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

String Quartet No. 1 in F major, Op. 18, No. 1
1. Allegro con brio
2. Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato
3. Scherzo: Allegro molto
4. Allegro

In 1792, when he was 22 years old, Beethoven came to Vienna to study composition with Germany’s greatest living composer, Franz Josef Haydn (Mozart had just died the year before in 1791). After roughly a year and a half, Beethoven grew impatient with the affable and conservative teaching style of Haydn, and by and large the two men parted ways. But this was not a setback for Beethoven. By this time, he had plenty of friends and opportunities for frolic (contrary to the image we now have of him, Beethoven was quite the socialite before his hearing loss made him more reclusive). And musically, he was already becoming known as one of the greatest piano virtuosos of the day and he was making excellent headway as a composer. However, to become known as a composer in his own right, rather than simply as a pianist-composer as so many other virtuosos were, Beethoven had to tackle genres beyond piano works. He did so in earnest: during the period of the 1790s, in addition to his first three piano concertos, he wrote more than a dozen important chamber works, including several violin and cello sonatas, five string trios, his important Piano Quintet (Op. 16) and his great Septet (Op. 20).

In 1798 and 1799, Haydn published his six seminal string quartets, often called the “London Quartets.” These works were so extraordinary they almost immediately set a new and lasting standard for the string quartet genre. Beethoven, his ego prodded, responded quickly: he initially composed what has become known as his First String Quartet in 1798. However, sensing that these were risky waters for a young composer to wade into, he did not publish immediately. Instead, he sent the draft to a friend, Karl Amenda, asking him to keep it under wraps. A while later, he told Amenda “… only now have I learned to write quartets.” Finally, with dramatic revisions, Beethoven published the First Quartet in 1801.

From the Quartet’s very first notes there is no doubt that Beethoven was intending to speak in big gestures. This work does not contain the kinds of themes we will hear in his later, ground-breaking symphonies, of course. Instead, it follows the impeccable models of both Haydn and Mozart (to be taken seriously as a composer at this time, Beethoven almost had to do this). In fact, the first movement’s theme is clearly a tip of the hat to Haydn’s Quartet, Op. 50, No. 1. But the urgency and drama that feed this first movement clearly reveal what Beethoven was made of, and they give us a peek at the greatness of his later works. Even more amazing, perhaps, is how mature this Quartet sounds: although this was his first attempt at this genre, the result is so natural and idiomatic it could just as easily be taken as his thirtieth quartet.

The biggest change from the first draft is the second movement, and this is the most progressive step for Beethoven. Here, he re-marked the tempo from simply “Adagio” to “Adagio affettuoso ed appassionato” (“slowly, affectionate and passionate”). This has the effect of expressing grief personally rather than in the abstract, which is a very Romantic perspective. Notice, too, the many silent pauses and tempo changes, all creating a deep, affecting pathos. The third movement’s scherzo is frisky, playful, and at times downright fiery. The finale is a fast-moving current of joyfulness.

Beethoven truly did “learn how to write a quartet” in this piece: listen for the motives passing through the four strings with fleet abandon. And above all, listen to a Beethoven who, at the beginning of a titanic career, shows himself to be full of vigor and good cheer, and taking the music world head on.

Alexander Borodin
(Born in St. Petersburg in 1833; died in St. Petersburg in 1887)

String Quartet No. 2 in D Major, Op.
1. Allegro moderato
2. Scherzo. Allegro
3. Notturno (Nocturne): Andante
4. Finale: Andante — Vivace

Borodin has written some of Western music’s most beloved pieces, including The Polovtsian Dances (from his opera Prince Igor), In the Steppes of Central Asia, Symphony No. 2, and his String Quartet No. 2. He was also one of the cherished members of the famous “Russian Five,” a group of composers that included Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov, Cui, and Mussorgsky. The group’s intent was to create a purely Russian classical music inspired by that country’s land and people, part of a nationalistic trend that was sweeping 19th Century Europe.

Despite Borodin’s success as a musician, and his importance to Russian music, it is astonishing to remember that for him music was but an avocation. His full-time profession was as a research chemist, physician and professor. In fact, much of his late career was spent discovering a chemical reaction of variants of formaldehyde, a process so scientifically important that until fairly recently it was still referred to as the “Borodin reaction”. He typically could only find time to compose when he was too ill to teach or go to the lab, or otherwise able to take time away from his scientific work.

Such was the case with his masterful String Quartet No. 2. Borodin wrote this work in 1881, during a vacation to mark the 20th anniversary of his proposal to his wife, the pianist Ekaterina Protopopova. This quartet differs from Borodin’s other compositions in two important ways. First, he wrote it very quickly; usually, he worked on his compositions in snippets over long periods of time (often when he took to his sick bed). Second, the quartet contains no obvious underlying narrative; like the other members of the “Russian Five,” he normally built his compositions around nationalistic stories.

But there is good reason to think that Borodin might have indeed infused his String Quartet No. 2 with a meaning of sorts: he not only wrote it on the 20th anniversary of his proposal to his beloved Ekaterina, he also dedicated it to her. And structurally, much of the work consists of a charming conversational dialogue between the cello (Borodin was an amateur cellist) and the violin (a likely instrument to represent Ekaterina). In any case, whether this wonderful Quartet is music for music’s sake or a love letter from Borodin to his wife, it delights us to this day.

Each movement abounds with riches, but it is the third movement, Nocturne, that may indeed be Borodin’s finest tune, and his finest chamber music accomplishment. Structurally, it is a simple song, where cello and violin share and embellish a terrifically beautiful, and singable, theme between themselves. In between, the second violin and viola pulse like a heartbeat and occasionally echo the lovers’ refrain. Ethereal and tender, the ending floats into the stratosphere. So beloved is this movement that its main theme (along with other Borodin tunes) was used in the 1950s musical “Kismet,” becoming the popular hit song “And This is My Beloved.” In a wonderful quirk of fate, in 1954 near the height of the Cold War, the by-then-long-dead Borodin won a posthumous Tony Award for his contributions to Kismet. Had he still been alive, he probably would have missed the gala and stayed working in the lab.

George Frideric Handel
(Born in Halle, Germany in 1685; died in London in 1759)

Handel was born in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti, and along with his friend and contemporary, Georg Philipp Telemann, the four share honors as several of the greatest of the Baroque composers. Unique among these four is Handel’s British expatriate career. Baroque musicians and composers always depended on the patronage of the wealthy. Handel, a Saxon from Germany, was no exception. After he made a name for himself as a virtuoso musician and a composer, he was asked in 1710 by German Prince George, the Elector of Hanover, to be his Kapellmeister (Court music director). But then in 1714 Prince George became King George I of Great Britain and Ireland. Handel followed his patron and made London his home for the rest of his life.

Handel had mastered every genre from opera to chamber music, but his most lasting fame came from his contributions to the English Oratorio genre. He wrote 27 oratorios in all. His Messiah of 1742 is the best known and arguably his greatest work. However, the inspired genius of the Messiah by no means eclipses the merits of his other 26 oratorios.

Overture to Theodora, HVW 68

1. Maestoso
2. Allegro
3. Trio – Larghetto e piano
4. Courante

Though Handel began his long and extremely lucrative London career writing Italian operas, he soon moved into experimenting with and perfecting the English-language Oratorio. These oratorios were essentially un-staged operas, stripped-down and simplified for the Lenten season when religious authorities frowned on elaborate theatrical spectacles. Handel chose Biblical themes for his oratorios, but exploited these stories for their drama, intrigue and emotion. Without the lavish excesses of costume, props and staging typical of operas, God-fearing Londoners could attend Biblically-based oratorios during Lent and get their quotient of great operatic-like music with a clean conscience. Handel’s Messiah of 1742, of course, was an instant success and was repeated often, but the insatiable desires of Londoners for more and different pieces of music kept him writing new oratorios every year

In 1750 he asked the great librettist, Reverend Thomas Morell, to write an Oratorio based on the life of Theodora, the Fourth Century Christian martyr. The result wasn’t an instant success for reasons unrelated to the piece’s musical worth (among other things, there was an earthquake), but it has since become “discovered” as one of Handel’s finest works. It was Handel’s favorite libretto, and he was clearly proud of his musical contributions. According to one account, when he was asked whether he considered the grand [Hallelujah] chorus of The Messiah as his masterpiece, he said: “No, I think the chorus … at the end of the second part in Theodora far beyond it.” Indeed, the final duet in Theodora, “Thither let our hearts aspire,” is surely one of Handel’s finest passages, and the Oratorio’s deeply anguished closing chorus rivals any of its peers from any era.

Theodora’s Overture is different from today’s operatic conventions. Overtures in Handel’s time were still taking shape as a genre, but in England Henry Purcell had begun using what was called the French Overture that took precisely the shape that Handel uses here for Theodora: a two-part work, comprised of a slow introduction followed by a fast fugue-like movement. As the curtain rises, the orchestra then plays two or more dance forms from the French suite style. In this form, the Theodora Overture clearly was one of the precursors to the symphonic form – indeed, it sounds much like a short symphony, and its riches run as deep as the entire cantata.

In true French Overture form, Handel begins his Overture with a slow introduction that paints a scene of earnestness and gravity, followed by a brilliant fugue that is reminiscent of his Messiah’s Hallelujah chorus (no doubt a clever marketing tactic by Handel). Then follows a graceful Trio. The Overture concludes with a bright and quick-stepped Courante (a triple-beat dance meaning “running”), which here sparkles as an exuberant, yet urgent musical offering. The entire Overture is a great work in its own right, and as Theodora gains more attention in modern times, the Overture will find its deserved a place in the repertoire.

Handel the Great Organist

Between 1735 and 1736 Handel composed four English Oratorios: Esther, Deborah, and Athalia in 1735, and Alexander’s Feast in 1736. Each of these works was given its premiere in the newly designed Covent Gardens, and each was a great success despite facing stiff competition in London. Indeed, that city’s new and wildly popular “Opera of the Nobility” theatre had been set up deliberately to steal Handel’s audiences. In addition, that theater’s company included one of the greatest singers of the age, the castrato Farinelli, whose performances created hysteria with audiences and won him the epithet “One God, One Farinelli!” For Handel and Covent Gardens, oratorios weren’t going to be enough to lure audiences back, and so Handel, widely celebrated as the greatest organist of his day, created several concertos for “Chamber Organ and Orchestra.” All of these works were to be played as interludes between various Parts (sections) of his four 1735-1736 oratorios. All were intended to show off Handel’s own prowess on the organ.

Handel’s contemporaries were awed by his skill as an organist. The most famous account reads as follows:

“… Handel had an uncommon brilliancy and command of finger; but what distinguished him from all other players who possessed these same qualities, was that amazing fullness, force and energy, which he joined with them. And this observation may be applied with as much justice to his compositions as to his playing.”
- John Mainwaring, Memoirs of the Life of the late G. F. Handel, 1760

Handel’s virtuoso talents certainly came in handy to help promote sales at Covent Gardens, but the music that Handel wrote for himself to perform has much more lasting value as some of the greatest music of the Baroque. This set of six concerti was first published for solo organ. The concerti in their original form, for the “chamber” organ (a small organ with relatively few registers) and chamber orchestra, were made available later on and are the versions heard tonight. True to Handel’s talent as an organist and composer, the solo parts are exquisite and the orchestra parts completely delightful, and as far as we know, Handel invented this pairing of organ with chamber orchestra in the concerto form.

Organ Concerto Op. 4, No. 1 in G minor, HWV 289

1. Larghetto, e staccato
2. Allegro
3. Adagio
4. Andante

Handel had few rivals for what seems to be an inexhaustible supply of beautiful themes and works of exceptional invention, and this Concerto was written to show off his abilities as both an organist and composer. It premiered in 1736 as an interlude for the Oratorio called Alexander’s Feast, which was based on a famous ode written by the British poet John Dryden in honor of St. Cecilia, the patron Saint of music (who, because of a mistaken Latin translation, was thought to be an organist). The solo organ parts were meant to show off specifically Handel’s virtuosity, but “Oratorio-concerti” like this one were nonetheless constrained by the smaller organs (with only a few registers) and smaller chamber orchestras typically used for Oratorios. As a result, these works of Handel’s are not “barn burners” like Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Nevertheless, they are testaments to a time when the organ was just beginning to become the king of instruments.

Immediately intriguing in this first organ Concerto is Handel’s atypical choice of tempo markings, which are predominately slow. The melodramatic opening of the work by the orchestra is understandable as an interlude during the larger Oratorio, as much a work for stage as it is for the concert hall, and which recalled the gruesome martyrdom of the beloved St. Cecilia. The organ’s entrance is enchanting and ethereal, and in a subtle way is set against the mood of the opening orchestral theme. This contrast between the organist and the orchestra plays out through the entire Concerto and allows for lots of lively organ virtuosity.

The only fast movement, Allegro, comes next and is spritely and light. The following Adagio is mostly for organ alone and brings out more of the singing beauty of the instrument rather than Handel’s virtuosic technique. All the same, it’s a sublime moment in the best Baroque tradition and demands true musical artistry from the soloist. The finale, though marked in a slow tempo (Andante), is written in such a way that it feels as though it clips briskly along. The exchanges between organ and orchestra are lively and fun and Handel’s main theme here is joyful. The organ writing, too, is extremely challenging and showy, bringing this wonderful and brief Concerto to a delightful close.

Organ Concerto Op. 4, No. 4 in F Major, HWV 292

1. Allegro
2. Andante
3. Adagio
4. Allegro

This Concerto may be one of the most exquisite pieces from Handel’s long and storied career. It was written as an interlude for his 1735 Oratorio, Athalia, which was a revision of a much earlier Oratorio that Handel had written in Italy in 1708. Athalia is based on the Biblical story of a Baal Queen (Athalia) who is hell-bent on murdering all of King David’s heirs, and the triumph of the true believers in deposing her tyranny. Interestingly, in 1730’s England, the Jacobites had championed the story’s theme to support the restoration of the Stuart monarchy; Handel clearly understood his English audience and his Athalia was a wild success.

When you listen to the organ Concerto you can hear right away how it mirrors the grandeur of the story. The first movement is majestic and brilliant and gives the organist lots of virtuosic passages that dazzle audiences. The work was well-received; one reviewer praised it thusly in the poetic and grand fashion of the day:

“When lo! the mighty man essay’d
The organ’s heavenly breathing sound,
Things that inanimate were made,
Strait mov’d, and as inform’d were found.
Thus ORPHEUS, when the numbers flow’d,
Sweetly descanting from his lyre,
Mountains and hills confess’d the God,
Nature look’d up, and did admire.”

The orchestra is mostly the accompanist in this Concerto, but Handel’s writing for it is rich and meaningful. The second movement is a true gem, beginning with a beautifully haunting theme, then gently exploring variations where the organ is allowed to express a great deal of emotional depth. The final refrain, with full orchestra and organ, is powerfully moving.

The Adagio is an evanescent introduction to the finale, but in its short bars, Handel captures a searing poignancy. And then comes the finale in a flood of light and lightness. In its context in the Oratorio, it is the exact music of a Hallelujah chorus that follows without break. Alone, it’s a flying fugue that shows off Handel as a composer and as virtuoso organist, and as one of great composers in Western music.

Ottorino Respighi
(Born in Bologna, Italy in 1879; died in Rome in 1936)

Respighi is known the world over as the composer of two gigantic orchestral tone poems, The Fountains of Rome (1916) and The Pines of Rome (1924). But few know that those amazing orchestral colors that make Respighi’s masterpieces sparkle and explode were a direct result of his time in Russia, as the principal violist of the Russian Imperial Theatre in Saint Petersburg, during their 1900 season of performing Italian opera. While there he met and studied with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, spending five months studying composition and specifically orchestration. Equally important in his musical formation was the fact that Respighi was an avid early music scholar and published in that genre. His initial experiments in composing for early music forms, like his Suite for Strings, P. 41, are a fascinating early look into one of Italy’s greatest and most unique 20th Century composers.

By the late 19th Century, a considerable interest was directed at older music, and a fair amount of music from the Baroque and before had been rediscovered. Respighi was in the avant-garde of composers who took a keen interest in early music, and he used these discovered melodies from his ancient forbears, or made up melodies inspired by these old forms, all the while recasting them in a more modern instrumental and harmonic guise. His work came years before Stravinsky and Diaghilev began the widespread interest in Neo-Classicism with the 1920 Ballet Russe production of Pulcinella Ballet and Suite (after Pergolesi’s Baroque music).

But especially as an Italian who was born in the glowing aftermath of Italy’s Risorgimento – its birth as a unified nation – Respighi was also deeply proud of his country’s extraordinary influence in the development of modern Western music; from the plainchant of the Roman Catholic Church and Gregorian Chant of Medieval times to the exquisite music by Baroque composers Scarlatti, Corelli, and Pergolesi, Italian composers were always at the fore. Respighi’s fascination with early music, therefore, turned into a combination of Italian pride mixed with Russian influence and 20th Century orchestral techniques. The results were rich and wonderful compositions.

Suite for Strings, P. 41

1. Ciaccona
2. Siciliana
3. Giga
4. Sarabanda
5. Burlesca
6. Rigaudon

Respighi’s most popular forays into recasting “antique” music culminated in his three Ancient Airs and Dances Suites of 1917, 1923, and 1932. Our concert’s Suite for Strings was composed much earlier, in 1902. At that time. Respighi was just beginning his musical experiments, and his Suite was inspired by Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite of 1884. Like Grieg’s, Respighi’s Suite was based entirely on musical forms and dances from the Baroque period.

The Chaconne (Ciaconna) is a beautiful movement and may well be Respighi’s most convincing fusion of Baroque and late-Romantic music. True to Baroque form, Respighi presents a chordal bass line and then creates a set of variations over its continuing repetition. It works musically, with lush string writing and rich, dark-hued chords making it melt in the air. But most delightful is its lyricism, which is a hallmark of each of the movements.

The Siciliana was typically a pastorale-type music often used for arias in Baroque opera. Here, Respighi seems to luxuriate in the string colors he creates and his Siciliana is lyrical and graceful. The Giga (gigue) is a lively dance that derives from the English/Irish jig, and which migrated to France and Italy. Respighi’s jig is full of charm and syncopations. The Sarabanda has a Spanish/Mexican musical history and its reputation was that it should be notoriously wild and erotic. Ironically, when it became assimilated into French, German and Italian court musical making, it often became a stately and somber affair. Respighi chooses its Italian usage and creates one of his most poignant musical wonders, turning a stately dance into a pathos-laden elegy.

The Burlesca is a spritely but complicated movement. “Burlesca” derives from the Italian burlesco, which is a derivative of the Italian burla, meaning a joke or ridicule. Equally at home in all the arts, in music a Burlesca typically creates comedic effects or exaggerates serious music to the point of mockery and buffoonery. Respighi appears to be doing this to himself in this movement, by mashing up bits of the somber themes of his previous movements with exaggerated syncopation and juxtaposed techniques – such as bowing and plucking.

And finally, the Rigaudon is a spirited two-step dance of French folk origin. Assimilated into the courtly suite of Baroque dances, it becomes an affable couples’ dance. Respighi uses it here to morph many of the previous themes into a delightful musical pageant to end one of his finest forays into “antique” music.

––Program notes © Max Derrickson

Robert Schumann
(Born in Zwickau, Germany in 1810; died in Endenich, Germany in 1856)

Traümerai, No. 7 from Kinderszenen, Op. 15 (Arranged for String Orchestra)

During Schumann’s life, the Romantic period in music was just coming into its own, creating music that favored expressiveness and emotion as the essence of Art. Schumann sometimes described it as making music out of pictures, by which he meant the pictures made by words as much as by paint. Indeed, those whom Schumann considered his artistic heroes included Lord Byron along with Beethoven. The son of a bookseller who had fostered a love of literature in his children, the young Schumann was as well versed in prose as he was music, and his love for words and thoughts deeply informed his composing.

Schumann began his musical career hoping to become a piano virtuoso, and thus much of his early works were composed for piano. This is also how he met the love of his life, Clara Wieck, whose father was Schumann’s renowned piano teacher. A virtuoso’s career never materialized for Schumann, but Clara became his artistic muse, and then in 1840, his wife.

The year 1838 was a particularly wonderful year for Schumann’s piano compositions and Kinderszenen (“Scenes from Childhood”), in particular, was inspired by Clara. Kinderszenen’s set of 13 pieces were meant to evoke the magic of childhood as remembered by an adult—a sublimely sophisticated approach—and each scene in the set bore a very deliberately chosen title. The intimacy of emotion that Schumann captures in these vignettes was something that he had an uncanny talent for and which can be found in much of his work. The scene titled “Traümerai” may be his greatest achievement in this regard, and it serves as the emotional anchor of the whole set of Kinderszenen.

Typically translated as “Dreaming” or “Reverie,” Traümerai captures a child’s dreaming with its innocence and naiveté, tinged with that bittersweetness of an adult reverie on a childhood long past. The work is in the form of a simple song, but what makes it uniquely beautiful is how Schumann manipulates the harmonies below its repeating, lovely melody. By simply changing a few notes, Schumann transforms sweet contentment into wistful yearning, shifting between innocent childhood and nostalgic adulthood. And like many masterpieces, Traümerai is as meltingly beautiful arranged for strings, or any instrument, as it is on piano.

The great pianist Vladimir Horowitz, later in his rich and long concertizing life, became extremely fond of playing Traümerai as one of his encores. Hardly a typical encore piece, Horowitz simply adored Traümerai and played it anyway—and it never failed to please. Probably no performer ever gave it more publicity than Horowitz, especially in what was likely one of the most famous recitals in modern times. After decades of being an ex-patriot in America during the Cold War, the native-Russian-turned-American-citizen Horowitz went back to Moscow in 1986 to give several recitals and “see his homeland one last time,” and to be, as he described it, an “ambassador of beauty.” Welcomed like a heroic Prodigal son, Horowitz was received with wide-open arms by his Soviet audience. His recital in Moscow was televised, of course, and received top billing in both Russia and the United States. Horowitz played Schumann’s lovely Traümerai as one of this recital’s encores, because, as he said, “It may look simple on the page, but it is a masterpiece.” The work’s simplicity and deep beauty spoke volumes on the world stage then, just as it does now, and just as it always has since Schumann first wrote it almost two-centuries ago.

Sergei Prokofiev
(Born in Sontskova, Ukraine in 1891; died in Moscow in 1953)

Violin Concerto No. 2 in G-minor, Op. 63
1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante assai
3. Allegro ben marcato

Prokofiev’s marvelous, somewhat quixotic, Violin Concerto No. 2 bears the tell-tale signs of a composer in transition, both ideologically and geographically. It was commissioned for the Belgian violin virtuoso Robert Soetens (1897-1997) by a group of the violinist’s admirers and the work was completed and premiered in 1935. At the time, Prokofiev had been gradually repatriating himself back to Moscow after more than two decades of building his career in the West as a composer, conductor and pianist. He was also evolving musically, shedding some of the ferocious modernism of his former years and actively embracing the new Soviet musical aesthetic of simplicity and lyricism. The Second Violin Concerto was composed in many places while Prokofiev wrapped up his touring life. As he recalled in his autobiography, the first theme of the first movement was written in Paris, the main theme of the second in Voronezh, the orchestration was completed in Baku, and then the premiere took place in Madrid. And the music itself is equally peripatetic, harboring multiple personalities: lyricism, anxiety, sarcasm, naiveté, and wildness, all alongside a hint that, given the right nudge, all hell might just break loose.

The Concerto is also incredibly important in Prokofiev’s evolution as a composer. Immediately after this piece was completed he set to work on two of his greatest achievements: the ballet Romeo and Juliet, and Symphony No. 5, which are also two of the 20th Century’s masterpieces. The lyricisms found in the ballet—those exotic, charming melodies—appear to have had the Violin Concerto as their drawing board. Certainly, the beautiful theme in the Concerto’s second movement Andante foretells those splendid love moments between the two star-cross’d lovers. Likewise, the massive sonic canvases that occasionally take over the Concerto seem to have gotten fully worked out in the Fifth Symphony. The percussive color that is so richly displayed in the Symphony is so indulged in the Concerto that the latter might rightly be considered a Concerto for Violin, Bass Drum and Orchestra during its first and third movements. In addition, the castanets that accompany the main violin theme in the Concerto’s third movement seem to have set the stage for the Fifth Symphony’s delicious percussion extravagance in its scherzo movement.

There are many curious and exciting moments in this Concerto, from the Concerto’s dark and longing opening theme, through the soaring and pure melody of the second movement, to the witty and sarcastically jangled dance-like third movement. It is the violinist who must give the Concerto’s many personalities their fair voice, and whose virtuosity must shine through in its splendidly challenging technical passages. We, as an audience, get to enjoy thereby one of the most original and fun masterpieces of Prokofiev’s great career.

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

Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92
1. Poco sostenuto – Vivace
2. Allegretto
3. Presto – Assai meno Presto
4. Allegro con brio

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 is undeniably one of the most beloved symphonies ever written, and its famous second movement is one of those rare creations that seem to appear once a century. That it is arguably Beethoven’s most skillfully realized symphony and composed at the height of his melodic abilities only partially explain what is so inspiring about this extraordinary work. What has truly enraptured listeners throughout two centuries is its infectious exuberance and joyful intensity.

The slow Introduction to the first movement, with its broad swashes of colorful chords and its strident woodwind lines descending between them, may seem to be a lovely reverie in luxuriant sonority. But in fact this Introduction establishes two important parameters that will define the entire symphony: mood and rhythm. While we are basking in a feeling of regality and gladness, the Introduction’s scalar patterns and lengthy sets of repeated notes are laying the groundwork for an extraordinary moment which will define the symphony’s rhythm. At the bridge between the Introduction and the Exposition (the fast, main section of the movement), harmony and melody quickly evaporate, leaving the winds and the strings trading notes. This leaves us in an absolutely static moment of simple rhythm, but one which inventively morphs into the new, delightful skipping rhythm of the Exposition’s first main theme. Though the rest of the movement spans a fairly vast amount of melodic and harmonic ground, this new morphed rhythm remains persistent throughout nearly every measure. Uninhibited by Beethoven’s usual struggle between Fate and triumph, this movement and its persistent, carefree rhythm evoke a mood of genuine ebullience. It allows, as well, for the energy to steadily intensify until the ending coda arrives, where, as the basses start welling up like sea surges, the horns proclaim the theme for the last time in a manner so glorious it sets nerves of joy ablaze.

The second movement Allegretto is a work of such otherworldly mastery and beauty, it is impossible not to be swept into its realms. This movement, too, revolves much around a persistent and simple rhythmic motif: a two-bar phrase of a quarter note, followed by two eighth notes and then two quarter notes. But where the first movement’s rhythm acted as an engine, the rhythm here in the Allegretto performs as an emotional transporter. The effect is ingenious. The movement starts with a solitary, solemn chord which is then followed by a rather skeletal melody upon the simple rhythmic motif. From here, an extraordinary set of variations begin: the rhythm gently propelling us through increasingly more beautiful and mysterious layers, absorbing us into haunting contours of sublime beauty. And then, the rhythm calmly brings us back. As the musical layers peel away, the rhythm also begins to falter, until we find ourselves back to the solemn chord with which the movement began.

The third movement scherzo, Presto, begins in a blaze of animation and with a rhythmical pattern taken from the static metamorphosis in the first movement. The energetic intensity of this music is greater than most of Beethoven’s former scherzos, and its contrasting middle section, the Trio, also builds into a more powerful air than its usual relaxed role. Although the Trio’s theme is believed to be based on an old Austrian hymn, it is hardly treated as such. For example, the famous and powerful moment near the middle of the Trio when the horns begin a syncopated, half-step warbling, building up incredible tension, until the exalted phrase of the hymn is joyfully released by the strings, trumpets and timpani. The movement ends with the Presto firmly reestablishing its quick-stepped pace.

The Finale continues the breezy and frenetic nature of the Scherzo but at an astonishingly higher intensity and with extraordinary vitality. The first two short phrases provide much of what, again, will be a persistent rhythm throughout the movement, and then the first theme essentially begins a rollicking and steady descent into joyful lunacy. In a sense, the entire Finale serves as a coda to the entire symphony, finalizing the work’s joyful theme with a nearly uncontrollable elation. The conductor and musicologist Donald Francis Tovey called it a “triumph of bacchic fury,” and it is indeed one of the most wonderfully energetic utterances ever created, steeped in joyous vigor and triumphal gladness.

As enshrined as one of Western music’s greatest masterpieces as Beethoven’s Seventh has become, the circumstances of its first public performance makes for a wonderfully ironic historical footnote. The Seventh was premiered in December 1813, along with Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony and his curious “Wellington’s Victory” (“Battle Symphony”). The concert was held to benefit Austrian and Bavarian soldiers disabled at the Battle of Hanau against Napoleon. The affair was organized by Johannes Maelzel, inventor of the metronome and (among other peculiar devices) the panharmonicon, a humongous mechanical orchestra. Maelzel persuaded Beethoven to compose a symphonic work for his contraption for the concert, which resulted in “Wellington’s Victory” (which commemorated a recent Napoleonic defeat in Vitoria, Spain). Once the contraption inevitably broke, Beethoven hurriedly wrote the parts out for a real orchestra. Even more unique about the work, however, is that it also employed live cannon and musket fire in time with the music (long before Tchaikovsky’s own “1812 Overture”). Even more extraordinary, was that participating in its performance were such luminaries as the composers Hummel, Meyerbeer, Spohr, Moscheles and Salieri. The “Battle Symphony” was hands-down the unabashed hit of the evening, leaving the two other symphonies in the shadows. However, even in 1813, the Seventh’s ethereal Allegretto movement made an impression, as the audience demanded that it be encored.

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 20^th 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

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart