02-10 ASO_Carnegie Hall Rental 1/29/13 12:54 PM Page 1 Sunday Afternoon, February 10, 2013, at 2:00 Isaac Stern Auditorium/Ronald O. Perelman Stage Conductor’s Notes Q&A with Leon Botstein at 1:00 presents Truth or Truffles LEON BOTSTEIN, Conductor KARL AMADEUS Gesangsszene (“Sodom and Gomorrah”) HARTMANN (U.S. Premiere) LESTER LYNCH, Baritone Intermission RICHARD STRAUSS Schlagobers, Op. 70 (“Whipped Cream”) This evening’s concert will run approximately two and a half hours, inlcuding one 20-minute intermission. American Symphony Orchestra welcomes students and teachers from ASO’s arts education program, Music Notes. For information on how you can support Music Notes, visit AmericanSymphony.org. PLEASE SWITCH OFF YOUR CELL PHONES AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES. 02-10 ASO_Carnegie Hall Rental 1/29/13 12:54 PM Page 2 THE Program KARL AMADEUS HARTMANN Gesangsszene Born August 2, 1905, in Munich Died December 5, 1963, in Munich Composed in 1962–63 Premiered on November 12, 1964, in Frankfurt, by the orchestra of the Hessischer Rundfunk under Dean Dixon with soloist Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, for whom it was written Performance Time: Approximately 27 minutes Instruments: 3 flutes, 2 piccolos, alto flute, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 3 French horns, 3 trumpets, piccolo trumpet, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (triangle, gong, chimes, cymbals, tamtam, tambourine, tomtoms, timbales, field drum, snare drum, bass drum, glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, marimba), harp, celesta, piano, strings, and solo baritone RICHARD STRAUSS Schlagobers (“Whipped Cream”) Born June 11, 1864, in Munich Died September 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany Composed in 1921–22 Premiered on May 9, 1924, in Vienna, by the Vienna State Opera Performance Time: Approximately 90 minutes Instruments: 4 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 4 clarinets, bass clarinet, 4 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 French horns, 7 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (glockenspiel, xylophone, triangle, cymbals, tambourine, snare drum, bass drum, castanets, maracas), 2 harps, celesta, organ, and strings 02-10 ASO_Carnegie Hall Rental 1/29/13 12:54 PM Page 3 Notes ON THE PROGRAM Musical Expression and the Challenge not be expressed in language? Or was of 20th Century History music inherently tied to linguistic mean- by Leon Botstein ing, suggesting what ultimately became a widespread assumption of a parallelism 19th-century Europe witnessed un - between music and language? Enthusiasm precedented social and economic trans- for dynamics between music and mean- formations. Among the most lasting ing was timely, for as the public for music (albeit erratic) of these was the expan- increased so too did the belief that music sion of literacy, most noticeable in was especially potent psychologically as a Europe’s rapidly growing cities. With means of expression. Music became the spread of literacy came the stan- invested with a power to convey—in its dardization of orthography, inexpensive own way—emotions, ideas, and senti- books, lending libraries, public libraries, ments we normally associate with lan- and the emergence of journalism—daily guage, but seem unnaturally trapped by newspapers, weekly magazines, and reg- speech and reason. ular periodicals. A myriad of local and regional public spheres took shape, as did It was this premium on music’s expres- a world of public opinion. These in turn siveness, and on the intense intermingling spawned movements and ideologies, not of music with language against which only concerning politics and social ques- many early 20th-century modernist com- tions, but matters of taste and value— posers rebelled. Romanticism in music everything from fashion to religion. had degenerated into a species of vulgar realism. In an effort to reclaim the Notably in German-speaking Europe, autonomy of music and rescue it from literacy in music developed rapidly in the status of sonic decoration, com- the wake of the expansion of reading posers turned away from the inherited and writing. That this historical devel- conventions of 19th century musical opment coincided with flowering of logic. Modernism rejected the idea that musical romanticism was perhaps more music was expressive of something than a coincidence. By the 1830s the other than itself, or that music could musical culture that was taking hold was give voice to love, desire, regret, hero- increasingly bound up with language. A ism, loss, solitude, and community. shared musical rhetoric emerged that came to frame conversations and con- What propelled this modernist rebellion victions. It was communicated through most of all was the recognition, after the the medium of the song, opera, and novel carnage of World War I, that the clichés forms of instrumental music—from short of musical romanticism had turned a works for the solo piano expressive of noble art form into a handmaiden for a sensibilities to larger scale instrumental culture that much like the language of works that assumed an illustrative story cheap journalism had succeeded in ren- telling function. dering inhumanity, cruelty, antipathy, and violence aesthetically pleasing. Inevitably music became the object of philosophic speculation. Was music This concert takes a candid and contro- fundamentally different from language versial look at the musical culture which and meaningful in a manner that could developed during the 19th century and 02-10 ASO_Carnegie Hall Rental 1/29/13 12:54 PM Page 4 was bequeathed to the 20th century. It and charm fell flat. Nothing could have sets in opposition to one another two shed a worse light on Strauss the man master composers from different gener- and the composer. ations who died mid-century. Richard Strauss is arguably the most facile and But is this judgment fair? Perhaps the versatile master of musical traditions virtuosity of musical realism and narra- and musical thinking. There was noth- tion that Strauss reveals in this score, ing in musical composition he could not the sensuality of the orchestration and do. At the same time, he was accused by the unabashed rehearsal of clichés and his contemporaries (rivals and admirers tricks tell a different story, one of fan- alike) of an excess of ironic detachment, tasy, enthusiasm, delight, magical unre- a corrosive cynicism born out of his ality, and the dream of that brief escape immense facility. Nothing seemed to mat- into another sense of time and space ter to him. Everything was done for effect that the darkest of times call into being. and too often his elegantly crafted and Perhaps Strauss marshaled all the inher- astonishingly appealing music descended ited conventions of musical communica- into kitsch, an empty sentiment entirely tion to recapture, briefly, the innocent, different from the anguished profundity fleeting, childlike beauty of the present of his contemporary, Gustav Mahler. moment in a manner unique to music. In this spirit we revisit this score with- In Strauss’ long career, only two out apology and with admiration for its moments have escaped critical derision: craftsmanship and possibly its outra- the period before 1911, during which geously cloaked and unrestrained ideal- the famous tone poems and Salome and ism. It deserves a new look. Perhaps Elektra were composed, and the so- Schlagobers can take its place alongside called Indian Summer, Strauss’ last The Nutcracker and offer some wel- years during the 1940s. Strauss’ music come relief from that overplayed score from the 1920s has long been regarded during Christmas time with a delightful as tired, empty, and forgettable. Indeed, ballet that can enchant children and given Strauss’ collaboration with the distract their parents, however briefly. Nazi regime, his music from the 1920s and 1930s came to represent the most The other work on today’s program corrupt and embarrassing (albeit skilled) dates from the post-World War II era. example of music as an explicitly The ASO has championed the music of expressive medium that manipulated Karl Amadeus Hartmann over the past rather than elevated its audience. 20 years. I regard him as one of the great masters of the 20th century, whose To challenge this conventional view, this stature and achievement rival that of program features Strauss’ perhaps least- Alban Berg and Dmitri Shostakovich. respected score, a piece that was excori- Hartmann inherited an ambition regard- ated at its premiere and has remained ing the power of musical expression that dismissed as a minor if not tasteless and sought to link ethics with art. He uninspired venture by even the com- remained, however, a conservative mod- poser’s most ardent defenders. The ernist. Influenced by Mahler, Schoenberg, work, Schlagobers, is a ballet score and Berg, Hartmann understood his modeled after Tchaikovsky’s The Nut- vocation as a composer as one of con- cracker. It was written in the midst of science and opposition to evil. He was the worst economic circumstances in committed to the redemption of musical Central Europe in the 1920s. Strauss’ expression and communication from attempt at lightness, humor, delicacy, the vulgar, the commonplace, and the 02-10 ASO_Carnegie Hall Rental 1/29/13 12:54 PM Page 5 complicit. His music and his life were conductor Hermann Scherchen, whom cut from one fabric—a fabric of Nazi cultural bureaucrats held in grave impregnable integrity, humility, and suspicion, conducted his overtly political courage in the face of radical evil. If symphonic poem Miserae. Even more Strauss was the master of ironic detach- daring was the dedication of this score, ment and profound philosophic pes- which reads “To My Friends…Dachau simism, Hartmann was the master of 1933/34.” Had the officials of the truth telling and unabashed intensity in Reichsmusikkammer discovered this music marked by the tireless struggle inscription, it would have spelled a vir- against despair. The work heard today tual death warrant for the composer. As was Hartmann’s last and is an unfor- it was, Hartmann’s wife has testified gettable masterpiece in the tradition of that the German authorities disapproved Mahler and Berg.