The Dvořák Serenade for Strings Always Makes Me Think of the Freshness of Spring Time, with Feelings of Optimism and Amiable Associations
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The Dvořák Serenade for Strings always makes me think of the freshness of spring time, with feelings of optimism and amiable associations. The key of E major helps to convey the buoyancy and energy I sense so strongly in this delightful work. ERIC MCCRACKEN, NCS VIOLIN Orawa WOJCIECH KILAR BORN July 17, 1932, in Lviv, Ukraine; died December 29, 2013, in Katowice, Poland PREMIERE Composed 1986; first performance March 10, 1986, in Zakopane, Poland, by The Polish Chamber Orchestra, Wojciech Michniewski conducting OVERVIEW Polish composer Wojciech Kilar studied in his native country and in Paris with the mentor of so many mid- 20th-century composers, Nadia Boulanger. A composer of more than 130 film scores, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease (2000), Kilar has also composed five symphonies and a number of other orchestral and choral works. In the 1960s, he was a leader of the Polish avant-garde, considering John Cage “the pope of modern music.” But after the mid-1970s, much of his inspiration derived from the indigenous music of the highlands of southern Poland, where he has spent most of his life. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR Composed in 1986, Orawa — the name of a hilly region spanning the Polish-Slovakian border — is based on the folk melodies and rhythms of the region. Kilar’s music sounds like a cross between Béla Bartók and Phillip Glass. Like Bartók, Kilar works with short kernels of melody rather than entire songs or dances; like Glass, he repeats melodic fragments, making gradual changes in the melody and subtle variations in orchestration, all to a constant meter, or beat. In the nine or so minutes it takes to perform, Orawa progresses through a series of brief melodies, beginning from the barely audible to a screaming finale. INSTRUMENTATION Strings Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra TERRY MIZESKO BORN 1946, in Morehead City PREMIERE Composed 2017; the North Carolina Symphony gives the world premiere in these performances OVERVIEW A native of eastern North Carolina, bass trombonist Terry Mizesko is among that small number of the North Carolina Symphony’s homegrown composers. In addition to his 46 years in the back row of the orchestra, Mizesko has regularly faced the ensemble to conduct Holiday Pops and educational concerts. He has taught trombone at Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and St. Augustine’s College. His composing and arranging must be crammed into a hectic schedule of teaching, touring, and practicing. He holds a bachelor’s degree from East Carolina University — not in trombone, but in composition and theory. Mizesko’s first orchestral work, Highland Suite (1996), was a personal project; but since then, NCS has gone back to the well for a number of works from their in-house resource. In addition to Sketches from Pinehurst, the orchestra premiered Four Scenes for Flute and Orchestra (2001) and Last Voyage of the Currituck (2006). His colleagues, past and present, have also supported his habit. Former principal violist Hugh Partridge commissioned Sundays at Shackleford Banks for the Triangle Youth Philharmonic in 2006; and NCS Assistant Principal Clarinet Michael Cyzewski commissioned the Divertimento for Clarinet and String Quintet. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR Mizesko composed this concerto at the suggestion of NCS Principal Double Bass Leonid Finkelshteyn, to whom it is dedicated. Mizesko describes the first movement as dominated by the second theme, a Yiddish dance. The second movement is a Romanza within a march, showing the incongruity of a double bassist playing a concerto with an orchestra — he gives the goose-stepping march to the orchestra, interrupted by long lyrical phrases by the bass. Mizesko describes the Scherzo as an homage to Bruckner and Mahler: angular, at times angry, at times humorous. The finale features two dances evoking the peasant music of Eastern Europe — Yiddish in style, with a mix of Slavonic dances and pizzicato imitating a balalaika orchestra. INSTRUMENTATION Solo double bass, strings Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op. 22 ANTONÍN DVORÁK BORN September 8, 1841, near Prague; died May 1, 1904, in Prague PREMIERE Composed 1875; first performance December 10, 1876, in Prague, Adolf Čech conducting OVERVIEW Given his current stature as one of the foremost composers of the 19th century, Antonín Dvořák was something of a late bloomer, although not for want of musical talent and industry. Dvořák’s father was a butcher, and had expected his son to go into the family trade. Only after his uncle had agreed to finance the boy’s musical education was he able to follow his passion for music. Although trained as a church organist, Dvořák took his first job as principal viola in Prague’s new Provincial Theatre Orchestra. During this time, he practiced composition, producing songs, symphonies, and entire operas, but without recognition — much less appreciation — until he was in his 30s. Already influenced by the nationalist Bohemian style of Bedřich Smetana, Dvořák met and became a disciple of Brahms in 1875. Vienna’s famous curmudgeon music critic, Eduard Hanslick, also encouraged the not-so-young composer and gave him prominent billing in his reviews. In the same year, Brahms and Hanslick also supported him when he entered and won the competition for the Austrian State Prize in music for young, poor, and talented musicians (Dvořák won the competition twice more). The committee report stated that “...the applicant, who has never yet been able to acquire a piano of his own, deserves a grant to ease his strained circumstances and free him from anxiety in his creative work.” Brahms and Hanslick also urged Dvořák to move to Vienna, but his love for his native Bohemia kept him in Prague. Dvořák sensed condescension in the support and encouragement of the Austrian musical establishment and was resentful at being forced by economic necessity to accept government stipends. He nevertheless responded to this encouragement with a creative outpouring that included, in the course of a few months, the Symphony No. 5, the Piano Trio Op. 21, the Piano Quartet Op. 23, the Moravian Duets Op. 20, and the Serenade for Strings. Like Smetana, Dvořák freely incorporated folk elements into his music, utilizing characteristic peasant rhythms and melodic motives although seldom actually quoting entire folk melodies. The 19th-century serenade, true to its 18th-century origins, is less intense than a formal symphony, but this one sits on the fence between the two genres. Three of the five movements are expanded A–B–A structures, including the first, which one would have expected to be in sonata-allegro form. Nevertheless, the serenade does contain elements characteristic of more formal symphonic practices of the period: a slow movement that contrasts with the other four; a scherzo middle movement that, despite its title, does not completely conform to the scherzo/trio symphonic form. The finale, a combined rondo and sonata-allegro form, quotes the main theme of the opening movement, a unifying device common in many more weighty symphonies and chamber works of the period. INSTRUMENTATION Strings ©2018 Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn .