Concert Program Vi: French Connections
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concert program vi: French Connections JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750) August 2 and 3 French Suite no. 5 for Solo Piano, BWV 816 (1722) Allemande Friday, August 2, 8:00 p.m., Stent Family Hall, Menlo School Courante Sarabande Saturday, August 3, 8:00 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts Gavotte at Menlo-Atherton Bourrée Loure PROGRAM OVERVIEW Gigue Bach is often considered the patriarch of a Germanic tradition, Wu Han, piano a lineage fulfilled by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and CAMILLE SAINT"SAËNS (1835–1921) Brahms. Echoes of his music’s structural rigor are encountered Fantaisie in A Major for Violin and Harp, op. 124 (1907) in the thematic complexity and formal perfection of these later Kristin Lee, violin; Bridget Kibbey, harp Classical and Romantic era composers. But equally vibrant in Bach’s language are the elegance, color, and romance that CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862–1918) characterize the music of France more than a century later. The Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp (1915) Pastorale: Lento, dolce rubato bewitching spirit of Bach’s French Suites surfaces in Saint-Saëns’s Interlude: Tempo di minuetto seductive Fantaisie and Debussy’s ethereal Sonata for Flute, Finale: Allegro moderato ma risoluto Viola, and Harp. César Franck’s powerful Piano Quintet presents Ta r a H e l e n O’C o n n o r, flute; Paul Neubauer, viola; Bridget Kibbey, harp PROGRAMSCONCERT a climactic synthesis of French color and German Romanticism. MARCEL TOURNIER (1879–1951) Mingle with the Musicians Suite for Flute, Violin, Viola, Cello, and Harp, op. 34 (1928) Saturday, August 3, 10:30 p.m., Stanford Park Hotel’s Menlo Soir Danse Grill (Dutch treat) Lied Visit with the Concert Program VI musicians for dinner or Fête a drink or just to say hello. Please RSVP to 650-330-2141 or Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; Kristin Lee, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola; Dmitri Atapine, cello; Bridget Kibbey, harp [email protected]. INTERMISSION CÉSAR FRANCK (1822–1890) Piano Quintet (1879) SPECIAL THANKS Molto moderato quasi lento Music@Menlo dedicates these performances to the following Lento, con molto sentimento Allegro non troppo, ma con fuoco organizations and individuals with gratitude for their generous Gilles Vonsattel, piano; Arnaud Sussmann, Ian Swensen, violins; Richard O’Neill, viola; David Finckel, cello support: August 2: The David B. and Edward C. Goodstein Foundation August 3: Vivian Sweeney Jean Béraud (1849–1935). Dinner at les Ambassadeurs, Hôtel de Crillon, Paris, 1880. Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY www.musicatmenlo.org Program Notes: French Connections JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH passed it back to German musicians in that highly decorated form. The (Born March 21, 1685, Eisenach; died July 28, 1750, Leipzig) courante was an old court dance accompanied by jumping motions that French Suite no. 5 for Solo Piano, BWV 816 was frequently paired with the smoothly flowing allemande. When the sara- bande immigrated to Spain from its birthplace in Mexico in the sixteenth Composed: 1722 century, it was so wild in its motions and so lascivious in its implications that Brandenburg Concerti, BWV 1046–1051 Other works from this period: Cervantes ridiculed it and Philip II suppressed it. The dance became con- (1721); Fantasia in C Major, BWV 573 (1722); The Well-Tempered Clavier, siderably more tame when it was taken over into French and English music BWV 846–869 (1722); Violin Concerto in E Major, BWV 1042 (ca. 1723) during the following century, and it had achieved the dignified manner in Approximate duration: 16 minutes which it was known to Bach by 1700. The gavotte is a dance of moderate liveliness whose ancestry traces back to French peasant music. The bour- From 1717 to 1723, Bach was Director of Music at the court of Anhalt- rée was a French folk dance that was adopted by the court as early as the Cöthen, north of Leipzig. He liked his job. His employer, Prince Leopold, sixteenth century. It is joyful and diverting in character and, when danced, was a well-educated man, twenty-four years old at the time he engaged is begun with a brisk leap, which is mirrored in Bach’s quick, upbeat pattern. Bach. (Bach was thirty-two.) Leopold was fond of travel and books and The loure was derived from a seventeenth-century country dance originally paintings, but his real passion was music. (Reports had it that Leopold spent accompanied by rustic instruments. (“Loure” is an obsolete French name for a whopping 20 percent of the court’s annual budget on his musical estab- the bagpipe.) The lively gigue arose from an English folk dance and became lishment.) The prince was an accomplished musician: he not only played popular as the model for instrumental compositions by French, German, violin, viola da gamba, and harpsichord well enough to join with the profes- and Italian musicians when it migrated to the Continent. sionals in his household orchestra but he also had an exceptional bass voice. —Dr. Richard E. Rodda He started the court musical establishment in 1707 with three players (his puritanical father had no use for music), and by the time of Bach’s appoint- ment, the ensemble had grown to nearly twenty performers equipped with CAMILLE SAINT"SAËNS a fine set of instruments. It was for these musicians that Bach wrote many of (Born October 9, 1835, Paris; died December 16, 1921, Algiers) his outstanding instrumental works, including the Brandenburg Concerti, the orchestral suites, the violin concerti, and much of his chamber and keyboard Fantaisie in A Major for Violin and Harp, op. 124 music. Leopold appreciated Bach’s genius, and Bach returned the compli- Composed: 1907 ment when he said of his prince, “He loved music, he was well acquainted Published: 1907 with it, he understood it.” Other works from this period: Cello Sonata no. 2 in F Major, op. 123 The first four of the so-called French Suites must have been com- (1905); Ouverture de fête, op. 133 (1910); Triptyque in D Major for Violin posed at Cöthen, since they appear in a manuscript collection of six such and Piano, op. 136 (1912); Six Études for the Left Hand, op. 135 (1912) works dating from 1723, the year Bach left Cöthen for Leipzig. The last two Approximate duration: 13 minutes suites in the 1723 set—now known independently as BWV 818 and BWV 819—had been replaced with the French Suites nos. 5 and 6 by 1725, when James Harding titled the final part of his 1965 study of Saint-Saëns and His the collection, much revised, reached its definitive state. The six French Circle “The Legend” and opened it with the following priceless anecdote: Suites (BWV 812–817) form a pendant to the earlier English Suites, though CONCERT PROGRAMSCONCERT they are smaller in scale (they eschew the elaborate opening preludes of One day in the 1890s, a devout Breton peasant woman bought the English Suites), more melodic in character, and lighter in texture. The a packet of chocolate. It contained the picture of a saint, one in source of the term “French” in the title is unknown. The heading of the 1725 a series of cards depicting famous people given free with every manuscript was written in French, but so was that for the English Suites, and packet. As the woman’s son was very ill and prayers for his recov- neither one mentioned “French” or “English” in its title. The composer’s first ery had so far gone unanswered, she decided to invoke this saint biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, suggested that the works were “written of whom she had never heard before, vowing that should he cure in the French taste,” but the nineteenth-century Bach scholar Philipp Spitta her son she would always display the holy effigy on her own per- countered that “there is no idea of imitating or carrying out any specially son. Almost immediately her plea was met: the boy returned to French characteristics.” What is certain about the title of the French Suites is health, and ever afterwards she carried reverently attached to her that it was not authentic with Bach and that it provides a convenient means bosom the yellowing likeness of Camille Saint-Saëns. of identifying the pieces. The French Suites follow the standard succession of stylized dances Though Saint-Saëns was never canonized by the Church, he was cer- that compose the Baroque form, established in German practice with the tainly lionized by the musical world. The fiftieth anniversary, in 1896, of his works of Johann Jakob Froberger around 1650: allemande, courante, sara- debut as a virtuoso pianist at age eleven provided the catalyst for a stream bande, gigue. In the French Suites, two to four additional dances of differing of honors, awards, citations, memberships, honorary degrees, and demands character (bourrée, gavotte, menuet, air, loure, polonaise, anglaise) are for personal appearances that continued unabated until the day he died. inserted before the gigue. The Fifth Suite includes a gavotte, bourrée, and Though his health deteriorated gradually during his later years, his tenacity loure. The moderately paced allemande, if its French name is to be trusted, and remarkable energy never flagged. He visited the United States for the originated in Germany in the sixteenth century. French composers found first time in 1906, giving concerts of his music in Philadelphia, Chicago, and it useful for displaying their most elaborate keyboard ornamentations and Washington, D.C., despite being seriously ill with diphtheria. He attended the unveiling of a statue in his honor in Dieppe in 1907 and left enough Music@Menlo 2013 mementos of his life to the town to establish a Musée de Saint-Saëns there.