Toronto Symphony

kg (¿■<4 TORONTO SYMPHONY - MARCH 2, 1967 MASSEY HALL - SEIJI OZAWA MUSIC DIRECTOR THE TORONTO SYMPHONY SEIJI OZAWA, Music Director and Conductor NIKLAUS WYSS, Assistant Conductor PENSION FUND CONCERT Guest Artist: ARTUR RUBINSTEIN, Pianist PROGRAM God Save the Queen VERDI . Overture, “La Forza del Destino” BEETHOVEN . Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 Allegro con brio Largo Rondo: Allegro ARTUR RUBINSTEIN, Pianist Intermission BRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15 Maestoso Adagio Rondo: Allegro non troppo ARTUR RUBINSTEIN, Pianist STEINWAY PIANO THE TORONTO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ASSOCIATION wishes to express its sincere appreciation to THE CANADA COUNCIL THE PROVINCE OF ONTARIO COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS and THE MUNICIPALITY OF METROPOLITAN TORONTO for their generous financial support of THE TORONTO SYMPHONY PROGRAM NOTES By JOHN BECKWITH GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813-1900: Overture to “La Forza del Destino” Opera in four acts, first performed, St. Petersburg, Nov. 10, 1862; first performed in Italy, Rome, Feb. 7, 1863, as Don Alvaro; libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, revised. 1869. by Antonio Ghislanzoni. “It is primarily for its almost unique melodic richness that Forza is loved by so many . though its length and the disconnected nature of the scenes together make it one of the more difficult operas to perform satisfactorily.” — Kobbe’s Complete Opera Book. La Forza del Destino is typical mature Verdi — a dark melodrama, whose recurrent “fate” theme is reminiscent of the “curse” that dominates Rigoletto, although in general the music is not so keenly at the service of plot and character as in that earlier masterpiece. The one country outside Italy where Forza holds the stage consistently is Germany, where the work has been permanent-repertoire material ever since Franz Werfel's German adaptation of the libretto, made in 1925. The Overture is one of a mere handful of full-scale overtures by Verdi: most of his mature operas substitute brief mood-creating preludes for the older self-contained orchestral overture form. The piece is skillful capsulization of the opera’s themes, both musical and dramaturgical. It contains references to the all-important agitato motive of “fate”, to the fervent melodic phrase sung in Act Two by the distraught Leonora to the words “Oh, do not abandon me!”, and to her duets with Alvaro and with the Father Abbott. LUDWIG van BEETHOVEN (1770-1827): Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 Composed in 1800; published in 1804; dedicated to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia; first performed, Vienna, Apr. 5, 1803, with the composer as soloist. The Third Concerto, transitional between his early and mature style-periods, is the first composition with orchestra in which Beethoven used the (for him) fateful key of C minor, with a joyous or triumphal, emergence into C major at the end. The opening motives in movement 1, strongly “Beethovenian” in their rhythmic incisiveness, are also tailored for concertante treatment, from their initial lay-out as a dialogue between strings and winds. In the semi-operatic cantabile section of the first-movement development, and in many passages of the second movement as well, Beethoven has the pianist’s two hands playing in octaves, to give the singing lines extra force, where Mozart (or Beethoven himself in his earlier concertos) would have written more purely illusory single lines: the octave effect became a hackneyed expressive device in a host of later concertos. Starting with “the largest of all Beethoven concerto tuttis” (Tovey), the first movement maintains its scope and stern assertiveness right to the end. The solo cadenza is showy and almost melodramatic in its rumbling emotionality; its brief acceleration into a new tempo is like a foreshadowing of the “Appas- sionata” Sonata, Op. 57. At its conclusion, a deliberate swerving-away from the expected resolution of the piano’s final trill forms an original touch, and also permits the piano’s retention in the foreground of the ensuing coda. The idea of using a remote and strongly contrasted key-relation (E major) for the Adagio may have come to Beethoven from some of Haydn’s experiments along these lines. The movement is an extremely slow and solemn meditation, relieved by the transparency of an episode in which soft broken chords in the piano part accompany an expressive flute-bassoon colloquy. The rondo-theme of the finale is a sort of enlargement of Haydn’s “gypsy rondos’"; its heavy ac cents and cross-accents push forward irresistibly, but are neatly broken in each appearance by a ritard and a brief flourish, in free time, by the piano. There is a bit of fugato treatment at one point. Towards the end, a short solo cadenza allows the major-key exuberance, already latent in some of the themes, to spurt up, leading to a compact, highly affirmative, fast-tempo ending. JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-97): Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15 Composed 1854-8; first performed. Hanover, January 1859, Josef Joachim conducting, with the composer as soloist. “It began as a sketch for a symphony, written for convenience as an ar rangement for two pianofortes to be scored later on for orchestra. Brilliant pianoforte writing, however, had an irrepressible tendency to break in on the one hand, while on the other hand the most important themes were clearly orchestral in conception. “The final result was inevitably a classical concerto, but one of unpre cedented tragic power . “It is known that the tragic mood . was inspired by the catastrophe of Schumann’s illness, on the terrible day when he threw himself into the Rhine. The slow movement is a Requiem for Schumann; and that is why in one of the sketches for it Brahms inscribed its quiet devout theme as a Benedictus.” — D. F. Tovey. (Tovey’s surmise regarding the slow movement may be incorrect, as one may gather from the following: “I am also painting a lovely portrait of you; it is to be the Adagio.” — Brahms, letter to Clara Schumann, Dec., 1856, referring to this Concerto.) The First Concerto has always been one of the problem children among Brahms’ works. It had, to start, a difficult birth, While the Hanover première went fairly well, a second performance, five days later, in Leipzig, was stormily received. It amounted, in fact, to “a terrible defeat, such as Brahms had never known, and never again was to experience” (Karl Geiringer). The composer put on a good outward show of toughness and indifference, however: “My Concerto went very well. I had two rehearsals. You have probably heard that it was a complete fiasco; at the rehearsal it met with total silence, and at the performance (where hardly three people raised their hands to clap) it was actually hissed. But all this made no impression on me.” — Brahms, letter to Clara Schumann. Later, starting from an 1865 performance in Mannheim, again with Brahms himself as soloist, the Concerto began to gain serious re cognition and even acclaim. The opening movement coordinates dramatically several sharply differen tiated ideas. The first theme-group shows two elements — the first a complex MUSICIANS’ PENSION FUND The Musicians’ Pension Fund was started in 1946 when a private founda tion donated $10,000 to the Toronto Symphony. Since its inception, it has given more than $65,000 to retired musicians whose years with the Orchestra have been long and distinguished. At present, ten such former orchestra members, are recipients of monthly incomes from the fund. Until recently, the Pension Fund was supported by the Orchestra Associa tion and the Christmas Box Concerts, so popular in the days of Sir Ernest MacMillan. Today, with continued income from the Pension Fund Concerts, this valuable fund is able to carry on its good work. At all of these concerts Maestro Ozawa and the players of the Toronto Symphony donate their services. and tightly-coiled orchestral theme with strongly resonant trills, and the second a typically Brahmsian sequence of double thirds reserved for the first entry of the piano soloist. In the restatement, these themes are redistributed, the orches tra playing the double thirds and the soloist the dynamic trill-encrusted motives. The piano also introduces the principal idea of the second theme-group, with its folksong-like opening motive: the same familiar, warm, German-woodland motive used in so many Brahms pieces from his early period to at least as late as the finale of the Op. 108 Violin Sonata. The trilling theme is the most extensively developed of these ideas. It bears the marks of careful shaping, being made both for projective emphasis and for use in dialogue and discussion-like passages via contrapuntal overlappings between soloist and orchestra, or between two or more orchestral sections. Brahms was deep in a study of Bach’s music around this time, and the con trapuntal aspects of this Concerto have been traced to this influence. By the same token, the spirit of Robert Schumann no doubt hovered over the invention of the “woodland" theme of the first movement. These two contrasting influences recur in the finale — Bach’s in a fugato, Schumann’s in a fanciful series of echo-phrases. Elsewhere in the finale Brahms seems to have been thinking back to the Beethoven concerto-finales — that of the Beethoven Third is suggested in the cross-accents, that of the Beethoven Fourth in the prominent scale-figures. Towards the end of the finale comes an increase of speed and the only really free cadenza-like section of the whole Concerto. TONIGHT’S GUEST ARTIST ARTUR RUBINSTEIN, Pianist The grand septuagenarian, world citi zen and best-loved of concert artist is here accurately described by Howard Taubman, critic of the New York Times.

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