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Home , Edward Elgar, La forza del destino, Overture

PROGRAM NOTES by Daniel Maki

Overture to by (1813-1901)

As Giuseppe Verdi approached his fiftieth birthday, he could look back on a career of amazing productivity that had resulted in some twenty in a period of twenty years. (It would be difficult to find another activity that the male of the species could possibly perform that would more closely resemble the travails of twenty consecutive years of child –bearing.) Understandably, Verdi felt that he deserved some time off, spending enjoyable time on his farm, and even contemplating retirement from composition altogether. Another claim on his time was politics. The eminence that he had achieved as Italy’s most important musician had won him the status of a national hero as well as a symbol of the Risorgimento, the movement that would finally lead to the unification of the Italian states into a single, independent Kingdom of Italy. Accordingly, he was elected a member of Italy’s first Parliament, a position that he held for several years. Eventually however, the call of the stage became too strong, and turning down several foreign commissions he received an offer that he couldn’t refuse, a commission from Russia for an to be performed at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg. Having completed what would be his twenty- second opera, La forza del destino (The Power of Destiny), he set off for the first of two trips to the barbaric, frigid north, accompanied of course by his favorite pastas and wines, carefully packed by his wife. The opera was premiered in November of 1862, and although it met with moderate success, failed to satisfy the . As the opera was performed throughout Europe he continued to make revisions until finally, for a performance at in Milan, he achieved the version that is now a staple of the operatic repertory. Among the changes in this final version was the replacement of what had been a brief introduction by a full- fledged . That overture has come to be considered his finest and has long been a standard part of the orchestral repertoire, proving it to be as effective an opener for a concert as it is for the opera itself. One possible approach for an overture is to introduce themes from the opera itself and it is this potpourri technique that Verdi uses here. After a starkly dramatic opening of three notes played twice in octaves by the brass, we are immediately introduced to the “fate” theme, an agitated, stormy passage in a dark minor key. We then hear several tunes from taken from the opera. The first, heard after another statement of those ominous six brass chords, is a melancholy theme played over pizzicato accompaniment with menacing rumbles of the fate theme underneath. Then we hear a soaring sung as a prayer in the opera by the leading lady Leonora, again with fragments of the fate theme heard in the background. Finally, one more theme is introduced in the , a theme in a major key that is far more cheerfully tuneful than any heard thus far. La forza has, even by operatic standards, an usually high number of melodramatic deaths, as Leonora and both her father and brother are killed. (In the original version even the leading man Don Alvaro commits suicide as he sees his beloved Leonora die but that seems to have been too much for Russian audiences. In the final version he prays with his companion Padre Guardiano that her soul will rise to heaven.) The exuberant major key ending of the overture seems to suggest that, as cruel as the forces of destiny can be, they can be met with faith and courage.

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Concerto in D major for and , TrV292 (AV 144) by (1864 -1949)

On April 30, 1945, American tanks approached the villa of Richard Strauss in the Bavarian town of Garmisch. After soldiers had come to the house and informed other family members that the villa would need to be evacuated, the composer himself came out and said,”I am Richard Strauss, the composer of Rosenkavalier and .” As it happened, several officers were musically literate and ordered their men to show respect to Strauss. Strauss invited the soldiers inside, provided lunch, and by the end of the day an “Off limits “sign had been posted, freeing the family from immediate further harassment. Over the following weeks Strauss would entertain a number of Americans, including John de Lancie, a corporal in that United States army unit that was tasked with securing the area of Garmisch as the war came to end. In civilian life de Lancie was the principal oboist of the Pittsburgh Symphony and had the opportunity to hold lengthy discussions with the composer about and other matters. At one point he asked Strauss if he had ever considered writing an oboe , to which the composer answered a simple “no”, and the matter seemed to end there. Strauss would change his mind. The late blossoming of Strauss’s career has been called a kind of “Indian Summer”. Though he was a world renowned figure he suffered during the war as did all Germans. Essentially apolitical, he had been dragged into politics and was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer, a charge that was officially dropped by a de-Nazification board. (Much of Strauss’s cooperation with Nazi authorities was motivated by the desire to protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and her children as well as to help other musicians.) He suffered shortages of food and fuel as did other Germans and at war’s end his assets were frozen, limiting royalties from his works. Despite all these concerns, he was able to bring himself into a period of extraordinary creativity (he was in his 80’s ), producing such works as his Second Horn Concerto, Metamorphosen for , the Four Last Songs, and, yes, a delightful Oboe Concerto that has proven to be one of the most important twentieth century additions to that instrument’s repertoire. Strauss completed the concerto in September of 1945 and it was premiered in Zürich in February of 1946. Strauss had promised the rights for the American premiere to de Lancie, but in the meantime de Lancie had become a section player in the Philadelphia Orchestra and was forced to defer to the principal player for opportunities to perform solos. He therefore offered the premiere to his friend Mitch Miller, a name best known to millions as a record producer and the leader of a television sing-along show of popular music. Miller played the Strauss Concerto on a radio broadcast in 1948. John de Lancie, incidentally, would eventually become the principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, serving in that capacity for 23 years and then becoming the Director of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Like other works of this period, the Oboe Concerto harks back to an earlier time in Strauss’s career. He had produced his own brand of “modernist” music but now seemed to be the time to turn back to the classic forms and procedures of his early works. Although the concerto certainly sounds like Strauss, it is not far-fetched to think that his early idol Mozart lurked in the back of his mind, prompting one commentator to call it “an essay in rococo ”. The concerto is laid out in the usual three movement, fast-slow-fast form typical of , but here the movements are joined together. The work opens with a curiously tentative 4 note figure in the . The soloist then launches into a cheerful and charming movement of much continuous playing, giving the player little rest but showing that the oboe is capable of considerable agility. The movement ends quietly as the opening trill - like figure leads into the slow movement, where it also appears as an accompaniment. Here the oboe sings a soaring melody, showing why it had for several centuries been one of the most important lyrical voices of the orchestra. A closes the movement and leads into the finale, a rollicking Vivace which again calls for considerable virtuosity from the soloist. Another brief cadenza prepares us for a final surprise: a coda with its own distinctive dance-like character that brings the work to a graceful conclusion.

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Siegfried Idyll , WWV 103 by (1813 -1883)

On December 24, 1870, Cosima Wagner turned 33 years old. Because it apparently was her custom to defer to a Higher Power and celebrate her birthday on the 25th, on Christmas morning her husband presented her with an extraordinary birthday/Christmas present. Frau Wagner described the event in her diary:” As I awoke, my ear caught a sound, which swelled fuller and fuller; no longer could I imagine myself to be dreaming; music was sounding and such music! When it died away Richard came into my room with the children and offered me the score of the symphonic birthday poem. I was in tears but so was all the rest of the household. Richard had arranged his orchestra on the staircase, and thus was our Triebschen [the Wagners’ new villa on Lake Lucerne] consecrated forever. “ It should be said that the serenely beautiful new work was also a belated wedding gift as well as a celebration of the couple’s infant son Siegfried. Not to disillusion anyone about this charming scene of domestic bliss, but the Wagners were not exactly Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. Cosima was of exotic parentage, being the second illegitimate child of and his mistress, the Countess Marie d’Agoult. As is well known, Richard was never one to be unduly burdened by such quaint bourgeois notions as marital fidelity, and had begun an affair with Cosima some years earlier, while she was still married to Hans von Bülow, the distinguished pianist and conductor and, incidentally, one of the leading exponents of Wagner’s music. The affair produced no fewer than three illegitimate children for the couple including the aforementioned Siegfried, as well as a spectacular scandal that damaged the reputations and careers of all involved. Although the trio had lived for a time as a ménage à trois, after Wagner’s wife had obligingly died Cosima moved in with Wagner at Triebschen. Siegfried was born there in 1869 and when von Bülow finally granted Cosima a divorce, the couple married in August of 1870. All that is admittedly spicier than the usual stuff of program notes but casts considerable light on Wagner’s character and work. The importance to Wagner’s emotional life of his marriage to Cosima can hardly be overstated. At the age of 57 he had finally found domestic satisfaction and a measure of stability in what had been to that point a spectacularly stormy, difficult, and, one might say, operatic sort of life. Until he reached his fifties, hardly a year had passed that he had not contemplated suicide, despairing that his gargantuan ambitions could ever be fulfilled. Certainly no ordinary woman could have met his emotional needs – his narcissism was boundless and his ego a prodigy of nature. In his beloved Cosima he had finally found a woman who would accept him as he was and devote herself entirely to him. Siegfried Idyll is not only an exquisitely beautiful piece of orchestral writing but a unique personal document as well. Filled with private allusions, it was never intended for the public, and was not published until some years later when, much to the Wagners’ chagrin, a personal financial crisis forced them to do so. The subject of the work is, of course, Siegfried, the couple’s first male child, on whom the composer doted endlessly and who was born about the time that he was finishing his opera Siegfried. Much of the thematic material is taken from the opera, most importantly the serene first theme that dominates the entire work. This melody is Brünhilde’s theme (”Immortal was I”), which, in Wagner’s own words, represents “the purity and holiness of the child’s soul.” The second theme, representing the mother’s singing to the child, is appropriately a German lullaby called “Sleep, little Child, Sleep”, which is stated simply by the oboe and contrasts with the lush string texture heard up to that point. Other borrowings from the opera include allusions to the well known Forest Murmurs from Act II, including the song of the Forest Bird, and, of course, the famous horn call signifying the hero Siegfried in all his macho glory as a young man. The Idyll ends peacefully, as, again in Wagner’s own words, the child “ sleeps quietly with a happy smile…. After a final loving kiss from the mother, the hero rests in the care of God.”

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In the South (Alassio), op.50 by (1857 – 1934)

Italy has long held a magnetic attraction for artists of all sorts, and perhaps especially for those from northern climes. One of the best expressions of the attraction came from that lion of Teutonic intellect, Johann von Goethe, who, in his late thirties made a life-changing journey across the Alps, and recorded his impressions in various works including poems and his diary-like Italian Journey. In one poem he wrote , “We are all pilgrims who seek Italy”, referring of course not only to the climate, but also to Italy’s rich cultural treasures as well as a way of life that seemed freer than that of the constrained, cautious, Protestant north. Among the many musicians who thought as Goethe did and sought inspiration in Italy are such diverse figures as Handel, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Sibelius, and Richard Strauss. Added to those names is that of Edward Elgar, who in the winter of 1903-1904 took a family vacation in the town of Alassio on the Italian Riviera. Elgar’s career had sky- rocketed with the appearance of his masterpiece the in 1899 and, as the new hero of English music, a three day festival of his music was planned in his honor for March of 1904 at the Royal , Covent Garden. Although Elgar had hoped to make progress on a symphony, inspiration lagged, at least in part to rainy weather which did not match his expectations of “sunny Italy.” He did however, manage a shorter work which would be ready for the festival. That work is a kind of travelogue filled with the composer’s impressions of the area surrounding Alassio, a place of rustic, pastoral charm but also one with a violent history which had seen many an army on its soil. Elgar described his inspiration as follows:

“Then in a flash, it all came to me- the conflict of the armies on that very spot long ago, where I now stood – the contrast of the ruin and the shepherd – and then, all of a sudden, I came back to reality. In that time I had composed the overture - the rest was merely writing it down. “

Although Elgar called the work a concert overture it is actually a tone poem , that type of one movement work which evokes a literary, pictorial or other extra-musical idea , and which had been brought to its highest level in the 1880’s and 90’s by Richard Strauss. Listeners familiar with some of Strauss’s tone poems like Don Juan or Heldenleben will recognize the style as begins in triumphantly ebullient style. (Elgar was apparently sensitive about his debt to Strauss and asked the program annotator not to mention him.) Responding to the pleasures of the culture, Elgar himself called this opening theme expressive of the “Joy of Life (wine and macaroni). “ Next comes a quieter passage, suggesting shepherd’s music and the ruins of a church which the Elgar family visited. Soon however, the atmosphere changes violently as we hear music filled with shocking dissonances and strikingly brutal percussion effects, obviously suggesting the violent history of the region which Elgar had so vividly imagined. When the battle dies down we are led into a magical new world, as Elgar demonstrates his ability to produce marvelously delicate effects. Here a solo accompanied by harp plays an evocative melody which Elgar called a canto popolare (popular song) but finally admitted that he had written it himself. The tune is then passed to the horn and various other instruments, all illustrating Elgar’s great skill as an orchestrator. Finally, a recapitulation brings the work back to the jubilant tone of the beginning and the work concludes with the highest possible spirits, a fitting tribute to the place that Goethe described in one of his best known poems as “ the land where the lemons bloom.” * * *