Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra 2014-2015 Subscription Series March 20 and 22, 2015 JEANNETTE SORRELL, CONDUCTOR AND HARPSICHORD ANNE MARTINDALE WILLIAMS, CELLO CYNTHIA KOLEDO DEALMEIDA, OBOE DAVID T. PREMO, CELLO JEFFREY T. TURNER, CONTRABASS JENNIFER E. ROSS, VIOLIN JOHN B. MOORE, CONTRABASS LORNA MCGHEE, FLUTE NOAH BENDIX-BALGLEY, VIOLIN JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Sinfonia from Cantata BWV 42, “Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbaths” JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Suite (Ouverture) No. 2 for Flute, Strings and Continuo in B minor, BWV 1067 I. Ouverture II. Rondeau III. Sarabande IV. Bourrée I and II V. Polonaise and Double VI. Menuet VII. Badinerie Ms. McGhee ANTONIO VIVALDI Concerto for Two Cellos, Strings and Continuo in G Minor, R. 531 (P. 411) I. Allegro II. Largo III. Allegro Ms. Williams Mr. Premo Intermission WILHELM FRIEDEMANN BACH Fantasia for Harpsichord in D minor, F(alck) 19 following without pause … JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Finale (Allegro) from Sonata in D minor for Harpsichord, BWV 964 (after Sonata No. 2 for Unaccompanied Violin in A minor, BWV 1003) March 20-22, 2015, page 2 GEORG PHILIPP TELEMANN Grillen-Symphonie, TWV 50:1 I. Etwas lebhaft II. Tändelnd III. Presto JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Concerto for Oboe, Violin, Strings and Continuo in C minor, BWV 1060R I. Allegro II. Adagio III. Allegro Ms. DeAlmeida Mr. Bendix-Balgley ANTONIO VIVALDI Concerto for Two Violins, “La Follia” ARR. SORRELL (after the Sonata for Two Violins and Continuo in D minor, Op. 1, No. 12 [R. 63]) Ms. Ross Mr. Bendix-Balgley March 20-22, 2015, page 1 PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. RICHARD E. RODDA JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Born 21 March 1685 in Eisenach, Germany; died 28 July 1750 in Leipzig Sinfonia from Cantata No. 42, Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbaths (“And in the Evening of That Very Sabbath”) (1725) PREMIERE OF WORK: Leipzig, 8 April 1725; Thomaskirche; Johann Sebastian Bach, director THESE PERFORMANCES MARK THE PSO PREMIERE APPROXIMATE DURATION: 7 minutes INSTRUMENTATION: two oboes, bassoon, strings and continuo The cantata Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbaths (No. 42 in Wolfgang Schmieder’s standard catalog of Bach’s works — Bach Werke Verzeichnis), which takes as its subject Christ’s appearance in the midst of his disciples on the evening of the Resurrection, was composed in 1725 for the first Sunday after Easter, which fell on April 8th that year. The cantata is prefaced by a splendid Sinfonia whose majestic breadth, richness of scoring and expressive cogency would not have been out of place in the Brandenburg Concertos. JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Suite (Ouverture) No. 2 for Flute, Strings and Continuo in B minor, BWV 1067 (ca. 1738-1739 ?) PREMIERE OF WORK: unknown PSO PREMIERE: 18 January 1946; Syria Mosque; Fritz Reiner, conductor; Sebastian Caratelli, soloist APPROXIMATE DURATION: 19 minutes INSTRUMENTATION: flute, strings and continuo Though the exact date of the Orchestral Suite No. 2 is uncertain, the years during which it could have been composed circumscribe the most productive phase of Bach’s career. The set of orchestral parts in Bach’s hand that serves as the principal source for the work has been dated through the evidence of the paper’s watermark to 1738 or 1739, though this is apparently a performance copy for his Leipzig Collegium Musicum concerts that he extracted from an earlier manuscript score that is no longer extant. The eminent American musicologist Martin Bernstein conjectured that the Suite was written in the early 1730s for Pierre Gabriel Buffardin, first flutist at the court of the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland in Dresden, to which Bach was then actively seeking an appointment as composer. It has also been suggested that the Suite may have been composed soon after Bach arrived in Leipzig in 1723, when he fitted many of his cantatas with elaborate flute parts, or even as early as the period between 1717 to 1723, when he was director of music at Cöthen. Bach had met Buffardin in 1716 in Dresden through his (Bach’s) older brother Johann Jacob, who was a student of the flutist, and it is possible that the Second Suite was composed for him sometime thereafter at Cöthen, a fertile period that also witnessed the production of the three other Orchestral Suites, the Brandenburg Concertos, the Violin Concertos and much of Bach’s chamber music. The Suite would have made the perfect vehicle for Buffardin, who was renowned for his breath control, nimble technique and limpid tone. The Suite in B minor, is an inventive hybrid of dance and concerto forms in which the wind instrument is treated as both a reinforcing tone color for the first violin and as a virtuosic soloist. The work begins with a grandiose Overture based on the type devised by Lully — a slow, pompous opening section leading without pause to a spirited fugal passage in faster tempo. The majestic character of the opening section (though not its music) returns to round out the Overture’s form. The delicate Rondeau is based on an old French form in which the opening motive is heard three times, refrain-like. When the Sarabande emigrated to Spain from its birthplace in Mexico in the 16th century, it was so wild in its March 20-22, 2015, page 2 motions and so lascivious in its implications that Cervantes ridiculed it and Philip II suppressed it. The dance became considerably more tame when it was taken over into French and English music in the 17th century, and it was included as a regular movement of the instrumental suite by Froberger around 1650, when it had achieved the dignified manner in which it was known to Bach. The Bourrée was a French folk dance adopted by the court as early as the 16th century. The Polonaise seems to have originated in connection with Polish court ceremonies, and had become a separate instrumental genre by about 1700. The Menuet was originally a quick peasant dance from southwestern France, but it became more stately by Bach’s time. The closing Badinerie, whose name derives from the same etymological root as “badinage,” is a dancing showpiece of woodwind virtuosity. ANTONIO VIVALDI Born 4 March 1678 in Venice; died 28 July 1741 in Vienna Concerto for Two Cellos, Strings and Continuo in G minor, R. 531 (P. 411) PREMIERE OF WORK: unknown PSO PREMIERE: 3 March 2003; Katz Performing Arts Center; Andres Cardenes, conductor APPROXIMATE DURATION: 10 minutes INSTRUMENTATION: strings and continuo Vivaldi obtained his first official post in September 1703 at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, one of four institutions in Venice devoted to the care of orphaned, abandoned and poor girls. As part of its training, the school devoted much effort to the musical education of its wards, and there was an elaborate organization of administrators, teachers and associates who oversaw the activities of the students. Part of his duties as violin teacher required Vivaldi to compose at least two new concertos as well as other instrumental pieces each month for the regular public concerts given by the Ospedale. The featured performers in these works were occasionally members of the faculty, but usually they were the more advanced students — the difficulty of Vivaldi’s music is ample testimony to their skill. For his students and colleagues and on commission, Vivaldi wrote some three dozen concertos for cello: 27 for solo cello, one for two cellos, three for violin and cello, two for two violins and cello, one for violin and two cellos, and two for pairs of violins and cellos. The G minor Concerto for Two Cellos follows the three-movement structure (fast–slow–fast) characteristic of the late Baroque version of the form: an opening ritornello movement in which solo passages for the tandem cellos alternate with tutti sections for the full ensemble; a melodious Largo in a plaintive mood; and a vigorous finale that here takes on an almost tempestuous quality. WILHELM FRIEDEMANN BACH Born 22 November 1710 in Weimar; died 1 July 1784 in Berlin Fantasia for Harpsichord in D minor, F(alck) 19 (ca. 1770) Members of the Bach family, beginning with Johannes and Veit at the close of the 16th century, served the courts and churches of north Germany for over two centuries. Though the familial line is properly considered to have reached its apogee with Johann Sebastian (1685-1750), four of his sons, all trained by him, also became prominent musicians during the mid-18th-century transition from Baroque to Classicism. The eldest, Wilhelm Friedemann, displayed a substantial talent as both organist and composer, but he seems to have lived uncomfortably under his eminent father’s shadow, drifting through various jobs and vacillating in his works between his father’s waning idiom and the not-yet-matured Classical style. By the 1770s, when Friedemann Bach had come to realize that he could never match his father’s mastery of the most rigorous Baroque forms, he devoted himself to his career as a virtuoso performer and largely confined his creative ambitions to such improvisation-based styles as the keyboard fantasia. The Fantasia in D minor (F. 19) is made from a flurry of restless, broken chords and a slow, somber strain in sharply dotted rhythms. March 20-22, 2015, page 3 JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Finale (Allegro) from Sonata in D minor for Harpsichord, BWV 964 (after Sonata No. 2 for Unaccompanied Violin in A minor, BWV 1003) (before 1720) Bach composed the three sonatas and three partitas for unaccompanied violin before 1720, the date on the manuscript, while he was director of music at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen, north of Leipzig. Though there is not a letter, preface, contemporary account or shred of any other documentary evidence extant to shed light on the genesis and purpose of these pieces, the technical demands they impose on the player indicate that they were intended for a virtuoso performer: Johann Georg Pisendel, a student of Vivaldi, Jean Baptiste Volumier, leader of the Dresden court orchestra, and Joseph Spiess, concertmaster of the Cöthen orchestra, have been advanced as possible candidates.