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Toronto Symphony Orchestra Sir Andrew Davis, Interim Artistic Director Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 8:00pm Thursday, May 30, 2019 at 8:00pm Saturday, June 1, 2019 at 8:00pm Jeremy Denk, leader & piano Simon Rivard, conductor* Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527* Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Concerto No. 14 in E-flat Major, K. 449 I. Allegro vivace II. Andantino III. Allegro ma non troppo Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Rondo in A Minor, K. 511 Intermission Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 I. Allegro maestoso II. Andante III. Allegretto Jeremy Denk’s appearance is generously supported by Indra and Rags Davloor. As a courtesy to musicians, guest artists, and fellow concertgoers, please put your phone away and on silent during the performance. MAY 29, 30 & JUNE 1, 2019 27 ABOUT THE WORKS Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527 Born: Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756 7 Died: Vienna, Austria, December 5, 1791 min Composed: 1787–1788 Don Giovanni owes its life to the love affair The overture begins with the Commendatore’s between Mozart and Prague, beginning terrifying second act entrance, with great with the composer’s earlier opera, The opening chords hinting at awesome powers. Marriage of Figaro. A success at its Vienna The 30 bars that follow are a catalogue of première in May 1786, Figaro was a triumph anxiety and dread: dotted and syncopated that December in Prague. Mozart was rhythms, pervasive chromaticism, sudden immediately commissioned to write a new accents, loud dissonant chords, trembling opera, in celebration of a royal wedding in strings, and unforgettable rising and falling October of 1787. Librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, scales in the violins and flutes. Then the terror, his collaborator on Figaro, suggested the like a bad dream, simply melts away, into a time-honoured tale of Don Juan and the stone scampering opera buffa overture that is pure guest. Don Giovanni was finished in time, Figaro and, occasionally—as in the dialogue but because of rehearsal problems, Figaro between brusque, staccato descending-scale (arguably a more appropriate choice for a figures and skittish violin replies—pure Rossini. nuptial celebration) was substituted. But Don The Don Giovanni overture, when performed Giovanni did receive its maiden performance as part of the opera, comes to a gentle in Prague, with the composer conducting, and halt, leading seamlessly into Act 1. Mozart proved an even greater success than Figaro. composed an alternate, boisterous ending for According to the composer’s wife, Constanze, concert performance. On a separate sheet of the great overture to Don Giovanni was paper inserted into the autograph score, he written during the night of October 27, less wrote out the extra dozen bars—undoubtedly than two days before the première. Mozart at 6:59am, with his free hand, while shaving. asked for punch to keep himself awake, to no Program note by Kevin Bazzana avail, falling asleep until 5am, yet still able to complete it for the copyist’s arrival at 7am. Mozart took the view—self-evident today, but novel back then—that an overture should not be an independent piece of music, but should convey the opera’s basic mood and subject matter, if not its actual melodies. In the first scene of this opera, Don Giovanni murders the Commendatore, only to find that he returns, in the second act, as a statue come to life, condemning Giovanni to hell for his misdeeds. 28 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Piano Concerto No. 14 in E-flat Major, K. 449 20 Composed: 1784 min In May 1781, Mozart was unceremoniously Compared with his subsequent piano concertos, discharged from the service of Hieronymus it is more modest in duration and calls for a von Colloredo, Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg. smaller orchestra. Some scholars speculate Delighted to be free from this unappreciative that his reason for reducing the accompanying and demeaning relationship, he relocated ensemble was to give soloists the plausible from the cultural backwater of Salzburg to option of performing it as a chamber work, the bustling musical metropolis of Vienna. with string quartet accompaniment, when no The city was ripe for artists with his talent orchestra was available. and drive and before long he was deep into Although it may lack the grand gestures and a busy schedule of teaching, composing, colourful orchestration of its successors, it and performing. certainly fulfills in terms of attractiveness Because he was best known as a pianist, he and entertainment value. The occasional focused on writing music for that instrument. emotional shadow and a certain nervous He composed 12 superlative piano concertos energy lend diversity to the otherwise between February 1784 and December 1786 straightforward charm of the first movement. (the first six alone belong to 1784). They are The second movement is gentle, almost deeper in feeling, broader in scope and richer dream-like. Quite possibly the concerto’s most in colour than any written before; in years to successful segment is the last. Its singular, come, they would serve as models of their forward-pressing momentum makes it one of kind, for Beethoven, Brahms, and other Mozart’s most exciting finales. The renowned similarly inspired composers. Mozart scholar Stanley Sadie wrote that this movement, “with its spirited counterpoint and This concerto was the first of the “golden its running application of variation techniques, dozen”. Mozart completed it on February 9. must stand as one of Mozart’s supreme and Unlike most of the 12, which he composed most powerfully original creations of his early for himself to play, he wrote it for his Viennese period.” pupil Barbara Ployer, daughter of Prince- Archbishop Colloredo’s Viennese agent. Program note by Don Anderson Rondo in A Minor, K. 511 10 Composed: March 11, 1787 min “Pivotal” is an apt word to describe this within the narrative of this evening’s program, diminutive solo piano piece: as reflective as the central turning point. of a moment in time in Mozart’s life; as Mozart recorded its completion in his personal exemplifying the imminent transition from thematic catalogue on March 11, 1787. Classical to Romantic musical thought; and, MAY 29, 30 & JUNE 1, 2019 29 ABOUT THE WORKS He had just returned to Vienna from a journey for example, dividing the beat into to Prague crowned by the heady success of progressively smaller units, with “A” primarily The Marriage of Figaro and the commissioning using eighth notes, while “B” uses sixteenths, of Don Giovanni. The creative ardour informing and “C” uses triplet-sixteenths. And the what came to be known as his “golden dozen” “A” section is more and more elaborately piano concertos (bookended by the two ornamented each time it returns. concertos on tonight’s program) was all but The orderly framework encompasses a huge spent, and along with it his own need for range of emotion, though, played out in the public piano performance. It is tempting to tension between the feelings aroused by the see this work as an introspective turning point theme in the “A” section and unsuccessful in the composer’s life—a meditation on his attempts to escape those feelings in the other relationship with the piano itself. sections. How one hears that theme is highly There is no record of a public première of the personal. Some have called it despairing, Rondo, leading some scholars to speculate forlorn and dejected, even depressive; others, that it might have been improvised on the spot Vladimir Horowitz among them, disagree, during one or another public performance, instead calling it pensive and reflective, and either just before leaving Prague or shortly cautioning against approaching it too slowly, after his return to Vienna. Whether or not this based on equating slow with profound. was the case, the characteristic rondo form of However one chooses to hear the theme, the piece is highly amenable to improvisation: it is inescapable, recurring, one way or an A-B-A-C-A pattern, where “A” is a recurring another, almost 50 times in the course of theme and “B” and “C” are episodes. As William this profoundly moving work. Cowdery has noted, the three main sections increase in pianistic complexity, Program note by David Perlman Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503 30 Composed: 1786 min By the time he composed K. 503, Mozart was “Olympian” utterances; all three movements turning away from concert life in favour of are more massive and symphonically opera, and so was shedding his need for new conceived than is typically the case in a Mozart piano concertos, which for several years had concerto, and all three have an unmistakable served as the principal vehicles for the public air of formality. (For instance, both outer display of his talents as a composer and movements feature ostentatious displays performer. Nevertheless, in K. 503 he produced of learned counterpoint—something rare in a magnificent work—sophisticated and subtle, concertos.) The work is grandly scored, too, highly original, and full of surprises. It is in C complete with trumpets and drums (though major, the key of some of his most heroic and not Mozart’s beloved clarinets). 30 TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA From the fanfare-like opening bars, the The second and third movements are scarcely first movement is all pomp and splendour, less rich, though here, too, powerful unifying including a militaristic little march among its forces are at work. The Andante, in which the themes (it sounds a bit like “La Marseillaise”). studiously plain alternates with the lavishly But though mostly bright and festive, the ornate, is elegant and poised, avoiding the music sometimes veers off strikingly into emotional ambiguities and startling, troubling darker emotional territory, and though rich digressions one finds in many Mozart slow in ideas, it is cohesive and intently argued.

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