From Amelia Goes to the Ball – Gian Carlo Menotti Born July 7, 1911, in Cadegliano, Italy Died February 1, 2007, in Monte Carlo, Monaco

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“Overture” from Amelia Goes to the Ball – Gian Carlo Menotti Born July 7, 1911, in Cadegliano, Italy Died February 1, 2007, in Monte Carlo, Monaco

Gian Carlo Menotti is known to many people as the composer of Amahl and the Night Visitors, but he composed dozens of operas. Born in a small Italian town, Menotti enrolled in the Milan Conservatory at just twelve years of age. His father died shortly thereafter and his mother had to move to Colombia to oversee the family business. In 1928 Menotti began studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where he would become friends with fellow students Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber, with whom he would forge a decades-long professional and personal relationship. Menotti would write the libretto for Barber’s opera Vanessa in 1955.

Menotti’s compositions are very approachable by operatic standards. Many of them are one-acts that share the evening with other operas. His first full-length opera, The Consul, won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, as did The Saint of Bleecker Street five years later.

Menotti’s first mature opera is the 1937 one-act Amelia Goes to the Ball, originally composed in Italian as Amelia al ballo. It was premiered at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia on April 1, 1937, conducted by the legendary conductor Fritz Reiner, on a double bill with Darius Milhaud’s Le pauvre matelot. National radio broadcasts and international performances followed within a year.

Amelia’s charm is partially driven by its plot:

The socialite Amelia is getting ready for the first ball of the season. Her husband appears and accuses her of an affair. He will not accompany her until she tells him the identity of her lover. She identifies the upstairs neighbor and a fight ensues. Amelia smashes a vase over her husband’s head and police arrive. She says a burglar attacked her husband and the neighbor is arrested. Her husband is taken to the hospital and Amelia attends the ball with the chief of police.

The overture begins with an energetic opening complete with nervous rhythms and a palpable sense of tension. Menotti’s middle section is a sumptuous depiction of the ball. After a dizzying development section, the opening music returns and the overture ends with a fast and furious coda.

Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra, Op.18 – Sergei Rachmaninoff Born April 1, 1873 in Oneg, Russia Died March 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, California

Of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s three concertos for piano and orchestra, the second has become the most popular. This beloved work is characterized by its rich beauty – as well as great technical brilliance and difficulty. However, it was a particularly difficult work for Rachmaninoff, who suffered from writer’s block. His Symphony No.1 (1897) was a complete failure. Despite his great promise as the most promising leader of a new generation of Russian composers, the harsh reception could not have been more brutal. Cesar Cui declared that the work sounded like the product of “a conservatory in Hell.” The depression that ensued caused an unusual dry period in Rachmaninoff’s compositional output. After three years, friends convinced the composer to seek help from Dr. Nicolai Dahl, who had used alternative therapies with his patients. The composer received considerable relief after four months of hypnosis, and was so grateful to Dr. Dahl that he dedicated the Second Piano Concerto to him.

The opening moderato begins with soft chords played by the piano even before the main theme enters in the strings. Supporting the sweeping melody, the soloist begins a pattern of wide arpeggios. The broad melody continues for some time, growing in passion and giving way to an unaccompanied section for the soloist. A yearning second theme is introduced by the soloist, while the orchestra interjects an occasional fragment of supporting material. Rachmaninoff’s sultry development section begins with a major-key proclamation of the first theme, finally giving way to a new march-like melody, growing in intensity until the recapitulation.

Brooding and moody, the adagio sostenuto commences with soft chords in the orchestra, which usher in the darkly stunning piano solo. A contrasting middle section presents a tumultuous surge in emotion. Listeners might note that the expressive theme that opens the movement was adapted into a popular song entitled “All By Myself.”

Rachmaninoff’s lively finale, marked Allegro scherzando opens with a rhythmic pianissimo entrance. Piano arpeggios navigate treacherous territory as the movement winds up to a fiery pace. After the usual development and recapitulation, filled with surprises around every corner, the movement ends with a showcase of dazzling pianism punctuated with a final triumphant hammering of orchestra chords.

Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma), Op. 36 – Sir Edward Elgar Born June 2, 1857, at Broadheath, near Worcester, England Died February 23, 1934, at Worcester, England

Sir Edward Elgar was nearly fifty years of age before his reputation was sealed with the premiere of one work – the Enigma Variations. As many have explained, there are actually three puzzles in this work. Elgar’s main theme, which returns in various guises throughout the work, is entitled “Enigma,” but no solution is given as to its meaning. Most scholars believe that the puzzle is simply a musical setting of the rhythm of the composer’s own name. Elgar described the other two enigmas as:

“It is true that I have sketched for their amusement and mine the idiosyncrasies of fourteen of my friends, not necessarily musicians, but this is a personal matter and need not have been mentioned publicly … The Enigma I will not explain. Its dark saying must be left unguessed … Further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes,’ but is not played. So the principal Theme never appears …”

As to the larger enigma, it remains unsolved. However, the smaller puzzle of connecting initials to Elgar’s friends was cracked by the composer himself when he revealed the solution in 1920. Presented below, each musical variation reflects certain defining characteristics of each of its subjects.

Variation I (C.A.E.): Caroline Alice Elgar was the composer’s wife. The tender and sentimental quality of this variation blends seamlessly with the theme.

Variation II (H.D.S-P): Elgar’s pianist friend Hew David Steuart-Powell was a pianist who played trios with Elgar (violin) and Basil G. Nevinson (cello). The pianistic type of runs in the violins at the opening suggests the exercises of Steuart-Powell, warming up his fingers.

Variation III (R.B.T.): Richard Baxter Townshend was an actor whose voice was capable of unusual changes of pitch. He was also known for his incessant ringing of a bell as he rode a tricycle around Oxford. Upper strings and woodwinds state the variation, followed by growling basses.

Variation IV (W.M.B.): R.B.T.’s brother-in-law, William Meath Baker, was a man of great energy and one fiery in argument. His eccentricities, especially his habit of slamming doors in anger, are expressed in this musical portrait, relying on brass and heavy timpani.

Variation V (R.P.A.): Richard Penrose Arnold, son of Matthew Arnold, was a man of changing moods and comic witticisms. His characteristic laugh is heard in this variation.

Variation VI (Ysobel): Isabel Fitton was a very tall viola student for whom Elgar wrote a set of practice exercises. Both the exercise and her stature are reflected in this viola- centric variation.

Variation VII (Troyte): Arthur Troyte Griffith was an architect who designed Elgar’s house at Malvern. He was a man of excitable and tempestuous temperament, who dabbled as an amateur pianist. Elgar gave noble effort to help this dear friend learn to play the instrument, but these efforts led inevitably to an exasperated slam of the keyboard lid.

Variation VIII (W.N.): Elgar’s neighbor, Winifred Norbury, is honored with a variation that pays homage to her gracious old-world courtesy. It leads without pause to the most famous of Elgar’s variations.

Variation IX (Nimrod): This most eloquent of all the variations is a tribute to the composer’s close friend, A.J. Jaeger, editor of The Musical Times and adviser to the firm of Novello, which published many of Elgar’s compositions. (In German “Jaeger” means “hunter – thus the reference to “Nimrod” the mighty hunter.)

Variation X (Dorabella - Intermezzo): Dorabella refers to Miss Dora Penny, the daughter of a local parson. Elgar favored the nickname “Dorabella” because of the reference to the bright practicality of Mozart’s character in Cosi fan tutte. Even her pronounced stammer is reflected in this variation.

Variation XI (G.R.S.): Dr. George Robertson Sinclair was the organist of Hereford Cathedral, who was also known for his loveable bulldog named Dan. The chordal brass suggests the sound of the organ, while the playful and puckish string writing represents Dan. A delightful story relates how Dan rolled down the bank of the River Wye, only to swim upstream to the shore where he barked loudly.

Variation XII (B.G.N.): Basil G. Nevinson was cellist who played in Elgar’s piano trio. Elgar described this variation as "a tribute to a very dear friend whose scientific and artistic attainments, and the wholehearted way they were put at the disposal of his friends, particularly endeared him to the writer."

Variation XIII (***): The original inscription of a trio of asterisks was later found to mask a reference to Lady Mary Lygon, who was at the time en route to Australia. For the intimate group of friends to could even hope to understand the reference, Elgar inserted a clarinet solo with a phrase from Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. The pulse of drums are said to represent the hum of the ship’s engines.

Variation XIV (E.D.U.): The Finale, elaborate and heavily orchestrated, is both a self- portrait and a musical culmination. (“Edoo” was the composer’s wife’s nickname for her husband.) The work ends in a broad presentation of the theme in a stately major key.