San Diego Symphony Orchestra a Jacobs Masterworks Concert
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SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT January 30, 2016 CLAUDE DEBUSSY Petite Suite (Orch. Henri Büsser) En bateau (In the Boat) Cortège Menuet Ballet W. A. MOZART Concerto No. 7 in F Major for Three Pianos, K. 242: Lodron Allegro Adagio Rondo: Tempo di minuetto Jessie Chang, piano Conrad Tao, piano Jahja Ling, piano ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK Slavonic Dance in G minor, Op. 46, No. 8: Presto* ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK Slavonic Dance in E minor, Op. 72, No. 2: Allegretto grazioso* JOHANNES BRAHMS Hungarian Dances* No. 5 in G minor No. 6 in D-flat Major GEORGE GERSHWIN Three Preludes* Allegro ben ritmato e deciso Andante con moto e poco rubato Allegro ben ritmato e deciso MAURICE RAVEL Suite (5 piéces enfantines) from Ma Mère L’Oye (Mother Goose) Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty Tom Thumb Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas Conversations of Beauty and the Beast The Enchanted Garden *Four-handed piano versions, no orchestra, played variously by Jessie Chang, Conrad Tao and Jahja Ling Petite Suite CLAUDE DEBUSSY (Orch. Büsser) Born August 22, 1862, Saint-Germain-en-Laye Died March 25, 1918, Paris In 1886 Claude Debussy – unknown to the world at large but all too well-known to the authorities at the Paris Conservatory – began work on a set of pieces for piano four-hands. This was a difficult time for the 24-year-old composer. He was just completing two unhappy years in Rome, where he had been obligated to study as winner of the Prix de Rome, and he would continue to struggle in obscurity for several more years. Not until 1893 and 1894, with the premieres of his String Quartet and Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, did he achieve fame. Now, however, the young composer was writing for piano. He composed the two Arabesques in 1888, and the following year he completed a set of pieces for four-hand piano, which he published under the title Petite Suite. There was a market for this sort of attractive music that talented amateurs might play at home, but the Petite Suite became much better known nearly twenty years later when Debussy’s friend, the composer Henri Büsser, arranged it for small orchestra in 1907. Debussy himself conducted the orchestral version with some success, including a performance in Vienna, and the composer’s biographer Edward Lockspeiser notes that the orchestral version of Petite Suite has achieved “an enviable place in the repertory of so-called light music.” Critics have been hard on the Petite Suite, perhaps because it is still early Debussy and does not show the distinctive advances in harmony and form that mark his mature music. Lockspeiser, in fact, speaks of this music’s “period prettiness” and hears a number of echoes of earlier French composers in the four pieces. Despite the critics, the Petite Suite has proven popular with audiences, and at least one of its movements has become famous on its own. This is the suite’s opening movement, En bateau (In the Boat), which is also a favorite of pianists in its version for solo piano. It is in the form of a barcarolle, the gently-rocking song of the Venetian gondoliers. Like all the pieces in Petite Suite, it is in ternary form: an opening section, a middle section of different mood and harmony, and a return of the opening material that also subtly recalls music from the central episode. En bateau is in the manner of a Monet water painting, with brightly-colored water lilies and brilliant sunlight glistening off the water’s surface. Debussy called the second movement Cortège, but there is little of the funeral procession about this movement, which rides along a steady pulse of sixteenth notes in its outer sections. The third movement is a minuet that concludes very delicately, while the finale, called Ballet, dances with unusual energy. Its central episode also dances, but in a different way: Debussy marks this Tempo di Valse, and this music does waltz along its 3/8 meter before the opening material returns to drive the Petite Suite to a powerful close. Concerto No. 7 in F Major for Three Pianos, K. 242: Lodron WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna As a composer in Salzburg, Mozart sometimes had to thread his way between competing obligations. He was a court musician for Archbishop Colloredo, and his primary job was to provide liturgical and ceremonial music for court functions. But the Mozart family was also a part of Salzburg’s social life, and it was for occasions put on by Salzburg families that Mozart wrote his Haffner Serenade, his divertimentos and many other works. Sometimes these obligations coincided. Early in 1776, just as Mozart turned 20, the wife of one of Salzburg’s leading families, Antonia Lodron, asked Mozart to write a concerto for three pianos and orchestra that she might play with her two daughters. Antonia Lodron was in fact the sister of Archbishop Colloredo, so this was a commission the young composer needed to take seriously; he wrote the Piano Concerto No. 7 in F Major for Three Pianos in February 1776. The three pianos are supported by a small orchestra (two oboes, two horns and strings) that could be reduced to chamber proportions so that this concerto could be played in Salzburg drawing rooms. But those forces could also be expanded into a much larger orchestra, and Mozart himself appeared in later performances of this concerto in Salzburg, Mannheim and Augsburg. In his study of Mozart’s piano concertos, Cuthbert Girdlestone laments the absence here of the polyphonic writing that Bach brought to his concertos for multiple keyboards. But Mozart had other considerations: he was writing music that would be agreeable to his modestly-talented performers and would be instantly attractive to their friends in Salzburg, so he kept textures clear, wrote tuneful themes, and made sure that the parts were not too demanding. The manuscript bears Mozart’s flowery inscription: “Dedicated to the incomparable merit of Her Excellency the Signora Contessa Lodron and her two daughters, Countesses Aloisa and Giuseppa, by their most devoted servant Wolfgang Mozart.” Antonia and her two daughters – Luisa and Josepha in their German spelling – appear to have been capable pianists, but evidence suggests that Josepha was the weakest of the three, and Mozart knew it: he kept the third part relatively easy, and in fact he later made a version of this concerto for two pianos by folding the third part into the second. He had his father send him the two-piano version after he had moved to Vienna, and he apparently performed it in that city with his pupil Josepha von Auernhammer. The opening Allegro is in sonata form. The orchestra’s exposition announces the two main themes – a firm opening idea and a more melodic second subject – before the pianists enter. The writing for the three pianos is straightforward and clear as the performers pass the themes to each other and trade long runs. Mozart himself supplied the cadenza for this movement. Longest of the movements, the Adagio has been admired as the finest part of this concerto. It too is in sonata form, and this music rises to a depth and dignity absent from the outer movements. The concluding movement is a rondo, but Mozart casts it as a minuet, just as he had done in his Bassoon Concerto (1774) and his Fifth Violin Concerto (1775). This movement dances agreeably, and once again the melodic line flows smoothly between the three soloists. Slavonic Dances in G minor, Op. 46, No. 8: Presto in E minor, Op. 72, No. 2: Allegretto grazioso ANTONIN DVOŘÁK Born September 8, 1841, Muhlhausen, Bohemia Died May 1, 1904, Prague Success came late to Dvořák. For years he labored in obscurity, supporting himself and his family as an orchestral violist and teacher, and then came the break: his music attracted the attention (and admiration) of Brahms, who alerted his own publisher, Simrock, to the talents of this unknown Bohemian composer. Simrock commissioned a set of Slavonic Dances from Dvořák, suggesting that he model them on Brahms’ own vastly popular Hungarian Dances. Dvořák composed a set of eight dances – originally for piano four-hands – between April and August 1878 and then orchestrated them. They were an instant success and quickly traveled around the world; performances followed in Germany, France, Italy, England and even distant America. Simrock paid Dvořák only a modest fee for this music, and the publisher did quite well financially on its tremendous success. For his part, Dvořák got something much better than money: he achieved worldwide fame, and the Slavonic Dances were really the music that launched his career. Simrock of course wanted another set of dances, and eight years later Dvořák wrote a further set of eight, which were published as his Opus 72. (Those eight years made a tremendous difference in Dvořák’s career: he asked – and got! – ten times as much for this set as he was paid for the first.) This concert offers one dance from each of the two sets, heard in its original version for piano four-hands. It has been noted that Dvořák – unlike Brahms – did not quote actual folk melodies in his dances; instead, he used native dance forms to write his own music. This set opens with one of the most famous dances from Opus 46. No. 8 in G minor is a furiant, an old Czech dance in which the meter changes constantly. Marked Presto, it bursts to life with a powerful, decisive beginning that quickly leaps between major and minor modes.