first, melancholic and atmospheric music pervades, but then, little by little, bits of a tune float up from the musical mist. These tune-wisps finally come together, near the middle of the movement, when Golijov at last quotes outright Gardel’s chorus from his Mi Buenos Aires Querido. And then to its end, the movement rhapsodizes, grapples, and pulses on Gardel’s refrain and Golijov’s “endless pull” bandoneón, with beauty and bittersweetness.

Together, these two movements create a spiritual, earthy, sexy, and ecstatic tango which, as Golijov describes, is a

… sublimated tango dance. … The bows fly in the air as inverted legs in crisscrossed choreography, always attracting and repelling each other, always in danger of clashing, always avoiding it with the immutability that can only be acquired by transforming hot passion into pure pattern.

Johann Sebastian Bach

(Born in Eisenach, Germany, on March 31, 1685; died in Leipzig, Germany, on July 28, 1750)

Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043

1. Vivace

2. Largo ma non tanto

3. Allegro

The German composer Johann Sebastian Bach’s exceptionally popular Concerto for Two Violins was most likely composed in 1730 in Leipzig, Germany, for performance by the Collegium Musicum. This extraordinary organization had been founded a few decades earlier in 1702 by Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) for the purpose of training music students and to provide free public concerts. The collegium concerts were held weekly at Gottfried Zimmermann’s large and posh coffeehouse in a wealthy part of Leipzig with the music played by students, teachers, and professional musicians. The sale of coffee to the patrons during these weekly events was always more than enough to allow Zimmermann to present these concerts for free. The music series was lucrative and extremely popular, and for their programs, new works were typically created by the collegium’s director.

In 1723, Bach was hired as Leipzig’s new Tomaskantor, the music director of both Leipzig’s main music school and the city’s four main churches. Six years later, Bach also became the director of Telemann’s Collegium Musicum, which required a variety of new compositions: overtures; sinfonias; concertos for strings, winds, and keyboards; and duo and trio sonatas—many of which Bach and his children performed along with the collegium’s pupils as soloists. Tonight’s Concerto for Two Violins was very likely one of these new collegium works, as were many of Bach’s most beloved secular works, including his Concerto for Violin in A minor, BWV 1041, and one of his most humorous pieces, the cantata-like work called Be Still, Stop Chattering, BWV 211, also known as his secular Coffee Cantata.

As the title indicates, Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins is cast for two soloists, but although each soloist is treated as a virtuoso in the Baroque fashion, they are also treated as a kind of collective soloist — often playing together in harmony, or in unison, or in duet, or in tumbling imitation, as if they were a single, extended instrument. And as listeners have felt for centuries, there is magic to this concerto that makes it one of Bach’s greatest, with its impressive contrapuntal treatment and unique lyrical beauty, and perhaps above all, with its tapestry-like sophistication. It served Bach so well in his own time, too, that he recast the work in 1737 as a Concerto for Two Harpsichords in C minor, BWV 1062. 

The first movement of his Concerto for Two Violins, Vivace (lively), begins with the “second” solo violin (this is a notational designation rather than a hierarchy) presenting the main ritornello theme of the movement — the Baroque ritornello was a structural form that featured a musical section that would continually return after alternating with contrasting musical “episodes.” This second solo violin’s opening ritornello theme is delightfully vivacious and carefree, dancing upward and downward and again upward. The “first” solo violin then plays this passage, too, but transposed up five steps in pitch, and soon after, the string bass enters with yet another iteration of it — everything sizing up to sound as though a great fugue is developing. But instead, inventively, Bach directs all this musical movement into constantly morphing counterpoint between the soloists and the orchestra, like a shifting kaleidoscope. What magically stands out from all this happy busy-ness, however, is how the music boils with virtuosic élan. Soon, the first episode begins with a new theme in which the two soloists dance acrobatically around each other in a duet of agile grace. The ritornello and episodes alternate quickly throughout this movement, and when the ritornello returns for the third and final time, the movement comes to a surprisingly gentle close.

The second movement, Largo ma non tanto (slowly but not too much so), is considered one of Bach’s most beautiful movements — one musicologist called it “the greatest eight minutes in music” — and it deserves its popularity. Beginning with the second solo violin, a lovely descending theme unfurls slowly as the main theme, which is soon joined by the first solo violin. From here, the two soloists play an extended love duet — tender and touchingly vulnerable — above an understated accompaniment from the orchestra. This Largo is also built as a ritornello, but in an unusual treatment of this form, the two soloists dominate the entire movement, with the alternate episodic sections evoking a kind of domestic contentedness as the two violinists dance closely, even finishing each other’s phrases, then returning to the home (ritornello) theme.

The final movement, Allegro (fast), begins with a bright and joyous sparkling of counterpoint from the entire ensemble while the string bass provides a brisk and steadfast “walking bass” beneath it all. This Allegro is also a ritornello, with its main section surprisingly brief. Throughout the movement, Bach employs lots of imitative counterpoint between the soloists (and all the orchestral instruments, too), overlapping it in such a way that even before a musical phrase from one soloist ends, the next soloist imitates it. As such, this movement is near hypnotizing in its constant melody making. Particularly fun to hear, at about one and a half minutes, is the alternating episode in which Bach gives the two soloists a long sequence of four-note chords to play as the rest of the orchestra somersaults in counterpoint beneath them. This movement demands more virtuosity from the two soloists, too, but Bach also infuses a few longer, lyrical lines for the soloists at the least expected times — in the midst of such cavorting counterpoint, these expressive moments truly soar. The movement thrums and captivates until its final bars, ending without fanfare, yet still resonating with dazzling energy.

Antonin Dvořák

(Born in Nelahozeves, Bohemia (now Czech Republic), on September 8, 1841; died in Prague on May 1, 1904)

Serenade for Strings in E major, Op. 22

1. Moderato

2. Minuet – Allegro con moto

3. Scherzo – Vivace

4. Larghetto

5. Finale – Allegro vivace

Early in his career, the Czech composer Antonin Dvořák struggled to be recognized as a composer outside of Prague, but then in 1875, he received a much-needed boost. He entered a composition competition held in Vienna that was founded to help young artists receive pay, commissions, and attention. On the panel of that Vienna competition’s three famous judges was Johannes Brahms, and each of them recognized Dvořák’s exceptional talents, granting him the top prize, and Brahms himself becoming one of Dvořák’s most important supporters from then on. To top off his musical success, Dvořák had just recently married and welcomed his first son into the world. His life in 1875, after years of professional hardship, was finally looking up and inspiring him into a period of extraordinary music writing.

With acclaim and financial breathing room provided by the competition award, Dvořák seemed to pour that good fortune into one of his next compositions, his 1875 Serenade for Strings, Op. 22. Written in only 12 days, the Serenade is a set of five short instrumental movements for string orchestra beaming with melodious beauty and good cheer, written as though it were created from the pure joy of composing. Hugely popular at its 1876 premiere in Prague, the Serenade further expanded Dvořák’s reputation and has remained one of his most beloved works. The success that Dvořák realized with this work’s neoclassical “serenade” form (a form well associated with Mozart’s famous serenades, like his Eine Kleine Nachtmusik) influenced his choice to use this serenade form again for one of the commissions that came from his Viennese competition celebrity, his hugely popular Serenade for Winds of 1879, a work that helped propel Dvořák to international fame.

The first movement of his Serenade for Strings, marked Moderato (moderately paced), begins with a bucolic gentleness that permeates the entire five movements and showcases Dvořák’s great gift for melody. The opening theme is a very singable tune, first sung in the violins, then answered by the cellos, and underpinned by steady, pulsating violas. Although this is a strings-only ensemble, we hear what sounds like a large, rich orchestra of strings, an effect achieved by dividing each of the string sections into multiple parts (a technique called divisi), thereby expanding their harmonies, registers, and harmonics. Dvořák initially keeps the ensemble in the lower registers which creates a soft, autumnal sumptuousness, but soon the softness and registers begin to soar in intensity and into higher, happier realms, ending the movement with a delicate, feathery touch.

The graceful second movement waltz, Minuet – Allegro con moto (fast with motion), begins in a minor key with a sweeping, twirling, yet somewhat melancholy, theme. The phrase lengths vary as the theme branches out, leaving a slight sense of imbalance, creating one of Dvořák’s most beautiful musical moments. The middle section, Trio, is equally gorgeous yet ambiguous, dancing with a lazy kind of skipping rhythm that is inflected with wistful nostalgia and accented with moments of drama. The opening music returns to finish this lovely and evocative movement.

The next movement, Scherzo – Vivace (lively), is exciting and quicksilvered. The opening theme’s imitation is canon-like between the cellos and the upper violins and creates a feeling of unbridled joy before pausing for a gentle contrasting section — a love song with several delicate refrains. The Scherzo’s concluding section is a brief and magical meld of these two musical ideas.

The fourth movement, Larghetto (rather slowly), is the Serenade’s weightiest movement, although it retains the whole work’s overarching pastoral mood. Like Mozart’s late-career slow movements, Dvořák’s Larghetto captures an ineffable heartache wrapped in otherworldly radiance. The main theme is made of a step down followed by a large descent — like a sigh and a falling tear — which then sequences through several iterations. This is a thematic technique that Dvořák would use more often in his works to come, but here, one gets the sense that this step-sigh theme reflects deep bliss rather than sorrow. A brief middle section contrasts this mood with uncertainty, but it is fleeting, as the movement returns to its main theme to close in quiet tranquility.

The Finale movement, Allegro vivace (fast and spirited), begins with a quick-paced call-and-response theme between the upper and lower strings. The theme skips in and out of minor and major modes, filling it with a sense of excitement and urgency, driven along by a motoric pulsing from the rest of the ensemble. As the music courses along, the falling-tear theme from the fourth movement unexpectedly arises (at about two minutes, in the cellos), followed then by the bucolic main theme of the first movement (at about two and a half minutes later, in the second violins), giving this bustling finale a sense of smiling reflection. But then, the final bars bolt toward the Serenade’s bright, bold, and brilliant ending.

© Max Derrickson

Antonio Vivaldi 

(Born in Venice, Italy, on March 4, 1678;
died in Vienna, Austria, on July 28, 1741)

Guitar (Lute) Concerto in D major, RV 93

1. Allegro giusto

2. Largo

3. Allegro

The Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi wrote over 500 instrumental concertos, and his invention and imagination for the concerto genre have been celebrated from his lifetime until today. His concertos’ lyricism and overt emotionalism were immensely influential on late Baroque and early Classical composers. But in his day, Vivaldi was also extremely renowned around Europe for his operas (he wrote over 40 of them). In fact, he was beckoned to Prague to stage several operas in 1730 for the Czech royal family. While in Prague, the Bohemian (Czech) count Jan Josef Vrtba commissioned Vivaldi to compose a set of four lute concertos (RV 93) featuring solo lute, two violins, and basso continuo (typically a harpsichord), of which the Lute Concerto in D major, performed tonight, was the first in the set.  

These lute concertos are the only concertos that Vivaldi wrote specifically for the lute. Actually, they were written for the archlute, an instrument that was larger than the typical lute but smaller than the theorbo. The reason Vivaldi wrote no other lute concertos is unknown, but one factor may have been the lute’s relative quietness as a solo concerto instrument. This would have been problematic in the bigger halls that were being built in the 1600s and 1700s to accommodate the increasingly popular demand for operas and larger orchestral pieces. In any case, it appears that Count Vrtba loved the archlute, and luckily for us, Vivaldi was keen to oblige his coincidental patron, creating a concerto that is alive with lyricism and infectious energy, and an absolutely gorgeous and soulful middle movement. The brisk, barely 10-minute-long Lute Concerto in D major has grown tremendously in popularity in more recent years, although this work is typically performed (as it is tonight) arranged for a guitar soloist and chamber orchestra, adding a few more strings than just the original two violins. 

The opening movement, Allegro giusto (appropriately fast), begins with a vivacious ritornello (“little return”) — a Baroque musical section that returns several times in a movement. Its opening theme is joyfully declamatory and tuneful and is delightfully constructed of several seemingly off-kilter five-bar phrases. In contrast to the first phrase of this opening theme, the next phrase is hued in a minor tonality and is more subdued. These two contrasting phrases give the sense of a conversation of ideas. Some historians think the minor-keyed phrase might have been inspired by Bohemian folk music that Vivaldi heard on the streets of Prague, although there is no direct source of the tune. The solo guitar then takes the lead, playing several variants of the ritornello’s theme as it moves through the movement and shows off some wizardly virtuosity. The ritornello and the guitar-featured sections then alternate throughout this short movement in a lyrical vortex of energy.

The second movement, Largo (slowly, solemn), floats on sheer beauty. The guitar opens the movement by playing an unhurried, ruminative melody over long-held notes in the upper strings and a gentle, pulsing thrum in the bass instruments. This opening section lasts approximately one minute and then repeats. Stylistically, soloists typically embellish their part the second time through, crafting virtuosity to enhance the emotional potential of the music. (In most of Vivaldi’s concertos, the soloist’s part is merely bare bones on paper, demanding a good deal of improvisation.) After the repeat, a section painted with rich harmonies begins, and this also repeats with even more improvisatory embellishments, which will end this mesmerizing movement.

The third and final movement, Allegro, begins with the orchestra twirling with a spritely theme sparkling with perpetual triplets. The energy is infectiously fun and dance-like, and the entire movement lasts only about two minutes. After the orchestra opens with its triplet flurries, the solo guitar jumps to the fore with its own spinning whirlwinds of notes. The orchestra and soloist then trade phrases over a skipping bass line that propels everything along, and this fleet and tune-filled concerto ends with exuberant cheerfulness. 

Heitor Villa-Lobos

(Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 5, 1887; died in Rio de Janeiro on November 17, 1959)

Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra

1. Allegro preciso – Poco meno

2. Andantino e Andante 

3. Cadenza: Quasi allegro – Andante – Quasi allegro – Poco moderato

4. Allegro non troppo

Heitor Villa-Lobos is inarguably Brazil’s most important Classical music composer of the 20th century. He is known for blending native Brazilian folk music into Classical idioms; most memorable are his set of nine Bachianas Brasileiras (1930–1945) — amalgamations of Brazilian folk music reimagined as if Bach had written them. Villa-Lobos was born just as his country overthrew its Portuguese ruling king and began to nationally celebrate its indigenous identity and — most important for this gifted composer — its folk arts and music. Villa-Lobos grew up playing guitar in that rediscovered musical environment, teaching himself to improvise grandly alongside the popular street musicians of his day, even (or so Villa-Lobos reported) trekking into the jungle to explore indigenous tribal music. At the same time, he was captivated by the European culture that flourished in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro. Already composing in earnest, in 1923 Villa-Lobos was persuaded to visit Paris to attract more European audiences. While there, he met the great Spanish guitar virtuoso Andrés Segovia (1893–1987). In 1930, when Villa-Lobos returned from Paris to Brazil, he retained his friendship with Segovia, writing several guitar works for him, including a commission for a guitar concerto in 1951.

Villa-Lobos finished the concerto that year in a three-movement form titled Fantasia concertante. This Fantasia version contained no cadenza, however, and it seems that Segovia was reluctant to premiere it without one (although there are alternate versions to this story). As such, in 1955, Villa-Lobos added a remarkable cadenza into the work and titled this new version Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra. In 1956 in Houston, Segovia performed the premier and Villa-Lobos conducted. The Concerto, hailed at its first performance as “beautiful, exquisite in its graces of theme, treatment and coloration, intensely lyric, rhythmically inventive, and in general a joy to the ear,” has become one of the foundations of the guitar concerto repertoire. 

Despite the added cadenza and title change, no other alterations were made to the Concerto, allowing it to retain the loose rhapsodic feel of a Fantasia — an old musical form that emphasizes improvisation and creative expression. One of the many wonders of this unique concerto is its general quietude, in which lyricism and guitar ruminations are celebrated more than grand climaxes or exuberant gestures. In addition, its use of a reduced orchestra allows the voice of the guitar to truly gleam, and throughout, Villa-Lobos weaves the constant suggestion of folk music.

The first movement, Allegro preciso (fast without wavering of tempo), is perhaps the most overtly folk-influenced movement of the Concerto. It begins with the orchestra delivering a set of syncopated rhythms that will return many times in this movement, rippling with quiet energy and sounding like the deliberate stamped-out steps of a folkdance. The guitar quickly joins the orchestra with ebulliently ascending triplets, as if Villa-Lobos is revisiting those delightful years of his youth when he was improvising on his guitar with street musicians. The second section occurs at about three minutes, Poco meno (a little less in tempo), and a very lyrical theme is presented by the guitar over lazy strings, which Villa-Lobos described as celebrating “the melodic atmosphere of rather popular songs from the Northeast of Brazil.” After a return to the introductory dance-like syncopation, the movement races to its end in a delightfully inventive way — the orchestra suddenly stalls on a full chord. The listener has the feeling of being caught off-guard by a magical and unexpected sight, and the first movement simply stops.

The second movement, Andantino (a leisurely pace, not too slow), begins with the winds playing gossamer-like runs over calm strings and horn. The guitar soon enters with the lyrical charm of a love song, folk-like in nature, and providing gentle flourishes between the notes of the melody. This leads to the Andante (rather slow) in about one minute, which features some magical solos for both the winds and the guitar. A particularly beautiful passage begins about two and a half minutes later when the oboe sings slowly and soulfully over the accompaniment of undulating arpeggios in the guitar. The passage then winds itself up before settling down to a hushed and golden-hued end.

After a slight pause, the Cadenza — a dedicated section of a concerto that showcases the soloist’s virtuosity — follows. Villa-Lobos conceived of this as a short, separate movement, even assigning several tempo markings. At three and a half minutes, it is long for a cadenza and functions more like a keystone; this is a place for the guitar soloist to dazzle. The section also bridges the three other movements. The first two tempo markings, Quasi allegro (almost fast) and Andante (leisurely) coalesce themes from the first two movements, and the third tempo, again using the marking Quasi allegro, wanders into new thematic territory, featuring a magical and deceptively difficult series of triplets with harmonics (soaring high pitches played by lightly depressing and playing the guitar string). And the fourth section, Poco moderato (moderately paced), begins with new, jaunty, and syncopated rhythms that foretell the thematic material in the final movement. As the Poco moderato progresses, the music becomes terser until a final, grand chord stops the cadenza in preparation for the last movement. 

The final movement, Allegro non troppo (fast but not too much), then dances away with the winds taking up the Cadenza’s syncopated rhythms, punctuated by strongly accented notes in the strings. Within a few measures, the guitar enters with breezy runs filled with joyful verve. In Villa-Lobos’s words, this movement is meant to metamorphosize these opening materials continuously in the pursuit of exploring the guitar’s virtuosic capabilities, with an underlying current of folk dance and song. Indeed, the guitar comes out of its shell. (Segovia himself mentioned the many difficult passages, although the writing never exploits sheer finger work over musical beauty.) A particularly bewitching example of this begins at about three minutes, when the guitar launches into a lyrical but driving passage, which seems to be preparing for pyrotechnical bravura but instead becomes a heart-catching duet with the first violin and then morphs yet again into a rhapsody between guitar and oboe. And like the first movement, this finale’s ending comes almost too abruptly. As both guitar and orchestra are busily rhapsodizing, the momentum suddenly grinds to a stop on a unison chord, only this time the guitar has one, brief, final punctuation to end this enduringly enchanting concerto.

Franz Schubert

(Born in Vienna, Austria, on January 31, 1797; died in Vienna on November 19, 1828)

Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, D. 485

1. Allegro 

2. Andante con moto 

3. Menuetto – Allegro molto – Trio

4. Allegro vivace

Franz Schubert was only 19 years old in 1816 when he composed his Fifth Symphony. That he had already written four symphonies and almost 500 compositions spanning virtually every genre is extraordinary for such a young composer. From an early age, Schubert’s near-manic, lifelong need to constantly compose seemed to have come from an almost magical wellspring of creativity. Clearly, one of his early inspirations was Mozart, who had died only five years before Schubert’s birth. As he recorded in his diary shortly before he began composing this Fifth:

As from afar the magic notes of Mozart’s music still gently haunt me […] O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, oh how endlessly many such comforting perceptions of a brighter and better life hast thou brought to our souls!

Of these first five symphonies, the Fifth is considered Schubert’s best creation in that genre during this early period of his orchestral writing. The work displays both a mature artifice and a light and extroverted beauty that gleams with charm.  

Although Schubert’s Fifth is indebted to Mozart’s influence, it foreshadows many of the distinctive hallmarks of Schubert’s works throughout his lifetime: It is filled with beautifully lyrical, singable themes as well as experiments with harmonic inventions. Both characteristics overflow in this work, and they are traits that Schubert used with increasing mastery in his oeuvre. In fact, as Schubert composed his Fifth during the month of September 1816, he was simultaneously working on 16 other compositions, 13 of which featured voice, including lieder (songs), a cantata, and a Magnificat. It is not surprising, then, that much of the symphony’s lyricism could have worked equally well for voice.

The first movement, Allegro (fast), evokes Mozart’s style. After a brief, four-bar introduction, the initial theme is presented by the first violins playing an ascending tune with a carefree skipping rhythm, which is answered immediately in the string bass line. This thematic gem is one of the most lighthearted, singable tunes of any Schubert work. One minute later, a second theme is introduced by the first violins, a wonderfully lyrical tune that could easily be an aria. Between and around these themes, the flute and oboes add a good-natured breeziness to the work. At about four minutes, the two themes begin to morph in sure Classical symphonic method, but Schubert also introduces some darker, dramatic harmonic regions that bring a sense of quietly stewing conflict. The effervescent two opening themes then return to end the movement in sheer joyfulness.

The second movement, Andante con moto (slowly but with motion), begins with the first violins singing an extremely expressive, slightly wistful tune, as though Schubert is telling a story of long ago, transporting us to a world of beauty. At about two and a half minutes, a very atypical key change (up one step) leads to a dreamy, floating duet between the violins and the winds, underpinned by pulsing lower strings. Throughout the rest of the movement, Schubert continues to stoke a restless but beautiful shifting between major and minor tonal regions. The overall bucolic feel of this Andante prevails throughout until the horn gently heralds the final bar. 

The third movement, Menuetto – Allegro molto (very fast) – Trio, cast in a minor key, immediately grabs our attention with its fervency, even aggression. The overt dramaticism of its opening theme — an arpeggiated rise followed by an accentuated descent — can be traced back to a portion of Schubert’s unfinished opera Des Teufels Lustschloss (The Devil’s Pleasure Palace), which he had begun writing two years earlier, in 1814. Musicologists argue, too, that the theme recalls the dance movement (Menuetto) of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, which is likely intentional. Most distinctive is how this movement contrasts with the lightness and the serenity of the prior movements; Schubert will develop this type of mood shift with enormous success through the rest of his writing life. Continuing these contrasts, the Trio section that begins about two minutes later is completely charming and rustic and cast in a major key, with its second full section gorgeously lyrical. The opening dramatic music returns to finish the Menuetto with a certain urgency.

The final movement, Allegro vivace (fast and very spirited), returns to the glorious lightness of the opening movement with some vivacious flair. The themes are airy and cheerful throughout, although Schubert allows the harmonies to sneak into more shadowy realms, with fleeting, dark chordal moments in nearly every phrase. Rather than creating conflict via these contrasts, however, Schubert appears to be evolving his harmonic language into the Romantic Era, where dark and light harmonies combine to create thicker, more multidimensional musical expression. Even with its darker dustings, this movement flits very happily through, with especially rich moments for the woodwinds. The ending returns to the opening section, which closes this delightful symphony with an air of smiling merriment.

© Max Derrickson

Ottorino Respighi

Born in Bologna, Italy in 1879; died in Rome in 1936

Gli uccelli (“The Birds”), Suite for Small Orchestra, P. 154

1. Preludio

2. La colomba (“The Dove”) 

3. La gallina (“The Hen”) 

4. L’usignuolo (“The Nightingale”) 

5. Il cucù (“The Cuckoo”)

By the late 19th century, composers throughout Europe were rediscovering older music. In Italy, for example, the older forms being adapted and celebrated ranged from the plainchant of the Roman Catholic Church and Gregorian chant of Medieval times to the exquisite music of Italy’s Baroque composers such as Scarlatti, Corelli, and Pergolesi, as well as many other lesser-known musicians. The great Italian composer Ottorino Respighi was one of those engaged in this rediscovery. And although he is typically remembered for his three gigantic Rome-centric orchestral tone poems (particularly The Pines of Rome), he was also very much in the avant-garde of composers who shared a keen interest in early music. Respighi used many “rediscovered” melodies from his “ancient” forebears and recast them into more modern instrumental and harmonic dressings. Starting with his 1902 Suite for Strings, he then achieved some certain popularity with his three instrumental suites collectively entitled Ancient Airs and Dances (composed in 1917, 1923, and 1932).

Perhaps Respighi’s most enjoyable foray into older music was his
Gli uccelli (The Birds), composed in 1928, a gloriously fun instrumental suite celebrating and recasting several Baroque composers’ evocations of bird songs. (Respighi had already established himself as a great admirer of birdsong: He created one of the most groundbreaking and enchanting moments in modern symphonic history when he insisted that the first performance of his Pines of Rome in 1924 include a phonograph recording of an actual Italian nightingale. This was the first time recorded sound was used in a classical music concert.)

For his Gli uccelli, Respighi uses a small, Baroque-sized orchestra and begins with a Preludio (Prelude) based on a melody from a harpsichord suite by one of Italy’s most influential keyboard players of the middle Baroque period, Bernardo Pasquini (1637–1710). While we bask in this lovely melody of old, Respighi cleverly also uses this Preludio to introduce bits of the bird songs that he will feature in the following movements, delightfully evoking birds in all their quirky glory. After a brief and regal introduction, at just under a minute, the violins begin a series of quickly repeated pitches with the violin bows bouncing off the strings to evoke a sort of manic pecking. Embedded in the pecking, the violins and flute erupt in chirpy upward squeaks, followed by the sound of a cuckoo, then a birdlike chattering from the trumpets, and then a fluttering of wings in the clarinets and, at just after two minutes, a marvelous section of unbridled flight with rapid notes in the violins. The Preludio comes to a gallant close as it returns to the regal music of the opening melody.

The second movement, La colomba (“The Dove”), employs a tune that Respighi discovered in the works of the Parisian Baroque lutenist and composer, Jacques de Gallot (ca. 1625–ca. 1695). Gallot was one of his era’s greatest lute players and known for musical portraits of his human contemporaries as well as of animals, including an alluring composition entitled “Dove.” For his own “Dove,” Respighi uses the oboe to represent this most gentle of winged creatures, making Gallot’s original tune sing with gentleness and mournfulness. The harp strums and plucks gently with a nod to Gallot’s lute. To give his Dove even more character, Respighi has the violins play high, warbled pitches at what seems to be random moments, allowing for the bird’s tendency to flitter back and forth to shine through. Especially enjoyable is the way the melody tracks all around the orchestral instruments — through the basses, flutes, violins, and clarinets — while the flittering warbles grow and spread, as if the Dove is in conversation with the whole bird kingdom. At last, all flutter away into the sky to end the portrait.

In the third movement, La gallina (“The Hen”), Respighi quotes from the French musician, Jean-Phillippe Rameau (1683–1764). Rameau was one of the great composers and theorists of the Baroque era, perhaps most famous today for his 1722 monograph entitled Treatise on Harmony, a scientifically based music theory book on which all modern study in Western music theory is based. But Rameau was equally renowned as a composer, and Respighi turned to Rameau’s engagingly fun composition entitled La poule (“The Hen,” or “gallina” in Italian) from a 1727 harpsichord suite. The main theme here is a manic bird-pecking motive, borrowed from Rameau, that Respighi hinted at in his Preludio. (Rameau directed this motive to be played “like a hen pecking for bugs on the ground,” accompanied by surprised [accented] little chirpy clucks.) Respighi, however, ups the ante: He drops us into an entire field of fidgety, jerky, wildly beautiful feathered hens and creates a comically dramatic sense of seriousness to all their cavorting. Soon, this hen motive is heard nearly everywhere in the orchestra, even in the lower registers, suggesting that the roosters are marching into the pecking joy, too, creating an absolutely magical fantasy. The magic ends, appropriately, with a muted trumpet call evoking the beginnings of a rooster crowing. 

The tune for the fourth movement, L’usignuolo (“The Nightingale”), comes from the very early Broque period in Holland when the great blind composer Jacob van Eyck (c. 1590–1657) wrote a piece for solo recorder that reimagined an old folksong entitled “Engels Nachtegaeltje” (“English Nightingale”). The nightingale’s song clearly bewitched Respighi — we’ve already noted that he used a phonograph recording of it in the premier performance of his Pines of Rome. Here, this movement opens with mystery and surreal beauty. Beginning with low, long-held notes in the horns and basses, the strings begin to slowly pulse and undulate, growing from their depths and building higher in range, depicting the deep and dark of the depth of night. Shortly, the flute plays van Eyck’s extremely popular and catchy Nachtegaeltje folk tune outright — a lyrical tune that wanders like an improvisation — accompanied by a good-natured countermelody in the bassoon. While the string undulations tumble gently onward, Respighi adds more winds to the tune, some of them beginning to warble and wiggle, like the growing chorus of birdsong before sunrise. The addition of the celeste (a metallic keyboard instrument) adds a delightfully magical sound to this chorus. Eventually, the tender and graceful song of this beautiful bird fades out, as do the strings, into silence of night.

The final movement of Gli uccelli returns to another tune, Il cucù
(“The Cuckoo”) by the Italian composer Pasquini whose Preludio inspired Respighi’s first movement. Here, Respighi borrows an exquisite 1698 Pasquini harpsichord composition called “Toccata con lo Scherzo del Cucco.” This Toccata was a piece of many faces — from the almost giddy recitation of the two-downward-note call of the cuckoo bird to flights of magisterial splendor and frolicking runs of notes — all combining to create a masterful piece of light-spirited entertainment. It’s no wonder Respighi was drawn to this work, and he upholds its multifaceted qualities, while also giving it a rather cinematic grandeur. As the music dashes about, with grandness to fleet flashes of fanciful rhapsodizing, the cuckoo’s call returns consistently, yet never predictably, sung out by every instrument in some fashion or another. It’s comical and wonderful. As this marvelous musical aviary ends, Respighi returns to Pasquini’s music of the Preludio to recount all the birds that flew through his suite, and to end, lastly, on a note of great and valiant cheer.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Born in Bonn in 1770; died in Vienna in 1827

Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68, “Pastoral”

1. Awakening of Cheerful Feelings Upon Arrival in the Country —
(Allegro ma non troppo)

2. Scene by the Brook — (Andante molto mosso)

3. Merry Gathering of Country Folk — (Allegro) 

4. Thunderstorm — (Allegro)

5. Shepherd’s Song.  Happy and Thankful Feelings After the Storm — (Allegretto)

Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral, is filled with charm and gratefulness, the light of the sun through summer leaves, and the grace and quietude of nature observed, as well as a little bit of stormy drama and a sprinkling of levity. When one regards Beethoven, with all his scowling portraits and allusions to monumental struggle in his Fifth Symphony, hearing his Sixth comes as a complete surprise.  

As with his Fifth Symphony, the essence of the composition had been germinating in Beethoven’s mind for many years. His busy city life in Vienna was increasingly counterbalanced by long sojourns to its parks and out into the countryside, and especially in the lovely town of Heiligenstadt, where in the summer of 1808 he escaped to finish the Pastoral. As he wrote to a friend, “No one can love the country as much as I do. For surely woods, trees, and rocks produce the echo that man desires to hear.” The composer, now truly suffering from his increasing deafness and dissatisfaction with human nature, found some of his greatest joy in nature that he captured in the expression he knew best – music.

Beethoven himself chose the name Pastoral for his Sixth Symphony as well as each movement’s subtitle, and together they suggest a “program,” or narrative series of scenes shaping a perception of the work. As such, the Pastoral is regarded as one of the first successful “programmatic” symphonies in the Classical repertoire — a fundamental structure that would soon dominate symphonic writing in the Romantic era. But despite these programmatic allusions, Beethoven cautioned against pictorial precision. In the brief, and rare, program note that he provided for its premiere, Beethoven called the Pastoral “… more of a matter of feeling than of painting in sounds… no picture, but something in which the emotions are expressed that are aroused by the pleasures of the country.” His subtitles evoke, in a metaphysical way, the psychological essence of what being in nature meant to him, honoring nature’s “music” with his own. Even so, Beethoven provides a few obvious, and delightful, musical representations in this symphony. The result is Beethoven at his happiest and most tenderhearted.

In the first movement, “Awakening of Cheerful Feelings…”, Beethoven focuses on this gentle vein with quietness, repetition, and a relaxed (or, as the musicologist Donald Tovey called it, “lazy”) pace. The mood is exquisitely peaceful, and Beethoven seems to blissfully luxuriate in the simple repetition of themes: one little five-note descending motive is repeated 80 times. And the harmonic pace of the movement is also on holiday; for example, near the middle of the movement, the key (B flat) lollygags for some 50 measures before Beethoven moves to a new key (of D). All this contentment-in-your-bones nurtures us, calms us, and brings us into nature’s pacific realm. And this will be the spirit pervading the whole symphony.

The second movement, “Scene by the Brook,” contains some especially lovely naturalistic representations. The first one can be heard in the opening measures — a slow and sauntering triplet figure is played by the second violins, violas, and cellos representing a flowing brook. The brook gathers a little speed as Beethoven doubles the triplet’s rhythm. Most beautiful here is the melody in the first violins above the burbling of the lower strings — as if the sojourning Beethoven is simply basking in nature’s delights. It’s some of the sweetest music in the entire symphony. And just before the end, some delightful imitations of birdsong arrive in an unlikely little quartet. The birds themselves are identified by Beethoven in the conductor’s score: a nightingale, a quail, and a cuckoo are played by the flute, oboe, and two clarinets, respectively.

The third movement, “Merry Gathering of Country Folk,” is Beethoven at his most witty. His friend Anton Schindler remembered something Beethoven had observed:

Beethoven asked me if I had noticed how village musicians often played in their sleep, occasionally letting their instruments fall and keeping quite still, and then waking up with a start, getting in a few vigorous blows or strokes at a venture, although usually in the right key, before dropping to sleep again.

It’s likely that Beethoven is making musical jokes at the musicians’ expense in this movement. Although the “Gathering” begins in a relaxed way, quite soon the instruments start getting a little out of hand in volume — making “Merry” indeed. Shortly, at about one minute into the movement, this friskiness leads to some overzealous French horn heralding, and it’s a gloriously fun moment. Perhaps Beethoven was having the horns wake up the bassoonist, for as the next section immediately begins with a chirpy little tune in the oboe, the sleepy bassoon apparently can manage only two different pitches in accompaniment.

The fourth movement, “Thunderstorm,” is another of the famous musical representations in this symphony. It’s a marvelous moment, too, crafted as a kind of “Meanwhile, as the band is engaged in their frivolity, a storm is brewing on the horizon.” Without a break, the country musical scene cuts to pianissimo (very quiet) tremolos (quickly repeated bow strokes creating a shimmering effect) in the basses, evoking the electricity that’s quivering in the atmosphere. The storm builds up rather quickly. To capture it, Beethoven uses thunderous timpani, piercing piccolo chirps, and, as the storm passes directly overhead of the now shelter-seeking country folk, the trombones sound out with a colossally dissonant set of chords to create the storm’s blistering climax.

As the storm gradually subsides, Beethoven creates one of the loveliest moments in any of his symphonies. Out of the shivering tremolos arise the oboes; then, without any pause, the final movement, “Shepherd’s Song. Happy and Thankful Feelings after the Storm,” opens up musically through the winds, then horns, and then the strings, like the breaking of the clouds and the glow of the sun spilling through the storm clouds and across the earth. The symphony ends in this happy radiance with a beautiful hymn-like theme, and as the essayist Basil Lam astutely observed, it’s Beethoven’s thanks to “… the Creator …, not for ending the storm, but for the glory of Nature, of which the storm is a part.”

© Max Derrickson

Introduction – Regarding Nonets

A musical nonet is a work scored for nine instrumentalists or singers. The form came into its own primarily in the early Romantic period, when relatively large chamber groups were becoming increasingly fashionable, especially in Vienna. This happened partly because putting together larger chamber groups was easier than gathering the dozens of musicians required for a full-sized orchestra. In addition, larger chamber groups created a richer sound than smaller ones. 

Music for large wind bands or string ensembles used in outdoor entertainments predated nonets, but it was the Austrian composer Ludwig Spohr (1784–1859) who focused attention on the nonet form with his Nonet in F Major, Op. 31. This work, composed in 1813, was scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Spohr’s compositional expertise and the fresh, new sonic palette his nonet displayed created an instant standard for this emerging genre, and many composers throughout Europe were inspired to create nonets of their own for many years to come. 

Among those so inspired was the young British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912), who wrote his own nonet (though with a slight change in instrumentation) in 1894 while still a student at the Royal Music College in London. This work, Coleridge-Taylor’s Nonet in F minor, Op. 2, is the first work you will hear in our concert.

Three decades later, in 1924, Spohr’s nonet inspired a group of nine musicians in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) to create their own musical group, called The Czech Nonet, that was originally devoted specifically to performing pieces of the genre. 

The Czech Nonet is still going strong and over the years it has been responsible for the commission of many new nonets, including the other two works in our concert. One of these works, the Nonet, Op. 147 by the Czech composer Josef Foerster (1859–1951), was written in 1924 for the The Czech Nonet’s inaugural concert. The other work, the Nonet No. 2, H 374 by another Czech composer, Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959), was written in 1959. It was one of the last pieces this great 20th century composer would write. 

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

(Born in Holborn [London], England in 1875; died in Croydon [London], England in 1912)

Nonet in F minor, “Gradus ad Parnassum,” Op. 2

1. Allegro moderato — Tranquillo 

2. Andante con moto — Più lento

3. Scherzo: Allegro — Trio — Scherzo da capo

4. Finale: Allegro vivace — Tranquillo — Più presto

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an outstanding English composer and conductor, whose list of compositions is long and impressive for his short career. Of particular social importance at the time, too, was Coleridge-Taylor’s racial heritage. His father, Daniel Taylor, who was from Sierra Leone, studied medicine in London where he met Coleridge-Taylor’s mother, Alice Martin. Around the time Samuel was conceived, however, Daniel was forbidden from practicing medicine in England, and he had little choice but to return to Sierra Leone to practice there. Alice chose to stay in London with their son and named him in honor of England’s great poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, inverting the order of his surnames. Precociously talented in music, Samuel was enrolled in the Royal College of Music in London. His career soon began to blossom immensely, especially in America. But at age 37, just when his career and racial heritage were providing a beacon of hope for people of color in the Western world, he succumbed to pneumonia. 

During his student years at the Royal College, the 18-year-old Coleridge-Taylor busily wrote music, creating three particularly fine chamber pieces: his Piano Quintet, Op. 1, a trio for strings and piano (not published in his lifetime), and his Nonet, Op. 2. Across the top of his nonet, the young composer wrote “Gradus ad Parnassum” (“A Step Toward Parnassus”) — likely a playful reference to Carl Czerny’s ubiquitous piano study book entitled Nouveau Gradus ad Parnassum (1854). Coleridge-Taylor’s nonet shows that the young Royal College student had already scaled Parnassus with his powers of melodic invention and the magnificent sound palette he created. He scored the work for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, double bass, and piano (instead of Ludwig Spohr’s flute). The addition of the piano provided near-orchestral power and color. 

The first theme of the first movement, Allegro moderato (moderately slow), showcases Coleridge-Taylor’s talents with melody. After one introductory bar, the clarinet sings one of Coleridge-Taylor’s most lyrical inventions, romantic and wistful. Underneath, the piano plays rich chords on the offbeats while the viola and cello create a quietly propulsive, skipping rhythm, giving the clarinet’s wistfulness a sense of insistence. When the clarinet finishes this first iteration, the theme opens up in sonic splendor as the rest of the nonet instruments, especially the piano, embellish on the theme. About a minute later, a second theme, bright and optimistic, is introduced first by the piano. These two themes and this skipping rhythm then populate the rest of the movement, but most lovely is Coleridge-Taylor’s inventiveness with different instrumental pairings, creating rich and exquisite hues.  

The second movement, Andante con moto (slowly but with motion), begins with a short, dark introduction from the piano, played in octaves, and rumbling mysteriously in the low registers. Except for a brief reminder of this cautionary phrase at about four and a half minutes, the Andante unfurls with increasing beauty and inner joy. Notice how the skipping rhythm from the first movement dances effervescently throughout this movement as well.

The third movement, Scherzo, was singled out for praise when the Nonet had its premiere in 1894: “The scherzo is unquestionably the most striking movement, and few would guess it to be the work of one still a student,” one reviewer wrote. And indeed, this movement is a joyful ride of exuberance and great craft. The first section, Allegro, is simmering with gusto, capering between instrumental sections, featuring the winds, or pizzicato strings, or the piano, all skipping around each other excitedly. The middle section, Trio, starting at about two and a half minutes, follows this frolicking with tender rhapsodizing.

The last movement, Allegro vivace (fast and lively), is filled with joie de vivre. Coleridge-Taylor treats this finale as a nonstop tour de force of technical brilliance for all the instruments, with the pianist taking on an especially virtuosic role. The main theme, heard immediately, is youthfully strong, lyrical, and playful, and the lyricism never lets up. The ending section, Più presto (yet faster), begins with a pizzicato run by the viola, cello, and double bass, and then the entire nonet dashes to an invigorating end.

Josef Bohuslav Foerster

(Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic] in 1859; died in Nový Vestec, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic] in 1951)

Nonet: Variations on Two Themes, Op. 147

1. Allegro 

2. Andante con moto 

3. Andante con moto 

4. Molto moderato 

5. Allegro appassionato

6. Scherzoso e fantastico — Allegro ma non troppo 

7. Andante con moto

8. Allegro moderato, ma molto appassionato

Josef Bohuslav Foerster was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, to a family of artists. His grandfather, father, and paternal uncle were all respected composers, and his brother became a well-known muralist. The young Foerster studied music at the Prague Conservatory, finishing with a degree in composition, and then set out on a triple career as teacher, composer, and music critic. From 1893, Foerster made his living mainly as a critic and professor, first in Hamburg, Germany, then in Vienna, Austria, and eventually returning to teach at the Prague Conservatory in 1918. All the while, Foerster composed operas, symphonies, and dozens of chamber works. 

In 1924, nine students of the Prague Conservatory founded the now famous (and still in existence) ensemble called The Czech Nonet. For their opening concert, they scheduled a performance of Spohr’s famous nonet for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, and also commissioned Foerster to write a new nonet for them, scored for the same instruments. Foerster happily obliged and the 1924 premiere in Vienna met with great praise. One critic gushed: “The atmosphere of Bohemia’s forests and meadows makes itself felt in this composition.… We are receiving the spirit of Dvořák from Foerster’s hands.”

Foerster’s nonet is indeed reminiscent of Dvorak’s gifts for pastoral lyricism, but it is deeply infused with Foerster’s own brand of more modern lyricism that incorporates a thoughtful dissonance, with notes that are allowed to fall out of the key as well as frequent key changes. Nonetheless, his nonet exudes a feeling of country calm and luster. Especially delightful is Foerster’s expert handling of the nine players: Each is treated with virtuosity and poeticism, and when all nine combine, they blaze with radiant colors.

The beginning movement, Allegro, presents the two themes that weave throughout the nonet. The first theme begins, cleverly, not with the theme itself but with an accompaniment in the winds that sounds rather comically as if they are waltzing with a limp. Then the bassoon enters to sing the first theme, which is at first galumphing but also lyrical and happy-go-lucky. The second theme appears less than a minute later, beginning with the oboe and then moving to the violin: It evokes a pastoral dreaminess, tinged with a hint of melancholy. The movement then expands on these two themes, ending quietly on plucked strings.

The second movement, Andante con moto (slow but with motion), begins with a solo viola and a variation that is filled with longing and vulnerability. After a pause, the opening viola strain repeats. Then, without any pause (attaca), the third movement, also marked Andante con moto, begins and becomes a graceful waltz with moments of brisk drama.

The fourth movement, Molto moderato (very moderately paced), starts with urgent, dramatic gestures and dissonance, but soon leads to a slower section, marked “dolcissimo, molto espressivo, ma tranquillo” (sweetly, very expressively, but tranquil), which features one of the nonet’s most lyrical violin solos. Again, without a pause (attaca), the fifth movement, Allegro appasionata (fast and with passion), begins. It opens with eight of the nine musicians playing a series of rapid-fire short notes in unison, moving into moments of fanciful rhapsodizing before it settles into its closing section of warmth and calm.

The sixth movement, Scherzoso e fantástico (playfully and fantastical), starts quietly with a hint of sinister intent but quickly turns into an engagingly insistent march that’s dappled with a certain songfulness. Different meters will appear throughout this movement — at one point, the four-beat march will be squeezed into three beats per measure. A surprise return of part of the second theme appears, and then the Scherzo ends with a few ebullient final bars.

The seventh movement, another Andante con moto, begins with a radiant clarinet solo singing languidly and peacefully. The pastoral second theme returns in full, and then the movement ends with the utmost vulnerability, marked to be played “dolente e patetico” (sorrowfully and movingly).

The final movement, Allegro moderato, ma molto appassionato (moderately fast and with much passion), begins with a surging energy but which soon pacifies. Following this initial surge and retreat, this movement becomes a recap of musical moments from the previous movements, with brief solos for everyone that then blend into longer full-ensemble passages. After a grand silence, the instruments race off with blistering speed, ending with great and joyous energy.

Bohuslav Jan Martinů

(Born in Polička, Czechoslovakia, [now Czech Republic] in 1890; died in Liestal, Switzerland in 1959)

Nonet No. 2, H 374

1. Poco allegro 

2. Andante 

3. Allegretto

Though never formally completing a music degree, the Czech composer Bohuslav Jan Martinů had an extraordinarily expansive approach to learning music, beginning with his lifelong love of Czech folk music. His musical explorations brought him to Paris in the early 1920’s where he discovered Igor Stravinsky’s neoclassicism (music adhering to structures and logic, that emulated the tenets of classicism and used sparser means than huge orchestral forces). This deeply informed his composing style for many years. But his musical genius was always devising new ways to express itself, and by the end of his life one could only truly define Martinů’s style as uniquely his own: Rhapsodic, often informed by his homeland’s folksongs and dance, clever, neoclassically inclined, rhythmically active, and always ingeniously inventive. 

During World War II, Martinů took refuge in the United States. After the war, he yearned to return to his Czech home but the communist regime there made that goal unrealistic. By 1959 he was living in Switzerland and kept in close contact with his friends and colleagues in Prague. That year, The Czech Nonet commissioned Martinů for a new work for the ensemble’s 35th anniversary concert. He chose to write for them his Nonet No. 2 (also scored for flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, like Foerster’s nonet). It would turn out to be one of his last completed compositions: He had been battling stomach cancer and died one month after the concert. Despite Martinů’s health challenges, his Nonet No. 2 is one of his most joyful works. It is often filled with the feeling of Czech folksong and dance, and with a kaleidoscope of colors and effervescent jubilance.

The first movement, Poco allegro (rather fast), is a festival of 10 separate themes, all packed into a short five minutes of music. The opening immediately portrays a sense of dance and glee as the clarinet begins a short little up-and-down-motive. This motive is then echoed in the strings at a faster pace, and within seconds, the entire nonet is burbling with excited iterations of the motive as solos from every instrument pop into the fabric with brief intensity. All of this excited tumbling culminates in a wonderfully regal horn solo at about two minutes. The movement then returns to and reworks the opening music and ends with happy bravura.

The second movement, Andante (at a walking pace), is a moment of stunning invention and noble beauty — perhaps one of the loveliest things that Martinů created. It begins with a cello solo in which the upper strings add quiet atmospheric zephyrs. Shortly, the strings branch into polyphonic wanderings (every instrument plays its own melody) that coalesce harmonically. It’s Martinů’s bewitching night music, filled with the sounds of every mysterious and beautiful thing at midnight. Particularly lovely is a passage, at about three and a half minutes, in which the flute and clarinet play together quietly and lyrically, and then the music becomes increasingly rhapsodic as more instruments join in. The bassoon, at last, brings this rhapsodic night music to rest, settling lower and lower into a soft chord with the full ensemble.

The final movement, Allegretto (not very fast), begins with bouncy and unpredictably happy chaos. The meter changes frequently, moving in and out of five beats per bar, and yet Martinů somehow balances all this restlessness with a sense of folkdance and jolliness. At about two minutes, the music calms and the flute and then the oboe, introduce a hymn-like tune. From here until the end, the feelings of folkdance and hymn take turns, each demanding ever more virtuosity from the players, until at last, the hymn-like tune closes the work with the horn heralding the ending bars with warm majesty.

© Max Derrickson

Henry Cowell

(Born in Menlo Park, California, in 1897; died near Woodstock, New York, in 1965)

Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10

For Oboe and Strings

Henry Cowell was one of the first modernist American-born composers, and his ideas and works spread their wings far across the musical landscape. Among his students, supporters, and devotees were Arnold Schoenberg, Burt Bacharach, George Gershwin, Charles Ives, and the ultramodernist John Cage (who steadfastly proclaimed Cowell as “the open sesame for new music in America”).

Born near San Francisco, Cowell was raised primarily by his mother and was largely educated at home and self-taught in music. Even at a young age, Cowell was being noticed as a musical genius, and in his late teens he studied music composition briefly with Charles Seeger (father of the famous Seeger family of folk singers) at the University of California, Berkeley, and equally briefly at the Julliard School of Music in New York.

But an academic approach did not suit the free-thinking Cowell. Instead, the young composer began a lifelong musical exploration, blending folk song and tonality with extended techniques for the piano. These techniques included nonconformist, creative ways of making music, such as playing tone clusters (chords that comprise at least three adjacent tones in a scale) with fists or forearms, hitting whatever notes they contact, and plucking strings inside the body of the piano. Some of his ultramodernist musical concerts erupted in riots.

Cowell wrote books about his ideas and methods, taught at several music schools, and influenced many classical American music composers of the 20th century. He was also a prolific composer, writing almost 1,000 works. But in the second half of his life, he became less aggressively avant-garde and looked increasingly toward tradition and tonality. Such was the case with the set of 18 works he called “Hymns and Fuguing Tunes,” composed between 1944 and 1964.

The Hymn and Fuguing Tune featured in our concert, No. 10, was completed in 1955. Cowell said the piece draws on the music “of Southern Revival meetings in which popular minstrel show rhythms were turned to religious purposes…. The tunes of course are my own.” All 18 of Cowell’s Hymns and Fuguing Tunes are gorgeous works, but No. 10 is perhaps the most popular, blending a folksong style with church hymns, yet wrapped in sophisticated compositional craft.

Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10 has two parts, a hymn part and a fugue part. In the hymn part, which comes first, the strings open with a lyrical hymnlike song, a singable melody laden with a folk-like feel and with tinges of Renaissance-sounding ornamentation. The solo oboist takes over from the strings, and for about four minutes, the music feels as though it is eternally blossoming. An explicit cadence (the equivalent of a musical “period”) never seems to arrive; instead, the first strain of the hymn part continuously evolves, from strings to oboe, to other soloists in the string orchestra, and back around, like an infinity loop. Some lovely chromaticism intensifies this sense of continual unfolding until, at last, the hymn part comes to its peaceful ending.

After a brief pause, the second part of the work, the fuguing tune part, begins. Before we describe it, we should note that fuguing tunes are not like fugues by Bach but rather a song genre that came to America from England in the middle of the 18th century and became extremely popular. Originally, these were sacred choral works arranged for a four-part chorus and based on Protestant hymns. They followed a pattern of first introducing a tune in all four parts, and then proceeding in a kind of canon form with the theme being sung in staggered entrances and afterward being sounded simultaneously by the various voices of the chorus or instruments — as in the children’s song, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

In the fuguing tune part of Hymn and Fuguing Tune No. 10, the oboe starts things off with a brief melody that is liltingly light on its feet and harmonious. As expected in this genre, various sections of the strings then take up the tune in canon sequence. But soon Cowell begins to play with the norms: A second short melody — a rippling run of notes — is introduced by the oboe, and the fuguing tune then increasingly becomes more of a rhapsodic fantasy of swirling voices playing counterpoint to each other in all sorts of instrumental and melodic combinations. This part of the work radiates with the intensity of the interactions between the oboist and various sections of the orchestra, yet always retains a light touch. At about two and a half minutes, the tempo pulls back for dramatic effect and all the instruments begin to pull together to end, at last, with three glowing, unison chords.

Franz Joseph Haydn

(Born in Rohrau, Austria in 1732; died in Vienna, Austria in 1809)

Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major, Hob. VIIb:1

1. Moderato
2. Adagio
3. Finale — Allegro molto

For almost 200 years, the world thought there was only one Haydn cello concerto to be played, the lovely Concerto No. 2 in D major. Haydn’s own catalogs of his works mentioned a previous cello concerto, written in C major, but that work seemed to have been lost. Then in 1961, a fortuitous knocking-over-of-old-dusty-stuff at the Prague National Museum by a museum archivist named Oldřich Pulkert uncovered a manuscript of the C major concerto. Music historian H.C. Robbins Landon described this event as “the single greatest musicological discovery since the Second World War.”

The manuscript that was found in Prague was signed by the C major concerto’s original soloist, Joseph Weigl. Weigl was a friend of Haydn’s and one of the musicians in Haydn’s first orchestra at the estate of his patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, of Hungary. The C major concerto was composed between 1761 and 1765 and written specifically for Weigl. (This was something Haydn did; he kept good musicians in his employ by rewarding them with juicy concertos to play). Judging by the virtuosic writing of the concerto’s cello passages, Weigl was indeed a superb cellist.

Haydn’s rediscovered Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major had its 20th-century premiere on May 19,1962, when Czech virtuoso Miloš Sádlo performed it with the Czechoslovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras. Sádlo and Mackerras also made the first recording. The concerto has been beloved ever since.

This wonderful work is surely one of the loveliest things that Haydn wrote, filled with a freshness that makes each of its three movements a delight. It is among Haydn’s most inventive works, and it achieves that magical concerto balance of showing off the capabilities of the solo instrument and its performer, even as it brims with musicality, lyricism and surprises for the entire ensemble.

The first movement, Moderato (at a medium speed), is full of charm and beautiful melody. After the stately yet sunny introduction of the theme by the orchestra, the soloist jumps in happily, highlighting the luxuriance of the cello’s chocolatey low range, the richness of playing multiple strings (chords), and the cello’s musical agility. What’s most enjoyable about this movement is Haydn’s long, vocal-like lines for the soloist in a movement that truly sings throughout, reminding us that Haydn first became famous in the Esterházy Estate as an opera composer.

The middle movement, Adagio (slowly), offers the concerto’s most tender musical moments. Like the previous movement, it’s filled with lyricism, but here Haydn explores the cello’s middle and upper registers in ways that evoke the human voice. The movement begins with an introductory theme, played by the orchestral strings, that features several brief, downwardly rustling figures that create the effect of falling leaves. Then the cello enters, beginning very softly, playing a long, single note growing in gentle intensity, then continuing with the rustling figures previously played by the orchestra. In this dialogue, it feels as if we’re overhearing a love song of intimate beauty.

The third movement, Allegro molto (very fast), is brisk and bright and bouncy. It features virtuosic displays for the soloist, but all these runs and wicked-fast technical challenges create very listenable, lyrical lines. Notice, too, that throughout this movement Haydn revisits the motives from the earlier movements: the growling low notes and chords, as well as the upper-register playing. The most wonderful reprise happens when the cello first enters, at about one minute, returning with that growing-glowing note from the beginning of the previous Adagio movement but now transformed into a quicker, brilliant blaze of light. This movement’s pace is breakneck to the very end, and as the final notes are bowed, it is undeniable that this masterly concerto is indeed one of the greatest (and luckiest) musical discoveries of the 20th century.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(Born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1756; died in Vienna, Austria, in 1791)

Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550

1. Molto allegro
2. Andante
3. Menuetto — Allegretto — Trio
4. Allegro assai

In the summer of 1788, Mozart’s life was overwhelmed by tragedy. Having recently suffered several professional failures, Mozart’s debts had accrued beyond control, and this only doubled his grief over his infant daughter’s unexpected death earlier that spring. Yet almost miraculously, despite the weight of these events, Mozart wrote three astounding symphonies, numbered 39, 40, and 41, over a mere nine weeks hoping to perform them in some upcoming subscription concerts. These three symphonies would be his final symphonic works, and although each is an undisputed masterpiece, No. 40 in G minor has retained a special place in his oeuvre for its profoundly emotional nature. It is one of only two symphonies out of the 41 he wrote that he set in a minor key. He reserved this key for significant expressivity, and given this great symphony’s uncanny beauty, pathos, and angst, it surely seems that this work reflects the emotional trials he was undergoing when he wrote it.

The first movement, Molto allegro (very fast), is evocative, continually suggesting an anguish that is delivered with a searing lyrical beauty. The movement begins with a quietly undulating rhythm in the lower strings, a pulsing that almost never abates. In just several quick beats, the violins then enter above that agitation with one of Mozart’s most memorable themes. This theme first lifts upward with a sense of questioning and then tumbles down in small rhythmic segments as if in indignation — conveying a feeling of inner turmoil. Immediately thereafter, a small motive surges angrily from the basses with two longish, descending notes and infiltrates everything in the movement, stoking a sense of unrest. The movement agitates and questions and surges to its final bars.

The second movement, Andante (slowly, at a walking pace), begins with the strings presenting a gently throbbing theme that seems to slowly unfold with a glowing grace. Yet there is an unmistakable fragility lurking underneath in the way that Mozart fragments the theme among the string sections, beginning with violas, then the cellos and basses, and so on. This feeling of vulnerability becomes poignantly present at about three and a half minutes, when a flitting little rhythm in the winds continuously descends, like falling tears, through several sequences of richly dark harmonies from the strings. The last bars conclude quietly.

The first part of the third movement, Menuetto — Allegretto (minuet dance, not too fast), begins with the full orchestra playing a strident, defiant-sounding theme that is almost sarcastically ill-suited for a dance like a minuet. The theme migrates into a series of repetitions, being cast about between the instruments and colliding with each other, creating a startlingly dramatic effect. The second part of the movement, Menuetto — Trio, is much more delicately dance-like, and features a delightful spotlight on the oboes and horns. The movement ends with a return of the opening section’s forcefulness.

The finale, Allegro assai (very fast), is rife with a dark and relentless energy. The opening theme begins with the violins punching out a series of ascending notes and finishes with the full orchestra playing a hyper-oscillating rhythm. Despite the uncanny tunefulness of this theme, the feeling is anxious and insistent. A brief second theme, featuring a sweet duet between the clarinet and bassoon, is much more relaxed and lyrical, but nonetheless, this finale is more overtly concerned with power and propulsion, and the symphony’s last eight bars are almost wild with excitement.

© Max Derrickson.