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emmanuel music Ryan Turner ARTISTIC DIRECTOR John Harbison PRINCIPAL GUEST CONDUCTOR Craig Smith FOUNDER (1947 - 2007) Patricia Krol EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Michael Beattie ARTISTIC ADMINISTRATOR Jude Epsztein Bedel DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Joan Ellersick ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL MANAGER Don Firth CONTROLLER Dayla Santurri PR/MARKETING ASSOCIATE Joanna Springer COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER Jayne West COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS COORDINATOR BOARD OF DIRECTORS ADVISORY BOARD Kate Kush PRESIDENT Belden Hull Daniels James Olesen Dale Flecker VICE PRESIDENT Richard Dyer Richard Ortner David Vargo TREASURER Anthony Fogg Ellis L. Phillips, III Eric Reustle CLERK John Harbison Peter Sellars Elizabeth S. Boveroux Rose Mary Harbison Russell Sherman Marion Bullitt Ellen Harris Sanford Sylvan H. Franklin Bunn David Hoose Christoph Wolff Coventry Edwards-Pitt Richard Knisely Benjamin Zander David Kravitz Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot Patrice Moskow Robert Levin Vincent Stanton, Jr. Errol Morris Dana Whiteside Mark Morris The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz, Joan Nordell ex-officio 15 Newbury Street | Boston, MA 02116 | 617.536.3356 | emmanuelmusic.org emmanuel music Ryan Turner, Artistic Director John Harbison, principal Guest Conductor MENDELSSOHN/WOLF CHAMBER SERIES YEAR I Sunday, November 2, 2014 – 4:00 PM Mörike Lieder Hugo Wolf Gesang Weylas (1860-1903) Der Genesene an die Hoffnung Schlafendes Jesukind Seufzer Auf eine Christblume II Pamela Dellal, mezzo-soprano Ryan Turner, tenor Brett Hodgdon, piano Variations Concertantes in D Major for Cello and Piano, Op. 17 Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello Ya-Fei Chuang, piano Mörike Lieder Hugo Wolf Begegnung Lebe wohl Nimmersatte Liebe Agnes An die Geliebte An eine Äolsharfe Pamela Dellal, mezzo-soprano Ryan Turner, tenor Brett Hodgdon, piano * * * INTERMISSION * * * Piano Quartet in C minor, Op. 1 Felix Mendelssohn I. Allegro viace II. Adagio III. Scherzo: Presto IV. Allegro moderato Ya-Fei Chuang, piano Danielle Maddon, violin Mark Berger, viola Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello Mörike Lieder Hugo Wolf Ein Stündlein wohl vor Tag Jägerlied Der Tambour Elfenlied Storchenbotschaft Pamela Dellal, mezzo-soprano Ryan Turner, tenor Brett Hodgdon, piano This afternoon’s performance is made possible through the generosity of John Pratt in loving memory of Joy Pratt. Steinway piano provided by M. Steinert &Sons. Emmanuel Music programs are supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES Hugo Wolf Hugo Wolf was born in 1860 in Styria, now Slovenia, then a part of the Austrian Empire. His father was a music-loving leather tradesman who taught him the rudiments of piano and violin. Without having finished high school, he went in 1875 to the Conservatory in Vienna where he was a poor student, subsequently being dismissed in 1877. From the age of seventeen Wolf depended mostly upon himself both for his musical training and for his living expenses. He supported himself by giving piano lessons and performing small-scale engagements, and in 1884 he became music critic for the Salonblatt, a Viennese society paper, where his uncompromising, stinging and sarcastic style won him a notoriety which was not helpful to his future prospects. Wolf composed in periods of feverish creative activity, which alternated with barren periods of deepest depression during which he was tormented with the anxiety that his creative well had dried up forever. By the end of 1891 he had composed the bulk of his works on which his fame chiefly rests: 53 Mörike Lieder, 20 Eichendorff Lieder, 51 Goethe Lieder, and the near 90 songs of the Spanisches and Italienisches Liederbuch. Mörike Lieder Eduard Mörike (1804–1875) was a pastor, a painter and the author of some of the most exqui- site, ardent, and lyrical German poetry. Scholar Richard Wigmore explains: “His range was extraordinarily wide, encompassing ideal, unhappy and erotic love, joy in the natural world, religious mysticism, the supernatural, whimsy and broad or ironic humor—all themes richly represented in Wolf’s Mörike collection.” Wolf wrote all 53 Mörike Lieder between February and November 1888. Over the course of the 2014-2015 season, Emmanuel Music will present the Mörike Lieder in its entirety. Felix Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, grandson of Moses Mendelssohn, the great Jewish thinker of the Enlightenment, was born in Hamburg in 1809, the son of a prosperous banker. Much of Mendelssohn’s childhood was passed in Berlin, where his parents moved when he was three, to escape Napoleonic invasion. When he was a boy, his father regularly invited professional musicians to his home to join the family in informal music-making. Many distinguished non-musicians were also invited, including the poet Goethe, with whom young Felix became great friends. Composer, pianist, organist, conductor, and visual artist, Felix Mendelssohn possessed prodi- PROGRAM NOTES gious talents that not only rivaled but surpassed those of Mozart. By the age of sixteen, Men- delssohn produced his first masterwork, the Octet for Strings, Op. 20, and the following year saw the completion of the luminous A Midsummer Night’s Dream concert overture. Rigorously schooled in Bach counterpoint, Mendelssohn, at the age of twenty, gained international fame and sparked revived interest in the music of J. S. Bach by conducting the first performance of the St. Matthew Passion since Bach’s death. During his tenures as conductor in Düsseldorf (1833-1835) and Leipzig (1835-1845), Mendelssohn rekindled interest in the music of Handel, and premiered other works, including Schubert’s newly discovered Symphony No. 9. One of the unique characteristics of Mendelssohn’s development as a composer is that, starting from a high Classical point of view, he moved almost simultaneously in two opposite historical directions. In his teens, he was wooed both by the music of the late Classical and early Romantic periods, and by the craft of Bach and Handel, for whom he developed intense admiration, even reverence. Variations Concertantes in D Major for Cello and Piano, Op. 17 The Variations Concertantes were written in 1829 for Mendelssohn’s younger brother, Paul, a good amateur cellist. The word concertante signals a virtuosic piece showcasing solo instru- ments. There is an original theme followed by eight variations, played without repeats and flowing seamlessly into one another Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 1 Perhaps the most important and enduring influence on Felix Mendelssohn’s musical educa- tion was Carl Friedrich Zelter, a prolific composer who set the poems of Goethe to music. Zelter encouraged his study of Handel, J. S. Bach, Haydn and Mozart, and by the time Felix was ten his creative output reflected a synthesis of these styles. Starting at the age of eleven, Mendelssohn wrote over 100 compositions, including a violin sonata, three piano sonatas and even two operas! The Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, his first published work, was composed in 1822 dur- ing a family holiday in Switzerland when Mendelssohn was thirteen years old, and reveals his breadth of style, range of emotion and scope of invention. The first movement is cast in classic sonata allegro form, the second spins a lyrical theme that looks forward to his Song Without Words, the scherzo trips along blithely, while the final movement reprises themes and the form of the first movement, closing with bravura flourish. PROGRAM NOTES Violin Sonata in F minor, Op. 4 Composed in 1825, when Mendelssohn was sixteen, the Violin Sonata in F minor elegantly blends the formality and balance of the 18th century with more than a hint of Beethoven-like turbulence. The sonata begins with a slow, unaccompanied recitative-like passage for the violin. When the pi- ano ambiguously joins, via a half cadence, the tempo immediately shifts to an allegro. The middle movement, a plush and dreamy poco adagio, gives way to the dancing 6/8 of the finale. The sonata ends as it began, with a quasi-cadenza for the violin that leads to an elusive close. - Ryan Turner String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13 Mendelssohn began the score of the quartet in July 1827 and completed it on 27 October 1827. The piece was published as Mendelssohn’s Op. 13 in 1830. On 14 February 1832 the work was premiered in Paris by violinists Pierre Baillot and Eugène Sauzay, violist Chrétien Uhran, and cellist Louis Norblin. “Ist Es Wahr?” (Is it true?) The adolescent Mendelssohn poses this question in a song composed in 1827, a setting of his friend Johann Gustav Droyson’s poem “Frage.” Mendelssohn was desper- ately in love, possibly with Betty Pistor, a singer in the choir he accompanied on Friday nights in Berlin. Material from the song would serve as the thematic backbone of the A minor string quartet that Mendelssohn would start composing later that year. The Mendelssohn family made sure to keep up with the latest musical trends, and in the 1820s this meant being familiar with the works of Beethoven, who by this time was well into his late period. Mendelssohn’s father, Abraham, was not terribly fond of Beethoven’s music but he made sure to purchase all of his works directly after they were published for his children’s study. This would prove to be crucial to Mendelssohn’s development as a composer (along with his grandmother’s gift of the score to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in 1824). The young Mendelssohn’s fascination with the late quartets of Beethoven is evident in a letter he wrote to his friend, the Swedish composer Adolf Frederick Linbad: “Have you seen his new quartet in Bb major [Op. 130]? And that in C# minor [Op. 131]? Get to know them, please. The piece in Bb contains a cavatina in Eb where the first violin sings the whole time, and the world sings along… The piece in C# has another one of these transitions, the intro- duction is a fugue!!” Beethoven’s death in early 1827 may have pushed Mendelssohn past the anxiety of influence that most composers after Haydn suffered when it came to writing string quartets.