RUDI STEPHAN ORCHESTRAL WORKS Includes Premiere Recording

CHSA 5040 Booklet cover 9/12/05 3:00 PM Page 1 CHSA 5040 CHANDOS SUPER AUDIO CD RUDI STEPHAN ORCHESTRAL WORKS includes premiere recording SERGEY STADLER violin MELBOURNE SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA • OLEG CAETANI CHAN 5040 BOOK.qxd 13/9/06 11:25 am Page 2 Rudi Stephan (1887–1915) 1 Music for Violin and Orchestra (1911)* 19:56 in One Movement Schott Archives Sehr getragen – Etwas belebter – Energisch bewegt – Sehr getragen – Ruhig fließende Bewegung – Wieder etwas lebhafter – [Langsames Tempo] – Ruhig – Lebhaft – Ruhig – Lebhaft – Breit – Lebhaft – Breit premiere recording 2 Music for Orchestra (1910) 24:30 in One Movement Heftig, nicht schnell – Gedehnt – Belebt – Ruhiger – Noch ruhiger – Belebt – Ruhiger – Wieder belebt – Ruhig – Bewegt – Sehr breit – Weniger breit – Gemessen – Sehr breit – Bewegt – Sehr breit – Lebhaft bewegt – Ruhiger – Bewegt 3 Music for Orchestra (1912) 18:34 in One Movement Langsam und gedehnt – Lebhaft – Langsam – Lebhaft – Langsam – Lebhaft – Breit – Lebhaft – Langsam – Lebhaft – Sehr breit – Lebhaft TT 63:10 Sergey Stadler violin* Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Daniel Kossov concertmaster Rudi Stephan Oleg Caetani 3 CHAN 5040 BOOK.qxd 13/9/06 11:25 am Page 4 Orchestra of the Munich Konzertverein. Built de théâtre by adding the full force of an organ Stephan: Music for Orchestra/Music for Violin and Orchestra on a slightly larger scale than the other works in a cataclysmic C minor. The coda which on this disc, the single-movement piece grows follows is of almost unsettling optimism as it organically out of a circling motion to and closes the piece in C major. Reviewing the On 29 September 1915 the twenty-eight-year- The generic titles – and Stephan’s habit of from particular musical events. It opens with a premiere, his sometime teacher Rudolf Louis old Rudi Stephan took a bullet to the brain in slow, painstaking work and continuous terse gesture (a decorated full cadence in described Stephan as the trenches of Galicia. It has been argued that revision – have led to considerable confusion: E minor) followed by a shimmering texture of a man still searching, perhaps straying at times, if Stephan had survived World War I the what is generally known as the Music for divided violas which introduces one of the but one who is pursuing a genuinely artistic goal evolution of western music would have been Orchestra, for instance, is actually a heavily work’s main themes, in canon between violins with a serious and lofty aim… a man who still has quite different. Just how different is impossible revised version of the second piece to which and flute. This theme will later appear in much to learn but is unquestionably gifted. to say: there is a mere handful of completed he gave that name. It reached its definitive inversion. One of the most striking passages It seems hard to believe that Stephan’s scores, but from the few surviving works (sadly, form in 1912 and soon became Stephan’s is a ‘nocturne’ scored for full orchestra, but Music for Violin and Orchestra (1911) was Allied bombing in World War II destroyed most best-known work. For various reasons, the first muted and playing pianissimo, which sounds criticised in the Berlin press as discordant and of Stephan’s remaining documents) it is clear Music for Orchestra of 1910 languished in like a dreamed reminiscence of the folk-tune cerebral in 1913. Its harmony is lush but that his was a major talent. obscurity for many years. When revived, it was ‘Bruder Martin’ (‘Frère Jacques’) used by diatonic and it explores a range of emotional Stephan was born in 1887, a few years given the unhelpful and quite inappropriate Mahler in his Symphony No. 1. Three solo landscapes as varied as those of Mahler. The after Stravinsky, Webern and Berg, in the title of ‘Symphonic Movement’ cellos introduce the work’s second main orchestration has a sensuous beauty ranging German city of Worms. His family, recognising (‘Symphonischer Satz’). While his musical theme, a six-note scale passage which appears from an opulent muscularity reminiscent of his musical potential, allowed him to leave language is firmly grounded in the tradition of in up- and downward forms, before yielding to Strauss to a delicate Debussyan transparency. school and travel, first to Frankfurt to study Liszt and Wagner – particularly Liszt’s the unexpected sound of the oboe d’amore. Formally a rondo, it consists of four harmony and piano full-time with Bernhard technique of motivic transformation – and Stephan’s writing for this instrument and its statements of the main thematic material Sekles, and a year later to Munich where he shows a composer fully aware of trends in the relative the cor anglais inevitably recalls Act III separated by contrasting episodes. There is studied counterpoint with Rudolf Louis. He is music of his time, Stephan was no dry of Tristan und Isolde and contributes to the nothing cerebral about the opening gesture, believed to have had some contact with Max formalist. His aesthetic seems related to that feeling described by Theodor Adorno in his with its ominous bass rumbling and Reger but there is no evidence of formal of the German art nouveau, or Jugendstil, work on Berg as ‘the addictive erotic passion passionate string chord answered by distant composition lessons. Solitary and sensitive, he which stressed organic form. Despite the of Jugendstil’. As a contrast, there is full, horns. The soloist enters almost immediately, worked long and hard to develop a distinctive intense labour that produced them, Stephan’s energetic writing; instability and tension are and plays almost continuously throughout the style, and at the age of twenty-one produced works give the impression of the unmediated generated by the use of harmony moving piece, but, like Mahler, Stephan draws from a his first major work, characteristically entitled unfolding of an emotional experience. between chords that lie a third apart and large orchestra an inexhaustible series of Opus 1 for Orchestra. As the composer The (first) Music for Orchestra (1910) was there is an almost Brucknerian climax in chamber music textures through which the explained, he wanted ‘no poetic title, not the premiered in Munich in January 1911 in the E minor which is stated twice. After the solo line passes. The first section, for instance, designation “tone poem”, nothing’. face of incomprehension and hostility from the second climax, Stephan achieves a true coup with its sinuous writing for cor anglais and 4 5 CHAN 5040 BOOK.qxd 13/9/06 11:25 am Page 6 gentle bell tones from the harp, is of based on material from the second section. Les Troyens. He taught at the St Petersburg Copland (CHAN 6580) and works by Bliss, breathtaking serenity and simplicity, providing There is one final version of the slow music, Conservatory from 1984 to 1989, was Chief Rubbra and Tippett (CHAN 6576). a foil for the burst of energetic writing which now with high-lying melodies and delicate Conductor and Music Director of the Nikolai follows. Later in the piece the orchestra offers harp figuration, which gives way to a jubilant, Rimsky-Korsakov State Opera and Ballet Discovered by Nadia Boulanger, with whom he passages of overwhelming power contrasted almost Sibelian coda. Theatre in St Petersburg from 1998 to 2002, studied for several years, Oleg Caetani attended with emphatic, terse gestures from the As we have seen, this work established and is the founder, Chief Conductor and conducting classes with Franco Ferrara and woodwinds. A kind of unaccompanied cadenza Stephan’s credentials. Sadly, we cannot know Artistic Director of the St Petersburg Stars composition classes with Irma Ravinale at the brings a lull before the final tutti, but the piece how Stephan’s career would have unfolded, Festival Symphony Orchestra. Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. After ends in a mood of unexpected serenity. and what effect it would have had on the studying conducting with Kirill Kondrashin at the The reworked (second) Music for Orchestra course of music history. We can, however, Australia’s Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Moscow Conservatory he went to St Petersburg (1912) was performed at the 1912 and 1913 regret the loss and be grateful for a small has developed a reputation for excellence, where he graduated under Ilya Musin, later festivals of the Allgemeiner Deutscher body of beautifully composed works. versatility and innovation over almost a winning the RAI Turin and Karajan competitions. Musikverein, establishing Stephan as a hundred years and has performed with such He has developed a particularly close significant composer of his generation and © 2005 Gordon Kerry renowned conductors as Mariss Jansons, relationship with the Munich Philharmonic leading to a contract with the publisher Paavo Järvi, David Runnicles, Igor Stravinsky, Orchestra, the Giuseppe Verdi Orchestra in Schott. The work’s slow introductory section Born in St Petersburg (then Leningrad) in Jeffrey Tate, Yan Pascal Tortelier, Osmo Milan, and the Dresden Staatskapelle. has the kind of mysterious lushness explored 1962, Sergey Stadler attended the Special Vänskä, Marcello Viotti and Simone Young. In 2001 he made his Australian debut with by composers as seemingly different as Berg Music School of the St Petersburg Under Markus Stenz, Chief Conductor and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, taking up and Debussy. After a muted opening, melodic Conservatory before studying at both the Artistic Director from 1998 to 2004, the the post as the Orchestra’s Chief Conductor and fragments for low divided strings and bass St Petersburg and Moscow conservatories, Orchestra went on tour to the USA, Canada, Artistic Director in January 2005. In 2001 he clarinet coalesce in a longer, wistful cor anglais going on to win a string of violin competitions, Japan, Korea, Europe, China and Russia.

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