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Chicago Symphony Orchestra Oct. 4, 2015, page PAGE 2 BIG ARTS 2020-2021 Series Sunday, January 24, 2021 TIMOTHY CHOOI, violin RICHARD FU, piano SAINT-SAËNS Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75 (25’) Allegro agitato — Adagio Allegro moderato — Allegro molto DVOŘÁK Romance in F minor, Op. 11 (12’) — INTERMISSION — FRANCK Sonata in A major (28’) Allegro ben moderato Allegro Recitativo — Fantasia: Ben moderato — Molto lento Allegretto poco mosso CHEN GANG Sunshine on Tashkurgan (7’) Jan. 24, 2021, page Notes on the Program by Dr. Richard E. Rodda Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75 Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) Composed in 1885. Camille Saint-Saëns was the Renaissance man among the great composers. His interests extended well beyond music to include the sciences (especially astronomy), theater, drawing and caricature, archeology, poetry, mathematics and literature. Critic Philip Hale left a memorable sketch of him: “He was of less than average height, thin, nervous, with a great and exposed forehead, hair habitually short, beard frosted. His eyes were almost level with his face. His eagle-beak would have excited the admiration of Sir Charles Napier, who once exclaimed: ‘Give me a man with plenty of nose.’ Irritable, whimsical, ironical, paradoxical, indulging in sudden changes of opinion, he was faithful to his friends, appreciative of certain rivals, kindly disposed toward young composers, zealous in practical assistance as well as verbal encouragement. [He was] a man that knew the world and sparkled in conversation; fond of society; at ease and on equal terms with leaders in art, literature, fashion.” In the compositions, Saint-Saëns always sought simplicity and clarity of form realized with appealing sonority, harmony and melody but devoid of excess pathos. “He who does not take thorough pleasure in a simple chord progression, well-constructed, beautiful in its arrangement, does not love music; he who does not prefer a lovely folk tune to a series of dissonant and pretentious chords does not love music,” he wrote in 1913. Saint-Saëns’ art is one of beauty, of precision, of formal perfection, a flawless realization by a master craftsman. Saint-Saëns was nearly fifty before he applied his elegant craft to the composition of a violin sonata. The Sonata in D minor, dedicated to the Belgian violinist and Paris Conservatoire faculty member Martin- Pierre-Joseph Marsick, was written in 1885, when the composer had finally regained his health on a trip to Algiers after the exhaustion occasioned by the premiere two years earlier of Henry VIII, the fifth of his thirteen operas. The Sonata is an evidence of the French interest in the traditional Classical genres of symphony, concerto and chamber music that flourished following the founding of the Société Nationale in 1871 by Saint-Saëns and some of his colleagues to foster the musical life of the country (and to redress the pervasive influence in France of Germanic Wagnerism after the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870). Saint-Saëns, who had been nurtured on the music literature of 18th-century Classicism, produced some three dozen chamber works during his long life, from the Quintet for Piano and Strings of 1855 (when he was twenty) to the Bassoon Sonata of 1921 (at age 86), a body of work that led the Irish musicologist and composer Arthur Hervey to comment, “It may be said with truth that Saint-Saëns was the first French composer who showed himself able to compete successfully in the intimate and yet supremely difficult genre [of chamber music] with the German masters of the past.” The Violin Sonata No. 1, like Saint-Saëns’ Third Symphony (“Organ”) and Fourth Piano Concerto, is divided into two large parts, each of which contains a pair of linked movements. The opening section of the Sonata is built from two themes: a melody of anxious melancholy in compound triple meter, and a broadly heroic strain given by the violin above the rippling accompaniment of the piano. These handsome themes are juxtaposed until they lead without pause to the Adagio, which is built on a contemplative song entrusted to the violin. The music becomes more animated as it proceeds, but rediscovers its halcyon demeanor by the end of the movement. Part II begins with a sparkling scherzo that recalls similar movements of Mendelssohn in its aerial sprightliness; a long-note melody in the violin provides contrast in the central trio section. The finale, which follows without pause, is an uninhibited display of blazing virtuosity for both participants — Saint-Saëns was a master pianist throughout his life; he practiced for two hours on the morning of the day he died in Algiers in 1921. Jan. 24, 2021, page Romance in F minor, Op. 11 Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) Arranged for violin and piano before 1879 from the F minor String Quartet of 1873. Early in 1873, the 32-year-old Antonín Dvořák had his opera King and Charcoal Burner accepted for performance by Prague’s Provisional Theater. After a few rehearsals, however, the Theater’s staff reconsidered its decision, and returned the score to the young composer as “unperformable.” (Dvořák later gave tacit agreement to this judgment by extensively revising the heavily Wagner-influenced score in 1881 and again in 1887.) The Provisional Theater’s rejection tempered the delight Dvořák had gained from the successful premiere of his cantata Hymnus during the spring, and caused him to undertake a wholesale reevaluation of his existing works. So extensive was his 1873 pruning of his juvenilia that he later kidded about “always having enough paper to build a fire.” Some of his frustration of those months following the rejection of King and Charcoal Burner was poured into a String Quartet in F minor that was apparently intended to have an autobiographical significance, similar to that of Smetana’s Quartet No. 1 in E minor, “From My Life,” composed three years later. Indeed, Dvořák may have conceived his piece for a chamber music society founded in Prague the preceding spring whose pianist was Smetana himself. Unfortunately, the society did not care for the Quartet, and the score lay in the composer’s desk unpublished and unperformed for six years. In 1879, after Dvořák had become associated with the Berlin publisher Simrock through the advocacy of Brahms and the critic Eduard Hanslick, he returned to the early F minor Quartet and adapted from its slow movement the Romance for Violin and Piano. Simrock issued the piece that same year as Dvořák’s Opus 11. (The complete Quartet was not published until 1929.) The Romance is a sweetly melancholy nocturne, filled with tender, twilit emotions. Following an ethereal introduction, the violin quietly sings the work’s soulful principal melody above a simple, rocking background. The center of the piece comprises a soaring theme for the violin, a gently swaying motive in waltz rhythm, and a more strongly marked section. The violin recalls the thoughtful mood of the opening before turning from the expressive key of F minor to the brighter tonality of F major to bring the lovely Romance to a contented close. Sonata in A major César Franck (1822-1890) Composed in 1886. Premiered on December 16, 1886 in Brussels by violinist Eugene Ysaÿe and pianist Léontine Bordes-Pène. Franck first considered writing a violin sonata in 1859, when he offered to compose such a piece for Cosima von Bülow (née Liszt, later Wagner) in appreciation for some kind things she had said about his vocal music. He was, however, just then thoroughly absorbed with his new position as organist at Ste.- Clotilde, and was unable to compose anything that year except a short organ piece and a hymn. (His application to his duties had its reward — he occupied the prestigious post at Ste.-Clotilde until his death 31 years later.) No evidence of any work on the proposed sonata for Cosima has ever come to light, and it was not until twenty years later that he first entered the realm of chamber music with his Piano Quintet of 1879. Franck’s next foray into the chamber genres came seven years after the Quintet with his Sonata for Violin and Piano, which was composed as a wedding gift for his friend and Belgian compatriot, the dazzling virtuoso Eugene Ysaÿe, who had been living in Paris since 1883 and befriending most of the leading French musicians; Ysaÿe first played the piece privately at the wedding ceremony on September 28, 1886. In tailoring the Sonata to the warm lyricism for which Ysaÿe’s violin playing was known, Franck Jan. 24, 2021, page created a work that won immediate and enduring approval, and which was instrumental in spreading the appreciation for his music beyond his formerly limited coterie of students and local devotees. The formal premiere, given by Ysaÿe and pianist Léontine Bordes-Pène at the Musée moderne de peinture in Brussels on December 16, 1886, was an extraordinary event, of which Franck’s pupil Vincent d’Indy left the following account: “It was already growing dark as the Sonata began. After the first Allegretto, the players could hardly read their music. Unfortunately, museum regulations forbade any artificial light whatever in rooms containing paintings; the mere striking of a match would have been an offense. The audience was about to be asked to leave but, brimful of enthusiasm, they refused to budge. At this point, Ysaÿe struck his music stand with his bow, demanding, ‘Let’s go on!’ Then, wonder of wonders, amid darkness that now rendered them virtually invisible, the two artists played the last three movements from memory with a fire and passion the more astonishing in that there was a total lack of the usual visible externals that enhance a concert performance.” In tailoring the Sonata to the warm lyricism for which Ysaÿe’s violin playing was known, Franck created a work that won immediate and enduring approval and was instrumental in spreading the appreciation for his music beyond his formerly limited coterie of students and local devotees.
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