RIGHT HERE - WHERE WE LIVE

SPRING CONCERT 2010

Joseph Schwantner (1943), a native of Chicago, took up the guitar as his instrument of choice and studied with Robert Stein from the age of eight. Both his studies with Stein, "an amazing teacher," and the instrument itself have had a strong impact on the growth of Schwantner as a composer. As the composer himself has said,

[S]omething fundamental about how I think about music...comes from my experiences as a young kid trying to play everything I could on the [guitar]...the guitar is a very highly articulate instrument...you pluck it and so the notes are very incisive. Lots of percussion...sharply etched...ideas often hang in the air...[as] when you play an E major chord on the guitar...[a] sustained resonance that you can easily do in percussion - a favorite trick of mine!

The guitar and a strong Chicago jazz scene influenced Schwantner, at age sixteen, to compose his first serious work, Offbeat, a work for jazz ensemble using the twelve-tone scale. The piece won the young composer the National Band Camp Award (1959), the first of many awards and grants Schwantner has received over the years. Following high school, Schwantner studied in the Chicago area at the Conservatory of Music and at Northwestern University where he earned his master and doctorate degrees in music. During this time he won BMI Student Composer Awards for three of his compositions, including Diaphonia intervallum (1967), which points to his more mature, highly personal style.

Before his retirement from teaching in 2002 to "live an artist's life," Schwantner served on the faculties of several universities and schools of music, including positions at Ball State University, the Chicago Conservatory as well as Yale and Julliard. His longest tenure was with the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York from 1970 on. From 1982 to 1985, he took leave from Eastman to serve as composer-in-residence with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, then under the direction of Leonard Slatkin. While there, he completed three major compositions, two of which were recorded by Slatkin and the St. Louis orchestra, and subsequently nominated for Grammy awards.

Schwantner has garnered much praise for several of his orchestral scores, beginning with a Pulitzer Prize for Aftertones of Infinity (1979) and progressing from Music of Amber (1981), New Morning for the World: Daybreak of Freedom (1982), Magabunda (1983), A Sudden Rainbow (1986), From Afar... (1987), and the Piano Concerto (1988) to the most impressive Percussion Concerto (1995), composed for the 150th anniversary of the New York Philharmonic. A further highlight of the composer's career was his election into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2002.

Chasing Light... came about when the League of American Orchestras and Meet The Composer commissioned Schwantner to compose a work for Ford Made in America series of original works by American composers to be performed in each of the fifty states. Schwantner has said, "My music is about where I live and what I'm doing." And the spark that brought on this particular composition was a walk through the woods near his New Hampshire home when a "flash of early morning light" inspired him to write a poem and then later the work we hear on tonight's program. Chasing Light... was premiered by the Reno Chamber Orchestra in September 2008.

 

Alexander Porfyrevich Borodin

Alexander Porfirevich Borodin (1833-1887) was the least doctrinaire among the group of Russian composers known as the "Mighty Five." This group tasked itself to producing a national Russian music, divorced as much as possible from the dominant Western music of the day. They sought themes in Russian history and culture, and, ironically, looked to the Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt for technical guidance and compositional inspiration. The other four of the five composers - Mily Balakirev, Caesar Cui, Modeste Mussorgsky, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov - eventually left their initial occupations and took to composing and teaching full time. Borodin, alone, stayed with his primary occupations in medicine and chemistry.

As the illegitimate son of a Russian noble, Borodin was raised within a comfortable environment with a broad education in the manner of the European gentry. He was expected to take up a musical instrument as well as a profession. Borodin did both with aplomb, becoming quite a talented pianist and a noted chemical researcher. He did not receive any formal composition instruction until 1863 when he studied with Mily Balakirev, who invited him to join the group of five.

Of his two callings - research and music, music clearly took second place, and consequently, Borodin has only a few works in his catalog. Those that do exist show Borodin as a master of melody so approachable as to be used as the basis for the American musical Kismet (1953). While his catalog of compositions is small, Borodin nevertheless produced large-scale works that have endured, most notably his Symphony No. 2 in B minor and his opera Prince Igor (completed by Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov). Unlike the other members of "The Five", Borodin ventured into the realm of absolute music and small ensemble pieces. His two string quartets are noted for their melodic grace and mastery of form. He also composed a string sextet and a piano quintet.

Originally, In the Steppes of Central Asia* was to be one of several tone pictures to celebrate the silver anniversary of Tsar Alexander II's ascension to the throne. The assassination of Alexander II precluded that celebration, but the work was premiered in April 1880 in St. Petersburg under the direction of Rimsky-Korsakov. The music is cyclical in form and depicts a caravan of Central Asians crossing the steppes under the protection of Russian forces. The Russian theme is presented first, followed by an Eastern melody on the English horn. The two melodies are eventually joined with a pizzicato "traveling" motif that represents the caravan itself moving across the desert. The piece returns to its beginning with the opening Russian theme.

NOTE:

* In the Russian В средней Азии literally translates In Central Asia.

Antonín Dvořák

England has long been a welcomer of foreign composers to its shores. When Antonín Leopold Dvořák arrived for the first of his nine visits in March 1884, a chronicler of the period responded that Dvořák 's "reception was one of the most cordial ever offered by our land to a foreign artist." From Henry Purcell (1659-1695) to Edward Elgar (1857-1934), the British produced no native-born composer of international rank, but in those years, the music-loving country made itself open to the talents from the continent. George Frederick Handel, for instance, German-born, Italian-trained, came for a visit and stayed as the country's resident composer. And after he died, came a son of Bach, Johann Christian, German born, German trained, to live and prosper as the "English" Bach. Other European composers of note followed, not to live there but to thrive and burnish their reputations - Franz Joseph Haydn, Muzio Clementi, Ignatz Moscheles, and Felix Mendelssohn, to name a few. It might be said that Dvořák was the last notable continental composer to receive such unbounded approbation, for with Elgar, the British began to look inward to its own composers of rank - Ralph Vaughn Williams, Arnold Bax, William Walton, and Benjamin Britten.

Interest in Dvořák had been growing in England since the performance of selections from his first set of Slavonic Dances in 1879, an interest that only increased with succeeding performances of the Slavonic Rhapsodies, the String Sextet and the Symphony No. 6 in D major, followed in 1882 by a performance of the Piano Concerto in G minor. The event, however, that immediately prompted the London Philharmonic Society* to formally invite Dvořák to England was the enthusiastic reception by a choral-loving public of the Stabat Mater, given its first English performance in March 1883.

When Dvořák arrived in London, he brought with him the hope that a "happier period is now beginning for me...a period which...will...bring good fruits for Czech art." Ever the nationalist, Dvořák resisted the impulse to trade away his love of country, to become Germanized, so to speak, even at the behest of his publisher Simrock and his great benefactor Johannes Brahms. Brahms had written to Dvořák in 1882 an impassioned letter urging the Czech composer to move to Vienna in order to capitalize on the great successes of the first set of the Slavonic Dances, the Stabat Mater, and the Piano Concerto: "After such great initial successes, your art requires a wider horizon, a German environment, a bigger non-Czech public." Dvořák, while grateful to Brahms, would have none of it and looked to England for a broader recognition of his works.

The Czech composer was astounded at the reception he received when he arrived at Albert Hall to guest conduct his Stabat Mater. The orchestra and soloists had been so well prepared that the rehearsals went smoothly, which naturally pleased Dvořák, but what amazed him was

...the size of the orchestra and choir. Please do not be afraid! There
are 250 sopranos, 160 altos, 180 tenors and 250 basses; 16 violins,
16 cellos, 16 double basses. The impression of such a mighty body
was indeed enchanting. It is quite indescribable.

The following week (March 20, 1884) Dvořák directed his second concert at St. James's Hall which featured the Hussite Overture, Slavonic Rhapsody and the Symphony No. 6 in D major; he even accompanied the tenor who sang a number of his Gypsy Melodies. This concert was followed two days later by a third performance of his own works at the Crystal Palace. These enthusiastic receptions of his music opened up English audiences to Dvořák and Czech music, an opening Dvořák took great pains to cultivate.

Dvořák and Wife Anna
in London - 1886

From this first venture and the three other trips Dvořák made to England between 1884-1886, the composer garnered commissions for three major works - an opera (The Spectre's Bride), an oratorio (St. Ludmilla), and a symphony for the London Philharmonic Society. Dvořák began composing the symphony on his return to Bohemia following his first trip, and on April 22, 1885, he attended its premiere in London at St. James's Hall, barely a month after its completion. Abandoning the usual British restraint, one music critic hailed the Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op 70, as "one of the greatest works of this kind that had been performed in the present generation." Other critics were just as unbounded in their praise for the new symphony. Oddly, this Seventh Symphony is not the one subtitled 'English.'

Dvořák, bolstered with the praise for his work, approached his publisher Simrock to increase the fees he was paid for new manuscripts. Dvořák was aware that Simrock paid him only a fifth of what he gave Brahms for a new work. A break between the composer and his publisher was avoided when Simrock agreed to pay Dvořák what the composer expected (half a Brahms' symphony), and Dvořák offered to compose a new set of Slavonic dances. It was a tentative compromise, however, which the two parties made.

By 1890, Dvořák and Simrock were at loggerheads again over payment for a symphony, this time the Eighth Symphony. Simrock refused Dvořák's demands, and the composer turned to Henry and Alfred Littleton, owners of the English music publishing firm Novello, who had been after Dvořák for new manuscripts. The two brothers paid Dvořák handsomely for the new symphony, which served the composer favorably in his further dealings with Simrock. Thus, it came to be that the Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op 88** was first published by a firm other than Dvořák's usual publisher. Dvořák and Simrock made up after this fit of pique, and the two lived happily ever after. And, thus, it came about that the symphony carried the subtitle 'English' for several decades after its publication.

The Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op 88 is a stark contrast to the stormy Romanticism of the Seventh Symphony. The Eighth is bright, cheerful, and brimming with melodic invention spurred by the Bohemian folk music from which Dvorak drew his inspiration.

 

NOTES:

* The London Philharmonic Society changed its name in 1912 to the Royal Philharmonic Society.

** The Symphony No. 8 was originally published by Novello as the Symphony No. 4, because Dvořák had withdrawn some of his early symphonies from his active catalog. These first symphonies - four to be exact - were restored to Dvořák's catalog of works in the 1960s, therefore requiring a numbering change.

This program is funded in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.