About the Music October 3 & 5, 2010

RICHARD STRAUSS tably fall short of the ideal, the hero’s compul- Don Juan, Op. 20 sion, exultation, and finally, failure. The moment of his death is unmistakable in the music: after Richard Strauss was born in Munich in 1864 and died a huge climax the music suddenly stops, and a in Garmisch, Germany in 1948. He completed his tone piercing trumpet becomes the rapier thrust that poem Don Juan in 1888 and led the first performance kills the hero. Strauss’ ending echoes Lenau’s in Weimar the following year. The score calls for 3 words: as the hero lies with the life flowing out of flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bas- him, “only silence remains.” soons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trom- bones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings. GIOVANNI BOTTESINI Once Strauss left home and the shadow Concerto No. 2 for Double Bass and Orchestra of his father—a famous horn player with con- in B minor servative musical tastes—his new-found inde- pendence and the heady influence of new music Giovanni Bottesini was born in Crema, Italy in 1821 (especially Wagner’s Tristan) combined to unleash and died in Parma, Italy in 1889. He composed this an explosive talent. As a fiery youth barely into work in 1845 and performed it extensively himself. The his twenties he composed Macbeth, Don Juan, and Concerto is scored for solo double bass, flute, 2 oboes, 2 Death and Transfiguration, tone poems that at once bassoons, 2 horns, timpani, and strings. repudiated his previous (more traditional) music and pointed the way for modern romanticism. Even though Giovanni Bottesini was a successful Don Juan was almost the perfect metaphor for composer and celebrated conductor, his name Strauss’ newly radicalized sensibilities. is remembered—by bassists, at least—as one of Unlike the sixteenth century legend that the greatest double bass virtuosi who ever lived. portrayed Don Juan as a cad and a bounder—and Bottesini took up the bass almost by accident. His the hedonist of Mozart’s Don Giovanni—Strauss’ musician father had taught him the rudiments of Don Juan was different. His model came from music, and by age eleven Bottesini was proficient Nicolaus Lenau’s romantic updating of the story, in voice, timpani and violin. When he applied to Don Juan: A Dramatic Poem of 1844. Lenau’s char- the Milan Conservatory, the only scholarships acter is less of an aristocratic knave and more of open were for bassoon and bass; within a few a seeker. Don Juan’s irresistibility to women is weeks he was admitted as a bassist! more than an excuse to satiate himself: it is what Like most virtuoso instrumentalists of his drives him to seek the ideal woman. Since no real day Bottesini had to compose his own solo reper- woman can survive the test, each is rejected in toire in order to properly display his abilities. In turn. To Strauss, there is a noble aspect to this addition to numerous works for the bass, he has Don Juan—how else to explain the title charac- also left ten operas, a requiem mass, chamber ter’s magnificent portrayal by the big tune in the music and various orchestral works. As a conduc- horns? What’s more, this Don Juan is not dragged tor he led orchestras all over the world. While down to Hell (and his just punishment) by the engaged at the Teatro S. Benedetto in Venice, he Stone Guest. Lenau’s hero is despondent in his met Verdi and they became lifelong friends; Bot- failure, and sinks into an intense self-loathing. In tesini later conducted the premiere of Verdi’s Aida the end he commits suicide by deliberately let- in Cairo. ting his guard down in a duel. Perhaps the greatest testament to Botte- One can hear all this and more in Strauss’ sini’s virtuosity is that his concertos are consid- brilliant tone poem. There is Don Juan’s rakish ered difficult to this day. But while he shattered opening theme, the serial love scenes that inevi- his listeners’ expectations about the scope and technical capabilities of the double bass, Bottesini returns to the opening material, now elaborated, likewise expanded the expressive breadth of the and with the oboe joining the double bass. instrument as well. His Concerto No. 2 doesn’t Meyer calls the finale “a fiddle tune with come off as a mere virtuosic showpiece; rather it blues overtones,” inspired by the violin and man- sounds like a lyrical joyride for an exceptionally dolin playing of his frequent collaborator, Sam talented bass singer. Bush. Folksy double stops from the bass lead the The concerto begins with a slightly serious opening, and as the orchestra joins with quirky and highly romantic movement with lyricism at interjections the soloist seems to be in perpetual its core. The cadenza we hear tonight comes from motion. A calmer, almost non-rhythmic section Mr. Meyer, who admits that in his youthful exu- ensues, whereupon a flurry of double bass notes berance he threw in everything but the kitchen lead us back to the opening theme and a virtuosic sink; still, everything in the cadenza is organically finish. derived from the music that surrounds it, and its effect is breathtaking. The Andante is a reminder that Bottesini PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY was a renowned composer and conductor of op- Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 era, for this movement is a rhapsodic aria full of passion and drama. Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, Russia The finale returns us to the mood of the in 1840 and died in St. Petersburg in 1893. He com- first movement in a delightful amalgam of the posed his Fourth Symphony between 1876 and 1878, polonaise and the Cuban bolero. Another Meyer and it was first performed in 1878 in Moscow under cadenza leads us to an exciting, bravura finish the direction of Nikolai Rubinstein. The score calls for 2 that leaves us wishing for more. flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. EDGAR MEYER Concerto No. 1 for Double Bass & Orchestra In the interval between his third and in D Major fourth symphonies, two women entered Tchai- kovsky’s life and each had a profound effect. Edgar Meyer was born in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in The one lasting association was with a woman 1960. He composed this work in 1993 and was the he would never meet: Nadezhda von Meck, a soloist at the first performance with the Minnesota Or- wealthy widow who was obsessed with Tchai- chestra under the direction of Edo de Waart. The score kovsky’s music and who became his patron. Their calls for solo double bass, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, relationship-by-correspondence was to last four- 2 bassoons, 2 horns, and strings. teen years, and it resulted in hundreds of inti- mate letters that reveal much about Tchaikovsky, Edgar Meyer’s Double Bass Concerto No. 1 both man and composer. reflects the eclectic range of his own musical ex- The encounter with the second woman perience: as at home playing in a bluegrass band was the biggest debacle of the composer’s life. as he is playing classical chamber music, his She was one of his former students at the Mos- concerto brings to life the sensibilities of a unique cow Conservatory and the problem was that she musical personality. fell in love with him. Now, Tchaikovsky was a The double bass opens the first movement homosexual and profoundly uneasy about it. He alone, growling from the depths of its range in an tried to put her off, but the young woman per- ominous but bluesy melodic line. The movement sisted, finally telling him that she would commit spins out this idea with an inexorable rhythmic suicide if he didn’t marry her. He tried to explain pulse, finally leaving us alone with the double (probably too obliquely, given the times) that he bass again at the end. could not love her, but she didn’t—or wouldn’t— The double bass sings a long melodic understand. For reasons that can only be specu- line along with pizzicato strings in the second lated upon today, Tchaikovsky went ahead and movement; eventually a clarinet joins in a brief married her. and haunting duet. The faster and rhythmically- He realized at once that it was a horrible charged middle section comes as a complete sur- mistake. As the train taking the pair on their prise, but it’s over before you know it. The music honeymoon left the station, he became more and more agitated; before long, he was “on the point sense. In later works he would have more to say of screaming.” He got off the train (abandoning about his “governing idea” ; he could abandon the his bride) and returned to Moscow, where accord- woman he married, but his obsession with “fate” ing to some accounts he attempted suicide. would remain. Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony doesn’t tell this story, exactly. But when we see how he explained the work to Mme von Meck in a let- —Mark Rohr is the bass trombonist for the PSO. ter, it’s hard to avoid thinking of it. He told her Questions or comments? [email protected] that the first movement’s relentlessly-hammered opening theme is “the germ of the whole work, Visit Online Insights at PortlandSymphony.org suggestive of the idea of Fate, the inevitable pow- to learn more about this concert. er that hampers our search for happiness.” The restless first subject “describes feelings of depres- sion and hopelessness,” while the second subject is a “fleeting dream of happiness.” This dream is shattered by the return of the Fate theme, which reappears several times both as a sign of emo- tional upheaval and a signpost in the musical structure. The middle two movements offer a brief respite. The second movement, Tchaikovsky wrote, “has that melancholy mood of a solitary evening indoors, when the book one has picked up slips from one’s fingers, and a whole host of memories passes by.” In the third movement Tchaikovsky lets the music dance. The string players put down their bows and play pizzicato ostinato, transforming the orchestra into a giant balalaika whose melody alternates with a slightly- drunken peasant song and the echoes of a mili- tary band. In the Finale Tchaikovsky rejoins the bitter theme he left in the first movement. He wrote to von Meck: “If you can find no joy in yourself, look around you and mingle with the people. See how they enjoy themselves and devote themselves entirely to festivity. But hardly does one forget one’s sorrow when untiring Fate announces his presence again.” Fate returns in both its musical and metaphorical guises. It is not conquered as it is in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony—the work Tchaikovsky used as a model for his Fourth—but remains as immutable as ever. Tchaikovsky described his program only to Mme von Meck; others, he said, would find it “so obvious that everyone would understand its meaning, or at least its governing idea.” Over the years, many have made the connection between Tchaikovsky’s “Fate” theme and his homosexu- ality, and it is not too big a stretch. He lived in a world that condemned his nature, while filling him with guilt and the dread of discovery. It sure- ly “hampered his search for happiness” and may even have led him to marry against all common