|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
A NEW ERA OF EXCELLENCE |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
WINTER CONCERT 2008 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Scandinavian Marvels Holberg Suite Grieg Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor Bruch Symphony No. 2 in D major Sibelius
PROGRAM NOTES The complete title to the opening work by Edvard Grieg (1843 - 1907) gives a greater indication of its character than the more common shortened form. From Holberg’s Time – Suite in the Olden Style, Op. 40 gives the essence of the occasion and the manner of the music.
Ludvig Holberg (1684 - 1754), writer and philosopher, was a Norwegian by birth who had received distinction as the 'Molière of the North' for his lively, satrical stage works. He was a contemporary of Bach and Handel, a product of the Baroque age. Although a Norwegian, he took up residence in Copenhagen and acquired Danish citizenship, becoming in time a 'pillar of Danish literature.' Holberg's native city of Bergen, Norway, however, was not going to let an occasion to honor its illustrious son pass without due notice. Thus, the city fathers of Bergen decided to hold a celebration in 1884 on the 200th anniversity of Holberg's birth, complete with the unveiling of a statue of Holberg and the premiere of a cantata composed for the occasion by its other famous son, Edvard Grieg.
Grieg accepted the commission with some reluctance, and as he progressed with the composition of the cantata, he became more and more disenchanted with it. He found the work to be tedious, boring, and uninspiring. Grieg, who suffered from poor health, could not abide the idea of conducting a choral work in cold December when the ceremony was to take place in the city square. In October, he wrote a cynically humorous note to a friend:
Grieg never completed the cantata, and the musical world does not have a mediocre Holberg Cantata to resurrect as a curiosity but has instead the delightful, tuneful Holberg Suite. Grieg had under his own initiative completed a set of piano pieces during the summer of 1884 as a personal homage to his fellow Bergenite (before he accepted the offer to write the cantata). During the winter of 1884-85, he undertook to orchestrate the suite and to the surprise of the city fathers, he conducted the premiere of Aus Holberg's Zeit in March 1885. Grieg based the Holberg Suite on the music of the Baroque era of Holberg himself, a dance suite in the French style, consisting of a Prelude, Sarabande, Gavotte/Musette, Air, and Rigaudon. However, as the Prelude quickly establishes, the Baroqueness of the forms is encased in purely Romantic renderings. The lyrical Sarabande in three-quarter time leads to the Gavotte, a courtly ballroom dance countered with the folkish quality of the Musette. The beautiful Air that follows is one of Grieg's most eloquent melodies, and like the Sarabande, it rests on the lower strings. In the concluding Rigaudon, the composer gives musical voice to the folk violinists of his native Norway. Max Bruch (1838 - 1920) came to have in his lifetime a love/hate relationship with his First Violin Concerto, for while the work assured his international fame and reputation, it also eclipsed to his great disappointment all his other works. He lovingly referred to the Concerto as "my world-renowned concerto" but begged virtuosos to consider his other lesser-known concertos to perform.
Although Bruch wrote several other works for the violin, including two additional concertos, both in D minor, this first concerto in G minor spanned more than ten years with repeated revisions in its later stages of composition, and required the assistance of no less a virtuoso than the great Joseph Joachim. Bruch began making plans for a violin concerto as early as 1857, but this "damned difficult affair" did not take hold of him until 1864 after his opera Loreley and a cantata Frithjof brought him to wider public attention. One may say, in fact, that Bruch gave the creative impulse to the concerto, and Joachim provided the technical expertise that brought the final rendition of the piece to fruition. Bruch struggled with the various aspects of the work for four years, asking for and receiving advice from several violinists before agreeing to a public performance of the concerto in April 1866 with Otto von Königslow as soloist. Displeased with its reception, Bruch decided immediately to rework the score, which he proceeded to do "at least a half dozen times." Exasperated, yet convinced of his score's integrity, he sent the draft to Joseph Joachim, hoping the eminent violinist would deign to supervise his work. To Bruch's surprise, Joachim was quite taken with the work and sent word to the composer that he considered the piece "violinistic" and agreed to work with him on the technical aspects. In the course of the next year, Joachim sent Bruch specific advice on the solo and the orchestral parts, many of which Bruch incorporated into the finished score. The composer dedicated the work to Joachim, and the violinist premiered the concerto in Bremen on January 5, 1868. The work was an immediate success, and it quickly became, according to Bruch, "uinversally admired and played everywhere." Joachim, who also had the concertos of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Brahms in his repertroire, praised Bruch's concerto as "the richest and the most seductive."
Bruch hesitated in calling his work a concerto and considered it a fantasy instead. But Joachim, a composer in his own right, encouraged him to retain the concerto designation. "As to your doubts, I am happy to say that I find the title 'concerto' fully justified; for the name 'fantasy,' the last two movements are actually too completely and symmetrically developed." That Bruch learned to love the violin and its cousins the viola and the cello is witnessed by the number of other compositions he wrote for the stringed instruments including the following numbers: Concerto for Clarinet and Viola, Concerto for Violin and Viola, Kol Nidre for Cello and Orchestra, Konzertstück for Violin and Orchestra, Romance for Viola and Orchestra, Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Serenade for Violin and Orchestra, in addition to the two additional violin concetos in D minor. The Scottish Fantasy and Kol Nidre are performed frequently and recorded often, but still lag in popularity when compared to the Violin Concerto in G minor. The first movement of the Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor is unusual in that it is a vorspiel, or a prelude, to the second movement to which it glides without a pause. The second movement is noted for its intoxicatingly beautiful melody. The muted opening bars of the third movement give way to an exuberant primary theme, followed by a second theme rich in Romantic lyricism. The final movement is unusual because Bruch did not write a cadenza nor provide for the soloist to give one of his own.
In little over a decade, Sibelius produced the body of works on which his international fame rests. Intensely nationalistic, these orchestral masterpieces, nevertheless, possess intrinsic musical values that have entrhralled audiences since their premieres. These works mirror, too, Sibelius's steady progress to escape the influence of the Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky and develop his own unique style. His progress can be followed in the succession of major works he produced from 1890 through 1903. On returning from study in Berlin, he published in 1891 a choral symphony Kullervo, based on the Finnish folk saga Kalevala. With this work, he achieved a degree of national recognition that continued to grow with each succeeding composition. He followed Kullervo with the Karelia suite and Lemminkäinen, a set of four symphonic poems (including the Swan of Tuonela) based as Kullervo on the Kalevala. It was with the orchestral scores he composed around the turn of the century that Sibelius began to gain an international audience. His first two symphonies acquired immediate recognition, along with the declamatory Finlandia, and raised his rank to the first level among composers of his day. With the completion of the Violin Concerto in D minor in 1903, Sibelius found himself with a large international following, eager for new works to showcase his innovative style. As a result, in the decade from 1905 to 1915, he undertook four trips to England and one to the United States. After Sibelius finished his Violin Concerto in 1903, his music began to take on a more introspective, personal quality that did not appeal to his audiences as did his earlier, more Romantic scores. Although he wrote seven symphonies, only the first two and the retrospective Symphony No. 5 in E-flat major have been widely programmed and recorded. The Symphony No. 2 in D major, Opus 43 has been called the Symphony of Independence since it was composed during a period of Russian domination of the Finnish language and culture. For his part, Sibelius played down the nationalistic aspects of the work in favor of a purely musical interpretation. In any respect, Sibelius began composing the symphony while on a visit to Rapallo, Italy, during the winter of 1900 and finished the score in 1902 after his return to Finland. The first performance of the work was by the Helsinki Philharmonic Society on March 8, 1902, with Sibelius conducting. Following that first performance, Sibelius revised the score; the first performance of the revised symphony was given in Stockholm on November 10, 1903. The symphony is in four movements with the third and fourth played attacca (attached). A rising three-note motif heard at the beginning of the work grows - organically, single-mindedly - throughout the work and forms the material for the extended dramatic finale.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Clinton Symphony Orchestra PO Box 116 Clinton, IA 52733-0116 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
