| The Four Seasons March 12 & 13, 2011 [buy tickets] |
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Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 The six Brandenburg Concerti stand at the crossroads in musical history, where chamber music and orchestral music went their separate ways. These Concerts á plusieurs instruments (Concerti for various instruments) as Bach named them, were dedicated to Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, who employed a modest orchestra that was in all probability too small and inexpert to play all the Concertos. The Dedication Score, including an obsequious cover letter by Bach, has been preserved and is now in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. The mint condition of the manuscript indicates that in all probability the Margrave’s orchestra seldom if ever performed them. Bach composed the Concertos between 1718 and 1721, although parts may have been written as early as 1708. They were not composed as an independent group, but rather assembled from various orchestral works Bach had already written over the years as courtly entertainment music on the highest level. These same Concertos, however, were probably common fare at the court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, Bach's employer. Letters and records indicate that the personnel in the Cöthen orchestra corresponded closely to the instrumental requirements of the Concertos. Four of them, Nos. 1, 2, 4 and 5, are true concerti grossi, requiring a solo instrument or group of instruments, requirements that correspond closely to better players in the prince’s orchestra. The Concerto No. 3 is a true ensemble work, as if composed for a group of friends spending a musical evening together. In its original form it interweaves three groups of strings, each one consisting of a violin, a viola and a cello, playing in turn the concertino (small group of instruments), and coming together to play the tutti (all together). In other words, all nine musicians share equally in the solo parts. A harpsichord and a violone (a very large viola da gamba) or double bass fill out the continuo. In the last movement the violone joins the three cellos in unison throughout. The most unusual aspect of this concerto is the absence of a slow, middle movement. In its place is a one-bar time signature and two eighth-note chords only. Some scholars think that Bach intended for one or two of the soloists to improvise the slow movement, ending with a cadence on the chords he specifically notated. The dedication score in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek gives no clue whatsoever as to Bach’s intentions. The outer movements are essentially the spinning out and free variations on a single theme. The first movement opens with all the players in the ritornello in unison, a device Bach picked up from Vivaldi.  As we have come to expect, the episodes introduce new music interrupted by the ritornello until its final restatement of the ritornello at the end. Because of the significant amount of new music in the episodes, the movement roughly follows an ABA form. The third movement ritornello is a grand chase, putting the lie to the stereotype that canons are stuffy. The episodes, while breaking out of the canon, never lose the breakneck momentum. | ||||||||||
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Concerto for Double String orchestra, Piano and Timpani Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu’s formative years were unusual. He spent his childhood in relative isolation in a tiny room at the top of the church tower in the small Moravian town where his father, a cobbler, served also as fire-watch, bell ringer and tower keeper. Until he started school, the boy seldom descended the 193 steps to the street level. He remarked that his whole aesthetic was influenced by his early bird’s eye view of the world, "…not the small interests of people, the cares, the hurts, or the joys but space, which I always have in front of me." Although his musical talent manifested itself early in his childhood, he was expelled from the Prague Conservatory for “incorrigible negligence.” In spite of his strong nationalistic feelings, Martinu left Prague and newly independent Czechoslovakia in 1923 for Paris in order, as he said, “To escape the cult of Smetana and the pervasive influence of German music with its full metaphysical apparatus.” He had intended to stay in Paris for only a few months to study with Albert Roussel but ended up settling there for 17 years until forced to escape after the fall of France in 1940. Like many others of Europe’s displaced intelligentsia, he reached the US via Lisbon in 1941. He lived in New York, composing and commuting to Princeton to teach. In spite of his many friends among the refugees from Europe, he never felt comfortable in this country. Nevertheless, his stay here turned into an extremely creative period with commissions and compositions, many written for his friends and colleagues, including the Five Madrigal Stanzas for violin and piano, written for violinist Albert Einstein and his friend, the pianist Robert Casadesus. Martinu composed the Concerto for Double String Orchestra, Piano and Timpani in 1938 for Paul Sacher and the Basel Chamber Orchestra. One of the greatest supporters and benefactors of composers in the twentieth century, Sacher (1906-1999) founded the Basle Chamber Orchestra in 1926, which specialized in pre-classical and contemporary music (He considered there were enough ensembles performing the Classical and Romantic repertoire.) Then, in 1934, he married Maja Stehlin, the wealthy widow of Emmanuel Hoffmann, the son of the founder of Hoffmann-La Roche. Together they commissioned and he premiered over 200 works from such composers as Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Benjamin Britten, Pierre Boulez, Richard Strauss and Martinu. Composed during a time when his native country was being sold down the river by Great Britain and France – the Concerto was finished the day the Munich Pact was signed – its mood reflects the grim atmosphere of the times. The Concerto is patterned after the Baroque concerto grosso. Although there is a significant part for the piano, solos are restricted to one per movement. While the Concerto is technically tonal, Martinu sustains the harmonic tension with jagged chromatic lines and irregular themes without clear-cut beginnings or ends, so that the listener rarely feels “grounded.” One of the unifying features of the entire concerto is that Martinu works a distinct palette of intervals (rather like Shostakovich’s signature DSCH motive) for all of the themes, as in this example from the third movement. At the beginning of the first movement, the syncopated rhythms contribute to the sense of being swept up by a force over which one has no control. Martinu shapes the first movement by dividing it into sections. After the angry opening, he introduces a second, more legato contrapuntal section for strings alone. In the middle of the movement, the tempo slows with a variant of the theme for pizzicato strings and piano. Steadily and relentlessly he increases the tempo, finally screaming towards the climax in a series of ascending chromatic scales until finally returning to the recapitulation of the main theme. The second movement, marked Largo, is a lament based on a single theme, which Martinu breaks up into short motivic units and develops freely. The long piano solo in the middle of the movement illustrates how the theme can be disassembled into its component intervals and still remain recognizable. As in the first movement, Martinu uses ascending chromatic scales to build the tension to a formal repeat of the theme. The violent mood returns in the final movement. Martinu develops this new theme, which utilizes the same array of intervals as the themes from the preceding movements. At the conclusion, however, he restates the theme from the lament, a final statement of mourning before the cataclysm of the inevitable war. | ||||||||||
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The Four Seasons Beginning in 1703 and intermittently for many decades, Antonio Vivaldi served as music factotum at the Pio Ospedale della Pietá in Venice, an institution devoted to the care and education of abandoned, orphaned and indigent girls, with a special emphasis on musical training (no Dickensian work house or Dotheboys Hall this). In addition to his duties as virtuoso violinist, violin teacher, orchestra director and instrument purchaser, Vivaldi served as resident composer, producing hundreds of works for various instruments and ensembles, including nearly 450 concerti, usually at a rate of more than two per month. The resident girls were trained in both string and wind instruments, including the organ, and as part of their training Vivaldi composed concertos for every instrument and instrument combination. Many of them were apparently written with specific girl soloists in mind. What is often overlooked, however, is that Ospedale also housed boys, teaching carpentry, blacksmithing and other trades. We have no idea whether the boys’ program was as successful as the girls’ since the names of the artisans who worked in Venice’s palaces and churches are generally unknown. Vivaldi saw to it that his music reached far beyond the boundaries of Venice. Around 1711 an Amsterdam firm issued his first published concertos as Opus 3, entitled L’estro armonico (The Harmonic Fancy), a set of 12 concertos, four each for one, two or four violins, and four with added cello. They are at the boundary between the old tradition of the Sonata da chiesa (church sonata) with its stately slow-fast-slow-fast movements, and the newer three- movement concerto form (fast-slow-fast). L’estro armonico was a sensation, becoming the most influential music publication of the first half of the eighteenth century. J.S. Bach admired these works and transcribed some of them as harpsichord concerti. The four concerti known as The Four Seasons are part of a group of eight violin concerti published in Amsterdam in 1725 as Op. 8. Vivaldi provided sonnets, probably his own, to head each of the four concerti. It is clear from the detailed notes Vivaldi made on the score that he enjoyed composing these concertos as well as performing them. Vivaldi attempted to make the music as programmatic as possible, marking with capital letters sections of the sonnets and their corresponding music. Concerto in E major, Op. 8, No. 1, Spring Spring has returned and with it gaiety Setting the mood of the opening movement, the opening ritornello (recurrent phrase) is marked in the score “The spring has returned.” The first violin solo is marked “Song of the birds,” while after a return of the ritornello, comes a soft murmuring on the violin. After the next ritornello comes the lightning and thunder, followed by an extensive return to the singing birds and gaiety.The slow movement is a musical description of the snoozing goatherd, watched over by his dog, whose bark is imitated throughout the movement on the violas with repeated notes to be played “very loud and abruptly.” The third movement, a rustic dance, opens with a suggestion of rustic bagpipes, complete with an imitation of their drones by sustained notes on the low strings. Concerto in G minor, Op. 8, No. 2, Summer Under the heat of the burning sun The opening phrases droop in sympathy with the suffering people. Suddenly the violin depicts the singing of the birds. The zephyr’s voice is heard gently on the violins and violas, interrupted by the wind squalls depicted by rapid scales on the violins and bursts by the entire ensemble. A lonely violin solo describes the weeping shepherd’s apprehension of an impending storm. In the second movement, the shepherd’s rest (solo violin) is interrupted repeatedly by his fear of distant thunder (strong tremolo by the whole orchestra). He tries to sleep again, but the gnats and flies (repeated dotted notes on the strings accompanying the solo violin) don’t let him rest.The third movement describes the violent storm, justifying the shepherd’s fears. Darting scales in the violins describe the lightning while the cellos and basses portray thunder. Concerto in F major, Op. 8, No. 3, Autumn The peasants celebrate with dance and song The concerto begins with the rhythmic dances and songs of the peasants, followed by uncertain lurches by the solo violin to depict their drunkenness, which gets wilder and wilder, alternating with the dance music. With a sudden shift to Larghetto, some of the revelers go to sleep while the dances continue. In the second movement, the muted strings become increasingly gentle as the slumber becomes deeper and deeper. Violins imitate the hunting calls in the third movement. A wild melee in the orchestra describes the confusion of the hunt, the fleeing prey and its death, with the strings imitating the baying dogs. Concerto in F minor, Op. 8, No. 4, Winter Frozen and shivering amid the chilly snow The strings, with trills in the violins, describe the shivering in the winter cold. Swift arpeggios and scales by the solo violin describe the whipping of the wind, while a series of abrupt chords suggest stamping feet and running to get warm. But rapid tremolos show that all this activity is useless, since the teeth continue to chatter. Violin pizzicati depict the falling raindrops, after which a warm melody on the solo violin describes the pleasant indoors with its roaring fire. The Finale opens with sliding phrases by the violin - walking and slipping on thin ice. The orchestra joins with a slower rhythm to indicate the hesitant steps and fear of falling. But then we are back indoors, enjoying the warmth while the winds howl outside. | ||||||||||
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| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2010 | [buy tickets] | ||||||||||
