Juilliard Wind Orchestra Photo by Claudio Papapietro
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Juilliard Wind Orchestra Photo by Claudio Papapietro Juilliard Scholarship Fund The Juilliard School is the vibrant home to more than 800 dancers, actors, and musicians, over 90 percent of whom are eligible for financial aid. With your help, we can offer the scholarship support that makes a world of difference—to them and to the global future of dance, drama, and music. Behind every Juilliard artist is all of Juilliard—including you. For more information please contact Tori Brand at (212) 799-5000, ext. 692, or [email protected]. Give online at giving.juilliard.edu/scholarship. iii The Juilliard School presents Juilliard Wind Orchestra Erik Ralske, Conductor Sunday, November 11, 2018, 3pm Paul Hall JOHANNES BRAHMS Serenade No. 2 in A Major, Op. 16 (1859) (1833-1897) Allegro moderato Scherzo: Vivace Adagio non troppo Quasi menuetto Rondo: Allegro RICHARD STRAUSS Sonatina No. 2 in E-flat Major, TrV 291, (1864-1949) “Happy Workshop” (1944-45) Allegro con brio Andantino Minuet Introduction and Allegro Performance time: approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes This afternoon’s concert will be played without an intermission. Major funding for establishing Paul Recital Hall and for continuing access to its series of public programs have been granted by The Bay Foundation and the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation in memory of Josephine Bay Paul. Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. 1 Notes on the Program By David Crean Johannes Brahms Serenade No. 2 in A Major, Op. 16 In September 1853, a 20-year-old Johannes Brahms arrived at the home of Johannes Brahms Robert and Clara Schumann bearing a letter of introduction from their mutual friend Joseph Joachim. Robert Schumann was one of the most esteemed Born: May 7, 1833, composers and critics in Europe, but only a few months after Brahms’ Hamburg, Germany arrival, he attempted to take his own life by jumping into the Rhine, and was subsequently institutionalized for the remainder of his life. In the intervening Died: April 3, 1897, time, he had published an article called “New Paths,” in which he hailed Vienna, Austria Brahms as one who would “give ideal expression to the times” and become the standard-bearer for absolute music in general and the symphony in particular. The lofty expectations placed on so young a composer had a profound, and initially stifling, effect on Brahms’ compositional development. Determined to avoid being an epigone of his idol Beethoven, Brahms found it difficult to compose in genres so closely associated with him, and in fact completed no orchestral music before Robert’s death in 1856. Nevertheless, in the late 1850s he began to apply himself to the study of orchestration, producing his first piano concerto (intended to be a first symphony) and the two serenades. The second serenade is a work for small ensemble: five woodwind pairs (flute, oboe, clarinet bassoon, horn) and three string parts (notably without violins). In addition to the outer fast movements and inner slow movement, the five-movement serenade includes both a scherzo and a minuet. While Brahms’ abilities as an orchestrator may have been as yet underdeveloped, other aspects of his mature style are already obvious in this work: persistent rhythmic vitality, including cross-rhythms and hemiola (the division of two measures of three beats into three notes of two beats), pervasive but not obtrusive chromaticism, and motivically rich themes that invite developmental creativity and tightly unified designs. The serenade opens with the expected sonata-form movement, cast in the mold of Beethoven but unmistakably Brahmsian. The primary theme begins relatively four-square, but soon breaks into cascades of chromatically inflected triplets. The sharp double-dotted rhythms and narrow range of the secondary theme provide maximum contrast. A seeming repeat of the exposition turns out to be a feint, and the development begins with an unexpected move toward F Major (the flat-submediant, a favored key area of Schubert, whom Brahms also greatly admired). Brahms focuses mainly on the primary theme here, which allows him to slip into the recapitulation almost unnoticed—not with a strong cadence, but with a long tonic pedal. The scherzo, in the somewhat unusual key of C Major, is rhythmically ambiguous from the outset: the accent pattern of the first phrase strongly suggests duple time while the second phrase is a clear example of hemiola. The strings attempt to maintain the underlying triple meter. The ensuing trio 2 is slightly more regular and its chromatic descending lines seem to recall the primary theme of the first movement. The expansive slow movement demonstrates the extent to which Brahms had internalized the contrapuntal language of 17th-century music. The three part-form opens with a plaintive A Minor melody that unfolds over a quasi-ground bass. It is unexpectedly interrupted by a series of fully diminished chords and wrenched abruptly toward A-flat Major. After a lyrical second section, the opening theme returns by way of C Minor, and a final return to A concludes one of Brahms’s most harmonically adventurous movements. After a brief minuet, the final Allegro begins with the same rising fourth motive that began the opening movement and the central slow movement. A light-hearted affair that utilizes the piccolo for the first time, the finale proceeds through a sonata-rondo form largely as expected and brings Brahms’ precocious exercise in orchestration to a delightful close. Richard Strauss Sonatina No. 2 in E-flat Major, TrV 291, “Happy Workshop” By the early 1940s, a nearly 80-year-old Richard Strauss was one of the most famous and accomplished composers in the world. He had burst onto Richard Strauss the scene in the late 1880s with a series of genre-defining “tone poems” before embarking upon an equally successful, though often controversial, Born: June 11, career as Germany’s premiere post-Wagner opera composer. The rise 1864, in Munich, of the Nazis put an effective end to his operatic career—his final opera Germany Capriccio was seen as a peculiarly lighthearted offering in the midst of the devastation engulfing Europe. But Strauss was neither deaf to, nor immune Died: September 8, from, the outrages of the Nazi regime. His last years were marked both by 1949, in Garmisch- anxiety over the situation of his Jewish friends and family (coupled with Partenkirchen, frequent, frantic attempts at intervention) and general depression over the Germany degradation of German culture by the Nazis and the physical destruction of its monuments in the war. Musically, Strauss felt himself creatively exhausted after completing Capriccio and declared that all subsequent compositions were merely “wrist exercises.” It was in this atmosphere of malaise and anxiety, however, that Strauss unexpectedly experienced a personal artistic renaissance, producing a number of expertly crafted large-scale instrumental works before his death in 1949. Strauss devoted particular attention during this time to a genre that he had generally neglected since his teenage years: music for winds. The first of the two sonatinas for winds was written in 1943 as Strauss recovered from the flu, but its gloomy subtitle “From an Invalid’s Workshop” seems more a reflection of a jaded worldview than a temporary illness. Its companion piece, begun just a few months later but completed after the surrender of Germany in 1945, bears the more upbeat title of “Happy Workshop” and the dedication, “To the spirit of the divine Mozart at the end of a life full of gratitude.” 3 Notes on the Program By David Crean (continued) An expert orchestrator, Strauss scores both sonatinas for the same unprecedented combination of two flutes, two oboes, five clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, and four very prominent horns (his father was a well-known horn virtuoso). Strauss’s early wind works were greatly indebted to 18th-century classicism, and it is no surprise to find those same elements in a work that invokes Mozart’s name. In Strauss’s mature style, however, the forms no longer circumscribe musical decisions but serve as a barely perceptible framework, overlaid with Strauss’s usual colorful harmonies and organically unfolding melodic lines. The main theme of the opening allegro is a deceptively simple elaboration of a descending arpeggio coupled with a hemiola figure. Modulation begins almost immediately as the main theme is tossed around the ensemble, passing through G Minor before settling into B-flat Major for the second theme, a stately chorale for the four horns and bassoons. The perception of a slower tempo is achieved through hemiola, occasionally disrupted by an interjection of the main theme. The development section begins with a lyrical clarinet melody derived from, and juxtaposed with, the main theme, but an abrupt increase in tempo brings unsettled harmonies and thicker textures. A gradual slackening of tempo and decrescendo to nothing heightens the surprise of the recapitulation, followed by an extensive coda. The two shorter middle movements are heavily indebted to 18th-century music in manner as well as in form. Were it not for the disjunct melodies and colorfully chromatic harmonies, the andantino could pass for one of Mozart’s elegant and courtly wind serenades. Featuring florid, highly virtuosic writing for the upper parts (often in elaborate duets) melded with characteristically Classical accompaniment figures, it might be described as Strauss’s idiosyncratic take on Neoclassicism—minus the acerbic tone and dissonant harmonies. The minuet too hearkens back to earlier times, with its strong rhythmic profile and clear form. Minuets in 18th-century symphonies often feature the winds in the trio section. Strauss replicates that contrast in his all-wind ensemble by featuring the clarinets and horns prominently in his trio, which is followed by an abbreviated reprise of the minuet.