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RIGHT HERE - WHERE WE LIVE |
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CHAMBER CONCERT 2009 |
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Chamber
Music Concert
Vaclav Nelhybel Paul Hindemith
Russian composer Victor Ewald (1860-1935) was a member of a group of Russian professionals who took to music as an avocation, gentleman musicians, if you will. Ewald was by training a civil engineer, a field in which he excelled, but he was, at the same time, the cellist in the Beliaeff Quartet, which was responsible for the introduction of much of the standard string quartet writing to St. Petersburg's music community in the late 1800s. Ewald, like others of the group in which he belonged, did receive a formal music education, in Ewald's case, at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, founded in 1861 by Anton Rubinstein. Here, he studied harmony and composition, and received instrument training in cornet, piano, horn and cello. At the encouragement of his cello teacher Karl Davidov, Ewald maintained an active interest in music, taking every opportunity to practice his passion. To further his love of music, Ewald joined a group of amateur musicians who were attempting to develop a distinctive Russian national music in order to break the hold that the Germanic tradition had on Russian music both in theory and in practice. This passionate group of music amateurs was formed by Mitrofan Petrovich Beliaeff, founder of the Russian music publishing house of the same name. The group met on Friday evenings at Beliaeff's residence, where lively conversations and splendid music-making were the usual fare. These meetings, Les Vendredis, as they became known, were also attended by established composers of some stature, figures such as Peter Tchaikovsky, Sergei Tanayev, Alexander Scriabin, César Cui, Mily Balakirev, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. It was in this setting that Ewald introduced his compositions to the scutiny of fellow travellers. Some questions remain as to whether Ewald presented the works as string quartets or as brass quintets; while the chronological order of the quintets has been debated, the belief is that the works occupied a twenty-five year span. The only brass quintet published in Ewald's lifetime is the one on today's program. For decades, musicologists considered Ewald's quintet of brass quintets as the only compositions written specifically for this configuration of brass instruments. That is no longer the case, however. Recent research has unearthed a set of twelve brass quintets by a French composer Jean Fancois Bellon (1795-1869), a violinist by craft and one-time leader of the Paris Opera Orchestra. This fact should not diminish Ewald's contribution to the brass repertoire, for his quintets remain as popular as ever. The Brass Quintet No. 1 in B-flat minor is the first published, second composed, of Ewald's five brass quintets. Composed around 1890, the work was published in 1902, then revised in 1912. It also is known by the title of Symphony No. 1 for Brass Choir, scored for a different combination of brass instruments. The melodies and harmonies in the piece reflect Ewald's deep interest in Russian folk music and the richness of sound indicates that it is written for the purity of tone exemplified in brass instruments. The quintet is a demanding work for players, who must not only contend with stylistic mannerisms of Tchaikovsky, but also with cathedral-like sonorities of Anton Bruckner.
By the mid-1880s, Antonin Dvořák had come into his own as a composer; he had a growing body of large symphonic works and smaller chamber compositions that had earned him an international reputation, only slightly less prominent than that of his mentor and advocate Johannes Brahms. The years 1885 and 1886 had been arduous years for the Czech composer with the completion of several major compositions taking a stressful toll on him. He finished his Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op 70 (1885), a somber work from this most cheerful of national composers, but which placed him on the international stage, an oratorio St. Ludmilla, Op 71, the second batch of Slavonic Dances, Op 72 (piano and orchestral versions), and In Folk Tone, Op 73, an edited version of Czech folk music. Little wonder then, that when the opportunity to make light music presented itself, Dvořák took to it with relish. In January 1887, the Dvořák family was living in Prague with his mother-in-law, who also rented rooms to aspiring university students. A chemistry student, Josef Kruis, rented a room where he not only lived but practiced violin with his instructor Jan Pelikán, a member of the Prague National Theater Orchestra. Dvořák heard them at practice as they played violin duets and got the idea for a composition, of no great import, for the two violinists and himself. Dvořák was an accomplished violist and saw this potential music-making as a form of relaxation. Dvořák set to work and in short order, a week to be precise (January 7-14, 1887), he had completed the Terzetto in C major, Op 74. Alas and alack, Dvořák had overestimated the ability of the young student, for both violin parts proved too difficult for the less-than-accomplished Kruis, thereby forcing the obliging Dvořák to write a new, less daunting trio, the Romantic Pieces. The Terzetto in C major, Op 74 is not major Dvořák, but it is mature Dvořák nevertheless. The three-movement work is laced with characteristics that make Dvořák so listenable to audiences. Melody abounds in each of the movements, with a clear nationalistic bent given to the Scherzo where a Slavic furiant takes control with duple cross-rhythms within a triple meter. The Tema con variazioni third movement is comprised of a theme and ten variations, each melding into the other, until the final variation where the C minor mood is thrown off to bring the work to its conclusion in C major. Despite its birth, the piece does have much complexity and a good helping of Dvořák's melodious invention.
For such a prolific composer, Nelhybel is little known to the greater classical music audience. His reputation is confined almost entirely to the subculture of high school and college bands and to modern wind ensembles. Nelhybel studied composition and conducting at the Conservatory of Music in Prague (1938-42). After World War II, he was affiliated with the Swiss National Radio before becoming the first musical director of Radio Free Europe located in Munich, Germany. In 1957 he immigrated to the United States where he lived and worked in the New York City area. He later took residence in Ridgefield and Newtown, Connecticut, before retiring to the Scranton, Pennsylvania, area in 1994 and taking up composer in residence status at the University of Scranton. Although Nelhybel wrote in all genres - symphonic, concertos, operas, choral and small ensembles, he seemed to have a special relationship to young people, writing challenging pieces for high school and college bands, many pieces that are still in the active repertoire. One notable instance of Nelhybel's unique attraction to young musicians is related by David Holsinger, a featured composer in the CSO's 2008 chamber music concert. Holsinger reports that In the fall of 1965
Nelhybel made no attempt to generate a new type of music but was content to take elements of music around him and synthesize them into a sound and treatment significantly his own. He made use of thematic materials of his native Czechoslovakia and imbued his music with a drive and whirlwind propulsion that appeals both to performers and to the audience. His three-movement Clarinet Quartet is no exception to the rule. Originally intended as part of a larger work entitled Opus Concertante or Festi di Discorsi Concertanti for seventeen wind and four percussive instruments, the quartet is only one of several ensemble works Nelhybel selected from the original as individual performance pieces. The quartet is much like a free-wheeling conversation, a musical one, where the players speak individually, then in groups, and finally in unison. What one commentator wrote of the third movement can be applied to the work as a whole: The cheerful buoyancy is never broken and increases in intensity toward the end where the instruments literally chase each other, scampering with great virtuosity as they finish in a triumphal flourish.
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) was considered one of the most prominent composers of the first half of the twentieth century; yet his influence hardly lasted beyond his own lifetime. Early in his career, he was a strong advocate of Gebrauchsmusik - utility music - in that he believed all music should serve or have a purpose other than for its own sake; but later in life, he qualified that extreme sentiment by stating that he had been misunderstood. Born in the village of Hanau, Germany, Hindemith moved with his family to Frankfurt am Main at an early age where in 1908 he entered the Hoch Conservatory and studied violin with Adolph Rebner and composition and conducting with Arnold Mendelssohn, a grandson of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and Bernhard Sekles. He earned money and experience by playing violin in local dance bands and musical comedies, eventually joining both the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra and the famed Rebner Quartet. During this period 1908-1917, he took to composing with the express purpose of writing a first-class modern string quartet. He achieved this task in 1915 with a quartet in C major, his Opus 2, that won first prize in composition at the Hoch Conwervatory. Hindemith continued his studies at the conservatory with an emphasis on composition until he was called to military service in World War I. He served briefly on the front before being transferred to a regimental band where he served until he was demobilized. Despite the chaotic conditions endemic to war, Hindemith continued composing and also took up the viola as his perferred instrument. In 1919, after rejoining the Rebner Quartet, he asked for and received the viola chair for the group. The Quartet premiered Hindemith's second and third string quartets (1919-20), and a recital of his works at the Hoch Conservatory in 1919 gained the attention of B. Schott and Sons music publishers of Mainz who took Hindemith on as a client, thereby providing him with a monthly stipend. Strnagely, Hindemith during this period jumped into large form composition with two operas Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen op. 12 (1919) and Das Nusch-Nuschi op. 20 (1920), both of which created something of a minor scandal because of the sexual overtones of their subject matter. It was at this period when Hindemith began a series of compositions for small ensembles which looked back to the concertos and divertimenti of the Baroque age, specifically to Johann Sebastian Bach. He may have been spurred on by the work of Igor Stravinsky, who had just initiated his neo-classical phase with its references to Mozart rather than Bach. Hindemith's Kammermusiken (chamber music) series of seven small concertos are reminiscent of the Brandenburg Concertos of J. S. Bach. The first of the series Opus 24 is in two parts: Kammermusik, Op. 24, No. 1 and Kleine Kammermusik, Op 24, No. 2. No. 1, for twelve instruments, is a clear homage to or imitation of Stravinsky with its Petruschka-like theme and references to jazz motifs. On the other hand, No. 2, the Kleine Kammermusik (small chamber music), displays the special affinity that Hindemith had for wind instruments. Kleine Kammermusik, Op 24/2 has few if any of the characteristics of the Stravinsky-inspired No. 1. It is a short, five-movement wind quintet skillfully conceived and executed, alive with a sense of humor typical of Hindemith during the 1920s. In true Baroque fashion, each instrumentalist is spotlighted with demanding and virtuoso material as well as close-knit ensemble playing.
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