University Musical Society

UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY The Leipzig Chamber Orchestra Georg Moosdorf Music Director and Conductor Sunday Afternoon, February 14, 1993, at 5:00 Rackham Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan PROGRAM Sinfonia Concertante for Oboe, Cello, and Orchestra in F major . J. C. Bach Allegro - Andante Tempo di Menuetto Jiirgen Dietze, oboist Matthias Moosdorf, cellist Symphony No. 3 in G major .................. Haydn Allegro Andante moderate Menuetto - Trio Finale: Presto Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra in B-flat major, K. 191 . Mozart Allegro Andante ma adagio Rondo: Tempo di menuetto Thomas Reinhardt, bassoonist INTERMISSION Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, D. 485 ........... Schubert Allegro Andante con moto Menuetto: Allegro molto Allegro vivace The Leipzig Chamber Orchestra is represented by Shaw Attractions, Inc., New York The Orchestra can be heard on Etema Records TWENTY-NINTH CONCERT OF THE 1HTH SEASON 30TH ANNUAL CHAMBER ARTS SERIES PROGRAM NOTES Sinfonia Concertante for Oboe, Cello, survived the centuries in a manuscript that and Orchestra in F major is now in the British Library. It may have Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782) been widely known during the composer's lifetime, for there is slightly different copy Johann Christian Bach was the elev in the old German State Library in Berlin. enth and last surviving son of Johann It is thought to have been written for Sebastian Bach. His music is entirely unlike performance at the concerts that Bach gave his father's, for it belongs to a modern style late in life, around 1779, with his child that he learned in Italy and practiced in hood friend, Carl Friedrich Abel, whose England. After his father's death in 1750, father had been a colleague of the great young Christian left Leipzig for Berlin, Johann Sebastian. Abel was a virtuoso where he lived and studied with his famous performer on the viola da gamba, which older brother, Carl Philipp Emanuel. From was by then almost obsolete. It is possible 1754 to 1762 he was in Italy, acquiring the that he was the string soloist in the first new operatic style of Naples, studying the performance of the work. Italian instrumental forms of sonata and Although most of Bach's orchestral symphony, and even serving for two years works are in three movements, this one, as organist at the Milan Cathedral. In 1762 like many of his sonatas, has only two - he saw opportunities in England and moved Allegro and Tempo di Menuetto - with no to London, where he soon launched a central slow movement. The standard or splendid career as a composer. His Italian chestra of the time is used: just two oboes, operas were popular there; he gave con two horns, and strings. The second oboe certs; Gainsborough painted his portrait, sometimes joins in duets with the first, and and the Queen appointed him her Master a solo viola occasionally plays with the solo of Music. cello. His most important contribution to the history of music perhaps resulted from the Symphony No. 3 in G major encouragement and advice he gave to the Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) eight-year-old Mozart, who visited London in 1764. In 1778 Mozart was still modeling Haydn wrote his first symphonies when major works after this Bach's, and in 1782 the form and the very idea of the symphony he wrote home to his father from Vienna, were new. Symphonies and overtures were in a letter about his collection of fugues by interchangeable, and, moreover, the mod Sebastian, Emanuel, and Friedemann ern distinction between orchestral and Bach, "I suppose you have heard that the chamber music was of little significance. English Bach is dead? What a loss to the Haydn wrote more than a hundred sympho musical world!" His influence lasted as long nies, and they earned him the right to be as 1788, when Mozart wrote his last sym called "the father of the symphony," for he, phonies. more than any other composer, inspired The sinfonia concertante is a hybrid form Mozart and Beethoven to invest symphonic that flourished briefly in the eighteenth composition with beauty and power. century, and the best known now are the The chronology of Haydn's early works two by Mozart. It was essentially a sym is very uncertain, but it is believed that he phony with a group of solo instruments, as wrote his first before 1759, the year in in the old concerto grosso that had been which he turned twenty-seven. Haydn had popular a generation or two earlier. recently entered the service of a Bohemian This Sinfonia Concertante, which was nobleman, Count von Morzin, as the music published for the first time in 1973, is the director of his orchestra of sixteen musi second one of a set of twelve that has cians. He was expected to compose for it too. A distinguished and rich Hungarian indicates that this work "was succeeded by nobleman, Prince Anton Esterhazy, heard two other concertos for bassoon composed Haydn's first symphony and soon engaged a few months later (spring 1775) for a rich the gifted young musician. Haydn began amateur, Baron Diirnitz, which are, unfor with the Esterhazys on May 1, 1761, and tunately, lost." This Baron Thaddeus von stayed with them for thirty years. He be Diirnitz was a well-known patron of music came Europe's most famous and honored and was accomplished on clavier and bas musician, and the Esterhazys were forever soon. Mozart composed several other works proud of having discovered him. for him, on commission - including the When modern musicologists first strug so-called Diirnitz sonata for clavier, K. 284 gled with the problem of authenticating but there seems to be some doubt about and dating the hundreds of symphonies his willingness to pay for them, and the attributed to Haydn, the earlier works were correspondence from Mozart's father is full not easily found and listed, but they were of questions about this. recognized fairly soon as works Haydn Einstein describes the B-flat concerto wrote around 1762. The early symphonies as "a work unmistakably conceived for a were often scored for two oboes, two horns, wind instrument, a real bassoon concerto, strings, and continuo. What distinguished which could not be arranged, say, for Haydn's music from that of the many violoncello . The solo portions are full composers who were then working in this of leaps, runs, and singing passages com "modern" form is the vigor with which he pletely suited to the instrument. The work carried out the new ideas of symphonic was written con amore from beginning to writing stating and analyzing and even end, as is particularly evident in the lively discussing them - as he did with matchless participation of the orchestra." imagination. Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, D. Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra in 485 B-flat major, K. 191 Franz Schubert (1797-1828) Wolfgang Amadens Mozart (1756-1791) It is sometimes difficult to believe that "As regards Mozart's concertos for Franz Schubert lived less than thirty-two wind instruments," writes Alfred Einstein years. He wrote about 600 songs and almost in his classic biography, "we can deal with 1000 more compositions T- symphonies, them in short order. They are for the most sonatas, string quartets, operas, masses - part occasional works in the narrower music in almost every form that existed in sense, intended to make a pleasant impres his time. We even divide them into periods sion ... all these works are simpler in - early, middle, and late works. Schubert structure, and the character of their me lived an extraordinarily full, long life in a lodic invention is determined by the limi short time. Mozart and Mendelssohn, in tations of the instruments. Not that Mozart their thirty-six years, had important public himself felt in any way cramped. He always careers, though very different ones, and moved comfortably and freely within any were well-known figures in the musical limitations, and turned them into positive world. Schubert was not altogether un advantages. [A]ll these concertos have known, but he never really had a place in something special about them, and when concert life. There is no record of a public one hears them in a concert hall, which is performance of any of his symphonies until seldom enough, one has the feeling that after his death. the windows have suddenly been opened Although Beethoven and Schubert and a breath of fresh air been let in." were contemporaries, they inhabited differ . The B-flat major Bassoon Concerto ent Viennas. Schubert had few connec was written in June of 1774, in Salzburg. tions with the wealthy and noble families There is apparently no mention of this who were for several generations involved work in Mozart's letters. W. J. Turner, in in the careers of Haydn, Mozart, and Bee his fine Mozart: The Man and His Works, thoven. Some of his friends were people of "quality," and he even spent two summers The music was put aside and forgotten until in Hungary as a music teacher of the some fifty years later, when George Grove, Esterhazys, but for the most part he con the original editor of the famous Grove ducted his life as a Viennese of the lower Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and Ar classes, son of a schoolmaster and for sev thur Sullivan, the musician of the Gilbert- eral years one himself. It was a simple life and-Sullivan team, went to Vienna to of the kind that might later be called search for the lost manuscripts of the un "Bohemian," lived with a group of friends published works of Schubert.

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