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Program Notes
March 15, 2008 Concert
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (b. Salzburg, January 27, 1756; d. Vienna, December 5, 1791) Austrian composer. Principal works: sixteen operas, including Don Giovanni, Le Nozze di Figaro, Cosi fan tutti, The Magic Flute; fifteen masses; forty-one symphonies; five violin concertos; twenty-one piano concertos; eight concertos for wind instruments; other instrumental works; twenty-six string quartets; forty-two violin sonatas; seventeen piano sonatas; chamber music for various combinations; divertimenti and serenades; choral music; vocal music and songs.
In eighteenth-century Austria, the division between "art" and "popular" music had not yet occurred; rather, it was a question of social class. The peasantry had their untutored folk songs and dances, but from the middle classes to the aristocrats, there was an enormous demand for sophisticated music for entertainment. This did not necessarily mean that such works were background for sprightly chatter, for often such entertainment music was written for performance in the home, whether that home was a palace or that of a comfortable middle-class merchant. The term "divertimento" was applied to a variety of works written to divert the lettered classes, from string quartets to string orchestras. It is clear that a "diversion" could come in many guises: during the last half of the eighteenth century, a divertimento could be scored for anything from a string trio to a small orchestra. It is true, however, that the title "divertimento" usually held the promise of a lighter piece of music, often composed especially for a specific occasion.
Mozart composed three of his early divertimenti, including the Divertimento in D major, K. 136 (125a), in Salzburg in 1772. This ingratiating score was probably written in anticipation of the teenaged Mozart's journey to Milan, accompanied, of course, by his tiresome father, Leopold. In Milan, the young Wolfgang Amadeus enjoyed great success with the premiere of his opera seria, Lucia Silla. Written for the usual "divertimento quartet" of two violins, viola and double bass, this work radiates youthful energy and elegance. Clearly influenced by the music of Johann Christian Bach, who was J.S. Bach's youngest son, the so-called "London" Bach whom Mozart met when he was a child, the Divertimento in D major is one of the most beguiling of its composer's early works.
Robert Schumann: Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 54
Robert (Alexander) Schumann (b. Zwickau, June 8, 1810; d. Endenich, near Bonn, July 29,1856). German composer. Principal works: one opera, Genoveva; an oratorio, Das Paradies und die Peri, and other large choral works; four symphonies; concertos for piano, violin and violoncello, as well as the Konzertstuck for four horns and orchestra; other orchestral works, such as the Manfred Overture; chamber music, including the Quintet in E flat major for piano and string quartet; piano music, including Carnaval, op. 9; songs and song cycles, including Dichterliebe, op. 48.
"And are you also a musician, Herr Schumann?" History does not record how Robert Schumann, almost pathologically silent on most occasions, responded to this question from an obtuse nobleman after a concert by Schumann's wife, Clara. Clara Schumann, herself a gifted composer, was one of the famous pianists of the nineteenth century. That the virtuoso wife was better known than the composer husband may seem a bit shocking today, but Robert Schumann was best known to his contemporaries as a brilliant if eccentric music critic and, secondarily, and to a relatively modest audience, an avant-garde composer. Clara, by contrast, was a superb pianist and a very attractive, outgoing woman, one of the first pianists to perform solo recitals by memory in public.
Although portrayed in older biographies and on the screen as one of the great love stories of the nineteenth century, the relationship between Robert and Clara was hardly idyllic. Their courtship was famously stormy, as Clara's grasping troll of a Teutonic father was against match and did everything in his power to prevent the marriage. (Of course, Herr Wieck, Clara's father, did have a point, as Robert Schumann was even then showing signs of mental imbalance and was known to be a heavy drinker.) A testament to their mutual devotion is found in the stunning music written by Robert especially for his fiancee: such pieces are musical love letters. His outpouring of musical tributes to Clara continued after their marriage. In May of 1841, Robert completed a one-movement "Fantasy" for piano and orchestra, composed for his wife. Due to its unusual brevity, the score could not find a publisher. Then, in a rush of inspiration often the result of a manic episode in the life of this manic-depressive composer Schumann completed two more movements in the summer of 1845. Unusual for Schumann, the completed Piano Concerto in A minor was an unqualified success upon its premiere on December 4, 1845, perhaps because his wife was the soloist, but also because the conductor on that occasion was not the composer, but rather the superb Ferdinand Hiller. The good luck of the concerto continued when the second performance was given in Leipzig on New Year's Day of 1846: the soloist was the same, but the conductor was none other than Felix Mendelssohn.
Felix Mendelssohn: Sinfonia no. 10 in B minor
Felix Mendelssohn (b. Hamburg, February 3, 1809; d. Leipzig, November 4, 1847) German-born composer of Jewish heritage. Principal works: several early operas; incidental music for plays, including for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream; two completed oratorios; five number symphonies but several early symphonies for string orchestra; two violin concertos; two piano concertos and two concertos for two pianos; chamber music, including six string quartets, two piano trios and an octet for strings; choral music; organ sonatas; piano music and organ pieces; songs.
Felix Mendelssohn was lucky to have been born into a uniquely cultured home. His grandfather was the Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, who is now considered one of the founders of Reform Judaism, while his father, Abraham, was a highly successful banker. Felix and his siblings, including his gifted sister, Fanny, who was a talented composer in her own right, were given the best possible education at home. The educational schedule was rigorous; the Mendelssohn children were anything but spoiled. These bright youngsters were expected to live up to their full potential. (In later life, these stern expectations meant that Felix became an anxious perfectionist as a composer, constantly revising his music and worrying over its quality.) The tone of the whole household was one of high seriousness mixed with equally high spirits and love.
Felix Mendelssohn began study at ten with Carl Friedrich Zelter, a reactionary composer and pedagogue who fed his young charge a strict diet of Baroque counterpoint. From the ages of 12 through 14, Mendelssohn composed a set of "sinfonias" for string orchestra, supervised by his strict teacher. The Sinfonia no. 10, cast in the dark key of B minor, was written in 1823, when its composer was fourteen years old. Unlike the others of the series, this sinfonia has a formal design consisting of one extended movement divided into two parts: an expressive, slow introduction is followed by an allegro in sonata form. Written for string orchestra, this touching work was premiered in the Mendelssohn home with the teenaged composer conducting.
Sergei Prokofiev: Symphony no. 1 in D major (“Classical”)Sergei Prokofiev adored games of all kinds, especially chess, at which game he was a formidable, gifted and relentless player. Many of the compositional challenges that he set himself suggest that he transferred his determined gamesmanship into his music. Prokofiev also loved paradoxes, and found that these musical excursions into the realm of what W.S. Gilbert famously called "topsy-turvy" helped expand his range as a composer. Prokofiev's First Symphony, written in the historically momentous year of 1917, is a case in point. During the summer of that year, Prokofiev decided to set himself a daunting challenge: to create a symphony without once using the piano as a reference point (and he was a superb pianist, so this restriction cannot have been an easy one!), and to attempt to recreate the spirit of the Classical composer Franz Joseph Haydn but in a modern harmonic idiom. Upping the ante, the Russian composer made the very curious decision to avoid using minor chords in the finale. The result should have been a sterile experiment ripe for the wastebasket.
However, Prokofiev won all of these inner bets, checkmating artistic disaster and creating one of the most delightful scores ever penned. The "Classical" Symphony for once the name is the composer's own is filled with clarity, wit and lyricism. The first movement is cast in sonata form, as one would expect in a work written in homage to Haydn. The strict adherence to sonata form is somewhat obscured by the exuberant irony of the music. The next movement, marked "Largetto" (moderately slow), starts with an elegant figure over which the strings unwind a sinuous melody. Instead of the expected minuet, the third movement is a Gavotte, a dance favored by Bach and other Baroque composers and one which Haydn would have considered a curious anomaly for a symphony. (Prokofiev later introduced this gavotte into his ballet Romeo and Juliet where it is repeated several too many times.) The finale, marked "Molto Vivace," hurtles forward with a combination of grace and mocking high spirits.
-- Byron Adams
