0425 Program Notes

Berkshire Symphony Orchestra Saturday, April 25, 2009 8:00 p.m. Program Notes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) is widely considered to be one of the most important Classical composers in music history. Many know of his style as playful and elegant, but he also wrote various works that were moodier and contained a Sturm und Drang quality. His 23rd Piano Concerto, K. 488 written in 1786 displays his more playful and cheerful style. The first movement is written in the double exposition form, meaning that the orchestra plays all of the major themes of the movement in the tonic key, A Major. When the pianist later comes in, Mozart fleshes out all of the themes and modulates to various keys. Mozart prominently displays the mature Classical Period stylistic qualities in this first movement. With the rise of the middle class, composers found that pieces that had a simple but melodic line with a tuneful quality to them were widely accepted by the public. One of Mozart’s most characteristic traits is his tendency to create small variations when repeating a phrase or a theme. This transformative quality is especially apparent in many themes of this concerto. Mozart himself probably played this concerto directly after it was written. In 1781 he paved a new road for composers because he decided to become a free-lance artist. Rebelling against the patronage system, Mozart wrote concertos that he would debut to the public to make a living. I chose this piece because I feel it is the best representation of Mozart’s elegant and deceptively simplistic style. The child-like characteristic of the piece is especially beautiful and difficult to convey. Through this piece, I have learned much about resisting the temptation to over-embellish and the importance of bringing out the detail-work that Mozart is famous for. – Tiffany Yu ‘12 Aaron Copland: Concerto for Clarinet and String Orchestra In 1947, jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman commissioned Aaron Copland to write him a concerto. Goodman placed no restrictions on Copland’s composition, only insisting that he have exclusive playing rights for two years. Despite his virtuosity, Goodman was worried about the concerto’s numerous altissimo notes and unrelentingly technical passages and worked with Copland to make the clarinet part easier to play. In the end, Copland only agreed to minor alterations, wishing to preserve the integrity of his original composition. After delaying the performance to have more practice time, Goodman finally premiered the Concerto with the NBC Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1950, under the direction of Fritz Reiner. After the harp sets the tempo in the opening, the clarinet joins with a subdued, melancholy line that establishes the mood for the majority of the first movement. The clarinet part gently rises and falls, exploring the full range of the instrument, before building to a soaring forte passage. After this faux-climax, both the orchestral and solo clarinet parts become more serene and introspective, ultimately drifting into an ethereal, slowly-fading chord. As the strings are dying away, the clarinet rejoins with a seeming reiteration of the movement’s opening theme before launching into a rousingly virtuosic cadenza. After the cadenza’s dramatic transition, the second half of the concerto is lively and playful, incorporating several jazz themes in a salute to Goodman. The tensions of the concerto’s second movement resolve in an elaborately frenetic coda with a brilliant glissando in C major. When I was in high school, my teacher Dr. Dave Ehrke gave me a recording of the Copland Clarinet Concerto by Richard Stoltzman. I was immediately intrigued by Copland’s juxtaposition of subdued, introspective passages and relentless, driving rhythms. After listening to the recording several times, I decided that I had to study the music. I started with the cadenza and fell in love with its rhythmic “groove” and wild arpeggios. When it came time to select a piece for the Student Soloist Competition, the decision was easy—the Copland Concerto is by far the most fun and satisfying clarinet work I have studied. – Alexander Taylor ’10 Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Violin Concerto in D major, opus. 35 Erich Wolfgang Korngold composed his Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 in 1945. Dedicated to Alma Mahler-Werfe, the widow of Korngold's childhood mentor Gustav Mahler, the concerto was premiered in 1947 by Jascha Heifetz and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra under conductor Vladimir Golschmann. This concerto is the first composition written after Korngold’s self-imposed hiatus from writing concert hall music; Korngold had vowed to give up composing other than film music, with which he supported himself and his family, until Hitler was defeated. At the end of World War II, Korngold had to be persuaded by fellow émigré and violinist Bronisław Huberman to write this work because of the harsh criticism he faced for being a successful film composer. Perhaps Korngold was criticized because he, in his own words, “never drew a distinction between music for films and for operas or concertos.” This violin concerto borrows its themes from four of his movie scores. The opening melody of the Moderato nobile is borrowed from Another Dawn (1937); the second, more nostalgic theme is taken from Juarez (1939). The wistful Romance takes its main theme from Korngold’s Oscar-winning score Anthony Adverse (1936). The Finale offers virtuosic variations on a theme from The Prince and the Pauper (1937). Like many of Korngold’s concert hall compositions, this concerto is obscure and is only recently being performed and recorded. Although an American critic denounced this concerto as “more korn than gold,” its premiere was a rousing success: it received the most enthusiastic ovation in Saint Louis concert history. This concerto is quite decadent in its various melodies and lush orchestration, and simultaneously quirky, unpredictable and exciting. – Alicia Choi ’09 George Perle: Sinfonietta 1 A commission from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra finally led me to realize a project that I had been thinking about for many years -- a work for an instrumental ensemble that would more or less coincide with the standard symphony orchestra of Mozart's day and that would somehow evoke something of the character, spirit, and shape of the 18th-century symphony as well. I had always liked and admired Prokofieff's Classical Symphony, but what I had in mind was not a parodistic echo of the musical idiom of a bygone age but, rather, a serious expression, in my own harmonic language, of my affection and regard for the 18th-century symphonic tradition. The Sinfonietta was performed for the first time in January, 1988, with David Zinman conducting the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. The work is scored for 1 flute, 2 oboes, 1 clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 1 trumpet, timpani, xylophone, and strings. -George Perle Igor Stravinsky: Suite from The Firebird (1919 version) The notorious inability of Anatol Liadov to finish his scores in time gave Stravinsky his first big break. In 1909, Sergei Diaghilev needed to find a fast-working composer for a new ballet based on the old Russian legend of the Firebird. Having been impressed by Stravinsky’s Fireworks, which he had heard a few months earlier, Diaghilev went to Stravinsky to discuss a possible commission for The Firebird. Though deeply engrossed in his opera The Nightingale, Stravinsky naturally recognized that a ballet commission from Diaghilev with a production in Paris was an opportunity he could not turn down. In fact, he was so enthusiastic that he began sketching the music before the formal commission finally reached him. He composed the large score between November 1909 and March 1910; the final details of the full score were finished by May 18. The premiere of the lavishly colorful score marked a signal triumph for the Ballets Russes and put the name of Stravinsky on the map. Diaghilev quickly signed him up for more ballets, and in short order he turned out Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, with which he brought on a musical revolution. The scenario of The Firebird involves the interaction of human characters with two supernatural figures, the magic Firebird (a sort of good fairy), and the evil sorcerer Kashchei, a green-taloned ogre who cannot be killed except by destroying his soul (which is preserved in a casket in the form of an egg), and who has an enchanted garden in which he keeps thirteen captured princesses. Many valiant knights have tried to rescue the princesses, but all have been captured and turned to stone. The suite opens with the ballet’s introduction, with its mood of magical awe. The double basses present a melodic figure (two semitones and a major third) that lies behind all the music of the Firebird. Following a culminating shower of brilliant harmonics on the violins (played with a new technique invented by Stravinsky for this passage), a muted horn call signals the rise of the curtain on a nocturnal scene in the “Enchanted Garden of Kashchei,” which continues the mysterious music of the opening (a chromatic bassoon phrase foreshadows the sorcerer). Suddenly the Firebird appears (shimmering strings and woodwinds), pursued by a young prince, Ivan Tsarevich. The Firebird performs a lively dance, all shot through with brilliant high interjections from the upper woodwinds. But Ivan Tsarevich captures the magic bird (horn chords sforzando) as it flutters around a tree bearing golden apples. The Firebird appeals to be freed in an extended solo dance, but Ivan takes one of its feathers—a magic feather—as a token before allowing it to depart.

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