Concert Program
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CONCERT PROGRAM November 9-11, 2012 Jun Märkl, conductor Daniel Lee, cello Dominique Labelle, soprano Kai Rüütel, mezzo-soprano Christoph Genz, tenor Stephen Powell, baritone St. Louis Symphony Chorus Amy Kaiser, director SCHOENBERG Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth), op. 13 (1907) (1874-1951) St. Louis Symphony Chorus Amy Kaiser, director HAYDN Cello Concerto in D major, Hob. VIIb:2 (1783) (1732-1809) Allegro moderato Adagio Rondo: Allegro Daniel Lee, cello INTERMISSION MOZART Requiem Mass in D minor, K. 626 (Süssmayr completion) (1791) (1756-1791) Introitus: Requiem— Kyrie Sequenz Dies irae Tuba mirum Rex tremendae Recordare Confutatis— Lacrimosa Offertorium Domine Jesu Hostias Sanctus Benedictus Agnus Dei— Communio: Lux aeterna Dominque Labelle, soprano Kai Rüütel, mezzo-soprano Christoph Genz, tenor Stephen Powell, baritone St. Louis Symphony Chorus Amy Kaiser, director 23 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Jun Märkl is the Jean L. and Charles V. Rainwater Guest Artist. Daniel Lee is the Sarah E. Rainwater Ward and Charles S. Rainwater Guest Artist. Amy Kaiser is the AT&T Foundation Chair. The St. Louis Symphony Chorus is supported in part by a grant from the Edward Chase Garvey Memorial Foundation. The concert of Friday, November 9, is the Dr. and Mrs. Richard G. Sisson Concert. The concert of Sunday, November 11, is the Thomas M. Peck Memorial Concert. The concert of Friday, November 9, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. David C. Farrell. The concert of Saturday, November 10, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from Ms. Lesley A. Waldheim. The concert of Sunday, November 11, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from Mrs. Ernest A. Eddy. Pre-Concert Conversations are presented by Washington University Physicians. These concerts are part of the Wells Fargo Advisors Series. Large print program notes are available through the generosity of Mosby Building Arts and are located at the Customer Service table in the foyer. 24 PEACE ON EARTH AND HEAVENLY PEACE BY PAUL SCHIAVO The consolation music offers in times of sorrow is one of its most remarkable properties, and one of the most valued. Musical elegies are TIMELINKS numerous, of course, and date to ancient times and probably to pre-history. But the most highly developed species of musical threnody is singing 1783 of the Requiem, the Latin mass for the deceased. HAYDN Cello Concerto in D major Settings of the Requiem text have been made Treaty of Paris officially by innumerable composers over the centuries. ends America’s One of the most beautiful and moving is that Revolutionary War of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which forms the second half of our concert. Lending poignancy to this already affecting music--Mozart wrote the 1791 MOZART Requiem during the last weeks of his life. Requiem Mass in D minor, The Requiem verses beseech eternal rest for K. 626 the departed and peace to those who survive. In revolutionary France, There are, of course, other texts and other Louis XVI swears kinds of compositions that make similar pleas. allegiance to constitution Our concert begins with one of them, Arnold Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden, or Peace on Earth, 1907 a choral setting of a poem written for Christmas. SCHOENBERG Between these works we hear the D-major Friede auf Erden (Peace Cello Concerto of Franz Joseph Haydn. Haydn on Earth) , op. 13 enjoyed a warm and mutually admiring Gustav Klimt paints Adele Bloch-Bauer I relationship with Mozart, who could be a harsh critic of other musicians. The fact that Mozart considered Haydn a dear friend attests not only to Haydn’s fine character but also the quality of his music. 25 ARNOLD SCHOENBERG Friede auf Erden (Peace on Earth), op. 13 PEACE ON EARTH Composed in 1907, Arnold Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden is a setting for large chorus of a Christmas poem by the Swiss writer Conrad Meyer (1825-1898). These verses begin by evoking the nativity scene of shepherds carrying to the Madonna and infant Jesus the angelic salute of the work’s title, “Peace on Earth.” AY R The text goes on to acknowledge mankind’s AN M violent history, but it returns to the theme of the Born opening stanza, envisioning a future when peace Vienna, September 13, 1874 finally will prevail on earth. Schoenberg initially Died scored the music for unaccompanied choir, but it Los Angeles, July 13, 1951 proved exceptionally difficult to sing in this form. First Performance (A projected performance, scheduled for Vienna December 9, 1911, in Vienna, in 1907, had to be cancelled because the chorus Franz Schreker conducted could not cope with the harmonically dense the combined forces of the Vienna Philharmonic writing.) Several years later Schoenberg added Chorus, the Vienna an instrumental accompaniment as an aid to Lehrergesang Society the singers, but he instructed that “it should not Chorus, and the Vienna sound prominent. On the contrary ... it [should] Tonkünstler Orchestra disappear in the sound of the chorus.” STL Symphony Premiere Schoenberg is remembered chiefly in This week connection with the dissolution of traditional Scoring harmony about a hundred years ago, and the mixed chorus eventual replacement of that harmony with a Performance Time kind of tonally abstract music that led composers approximately 8 minutes into some arcane and hermetic compositional byways during the middle decades of the 20th century. But the Austrian musician was not born a revolutionary, and he did not come to his radical break with key-centered harmony suddenly. Rather, Schoenberg moved gradually from a late-Romantic musical ethos indebted to Wagner, Strauss, and Mahler—the starting point for his artistic journey—through a kind of harmonic twilight in his middle years to the atonal work of his maturity. Friede auf Erden stands at the cusp of this second phase of Schoenberg’s development. The work’s harmonic language seems to press the boundaries of conventional possibilities, and for brief periods to spill beyond them. But the composer still uses dissonance as an expressive inflection within an overall context of tonal harmonies, rather than as a means to efface such harmonies altogether, as he would in his later work. Whenever the music threatens to lose its way altogether, Schoenberg pulls it back to more familiar ground, and in the final moments all the straining harmonic tensions resolve to a bright D-major chord. 26 FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN Cello Concerto in D major, Hob.VIIb:2 A CONCERTO RESTORED Although his Cello Concerto in D major has long been among Haydn’s most familiar works in concerto form, its origins remain somewhat obscure. We do not know with certainty when or for whom the composer wrote this music, though it seems DY likely that it dates from the 1780s and was R A H AS intended for Anton Kraft, an accomplished M HO cellist with the Esterházy court orchestra, which T Haydn directed for some thirty years. Born The concerto unfolds in the customary Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732 three movements. The first, whose duration Died comprises more than half of the entire work, Vienna, May 31, 1809 begins with an extended orchestral exposition, First Performance the usual opening in a Classical-period concerto. Unknown, but undoubtedly given by the cellist Anton Only with this accomplished does the solo Kraft and the Esterházy instrument join in exploring the thematic ideas court orchestra under set forth by the orchestra. The music doesn’t the composer’s direction, convey the robust and often brilliant character probably in the 1780s we generally find in the initial movements of STL Symphony Premiere Haydn’s symphonies. Rather, its melodies February 16, 1912, Boris express more a relaxed elegance—a refined, one Hambourg was soloist, with might even say courtly, lyricism. Max Zach conducting In the slow central movement, the musings Most Recent STL Symphony of the soloist establish a relaxed atmosphere, Performance which occasional interjections from the September 12, 2002, Yo-Yo Ma was soloist, with Keith orchestra fail to dispel. Haydn then concludes Lockhart conducting the work with a brief rondo-form finale. Its principal theme, which returns repeatedly Scoring solo cello between episodes of contrasting material in the 2 oboes classic rondo manner, is stated by the cello in 2 horns the opening measures. This melody is simplicity Strings itself, but Haydn nevertheless manages to Peformance Time discover in it considerable interest. Each re- approximately 25 minutes appearance finds the theme slightly varied: decorated with new instrumental figuration or, at one point, colored with somber minorkey harmonies. The intervening episodes offer vigorous passagework for the soloist. The concerto closes in high spirits. 27 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Requiem Mass in D minor, K. 626 HISTORY AND LEGEND No work of Mozart’s has acquired so heavy a gloss of legend and romantic fiction as has his final composition, the Requiem Mass. The composer was scarcely in his grave, the unfinished Requiem still on his desk, before various persons began to speculate on the coincidence of his writing a setting of the Latin Missa pro Defunctis while he himself was fatally ill, and to embellish, in light of this, what they Born knew about his final days. Since the 19th century, Salzburg, January 27, 1756 the Requiem legend has grown so familiar and, Died to those sentimentally inclined, so appealing, Vienna, December 5, 1791 that it now requires some effort to consider First performance objectively the work and the circumstances in At the estate of Count Franz which it was composed. Georg Walsegg, near Vienna, The facts concerning those circumstances under the Count’s direction, December 14, 1793 are as follows. By 1791 Mozart’s fortunes were at low ebb. He was heavily in debt and STL Symphony Premiere reduced to accepting what were for him December 12, 1958, with soprano Irene Jordan; second-rate assignments: writing dance music contralto Jean Madeira; tenor and orchestrating old music.