Merrill Conducts Bernstein & Brahms

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Ludwig van Beethoven:
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 “Choral”

One of history’s pivotal composers, Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16 or 17, 1770 in Bonn, and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827.  His Ninth Symphony, op. 125 was composed over a period of many years, most intensely between 1822 and 1824, culminating in its premiere in Vienna’s Kärtnertortheater on May 7, 1824.  It is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, timpani, and strings. The Winston-Salem Symphony’s most recent performances of this work occurred in October 2016.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony has acquired a status of universal approbation unmatched in the symphonic repertory. The British affectionately call Beethoven’s Ninth the “Choral” Symphony, while the Japanese, who each December present well over one hundred performances of it, have dubbed the work “Daiku” (“Big Nine”). It is a mainstay of concert halls and music festivals throughout the world. Wagner saw fit to conduct a performance of it when he laid the cornerstone of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1872.   In the summer of 1989 in China, revolutionary students gathered in Tiananmen Square and played its finale through loudspeakers in order to bolster their spirits. Later the same year, in Berlin, Leonard Bernstein led a ceremonious performance of it, changing Schiller’s “Freude” (Joy) to “Freiheit” (Freedom) in symbolic celebration of the razing of the Wall which had divided that city.

The Ninth is, at the same time, one of Beethoven’s most perplexing

compositions—a work that remains one of the world’s most revered musical masterpieces, but which is not without its problematic side. Its musical syntax is a curious mixture of complexity and simplicity, and over time critics have seen fit to assail it on both counts, although virtually no composer after Beethoven could escape the Ninth’s immense shadow. Stemming as it did from a particular time and circumstance—Vienna during the during the age of Metternich—with all the musical, social, and cultural associations of that period, the Ninth Symphony has emerged as a ceremonial piece par excellence, befitting artistic and political summitry, as well as a populist symbol for freedom-loving citizens from Beijing to Berlin. The Ninth Symphony is much more than a monument of Western music: it is a cultural icon. UNESCO declared it to be the first musical composition to be entered into the Memory of the World Register in 2001.

Beethoven’s last symphony represents the culmination of two discrete projects.  The first was the fulfillment of a commission for a new symphony tendered by the Philharmonic Society of London in 1822, itself the partial satisfaction of an earlier request from the Society for two new symphonies. The other project dates back to 1792, the year in which we have the first evidence of Beethoven’s interest in setting Friedrich Schiller’s 1785 poem, An die Freude (Ode to Joy), to music. The joining of these separate enterprises into the Ninth Symphony did not occur until relatively late in the symphony’s evolution. First performed in Vienna on 7 May 1824, the Ninth Symphony immediately made a tremendous impact, despite its faulty execution.

Indeed, the work itself seems immeasurable. The opening Allegro un poco maestoso is far from the longest first movement that Beethoven wrote, yet its scale is greater than any other. One reason for this lies in the density of its content. From a barely audible murmur, fragments in the strings grow in speed and intensity as they coalesce to form the titanic first theme. The time scale in which this occurs is small, but its implication is immense. Never before, and rarely since, has such force ever been unleashed in music. The opening of the movement is unique, yet all subsequent imitations of it (Bruckner and Wagner, most notably) were conceived in fully self-conscious homage to Beethoven. Equally cataclysmic in its impact is the explosion in D major that launches the movement’s recapitulation. The powerful funereal peroration from the coda also has also been imitated—most notably by Gustav Mahler—but never equaled. The first movement of the Ninth Symphony is tragedy writ large.

The scherzo, which is placed as the symphony’s second movement, offers little relief. Tragedy is now re-played as farce as the strings and kettledrums hammer out its distinctive motif. After a full-scale treatment of the Molto vivace in sonata form, replete with a fugal exposition and metrical trickery in its development section, the pastoral trio in D major offers the first true moment of respite. The word scherzo means joke, but anyone familiar with Beethoven know that his humor often has its dark side, and the scherzo of the Ninth Symphony is one of the demonic ever penned. The final “joke” of this movement comes in its coda, where Beethoven threatens to repeat the trio section, only to thwart our expectation with an abrupt ending—a gesture that he used in the scherzo of his Seventh Symphony (1812).

The Adagio molto e cantabile third movement dwells in the realm of pure melody and dance.  Aestheticians in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were fond of making a distinction between the “sublime” (lofty) and the “beautiful” in art.  If the first two movements are representative of the former, the third movement of the Ninth Symphony surely is an exemplar of the latter. The movement is cast as a rondo with varied reprises for each of its two themes.  A distinguishing characteristic of the first theme is the woodwind echo that occurs at the end of each phrase of the hymnal theme played by the strings, a feature that is retained in each of its returns.  The second theme is a contrasting Andante moderato in triple meter. The literal midpoint of the movement (and, in fact, the entire symphony) is its ethereally calm development section, where the color of woodwinds (Harmoniemusik) dominates its landscape. The fourth horn emerges out of this heavenly serenity in a celebrated passage which culminates in an unaccompanied scale.  Listeners should attend to how this instrument continues to play a prominent, and often virtuosic, role throughout the remainder of the movement.

The onset of the finale rudely shatters the calm with a glancing dissonance and a passage that Wagner dubbed the “horror fanfare” (Schreckensfanfare). Evidence from Beethoven’s sketches reveal that Beethoven had considerable difficulty effecting a transition from the purely instrumental opening movements to the choral part of the finale. How, after all, does one introduce an element that never before had belonged to a genre? Using every bit of his ingenuity, and bringing his experience gained from previous works to bear (the “Choral” Fantasy and several piano sonatas), Beethoven hit upon the idea of using instrumental recitative—played here by the cellos and contrabasses—as a conduit from the world of purely instrumental music to that of instrumental/vocal.

The instrumental recitative is a superbly effective device, used as a link between fragmented reminiscences from the previous movements. The reason for these thematic recollections has been interpreted by analysts in various ways.  Most writers suggest that the recitative serves as a rebuff of the spirit of these earlier movements, each of which in turn is spurned by the cellos and basses until the famous “Joy” melody is presented.  But there is another possible reason why Beethoven elected to bring back these themes, a purpose that is as much prospective as it is retrospective. The elaborate multi-sectional finale plays out as an entire four-movement symphonic structure in miniature.  Viewed from this perspective, the episode of recitative and recollection is an introductory prefiguration of the landscape of the entire finale.

The presentation of the “Joy” theme in variations (both instrumental and vocal) comprises the gesture of a first “movement.”  The portions of Schiller’s An die Freude used in this part are the ones that are most overtly profane or pagan in spirit. This is followed by the “Turkish” music that acts as a kind of scherzo, which in turn yields to a solemn slow “movement” (Seid umschlungen, Millionen). This third section devotes itself to the most overtly sacred parts of Schiller’s poem. The re-entry of the “Turkish” percussion movements marks the onset of the “finale,” where Beethoven joins together the profane and the sacred in a symbolic marriage of Athens and Jerusalem. Joy, then, serves as the agent through which “all men become brothers.”

Notes by David B. Levy © 2008/2016/2019/2022

Carlos Simon: Fate Now Conquers

American composer Carlos Simon was born in 1986 in Washington, DC. The son of a preacher, he was raised on a mix of the improvisatory nature of Gospel music and the more formal structural elements found in Classical music. His formal musical studies were pursued at Morehouse College, Georgia State University, and the University of Michigan. Among his teachers at Michigan were Michael Daugherty and Evan Chambers. As a music educator, Simon has served on the music faculties at Spelman College and Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. He currently serves as Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. In 2021 the Sphinx Organization awarded him the Medal of Excellence, and he has been Composer-in-Residence for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Simon was nominated for a 2023 GRAMMY Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for his album, Requiem for the Enslaved. His five-minute-long orchestral composition, Fate Now Conquers, received its first performance on March 26, 2020 at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Since its premiere, it has been performed widely throughout the United States. The work is scored for Flute, 2 oboes, 2 Clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

The inspiration for Fate Now Conquers comes from an entry in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Tagebuch, a diary that he kept from the years 1812-1818. Although Beethoven’s formal education was sporadic, he prided himself on reading as much ancient and contemporary literature and philosophy available to him. We know that Homer was among the ancients with whom he was familiar because of two entries, one each from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Beethoven lamented that his familiarity with some authors was limited to translations. The reference fate in the Tagebuch, interestingly contains metrical scansions, indicating perhaps that he may have considered setting the quotation from the Iliad to music. Carlos Simon wrote of his Fate Now Conquers:

This piece was inspired by a journal entry from Ludwig van Beethoven’s notebook, written in 1815:

Iliad. The Twenty-Second Book:

But Fate now conquers; I am hers; and yet not she shall share in my renown; that life is left to every noble spirit and that some great deed shall beget that all lives shall inherit.

Using the beautifully fluid harmonic structure of the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, I have composed musical gestures that are representative of the unpredictable ways of fate. Jolting stabs, coupled with an agitated groove with every persona. Frenzied arpeggios in the strings that morph into an ambiguous cloud of free-flowing running passages depict the uncertainty of life that hovers over us.

We know that Beethoven strived to overcome many obstacles in his life and documented his aspirations to prevail despite his ailments. Whatever the specific reason for including this particularly profound passage from the Iliad, in the end, it seems that Beethoven relinquished himself to fate. Fate now conquers.

Those familiar with the Allegretto from Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7 will be hard pressed to hear actually how its “fluid harmonic structure” is articulated in Fate Now Conquers. Nevertheless, the Beethovenian idea of “seizing fate by the throat” and the struggle it represents come through clearly, perhaps representing for Carlos Simon, the social struggles that perplex our own society, as well as the hope of overcoming adversity in all its manifestations.

Program Note by David B. Levy/Carlos Simon, © 2023

Ludwig van Beethoven:
“Leonore” Overture No. 3, op 72b and “Mir ist so wunderbar” from Fidelio

One of history’s pivotal composers, Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 15 or 16, 1770 in Bonn, and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. Of the four overtures associated with his only opera, Fidelio (originally entitled Leonore), the Leonore Overture no. 3 was composed in 1805-6 for its first revision. Its first performance took place on 29 March 1806, in Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. The vocal quartet,“Mir ist so wunderbar,” occurs in Act I of the opera.  The overture is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings. The Winston-Salem Symphony first performed the overture in October 1959; its most recent performances took place in September 2012. These mark the first Symphony performances of the Act 1 quartet.

Leonore, ou L’amour conjugal is the title of a rescue drama written by the French playwright, Jean Nicolas Bouilly. The play would attract little attention nowadays were it not for the fact that Beethoven based his only opera, Fidelio (originally entitled Leonore), upon it. The play, originally set against the backdrop of the French revolution of 1789, is filled with the virtues of love, loyalty, and political freedom that were ever near and dear to the composer’s heart.

Fidelio exists in three versions, and Beethoven composed no fewer than four separate overtures for it. The original version was first produced in Vienna’s Theater an der Wien on November 20, 1805 under the worst possible circumstances. Beethoven not only had to deal with a weak libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner, but the occupation of the Austrian capital by Napoleon’s Grand Army only days earlier made the Viennese citizenry too frightened to leave home, let alone to attend the theater. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the enterprise failed miserably.

The overture used for this earliest version of the opera is now known, oddly, as Leonore Overture no. 2.  What is now referred to as the Leonore Overture no. 1 was composed in 1806-7 for a projected performance of Fidelio in Prague. The performance never took place, however, and this overture was never performed during Beethoven’s lifetime.

When Beethoven revised Fidelio in 1805-6, with improvements to the libretto provided by his friend Stephan von Breuning, he composed the Leonore Overture no. 3.  This work has many elements in common with the opera’s original overture, now known as the Leonore Overture no. 2—including off-stage trumpet calls—and it still was intended to be played before the opera begins. When Beethoven made his final revisions to the opera in 1814, he wrote an entirely new overture, known as the Fidelio Overture.  This new overture, however, raised a dilemma for those conductors who wish to use the musically superior Leonore Overture no. 3 within the context of the opera. Some conductors choose to perform it at the beginning of Act II. Others opt to place it at some point after the dungeon scene of Act II—the climactic moment when Leonore, disguised as the assistant jailer, Fidelio, rescues her unjustly imprisoned husband, Florestan, from murder at the hands of the evil and ambitious minister, Pizarro. The trouble with the first option is that the dramatic events of the scenes that follow are rendered dramatically redundant. The problem with placing the overture after the rescue scene is that the overture loses its impact, the audience having already experienced the very events that the overture exhibits in purely musical sounds. When performed as a concert piece, as it is on this program, however, none of these issues are of concern.

The overture’s introduction, after its suspenseful opening descriptive of Florestan’s dark subterranean prison cell, develops material derived from his introductory aria in Act II, “In des Lebens Frühlingstagen” (“In the Springtime of Life”), where the prisoner reflects on the justness of his cause and hope for liberation.  Most of the music of the main body of the sonata-form overture is based upon material not used in the opera itself, but it captures its heroic spirit admirably. The trumpet calls that announce the arrival of Don Fernando, the king’s minister, in the opera are placed at the moment of greatest musical tension for a piece cast in sonata-form—near the end of the development section. A wonderful element in the recapitulation is the addition of virtuosic writing for the principal flute and bassoon. The overture ends with an appropriately heroic coda that is similar to the one that ends the finale of his Symphony no. 3 (Eroica). The Leonore Overture no. 3 offers further confirmation of Beethoven’s genius as the unsurpassed master of dramatic expression through purely instrumental means.

The vocal quartet from Act I of Fidelio, “Mir ist so wunderbar” (I feel so strange), is a wonderful example of how four different characters (Marzelline, Fidelio, Rocco, and Jacquino) can express completely different emotional states while singing the same music. It begins with soft and profoundly moving introduction in the lower strings of the orchestra, followed by the singers each singing the same melody in the form of a round (or canon). The first character we hear is Marzelline, daughter of the jailer, Rocco. She believes that Fidelio (Leonore disguised as a young man) is in love with her. Recognizing this, Leonore/Fidelio comments on how precarious a moment this is. The affable jailor, Rocco, comments that Fidelio and Marzelline would make a fine couple, while Jacquino, Rocco’s assistant jailor who is in love with Marzelline, expresses his frustration and jealous anger over the situation.

While each of the singers carries the same tune, Beethoven expertly changes the orchestral accompaniment in the woodwinds to reflect the emotional state of each character. After each of the four characters make their entrance, the strings add a new and tender layer of sonority to the mix. The end result is one of the greatest glories of vocal ensemble writing ever created.

TEXT

Marzelline

I’m feeling so strange,
My heart feels so tight;
He loves me, that is clear,
How happy I shall be!

Leonore

How great is the danger!
How faint the ray of hope!
She loves me, that is clear,
O unspeakable pain!

Rocco

She loves him, that is clear;
Yes, my girl, he shall be yours!
A fine young couple;
They will be happy. 

Jacquino

My hair stands on end!
Her father concents.
I’m feeling so strange,
There’s nothing I can do!

Program Note by David B. Levy © 2012/2023

Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”

The Czech master Antonin Dvořák was born in Nelahozeves, near Kralupy, on September 8, 1841; and died in Prague, May 1, 1904. His “New World” Symphony remains his most popular work. Composed during his residency in the United States in 1892-3, the work received its premiere on December16, 1893 in New York’s Carnegie Hall. It is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns,  trumpet, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings. The most recent Winston-Salem Symphony performance of this work is January 2017, under the direction of Robert Moody.

In early 1991, a three-story brick row house at 327 East 17th Street in Manhattan was declared a national landmark.  A plaque above the first story declares that this was the New York home from 1892 to 1895 for the famous Czech composer Antonin Dvořák, who composed his Symphony no. 9 (“From the New World”) during a period from January to May 1893. Unfortunately, the brownstone was taken down to make room for the expansion of a nearby hospital and the corner near where it stood was renamed Dvořák Place. The composer moved to New York after Jeannette Thurber invited him to assume the directorate of the National Conservatory of Music.  Shortly after taking up residence there, Dvorák communicated the following to a friend in Prague:

“We [the composer, his wife, and two children] live four minutes from my school in a
very pleasant house.  Mr. Steinway sent me a piano, free, so we have one good piece of
furniture in the parlor.  The rent is $80 a month, a lot for us, but a normal price here.”

Ever since it received its first performance in New York City on December 16, 1893 with Anton Seidl conducting the New York Philharmonic, Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony has remained an extremely popular orchestral work.  The Czech master wrote two major works, as well as some smaller ones, during his extended visit to the United States, which included a short summer vacation spent with a colony of Czech immigrants in Spillville, Iowa.  One of these compositions was the String Quartet, op. 96 (“American”), the other was this, his last symphony.  Had Mrs. Thurber had her way, Dvořák also would have composed an opera based on Longfellow’s story of the Native Americans Minnehaha and Hiawatha, as she hoped that Dvořák would become the founder of a new American “school” of composition.  As we shall see, at least some of Mrs. Thurber’s hopes found expression in his “New World” Symphony.

Folk music had always played a vital role in Dvořák’s music, and his “American” efforts serve to remind us that many folk musics have elements in common.  The “New World” Symphony speaks its “American” with a distinctly Slavic accent.  The title for the work, “From the New World” is the composer’s own, and he explained that it was inspired by “impressions and greetings” from his host country.  Among these impressions must be counted the music of African-Americans, whose melodies he learned from one of his students at the Conservatory, Henry Thacker Burleigh.  It is difficult to determine just how well-versed Dvořák was in the authentic musical idiom of Native Americans, but the famous Largo movement of the “New World” Symphony, was inspired, according to the composer, by a passage from Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha.”  The famous English horn theme of this Largo is still known by many people as a “spiritual” with the words “Goin’ Home.”  The Symphony is filled with many such appealing folk-like themes.

Another important element in the “New World” Symphony is its cyclic construction, in which a motto theme, first heard near the beginning of the first movement, is brought back at strategic moments in the subsequent movements.  A careful listener will discern that this motto itself is the progenitor of other themes, thereby strengthening the thematic unity of the entire work.  Dvořák also provides many masterful moments of orchestration and harmony, none, perhaps, more beautiful than the succession of brass chords at the beginning and end of the Largo.

While the composer was still in America, he sent the manuscript for this symphony to his German publisher Simrock, who in turn showed them to Dvořák’s friend and advisor, Johannes Brahms.  Brahms saw fit to make certain corrections, and even some wholesale changes—especially in the finale—where he altered some of Dvořák’s tempos.

Notes by David B. Levy © 2005/2016

Edgar Meyer: Concerto No. 1 for Double Bass

Bassist and composer Edgar Meyer was born on November 24, 1960 in Oak Ridge, TN. His extraordinary talent as a soloist, composer, and collaborator has brought him together with a  vast array of musical artists, including Joshua Bell, Hilary Hahn, Yo-Yo Ma, Jerry Douglas, Béla Fleck, Zakir Hussain, Sam Bush, James Taylor, Chris Thile, Mike Marshall, Mark O’Connor, Alison Krauss, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Guy Clark, and the trio Nickel Creek. His earliest studies on the bass were with his father, Edgar Meyer, Sr., starting when he was five years old. In 2000, he won the Avery Fisher Prize and in 2002 he was named a MacArthur Fellow. Meyer’s collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma and Mark O’Connor on the widely acclaimed Sony Classical disc Appalachia Waltz brought him a wider audience and greater acclaim than one usually associates with a virtuoso on his instrument. The impressive variety of artists with whom Meyer works gives ample evidence of the breadth of his musical interests and accomplishments. Meyer is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Double Bass at Vanderbilt University‘s Blair School of Music, as well as at the Curtis Institute of Music. He is also an artist-faculty member of the Aspen Music Festival and School. Meyer is the author of three concertos for his instrument. The Concerto no. 1 in D Major was composed in 1993.

The following program notes were written by John Henken for the Los Angeles Philharmonic:

“Most of the music I’ve become interested in is hybrid in its origins,” Meyer says. “Classical music, of course, is unbelievably hybrid. Jazz is an obvious amalgam. Bluegrass comes from 18th-century Scottish and Irish folk music that made contact with the blues. By exploring music, you’re exploring everything.”

Meyer’s Bass Concerto No. 1 was composed in 1993 (he has since written another solo concerto and a Double Concerto for Cello and Bass) at the instigation of Peter Lloyd, principal bass of the Minnesota Orchestra, the ensemble with which Meyer played the premiere, conducted by Edo de Waart.

The opening solo lick, a bluesy upward swagger with an emphatic punctuation, sets the stylistically protean tone for the piece. The orchestra suggests something more ominous, eventually luring the soloist up into chill and glossy heights. The sense of barely stilled worry ends with the understated return of the opening lick.

The middle movement is in the three-part song form typical of classical concertos. In the first section the bass soars lyrically over a pizzicato accompaniment, sounding like a thoroughly acculturated Satie gymnopédie, although Meyer says that he picked up the idea from Haydn’s C-major Violin Concerto. The contrasting central section is agitated and driven, bustling urgently before slipping back into a state of lyric grace, this time with oboe joining the bass in tandem lines.

The finale explodes with fiddling fury, given only more energy by its rooted weight in the bass register, though this too slips its moorings and spins off into instrumental thin air. “I got the idea for this type of tune and the way of playing it from hearing Sam Bush play the violin and mandolin,” the composer says. (Bush was a partner in several projects with Meyer, going back to the 1980s and the newgrass band Strength in Numbers.) Celtic modality, blues engines, suggestions of John Adams in the scoring, and strenuous virtuosity all combine in this movement, also in a three-part form, with a free-floating middle and cadenza.

Program Note by David B. Levy/John Henken (2012), © 2016/2023

Giovanni Bottesini: Concerto No. 2 in b minor 

String bass virtuoso, composer, and conductor, Giovanni Bottesini was born in Crema, Lombardy on December 22, 1821 and died in Parma on July 7, 1889. His activities as a conductor were important, but he is best remembered for advancing the technique of the string or double bass in the Romantic era. His extraordinary skill as a performer resulted in a significant number of his own compositions for this instrument, including two concertos, chamber works, variations on themes from opera, and a host of assorted works for bass and piano. His Concerto for Contrabass and Orchestra no. 2 is considered one of his finest compositions.

One rarely thinks of the string (double) bass as the featured instrument for a concerto, yet the extraordinarily gifted Giovanni Bottesini has left two such works for posterity. The son of a musician, Bottesini started out as a violinist. His father, recognizing his son’s talent, decided to send him to the Milan Conservatory to further develop his skills, but the family did not have sufficient funds to pay tuition and expenses. As fate would have it, there were scholarships available for bass and bassoon. Amazingly, the young musician was able, after only a few weeks’ practice, to demonstrate enough skill and promise on the bass to gain admittance. A sign of his success was the awarding of a prize of 300 francs, which Bottesini used to purchase a fine instrument made in 1716 by Carlo Giuseppe Testore (the instrument is now in the possession of a private investor in Japan). Thus was launched the career of the “Paganini of the Double Bass.”

Bottesini’s virtuosity as a bassist, however, was not his only calling card. After an extended period of touring as a soloist that took him from Milan to America, Cuba, and England, he became a noted opera conductor in Paris, London, and Italy. His good friend Giuseppe Verdi was sufficiently impressed with Bottesini’s skill as a conductor to have him direct the premiere of his Aida in Cairo on December 27, 1871. Not surprisingly, Bottesini also was the composer of several operas—works that are seldom performed, despite the fact that some of them were well received at their premieres.

While the modern string bass has four strings, in the nineteenth century many performers, including Bottesini used only three, which Bottesini tuned a step higher than normal. This configuration makes the music of his works for the instrument all the more demanding. He also preferred the so-called “French” grip of the bow (overhand grip, as used by the cello, viola, and violin) over the underhand “German” grip. His Concerto no. 2 remains one of the instrument’s most demanding challenges, whose three movements explore the full range of its capability, from rapid passagework to full-throated operatic lyricism. Dramatic fire—as found in the music of his friend Verdi—also are hallmarks of this unusual composition.

Program Note by David B. Levy, 2015/2023

Jessie Montgomery: Strum

Born in New York City in 1981, African American composer, musician, and educator, Jessie Montgomery is one of the most vital voices of her generation. Her studies began at Manhattan’s Third Street Music School Settlement. She later went on to receive a degree in violin performance at Juilliard and a master’s degree in Composition for Film and Multimedia at New York University (2012). She has been actively involved with the Detroit-based Sphinx Organization in supporting and encouraging young African American and Latinx string instrumentalists. Her works have been performed by many significant arts institutions (Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, to name but a few). She also has worked collaboratively with numerous colleagues in both music and dance. Strum began its life as a string quintet in 2006. She later made a string quartet version (2008), reaching its final version in 2012 in celebration of the 15^th annual Sphinx Competition.

In her own program notes for Strum, Jessie Montgomery wrote:

Originally conceived for the formation of a cello quintet, the voicing is often spread wide over the ensemble, giving the music an expansive quality of sound. Within Strum I utilized texture motives, layers of rhythmic or harmonic ostinati that string together to form a bed of sound for melodies to weave in and out. The strumming pizzicato serves as a texture motive and the primary driving rhythmic underpinning of the piece. Drawing on American folk idioms and the spirit of dance and movement, the piece has a kind of narrative that begins with fleeting nostalgia and transforms into ecstatic celebration.

Living up to its title, the work uses extensive pizzicato (plucking) effects, evoking the idea of a banjo, over which evocative musical fragments are played (arco) with the bow. In kaleidoscope fashion, the music shifts from idea to idea, keeping the listeners on their toes from start to finish. The work, in its string quartet version, has been recorded by the Catalyst Quartet as part of the album Strum: Music for Strings (2015) on the Azica label.

Program note by David B. Levy/Jessie Montgomery, © 2021/2015

Maurice Ravel: La valse

Maurice Ravel was born March 7, 1875 of parents of Swiss and Basque descent in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées. He died December 28, 1937 in Paris. La valse had its first performance in Paris with Camille Chevillard conducting the Lamoureux Orchestra on December 12, 1920. It is orchestrated for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, glockenspiel, 2 harps, and strings. The work was last performed by the Winston-Salem Symphony on January 7, 8, and 10, 1995 with Peter Perret conducting.

Symphonic poem or ballet? Virtuoso work for piano or orchestral show piece? Sentimental reminiscence of Imperial Vienna or frenetic dance of death? La valse has at one time or another represented all of these things, and more. Ravel himself was not entirely certain. The work we know as La valse (The Waltz), choreographic poem for orchestra, completed in 1920, underwent many changes since its initial conception in 1906 under the provisional title (by 1914) of Wien (Vienna), “an apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, linked in my mind with the impression of a fantastic whirl of destiny” and homage to Johann Strauss. Aside from its purely musical evolution, one also ought to take into account the impact of two tragedies–one personal and the other global–the death of the composer’s mother, and the First World War.

The death of Marie Delouart Ravel on January 5, 1917 came as a devastating blow from which the composer would in some respects never recover. Letters from the end of 1919, when Ravel was finishing La valse, bear witness to his continuing grief. As for the war (Ravel served in the French army as a truck driver), it seems entirely plausible that this experience caused the composer to see the Viennese waltz in a different light. Interestingly, Ravel refused to join his colleagues in endorsing an official French ban on modern German and Austrian music during the war, asserting, according to Arbie Orenstein, that “the best way to defend French music would be for French composers to write good music” (Ravel: Man and Musician, New York, 1975). Ravel’s refusal to accept the Legion of Honor in 1920 is further evidence of his single-minded independent spirit. Yet, as Erik Satie observed: “Ravel refuses the Legion of Honor, but all of his music accepts it.” Unfortunately, the impresario, Sergei Diaghilev, with whom Ravel and so many other important composers (including Stravinsky) had worked, refused to accept La valse as a ballet, calling it a “masterpiece,” but more a “portrait of a ballet” than a scenario for a ballet proper. This rejection precipitated a permanent break between Ravel and Diaghilev. La valse received a concert performance with Camille Chevillard conducting the Lamoureux Orchestra on December 12, 1920 to considerable critical acclaim. Ida Rubinstein, for whom Ravel composed his Boléro, staged La valse as a ballet in Paris on May 23, 1929, but the piece is still more commonly heard on concert programs. Versions of La valse also exist for solo piano and for two pianos, although it is not entirely clear as to whether these preceded or followed the orchestral version.

La valse begins with low-pitched instruments, setting a sinister tone as the pulse of the triple-meter dance is established. The pulse is further colored by fragments of melodies and washes of orchestral sound. Carl E. Schorske gives an impressive characterization of the piece, viewing it as a metaphor for the “violent death of the nineteenth-century world”:

Although Ravel celebrates the destruction of the world of the waltz, he does not initially present that world as unified. The work opens rather with an adumbration of the individual parts, which will compose the whole: fragments of waltz themes, scattered over a brooding stillness. Gradually the parts find each other–the martial fanfare, the vigorous trot, the sweet obligato, the sweeping major melody. Each element is drawn, its own momentum magnetized, into the wider whole. Each unfolds its individuality as it joins its partners in the dance. The pace accelerates; almost imperceptibly the sweeping rhythm passes over into the compulsive, then into the frenzied. The concentric elements become eccentric, disengaged from the whole, thus transforming harmony into cacophony. The driving pace continues to build when suddenly caesuras appear in the rhythm; the auditor virtually stops to stare in horror at the void created when a major element for a moment falls silent, ceases to act. Partial paralysis of each element weakens the movement, and yet the whole is moving, relentlessly driving as only compulsive three-quarter time can. Through to the very end, when the waltz crashes in a cataclysm of sound, each theme continues to breathe its individuality, eccentric and distorted now, in the chaos of totality. (Fin-de-siècle Vienna, New York, 1979)

The ultimate destruction of the waltz is symbolized in the last measures by a quadruplet–a four-beat pattern that occupies the same space of time as three beats.

Program Note by David B. Levy, © 1994/2013

Douglas Cuomo: a raft, the sky, the wild sea

American composer Douglas J. Cuomo was born in Tuscon, AZ on February 13, 1958. He was raised in the San Francisco Bay area and Amherst, MA. Starting out his musical education at an early age on trumpet, he switched to guitar, and was fortunate to start learning from two jazz greats: drummer Max Roach and saxophonist Archie Shepp both of whom taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His studies continued at Wesleyan University and the University of Miami-Coral Gables with degrees in Jazz Studies. He later got involved in music for the theater and television, composing themes and music for shows such as “Sex and the City” (HBO) and “Now with Bill Moyers” (PBS). He has also written music in a wide variety of popular and classical idioms for numerous notable performers and ensembles, as well as winning many honors and grants. His Saxophone Concerto, a raft, the sky, the wild sea, was co-commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, and the Winston-Salem Symphony. Its world premiere took place on October 14, 2022 in Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall with soloist Joe Lovano and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra led by conductor Robert Spano. It is scored for solo tenor saxophone, 3 flutes (piccolo, alto flute), 3 oboes (English horn), 3 clarinets (bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, harp, and strings.

Composer Douglas J. Cuomo wrote the following notes for the European premiere of a raft, the sky, the wild sea:

While composing this piece I was imagining an inner voyage, one that is sometimes calm and reassuring, sometimes startling and turbulent. You’re being taken somewhere, but you’re unsure where you’re going or how you’ll get there. This uncertainty about the big picture puts the focus on what’s happening right now, in this instant. And then in the next instant, and the next, and the next. This is all of us, each on our own metaphysical raft under the open sky, trying to cross the wild sea. But for millions of people throughout the world this is not a metaphor. For those who are forced to flee their homeland to seek safety and a better life, it’s a description of a harrowing physical reality. This piece also recognizes these children, women and men, for whom the raft, the sky and the sea are indescribably dangerous, and for whom the journey is real.

Written for the world-renowned jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano, a raft, the sky, the wild sea draws on my background in both the jazz and classical worlds. Its musical language references the vocabularies of both contemporary classical music (building a large-scale three-movement musical structure, Lutosławski-influenced strategies of pitch organization and harmonic language, etc.) and jazz (traditional ballad playing, modal improvisation, the blues, etc.). As in a traditional concerto, a dialogue is set up between soloist and orchestra, however in this case much of the soloist’s part is improvised. The score prescribes very clearly exactly when the saxophone plays, but during the improvised sections, what is played is largely left to them. Rhythmic and harmonic guidelines are indicated, as well as the occasional description of mood or feel. Generally however, I am relying on the music of the orchestra itself to provide the inspiration for the improvising, knowing that each particular mood in the orchestra has the possibility of inspiring myriad improvised musical responses from the saxophone.
This is a musical exploration through the unknown, with each performance unique, acknowledging that every journey we take is one of high stakes, but also infinite possibility.

To leave so much up to the soloist requires a deep musical compatibility and trust — a special relationship between composer and performer. Joe’s tremendous artistry and wide-open musical mind was a guiding light during the writing of this piece, allowing me to compose with freedom, and with the confidence that he would bring exceptional beauty, raw power, sensitivity, and heightened emotion to his part.

Program Note by Douglas J. Cuomo (2022) and David B. Levy (2023)

(Achille-)Claude Debussy was born August 22, 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (near Paris) and died in Paris on March 25, 1918. His magnificent seascape, La mer, was composed between 1903-05. Its first performance took place in Paris at the Concerts Lamoureux on October 15, 1905 under the direction of Camille Chevillard. The work is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (cymbals and tam-tam), 2 harps, and strings.

As is the case with his Nocturnes (1893-99), La mer (“The Sea,” 1903-05) is a triptych. Unlike the former work, however, La mer’s three movements must be performed together in order retain their unity (Nuages, Fêtes, and Sirènes, the movements that comprise Nocturnes, could be–and often are–performed separately). La mer represents Debussy at his symphonic best, a fact that garnered criticism from both his friends and enemies. Debussy’s supporters sensed that he was moving too far from the abstract qualities of symbolism, such as is found in his Prelude to “The Afternoon of a faun” of 1894, in favor of a too “traditional” approach to composition. His detractors, on the other hand, argued that he did not go far enough, wishing La mer to be a full-fledged symphony. While some of the criticism toward La mer may have been driven by animosities deriving from scandals surrounding Debussy’s personal life (he had left his wife, Lily, for Emma Bardac, the wife of a prominent Parisian banker), the work obviously has triumphed over the objections of its earliest critics.

Debussy’s love of the sea was deeply felt, and in a letter to his publisher Jacques Durand, he reveals that under other circumstances he might have pursued a maritime career. In another letter he identifies the sea as “the thing in nature which best puts you in your place.” The original title for the first and third sketches were, respectively, “Mer belle aux iles sanguinaires” and “Le vent fait danser la mer” (“The Beautiful Sea with Happy Islands” and “The Wind Makes the Sea Dance”). The second sketch, “Jeux des vagues” (“Games of the Waves”) retained its original title in the final draft of the piece.

I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From Dawn to Noon on the Sea). The immense power of the sea, yet to be unleashed, is portrayed in a slow introduction. The first important theme is played by English horn and trumpet. As dawn rises, the movement of the sea becomes more active, as one feels (and sees in the bow movements of the violins) an undulating, rocking motion. Divided cellos announce the fully wakened forces of nature at work. The end of the sketch is marked by a majestic theme in the horns–the “chorale of the depths.”

II. Jeux des vagues (Games of the Waves). Debussy’s superb skills as an orchestrator come to the fore in this scherzo filled with brilliant effects and delicacy. The “games” range from the teasing to the powerfully rough and tumble variety.

III. Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea). At first it seems as though the winds adumbrate an approaching storm. A transformation of a figure from the first movement, a short note followed by a longer one, takes on a plaintive air described by some as akin to a siren’s song. This figure dominates the mood of the entire movement. Cellos and bassoons give an animated statement of the first theme from the opening sketch, which now grows more vehement. This yields eventually to a subtle invocation of the “chorale,” but the plaintive wail of the siren’s song returns in colorful guise, framed by a wonderful high note (harmonic) in the violins. A majestic sounding of the “chorale” in the full brass denotes the powerful coda–a peroration in praise of the sea, which, as Debussy says, has shown us “all her moods.”

Notes by David B. Levy © 2006/2022

George Frideric Handel: Messiah, HWV 56

George Frideric Handel was born on February 23, 1685, in Halle (Germany), and died on April 14, 1759, in London. He was buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poet’s Corner, an honor rarely afforded one who was not born in Britain. His English oratorio, Messiah, is far and away his best known and most beloved work. It takes its place among Handel’s works with several other oratorios, sacred and secular choral works, operas in Italian and English, and a large repertory of instrumental works that include solo keyboard music, chamber works, concertos for organ, concerti grossi, and orchestral suites. The best known of the latter category are the three suites that comprise the Water Music of 1717. Messiah, whose text was assembled from Charles Jennens’ excerpts from the Old and New Testament, was first performed in Dublin on April 13, 1742, as a charity concert. Its London debut took place in March of 1743. It is scored for vocal soloists, chorus, and an orchestra comprising two oboes, bassoon, two trumpets, timpani, strings, and basso continuo instruments (harpsichord and organ).

The history of Western music has produced a few monuments that tower above all other works in the imaginations of audiences. Among these we may count the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (his setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy), Bach’s Mass in B minor (less frequently performed on this side of the Atlantic than it deserves), and Handel’s Messiah. Messiah is universally recognized as a sacred music treasure and encompasses carefully selected and arranged passages from the Old Testament prophets (especially Isaiah) and the New Testament, which lays out a carefully crafted narrative that describes the advent of Jesus Christ, ending with his entry into Jerusalem (Part I), his rejection, death, resurrection, ascension, triumphant spread of the Gospel (Part II, culminating in the famous “Hallelujah” chorus), and ending with the promise of resurrection and eternal life to those who follow him (Part III)

Performances of Messiah during the Advent and Christmas seasons have become the norm, even though only Part I is applicable to that season (without the “Hallelujah” chorus). Handel’s decision to compose Messiah (and, indeed, all his other oratorios) was linked to the Lenten season, when opera houses were forced to shut their doors. Handel, ever the entrepreneur, realized that the application of operatic techniques to sacred topics would prove commercially viable during Lent. Because the performance of oratorios does not entail the cost of staging, sets, and costumes, they were considerably less expensive to produce than opera.

Messiah stands outside the norm for oratorios in three respects: Firstly, it comprises musical settings of direct citations from the 1611 Authorized Version of the English Bible, as well as passages derived from the Book of Common Prayer instead of taking its text from an opera-like libretto. Secondly, its theme of Christ’s role as the Messiah foretold in Hebrew prophecy deviates from the telling of stories about the Exodus from Egypt or heroes found in the Old Testament and other writings. But what truly distinguishes Messiah from all other oratorios is the sustained high level of its music.

Handel, through his melodic genius and experience as the composer of operas, was a master of expressive dramatic composition. Virtually every aria and duet in Messiah is a masterpiece unto itself. But what attracts audiences to Messiah even more, is the mastery displayed in the expression and humanity poured into every note of Handel’s magnificent choruses. Less densely imitative in texture than the choral works of Bach, Handel’s choruses are sufficiently approachable by amateur choirs to make them favorites of choral groups around the world. By the time he composed Messiah, Handel had fully mastered setting English words to music. And what splendid and inspiring settings they are! No wonder an English performance of the work in 1859 featured a chorus of 2,765 voices!

It was once believed that Handel composed all of Messiah in a blaze of creative fire in merely 24 days. While we now know that there are many sections of Messiah that were “borrowed” from previously composed works (material for the choruses, “His yoke is easy” and “And He shall purify,” for example, were arranged from a 1741 Italian chamber duet, “Quel fior che all’ alba ride”) does not detract one bit from the dramatic impact of this skillfully constructed masterpiece. Neither should Handel’s practical revisions of the original Dublin version for performance in London diminish our enjoyment at all. As Handel himself wrote upon completing the “Hallelujah” chorus on September 6, 1741, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God himself.” Audiences clearly still agree.

Program Note by David B. Levy, © 2007