PROGRAM NOTES The Romantic Period in music (roughly 1820-1900) is characterized by music that portrays and celebrates human emotion through large ensembles, extreme emotions (often not only concerned with love), and wild, evocative orchestration. Certainly many of our selections in this concert were written in this period and portray those characteristics, while others concern themselves with love and romance. We hope you enjoy the program.
Mars, The Bringer of War from “The Planets”, Op. 32 Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
Together with his friend and fellow composer Ralph Vaughn Williams, Holst played a major role in re-energizing English concert music by injecting it with the spirit, and at times the letter of the country’s folk music. Both composers also created music in a more cosmopolitan style, such as the engaging, brilliantly scored suite, ”The Planets”, one of Holst’s most popular compositions. The suite was written as a result of his interests in the astrological characters of the seven then- known planets in our solar system (he didn’t include Earth and Pluto had yet to be discovered). These characters differ from their mythological personalities. He completed Mars, the opening movement, in a rural cottage during August,1914 before the outbreak of World War I. He completed the remaining movements over the next 2 years and the first performance was given in London in September, 1918 under the baton of Sir Adrian Boult. Mars, the Bringer of War, portrays a world in the grip of cold, implacable brutality. Brass and percussion hold center stage throughout, pounding out harsh blocks of sound over an equally implacable, motor like rhythmic tread (in the jagged, not often-used meter of 5 beats to a measure). After a grindingly dissonant climax, the death machine that is war pauses desolately for a moment, only to power recklessly ahead to a devastating conclusion amidst the ascent of numerous tortured souls from the battlefield.
Selections from “Les Miserables” At the End of the Day / I Dreamed a Dream / Master of the House / On My Own / Do You Hear the People Sing? Claude-Michel Schonberg Arr. Warren Barker
The show, “Les Miserables”, has been a worldwide phenomenon since it’s debut in 1985. It is the world’s longest-running musical. Based on the voluminous 1862 novel written by Victor Hugo it tells the intertwined stories of the noble and harshly convicted Jean Valjean, the duty-bound and relentless policeman Javert, Fantine, her daughter Cosette (who was raised by Valjean), the valiant revolutionary Marius, and the comical (though larcenous) Thenardiers and their daughter Eponine. The story takes place over the decades leading to the French Revolution with the misery of the common citizens of Paris as the backdrop for the events of the story. Of the many themes portrayed in the novel, the primary ones are the role of love as redemption and the human spirit over misery and tyranny.
Concerto No. 18 in Eb for 2 Horns Movement II: Adagio Movement III: Allegro Francisco Antonio Rosetti (c. 1750-1792) Arr. John Anderson Horn Soloists: Jesse Clevenger and Jamie Leff Antonio Rosetti, a contemporary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, is not well known today. In his lifetime, however, he was a prolific composer, writing at least 44 symphonies, many chamber works, and numerous concertos, including 17 for horn and 6 for two horns. He was born Franz Anton Rosler, around 1750 in Bohemia. After early studies in music, he joined the court of a Russian, Count Orlov, as a musician around 1770. He moved to Germany in 1773, at which time he Italianized his name to Francesco Antonio Rosetti. In Germany he served as a double bass player and composer in the court of the Prince of Ottingen-Wallerstein. While there, he married and had three daughters, all of whom became professional singers. In 1781, the prince gave Rosetti leave to visit Paris. Rosetti was able to get some of his music published in Paris and enhance his reputation. Eventually his music was played all over Europe. In 1789, he became Kapellmeister to the Duke of Mecklinburg-Schwerin, with a significant pay increase. Rosetti’s Requiem was performed in 1791 at a memorial for Mozart, who died that year. Antonio Rosetti died the following year at age 42. Very popular in its heyday, his music is rarely heard today.
The Wallerstein court orchestra was known for its excellent wind players, including two horn players from Bohemia, Joseph Nagel and Franz Zwierzina. They had both studied the new hand stopping technique, which enabled horn players to play many more notes on the natural horn – valves had not been invented. Nagel and Zwierzina must have been superb musicians as the seven double concertos that Rosetti wrote for them are very difficult even on the modern valve horn. In the concerto we hear today, the second movement Romanze is a lyrical, aria-like duet for the two soloists. The third movement is in rondo form, meaning the main melody keeps reappearing after each new section. This movement is charming and lively, with exciting displays of technique in both solo parts as well as expressive melodies. Gary Smith, on the Mozart Forum site, says of Rosetti’s works that the “early works are written in a pleasing style of no great complexity or originality” but that Rosetti matured as a composer after 1784. The later compositions, among other attributes, show “imaginative and colorful orchestration” as well as a rich harmonic and tonal language. This concerto is a delightful example of Antonio Rosetti’s musical imagination and expertise.
~ Notes by Rebecca Leff Porgy and Bess I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin / It Ain’t Necessarily So / Summertime / Crab Man / Bess, You Is My Woman Now
George Gershwin (1898-1937) Arr. James Barnes
Porgy and Bess was first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and subsequent play of the same title, which he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy Heyward. All three works deal with African-American life in the fictitious Catfish Row (based on the area of Cabbage Row) in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1920s. Originally conceived by George Gershwin as an "American folk opera", Porgy and Bess premiered in New York in the fall of 1935 and featured an entire cast of classically trained African-American singers—a daring artistic choice at the time. Gershwin chose the African-American musician Eva Jessye as the choral director for the opera. The work was not widely accepted in the United States as a legitimate opera until 1976, when the Houston Grand Opera production of Gershwin's complete score established it as an artistic triumph. Nine years later, the Metropolitan Opera of New York gave their first performance of the work. This production was also broadcast as part of the ongoing Saturday afternoon live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. The work is now considered part of the standard operatic repertoire and is regularly performed internationally. Despite this success, the opera has been controversial; some critics from the outset have considered it a racist portrayal of African Americans. The song "Summertime" is the best-known selection from Porgy and Bess. Other popular and frequently recorded songs from the opera include "It Ain't Necessarily So", "Bess, You Is My Woman Now", "I Loves You Porgy" and "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'". The opera is admired for Gershwin's innovative synthesis of European orchestral techniques with American jazz and folk music idioms. Porgy and Bess tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black beggar living in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina. It deals with his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and Sportin' Life, the drug dealer. Where the earlier novel and stage-play differ, the opera generally follows the stage-play. The opera has enjoyed success in many forms since its 1935 debut, both in film and in 1942 and 2011-12 Broadway revivals (the 2011-12 revival, starring Audra McDonald won Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical and Best Actress).
Suite from the Opera “Carmen” I. Prélude and Aragonaise / II. Les Toréadors / III. Habañera / IV. Chanson du Toréador / V. Danse Bohème
Georges Bizet (1838-1875) Arr. Tohru Takahashi During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Georges Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognized as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalize on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theaters preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he began many theatrical projects during the 1860s, most of which were abandoned. Neither of the two operas that reached the stage—Les pêcheurs de perles and La jolie fille de Perth—was immediately successful. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, in which Bizet served in the National Guard, he had little success with his one-act opera Djamileh, though an orchestral suite derived from his incidental music to Alphonse Daudet's play L'Arlésienne was instantly popular. The production of Bizet's final opera Carmen was delayed through fears that its themes of betrayal and murder would offend audiences. After its premiere on 3 March 1875, Bizet was convinced that the work was a failure; he died of a heart attack three months later, unaware that it would prove a spectacular and enduring success. Bizet's marriage to Geneviève Halévy was intermittently happy and produced one son. After his death, his work, apart from Carmen, was generally neglected. Manuscripts were given away or lost, and published versions of his works were frequently revised and adapted by other hands. He founded no school and had no obvious disciples or successors. After years of neglect, his works began to be performed more frequently in the 20th century. Later commentators have acclaimed him as a composer of brilliance and originality whose premature death at the age of 38 was a significant loss to French musical theatre. Carmen is an opera in four acts. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on a novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, on March 3, 1875, and was not at first particularly successful; its initial run extended to 36 performances. Before this run was concluded, Bizet died suddenly, and thus knew nothing of the opera's later celebrity. The opera, written in the genre of opéra comique with musical numbers separated by dialogue, tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naive soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen. José abandons his childhood sweetheart and deserts from his military duties, yet loses Carmen's love to the glamorous toreador Escamillo after which José kills her in a jealous rage. The depictions of proletarian life, immorality and lawlessness, and the tragic outcome in which the main character dies on stage, broke new ground in French opera and were highly controversial. After the premiere most reviews were critical, and the French public was generally indifferent. Carmen initially gained its reputation through a series of productions outside France, and was not revived in Paris until 1883; thereafter it rapidly acquired celebrity at home and abroad, and continues to be one of the most frequently performed operas; the "toreador's song" from act 2 is among the best known of all operatic arias. Later commentators have asserted that Carmen forms the bridge between the tradition of opéra comique and the realism or verismo that characterized late 19th-century Italian opera. The music of Carmen has been widely acclaimed for its brilliance of melody, harmony, atmosphere and orchestration, and for the skill with which Bizet represented musically the emotions and suffering of his characters. After the composer's death the score was subject to significant amendment, including the introduction of recitative in place of the original dialogue; there is no standard edition of the opera, and differences of view exist as to what versions best express Bizet's intentions. The opera has been recorded many times since the first acoustical recording in 1908, and the story has been the subject of a large number of screen and stage adaptions. In tonight’s concert the Band will perform 5 selections from the suite – one of the most popular in “classical” music – the opening Prélude and Aragonaise, Les Toréadors, the Habañera, the aforementioned song of the toreadors, Chanson du Toréador, and finally the Bohemian Dance, Danse Bohème.
Symphony Number 5 in e minor, Op 64 - Movement IV. Finale Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Arr. Steven Stanke Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is arguably Russia’s most famous composer, and for many music lovers, the essence of Romantic fervor.
Tchaikovsky’s music can be said to go “straight from the heart to the heart,” to borrow Beethoven’s description of his own music. Tchaikovsky’s melodic gift is second to none, sharing a well-deserved berth along with Mozart, Schubert and Dvorák as classical music’s great melodists. Tchaikovsky had an unerring instinct for the right sequence of chords to intensify feeling, and a generous and well-chosen palette of orchestral sonorities with which to drape his musical narrative.
Whatever personal demons tormented him—and there were many, ranging from his extraordinary sensitivity to noise and to slights intended and imagined, to inner turmoil attending his homosexuality—he bravely tried his compositional hand at all the genres of his time. Operas, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, solo piano works, song and ballets flowed from his ever- active pen.
By the time he composed his Symphony No. 5, Tchaikovsky was riding the crest of a wave of popularity that had spread far beyond Russia and Europe to the shores of the United States. Despite his fame, his demons continued to fill him with great doubt. A letter to his brother Modest in May of 1888 expressed fears that he was “written out.” Even the successful premiere of the new work failed to expel paroxysms of doubt.
Though he offered no specific program for the Fifth Symphony, his personal notebooks reveal a general roadmap indicating an obsessive working out of his resignation to Fate, personified in a recurring theme, a virtual idée fixe that journeys from minor-key despair to major-key liberation. He inherited the narrative format, of course, from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (also associated with Fate).
The opening movement announces itself with the recurring Fate theme cast in shades of funereal gravity by clarinets over low strings. This theme finds it’s way prominently throughout all four movements of the symphony.
The final movement, Andante maestoso, which the BGSB is performing tonight in a rarely-heard transcription from the original orchestral version, opens with a major-key version of the Fate theme, richly garbed in the clarinets and saxophones. After a brief chorale in brass, the woodwinds provide a legato background in triplets over which winds take up the now optimistic theme. The music becomes increasingly rousing and celebratory, even manic at times, as anxieties and gloom are replaced by cathartic jubilation. To be sure, the anxieties of the first three movements return as emotional flashbacks before final resolution of conflict with a rousing march. Fate seems to have been triumphantly vanquished. But has it – the last 4 repeated major chords can be seen as victorious or as an ominous statement of struggles to come……
March to the Scaffold fr. “Symphonie Fantastique”, Op. 14 Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) Arr. R. Mark Rogers Hector Berlioz was an anomaly among composers. A true romantic he composed the Symphonie Fantastique in 1830. Berlioz played neither piano or violin – his instrument was the guitar! In a time when composers wrote “pure” music for orchestra, with no intended narrative or plot, Berlioz’ Fantastic Symphony not only has a clear story (described by Berlioz himself) it seems to be autobiographical.
In 1827 Berlioz fell obsessively in love with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who never so much as answered Berlioz’ letters. The five-movement symphony tells the story of "an artist gifted with a lively imagination" who has "poisoned himself with opium" in the "depths of despair" because of "hopeless love." (Berlioz’ words).
One unique aspect of the symphony was the representation of the artist’s love by a recurring theme – the idee fixe – that morphs throughout the entire symphony depending on the protagonist’s view of her at the time that it occurs.
By the end of the third movement the young artist has taken the opium and has dreamed in a fit of rage over being betrayed has killed his love.
In the fourth movement, being performed tonight - the March to the Scaffold – here are Berlioz’ program notes:
“Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of narcotic, while too weak to cause his death, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by the strangest of visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned, led to the scaffold and is witnessing his own execution. As he cries for forgiveness the effects of the narcotic set in. He wants to hide but he cannot so he watches as an onlooker as he dies. The procession advances to the sound of a march that is sometimes sombre and wild, and sometimes brilliant and solemn, in which a dull sound of heavy footsteps follows without transition the loudest outbursts. At the end of the march, the first four bars of the idée fixe reappear like a final thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow when his head bounced down the steps.” The movement begins with timpani sextuplets in thirds. The movement proceeds as a march filled with blaring horns and rushing passages, and scurrying figures that later show up in the last movement. Before the musical depiction of his execution, there is a brief, nostalgic recollection of the idée fixe in a solo clarinet, as though representing the last conscious thought of the soon-to- be-executed man. Immediately following this is a single, short G minor chord – the fatal blow of the guillotine blade, followed by snare drums representing the rolling of the severed head into the basket, followed by brilliant chords seeming to portray the cheering of the throngs who have come to witness his execution.
~ Compiled and Composed by Howard M. Green