SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA a JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT Jeffrey Kahane, Conductor and Piano

SAN DIEGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT Jeffrey Kahane, conductor and piano April 13 and 14, 2018 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat Major, K. 595 Allegro Larghetto Allegro Jeffrey Kahane, piano SAMUEL BARBER Music for a Scene from Shelley, Op. 7 INTERMISSION ROBERT SCHUMANN Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 97: Rhenish Lebhaft Scherzo: Sehr mässig Nicht schnell Feierlich Lebhaft Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat Major, K. 595 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna Mozart completed the Concerto in B-flat Major on January 5, 1791, eleven months to the day before his death, and he gave the first performance on March 4. The conditions of that premiere are especially poignant. Mozart’s own concerts in Vienna had done so poorly for the previous several years that he had been forced to abandon them – he played this concerto on a program given by the clarinetist Joseph Bähr. Such dismal circumstances, the expressive mood of the music itself, and the imminence of the composer’s death have led Mozart’s biographers to make some staggering claims for this concerto. Alfred Einstein feels that it “stands at the gate of heaven… [and is] the musical counterpart to the confession he made in his letters to the effect that life had lost attraction for him.” H.C. Robbins Landon suggests that in this music “we meet a new, resigned Mozart, a Mozart who no longer really cared about worldly acclaim.” Painful as the thought of Mozart’s premature death may be for us two centuries later, it is far better to regard this wonderful concerto not as a message of farewell (Mozart had no idea when he wrote it that he would be dead within a year) but as a promise of what might have been, had he been allowed even a few more years, for every measure of this music is suffused with a calm and expressive beauty. Mozart scored the concerto for an orchestra of one flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons and horns, plus strings; the absence of the martial sound of trumpets and drums helps create the restrained, almost understated mood of this music. The opening Allegro is built on two theme groups. After one measure of quietly-rustling accompaniment from second violins, first violins announce the movement’s flowing main idea, and a few moments later they have the second theme as well, built on long, falling chromatic lines and nicely enlivened by chirping grace-notes; the piano will take up both these themes on its entrance. The geniality of this opening does not prepare us for what happens at the beginning of the development. Here piano and orchestra trade phrases that seem to be coming from different worlds harmonically – each new phrase glances obliquely off its predecessor, and the effect is surprising, even unsettling. Yet this extraordinary passage takes place in a very quiet way – everything is done subtly in this music. The development itself is concise, and Mozart offers a cadenza just before the close. Piano alone states the main theme of the Larghetto and then is quickly joined by the orchestra. This ternary-form movement has some of the most intimate music in the concerto; there is something chaste and innocent about the piano’s opening statement, and that mood informs the entire Larghetto. It may be a key to the finale as well. A week after composing this concerto, Mozart wrote three songs for a collection of children’s songs that was to be published in Vienna. Two of these are about the coming of spring, and one of them, Sehnsuct nach dem Frühlinge (“Longing for Spring”), begins with a gently-dancing phrase that sets the words Komm, lieber Mai, und mache die Bäume wieder Grün (“Come, dear spring, and make the trees green once again”). Mozart used the music that sets this phrase as the main theme for the finale of his Piano Concerto in B-flat Major, and perhaps we sense – in music written in the dead of winter – a longing not just for spring and green leaves but for the entire notion of rebirth. The concerto’s concluding rondo, marked simply Allegro, is music of unusual gentleness. It dances gracefully along that lilting opening idea, but beneath the graceful surface is a complex structure. Mozart interrupts the rondo with opportunities for two cadenzas and then begins to develop his themes so extensively that the rondo threatens to become a sonata-form movement. But the gentle mood of the opening prevails, and Mozart’s final piano concerto ends in the mood of calm beauty that has pervaded the entire work. Music for a Scene from Shelley, Op. 7 SAMUEL BARBER Born March 9, 1910, West Chester, Pennsylvania Died January 23, 1981, Mt. Kisco, New York Samuel Barber spent the summer of 1933 in the village of Cardegliano on the Italian shore of Lake Lugano. The 23-year-old composer was a voracious reader, and that summer he was reading Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. In Shelley’s drama, Prometheus – symbol of mankind – is released from bondage and reunited with his wife Asia, symbol of ideal love; their union ushers in a golden age for humanity. Barber was particularly drawn to the moment in Act II, Scene 5 when Panthea – atop a snowy mountain – addresses Asia on the capacity of music to evoke the power of love: Hearest thou not sounds i’ in the air which speak the love Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou not The inanimate winds enamoured of thee? List! [Music] Barber composed Music for a Scene from Shelley in response to those lines. It was the young composer’s second work for orchestra, and in a letter written that July Barber stressed that this music was not a tone poem depicting the music that speaks of love but rather the sounds of the “voices in the air” imploring Asia to allow them to hear that music. Atmosphere is everything in Music for a Scene from Shelley. This nine-minute work captures the mood of sensuality and longing in Shelley’s lines, and much of its success comes from Barber’s deft handling of the orchestra. At the beginning – marked Adagio, ma non troppo – muted strings establish the murmuring context for the first theme, sung by a quartet of muted horns. Barber identified this descending figure with the distant voices crying “Asia! Asia!” but rather than being ecstatic, their soft theme is full of chromatic tension. Gradually the instruments take off their mutes, the music grows in power, and the soaring second subject is given out by massed violins and violas – here, perhaps, is the power of love associated with Asia. Music for a Scene from Shelley is not in sonata form, nor does Barber “develop” these ideas. Instead, the music builds to a moment of tension, breaks off on a grand pause, and reaches its climax in a series of strident dissonances. This tension falls away on a long coda that recalls parts of both principal themes and finally sinks into silence. Barber had to wait almost two years – and travel a long way – to hear this music. Music for a Scene from Shelley received its first performance in Carnegie Hall on March 24, 1935, when Werner Janssen conducted the New York Philharmonic in a program of music by young American composers. Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 97: Rhenish ROBERT SCHUMANN Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau Died July 29, 1856, Endenich On the evening of September 2, 1850, Schumann and his family arrived in Düsseldorf, where he had agreed to take up the position of music director. The previous six years had been spent in various stages of depression in Dresden, and now Schumann was delighted to escape a city he associated with creative blockage and to make a fresh start. He and Clara were feted with a flurry of concerts, dinners and dances in Düsseldorf, and four weeks later they traveled 30 miles up the Rhine for the enthronement of Archbishop Geissel of Cologne as a Cardinal. Though the Schumanns were not Catholic, this solemn ceremony in the still-unfinished cathedral made a deep impression on the composer. With his energies revived in Düsseldorf, Schumann plunged into work, quickly composing his Cello Concerto and beginning to conduct the orchestra in a series of subscription concerts. In the midst of this, he set to work on a new symphony. This would be listed as his Third, even though it was the last of the four he composed: he sketched the first movement between November 2 and 9, made another quick visit to Cologne, and had the entire symphony complete on December 9. The composer led the successful premiere of the Third Symphony in Düsseldorf on February 6, 1851. (Things happened faster in those days: from the time Schumann sat down before a blank sheet of manuscript paper until he led the premiere, only ninety-six days had passed.) Schumann himself contributed the nickname Rhenish for the new symphony, but that name needs to be understood carefully. This music paints no scenes, tells no story, and does not set out to translate that fabled river into sound. Rather, it is music inspired by a return to the river on which Schumann had spent happy student days 20 years earlier and which was now the setting for his new job and (he hoped) a return to health. Several of the symphony’s movements had descriptive titles in Schumann’s original manuscript, but he carefully excluded these from the completed score: he wanted this symphony understood purely as music.

Load more