Season 8 (2011-2012)

PROGRAM
Beethoven Leonore Overture Nr. 3

Ligeti “Concert Romanesc”

Dvorak Cello Concerto

CONDUCTOR

Ryan McAdams

SOLOISTS
Jan Vogler, cello

VENUES
Shrine of St. Stanislaus, St. Colman Church, St. Noel Church, St. Mary Church, Fairmount Presbyterian

PROGRAM NOTES

ONE OPERA, THREE BONUS OVERTURES

Leonore Overture No. 3

Beethoven wrote only one opera, but he wrote it three times over a period of ten years. Finally, in 1814, the opera Fidelio took its final form. The revisions left a legacy of four overtures: the three Leonore overtures and the overture to Fidelio that’s played before the opera today. Of the Leonore overtures, named for the heroine, the third (from 1806) is the most popular.

Fidelio, or The Triumph of Conjugal Love is an ‘escape opera’ and its hero is Florestan, a political prisoner: “In the springtime of life, happiness has deserted me. I dared to speak the truth boldly, and these chains are my reward.” The tune of this aria, from the beginning of Act II, establishes the mood for the slow introduction of Leonore Overture No.3. Beethoven gives the somber theme to the clarinet; once the overture is underway, it’s transformed for flute and violins.

The overture encapsulates the scenario of the opera, including a last-minute reprieve announced by dramatic trumpet calls. This is the moment that everyone waits for in the opera: the rescue. In the opera this is signaled by a faint and distant trumpet fanfare, announcing the arrival of the government minister who has the power to save Florestan. Leonore, Florestan’s wife, sings: “You are saved, thank God!” Florestan’s enemy, Pizzaro, is dismissive. Then the trumpet sounds again, closer.

In the overture, this moment is captured perfectly. Unfortunately, it’s too effective at foreshadowing the climax of the opera. To put it another way, if you were to hear this overture before the opera it would act as a spoiler. Which is why Beethoven abandoned this masterpiece to write yet one more overture – a much simpler prelude – in 1814. The dramatic, symphonic qualities that make Leonore No.3 satisfying in the concert hall don’t work so well in the theatre when what’s needed is a curtain raiser. It’s a good thing that it took Beethoven several attempts to realize this: the result is three marvelous additions to the orchestral concert repertoire.

BANNED!

Concert Românesc

It’s difficult to imagine that this tuneful, vibrant music was once banned. But it was banned – Ligeti was granted only a single rehearsal in Budapest in 1951 and the work didn’t receive a public performance until 1971.

What harm did a communist government see in music such as this, based on genuine folk melodies and drawing on the spirit of village bands? Ligeti explains: “Under Stalin’s dictatorship, even folk music was allowed only in a ‘politically correct’ form, in other words, if forced into the straitjacket of the norms of socialist realism…” Major-minor harmonizations were welcome and modal orientalisms à la Khachaturian were allowed, but “Stravinsky was excommunicated.”

Ligeti’s problem was that he had transcribed folk songs and immersed himself in the authentic sounds and style of traditional music-making. But, he said, the “peculiar way in which village bands harmonized their music, often full of dissonances and ‘against the grain’,” was regarded by the authorities as incorrect. A single “wrong” note (a foreign F sharp heard in the context of F major in the fourth movement) was reason enough for the apparatchik to ban the entire piece.

The concerto is in four movements, played without pause, that alternate between slower, vocally inspired music, as in the first movement, and lively (vivace) dance-inspired music, such as the second movement. In that contentious fourth movement you can hear a village fiddler in toe-tapping mode. In the plaintive third movement (“slow but not too much”) the horns play without the aid of their valves – using only lip pressure to change note – perhaps to evoke the sound of the alphorns Ligeti had heard in his childhood, echoing from mountain to mountain.

ANYTHING YOU CAN DO…

Cello Concerto in B minor

The Dvořák Cello Concerto is perhaps the greatest cello concerto in the repertoire, and we owe its existence to an Irish-born, German-trained American. His name was Victor Herbert and his own claim to fame is based on the operettas he wrote for Broadway before World War I – Babes in Toyland was one. But he was also the principal cellist in the New York Philharmonic and his compositions included cello concertos for himself to play.

Dvořák – who was the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York – heard the second of these concertos in April 1894. Seven months later, after spending the summer holidays in Bohemia, he returned to America with the idea of writing a cello concerto for his friend Hanuš Wihan.

Herbert’s role in this was to provide, through his own concerto, a demonstration that it was indeed possible to compose for a solo cello against the relatively large orchestra of the 19th century. You’ll see three trombones in Dvořák’s orchestra; there’s a tuba, three horns and two trumpets; and the shrill sound of the piccolo is heard among the pairs of woodwinds. (Haydn, writing cello concertos a century earlier, would have kept his orchestra small: perhaps two oboes and a pair of horns.)

Dvořák (and Herbert before him) makes this work by avoiding unfair competition. When the soloist is playing, the accompaniment comes mainly from the contrasting sound of the winds; when the full orchestra plays it has the stage to itself. It’s the orchestra which introduces the main musical ideas of the first movement – a broad opening theme and an achingly beautiful theme for the horn – after which the solo cello can make its own heroic entrance over the lightest of accompaniments.

The second movement (“slow but not too much”) has the same qualities that we love in the Largo from the New World Symphony: tender, singing and heartfelt. Apart from a brief outburst, the mood is overwhelmingly serene. The finale shifts and swerves between stormy drama, nonchalant elegance and glittering display. This time it’s the cello who introduces the principal theme, in what turns out to be a conversation, rather than a contest, between soloist and orchestra.

Yvonne Frindle © 2011

PROGRAM
Corelli Christmas Concerto (Grosso) Op. 6, No. 8,

Mozart Violin Concerto No. 3, K216

Brandenburg Concerto No.3

Dvorak Serenade for Strings

Christmas Carols

CONDUCTOR

Joel Smirnoff

SOLOISTS
Joan Kwuon

VENUES
Shrine of St. Stanislaus, United Methodist Church, St. Colman, Fairmount Presbyterian Church, St. Noel Church

PROGRAM NOTES

CHRISTMAS CONCERTO

Concerto grosso in G minor, Op. 6 No. 8

For most modern listeners this music is the Christmas Concerto. What this hides is the fact that whole swathes of Christmas concertos were composed during the baroque era – it was a genre in its own right. But Corelli’s has come down to us as the most famous one of all.

It’s a concerto grosso – a concerto with more than one soloist, unlike the Mozart violin concerto we’ll hear next. In this case, two violins and a cello make up the solo group, which plays with and ‘against’ the full ensemble. The concerto belongs to a set of 12, possibly written as early as 1690 for concerts in the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni and published in 1714 as Corelli’s Opus 6.

Of the dozen concertos, this is the only one with a subtitle: Fatto per la notte di natale (Made for Christmas night). But even without this clue, Corelli’s original listeners would have recognized it as a Christmas concerto from its final movement. Throughout the concerto Corelli has alternated mood and tempo – back and forth between the lively and the serious. But then, instead of bringing the concerto to a fast conclusion, Corelli gives us a slow pastorale, featuring the lilting rhythms associated with the shepherds in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks.

STRASSBURGER CONCERTO

Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K216

Imagine hearing Mozart-the-violinist: once after he’d performed this concerto he said it had gone as “smoothly as oil,” and everyone had praised his “beautiful, pure tone.” Mozart must have had a “singing” style, and it’s no surprise that the very beginning of this concerto was borrowed almost note for note from music for the voice: an opera he’d recently written called Il re pastore (The Shepherd King).

It’s possible to listen to the whole concerto as an opera for the violin. The music is full of vivid characterizations, as if there are scenes for lovers, for peasants, a clown… In the third movement you can hear various changes of mood or ‘costume.’ The music that anchors all this – like the chorus in a song – is the recurring rondo theme, introduced at the beginning of the movement and played between each contrasting musical episode.

But the third episode offers a surprise: Mozart breaks off with three big chords from the orchestra and the music becomes slower and more stately – it’s a court dance known as a gavotte. But before he has even finished, Mozart interrupts himself again, this time with a lusty peasant dance, the ‘Strassburger’ tune.

The finale is great fun, but the most exquisite music in the concerto is in the Adagio (slow) movement, the only movement where we hear the flutes. Their sound is complemented by the violins and violas playing with mutes and the cellos and basses plucking their notes instead of bowing them. And above this gentle accompaniment the soloist spins one of Mozart’s gorgeous melodies.

CONCERTO FOR STRINGS

Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G, BWV1048

Both halves of this concert begin with the same type of music: a baroque concerto grosso. This one belongs to the famous set of Brandenburg concertos – six concertos “with various instruments” composed at various times between 1718 and 1721. During this period Bach was working in the court of Anhalt-Cöthen, and if these concertos are any guide, the musicians in his orchestra there were very fine players indeed.

One way to think of the Brandenburg Concertos is as an artist’s portfolio in which Bach reveals the extent of his virtuosity and imagination as a composer. They were assembled in 1721 in a handsome presentation manuscript addressed to the Margrave of Brandenburg (hence the nickname) and each one is for a different (and, for the time, unusual) ensemble of instruments.

The third concerto is striking in that it calls for string orchestra with a keyboard playing a continuo role (the baroque equivalent of a jazz rhythm section). The strings are arranged in three groups of equal strength and virtuosity, making it the most democratic and in some ways the most symphonic of the Brandenburg concertos. In turn, each of those groups has three parts, which to an 18th-century listener would have prompted thought of the holy Trinity.

The concerto also follows a three-part structure: two fast (Allegro) movements separated by the tiniest of slow (Adagio) movements – just two chords!

But Bach would have expected more of his performers here: the chords an invitation for the musicians, or the leader at least, to improvise a transition between the two outer movements.

A MUSICAL DIVERSION

Serenade for strings, Op. 22

Dvořák’s Serenade for strings is a relatively early creation, written when he was 34 and before he was established as a composer to be reckoned with.

It shows a young man looking backwards to his heritage and the result is music that Mozart would have recognized. As a serenade, it belongs to an 18th-century tradition of cheerful music written for casual settings, intended as background for socializing.

Composing in 1875, Dvořák intended his serenade for concert performance and he would have expected us to listen to it, not chat, but the music still reveals a genial spirit, a charming simplicity, and an appealing variety of moods over the course of its five movements. It’s a Classical serenade at heart.

Dvořák’s personal voice emerges in the flowing, folk-like theme of the first movement, his instinct for dance music (the second movement is an elegant waltz), and his energizing use of rhythm – again, influenced by folk traditions. The Larghetto (slow) movement brings a mood of tranquility and reflection to the serenade before the fiery and restless music of the finale.

Yvonne Frindle © 2011

PROGRAM

Brahms Violin Concerto

Wagner Siegfried Idyll

Mozart Symphony from the “Posthorn” Serenade

CONDUCTOR

Sean Newhouse

SOLOISTS
Dylana Jenson

VENUES

Shrine of St. Stanislaus, St. Colman, Fairmount Presbyterian Church, St. Mary’s Church

PROGRAM NOTES

It’s a good thing that Brahms and Wagner are separated by an intermission in this concert, because the two composers did not see eye to eye.

During the 19th century they represented two opposing schools of thought concerning the nature of music and its future. Brahms felt a great burden as a proclaimed ‘successor’ of Beethoven and devoted his energy to the kinds of music that Beethoven mostly composed: concertos, symphonies, chamber music – all of it abstract or ‘absolute’ in character.

No stories here. Wagner, on the other hand, felt that Beethoven had taken Classical forms as far as they could go. The symphony was dead, he said. Instead, he believed that the future of music lay in dramatic narrative forms, and he focused almost exclusively on opera.

Mozart, of course, was a master in both realms, and his gift was the capacity to delight and entertain, whether in the concert hall or the opera theatre.

IN THE MASTER’S FOOTSTEPS

Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77

One of Brahms’s staunchest supporters was the violinist Joseph Joachim. He was a passionate and persuasive advocate, and as a young man he’d single-handedly established Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in the repertoire. The Beethoven concerto had been written for a particular violinist, Franz Clement; Mendelssohn’s concerto was written for Ferdinand David. And when Brahms came to write his own violin concerto he had Joachim in mind. More than that, he and Joachim worked closely together on the concerto.

Brahms was a composer with a deep respect for the past, and especially for the legacy of Beethoven. It’s not surprising that he begins his own violin concerto with a gesture similar to the beginning of Beethoven’s violin concerto: elaborate and wide-ranging music that introduces the violinist as virtuoso. Both concertos are in D major – a ‘good’ key for the violin – but Brahms does something sneaky: he introduces his soloist in D minor, giving the music a melancholy twist.

Both Beethoven and Brahms leave it to the soloist to improvise a cadenza, that moment in the first movement where soloists had traditionally displayed their musicality and skill. For Brahms this was a very Classical, very old-fashioned thing to do: by 1878 (and this had begun with Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto) composers had long been writing out their cadenzas, removing all opportunity for improvisation. Unsurprisingly, Joachim’s own cadenza has become the most popular among modern soloists.

Originally, Brahms had planned the concerto in four movements, but early on he decided that the middle movements were ‘failures.’ In his typically self-effacing way, he told Joachim: ‘I have written a feeble Adagio instead.’ But there is nothing feeble about it at all! In fact, the Adagio includes some of the most heartfelt and moving music in the whole concerto, as well as a beautiful solo for the first oboe, which the soloist then transforms into an astonishing violinistic rhapsody.

The third movement of the concerto reveals one of Brahms’s musical enthusiasms: gypsy music. This inventive and energetic finale is also a tribute to Joachim, who was half Hungarian. But above all, it brings the concerto to an exhilarating conclusion.

THE PERFECT PRESENT

Siegfried Idyll

On Christmas Day, 1870, Cosima Wagner awoke to the sound of 13 musicians playing on the staircase outside her room. The music had been composed for the occasion by her new husband, Richard, and its full title was: ‘Tribschen Idyll, with Fidi’s Birdsong and Orange Sunrise, as a Symphonic Birthday Greeting from Richard to Cosima.’

A lot is packed into this title. There is Cosima, who was a daughter of the pianist and composer Franz Liszt and had first married the conductor Hans von Bülow. There is Tribschen, the Swiss villa where the Wagners were living. Fidi was the nickname for their third child, Siegfried, born the previous year.

Many of the musical themes come from the opera Siegfried, which Wagner was writing at the time. One of these is a theme that Brünnhilde sings in Act III: ‘I always was, I always am, always lapped in sweet longing bliss, always caring for your good.’ Another is a horn motif, associated with the resolution of love, combined with the bird calls of the title. The music moved Cosima to tears. It was the perfect birthday present, not least because of all the hidden, personal references embedded in the music.

Perhaps most intriguing in the full title is the word ‘symphonic’ applied to what was essentially chamber music. The Siegfried Idyll may have begun as something tender and domestic, but Wagner also approved its performance with orchestral strings. With these larger forces, it gains warmth, intensity and something of the expansive vision normally associated with Wagner, composer of epic operas.

Eventually Wagner had to sell the publication rights to meet their debts, and Cosima wrote: ‘The secret treasure is to become public property – may the pleasure others take in it match the sacrifice I am making!’

THE ‘POSTHORN’ SYMPHONY

Symphony in D major (from the Posthorn Serenade, K320)

The Salzburg serenade tradition of the 18th century was made possible by the city’s mild summers. With these came outdoor celebrations requiring background music, and there was a flourishing market for sunny orchestral works in many short movements.

At the Benedictine university, for example, Mozart’s music was heard in at least five of the graduation ceremonies between 1769 and 1779. At the last of these Mozart’s ‘Posthorn’ Serenade received its premiere.

That first performance in 1779 was possibly the Serenade’s only complete performance until the 20th century. Repeat performances of graduation serenades were rare, but that didn’t mean the music went to waste. Instead, selections from these often hour-long works were grouped into three or four-movement symphonies and miniature concertos.

In the case of the ‘Posthorn’ Serenade, the first, fifth and seventh movements became known as an independent symphony, with copies of the music spreading throughout Europe until it was published after Mozart’s death as his ‘Opus 22’. (Among the omitted movements is the one that gives the Serenade its nickname: in the second minuet there is a short solo for the post horn, an instrument used by the mail coaches for bugle-like signals.)

The first movement is grand in character – it begins with a slow and majestic introduction (Adagio maestoso), which then leads into fast and spirited music (Allegro con spirito). The orchestra – a relatively large one – features trumpets and drums and many exciting and fashionable effects.

The second movement, a gently moving Andantino, provides a moment of contrast, the shift from D major of the first movement to D minor giving the music a melancholy character. The exhilarating finale (Presto – as fast as possible) returns the symphony to the celebratory mood and orchestral brilliance of the opening.

Yvonne Frindle © 2012

PROGRAM
Max Bruch Kol Nidrei Hans Krása Brundibár, A children’s Opera

Beethoven Symphony Nr. 5

CONDUCTOR

Ryan McAdams

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Alison Chase

SET/COSTUME DESIGNER

Angelina Avellone

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Stephen Strawbridge

TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

Barney Taxel

VENUES
John Hay High School

PROGRAM NOTES

Weeping and Atonement

BRUCH’S KOL NIDREI

From time to time Max Bruch has been identified as Jewish – including by the Third Reich in the early 1930s – although he was in fact a Protestant.

The confusion is easy to understand: it is assumed that any composer who could compose such a powerful and moving interpretation of the Kol Nidrei prayer must himself be Jewish.

On one level the assumption is absolutely correct. For Kol Nidrei, Bruch drew on two impeccably Jewish sources: an old Hebrew song of atonement traditionally sung on the eve of Yom Kippur, and a magnificent song ‘O weep for those who wept on Babel’s stream’ from Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, for which the composer had been Isaac Nathan.

Bruch got to know both melodies in Berlin, where from 1878 to 1880 he was the music director of the Stern Choral Society and had ‘much to do with the children of Israel’ in the choir. His other motivation was the nagging of cellist Robert Hausmann, who envied violinists the rich creations Bruch had composed for them and wanted something for his own instrument.

Kol nidrei begins with the imploring liturgical melody, treated quite freely by Bruch. Perhaps mirroring the three stages of repentance (remorse, resolve and triumph), Bruch breaks up the original melodic line into groups of three notes, each separated by a musical breath or ‘sigh’.

The music is grave, fervent, meditative, sorrowful and even at times a touch sentimental. Bruch knew that its success was assured, because, as he wrote to a friend, ‘all the Jews in the world are for it on its own account.’

Our Friends Make Us Strong

BRUNDIBÁR

The children’s opera Brundibár (Bumblebee) began life in 1938 as an entry for a competition and was the second collaboration between composer Hans Krása and librettist Adolf Hoffmeister. But the competition never took place and by the time the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia the original score had been lost. With occupation, Jews (and their music) were banned from public life in Prague. One of the places they could meet was the Hagibor Jewish orphanage, run by an avid music lover and amateur musician, and it was here in December 1942 that the premiere of Brundibár took place. The accompaniment was provided by a pianist, violinist and drummer, all playing from the same piano score of the music.

Only 150 or so people were invited to this illegal performance and they had to arrive discreetly, but it was considered a great success.

Hans Krása wasn’t at the premiere; he had already been sent to the Terezin ghetto. Within seven months, the children of the original cast, the orphanage director and his son, and many others had followed him. Rudolf Freudenfeld, the son, managed to smuggle the piano score of Brundibár into Terezin.

As a ‘model’ ghetto – on display to representatives of the Red Cross and other international guests – Terezin allowed certain cultural freedoms: confiscated instruments were made available for orchestras, children could learn piano and sing in choirs, and concerts and theatrical productions by the inmates were permitted. Thus came about the second production of Brundibár, in September 1943. Krása enthusiastically arranged the music for the available ensemble: flute, clarinet, trumpet, guitar, accordion, piano, percussion, four violins, a cello and a bass. His orchestra may have been small, but it was filled with virtuosos.

The opera’s music is buoyant and tuneful and the libretto, although naïve, resonated with the Terezin community, its spirit summed up in the closing lines: ‘He who loves justice…and who is not afraid, is our friend and can play with us.’ When the original chorus sang of defeating the evil Brundibár (in Kushner’s version: ‘bullies disappear!’) everyone present would have had another evil bully in mind. And so Brundibár was a tremendous success.

The tickets might have been free but they were in hot demand. The opera received 55 performances in the year following its Terezin premiere.

In 1945 the Germans included it in a film made in Terezin, and the final scene survives – no longer propaganda but a testament to courage, resilience and the power of music.

Fate Knocks at the Door

BEETHOVEN’S FIFTH

The most famous four notes in all music launch Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on a compelling emotional and musical journey. That journey is a familiar one now – this must be the best-known symphony of all – but at its premiere Beethoven’s contemporaries must have been astonished by the symphony’s new and noisy sounds and its unexpected destination.

It won’t surprise modern listeners because other composers have done the same thing since, but in the Fifth Symphony Beethoven did something truly innovative: he began the symphony in one key (the dramatic and threatening key of C minor) and ended in another (the brilliant and triumphant key of C major). In the same way that a painter might place a luminous subject against a gloomy background, it’s as if Beethoven is saying that the joy and triumph of the finale can only be expressed in the context of the fear and awe he sets up in the first movement.

The broad idea of struggle and triumph is also conveyed through the internal development of the symphony: that famous opening motif transforms in character during the course of the whole work. Through this Beethoven achieves an unprecedented sense of musical unity, emphasised still further by the seamless transition between the nervously brooding third movement and the finale.

That transition is itself unusual – providing a moment of hushed suspense with menacing and insistent drum beats before the blazing entry of the trombones, an instrument taken from the theatre and church to appear in a symphony for the first time in musical history. Together with the contrabassoon and shrill piccolo, Beethoven counted on those trombones to ‘make more noise than six timpani, and better noise at that’.

This noise, of which Beethoven would have heard nothing, contributes to a radiant and festive march, all the more triumphant for the struggle that has gone before.

Later Beethoven supposedly described the opening notes as Fate knocking at the door. The story may be dubious, but it’s completely in character with the Romantic mindset and the way listeners hear this symphony. ‘Beethoven’s music sets in motion the lever of fear, of horror, of suffering,’ wrote E.T.A. Hoffmann in his famous 1810 review of the symphony, ‘and wakens just that infinite longing which is the essence of Romanticism. Beethoven is accordingly a completely Romantic composer…’

Yvonne Frindle © 2012

PROGRAM
Persistence of Creativity and its programs have been underwritten by the generosity of Andrew and Judy Green, and the Henry and Eugenia

Facing History and Ourselves

Concert for Yom Hashoa

Terezin Diary produced by Mark Simon, narrated by Eli Wallach

Emigrants

VENUES
Lakewood Public Library, Cinematheque at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Maltz Museum, Cleveland Public Library, Workshop at John Carroll University – Dolin Science Center