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UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra (Hessischer Rundfunk) Dmitri Kitaenko, Music Director and Conductor Cho-Liang Lin, Violinist Sunday Afternoon, October 25, 1992, at 4:00 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan PROGRAM Passacaglia for Orchestra, Op. 1 ..................................Webern Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 .............................Brahms Allegro non troppo Adagio Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace INTERMISSION Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100 .................Prokofiev Andante Allegro marcato Adagio Allegro giocoso The Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra appears by arrangement with ICM Artists, Lid., New York, Lee Lamont, President. All concertgoers are invited to remain for the Third Annual University Musical Society Benefit Auction to take place in Hill Auditorium immediately following the concert. EIGHTH CONCERT OF THE 114TH SEASON 114TH ANNUAL CHORAL UNION SERIES PROGRAM NOTES Passacaglia, Op. 1 Until 17th-century composers began to Anton Webern (1883-1945) write them, passacaglias were Spanish street dances. As a musical form, the passacaglia is Anton Webem was a composer simply a set of continuous variations on a short whose importance and worth are not measured subject, usually just eight measures in length. In by the number of his brief compositions. His earlier examples, it was always in triple meter. A opus numbers run only to 31 and they are all passacaglia subject may be a big melody, as in recorded on just four long-playing records, but Bach's great C-minor Passacaglia for organ, or his musical expression is so condensed, his craft just a succession of chords, as in the Brahms so precise, his ideas so pure in conception, that Symphony, or a mere wisp of a tune, as here. his works affected the composers of Europe and Webern starts with a very simple, soft and America during the twenty-five years after the slow statement of his subject in the strings, Second World War more than did any other muted and plucked. There are 23 variations single influence. that fall into three groups. In the first, the music Webem's first music teacher was his rises in speed, volume and intensity, and then mother, an amateur pianist. He had a classical falls back to the opening levels. The second education as a young man and then studied group makes up a soft and slow central section music history and theory at the University of for the whole piece, with only a slight rise and Vienna, where he earned a doctorate in fall. The third group is freer, more mixed in musicology in 1906. He studied composition character and less tightly tied to the opening with Arnold Schoenberg from 1904 to 1908, subject. The music rises to a noble climax and and before long, Webern, his fellow-pupil, fades away in a soft closing coda. Alban Berg, and their teacher came to be seen as Note by Leonard Burkat a new, second Viennese school, historical successors of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, whose careers had been interlocked there more earned his living than a century earlier. Webern Violin Concetto in D major, Op. 77 until the arrival of the Nazis in as a conductor Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Austria put an end to most of his professional work. He died, tragically, in an accidental Brahms' first concerto was for shooting by an American soldier. piano the D-minor Concerto and it was Most of Webem's mature works are tiny hissed at its second performance. Twenty years musical microcosms, miniatures in duration but later, the composer was again at work on a so weighty, so highly condensed, that two concerto, this one for violin. The Violin generations of musicians have devoted whole Concerto turned out to be of a decidedly lifetimes of study to them. This early Passacaglia different character than the First Piano is relatively large in scale. It was written in Concerto. It is franker, more exposed; it has 1908, the year in which Webem completed his more solo virtuosity; it is warmer and more studies in Vienna with Schoenberg and left for lyrical. It returns to the classical custom of his first important conducting engagement, at permitting a solo cadenza at the discretion (or Bad Ischl, a fashionable resort town where lack of it) of the performer. It is gentler and Brahms had spent many summers. In our time lacks the dark brooding of the D-minor Piano Webern's Op. 1 sounds almost Brahmsian. The Concerto. It sings in the manner of the Second themes and turns of phrase are modem in Symphony, to which it is related most nearly in shape, but they recall Brahms, and the point of chronology (the symphony was written passacaglia form is the one that Brahms chose in 1877, the concerto in 1878), and the place of for the finales of his Fourth Symphony and his composition in both cases was the town of Haydn Variations. Portschach in the Austrian Alps, near the Italian frontier. Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, Op. 100 Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) The oft-remarked collaboration between Brahms and the great violinist Joachim came to In an interview with Robert almost nothing in the final version of the Magidoff, an account of which appeared in the concerto. Brahms asked for help from the New York Times in 1945, Prokofiev said of his violinist because Brahms was a pianist. Joachim Fifth Symphony that "It was a very important made many suggestions, most of them aimed at composition for me, since it marked my return removing some of the more painful difficulties to the symphonic form after a long interval from the solo part. Brahms took the suggestions my Fourth Symphony was written in 1928.1 and then ignored them. Joachim did write out regard the Fifth Symphony as a culmination of the first movement cadenza, perhaps the major a large period of my creative life. 1 conceived it concession made by Brahms, and the composer as a symphony on the greatness of the human added the tempo designation non troppo vivace spirit. When war broke out, 1 felt that everyone after the allegro giocoso of the third movement at must do his share and I began composing the suggestion of Joachim. But even this is songs, marches for the front. But soon events meaningless, because violinists now play the assumed such gigantic and far-reaching scope movement as fast as is humanly possible. In any as to demand larger canvases. I wrote the case, the difficulties clearly limit the tempo Symphonic Suite 1941, reflecting my first within certain bounds. impressions of the war. Then I wrote War and The main theme of the first movement Peace. This opera was conceived before the war, (Allegro non troppo) is announced by cellos, but the war made it compelling for me to violas, bassoons, and horns. This subject and complete it. ... Finally, I wrote my Fifth three contrasting song-like themes, together Symphony on which I had been working for with an energetic dotted figure, marcato, furnish several years, gathering themes for it in a special the thematic material of the first movement. The notebook. I always work that way and probably violin is introduced, after almost a hundred that is why I write so fast. The entire score of measures for the orchestra alone, in an extended the Fifth was written in one month in the section, chiefly of passage-work, as a preamble summer of 1944. It took another month to to the exposition of the chief theme. The orchestrate it, and in between I wrote the score caressing and delicate weaving of the solo for Eisenstein's film, Ivan the Terrible." instrument about the melodic outlines of the Prokofiev composed the symphony at his song themes in the orchestra is most summer home in a picturesque Russian village unforgettable. near Ivanov. The work was first performed at a This feature is even more pronounced in concert of Prokofiev's music in the Grand Hall the second movement (Adagio) where the solo of the Moscow Conservatory. It was violin, having made its compliments to the chief immediately acclaimed as one of the most subject, announces a second theme that it important 20th-century Russian symphonic proceeds to embroider with captivating and works. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, under tender beauty. The Finale (Allegro giocoso, ma conductor Serge Koussevitsky, gave the work's non troppo vivace) is a virtuoso's paradise. The American premiere in November 1945. jocund chief theme, in thirds, is stated at once During a long absence from his native land by the solo violin. There is many a hazard for between 1918 and 1933, Prokofiev had won the soloist ticklish passage-work, double- acclaim as an international composer. Such stopping, arpeggios but there is much spirited works as the Classical Symphony (1917), the and fascinating music of rhythmical charm and Scythian Suite (1916), the opera The Love of gusto. Three Oranges (1921), which he composed for the Chicago Opera Association, and the ballet Chouf (1921) had, with their driving energy, clear designs, and bright colors, carried his name throughout the musical world. For those ABOUT THE ARTISTS listeners who have heard only this composer's witty Classical Symphony his first the present symphony may come as something of a Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra surprise, for here is a work cast in epic proportions. Founded in 1929, the Frankfurt The first movement is laid out in Radio Symphony Orchestra has been affiliated with traditional sonata form with exposition, diverse broadcasting institutions and systems development, recapitulation, and coda. There throughout its history. Its first conductor (until are five well-defined themes or motives.