Bartók Concerto for Orchestra

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Beethoven

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.”

Carlos Simon

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.

Beethoven

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!

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.

Edgar Meyer

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.

Giovanni Bottesini

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

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.

Maurice Ravel

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.

Douglas Cuomo

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)

Claude Debussy

(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.”

George Frideric Handel

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.

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Concerto no. 2 in C Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 18

Sergei Vassilevich Rachmaninoff was born in Oneg, Novgorod on March 20/April 1, 1873 and died in Beverly Hills, CA on March 28, 1943*. Famed as both pianist and composer, Rachmaninoff left Russia after the Revolution of 1917, eventually taking up residence in the United States. His Piano Concerto no. 2 was composed in 1900-01, and received the first performance of its last two movements in Moscow on December 2/15, 1900 in Moscow. The first performance of the entire piece took place on October 27/November 9, 1901*. On both occasions the composer himself was the soloist, with Alexander Siloti conducting the Moscow Philharmonic. The Winston-Salem Symphony’s most recent performance of this concerto was in November 2019 with pianist Alexander Kobrin, Martin West conducting. The Concerto no. 2 is scored for solo piano, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings.

*NB: The variation of dates reflects the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

The Russian-born pianist and composer Rachmaninoff falls into the tradition of the great performer-composers of the Romantic style that included figures such as Niccolò Paganini and Franz Liszt. Like his great predecessors at their best, his music avoids the self-indulgent kind of virtuosity-for-its-own-sake practiced by less gifted musicians. His music often is quite sentimental, but his melodic gifts were more than sufficient to prevent it from becoming maudlin. Although Rachmaninoff composed a wide variety of music, he is best known for his works for the piano, and his Concerto no. 2 is by far the most frequently performed of the four that he composed. His Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini is also a popular favorite.

After the failure of his First Symphony in St. Petersburg, Rachmaninoff recorded in his Recollections that he lost all hope for any future success. In 1900 he sought psychiatric assistance from Dr. Nikolai Dahl, who, according to the composer, hypnotically persuaded him to continue work on a new piano concerto. Dr. Dahl’s positive approach seems to have worked and he became the recipient of the dedication of the Piano Concerto no. 2. The work received its first performance in 1901 in Moscow, and it was greeted with both critical and popular acclaim.

The concerto is in three broad movements. The first of these, Allegro moderato, begins quietly with chords solemnly played by the unaccompanied soloist. These grow in intensity, ushering in the lush first theme in the strings. A lyrical second theme emerges from the soloist, followed by a proper development section and a stirring recapitulation in martial style. The Adagio sostenuto is a movement of great beauty and tunefulness, whose serenity is only briefly interrupted by an animated middle section that calls for considerable dexterity. The last movement is marked Allegro scherzando and plays dramatically between the major and minor mode. As was the case in the first movement, the finale’s second subject is highly lyrical. Following the lead of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no. 1, which may have served as a model for this piece, Rachmaninoff demarcates the climax of the movement with a tutti statement of the lyrical theme which lends a triumphant and stirring conclusion to this late romantic masterpiece.

Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5, Op. 57

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was born in Saint Petersburg on September 12, 1906. He died in Moscow on August 9, 1975. He was one of the Soviet Union’s greatest composers. Although he composed in a wide variety of genres, including film scores, but is best known for his fifteen symphonies, which are among the finest examples of its kind from the mid-twentieth century. His Fifth Symphony was first performed in Leningrad (now, once again, St. Petersburg) on November 21, 1937. Its success was unequivocal and it remains of the landmark compositions of this century. It is scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (triangle, snare drum, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, bells, xylophone), 2 harps, piano, celesta, and strings. The work was last performed by the Winston-Salem Symphony in the 2016/2017 season under the baton of Maestro Robert Moody.

Of Shostakovich’s fifteen symphonies, the Fifth Symphony is his most popular and frequently performed work. A pejorative overtone creeps in, however, when one tries to define the word “popular” by seeking its opposite, such as when “popular” music (e.g., Rock, Hip-hop, or Traditional) is contrasted with “art” music (Symphonies, chamber music, Opera). How many of us, for example, have at some time or other characterized some “popular” music as “coarse, primitive, [or] vulgar”? These, however, are the precise words that appeared in a January 1936 article in Pravda entitled “Muddle Instead of Music,” an article (possibly authored by Joseph Stalin himself) that denounced Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District and ballet, The Limpid Stream. Thus began one of the saddest episodes in twentieth-century music history—the official exile of one of the Soviet Union’s most gifted talents. Those who dared to stand by Shostakovich, either personally or artistically, did so at grave risk to their own career, or even life.

The irony, however, was yet to come. Shostakovich sought to deal with Stalin’s rebuke through continued work on new compositions. His immense Fourth Symphony was written over the course of the subsequent months of 1936, but the work was withdrawn under suspicious circumstances shortly before its scheduled premiere in April. The Fifth Symphony, composed during the next year, enjoyed a much happier fate. One journalist dubbed the new symphony as “a Soviet artist’s practical, creative reply to just criticism,” a subtitle that was used for the first time at the Moscow premiere in 1938. Shostakovich, typically, neither endorsed nor renounced the title.

But did the Fifth Symphony truly represent the rehabilitative effort of a man who had fallen from the good graces of a repressive regime? Evidence that has recently surfaced in two books—Solomon Volkov’s Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich (London, 1979) and Elizabeth Wilson’s Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (Princeton, 1994)—paints a rather different portrait. Here we discover a composer who at first believed that his career lay in ruins. His strategy became the maintenance in public of humility and submission. In private, by contrast, Shostakovich set himself on a course of defiant resistance to Stalinist repression by encoding private warnings and references into his scores. Purely instrumental music, after all, has one advantage over works for the stage; censors, who for the most part are musical illiterates, have a harder time applying their political standards. One may recall here how, one hundred years earlier, the crafty Robert Schumann had slipped the forbidden “Marseilles” past the Viennese censors in his Faschingsschwank aus Wien.

Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony owes, as is the case with much of his other music, a debt of gratitude to the color and sardonic wit found in the music of Gustav Mahler. The powerful opening Moderato begins with a jagged figure treated imitatively in the strings. This paves the way for music of a haunting lyricism. After the first climax, a broad song emerges over a throbbing accompanying figure in dactyls. The gentle pulsation turns outright threatening with the introduction of the percussive sound of the piano and a quickening of speed. The music becomes increasingly frenetic, reaching shattering climaxes before returning to its majestic opening speed and demeanor. It ends shrouded in mystery as the celesta plays its haunting chromatic scales.

The second movement, Allegretto, is a saucy scherzo that dresses itself as a kind of sardonic waltz. Its cheeky character is highlighted by the color of the soprano clarinet and solo violin. The high spirit of this movement yields to the dramatic poignancy of the ensuing Largo. This movement begins soulfully in the divided strings. The highest violins soon introduce a new theme based upon a repeated-note figure. An ethereal duet for flutes over an undulating harp ostinato accompaniment follows. Later, the solo oboe introduces yet another haunting tune. A climax of terrific intensity is achieved based upon the high violin theme, but the tension finally breaks. The movement ends with the oboe theme, now played by celesta and harp (in bell-like harmonics), melting into a more optimistic major chord in the hushed strings.

The finale, Allegro non troppo, is famous for its rousing opening theme, played by trumpets, trombones, and tuba over the pounding kettledrums. This theme may have pleased Shostakovich’s socialist-realist critics, but they would have been less enthusiastic if they knew that its opening notes were derived from the first song, “Rebirth,” from the composer’s Four Pushkin Romances. Even more telling is a later theme in the movement bearing material that Shostakovich had set to the following words: “Thus delusions fall off/ My tormented soul/ And it reveals to me visions/ Of my former pure days.” A tumult of new themes follows, some of which are evocative of themes heard earlier in the symphony. A slowly oscillating ostinato in the violins takes over, leading to one of the real strokes of genius in the movement—the slow, soft reintroduction of the opening martial theme. The movement ends in a dignified blaze of glory as this theme arrives at its apotheosis in the resplendent brass. Perhaps this is what Shostakovich had in mind when he spoke of his Fifth Symphony as “the stabilization of a personality.” Few works can match these concluding pages for depicting the sheer triumph of the human spirit over adversity.

Jared Miller: Luster

Jared Miller was born in Los Angeles in 1988. Shortly thereafter his family moved to Burnaby, British Columbia. He pursued his undergraduate studies at the University of British Columbia. He later pursued a Master of Arts and Doctorate at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, where he studied musical composition with Samuel Adler and John Corigliano. In 2014 he became the composer-in-residence at the Victoria (BC) Symphony, a position he held for three years. He taught composition and music theory at Dalhousie University in Halifax before taking an appointment at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2022. According to his website, Miller has won numerous awards for composition that include a 2012 ASCAP Morton Gould Award, the 2011/12 Juilliard Orchestra Competition, three SOCAN awards for young composers (2011, 2015 and 2019) and SOCAN’s Jan V. Matejcek Award for Excellence in New Classical Composition in 2020. His Luster is the result of a commission for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the ensemble that gave the work its world premiere on June 15, 2018 with the DSO under the direction of Robert Spano.

Jared Miller kindly provided the following comments about Luster:

“When I received this commission to write for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, I immediately knew that I wanted to pay homage to the city’s vibrant musical past. After all, in addition to the DSO’s world-class music making under Leonard Slatkin over the past decade, Detroit is known for its invention and/or cultivation of many popular music genres including Motown, rap, and rock music. Upon reading more on the musical history of Detroit, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of my favorite musical genres – techno music – was also invented in Detroit. The sound-world of Luster is inspired by the thumping bass, instrumental colors, reverberation effects and multi-layered rhythmic texture that is found in techno, house and EDM music from the past 35 years.”

The piece begins with an aura shimmer for two flutes, producing a kind of echo effect, backed by high-pitched harmonics in the strings and wonderful colors emanating from the percussion. The shimmer grows in intensity as it spreads throughout the orchestra. As it reaches its climax, the tempo increases as new ideas are introduced, punctuated by complex rhythmic patterns. The dynamic level drops as the shimmer continues to take on new aspects. The reverberation effects in the flutes returns, along with the string harmonics, rounding out this highly engaging short showpiece for orchestra.

Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence, MA on August 25, 1918 and died in New York City on October 14, 1990. His career centered on musical composition and conducting, but he was also a gifted pianist. He preferred to call himself simply “musician.” Bernstein was, as his biography in the New Grove Dictionary puts it, “the most famous and successful native-born figure in the history of classical music in the USA”. His influence on a generation of musicians was immeasurable. Furthermore, his body of work successfully spanned and connected the sometimes disparate worlds of the concert music and musical theater. His legacy continues through his music, recordings, videos, and many books. His Symphonic Dances from West Side Story is the work of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, who in 1961 excerpted and orchestrated music from the popular Broadway musical under the guidance of the composer. The Symphonic Dances enjoyed its first performance on February 13, 1961, with Lukas Foss conducting the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, in a pension fund gala concert entitled “A Valentine for Leonard Bernstein.” The work is scored for 3 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes and English horn, 2 clarinets plus E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet, alto saxophone, 2 bassoons and contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, large percussion section, harp, piano, celesta, and strings. The last performance of Symphonic Dances from West Side Story by the Winston-Salem Symphony took place on the “Romeo and Juliet” concert during the 2005-06 season.

Leonard Bernstein’s enduring musical, West Side Story, opened at New York’s Winter Garden Theater on September 26, 1957. The text by Stephen Sondheim (after A. Laurents) is based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with the feuding Capulets and Montagues now represented by two rival gangs, the Sharks and the Jets, and the scenario removed from Verona to the streets of Manhattan. Among the popular tunes from West Side Story are “Maria,” “One Hand, One Heart,” “America,” “Tonight,” “I Feel Pretty,” and “Somewhere A Place for Us.” The show successfully combines jazz, lyricism, Latin-American rhythms, and ballet.

Bernstein had the good fortune to work with the superb choreographer, Jerome Robbins, for West Side Story. The two artists had previously worked together in 1944 on Fancy Free and again in 1946 on Facsimile. On the Town (1944) and Wonderful Town (1952) were earlier musicals by Bernstein that used dancing as a central feature of their style. The Symphonic Dances from West Side Story were excerpted and orchestrated under the composer’s direction in 1961 by Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal (who orchestrated the film version of the show), and have since become a regular part of the repertoire of symphony orchestras. Audiences will recognize several musical themes and moments from West Side Story in the Symphonic Dances, including “Somewhere” and a Cha-Cha version of “Maria.” The orchestra gets to shout out the word “Mambo” during one of the dance sequences, and also gets to snap their fingers.

Johannes Brahms: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major, Op. 77

Johannes Brahms was born on May 7, 1833 in Hamburg and died in Vienna on April 3, 1897. One of the dominant composers of the late nineteenth century, Brahms greatly enriched the repertory for piano, organ, chamber music, chorus, and orchestra. His only Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was composed in the summer and early fall of 1878 in one of his favorite locales, Pörtschach am Wörthersee in Carinthia (Austria). Brahms effected minor revisions after its premiere on January 1, 1879 in Leipzig with the composer conducting the Gewandhaus Orchestra with Joseph Joachim as soloist. It is scored for solo violin, 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Few would deny that the violin concertos of Beethoven and Brahms stand at the pinnacle of the genre. It is also true that Beethoven’s work served as a model for Brahms, resulting in many clear points of contact between the works. Both concertos, for example, use the orchestra extensively, lending a symphonic quality to them. Each work not only explores the virtuosic capabilities of the violin, but also its lyrical side. The first movement of both works follows the classical principle of tutti-solo alternation (a carryover from the Baroque ritornello form) in conjunction with the dialectic of sonata form. Yet, even while clinging to classical forms, both concertos ultimately transcend them. They are not just great violin concertos; they are superb musical compositions. As such, therefore, they tax their performers in both technical prowess and musicality.

Brahms’s Concerto emerged from the master’s highly productive summer of 1878, a period that also produced the Symphony no. 2, the First Sonata for Violin and Piano, and early work on the Second Piano Concerto. The genesis and growth of Brahms’s Violin Concerto owes to the composer’s continuing friendship and professional affiliation with the great violinist, Joseph Joachim. This virtuoso musician, who also was a composer of no small ability, offered much more than merely technical advice to the composer. The Brahms-Joachim correspondence reveals much valuable insight into the concerto’s compositional genesis. One document, for example, shows Joachim dissuading Brahms from his plan to extend the work into a four-movement composition through the addition of a scherzo (Those familiar with Brahms’s Piano Concerto no. 2 will be aware that the composer successfully added such a movement in that work). But Joachim surely was right in his instincts regarding the Violin Concerto. The three-movement design was perfect as it stood.

The magical moments in Brahms’s Violin Concerto are almost too numerous to count, but a few are worth noting. The first comes very near the start of the opening Allegro non troppo, when after a purely diatonic D-major opening paragraph, an unexpected surprise comes in the form of a shudder—a counterstatement that starts in the foreign key of C Major. The first entrance of the solo instrument takes place in a highly charged and dramatic D Minor. Also worthy of mention is the gentle and lyrical reentry of the orchestra after the first movement’s cadenza—one of several instances of the influence of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto (a work that was also performed, at Joachim’s insistence, at the premiere). Joachim composed and performed his own cadenza (still used by many violinists) for the first performance of the Brahms. Both the cadenza and Joachim’s superb playing of it, according to a letter from Brahms to a friend, trampled over this poignant moment with immediate applause from the audience.

Speaking of lyricism, it is difficult to imagine a more sublime melody than the F-Major oboe solo that inaugurates the Adagio second movement. Indeed, the scoring for woodwinds throughout this movement is incomparable. This writer, for one, lives for the end of the movement’s introduction, when in an astonishing sequence, the solo flute drops from an F natural in a high register to a low F sharp, followed by a rest before resolving sweetly to a G. The next two measures land the music gently in its final cadence in the home key. This sequence is repeated later in the movement by the solo violin.

The finale is a gypsy-inspired Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace, filled with technical challenges aplenty, as well as metrical subtleties, but never exceeding Brahms’s customary decorum. The movement is rounded out by a piquant and exciting coda, Poco più presto.

Antonín Dvořák: Carnival Overture, Op. 92

The Czech master Antonin Dvořák was born in Nelahozeves, near Kralupy, on September 8, 1841; and died in Prague, May 1, 1904. His Carnival Overture (originally entitled “Life”), composed In 1891 is one of his liveliest and most popular short works for orchestra. The work was first performed in Prague on April 28, 1892, just before the composer departed for the United States. It is scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.

Dvořák’s symphonies, particularly nos. Seven, Eight, and Nine (“From the New World”), the Cello Concerto, and the orchestrated version of his Slavonic Dances are his most frequently performed symphonic works. To this list may be added the one exception among his five symphonic poems, the Carnival Overture. This work, written in 1891, takes its place in the middle of a trilogy of concert overtures collectively labeled Nature, Life, and Love.

The overture’s title refers to the pre-Lenten season that is celebrated so colorfully in various parts of the world, culminating in Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras). The composer indicated that the Carnival Overture expresses the sentiments of “a lonely, contemplative wanderer reaching at twilight a city where a carnival is in full sway. On every side is heard the clangor of instruments mingled with the shouts of joy and unrestrained hilarity of people giving vent to their feelings in songs and dance tunes.” The lively opening and closing sections flank a more subdued middle part that may be indicative of the “wanderer” and his feelings. But it is the general exuberance of the outer sections, with their brilliant splashes of orchestral color that has endeared this work to audiences.

Béla Bartók
Concerto for Orchestra

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