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RIGHT HERE - WHERE WE LIVE |
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AUTUMN
CONCERT 2011 |
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Autumn Concert:
America's Heartbeat David E. Stern Carl Maria von Weber Howard Hanson
California-based composer David E. Stern (b. 1955) is a native of Brooklyn, New York, and much of his early music study and training was in that area. He so impressed Stanley Wolfe, a composer and Julliard School of Music faculty member, that Wolfe took Stern as a private student. Wolfe, himself, had studied with noted American composers William Bergsma, Vincent Persichetti, and Peter Mennin. Later Stern studied with composers George Perle and Arthur Berger. Stern's undergraduate studies included a bachelor's degree from the Mannes College of Music; his post-graduate work earned him a master's degree from Queen's College and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Center of City University of New York (CUNY). Stern has been active in several fields of American music - as composer, orchestrator, arranger, and copyist. He has worked with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, film composer Fred Karlin, music arranger Joey Melotti, and as a personal music assistant to singer Miss Peggy Lee. He does on occasions make forays into the popular and new wave genres, writing music that "tend[s] to emphasize a positive, spiritual nature, and also with social commentary in the tradition of the 60's protest songs, songs advocating peace." Several orchestral compositions figure large in Stern's symphonic output. In 2002, he premiered two works at Ball State University - Symphony No. 1 and the work on tonight's program, We Stand for Freedom: In Memoriam, September 11th, 2001. Clarinetist Leo Chelyapov and the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony premiered Stern's Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in Los Angeles in 2004. And, in 2006, Stern offered two tone poems for large orchestra devoted to Leonardo da Vinci - Da Vinci's Wings of Flight and Da Vinci's Riddle - both first performed by the New Haven Symphony. We Stand For Freedom: In Memoriam, September 11, 2001 is "an elegiac and eloquent musical statement about this pivotal moment in American history. From the composer: 'With love and prayers for all lives lost and all touched by this tragedy, to New York's finest and bravest fire, police, and rescue workers, and for the spirit of freedom that the Founding Fathers of our country envisioned as the mission of the United States of America to the world.'" Since its premiere in 2002, We Stand for Freedom has received numerous performances by orchestras around the country.
No composer typified the Romantic artist of legend than did Carl Maria Friedrich Ernst von Weber (1786 - 1826). Composer, pianist, guitarist, music critic, lithographer, and singer, the father of German Romantic opera lived a life that would easily serve as the basis of a novel from the pen of a Victor Hugo or as the subject of a painting by Eugène Delacroix. Little is known of Weber's life before the second decade of the nineteenth century, although the information that is available indicates that; obscure as it may be, that part of his life was quite eventful. Weber was born with a congenital hip-joint disorder that forced him to walk with a limp, and he suffered from illnesses, great and small, throughout his short life. Weber's early years were dominated by his father Franz Anton Weber, an excellent violinist, who had appropriated the title 'Baron' and the 'von' from an extinct Austrian lineage. Shortly after Carl Maria's birth, his father formed a theatrical company around the members of his family and the troupe spent the next ten years as a traveling road show. When that enterprise failed to bring lasting rewards, Franz Anton tried to pass off his son as a piano wunderkind, as another Mozart, but with only a modicum of success; young Carl Maria, while gifted at the keyboard, could not match in performance the promises of his father. The years 1798-1804 Weber spent with his father in various enterprises chiefly in the cities of Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna. During these years, he studied with Michael Haydn and Georg Joseph Vogler, and made such remarkable progress with Vogler, that his mentor recommended Weber to an appointment as conductor at the theatre in Breslau. Here, he worked tirelessly to improve the programming and orchestra standards to the point that he soon began to encounter opposition from orchestra members as well as music critics who were particularly offended by Weber's use of excessively fast tempos and esoteric repertroire. The only major composing he did was on an unfinished opera, Rübezahl. After an extended illness during which theater management and personnel conspired against him, Weber left Breslau. Eventually in 1807, he reached Stuttgart, and took a position as 'Private Secretary' to Duke Ludwig Friedrich Alexander. During his two and a half years at Stuttgart, his official duties imposed on his time to compose, and he almost abandoned his art save for the intervention of Danish composer Franz Danzi, who kept him engaged in music. But, again, fate intevened when Weber's father Franz Anton became embroiled in a financial imbroglio, resulting in the temporary imprisonment of father and son. Bad debts and accusations of embezzlement led to the two being banished from the city for life. Chagrined by his experiences in Stuttgart, Weber vowed to take control of his life and, for the remainder of his years, kept a journal of his day-to-day activities and expenses. Failing to gain any permanent employment in Mannheim or Darmstadt, he undertook to sell himself as a performer and as a composer. After 1810, he took to the concert stage, composed new works and revised older ones, and, in general, sought to ingratiate himself with his fellow musicians as well as with the public. For his frequent appearances as a pianist, conductor, and composer, he revised the First Symphony and composed the C major Piano Concerto, a set of variations for cello and orchestra, the Rondo for Soprano and Orchestra, Op.16 and a duet for two altos and orchestra. These works and other older pieces were picked up for publication by Simrock. Now, Weber's financial situation began to improve, and he never allowed himself again to fall into debt as he had done in Stuttgart. Weber arrived in Munich on March 14, 1811. With royal permission, he gave a concert at the court theatre on April 5, at which the court clarinettist Heinrich Joseph Baermann performed Weber's newly composed Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra in E-flat major, Op. 26, the first of a series of pieces Weber wrote for Baermann. The success of this work led immediately to royal commissions for two full-length clarinet concertos. His compositions for the clarinet, which include two concertos, a concertino, a quintet and a duo concertante, were written exclusively for Baermann and are considered the most significant works for the instrument from the early Romantic era. The Clarinet Concerto No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 74, came immediately after his Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F minor, Op. 73, and his Concertino for Clarinet. Written with Baermann's input, the work displays a thorough knowledge of the capacities of the instrument. Set in three movements, the Concerto in E flat opens with a challenging Allegro, moves through a beautiful Andante con moto, and closes with a impetuous Alla Polacca. His writing for the instrument is breathtakingly difficult but completely within the grasp of an experienced soloist.
Howard Harold Hanson (1896 - 1981) was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, of Swedish immigrants Hans and Hilma Hanson. His early music training was with his mother. He studied at Luther College in Wahoo, graduating in 1911, and then matriculated at the Institute of Musical Art, under the tutelage of Percy Goetschius, before receiving his Bachelor of Art degree at Northwestern University where he was an assistant teacher in 1915–16. Hanson then took a position as a theory and composition teacher at the College of the Pacific in California in 1916 and, three years later, he became dean of the Conservatory of Fine Arts. It was here that Hanson composed his first significant works including, among others, Concerto da Camera, Symphonic Legend, Symphonic Rhapsody, and piano pieces, such as Two Yuletide Pieces, and the Scandinavian Suite. In 1921, Hanson came to national attention following his selection as the first winner of the Prix de Rome in Music from the American Academy in Rome, awarded for both his California Forest Play and his symphonic poem Before the Dawn. Consequently, Hanson took up a three-year residency in Rome where he could, unfettered by the demands of teaching and conducting, devote himself to mastering the complexities of composition. This Italian sojourn proved to be a major component in Hanson's music; his compositions following his Italian retreat reveal a greater propensity to lush orchestrations a la Ottorino Respighi, for example, and his piece Mosaics was influenced by his specific study of Italian mosaics and, in general, by his study of Italian visual arts. On his return to the United States, Hanson assumed the directorship of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. During his forty-year tenure, he brought the school to a position of prominence as one of the most prestigious music schools in the country, if not the western hemisphere. He brought in major teaching talents to create and bolster the school's curricula; and, he improved the institute's orchestras to the point that they served him well in a series of recordings of the music of American composers for Mercury Records - recordings still valued today for their exceptional sound and authentic viewpoints. In fact, Hanson was a strong advocate of American serious music, and he himself esttimated that during his time at Rochester, he premiered works by more than 500 composers, totaling several thousand compositions. Hanson, in addition, dedicated himself to furthering the cause of American music when he founded the Institute of American Music in 1964 with the goal of disseminating the works of native composers to a broader public. His advocacy carried over to a deep involvement in American music associations and organizations. He helped found the National Music Council, served as president of the Music Teachers National Association and the National Association of Schools of Music. The recipient of many awards, Hanson was particularly proud of his Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 4 and his membership in the Swedish Royal Academy of Music. Toward the end of his life, he was rewarded with an election to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1979). As a conductior, Hanson championed American composers such as William Grant Still, John Alden Carpenter, Roy Harris, and Peter Mennin, and others. Those composers that he fostered most ardently were, as a rule, like himself neo-romantic in outlook. The success of his Symphony No. 2 no doubt had much to do with his continued composing in this vein, although he did make minor detours to experiment with other techniques, in particular in the more abstract Piano Concerto in G major, Op. 36, which exhibits a "prevalence of short thematic fragments and traces of jazz and Tin Pan Alley." Hanson was no innovator, yet his music was received by most listeners as fresh and intrinsically American, despite the Nordic touches reminiscent of Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius. Acerbic American composer and music critic Virgil Thomson once confided "I have never yet found in any work of [Hanson] a single phrase or turn of harmony that did not sound familiar." One of its themes, from the first of its three movements, is performed at the conclusion of all concerts at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, conducted by a student concertmaster after the conductor has left the stage. Another theme from the symphony was used over the closing credits of the sci-fi film Alien (1979) without Hanson's approval, but he declined to bring suit. And film composer John Williams utilized some motifs from the work in his film music for E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Program Notes © 2011 William H. Driver and Clinton Symphony Orchestra Association
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