THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1955 ROCHESTER PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Erich Leinsdorf Music Director and Conductor Artur Rubinstein Piano Soloist

Dance Overture, Opus 62 Paul Creston First Performance by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra

Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra Cesar Franck Mr. Rubinstein, Soloist

Symphony No. 7, in One Movement, Opus 105 Jean Sibelius In Honor of the Ninetieth Anniversary of the Composer’s Birth

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Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Opus 37 Ludwig van Beethoven Allegro con brio Largo Rondo: Allegro Mr. Rubinstein, Soloist

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49 NOTES ON THE PROGRAM By CHARLES WARREN FOX Dance Overture, Opus 62 Paul Creston (Born in New York, N. Y., October 10, 1906; now living in Tuckahoe, N. Y.) Joseph Guttoveggio was born in New York of Italian parents; later he changed his name to Paul Creston. In 1922 he withdrew from high school in order to earn money for private musical studies. He had formal training in piano and organ but as a com­ poser is an autodidact. For many years he has served as organist of St. Malachy’s Church in New York and has maintained a private studio for teaching piano and composition. In 1943 his First Symphony won the award of the New York Music Critics’ Circle. His works have been widely performed ; his Two Choric Dances and his Second and Third Symphonies are particularly well known. In April, 1953, the Louisville Philharmonic Society was awarded a grant of $400,- 000 by the Rockefeller Foundation, in order that the orchestra might extend its seasons and commission many new compositions over a four-year period. Mr. Creston’s Invoca­ tion and Dance, Opus 58, was among the pieces commissioned for 1954 and was per­ formed by the Louisville Orchestra later that year. The composition was performed by the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, under Erich Leinsdorf’s direction, on November 18, 1954. Mr. Creston views music as deriving particularly from the song and the dance. The rhythmical features of his music are particularly important. These points are well illustrated in his Dance Overture, a recent work dating from 1954. The Overture is in three sections, a rather slow and lyrical middle theme providing contrast with the opening and closing animated sections.

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Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra Cesar Franck (Born in Liège, December 10, 1822; died in Paris, November 8, 1890) The title of this composition is deceptive, since it is likely to suggest nothing more than a "theme and variations” in the ordinary sense. Actually the work is, in Tovey’s words, "a finely and freely organized fantasia with an important episode in variation­ form.” Consequently, it is vastly different from Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Haydn, which closely follows classical models, or Elgar’s so-called "Enigma” Variations, actually a set of separate and contrasting character-pieces. There is no single term ap­ plicable to the unique form of Franck’s work, considered by many critics as his very greatest. The composition opens with a motive in dotted rhythm, presented in the strings; this hardly more than hints at the "theme,” which appears considerably later. The piano, at its first entrance a few measures after the beginning, announces another important motive, marked by a descending chromatic line. These two motives are treated antiph- onally between strings and the solo instrument. The "theme” appears first, in tenta­ tive and incomplete form, in the pizzicato strings. This leads to an extended and rhap­ sodic development of the descending chromatic motive in the piano alone. The orchestra returns with a short development of the first dotted-rhythm motive, and there is a further antiphonal treatment of both motives. All of this makes up the first large division of the piece. Now the piano alone introduces the theme in its complete form. Listeners will be reminded of the somewhat similar theme used by Franck in the slow movement of his Symphony in D Minor. Six variations upon this short and simple theme follow. The third large division of the composition is approximately as long as the first two combined. It is unusual, in that the "theme” itself is not used, except as a bass

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52 counterpoint in two short passages. This final section is rather a free development and amplification of the two motives introduced in the first division. Franck wrote the Symphonic Variations in 1885, when he was nearly 63 years old. The first performance took place in Paris on May 1 of that year, the solo part being played by Louise Diemer, to whom Franck dedicated the work. A long time passed be­ fore the composition became well-known internationally; the first performance in New York did not come until 1898. At the present time, however, it is possibly the best known piece for piano and orchestra, outside of the field of concertos.

Symphony No. 7, in One Movement, Opus 105 Jean Sibelius (Born in Tavastehus, December 8, 1865; now living near Helsinki) Today the musical world is celebrating the ninetieth birthday of Jean Sibelius, per­ haps the most famous of all living composers and certainly the best known of all liv­ ing Finnish citizens. There are undoubtedly millions of Americans alone who know the name of Sibelius but who would be hard put to name any other living Finns. Special attention is being devoted to him this year in his native country, and countless per­ formances of his compositions are being given in many countries. The Philadelphia Orchestra, on its European tour last spring, played Sibelius’s music in Finland and made a trip of respect to his house, where they were able to see the composer briefly. For many years he has been living in virtual retirement. As early as 1897, the Finnish Senate granted the young composer (then only 32 years old) an annual stipend, enabling him to devote more of his time to composition; in 1926 a much larger grant was voted by the government. So for many years he has been relatively free of the economic cares besetting most composers. Some writers have suspected that the stipend may not have been all to the good. It is, at least, a fact that Sibelius has produced very little music of any importance in more than 25 years; a few years ago members of his family reported that he was still composing, but he has not revealed these recent compositions (if any) to the musical world. A great deal of mystery has surrounded his "Eighth Symphony,’’ as yet unheard. Writing in 1931, Cecil Gray expressed the belief that this work had been finished and was about to be per­ formed, and the fourth edition of Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (1940) even listed the Symphony among Sibelius’s completed works. Sibelius’s career has been so closely interwoven with the history of Finland that some misconceptions, still current, have developed. One is that the music of Sibelius is the instinctive expression of a "Finnish race soul.” The exploded pseudo-psychology underlying this conception may be dismissed without comment. More pertinent is Gray’s discovery that out of the 32 direct ancestors of Sibelius living about 1700 only four were

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53 pure Finns. The others were of Swedish or German origin. Another common belief about Sibelius is that he is addicted to the use of Finnish folk songs in his own com­ positions; the truth is that he has hardly ever resorted to such borrowing. If Sibelius’s compositions sound "Finnish” to the outside world, it is only because of his own fame and influence. It is only from the point of view, that Finlandia is Finnish. Sibelius finished the composition of his Seventh Symphony early in 1924 and con­ ducted the first performance in Stockholm on March 24 of that year. A month later, on April 25, the first performance in Helsinki took place, under the baton of Robert Ka- janus, who did so much to spread knowledge of Sibelius’s music. The classical symphony in the time of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven was a fairly well-defined musical structure in four (or sometimes three) movements. Even before the death of Beethoven, there were signs of change, Beethoven himself violating tradi­ tion by using voices in the last movement of his Ninth Symphony. Only a few years later, Berlioz wrote his "Fantastic” Symphony, a programmatic work in five movements. Later Anton Rubinstein created an "Ocean” Symphony in no less than seven movements (these to symbolize the seven seas). This tendency to increase the number of movements in a symphony has reached its climax in Olivier Messiaen’s "Turangalila” Symphony, a work in ten movements, long enough to constitute a whole program. Rebelling against this hypertrophy of symphonic conceptions, some composers of the present century have attempted to revitalize the symphony through emphasis on brevity and compactness. Schonberg’s Chamber Symphony, Opus 9, is an early example of a symphony in one movement. But undoubtedly the most notable of all such sym­ phonies is the Seventh by Sibelius. The Seventh Symphony may be regarded in two different ways. On the one hand, it has as a whole many features of the traditional first-movement form, including an exposition, development section, and recapitulation. On the other hand, its changes in tempo (ranging from Largamente to Presto) suggest a full symphony, in contracted form and without pauses between movements. Most of the work is written with a time­ signature of 3-2. This unifying device might easily become oppressive at the hands of a lesser composer. But Sibelius avoids rhythmical monotony in several different ways: there are frequent changes of tempo, as mentioned above; sometimes the 3-2 actually becomes a 6-4 (and in one section is so marked in the score); and some of the musical material has syncopations against the regular metrical beat. In the classical period of the symphony, it was customary for themes to be stated as complete units and then to be developed by dissection. The procedure of Sibelius in the Seventh Symphony and in other works is to start with fragmentary motives and later to develop these by expansion.

Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Opus 37 Ludwig van Beethoven (Born in Bonn, December 16(?), 1770; died in Vienna, March 26, 1827) The autograph manuscript of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto is headed "Con­ certo 1800. Da L. v. Beethoven.” It is likely that he wrote the composition in the sum­ mer of that year, when he was living in Unter-Dobling, in the country about an hour’s walk from Vienna. At that period in his life he was accustomed to devote the pleasant summers in the countryside that he so deeply loved to the composition of large works, which would be ready by fall for final revision and copying. The first performance of this Concerto was not given, however, until April 5, 1803, at a concert in Vienna of compositions by Beethoven. The gigantic program included the First and Second Sym­ phonies, the Concerto, and the oratorio entitled Christ on the Mount of Olives. The Concerto, dedicated to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, was published in

54 1804. A critic of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, the most important German musical magazine of the period, devoted six and a half pages, complete with many musical examples, to a detailed review of the Concerto. This enthusiastic writer said in his opening sentence: "This great Concerto is among the most significant works to ap­ pear for some years from this composer-genius and from some points of view might even stand above all of them ...” The fact that the basic key of the Concerto is C minor is of more than slight im­ portance. For Beethoven that key was a key of great seriousness and import—as shown in such works as his Sonate Pathétique for piano, his Fifth Symphony, his Violin Sonata in C Minor, and the String Quartet in that key. This does not mean, of course, that the key of C minor has any metaphysical significance—especially since tunings in Beethoven’s day were different from ours. It seems rather to show that a composer may himself at­ tach, consciously or unconsciously, certain values to particular keys. For Mozart, the most serious key was undoubtedly G minor. Scriabin, guided by some of the mystical doctrines of theosophy, found a key signature of six sharps particularly important. This Concerto is in the usual three-movement classical form. The opening theme of the first movement, given out first by the orchestra, shows immediately Beethoven’s growth in breadth and force from the years of his earlier concerti. The treatment of the piano is also much more pianistic and less harpsichordish than in the earlier works.

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