PROGRAM NOTES by Daniel Maki Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, in C
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PROGRAM NOTES by Daniel Maki Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, in C minor by Franz Liszt (1811-1886) Transcribed for Orchestra by Karl Müller-Berghaus (1829-1907) Duration: Approximately 11 minutes First Performance: unknown (original piano version published in 1851) Last ESO Performance: May, 1968; Douglas Steensland, conductor Although Franz Liszt grew up speaking German rather than Hungarian and actually lived relatively little of his life in his native land, he always remained intensely proud of his Hungarian heritage. Among the many colorful stories in Lisztian biography are the accounts of his playing in public while dressed in native folk costume. This was in the 1840’s, when “Lisztomania” had become an international phenomenon and his career as a concert artist was at its height, corresponding with the growing protest in Hungary against Austrian dominance . Ultimately the unrest would lead to the Hungarian revolution of 1848, and, as Hungary’s most prominent citizen, Liszt fell easily into his role as symbol of Hungarian independence. Not surprisingly, Liszt had a strong interest in Hungarian folk music and absorbed its influences in some of his own music. The best known of his folk inspired works are the 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies for solo piano, pieces that are still very much a part of the virtuoso piano repertoire. Popular as they have been with audiences, the Rhapsodies have been the source of some contention in certain musical circles. The controversy stems from the fact that the nature of Hungarian folk music itself has been a matter of considerable scholarly dispute. To many people, the idea of Hungarian music first brings to mind the so-called gypsy style of the Roma people, a style called alla zingarese in Italian or Zigeuner in German. (These days, this German word is considered politically incorrect by some, as is the word “gypsy” in English.) This is music which Liszt studied by visiting a gypsy encampment and listening carefully to the best gypsy musicians. Distinctive as the style is, with its wildly passionate and exotic character (heightened by use of the so-called “gypsy scale” which contains 2 striking intervals known to music theory students as “augmented 2nds”), it frequently employed material that was not genuine folk music. Some of it was popular music of the time and some was actually written by upper class musicians, causing considerable consternation among some members of the Hungarian intelligentsia who accused Liszt of debasing the national heritage. Although Liszt may have been deceived by some of the material, modern scholarship has for the most part redeemed him, showing that he did use actual Magyar melodies albeit in a form that was transformed by gypsy musicians. The Rhapsody No.2 in C# minor is the best known of the set, and like many of the others, has been arranged for orchestra. The version heard today was transposed down a half step to C minor and arranged by Karl Müller-Berghaus, a distinguished German violinist, conductor, and composer. To achieve its folk flavor, the Rhapsody is set in the form of a czárdás, a Hungarian dance hat is traditionally laid out in two sections, one slow and one fast. The opening, called Lassan (Hungarian for “slow”), sets a proudly ponderous tone filled with theatrically melancholy emotion. Adding to the exotic flavor is the use of the so-called Phrygian mode, an ancient scale much used in Spanish music. This section is punctuated by several spectacularly virtuosic clarinet solos, meant to sound as though improvised. The fast section known as the Friska (literally “fresh” in Hungarian), begins with the tinkling imitation of the cimbalom, a folk instrument used in Gypsy bands. Adding to the frantically exuberant tone are several invigorating accelerandi and a final concluding spectacular prestissimo. * * * Concerto No. 5 in A major, K. 219 (Turkish) by W.A.Mozart (1756-1791) Duration: Approximately 31 minutes First Performance: unknown (completed December, 1775) Last ESO Performance: These are the first ESO performances of the work Mozart’s performing career was primarily as a pianist, and he was certainly one of the outstanding keyboard players of his era. He was also, however, by all accounts a fine violinist as well, something that might be expected of a son of Leopold Mozart, who was a topnotch violinist himself as well as an acclaimed violin pedagogue and the author of an important treatise on violin playing which is still read with interest today. It’s easy to picture little Wolfgang acquiring his violin technique almost by a process of osmosis in the intensely music Mozart household. Leopold was ever the proud papa but he was also highly critical so when he wrote the following to his son it meant something more than casual parental ego building: “You yourself do not know how well you play the violin… when you play with energy and with your whole heart and soul, yes indeed, just as if you were the first violinist in Europe.” The musicologist and Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein once called the violin “Mozart’s working instrument.” Throughout his teenage years, Mozart played as a member of the court orchestra in his hometown of Salzburg, beginning as an unsalaried player and eventually rising to the position of salaried concertmaster. Although he would gradually grow to chafe under the restrictions of his life in Salzburg, these were valuable apprentice years during which he constantly absorbed new ideas while composing continuously. To the everlasting gratitude of violinists the world over, this was the period when he wrote most of his solo violin music, including five complete concertos, four of which were written in amazingly quick succession in 1775. Although it is not known whether he wrote them originally for his own use, it is known that he himself performed them. Today these concertos occupy a central place in the violin repertoire, classic in every sense of the word for the way that they present the solo instrument in the most elegant and refined manner. Amazing achievements for any composer let alone a teenaged boy, they show a fresh and youthful lyricism that Mozart was hard put to surpass, even in his most mature works. The so-called “Turkish” Concerto was completed in December of 1775, barely a month before the composer’s twentieth birthday. Although filled with all the poetry of which the violin is capable, it also contains some sly humor. The opening movement, for example, begins with a kind of practical joke (albeit a very subtle one). The opening orchestral exposition sounds conventional enough, beginning with what might be expected to be the principal theme of the movement. Eventually, however, the orchestra suddenly trails off, allowing the soloist to play a brief, dreamy, and completely unexpected meditation of six bars. Only after this soliloquy does the soloist launch into a vigorous new theme which proves to be the actual main theme but which is superimposed over the original orchestral material which now reveals itself to have been an accompaniment figure all along. Those who have bothered to follow all that might have some sense of the subtlety of Mozart’s mind as well as the sense of pure fun which he brought to his music making. As usual, he is generous with thematic material, giving several new ones along the way, including a new one in a dramatic minor key in the brief development section. The exquisite Adagio is one of the slow movements in this set of concertos that inspired the nineteenth century scholar Herrman Abert, still considered by many to be the greatest of all Mozart biographers to wax eloquent. Movements like this one, according to Herr Abert, “are splendid examples of the noblest cantabilità (“songfulness”), professions of an adolescent’s infatuated soul that go straight to the heart in their chaste purity”. It is the final movement that gives the concerto its nickname. This finale is, in the words of Mozart scholar Neil Zaslaw, “a rondo organized around an interruption.” A rondo is, of course, a piece with a refrain which recurs alternating with various new material. In this case the refrain is a minuet, the courtly elegance of which, as Mr. Zaslaw tells us, “places us firmly in the West, ready for a confrontation with the infidel East, which appears in the form of a ‘Turkish’section.” The notion of the Turkish perhaps requires some explanation. From time immemorial Westerners have had a fascination with the exotic East, succumbing from time to time to fads for such cultural styles as the Chinese (chinoiserie) and Japanese (japonisme). Added to these is turquerie, the fashion for things Turkish or vaguely Middle Eastern which flourished in many ways throughout Europe from the16th to the 18th centuries. In addition to interest in such Turkish consumer goods as coffee and tobacco, Europeans were attracted to Turkish styles in design, the visual arts, and literature (the Arabian Nights stories were wildly popular). In music, the style came to be known as alla turca, used by Mozart in a famous movement of a piano sonata, and, in a full-fledged tip of the hat to turquerie, his opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, which is set in a Turkish harem. The style creeps in even amidst the choral sublimities of the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony in the famous brief Turkish band section. Once again, as in the case of Liszt’s ethnic borrowings, in the interests of good ethno-musicology it needs to be said that this style is not actual Turkish folk music but a Europeanized version probably made by Hungarian peasant and gypsy musicians. Such musicians had long lived in territories abutting the Muslim Ottoman Empire in times of war and peace, and had absorbed this foreign music by direct imitation and often turning it into parody.