Classics 2: Celebrating Greatness Program Notes Overture to Light Cavalry Franz Suppé Born in Spalato, Dalmatia [now Split, Croatia] April 18, 1819; died in Vienna, May 31, 1895 Franz Suppé studied law to please his father, but his musical side could not be denied. He spent most of his career composing and conducting for the theater in Vienna—first without pay at the Theater in der Josefstadt, followed by seventeen years at the Theater an der Wien and later at the Kaitheater and Carltheater. His farce Gervinus and operettas Flotte Bursche (Jolly Students) and Fatinitza were among his longest-running productions—over one hundred performances each—capped by his operetta Boccaccio, the work he considered his greatest success. After retiring from the Carltheater in 1882, Suppé continued to compose and conduct, receiving invitations to visit music centers across Europe. Though highly renowned in his own time, Suppé is remembered today chiefly for a few overtures—Dichter und Bauer (Poet and Peasant); Ein Morgen, Mittag, und Abend in Wien (Morning, Noon, and Night in Vienna); and Leichte Cavallerie (Light Cavalry). Popular in its day, Light Cavalry, a two-act operetta with a libretto by Carl Costa, was first performed at the Carltheater in Vienna on March 21, 1866. The story involves the love between Vilma, a beautiful young woman raised as an orphan by Hungarian villagers, and Hermann, nephew of the mayor. Mayor Bums himself is one of the many influential townspeople hoping to marry Vilma, and it takes the clever intrigue of some Hussars (Hungarian light cavalry) stationed in the village to win consent for the two young lovers to marry. (Suppé’s music was reworked in 1934 for an operetta of the same name with a libretto by Hans Bodenstedt set around 1750, which has an entirely different plot.) The Overture immediately suggests a military setting with its majestic opening fanfares. One definitely senses Rossini’s influence in the instrumentation and in the additive construction by repetition of phrases with expanded instrumentation and range. When the fast main section begins, Suppé gives the scurrying first theme to the violins before introducing the famous theme that has been used to represent “galloping” to the rescue in so many cartoons, television shows, and movies. He contrasts this with a lyrical snippet, a menacing striding theme, and a brief clarinet cadenza that introduces his broad, soulful “Hungarian” theme, replete with characteristic short-long rhythms at its conclusion. The “galloping” theme returns for the Overture’s conclusion, where Suppé combines it with his fanfare music from the opening for a rousing finish. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Scored for piccolo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, (timpani added by later arranger), snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, and strings Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, op. 73, “Emperor” Ludwig van Beethoven Born in Bonn, December 16? (baptized December 17), 1770; died in Vienna, March 26, 1827 Beethoven’s Fifth (and last) Piano Concerto was the first that he did not introduce himself as soloist, having become too deaf by this time. He completed it in Vienna in 1809, the year Austria was defeated at Wagram and Napoleon had invaded and occupied Vienna. Beethoven wrote: Since May 4th, I have brought into the world little that is connected; only here and there a fragment. The whole course of events has affected me body and soul. Portrait by Joseph Willibrord Mähler, 1815 . What a disturbing, wild life around me; nothing but drums, cannons, men, misery of all sorts. Worried about protecting what was left of his hearing, Beethoven took refuge on at least one occasion in the basement of his brother Carl’s house and covered his ears with pillows. Far from “fragments,” however, he managed to compose such impressive works as this concerto, the Harp Quartet, and the Opus 78, 79, and 81a piano sonatas. As in several of his “invasion year” works, Beethoven employed E-flat major, a key he favored for noble and heroic sentiments (as in the Eroica Symphony), imbuing the Concerto with a remarkable aura of grandeur. Nothing would have infuriated him more, however, than the nickname it received. According to one story, a French officer at the first Viennese performance acclaimed it as “an emperor among concertos.” Beethoven’s antiauthoritarian opinions and celebrated removal of Napoleon as the Eroica dedicatee confirm the impossibility of his having celebrated imperial grandeur. The successful premiere in Leipzig in November 1811 by Johann Friedrich Schneider put the large audience into such “a state of enthusiasm that it could hardly contain itself with the ordinary expressions of recognition and enjoyment.” Yet the first Viennese performance in February, with Beethoven’s brilliant pupil Carl Czerny as soloist, earned such unfavorable commentary as: “He [Beethoven] can be understood and appreciated only by connoisseurs.” Since it’s hard to imagine such a difference in the quality of the two performances, these conflicting reactions must simply reflect the different tastes of the critics or of the two cities. Introduced and punctuated by full orchestral chords, the majestic work begins with a solo cadenza that firmly establishes the home key. Beethoven later recalls his introduction to set up the recapitulation. Toward the end, he prepares for a traditional solo cadenza, but then astonishes by ingeniously turning it into an extended coda involving yet another recapitulation. Beethoven leads his tranquil slow-movement theme through three variations at a gloriously unhurried pace, whereupon he presents one of his most dramatic and thrilling coups. The bassoons sustain the home pitch, then gently lower it a half step. The horns sustain and the piano joins tentatively, whispering what will erupt as the finale’s main theme. This sonata- rondo, colored by the upward-bounding main theme with its energy-charged syncopation, makes an exultant conclusion to this heroic work. —©Jane Vial Jaffe Scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings Concerto for Orchestra, BB 123 Béla Bartók Born in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now Sînnicolau Mare, Romania), March 25, 1881; died in New York, September 26, 1945 The stimulation provided by the commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Concerto for Orchestra may well have prolonged Bartók’s life. Ill, weak, and with no means of financial support in sight, Bartók received a visit in his hospital room in 1943 from conductor Serge Koussevitzky, acting on a suggestion by Joseph Szigeti and Fritz Reiner. Koussevitzky offered him a $1,000 commission—$500 to begin with, the remainder on completion of the score. Worried that Bartók would refuse anything resembling charity, and, unwilling to consider that Bartók might be too ill to complete it, Koussevitzky told him he couldn’t refuse as the board of trustees had made an irrevocable decision. Recuperating from the treatment for blood and lung disorders, Bartók spent the summer at Saranac Lake, New York, where he completed the work. Koussevitzky conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the première on December 1, 1944. The composer, whose doctor permitted him to attend rehearsals and the performance, was thrilled by the great success of the work, and by Koussevitzky’s enthusiasm for it. Bartók quoted the conductor as saying that the Concerto is “‘the best orchestral piece of the last twenty-five years’ (including the works of his idol Shostakovich!).” The turnabout in his fortunes that the work occasioned sadly came too late. He grew weaker and died less than a year after its first performance. Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra was not the first, but his work launched a creative outburst. More than twenty noted composers have since added substantial contributions—Witold Lutosławski, Thea Musgrave, Elliott Carter, Roger Sessions, Michael Tippett, Karel Husa, Gunther Schuller (with three), Shulamit Ran, and many others—but it is Bartók’s work that orchestras continually strive to perform and record as a symbol of achievement. Bartók shows off not only individual instruments but an entire realm of innovative combinations, as well as the power of the whole orchestra. The work’s tunefulness and combined force make it readily accessible to audiences, while its masterful construction has given analysts a field day—at least two entire monographs are devoted to this one work. Bartók’s own description for the premiere began: “The general mood of the work represents, apart from the jesting second movement, a gradual transition from the sternness of the first movement and the lugubrious death song of the third to the life assertion of the last one.” He later told Hungarian colleagues that he wrote the Concerto as a personal expression “of homesickness and hope for his country, and of peace and brotherhood for the world.” Bartók’s program note continued with a matter-of-fact recital of some of the work’s details, but naturally couldn’t gush about some of its great wonders. One of these is the masterful overall symmetry of the five-movement structure: two outer movements, which carry most of the structural weight, surround the lighter-textured, more relaxed movements two and four, which in turn encircle the central slow movement. “The first and fifth movements,” he wrote, “are written in a more or less regular sonata form. The development of the first fugato contains sections for brass; the exposition in the finale is somewhat extended, and its development consists of a fugue built on the last theme of the exposition.” We should add that the first movement’s opening features intervals of a fourth, which he favored throughout his life, followed by sections beginning in half-steps, fanning out to clusters, and retracting again.