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River Rouge Transfiguration Mendelssohn’s Third Symphony is the perfect piece to hear in the springtime — this intensely exuberant music is so evocative of nature. The second movement always reminds me of the forest fairies running around in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. RACHEL NIKETOPOULOS, NCS FRENCH HORN River Rouge Transfiguration MISSY MAZZOLI BORN October 27, 1980, in Lansdale, PA PREMIERE Composed 2013; first performance May 31, 2013, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Slatkin conducting OVERVIEW Composer Missy (Melissa) Mazzoli is, in her words,”…a delinquent tap dancer turned insomniac composer, whose influence ranges from Beethoven to Balinese gamelan.” A graduate of Boston University, the Royal Conservatory in the Hague and the Yale School of Music, she is also an educator, arts advocate, and performer on keyboards. She directs the MATA Festival of New Music, founded by Philip Glass and devoted to young composers, and has taught composition at Yale University. In 2004, she was Composer-in-Residence at STEIM, Amsterdam’s center for electronic music, where she created electro-acoustic works for the Insomnio Ensemble. Mazzoli composed River Rouge Transfiguration in 2013 on commission from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The “River Rouge” of the title refers to the huge Ford Motors plant in Detroit, constructed between 1917 and 1928. She fell in love with the city of Detroit, devouring both photography of and literature about the city in its heyday as the center of America’s burgeoning industrial “Golden Age.” WHAT TO LISTEN FOR Inspired by the literary metaphor comparing the city’s factories to cathedrals and altars, Mazzoli transforms the “grit and noise of Ford’s iconic River Rouge plant, (here represented by the percussion, piano, harp, and pizzicato strings) into something massive, resonant, and unexpected.” INSTRUMENTATION Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, strings Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16 EDVARD GRIEG BORN June 15, 1843, in Bergen, Norway; died September 4, 1907, in Bergen PREMIERE Composed 1868; first performance in Copenhagen, April 3, 1869, conducted by Holger Simon Paulli with Edmund Neupert as soloist OVERVIEW The most successful and best known of 19th-century Scandinavian composers, Edvard Grieg was one of the great exponents of Romantic nationalism. He saw it as his role in life to bring Scandinavian musical and literary culture to the attention of the rest of Europe. As a composer, pianist, and conductor, he became a sought-after fixture in Europe’s music centers. His wife, Nina, was an accomplished singer, and the two traveled extensively together, popularizing his songs and piano works. In the process, he also helped introduce to the rest of Europe the writings of Scandinavian poets and dramatists, particularly Henrik Ibsen, for whose play Peer Gynt he composed incidental music. Grieg felt most comfortable with, and excelled in, smaller musical forms: songs, miniature piano pieces, orchestral dances, and re-workings of folk melodies. His aptitude for orchestration was indifferent at best. It is, therefore, surprising that the Piano Concerto, his only completed large-scale orchestral work outside of the student symphony, would end up as one of the most popular Romantic concertos. Composed in 1868 and revised extensively five times, the last revision coming shortly before the composer’s death, the concerto was modeled after the Piano Concerto of Robert Schumann, with considerable Lisztian influence. Franz Liszt was Grieg’s idol, and he consulted with the older composer on phrasing and piano technique, particularly in the large cadenza. While the concerto’s themes are not ethnic Norwegian — it was written before Grieg became interested in Norway’s folk music — it still has a “Northern” mood and does incorporate Norwegian dance rhythms. Initially, the concerto was not well received; its introverted style was foreign to a public used to the fire and bravura of concertos à la Liszt. Ironically, it was the enthusiastic endorsement by Liszt himself that turned the tide and converted both audiences and pianists to the work. Later in his life — his hero worship notwithstanding — Grieg had second thoughts about some of Liszt’s suggestions, and in the last revised version, removed some of the latter’s more bombastic additions. This final version is the one commonly heard today. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR Emulating his models, Grieg opens the concerto with a strong piano declamation, spanning almost the entire range of the keyboard and followed by a wave of arpeggios before the first theme appears in the orchestra. Only then is the theme taken up by the piano and elaborated. The cellos introduce a lyrical second theme although in the earlier versions Grieg had scored it for the trumpets (probably on Liszt’s advice). The written-out cadenza is expansive and, of course, technically challenging. The second movement, Adagio, is a tender song-like theme on muted strings. When the piano finally enters, it gently embellishes the theme. It is in the last movement that Grieg’s folk impulses break out in a Norwegian dance, the halling. But a gentle middle section introduced by the flute with string accompaniment serves as a contrast to the ebullient dance. After a brief cadenza, the soloist launches into a coda recasting the dance theme into the rapid triple time of the popular Norwegian springdans. The concerto ends with the gentle flute theme now thundered out by orchestra and soloist. INSTRUMENTATION Solo piano, piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, strings Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, Op. 56, “Scottish” FELIX MENDELSSOHN BORN February 3, 1809, in Hamburg; died November 4, 1847, in Leipzig, Germany PREMIERE Composed 1829-1842; first performance March 3, 1842, by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, conducted by the composer OVERVIEW We are all familiar with the romantic stereotype — and often the reality — of the composer struggling for his daily bread and artistic survival. Probably the greatest exception to this picture was Felix Mendelssohn, an economically secure composer from a culturally sophisticated and highly supportive family. The Mendelssohn household was a Mecca for the intellectual elite of Germany, and the many family visitors fawned over the prodigy and his talented sister Fanny. Fortunately for the development of his rare abilities, his carefully selected teachers were demanding and strict. Mendelssohn’s financial security gave him the opportunity to take the Grand Tour in what was then considered the civilized world: Western Europe, Italy, and Britain. In 1829, he traveled to England and then on to Scotland, where his visit to Fingal’s Cave in the Hebrides Islands inspired The Hebrides. It also produced the ideas that became the “Scottish” Symphony. Started in Italy in 1830 but not finished until 1842, the “Scottish” Symphony was Mendelssohn’s last — the numbering of the five symphonies reflecting their order dedicated the symphony to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, whom he had met and charmed during one of his visits to England (the queen actually sang with Mendelssohn accompanying her on the piano.) WHAT TO LISTEN FOR While the music has an undeniably Scottish flavor, it does not quote any authentic folk melodies, a device that Mendelssohn despised. Writing to his father from Wales, he commented: “... anything but national music! May ten thousand devils take all folklore ... a harpist sits in the lobby of every inn of repute playing so-called folk melodies at you — dreadful, vulgar, fake stuff; and simultaneously a hurdy- gurdy is tooting out melodies — it’s enough to drive you crazy ...” That being said, it’s difficult to distinguish Mendelssohn’s invented Scottish-style melodies from the kind of musical nationalism he so despised. Beginning with the introduction and the succeeding Allegro agitato, the gloomy atmosphere gave rise to the myth that it was somehow inspired by the tragic life of Mary, Queen of Scots. More likely, the symphony reflects the bleak and stormy weather so prevalent in the Scottish Highlands, lowlands, and outlying islands. The climax of the first movement is a veritable hurricane, replete with chromatic moaning in the strings. The second movement provides a little sunshine, its main theme as near to a Scottish folksong — with “Scotch snap” and all — as Mendelssohn could get without actually using one. The third movement comes through as passionate, at times even anguished. Its middle section suggests a horn- call summons of doom. Then, it’s back to the Sturm und Drang (storm and drive) of the finale. But — perhaps with a bow to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony — Mendelssohn finishes the symphony with a shift again to the major mode and a new and optimistic theme to end it. INSTRUMENTATION Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings ©2018 Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn .
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