Friday Evening, December 8, 2017, at 7:30 The Juilliard School presents Juilliard415 Robert Mealy , Director and Violin Eunji Lee , Harpsichord The Pleasure Garden: Music From Handel’s London GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL (1685–1759) Concerto grosso in G major, Op. 6, No. 1, from Twelve Grand Concertos in Seven Parts , Op. 6 (1740) A tempo giusto Allegro e forte Adagio Allegro Allegro ROBERT MEALY and SARAH JANE KENNER , Violin Concertino MORGAN LITTLE , Cello Concertino HANDEL Concerto grosso in B-flat major, Op. 6, No. 7 , HWV 325 (1739) Largo Allegro Largo Andante Hornpipe MICHAEL CHRISTIAN FESTING (1705–52) Concerto in G major, Op. 3, No. 9, from Twelve Concertos in Seven Parts (1742) Largo Allegro Largo Allegro Assai Hornpipe—Andante—Hornpipe JONATHAN SLADE and BETHANNE WALKER, Flute Concertino Program continues on next page Juilliard’s full-scholarship Historical Performance program was established and endowed in 2009 by the generous support of Bruce and Suzie Kovner. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not permitted in this auditorium. Information regarding gifts to the school may be obtained from the Juilliard School Development Office, 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-6588; (212) 799-5000, ext. 278 (juilliard.edu/giving). Alice Tully Hall Please make certain that all electronic devices are turned off during the performance. THOMAS ARNE (1710–78) Concerto No. 5 in G minor from Six Favourite Concertos for the Organ, Harpsichord, or Piano Forte (1793) Largo Allegro spirito Adagio Vivace EUNJI LEE , Harpsichord Intermission HANDEL Suite in F major from Water Music , HWV 348 (1717) Overture (Largo-Allegro) Adagio e Staccato Allegro—Andante—Allegro Minuet Andante Air Minuet Bourrée Hornpipe Andante Allegro Alla Hornpipe Performance time: approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes, including one intermission Notes on the Program This form of the concerto, where a small concertino trio is set against the full by Robert Mealy ripieno ensemble, was perfected first in Rome by Arcangelo Corelli in the late 17th The pleasure garden was a particularly century. A contemporary remarked upon 18th-century invention: a space open to all the dramatic effect of contrast inherent in who could pay a shilling, a pastoral oasis in the form: the midst of the new urban sprawl, a place for entertainment of all sorts. London had At the direction piano or p all are to play dozens of these pleasure gardens in the at once so softly and tenderly that one 18th and 19th centuries, and many of them barely hears them, at the direction forte offered a regular diet of music to entertain or f with so full a tone, from the first note the masses. In the gardens one could hear so marked, that the listeners are left, as it the latest airs from operas (which were were, astounded at such vehemence. ... By then published as “favorite airs from exactly observing this opposition or Vauxhall Gardens”) or—as we hear tonight— rivalry of the slow and the fast, the loud that new invention, the orchestral concert. and the soft, the fullness of the great The house band would entertain the prom - ensemble and the delicacy of the little enading citizens with diverting music, most trio, the ear is ravished by a singular frequently featuring the popular orchestral astonishment, as is the eye by the oppo - genre of the concerto grosso . sition of light and shade. Though this has often been reported by others, it cannot George Frideric Handel, who produced his be said or enjoined sufficiently. own Op. 6 concerti grossi as a tribute to Corelli’s Op. 6 concerti. In this collection, The English obsession with Corelli and his Handel takes Corelli’s model and greatly concerti grossi was part of a larger fascina - expands its proportions, with a sure sense tion for Italian culture. A young English of theatrical effect. The first concerto in gentleman would not consider his educa - this collection is a particularly good exam - tion finished without a year or two on the ple of this, with a nice balance of “learned” Grand Tour, examining the antiquities of (the fugue of the fourth movement, which Rome, collecting paintings and sculptures, rapidly devolves into a highly theatrical hearing operas, and often having a violin les - drama between the concertino and the rip - son with one of the great Roman violinists. ieno ) and “popular” (the cascading gigue of the last movement). For the first time, the ability to play the violin was considered as much a mark of culture One of the most striking works in Handel’s as one’s taste in buying art. It’s no surprise Op. 6 is the seventh concerto, which is that the moment when English nobility scored for orchestra throughout, with no were developing a taste for string playing is solo excursions. Like the Festing concerto, exactly the time when we get the first Op. 6, No. 7 ends with a gesture toward book on how to play the violin, Geminiani’s English tradition in the form of a hornpipe. The Art of the Violin . This is an especially quirky dance which Handel’s German friend Johann Mattheson The genre of the concerto grosso was par - said has “something so extraordinary that ticularly appealing for gentleman violinists one might think it originated from the court because the orchestral parts—the ripieno, composers of the North or South Pole.” or parts that filled out the picture—were often relatively straightforward, allowing The German composer Michael Christian the gentry to play alongside their teachers Festing was the music director at the who would take the more challenging con - Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens and led the certino parts. band there for more than a decade. Several of his Op. 2 concerti grossi are written for Just as English noblemen asked their a pair of flutes, rather than the usual vio - architects to build more lavish versions of lins, and display an elegant sense of galant the beautifully proportioned Italian villas of tunefulness. In his ninth concerto in this Palladio, so too with their composers. The set, the challenge of writing for the soft concerto grosso becomes, in the hands of 18th-century traverso is overcome by stag - George Frideric Handel and his contempo - ing the flutes as a separate ensemble, who raries, far more theatrical and more gener - are accompanied sometimes by the con - ously proportioned than the elegant classi - tinuo, and sometimes only by the violins cism of Corelli. The English concerto on their own. grosso is like walking through the rooms of a great country estate: each movement Another regular at these gardens was opens new vistas of elegant proportion, Thomas Arne, a composer best known with plenty of delightful details to admire. today for writing “Rule, Britannia” as part of his nationalistic epic Alfred . A son of a Tonight we present several different musi - well-to-do family, Arne was so keen on cal palaces, beginning with that most influ - music that he tormented his fellow stu - ential musical figure of 18th-century England, dents at Eton by practicing the recorder night and day. His father put together an In fact, despite a brief falling-out in 1713, English opera company for him in a theater Handel and George I got on so well that in the Haymarket, where Arne’s operatic Handel was asked to accompany the king version of Tom Thumb was heard in 1734; on a trip abroad in 1716. Shortly after his later Arne went on to write everything return, the king (feeling the need to delight from opera seria (a setting of Metastasio’s his nobles) proposed to sell subscriptions Artaserse ) to a fully orchestrated version of for a festive boat ride down the Thames. the hit ballad-opera The Beggar’s Opera. The impresario Baron Kilmanseck, who arranged this sort of thing, had to explain Arne’s Six Favourite Concertos for the Organ, that a pleasure cruise couldn’t really bring in Harpsichord or Piano Forte were only pub - that much in the way of subscription-money. lished posthumously in 1793, but they When he saw how crestfallen the king was, seem to have been intended for Arne’s son he diplomatically offered to fund it himself. Michael to play in venues like Vauxhall or Ranelagh Gardens in the 1750s. The sixth So it was that Handel was commis - concerto, in the serious key of G minor, sioned to write some of the greatest begins with a grand French overture party music of all time. We have a great before revealing itself as a harpsichord report of the occasion via that new concerto. The brief slow movement offers invention of the 18th century, the daily the soloist a chance to improvise exten - newspaper. The Daily Courant reported sively, while the last movement is a head - on Friday, July 19, 1717: long gigue reminiscent of Scarlatti’s brilliant keyboard compositions. On Wednesday Evening, at about 8, the King took Water at Whitehall in an open Moving from gardens to rivers, Handel ’s Barge, wherein were also the Dutchess Celebrated Water-Musick (as it was already of Bolton, the Dutchess of Newcastle, known in his lifetime) owes its creation to the Countess of Godolphin, Madam George I himself. This monarch had come Kilmanseck, and the Earl of Orkney. And to the English throne through a compli - went up the River towards Chelsea. cated genealogical transaction, in which Many other Barges with Persons of Quality English politicians managed to arrange that attended, and so great a Number of a safely Protestant descendant of James I, Boats, that the whole River in a manner king a century before, receive the crown was cover’d; a City Company’s Barge instead of the direct (but Catholic) heir.