Advance Program Notes Roanoke Symphony Orchestra Masterworks Concert Sunday, October 15, 2017, 3 PM
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Advance Program Notes Roanoke Symphony Orchestra Masterworks Concert Sunday, October 15, 2017, 3 PM These Advance Program Notes are provided online for our patrons who like to read about performances ahead of time. Printed programs will be provided to patrons at the performances. Programs are subject to change. Roanoke Symphony Orchestra Masterworks Concert David Stewart Wiley, conductor Jeffrey Biegel, piano Piano Concerto no. 5 in E-Flat Major, Emperor Ludwig van Beethoven I. Allegro II. Adagio III. Rondo: Allegro ma non troppo Jeffrey Biegel, piano INTERMISSION Symphony no. 4 in E Minor, op. 98 Joannes Brahms I. Allegro non troppo II. Andante moderato III. Alegro giocoso IV. Allegro energico e passionato This performance is supported in part by a gift from Mike and Candi Kelly. Roanoke Symphony Orchestra FIRST VIOLIN FLUTE Akemi Takayama, concertmaster Alycia Hugo, principal James Glazebrook, associate concertmaster Julee Hickcox Paul Kim Larry Chang PICCOLO Nicole Paglialonga Julee Hickcox Wendy Rawls OBOE Christi Salisbury William P. Parrish, principal M. Alan Pearce Michael Schultz Charlie Rickenbacker Amanda Gentile CLARINET Carmen Eby, principal SECOND VIOLIN Candice Kiser Matvey Lapin, principal Elise Blake, assistant principal BASSOON Martin Irving, assistant principal Cynthia Cioffari, acting principal Shaleen Powell Ryan Romine Kevin Matheson Martin Gordon Jane Wang Vladimir Kromin CONTRA BASSOON Donna Stewart Megan Cassada Brooke Mahanes HORN Brent Beasley Wally Easter, principal Jared Hall Abigail Pack VIOLA Dakota Corbliss Kathleen Overfield-Zook,principal Rodney Overstreet Andrea Houde TRUMPET Sam Phillips Paul Neebe, principal Johanna Beaver Thomas Bithell Lindsey Fowler Satoko Rickenbacker TROMBONE Christina Sienkiewicz Jay Crone Samuel Kephart Zachary Guiles Liz Lochbrunner John McGinness CELLO PERCUSSION Kelley Mikkelsen, principal William Ray, principal Carl Donakowski Hannah Pressley TIMPANI Alan Saucedo Annie Stevens Evan Richey Jeanine Wilkinson Rachel Sexton Edward Gant BASS John P. Smith IV, associate principal Michael DiTrolio Christopher Ewan Edward Leaf Brian Wahl Program Notes PIANO CONCERTO, NO. 5, IN E-FLAT MAJOR, EMPEROR Ludwig van Beethoven (b. 1770, Bonn, Germany; d. 1824, Vienna, Austria) There is a certain irony in the subtitle of Emperor that was later given to Beethoven’s fifth and final piano concerto, but never used by the composer himself. By the spring of 1809 when Beethoven was creating his Emperor Concerto, the last person he would have wanted to honor was the emperor of the day, Napoleon Bonaparte. Years earlier, he had angrily obliterated a dedication to the French leader he’d once admired from the title page of his Third Symphony, the Eroica, after he learned that Napoleon had just crowned himself Emperor. In May 1809 Napoleon’s armies were actually besieging the city of Vienna. Beethoven’s home was in the line of fire of the French cannons, and he was forced to flee to his brother’s house, where he holed up in the cellar with a pillow pressed to his still sensitive ears. But his work on his new concerto did not cease. And yet in many ways Emperor, taken in a more generic sense, is an appropriate title for this concerto. It is a work of imperial size and scope—particularly in its huge first movement—and it reflects its war-riven era in its virile, martial tone. Its key—E-Flat Major—was one of Beethoven’s favorites and one he associated with heroic thoughts; it is also the key of his Eroica Symphony. Sadly, Beethoven was never able to display his own powers as a pianist with this work. Although he had introduced all his other keyboard concertos to the public, his deafness was too far advanced for him to risk playing the 1810 premiere in Leipzig. The length and complexity of the sonata-form first movement demonstrate Beethoven’s new symphonic conception of the concerto. The opening is boldly innovative. First we hear the pianist sweeping over the keyboard in grand, toccata-like arpeggios and scales, punctuated by loud chords from the orchestra. Then the soloist allows the orchestra to present its long exposition of themes. The first theme, with its distinctive turn ornament, is introduced immediately. The second, a quirky little march, appears first in halting minor-mode form in the strings, then is immediately smoothed out and shifted to the major by the horns. Over the course of the movement, Beethoven will transform both these themes in a wondrous range of keys, moods, and figurations. After its long absence, the piano begins its version of the exposition with an ascending chromatic scale ending with a long, high trill. Throughout, Beethoven uses this scale as an elegant call-to-attention: whenever we hear it, we are being given notice that a new section of the movement is beginning. It will mark the opening of the development section and later the closing coda after the recapitulation. Just before that coda comes the usual moment for the soloist’s big cadenza. But here Beethoven has quashed the soloist’s customary right to improvise his own exhibition of virtuosity. Fearing the jarring improvisations other soloists might make, the composer wrote in Italian in the score, “don’t play a cadenza, but attack the following immediately.” He then carefully wrote out a brief series of variants on both his themes. A complete contrast to the extroverted first movement, movement two is a sublime, very inward elegy in B Major, a remote key from the home tonality of E-Flat. Two themes receive a quasi-variations treatment. The first and most important is the strings’ grave, almost religious theme heard at the opening. The second theme is the downward cascading music with which the piano enters. At the close of the movement, the pianist experiments hesitantly with a new melodic/rhythmic idea. Suddenly, the spark is struck, and the theme explodes into the exuberant rondo finale. Beethoven stresses the weak beats of his dancing meter, giving the theme an eccentric, hobbling gait. An important element is the incisive rhythm first heard in the horns; this martial, drum-like motive returns us to the wartime world of the concerto’s birth. Near the end, Beethoven gives this to the timpani, in eerie duet with the soloist, before the concerto’s triumphant finish. Program Notes, continued SYMPHONY, NO. 4, IN E MINOR Johannes Brahms (b. 1833, Hamburg, Germany; d. 1897, Vienna, Austria) Brahms’ last—and, in the opinion of many—greatest symphony made an inauspicious debut with its first audience, a small group of the composer’s friends (including conductor Hans Richter and Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick) gathered around two pianos in 1885 as Brahms and a colleague played through the score. They listened in stunned silence, then began tearing the work apart. Max Kalbeck, the composer’s first biographer, suggested Brahms publish the finale as a separate piece, throw out the third-movement scherzo, and rewrite the first two movements. A discouraged Brahms asked Kalbeck the next day, “if people like … you do not like my music, who can be expected to like it?” Fortunately, the musical public liked the Fourth Symphony much better than did Brahms’ friends. It was a resounding success at its premiere with the Meiningen Orchestra under the composer’s baton on October 25, 1885, and was equally applauded on a nine-city tour that followed, with Brahms and the distinguished conductor Hans von Bülow alternating on the podium. Von Bülow responded to the Fourth as we do today, calling it “stupendous … individual and rocklike. Incomparable strength from start to finish.” What could have been so distressing about this noble work to those first listeners, all sophisticated musical professionals? While composing it during the summers of 1884 and 1885 in Mürzzuschlag in southern Austria’s Styrian Alps, Brahms wrote to von Bülow, “it tastes of the climate hereabouts; the cherries are hardly sweet here, you wouldn’t eat them!” Certainly compared to his first three symphonies, the work has something of the bitterness of sour cherries in its austerity, harmonic bite, and predominantly tragic mood. It is the most tightly constructed of his symphonies, governed by an internal logic inspired by the strictness of its celebrated passacaglia finale. But listeners will be less aware of this than of the work’s amazing range of moods, its wealth of lyrical melody, and its overall drama. For Brahms, a firm structural foundation gave freedom for unfettered expressiveness. This is epitomized by the finale’s use of the Baroque passacaglia or chaconne form, in which a series of variations are created over a repeated theme. Brahms adopted his theme from Bach’s Cantata, no. 150, Nach Dir, Herr, verlanget mich (Toward You, Lord, I Long). In 1880, he had played this cantata for von Bülow and, pointing out the theme, suggested, “what would you say to a symphonic movement written on this theme some day?” Tonight’s performance of the beloved Fourth Symphony by Brahms has a noteworthy musical addition at the opening of the first movement. Maestro David Stewart Wiley has restored the original four-measure introduction by the composer in the Allegro non troppo first movement. A strong A Minor to E Minor tonal sonority in these four bars prepares us for the customary violin upbeat. This is an exact realization from the surviving manuscript scored in the composer’s hand and establishes the symphony’s home key. We hope you enjoy this RSO premiere restoration of the original opening measures of this masterwork, for it is not found on any existing recording to our knowledge! The violins’ sighing motive, descending then ascending, will be the cornerstone of Brahms’ symphonic cathedral; by movement’s end, this gentle idea will reach heights of dramatic pathos. The complete melody then unfolds in the violins, followed by a variation on it.