Two Rivers Brass Quintet – Concert on the Lawn: June 25, 2017

Eric Ewazen

(Born in Cleveland, Ohio on March 1, 1954)

A Western Fanfare

Ewazen is one America’s finest living composers. He studied composition with a handful of the 20th Century’s most important composers (Samuel Adler, Milton Babbitt and Gunther Schuller, to name a few) at the Eastman School of Music and the Julliard School. He has remained an important figure in the New York City scene and teaches composition at Julliard.

Ewazen began writing more and more for brass instruments from the 1990’s onwards, and many of his commissions feature brass. “A Western Fanfare” is one such commission. It was requested by the Music Academy of the West (Santa Barbara, California) in 1997 for their 50th Anniversary. Ewazen responded with a fanfare for a brass orchestra and percussion, which he soon afterwards arranged for brass quintet. It’s meant to be celebratory, and it bursts with energy and pride. It’s also extremely fun and a bit devilish to perform.

Surprisingly, perhaps, for a 20th to 21st Century composer, Ewazen is unregretful in his tonal approach to music because, as he says, it’s “the language that speaks to me.” But tonality also speaks wonderfully to audiences and performers, and he believes that when a performer gets excited about a piece of music, he or she will really “sell” it to the audience. “A Western Fanfare” is one of those kinds of pieces: exciting, lyrical and tonal, wonderfully “brassy” and fresh. This concert’s performers will have no trouble “selling” it and listeners will want to hear more of Ewazen’s great pieces.

Anonymous

Sonata from “Die Bankelsangerlieder” (c. 1684, Germany)

As composer Eric Ewazen pointed out in a 1994 interview, the Renaissance period witnessed the flourishing of works composed for brass instruments. Most notable was the antiphonal music of Giovanni Gabrieli (c.1553-6 – 1612) in Italy, and as the Renaissance spread throughout Europe, so did its musical designs. Near the end of this epoch in the late 17th Century, Germany was at its own Renaissance height and a group of unattributed vocal works called “Die Bankelsangerlieder” was published. At the very end of the collection was this “Sonata” scored for five brass instruments.

The Renaissance term “bankelsanger” referred to a travelling singer, otherwise known as a “troubadour” in Renaissance France, who made his living by standing on a bench in taverns and singing for his supper. The term “Sonata” came from the Italian word “sonare” which simply meant “to sound” or “play” – a precursor form to what became the fugue and later the classical sonata form we know from Mozart and Haydn. The anonymous Sonata that’s included in today’s program is a remarkable piece because of its energy and brass sonorities. Notable also is its within-group antiphonal playing that sounds like a “Call and Response” – a technique that clearly prefigures the fugues soon to come in the Baroque era. This Sonata is timeless, too, in its beauty. Indeed, it has remained so popular that most listeners have probably heard it before without knowing its title, and yet it never grows old for performers or listeners alike.

Leonard Bernstein

(Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1918; died in New York City in 1990)

Selections from West Side Story/arranged by Jack Gale

1. Prologue

2. Something’s Comin’

3. Maria

4. Tonight

5. America

6. I Feel Pretty

7. Somewhere

Like many composers before him – Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Gounod and Berlioz, just to name some of the more famous – the American composer Leonard Bernstein was attracted to Shakespeare’s tale of tragedy, Romeo and Juliet.  Bernstein’s first musical vision for this tragedy of “star-cross’d lovers” began by imagining the feuding parties as Catholics and Jews in the lower East side of New York’s Manhattan during Passover and Easter. It then eventually morphed into a musical focused on Puerto Rican and Anglo street gangs in the city’s upper West Side. This contemporary scenario was perfectly suited for Shakespeare’s tale of woe, and Bernstein hoped it would awaken the public’s awareness to what some called New York City’s “War zone” of the 1950’s and ‘60’s.

But even without the “story,” the music to West Side Story is undeniably Bernstein’s masterpiece. In the honored tradition of classical composing from Mozart to Mahler, motives and just a few themes are the driving force for the whole work, and they give the music an extraordinary cohesiveness. That and Bernstein’s uncanny ability to absorb musical genres, which is heard in the jazz and Latin-feel that pervades the score, make the work both contemporary and ageless, from the swinging coolness in the “Prologue” to the popping, ethnic cross-rhythms in “America.” Bernstein’s greatest strdength, though, was his understanding that a beautiful tune always wins the day, and in this work he magically created some of America’s most cherished songs. Many of these songs are heard in our program’s excellent brass quintet arrangement: “Maria,” “Tonight” and a wonderful brass-chorale rendition of “Somewhere.”

John Cheetham

(Born in Taos, New Mexico in 1939)

Scherzo

Cheetham was born and raised in America’s Midwest, and he has essentially remained there all of his life, save for PhD studies at the University of Washington. He served as Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the University of Missouri (Columbia) from 1969 – 2000. Because of this background, he might be even more “American” than Aaron Copland (Copeland was long considered the Dean of American composers until his death but he was actually more of a “New York city boy” than Cheetham).  And Cheetham’s music reflects his middle-America sentiments – libertarian, unapologetically conservative, singable melodies and bracing rhythms. Such is his Scherzo for brass quintet.

Like composer Eric Ewazen, Cheetham writes equally for the performer as well as the listener. His Scherzo is quick-paced and catchy, and is thorny to play with its changing meters and rhythms. However, the musical delights are very much worth the performers’ effort. The main tune is something you’ll find yourself humming or whistling on the way home from the concert; as Cheetam says, “a good tune goes a long way.” In a recent e-mail exchange with Cheetham, he described his Scherzo as follows:

“[The Scherzo] was written in 1962 during my senior year at the University of New Mexico for a faculty quintet teaching at a UNM summer music camp. Through no fault of my own, it immediately became popular and was published and recorded by 1964. Its simple ternary design and tuneful melodies make it easily accessible.”

Johann Sebastian Bach

(Born in Eisenach, Germany in 1685; died in Leipzig, Germany in 1750)

Contrapunctus IX, “alla duodecima,”
from The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080

As Bach entered the last decade of his life, he renewed his interest in keyboard music and especially counterpoint, or the way in which fugues are made and how musical themes can be manipulated. In this decade, he began his ultimate offering to musical counterpoint – a series of fugues and canons all derived out a single musical theme – The Art of the Fugue. He worked on this series for 10 years but never finished it. His son, Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach, gathered, titled and published it in 1751 just after his father’s death.

The Art of the Fugue may well be Bach’s seminal work. It contains 14 fugues and four canons, all in D-minor, arranged in increasing difficulty. These pieces are, as Bach historian Christoph Wolff has observed, “an exploration … of the contrapuntal possibilities inherent in a single musical subject.” That “single subject” is disarming in its simplicity but it is nevertheless rich seed material for Bach’s fugal explorations that follow. Instead of calling them “counterpoint(s),” Bach preferred the Latin word “Contrapunctus.” Number IX (9) is a study of turning that simple subject into a new derivation and into a double fugue (two themes treated as a fugue at the interval of a twelfth, thus the subtitle “alla duodecima”). Bach then adds the original “single subject” fugue theme into the mix as an additional subject. Always a masterpiece, this Contrapunctus becomes especially spirited and extremely powerful when performed by a brass quintet.

Victor Ewald

(Born in St. Petersburg in 1860; died in Leningrad in 1935)

Brass Quintet No.1 in B-Flat Minor, Op. 5 

1. Moderato – Più mosso

2. Adagio non troppo lento – Allegro vivace – Tempo I – Adagio

3. Allegro moderato

Brass ensembles of every imaginable sort were a big part of Russia’s musical history, but it was Victor Ewald who established the nation’s first works for brass quintet with four exceptional works written between 1888 and 1912. Quintet No. 1 was published in 1890 and since then has remained in the genre’s performing repertoire as a huge favorite with performers and audiences.

Ewald was a civil engineer by trade but a serious musician by avocation. He wasn’t one of the “Russian Five” (Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, etc.), the Russian Nationalist musicians, but he was very close in their orbit. He often played chamber music with them, in sessions that came to be known as “Friday Evenings,” and he was an integral part of their musical discussions. He wrote his four quintets essentially for these chamber music gatherings and he himself played the bass part which was equivalent to the tuba part you will hear in our performance.

Ewald’s Quintet No. 1 is challenging to play, packed with fantastic melodies, and has a wonderful “Russian-ness” – that indescribable sound, dark and rich and melancholic.  And fittingly, for the performer/composer Ewald, the opening theme played on the tuba exemplifies that very special sound. Later in the third movement, a lovely Russian-folksong theme emerges that would have made his Nationalist musician friends proud.  Although Ewald never tackled the larger orchestral genres, he could well have been considered the “Russian Sixth” based on the wealth of lyricism and inventiveness filling his delightful Quintet No. 1.

Program Notes ©Max Derrickson

Two Rivers Piano and Wind Ensemble: April 29, 2017

Windswept!
PROGRAM NOTES

Paquito D’Rivera

(Born in Havana, Cuba in 1948)

Invitación al danza (Invitation to dance)

D’Rivera’s first teacher was his father, a well-connected classical saxophonist and music educator, who brought him up on recordings by Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. No doubt this is where Paquito first began to understand jazz and improvisation. But perhaps the youngster’s greatest tutelage came from sitting in the orchestra pit along with his father in Havana’s lavish, notorious and jazz-rich Tropicana Club, where he recalls very memorable evenings sitting close by and watching many of the jazz greats who visited there. Still, he always remained grounded in the Classical music of composers like Bach, Mozart and Chopin – music that still informs his compositions to this day.

D’Rivera soon became one of Cuba’s musical wonders, active in both classical and Latin jazz music, and both a composer and performer on clarinet and sax. However, he eventually realized that he would never be able to flourish in Cuba’s anti-jazz ideology (Castro insisted jazz was “imperialist poison”), so in 1980 he defected to the United States. His international reputation has soared since then. He has won 14 Grammy Awards for both performance and composition and has made over 30 recordings. But, as a boisterous yet generous soul, he is most proud for being known – in the words of the National Endowment for the Arts – as “the consummate multinational ambassador, creating and promoting a cross-culture of music that moves effortlessly among jazz, Latin, and Mozart.”

Invitación al danza was composed in 2008 and came into prominence on a recording with Yo Yo Ma (“Songs of Joy and Peace,” 2008). This is considered one of D’Rivera’s Classical works, and with his love for Classical music he gave it the same title as a famous work by Carl Maria von Weber (1786 – 1826). But one immediately realizes the work’s extraordinary fusion of styles, from Classical to Jazzy riffs and improvisation, to even a tip of the hat to early Rock-n-roll (listen for the echoes of Louie, Louie by The Kingsmen). Originally written for clarinet, cello and piano, Invitación has invited and inspired all kinds of arrangements. In this case, the French horn takes the place of the cello. Invitación dances easily from gentle swaying to joyful smiling, and slide-steps between some lovely ballroom dancing to downright foot stomping and arm jangling. Invitación al danza is infectiously tuneful and fun, and makes good on its invitation.

Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt

(Born in Koblenz, Germany in 1833; died in Bernburg, Germany in 1894)

Nocturne for Clarinet, Horn, and Piano, Op.75

Voigt followed his father’s vocation of being a military musician after completing his musical studies in Berlin. He rose quickly through the ranks and by 1857, at the young age of 24, became the conductor of the high profile First Guard Regiment in Potsdam, a post in which he served for 30 years. He became well known for his compositions for military bands and ensembles, and as a conductor and music educator. In 1870, in his role as military conductor, Voigt found himself marching to Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, composing and performing music as necessary for any moment, from celebratory evenings when Kaiser Wilhelm visited in the field, to funeral music for fellow soldiers. But there was more to do than perform: Voigt and his military musicians often were tasked with, among other things, burying the fallen. His diaries describe some horrid scenes of death. Finally, in 1871, Voigt arrived in a devastated, occupied Paris now under Prussian rule. Voigt’s role in Paris was to provide music for victorious Prussians and defeated French alike. Performing much of his own military music along with other classics, he was proud, but moreover astonished, when his French audiences applauded and thanked him for his musical craft. Voigt wrote home to his wife “Yes, music is a fine art; it connects the souls of men, and this effect is not granted even to language.”

In 1885, long after those extraordinary times, Voigt had returned to Germany and composed his endearing Nocturne. It’s tempting to imagine this work as a tender musical memorial to those lost Prussians and Frenchmen, but whatever his inspiration, the piece has been loved for generations since. The Nocturne has the air of a quiet operatic duet between two old friends, reminiscing in nostalgia, with an edge of sadness lacing their song, sometimes a flight of fancy from the clarinet, and a brief recitative-like passage mid-way through. The piece ends with both instruments singing the opening phrase in unison above some lovely pianistic filigree, before closing in gentle contemplation. All in all, it is a tuneful, surprisingly enchanting gem, a pacific counterpoint to a military musician’s life work.

Francis Poulenc 

(Born in Paris in 1899; died in Paris in 1963)

Trio (for oboe, bassoon and piano), Op. 43

1. Lento – Presto

2. Andante con moto

3. Rondo. Très vif

At the turn of the 20th Century, Paris was an exciting tumult of new and adventurous artistic ideals. The Parisian salon was the place to be for anyone who was someone, a place where artists and thinkers came to discuss conquering – or at least profoundly changing – the world. Out of this intoxicating brew came a group of musicians called “Les Six” (also known as the “French Six”). Francis Poulenc, a frequent visitor to the salon, rather unwittingly found himself to be part of this group. The group’s general goal, formulated by its founders (first the composer Erik Satie and then the author Jean Cocteau) was to write unabashedly French music. Poulenc himself was mainly self-taught and had an innate and immense talent for music; he had no conservatoire trappings and was urbanely Parisian in the best sense, and he thus embodied the group’s ideals perfectly. As the writer Jean Roy, a chronicler of the “Les Six,” said:

“Francis Poulenc improvised, invented, disregarded conventions …. He was daring, but not provocative. … he showed himself for what he was, with a frankness which is rare, … drawing from a tremendous fund of knowledge that included the fine arts, literature and the music of his predecessors. … His music expresses the way he looked at things… sincerity… his own way of hoping, of praying, of showing confidence.”

From this sense of freshness came Poulenc’s first great chamber work in 1926: his Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano, written when he was 27 years old. The work is equal parts silly, lively, beautifully melodic, and fun. Poulenc admitted that parts of his Trio were based, structurally and thematically, on the music of his forbearers – Haydn, Beethoven and Saint-Saens – but in Poulenc’s hands these echoes only add to the delight of the music. Regarding his musical lineage, he wittily remarked that he “wouldn’t like to be thought ‘born of an unknown father.'” What the listener hears in the Trio is anything but a pastiche of the past; instead, this is a splendidly lyrical and playful piece that features each instrument with an uncanny notion of their interplay. The Trio has become one of Poulenc’s most adored works, and rightly so. It is a superb example of the composer’s joyful music-making, and of his own harmonic and lyrical inventiveness.

Ludwig van Beethoven

(Born in Bonn in 1770; died in Vienna in 1827)

Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 16

1. Grave – Allegro ma non troppo

2. Andante cantabile

3. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo

Life was a jolly affair for Beethoven when he moved to Vienna from Bonn in 1792. He was known to be fiery, but he was also a congenial socialite. And as a free-spirited youth, he was taking Vienna by storm as a “wild” piano virtuoso and magnificent improviser. However, he also had an extraordinary composing talent and needed to make it known.

Before tackling the symphonic genre, Beethoven started with a form that bridged the chamber-symphonic barrier: the Piano Quintet. Well acquainted with Mozart’s works, Beethoven used Mozart’s masterful Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major, K. 452 (1784) as a model for his own Quintet that featured a piano, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and horn. Beethoven completed this work in 1797 but he withheld its publication until 1801 and in the meantime also produced a reworked version that took the form of a Quartet for three strings and piano – a clear sign that he was trying to show off his abilities by demonstrating his range as a composer.

The Quintet is a very early Beethoven, and very “Classical” in sound, when compared to his later works. But it is no less Beethoven in spirit, clearly foreshadowing his boldness and compositional cleverness. The very somber and slow Grave opening is as much a statement to the world about the seriousness of Beethoven’s compositional intentions as it is a musical introduction. Soon after the Allegro proper begins, one is reminded of Beethoven’s abiding love for piano – indeed, this Quintet is much like a mini-piano concerto. But even in this particularly early work, Beethoven shows uncanny prowess in his writing for the winds: each instrument is featured especially well through a great deal of musical material, and each is given many moments to shine. One great example is just near the end of the first movement when Beethoven asks the horn to navigate some treacherous arpeggios.

The second movement is rightly titled cantabile (singing), with some meltingly song-like moments for every player, and it seems that it is here where Beethoven truly begins to find his own voice in this great, early masterpiece. The third movement finale is leisurely-brisk and sunny-bright, even allowing for a brief piano cadenza near its end. It is said that at the Quintet’s early performances, the “wild” Beethoven manned the piano himself and often took some extended liberties with this cadenza – to his great delight, though peeving his wind players.

 

© Max Derrickson

Songs and Dances of Love: March 25, 2017

Johannes Brahms

(Born in Hamburg in 1833; died in Vienna in 1897)

Liebeslieder walzen, Op. 52

1. Rede, Mädchen (“Speak, Maiden”)

2. Am Gesteine rauscht die Flut (“Against the stones the stream rushes”)

3. O die Frauen (“Oh, women”)

4. Wie des Abends schöne Röte (“Like the evening’s lovely red”)

5. Die grüne Hopfenranke (“The green hop’s vine”)

6. Ein kleiner, hübscher Vogel (“A small, pretty bird”)

7. Wohl schön bewandt war es (“Quite fair and contented”)

8. Wenn so lind dein Auge mir (“When your eyes look at me”)

9. Am Donaustrande (“On the banks of the Danube”)

10. O wie sanft die Quelle (“Oh how gently the stream”)

11. Nein, es ist nicht auszukommen (“No, there’s just no getting along”)

12. Schlosser auf, und mache Schlösser (“Locksmith, get up and make your locks”)

13. Vögelein durchrauscht die Luft (“The little bird rushes through the air”)

14. Sieh, wie ist die Welle klar (“See how clear the waves are”)

15. Nachtigall, sie singt so schön (“The nightingale, it sings so beautifully”)

16. Ein dunkeler Schacht ist Liebe (“Love is a dark shaft”)

17. Nicht wandle, mein Licht (“Do not wander, my light”)

18. Es bebet das Gesträuche (“The bushes are trembling”)

In the first years after Brahms settled in Vienna, he quickly became appreciative of a new and very Viennese (and European bourgeois) musical fashion – Hausmusik. No longer was music just for the very rich, but indeed, the rise of a healthy middle class made music a household necessity. Young ladies, in order to be at all eligible for marriage, needed to know how to read music, sing and play the piano. But music in the house wasn’t just for young ladies. All manner of parlor works were written as well as re-arranged from larger works like symphonies, solely for the enjoyment of music lovers in their homes. For many a composer it was a cash cow. Brahms, not above the need for money, discreetly cashed in on this Hausmusik phenomenon with the young lady singer-pianist in mind, first and famously with his Hungarian Dances (1869), and then in the same year with his delightful Liebeslieder walzen (of which, over a few years, he composed several sets, Op. 52 being essentially his first).

Brahms’s Liebeslieder walzen (Love song waltzes) were inspired during a project of editing a batch of Schubert’s works, several groups of landlers, which are the waltzes especially loved by the Viennese. Also a model were the Spanische Liebeslieder (1849) by Schumann, Brahms’s fraternal mentor. No less an influence, too, were the delightful waltzes by Johann Strauss II (the Viennese “Waltz King”), which Brahms appreciated for their perfect form and delicious tunefulness. It’s often suggested that Brahms’s Love song waltzes were intended as a musical flirtation for Julie Schumann, the daughter of Robert and Clara Schumann. But as always, Brahms was much too discreet to have made this a public affair. What matters is that the waltzes are enchanting. As Brahms’s biographer Jan Swafford calls them, these are musical “Schlagsahne” (whipped cream).

The 18 waltzes are indeed confections, but they are certainly not trifles. They assume the ballroom dress of society waltzes, but Brahms doesn’t spare his genius on them. Even as early as the first waltz, the main theme is eventually turned upside down. Especially delightful are the rich harmonies and contrasts that appear in numbers 5, 6 and 7. A lovely homage to Strauss’s “The Beautiful Danube” is undeniable in number 9. Throughout, Brahms’s inventiveness for both tunefulness and sophisticated compositional craftsmanship make these love songs little wonders. Brahms had originally written them as “one-offs” – single sheet works for the parlor, for piano (four hands) and varying small groups of singers. The lyrics came from a large set of poetic translations from various cultures by the philosopher and poet Georg Friedrich Daumer (1800 – 1875). The songs range from giddy young love to broken heartache, but they are all quite lighthearted. Brahms, too, keeps the melodic themes light but infuses them with his typical soulfulness. The waltzes were immediately adored, and brought Brahms a sure amount of early fame and fortune; they have remained a cherished part of the chamber music repertoire. This arrangement for strings was first transcribed by Friedrich Hermann in 1889 and it has been loved ever since. In any arrangement, these love songs’ beauties are rich and genuine Brahms.

Edward Elgar

(Born in Lower Broadheath, England in 1857; died in Worcester, England in 1934)

Serenade in E-minor for String Orchestra, Op. 20

1. Allegro placevole

2. Larghetto

3. Allegretto

Elgar was the quintessential underdog, and as such, his masterpieces make us all the more glad that he finally achieved his rightful praise. He was a self-taught composer, learning his craft by borrowing books on counterpoint and harmony from the library in his small hometown of Broadheath. He was an accomplished violinist but also played the organ and bassoon and viola (and other instruments), and it was upon these instruments that he relied to make a living for many years as a private music teacher. He also picked up conducting and freelanced as a conductor in some of the most obscure places (such as the County and City Pauper Lunatic Asylum) for many, many years. His beloved wife, Alice, was his greatest champion and brought Elgar through some severe bouts of low self-esteem and depression. Had it not been for her constant support, Elgar may have never persevered to write some of Western music’s most beloved pieces.

His lovely Serenade was written in 1892 and is Elgar’s earliest piece to eventually become well known, although it took another six-and-a-half years for this now middle-aged British musician to find any fame as a composer with his Enigma Variations (1899). The Serenade was written “in the musical trenches,” as Elgar crafted out a patchwork living by teaching, performing and conducting. He also credited some of the piece’s material to his wife, Alice, by marking in the score in several places “Braut” (his German nickname for her, meaning “bride”). The success of his Enigma Variations, his Violin Concerto and other masterpieces eventually, and finally, landed him fame and security, But it was this Serenade that he always referred to as his favorite piece, and any listener will quickly understand his devotion. Here is Elgar at his lyrical best and at the very beginning of a long line of beautifully elegiac masterpieces for which he would become famous.

The first movement is marked a curious “placevole” which means “pleasing.” Indeed, its quietly propelling main rhythm and the rising and falling melody is pleasantly nostalgic and cheery – so wonderfully British. The middle movement is romantically and harmonically rich, capturing a kind of enlightened melancholy that only Elgar seemed to be able to conjure. The third movement rounds out the Serenade with delicate charm, perfectly moving from the deep beauty of the middle movement into a musing on the work’s placevole beginning, and lastly, closing in gentle contentment. Elgar was one of the first composers to seriously use the beginning technologies of sound recording, and fittingly, in 1933 a year before his death, he made a recording which included his beloved Serenade.

Ney Rosauro

(Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1952)

Marimba Concerto No. 1, Op. 12

1. Saudação (Greetings)

2. Lamento (Lament)

3. Dança (Dance)

4. Despedida (Farewell)

According to his own website, Ney Rosauro “… is recognized as one of the most original and dynamic symphonic percussionists and composers today.” He studied in Brazil, Germany and Florida, and in his professional career has performed the world over as both a marimba virtuoso and as a timpanist/percussionist, along with composing over 100 works. He became especially recognized, however, with his wonderful Marimba Concerto No. 1 (1987) when another famous percussionist, Evelyn Glennie, recorded it with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1990. Since then, this Concerto has become probably the most widely performed marimba concerto in the world.

The marimba is a tuned percussion instrument with tubes underneath the pitched bars to enhance resonance. It became a prominent solo instrument in the late 1970’s when composers began recognizing its exceptional versatility – from its ability to sound like an organ with sustained, humming chords, the fact that it could be played like a piano with both melody and harmony, concurrently, as well as its potential for complex rhythms and extended range of notes (typically 4-1/3 octaves). All of this became especially possible with the introduction of playing with four (and occasionally more) mallets simultaneously. Rosauro, though, was the one of the first composers to really exploit the marimba’s four-mallet capabilities in a symphonic concerto form. His Concerto No. 1 does this marvelously and uses all the instrument’s possibilities superbly, taking care to not only showcase the soloist with virtuosic leaps from one end of the large instrument to the other and dazzling mallet work, but to showcase the instrument’s beauty. The Concerto was begun as a Master’s thesis while Rosauro was studying in Germany. In that year, his son Marcelo was born, and it’s fitting, with the Concerto’s energy and life-affirmingness, that Rosauro dedicated it to his newborn son.

As a Brazilian, Rosauro understandably uses Brazilian motives for the subtitles of his Concerto‘s four movements and as their inspirations. The first movement maintains a near-perpetual-motion kind of incessancy, with lots of wonderful moments for the soloist to make some jazzy melodic runs – it’s infectious and fun. The second movement explores the marimba’s soulful, organ-like timbres and includes some lovely duets between soloist and orchestra (especially the first violin). The third movement is called a dance, but it begins with a lovely cantabile section that features some fun mallet work, before becoming truly quick-footed and virtuosic, then closing in song. The finale is again a driving movement, jazzy and somewhat Brazilian in flavor, with a delightfully catchy tune, changing meters and virtuosity aplenty. The fervor leads up to a cadenza that is as much about fancy mallet work as it is wrapping up the musical narrative of the Concerto, musing with the various themes of the earlier movements. The work then ends in a fiery-quick blaze of virtuosity.
© Max Derrickson

Mozart Magic: November 19, 2016

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(Born in Salzburg in 1756; died in Vienna in 1791)
No composer has contributed so many works of genius, in so many genres of music, as Mozart: sacred, chamber, concerti, orchestral and opera. His output is extraordinary, not only because of its quantity and consistently high quality, but also because of his uncanny ability to assimilate the styles of his time and add his own innovations. It sounds cliché to say that Mozart approached something of a superhuman quality, but studying his music always provides this same awed assessment. No genre stands out quite as much as Mozart’s operas in style assimilation, masterwork and innovation.
Opera in Mozart’s Vienna was a curiously Italian affair. Opera had essentially “grown up” in Italy and Italians had set the standards. But the popular style was Italian Opera buffa – light-hearted and frivolous dramatic works. Viennese sentiment was beginning to favor German-language opera but German operas hadn’t made much headway in quality. Nonetheless, as Mozart told his father in 1778, he first began with “Italian, not German; seria, not buffa.” Thus commenced his lifelong adaptations in the field of opera, beginning with the Italian model for opera seria “serious themed,” moving to the German model of the singspiel (“singing play”), where dialogue replaces the Italian recitative, creating a delicious synthesis of these models.
All of this, and Mozart’s musical genius, created an opus of operas that are nearly all considered masterpieces. Mozart brought a rather stodgy genre that he inherited from the Italians into a modern day kind of storytelling, with characters that were more real and current, and with music that matched the complicated psychological underpinnings of his characters.

Overture to Le nozze di Figaro 
(The Marriage of Figaro)

This was the first of three operas that Mozart wrote in collaboration with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. This collaboration shines as a marriage of geniuses in Western music; it produced Le nozze di Figaro (1786), Don Giovanni (1787) and Così fan tutte (1790), all of which are considered the pinnacle of their Classical genre. Many regard Le nozze as the greatest Opera buffa ever written.

Created near the peak of his career, Le nozze di Figaro is one of Mozart’s finest scores. In it, his ability to make music mirror the psychological essence of the scene, the story and the characters is nearly unrivaled. The Overture is a self-contained work – meaning it contains essentially little of the themes from the opera proper and ends without fading into the first scene. It’s a marvel of fleetness. The winds and strings open with a frenetic but quiet, whirling motive that sets the tone for the opera to come – fast-paced and filled with intrigue and humor. The whirling is suddenly interrupted by a full tutti of the orchestra, bright and shining and loud, with trumpets and timpani that tells us the opera will bring a series of surprises and comic moments. The energy never lets up until the last, glorious bar.

Aria: “Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben” from the Opera Zaide

Zaide was begun in 1779-80 by Mozart in the off chance that this German language singspiel (“singing play”) might be accepted in Austrian Emperor Joseph II’s new opera company that was devoted to German opera. Mozart’s working title was Das Serail, but the Third Act and Overture were left unfinished as he moved on to his first commissioned opera, Idomeneo. Decades after Mozart’s death, the unfinished opera was prepared for production in 1830 and given the title it’s come to be known by: Zaide.

Having found a librettist in Johann Schachtner, Mozart’s Zaide took up the popular theme of Turkish pirates on the prowl in the Mediterranean, seizing loot and Christian slaves. Zaide is the heroine Christian slave who falls in love with another slave, Gomatz. The Turkish Sultan is enraged because of his own affections for Zaide, but by the end of Act II, Zaide chooses a free life with Gomatz.

“Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben” (“Rest gently, my dearest life (Beloved)”) appears in Act I when Zaide first discovers Gomatz, asleep under a tree. She instantly falls in love, and leaves him her portrait, jewels, money and a note beseeching him to meet her later in that same spot. She then sings this beautiful aria to the would-be lover, telling him to sleep until he awakes with happiness. It’s one of Mozart’s most beautiful arias and is especially remarkable given that this is such an early foray for him into full opera writing.

German Lyrics
Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben,
schlafe, bis dein Glück erwacht;
da, mein Bild will ich dir geben,
schau, wie freundlich es dir lacht:
Ihr süssen Träume, wiegt ihn ein,
und lasset seinem Wunsch am Ende
die wollustreichen Gegenstände
zu reifer Wirklichkeit gedeihn
English translation

Rest peacefully, my beloved,
Sleep until happiness dawns,
My portrait I give you,
See, how kindly it smiles upon you.
Sweet dreams rock him to sleep,
And Grant his wish at last,
That the things of which he dreams 
May ripen into reality.

Aria: “Ach, ich fuhl’s” from Die Zauberflöte 
(The Magic Flute) K. 620

The Magic Flute premiered in 1791. It is Mozart’s last opera, and in so many ways his crowning achievement in the genre. All of this great composer’s talents are on display in this masterpiece. The story takes place in Egypt, sometime around 1300 BC, and centers upon Tamino, a handsome young prince on a quest to rescue the daughter of the evil Queen of the Night, the lovely Pamina, so he can marry her. Tamino and his comic side-kick, Papageno, are given a Magic Flute and a set of magic Bells to ward off evil. They find Pamina in the care of Sarasato, a high priest, and to their surprise discover that Sarasato is actually protecting Pamina from her mother. Seeing Tamino’s purity, Sarasato agrees to let him and Pamina marry, but only after a set of trials to test his and Papageno’s mettle and purity. Adventures succeeded, Sarasato then celebrates the marriage of Tamino to Pamina, and banishes the evil Queen and her minions.
Mozart’s score sparkles with the magic and genius of a master at play. The music is appreciable on many levels, from giddy, simple tunes to wonderfully sophisticated moments of complex counterpoint – the whole tied together with exquisite melodies. One such beautiful aria is Pamina’s aria from Act Two, “Ach, ich fuhl’s (Ah, I feel it).” Tamino has sworn a Vow of Silence as part of Sarasato’s tests of mettle, and Pamina is despairingly certain that their love is lost. The aria is heart-wrenchingly beautiful, the soprano singing over an exquisite and sophisticated chord scheme in the orchestra, sounding much like a movement from a requiem, spare, somber. It’s one of Mozart’s most remarkably heartfelt songs, with the soprano’s pathos soaring into the spirit realms.
German Text
Ach, ich fühl’s, es ist verschwunden,
Ewig hin der Liebe Glück!
Nimmer kommt ihr Wonnestunde
Meinem Herzen mehr zurück!
Sieh’, Tamino, diese Tränen,
Fließen, Trauter, dir allein!
Fühlst du nicht der Liebe Sehnen,
So wird Ruh’ im Tode sein!
English Translation
Oh, I feel that it is gone,
forever gone – the happiness of love!
No more come the hours of joy
to my heart!
See, Tamino, these tears
flow, dearest, for you alone!
Do you not feel my love and longing?
I’ll only find peace in death.

Overture to Così fan tutte

The opera is one of Mozart’s great masterworks, assimilating the buffa aspects of the popular Italian opera together with serious (Opera seria) aspects, giving the drama and the music a greater depth. Mozart’s music is fun and mirthful as it often needs to be with the comic storyline, but it also captures the intrigue and emotions of the main characters in an uncanny way. One of Mozart’s lasting influences on opera was the way he molded the music to make the characters feel as real as life. This is especially true in Cosi fan tutte.

The title translates roughly, “Women are like that”, referring to a belief that all women will eventually be unfaithful. Set in Naples, two young officers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, brag about the beauty and faithfulness of their sweethearts, sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella. However, their older friend, Don Alfonzo, wagers that the two sisters can be found to be unfaithful. A convoluted and comic set of frauds and mistruths and disguises are set into motion. In the end, all is forgiven.

The Overture has retained its own staying power. It’s a gallant and joyful speed-ride. Unlike many overtures, however, it contains virtually no melodic material from the opera, but rather, new music used to set the tone. Among its many delights, there is an abundance of woodwind work, specifically the interplay between oboe and flute which is a musical representation of two sweethearts sharing the same heart-music. In all, the Overture is a lightning quick romp of merriment.

Aria: “Come scoglio” from Così fan tutte

Così fan tutte has made listeners both delighted and yet troubled. Of course this was all by design, and that may be why the depth of both Mozart’s musical score and da Ponte’s libretto make this arguably Mozart’s greatest achievement in opera. One splendid example of this bi-polar, humorous, and extraordinary music is “Come scoglio” (“Like a rock”) in Act I sung by Fiordiligi, Ferrando’s lover. Don Alphonso has arranged for Fiordiligi and Dorabella to believe that Ferrando and Guglielmo have been called off to war suddenly. Then, dressed in disguise as two “Albanians,” Ferrando and Guglielmo return and begin wooing the other’s sweetheart. Fiordiligi, at least initially, will have nothing of it, and crows about it.

Mozart begins the aria with an almost martial call to arms – a very peacocking moment. Then comes a delightful lyrical section that is almost inane, yet so charming that it keeps us smiling. The aria switches between these two types of music with a kind of over-the-top drama. It’s a great example of the type of opera-stopping solos that permeated 18th Century opera, but the aria is simultaneously parodying them. With this brilliantly uncanny mix of bravura with lyrical charm, Mozart’s music can’t quite allow you to believe Fiordiligi’s protestations, even while she must accomplish some extremely difficult musical passages: large interval leaps, and drops and runs up and down a two-octave range. “Come scoglio” is definitely one of Mozart’s greatest hits.

Italian text
Come scoglio immoto resta
Contro i venti e la tempesta,
Così ognor quest’alma è forte
Nella fede e nell’amor.
Con noi nacque quella face
Che ci piace, e ci consola,
E potrà la morte sola
Far che cangi affetto il cor.
Rispettate, anime ingrate,
Quest’esempio di costanza;
E una barbara speranza
Non vi renda audaci ancor!
English translation
Like a rock standing impervious
To winds and tempest,
So stands my heart ever strong
In faith and love.
Between us we have kindled
A flame which warms, and consoles us,
And death alone could
Change my heart’s devotion.
Respect this example
Of constancy, you abject creatures,
And do not let a base hope
Make you so rash again!
Aria: “Dove sono” from Le nozze di Figaro
(The Marriage of Figaro)

Written near the peak of his career, Le nozze di Figaro is naturally one of Mozart’s finest scores – many consider it to be the finest Opera buffa ever written. And his ability to make music mirror the psychological essence of the scene, the story, and the characters is nearly unrivaled. One of the opera’s most beautiful and thoughtful moments occurs in Act III with the Countess’s aria “Dove sono” (“Where are they?). Here the Countess is planning to catch her husband, the Count, red-handed in faithlessness with Susanna, and she’s employed Susanna to help trap him. But in a moment of quiet reflection, she wonders where the sweetness of their love has gone, how she could find herself in such a terrible state of lovelessness and humiliation. And yet, she still holds hope with a faintness as fragile as a spider web. The beauty of the music is deeply poignant, but Mozart goes a little further. He creates a magic moment, to capture the deep suffering of the Countess, by repeating the first section at almost a whisper. The psychological effect is disarming – even in the pathos of the Countess’s soul pain, a feeble hope for reconciliation is still distantly glimmering.

Italian text
Dove sono i bei momenti
Di dolcezza e di piacer?
Dove andaro i giuramenti
Di quel labbro menzogner?
Perchè mai, se in pianti e in pene
Per me tutto si cangiò,
La memoria di quel bene
Dal mio sen non trapassò?
Ah! se almen la mia costanza,
Nel languire amando ognor,
Mi portasse una speranza
Di cangiar l’ingrato cor!
English translation
Where are the lovely moments
Of sweetness and pleasure?
Where have the promises gone
That came from those lying lips?
Why, if all is changed for me
Into tears and pain,
Has the memory of that goodness
Not vanished from my breast?
Ah! If only, at least, my faithfulness,
Which still loves amidst its suffering,
Could bring me the hope

Of changing that ungrateful heart!

Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K. 543

1. Adagio – Allegro
2. Andante con moto
3. Minuetto – Allegretto
4. Finale – Allegro
In the summer of 1788, in just under 10 weeks’ time, Mozart wrote three of Western Music’s greatest symphonies, Numbers 39, 40 and 41 – an almost superhuman accomplishment.  Whereas the 40th and the 41st are overt in their pathos and exuberance, respectively, the 39th is the subtle delight of the trio. It is a testament to refinement, yet no less a masterpiece, and with its own daring.
The 39th sounds, on first hearing, almost textbook Classical music, but Mozart has in fact disguised its adventurousness in lightness. The slow introduction, grand and stately, promises something magnificent, but when the Allegro proper begins, the introduction’s theme continues onwards, now faster, now light and breezy. This is a bold kind of transitioning that Beethoven will take very seriously in his own symphonies. The second movement is again a model of sophistication, both in its light scoring and its handling of the deeper emotion that imbues it. On its surface, it comes to us as a tender song, but underneath is an undercurrent of pathos that is never allowed to become too passionate. In that, we might almost miss the exquisite harmonies that occur about two-thirds of the way through this lovely movement.
The Menuetto is one of Mozart’s most memorable works in that genre. Filled with grace and charm, it dances us lightly into gladness. Along the way we can especially hear Mozart’s love for the clarinet which was essentially a new instrument in his day. The Finale is an extraordinary whirling demon kept tightly cornered – flying notes dart in many directions and yet Mozart makes it sound as if it’s all just a little bit of boiling water. It’s truly a masterpiece in engaging minimalism. Brimming with fun and humor, the Finale ends in a deliciously clipped way for humor’s sake, as if the musicians turned the page at the end of a phrase and, alas, no more pages.

Infinite Wind: April 9, 2016

Trios Pièces Brèves

Jacques Ibert

(Born in Paris in 1890; died in Paris in 1962)

Trois Pièces Brèves

1. Assez lent, allegro scherzando

2. Andante

3. Allegro

French composer Jacques Ibert was one of the early 20th Century composers to rediscover the wind quintet as a form, though he composed only one. In the wake of a turbulent new millennium and World War I which thrust the Western world into a new modernity, composers began balking at the excesses of the Romantic Era of music. No longer did gargantuan orchestras and extremely long, pathos-driven music seem appropriate for composer or audience. So some looked backwards and Neo-Classicism was born. This was a return to simplicity, clean lines and structural forms, wrapped in 20th Century harmony. Ibert, one of “Les Six” of French composers looking for new musical expression, was for a time at the forefront of Neo-Classicism. In 1930 he turned to the Classical promise of the wind quintet, and from that was born one of his most cherished chamber works: Trois Pièces Brèves.

Ibert’s charming Quintet shows him at his colorful and inventive best. Ibert fashioned it so that its movements could be played in any order or independently, without any compromise to the work as a whole. He found the five-wind ensemble to be an opportunity to show boundless colors in simple combinations. He also delighted in writing works as sheer entertainment, which Trois Pièces Brèves provides brilliantly. The rather puffed-up, and lovely, introductory fanfare of the first movement becomes gently sarcastic when it devolves into a bird-call passage. More wittiness follows when the sprightly march-like theme evolves into a waltz. The march and waltz then battle for supremacy, and Ibert chooses the dance. The second movement is a surprise in color and beauty from only two instruments, the flute and clarinet, ending by adding a few more instruments to prepare for the jocular third movement. In the finale, Ibert again flexes his talent for sonority – all five instruments here combine for some wonderful colors and a whirlwind of whim and fun. A slightly drunken jig-like theme is punctuated with vocalistic roulades (a flurry of quick notes just before the next note in a melody), and hints of good old-fashioned 1930’s dance hall music. Trois Pièces Brèves is a delicious wonder.

Milonga Sin Palabras

Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla

(Born in Mar del Plata, Argentina in 1921; died in Buenos Aires in 1992)

From the time Argentinian-born Ástor Piazzolla was given the large keyboard accordion known as a bandoneón at around the age of eight until his death, Piazzolla was irretrievably drawn into the world of the tango. He became famous for his “Nuevo tango” in the 1960’s, a reinvigoration of Argentina’s “national” music that he derived from his formula of “tango + tragedy + comedy + whorehouse.” Though Piazzolla’s large output of music rests mainly on tango music with its distinctive dance rhythms, he was indeed a musical polyglot. Bach, Stravinsky, Hindemith, klezmer, jazz, popular music and a keen interest in traditional folk music all figure into his works, and so it was that he turned to his hometown of Mar del Plata to investigate its famous folksong and dance, the milonga.

The milonga had become popular in the 1870’s, growing out of a wonderful folk tradition called payada de contrapunto, a several hour to several day competition between two payadors (singers), who exchanged dueling verse to each other’s questions of life and love, usually ending with insults. Dance began to accompany the song form as it morphed into the milonga, and the combination of dance and milonga became regarded as an “excited habanera.” Piazzolla originally composed his Milonga Sin Palabras (“milonga without words”) for his wife in 1979 for bandoneón and piano. It soon became immensely popular and it was arranged for wind quintet by William Scribner. In Milonga Sin Palabras, Piazzolla again treats an old form through the filters of newer popular music. His Milonga wafts pensively but casually, with the rhythms and flickers of dance infusing it, yet its gentle lyricism adding depth and soul and timelessness. Beautifully crafted, Piazzolla’s Milonga seems to be returning to this old form, heard through the ears of ghosts who, while nostalgically remembering the old vocal competitions, infuse it with both new harmonies and melancholy.

Quintet in B-flat, Op. 56

Franz  Ignaz Danzi

(Born in Schwetzingen, Germany in 1763; died in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1826)

Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 56, No. 1

1. Allegro

2. Andante con motoa

3. Menuett – Trio

4. Allegro

After Giuseppi Cambini “invented” the wind quintet ensemble in the early 1800’s, two composers in particular took a keen interest and were influential in establishing the genre in the concert hall. First was Czech composer Anton Reicha (1770 – 1836) who composed 24 Quintets not long after Cambini’s, followed by German composer Franz Danzi and his 9 Quintets that were written most likely in the period 1820-24. These 33 works have become the foundation of the repertoire. Danzi was a highly respected cellist, composer and teacher in a long career that was witness to Mozart’s last years and Beethoven’s entire career, as well as being a mentor to Carl Maria von Weber. As a composer in his own right, he contributed to nearly every genre of the day and often with impressive works. Most impressive and most memorable are his Quintets, and his first three published as Opus 56 have remained deservedly popular.

The Wind Quintet No. 1 (of Op. 56) is an impressive and sparkling little masterwork in its genre, imbued with that wonderful late Classical spirit, light and airy, masterfully balanced and full of energy. The harmonies are clearly looking forward to the Romantic era, and the themes, breezy as they appear, are rich and often hint at something much deeper than just light entertainment. The second movement is quite the gem, featuring the double reeds (first oboe, then bassoon), in a rather wistful funeral cortege that is filled with ambiguity and bittersweet sentiment. Then the double reeds hands the baton to the flute and clarinet, creating a wonderful changing of light and color in the ensemble. Likewise, the Trio (middle) section of the third movement presents a masterful sequence as the theme is exchanged between each member of the quintet. The entire work is ripe with these ingenious techniques, and as charmingly as they fall upon our ears, the work is equally heady. Most impressive still is how Danzi, the cellist, captured the capabilities of each wind instrument with remarkable idiomatic wisdom.

Quintet in C, Op. 79

August Friedrich Klughardt

(Born in Köthen, Germany in 1847; died in Rosslau, Germany in 1902)

Wind Quintet in C-Major, Op. 79

1. Allegro non troppo

2. Allegro vivace

3. Andante grazioso

4. Adagio – Allegro molto vivace

Despite Danzi’s contributions to the quintet repertoire, the string quartet still held considerable cache with composers. But at the turning of the 20th Century, two important musical forces were underway. First was the war that raged over the future of music – the “New German School” of music (the tone poems of Liszt and the operas of Wagner) vying with the “Conservative” composers (the symphonies of Brahms and Schumann). The second transformation was at once mechanical and musical. Technological advancements to wind instruments were making them more agile, with wider ranges, transforming the music they could play.

Into this mix came August Klughardt who, in his youth, adored Liszt. But late in his life he began to appreciate deeply the Conservative path. The result was something magical producing a wonderful combination of both ideologies. With the richness and nimbleness now available in wind instruments and his growing fondness for conservative musical structures, Klughardt wrote his Wind Quintet between 1898-1901. It has become one of the cornerstones of the repertoire for both its Classical clarity and its deeply Romantic underpinnings.

Perhaps as no other composer, Klughardt understood the possibilities of this particular set of instruments and how “orchestral” they could sound, and how they could also bridge the gap between the two “Schools.” The first movement delves into lush melodies over rich and complex harmonies – a nod to his New German School forebears. The second movement, simple and bucolic, acknowledges Conservative aesthetics. The third movement is a magical mix of both Schools, where instrument pairings and inventive timbres create a folktale-like atmosphere – the music is never heavy and yet manages to be richly sonorous. The finale nods to the early Baroque with a somber and beautiful slow introduction, but what follows is an exploitation of just what these five wind instruments can do when set loose, virtuosic and breathtaking to the end.

Highlights from Porgy and Bess

George Gershwin

(Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1898; died in Hollywood, CA in 1937)

Selections from Porgy and Bess for Woodwind Quintet

1. Overture: Catfish Row

2. Summertime

3. A Woman is a Sometimes Thing

4. My Man’s Gone Now

5. I Got Plenty O’ Nuthin’

6. It Ain’t Necessarily So

7. There’s a Boat Dat’s Leabin’ Soon for New York

8. Oh, Lawd, I’m On My Way

Just on the heels of his extraordinary success with Rhapsody in Blue in 1924, Gershwin launched a new musical, Oh, Kay!, in 1926.  In the throes of its rehearsals, Gershwin found he couldn’t sleep one night, and he picked up the new and hugely popular novel, Porgy (1924), by American author DuBose Heyward (1885-1940). The composer was enthralled with Heyward’s story about the Gullah-speaking African-Americans living in Charleston hoping to find fishing work on “Catfish Row.” Heyward’s main character, Porgy, was based on a real character he knew named “Goat Sammy,” a crippled man who got his way through town riding a cart pulled by a goat. The novel had all the elements for great theatre: crime, love, the little guy rising up to win the day, and so Gershwin immediately wrote Heyward asking to turn Porgy into an opera he hoped to call Porgy and Bess.

Since his teenage years, Gershwin had been enamored with the idea of writing an opera as the best way to get “popular” music into the Classical world. For various reasons, it would take him another nine years after reading Porgy to complete Porgy and Bess and to premiere it in 1935 in Boston. Historically speaking, it was a triumph of firsts, using an all African-American cast and bringing such a racially-charged piece onto the stage, but it didn’t win over the critics initially. Today, however, the opera Porgy and Bess is recognized as an American masterpiece, and its wonderfully singable songs and arias have been extremely popular in their own right. There is probably no other aria in the American song book as beloved as “Summertime,” and the opera’s almost embarrassing wealth of great music virtually begs to be played in any combination possible. Tonight’s arrangement for woodwind quintet is yet another example of the timeless appeal of Gershwin’s music.

Pushing the Season: March 12, 2016

Aaron Copland
(Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1900; died in North Tarrytown, New York in 1990)

Appalachian Spring (original version for Chamber Orchestra)

For many, Appalachian Spring has come to represent the “sound of Appalachia” – that ancient chain of low mountains marching up the eastern seaboard, with their dense wilderness, granting views that gently span the horizon through a myriad of brilliant autumnal colors and misty pastels and filled with the folk music of song and fiddles seeming to be as ancient as the mountains themselves.  The underlying story of Copland’s ballet is also equally well known: that of a newlywed pioneer family “building a house with joy and love and prayer.”  Interestingly, neither the Appalachia theme nor this ballet story appeared in this piece until much later in its creation.  Commissioned of Copland in 1942 by the famous American dancer and choreographer, Martha Graham, the grande dame of Modern Dance, together with the Coolidge Foundation, the ballet music that Copland originally conceived of was first titled “Ballet for Martha” and he said that “the music … takes as a point of departure the personality of Martha Graham.”  It was only just before the ballet’s premiere in 1944 when Graham herself happened across the lovely phrase that became its title, “Appalachian spring,” finding it in a poem by Hart Crane called The Dance, (from the larger collection titled The Bridge) where the “spring” referred to a water source, not the season.  Although a basic outline of the ballet’s story existed from the start, most of the details that we know today were hammered out in the several months prior to its premiere.

Two aspects in the commissioning of Appalachian Spring, however, were essential to its creation from the very beginning: the music had be danceable, and it must be “American” sounding.  And these two aspects Copland undeniably achieved in this, his greatest masterpiece.   American born and bred, Appalachian Spring has remained peerless as the music that captures the spirit of America.   To be sure, its musical canvas conveys a humility and newness that has become easily attached to a nostalgic American perception of itself, and one of its most beloved melodies, the beautiful hymn tune “Simple Gifts*,” gives the musical score a deeply honest and hopeful feel.  These characteristics lend themselves wonderfully to any dance interpretation.  Originally scored for 13 instruments (1 flute, 1 clarinet, 1 bassoon, piano and strings) to be danced in the small Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC,  Copland revised and condensed the score in 1945 into a suite for full orchestra, now its most well known version.  The original version, however, retains its own wonderful charm and is a delight to listen to, especially when accompanied by dance.

The underlying story, according to the original published score, is as follows:

“…a pioneer celebration in spring around a newly-built farmhouse in the Pennsylvania hills in the early part of the last century [1800’s].  The bride-to-be and the young farmer-husband enact the emotions, joyful and apprehensive, their domestic partnership invites.  An older neighbor suggests now and then the rocky confidence of experience.  A revivalist and his followers remind the new householders of the strange and terrible aspects of human fate.  At the end the couple is left quiet and strong in their new house.”

*A note about the tune “Simple Gifts”:  The Shakers, a break-off sect from the Quakers, emigrated from England to America in 1774.  “Shakers” was a pejorative term for the sect describing their lively and ecstatic form of worship, which involved a lot of their own, original music accompanied by swaying and twirling dance.  Music played a part in all aspects of Shaker life, and was thought of, dually, as utilitarian and spiritual in essence, and these songs were referred to as work-song-hymns.  In 1875, Shaker member Elder Joseph Brackett composed “Simple Gifts.”  It was published in a compendium not long afterwards called The Gift to Be Simple: Shaker Rituals and Songs, which is where Copland found it.  The song’s lilting, sweet melody and its humble, yet joyful, lyrics seem to capture the essence of Appalachian Spring as well as any description.  They are:

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free;

‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be;

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d,

To bow and to bend we sha’n’t be asham’d

To turn, turn will be our delight,

‘Til by turning, turning we come round right.

 

Antonio Vivaldi
(Born in Venice, Italy in 1678; died in Vienna, Austria in 1741)

The Four Seasons, Four Concertos for Violin, Op. 8, Nos. 1-4
I. “Spring” Concerto in E-major
1. Allegro
2. Largo e pianissimo sempre
3. Allegro

II. “Summer” Concerto in G-minor
1. Allegro non molto
2. Adagio
3. Presto

III. “Autumn” Concerto in F-major
1. Allegro
2. Adagio molto
3. Allegro

IV. “Winter” Concerto in F-minor
1. Allegro non molto
2. Largo
3. Allegro

In Venice, just down the quayside from St. Mark’s Square, stands a building called Ospedale della Pieta on whose outer walls there is a hole just big enough to stick a bowling pin through.  Underneath reads a plaque which damns to hell the person who slips any infant other than a true orphan through the small passage to the indoors.  It was within this orphanage that Vivaldi worked for most of his life, where he taught the girls who had been slipped through as newborns how to play music.  And it was here that he composed his incomparable The Four Seasons.

Besides teaching, Vivaldi was a virtuoso violinist as well as composer, and of his 500-plus concertos, 221 are for violin written most likely for himself.  Although it’s unknown when the concertos of The Four Seasons were composed, they were first published in 1725 in a larger set titled The Test of Harmony and Invention.  Since then, they have become so famous as to almost eclipse the composer himself – so rich in tunefulness and inventiveness, so exceptional in their virtuoso violin solos – indeed, their inspired beauty nearly defy time, place and composer.

One lesser known aspect of the Seasons is that the orchestral parts are accompanied by detailed programs (storylines) which explain many of this timeless masterpiece’s ingeniously clever musical moments.  In the original 1725 publication Vivaldi even provided four of his own seasonally-inspired sonnets. As an example of this program-music, the sonnet for Spring describes, in part: bird song, then the babbling brooks of Spring, followed by a storm and then a return of the birds.  Once this is known, the musical imitation is almost impossible to miss (the trilling of the strings representing birdsong, the undulating string motives echoing the running brooks, and so on).

Antonio Vivaldi’s Sonnets to the Four Seasons

Spring

1. Spring has come and joyfully the birds greet it with happy song, and the brooks, while the streams flow along with gentle murmur as the zephyrs blow. There come, shrouding the air with a black cloak, lighting and thunder chosen to herald [the storm]; then, when these are silent, the little birds return to their melodious incantations.

2. And now, in the pleasant, flowery meadow, to the soft murmur of leaves and plants, the goatherd sleeps with his faithful dog at his side.

3. To the festive sound of a pastoral bagpipe, nymphs and shepherds dance under their beloved roof, greeting the glittering arrival of the spring.

Summer

1. In the harsh season scorched by the sun, man and flock languish, and the pine is on fire; the cuckoo begins to call and soon after, the turtledove and the goldfinch are heard singing. Zephyr [the west wind] gently blows, but Boreas [the north wind] suddenly enters into a contest with its neighbor, and the little shepherd weeps for he hears the awesome threatening storm and his fate.

2. To his tired limbs rest is denied by the fear of lightning, awesome thunder, and the furious swarm of flies and hornets!

3. Alas, his fears are justified. The sky is filled with thunder and lightning and hail cuts down the proud grain.

Autumn

1. The peasant celebrates the pleasure of the happy harvest with dances and songs; and inflamed by the liquor of Bacchus, many end their rejoicing with sleep.

2. The mild pleasant air makes all abandon dance and song; this is the season that invites all to the sweet delights of peaceful sleep.

3. The hunters, at the break of dawn, set forth with horns, guns, and hounds. The animal flees, and they follow its tracks. Already frightened and tired by the great noise of guns and hounds, the wounded animal makes a weak attempt at fleeing, but is overcome and dies.

Winter

1. Trembling with cold amidst the freezing snow, while a frightful wind harshly blows, running and stamping one’s feet every minute, and feeling one’s teeth chatter from the extreme cold;

2. Spending quiet contented days by the fire while the rain outside drenches people by the hundreds;

3. Walking on ice, and moving cautiously, with slow steps, for fear of falling, spinning around, slipping, falling down, again walking on ice and running fast until the ice cracks and splits; hearing Sirocco, Boreas, and all the winds at war burst forth from the bolted doors – this is winter, but it also brings joy!

Program notes © Max Derrickson

Martin Luther King Holiday Concert: January 16, 2016

Panamanian Dances
(Danzas de Panama) for String Quartet

William Grant Still
(Born in Woodville, Missouri in 1895; died in Los Angeles in 1978)

  • Tamborito – (“Little drum”)
  • Mejorana y Socavón – (2 Dances: “Marjoram” and “Tunnel [where an image of the Virgin Mary was reported in an old mineshaft in Panama in 1756]”)
  • Punto – (“Point[ing]”) – Allegretto con grazia
  • Cumbia y Congo – (2 Dance names)

In 1955, when most African-American citizens in the South couldn’t even drink out of the same water fountain as their white neighbors, composer William Grant Still achieved a breakthrough – he was the first African-American to conduct the New Orleans Philharmonic. It was only one of the many steps toward racial equality (in that same year, Rosa Parks was arrested in Alabama for refusing to obey bus segregation), but in the Deep South in 1955 Still’s accomplishment was extraordinary.  That 1955 concert highlighted several of Still’s own works, including his Afro-American Symphony (Symphony No. 1, 1930), in which Still was just mastering the technique of giving voice to African-American song and rhythm in the “classical” Neo-Romantic style. If George Gershwin started that idea in 1924 with his Rhapsody in Blue, then Still carried it further into the concert hall and perfected it. Such is the case with his marvelous Panamanian Dances for string quartet which he premiered in 1948. Still incorporated not only African-American elements, but as the title’s “Panama” suggests, also Spanish and Native Central American Indian elements as well. These Dances are filled with ingenious details, such as the actual percussive elements of the folk dances throughout, where the performers knock on their instruments in the first and last movements. And then there are the evocations of Panamanian folk instruments – the guitars called mejoraneros and the three-stringed violin, the Rabel – during the Mejorana y Socavón (2nd movement), as well as the shoe-tapping portion in the Punto (3rd dance) from the Panamanian dance, the Zapateo. In the final dance, Still brings to life the joyous Afro-Latin dances, the Cumbia and the Congo, evoking women dancing sensuously in the streets during the Congo with candles held high as the men swirl around them in ecstatic abandon.

 

Lullaby for Strings 

George Gershwin
(Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1898; died in Hollywood, CA in 1937)

George Gershwin’s life is one of those great and inspirational American stories.  The son of a poor immigrant family in Brooklyn, he worked his way up from nowhere to becoming one of the most famous musicians in the world and having his music hailed as representing America itself.  Even in his fame, however, Gershwin continued studying music as his lifelong pursuit. Thus was born his wonderful Lullaby for Strings in 1919, which was composed as an assignment in harmony and counterpoint during his studies. Aside from Lullaby’s gentle hues, its sweet and lazy habanera/swing-like rhythms, and its two infectious and utterly unpretentious themes, one senses a real glow in this work that emerges from these almost hidden harmonies and counterpoint underneath the melodies. Although Gershwin adapted Lullaby into a song in a new show Blue Monday (a one act “jazz-opera,” Gershwin called it, as well as Opera à la Afro-American, 1922), the show flopped. Nonetheless, the famous jazz band leader Paul Whiteman heard Gershwin’s talent, and commissioned him to write a new piece, which turned out to be Rhapsody in Blue. And thus it was that the gentle Lullaby fathered the edgy Rhapsody that transformed American music.

 

String Quartet No. 12
in F Major, Op. 96, B. 179, “American”

Antonin Dvořák
(Born near Prague, Bohemia (now Czech Republic) in 1841; died in Prague in 1904)

  • Allegro ma non troppo
  • Lento
  • Molto vivace
  • Vivace ma non troppo

In 1892 the American philanthropist Jeanette Thurber persuaded Czech composer Antonin Dvořák to head her newly formed National Conservatory of Music in New York City for three years. The idea was to foster grassroots classical music training, help grow a Nationalist American music, and be open to all races – most important, to African-Americans. Within a year, Dvořák had composed his Symphony in E-Minor “from the New World,” which according to the composer was influenced by the African-American spirituals (then called “Negro music”) he had been exposed to. Ignoring the racial barriers of the time, Dvořák insisted that in “. . . the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.”  Directly after composing the “New World” Symphony, Dvořák took a long summer holiday in 1893 in Spillville, Iowa. This small, country town was everything that the bustling New York City he’d spent the year in was not, including a large community of Czech immigrants. Amidst nature and his countrymen, Dvořák overflowed with musical ideas. Within 3 days he sketched out his entire String Quartet No. 12, later nicknamed the “American,” and finished it in another 13 days. Probably the most beloved String Quartet in the repertoire, the American is beautiful and robust, folksy and sophisticated. There is no movement without a gorgeous melody, and equally enticing are their delightful accompaniments, with syncopated ostinatos on par with Joplin’s and chock full of inventiveness. Especially enchanting is the magical second movement (Lento), where a sorrowful tune wafts above the soft undulations of the other strings, and where the harmonies could melt sunsets. The American is unreservedly a masterpiece and crowd pleaser.

But what of the folk songs and African-American influences so often mentioned as sources for these “American” pieces?  The only confirmed American “song” comes in the third movement of this Quartet, the bird song of the beautiful Scarlet Tanager, whose insistent singing apparently annoyed Dvořák during his work, and so he transcribed it and memorialized it in the third movement (Molto vivace).  All the same, Dvořák felt that just by being in America and hearing a new type of music was enough to inspire him to write in a different way – as if he were hearing with different ears.  And so two of Western music’s great masterpieces were created during Dvořák’s tenure in America, and thanks to him and Jeanette Thurber, a serious interest in African-American music began to take root, helping to pave the way for other composers to plumb African-American music to its fullest in the popular as well as the classical vein.

 

Three Rags by
Scott Joplin
(arranged for String Quartet)

Scott Joplin
(Born in Texarkana, Texas (uncertain) in 1867 or 1868; died in New York City in 1917)

  • The Entertainer
  • Solace
  • Maple Leaf Rag

As popular as it is today, it seems almost impossible that anyone in the western world could never have heard Joplin’s magnificent classic rag The Entertainer (c. 1900). This perfect little piece of music is both jazzy and classical, upbeat and melancholy, and features that rarest of all musical occurrences — an almost instantly memorable main theme.  It is as melodiously perfect as a Souza March or a Rossini Overture. Such is the genius of America’s greatest ragtime composer, Scott Joplin, but his fame only really began a half century after his death when his rags were featured in the 1973 classic film The Sting (starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford). In his own lifetime, Joplin’s popularity was sporadic, ending in poverty and an early death. He was buried in an unmarked grave in 1917 at the age of 49, and by the 1920’s he was all but forgotten. But his 1897 rag, the Maple Leaf Rag (the closing piece in this arrangement), had brought Joplin some brief fame. This piece more than any other perfected the ragtime genre – which previously was known condescendingly as “bordello music” – and became the most important influence on the musical form that soon blossomed into Jazz.  What was so inspiring about Maple Leaf was its catchy melodic lines and its delightfully infectious character, but also its sophisticated harmonies and intelligent syncopations. As musicologist Bill Ryerson explained it, Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag did for ragtime (and soon Jazz) what Chopin did for the Polish mazurka. Quite different in tone, however, is Solace (also subtitled “Mexican Serenade,” the second rag in this arrangement), which Joplin wrote in 1909. Here the rich harmonies and melancholic sentiment are the true gems – the syncopated top line saunters almost like an afterthought to a remarkably moving and tuneful piece. Joplin wrote his rags as classical pieces of music informed strongly by African-American influences, and their exceptional quality played a tremendous role in shaping the direction of American music.

Brilliant Beginnings, November 7, 2015

Friends of Music Member Program Notes
Brilliant Beginnings, November 7, 2015 

Oswaldo Golijov
(Born in La Plata, Argentina in 1960) 

Last Round
1. Movido, Urgente – Macho, Cool and Dangerous
2. Lentissimo – Death of Angels 

Oswaldo Golijov’s Last Round is a wonderfully quirky chamber work that honors the tango, Argentina’s beloved song and dance. It also serves as an elegy for two of tango’s greatest composers –- Astor Piazzolla and Carlos Gardel. Last Round represents the tango as it has always been –- a multi-cultural, always-evolving form of music.

The tango itself came about as amazing amalgamation of influences. By the 1890’s, tango had reached Buenos Aires, Argentina, but not before first stopping in Uruguay and Cuba. In Uruguay tango began as a West African slave-trade musical form called candombe. The word itself designated a set of drums, but the drums became a part of a spiritual dance and song, under the same name, which was only preformed during carnival — a splendid blend of West African and Catholic influences. The song and dance form then moved with the active slave trade to Cuba, and there it began to take on a new, sensual kind of dance shape.

Before long, tango found its way to Argentina, and into that country’s streets and dance halls. In the dance halls, now imbued with African and Cuban influences, it was blended in with salon music brought from the huge influx of European immigrants, and soon became solidly known as the tango. Where first needing the salon-type orchestra as its accompaniment in the Buenos Aires dance halls, the common folks needed an orchestral substitute. This was soon found in the bandoneón, a button accordion which was brought to South America by German immigrants as a substitute for the organ in makeshift churches. By the early 1900’s, the tango as we generally know it today had morphed in Buenos Aires into the overtly sensual form of singer, bandoneónista, and two dancers. It has since become one of Argentina’s most prized cultural icons –- and as diversely invested with influences and change as perhaps any song and dance form ever has been.

Golijov is himself one of the world’s most sought-after new composers, and he brings his own cosmopolitanism to Last Round. But he comes by the tango honestly: born and raised in Argentina to Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Golijov grew up immersed in Jewish, Classical, South American pop music, and of course, the tango. He went on to study music first in Israel and then finished his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. During his childhood in Argentina, it was the “tango of the old guard,” as epitomized by the actor and performer Carlos Gardel (1890 – 1935), who essentially won the hearts of the world to the beauties of tango, especially with his famous tango song My Beloved Buenos Aires in the 1930’s. Along the way, Golijov fell in love with the tangos of Astor Piazzolla (1921 – 1992), especially with his first set of tangos in the 1960’s, which challenged the “old guard” tangos with his new approach – the “nuevo tango.”

Said Piazzolla: “Nuevo tango = tango + tragedy + comedy + whorehouse.” One tango in particular in his early 1960’s set, which truly epitomized Piazzolla’s philosophy, was titled La muerte del ángel, which, with its highly syncopated rhythms and its complex harmonies, defied tango tradition. Having achieved National Hero status in Argentina, and fame around the world, Piazzolla’s death in 1992 prompted Golijov to begin his elegy to his tango guru by writing the second movement of what would later become Last Round – Lentissimo – Death of Angels. A few years later he was commissioned to expand the work and Golijov added the first movement. It premiered in 1996 to high acclaim.

Last Round’s orchestration is wonderfully unique. Two small string ensembles oppose each other on stage, and they are moderated and anchored by a double bass in the middle. Golijov’s objective was to create a string version of the bandoneón and it works remarkably well. The first movement is a tango of the rough and tumble street musicians of the underbelly of Buenos Aires, circa early 1900’s. Wheezing and snapping, the “string-bandoneón” creates a very untidy, and altogether joyful, roughneck tango straight off the streets. Occasional increases in tempo call into play the machismo of the vying tango dancers, and the jaunty, almost chaotic, rhythms testify to the love of rhythm that Piazzolla adored and exploited in over 300 tangos.

The second movement is a fittingly somber threnody of the two great tango men. Its subtitle, of course, is named in homage to Piazzolla’s groundbreaking tango La muerte del ángel, but only in name. Here it serves both as literal reference and as an elegy about the influence and death of Piazzolla, one of tango’s great champions. In this movement, Golijov wanted to create the sensation of what a bandoneón could do if it never had to change between compression and expansion –- one gigantic, long pull. Bits of a tune are implied at first, but melancholic and atmospheric music pervade, evoking mourning and sadness. Not until near the middle do we understand from where the bits of melody arise, as Golijov finally quotes

outright the famous Gardel refrain from My Beloved Buenos Aires. Heard clearly and somberly –- this refrain is the first true melody to invade the movement.

From then on, the movement rhapsodizes on Gardel’s refrain and Golijov’s “endless pull” idea, with delicate beauty and bitter sweetness. The result of both movements together creates the kind of spiritual, earthy, sexy and ecstatic music of the tango in a completely fresh and heartfelt way, much in keeping with tango’s multi-cultural roots, and delightfully new and engaging for today.

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
(Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1809; died in Leipzig, Germany in 1847) 

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E-minor, Op. 64
1. Allegro molto appasionato
2. Andante
3. Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace 

In 1825 and 1826, the 16 year-old Mendelssohn wrote two of Westerns Music’s greatest jewels: the String Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, followed by A Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture, Op 21. After being stunned and delighted by these great works, all of Europe was expecting a string of masterpieces to follow. Although Mendelssohn composed many excellent works in the years that followed – most notably his Symphonies No. 2 through 5 and his two Oratorios – none seemed to achieve the inspiration that he had displayed with these two early, giant masterpieces.

But during these seemingly quiescent years, Mendelssohn wasn’t resting on his young laurels. He had become a revivalist of Bach’s great choral works and was a first-rate Bach scholar; he founded and directed the Leipzig Conservatory; he conducted professionally and made some significant reforms in that field; and he concertized at an exhausting pace. Nevertheless, the music-going audiences of the day came to believe that his former masterpiece-well had gone dry.

The 1845 Violin Concerto would prove them wrong. It was only Mendelssohn’s hectic life that had kept him from finishing and premiering it. Its first notes had in fact been conjured up in 1838, when he told his friend and violinist, Ferdinand David, that he wanted to write him a concerto. The life-long collaboration between Mendelssohn and David is famous, and in this Concerto, David became an indispensable technical advisor. Despite that first inspiration in 1838, Mendelssohn couldn’t sit down to work on his Concerto without distraction until 1844. It was premiered in 1845 with David as soloist. It was immediately recognized as a masterpiece worthy of Mendelssohn’s early successes, and his critics were converted into his greatest admirers.

By Mendelssohn’s day –- hardly a generation since the towering violin concertos of Beethoven and Mozart –- Europe was becoming infatuated with concertos filled with musical fluff, often more flash than musical merit. Mendelssohn’s Concerto had something much more serious and lasting to say, surely in keeping with the tradition of the great Masters before him. This is clear from its opening theme. That first theme, sweeping, haunting and wonderfully lyrical, had been lurking in Mendelssohn’s mind ever since he wrote David in 1838 that it “gave [him] no peace” until he gave it voice in the Concerto. The entire concerto is filled with beautiful melodies, concise expression and those hallmark Mendelssohnian charms –- all aspects that would make this a masterpiece on their own.

But three unusual compositional techniques add an aspect of wholeness, of seamless flow and drama that make this Concerto stand above most others. First, the violin and orchestra are immediately thrown together to play at the outset, contrary to the typical orchestra-only introduction followed by a spotlight on the soloist. This fusion makes for a very dramatic beginning, as though there is little time to waste on trifles. Mendelssohn also placed the cadenza in an unusual place – instead of customarily placing it near the end, it occurs much sooner, heightening the sense of drama. Lastly, to keep an organic flow, Mendelssohn calls for no breaks between movements, but rather links them with musical bridges.

The link between the intense first movement and the second is a magical moment. The bassoon holds out a prolonged pitch after the final chords die off from the first movement, suspending time. And then a change of a half step occurs, followed by a quiet gathering of flutes and strings, liquefying like clouds into pitches of a new key, and then a new movement emerges. The Andante that follows is a sweet musing, one of Mendelssohn’s most beautiful songs. As this second movement ends, another magical bridge follows, this time like a recitative from a Rossini opera, with statements from the soloist and responses from the orchestra. All the while the tempo is quickening, and then, unexpectedly, a new movement launches forth.

The Finale is a quick-silver affair, introduced with a fanfare, followed by the soloist catapulting into revelry. One delightful detail of its main theme is that, as mercurial as it is, the upper woodwinds play along, creating an aurally 3-dimensional effect. Not without its own special charms, the Finale dashes through to a rousing ending.

Almost instantly famous, Mendelssohn’s Concerto became a mainstay in the repertoire. As the renowned violinist Joseph Joachim (1831 – 1907) said of it in 1906:

“The Germans have four violin concertos … [Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch and Mendelssohn’s]. But the dearest one of them all, the heart’s jewel, is Mendelssohn’s.” 

Ludwig van Beethoven
(Born in Bonn in 1770; died in Vienna in 1827) 

Symphony No. 1 in C Major, Op. 21
1. Adagio molto – Allegro con brio
2. Andante cantabile con moto
3. Menuetto, Allegro molto e vivace
4. Finale, Adagio – Allegro molto e vivace 

Beethoven began sketching his First Symphony in 1795, but Haydn and Mozart’s symphonic legacy cast a daunting shadow over the young composer, not to mention the demands posed by composing his piano concertos and his performing career. But in 1800 this First Symphony was finally completed and premiered in a concert where he also premiered his Piano Concerto No. 2. The Symphony received generally good reviews, and some even called it a masterpiece. Though the First may not be the masterpiece of Beethoven’s even greater symphonies yet to come – his Third and Fifth through Ninth Symphonies –- it is robust and energetic, filled with Classical charm, and containing more than a few renegade surprises. It’s a wonderful creation by a genius during the happiest days of his life, when he was on top of the world.

It’s important to note, however, that Beethoven felt a tremendous need to write a symphony that could stand alongside those of Mozart and Haydn, and perhaps even surpass them. To do so meant that he had to show intelligence in key relationships, counterpoint, symphonic structure and orchestration –- and it meant that his Symphonic debut needed to turn some heads. This First Symphony in C Major begins with one of those head turners –- a series of chords not in C Major and that don’t seem to be going anywhere near their ostensible “home” key. These introductory chords sound almost like a small musical “bridge,” which is a customary technique for linking main themes or sections, but not as an introduction to a “proper” symphony. These chords soon lead into a harmonically rich adagio introduction that does indeed bring us to the main key and a very buoyant first theme, leaving these mysterious chords behind. The rest of the movement is lively and bright, rather like Haydn in its overall lightness, but with a greater use of woodwinds than was common in 1800.

The second movement stretches the symphonic conventions a little further. Its lyrical themes are fashioned into quasi-fugues, although slow and meandering ones, which was something normally saved for a finale. This is Beethoven perhaps flexing his youthful muscles and challenging norms. All the same this Andante with its variations is delightful in its nearness to singing. Two other surprises greet us here. After the easy-going fugal work, Beethoven begins solving the mystery chords from the first movement by using them in their traditional role as a “bridge” to the next section. That next section, then, delivers the second surprise by giving the timpani a prominent part, an important role that the timpani will play even more aggressively as the Symphony continues.

The third movement also breaks with tradition by turning the typical menuetto-dance movement into a break-neck speed concert piece, completely unsuitable for dance and completely exhilarating for the orchestra and listener alike. This would become one of Beethoven’s many contributions to the symphonic form –- that of introducing the lively scherzo in the place of the dance movement.

The Finale starts with a section that resolves the musical mystery of the Symphony’s opening chords, by, in essence, recreating that chordal conundrum again. In this uncharacteristically slow introductory section for a finale, fractured bits of a scale creep upwards in the “wrong” key, wonderfully ambiguous and creating great anticipation. And, then, the Finale breaks out in full force and in the home C Major key. It’s a wonderful finale, filled with energy and vigorous joy. For the listener, it’s a jubilant end to a terrifically enjoyable symphony. For Beethoven, it was just the beginning of even greater things to come.

Program notes © Max Derrickson