Download 1 Orchestra Toronto Concert I Program Notes by Terry Robbins

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Orchestra Toronto
Concert I Program Notes
by Terry Robbins
Songs of a Wayfarer
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
We have become so accustomed to the immense popularity and significance of Mahler’s
music that it is easy to forget that he made his reputation — and his living, for that matter
— not as a composer but as a conductor, being generally regarded as one of the greatest
of his generation. His music was, for the most part, misunderstood and unappreciated by
his contemporaries.
Mahler’s compositional output consisted almost entirely of symphonies — often with a
strong vocal component — and songs, which were usually orchestral and decidedly
symphonic in nature. The Songs of a Wayfarer (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) was his
first mature work, and was written after a failed love affair with the soprano Johanna
Richter when Mahler was employed as second conductor at the opera house in Kassel.
Biographers seem unable to agree on the exact dates, but December 1883 is a likely start
date — the affair may actually have ended on Christmas Day — and the song cycle,
originally for voice and piano, was completed in 1885.
Mahler revised the work between 1891 and 1896, and orchestrated it during the same
period. It was first performed in 1896 in the orchestral version, but may well have had a
prior performance in the piano version.
The English translation of the title as Songs of a Wayfarer is somewhat lacking, the
German word “Gesellen” actually meaning “journeyman.” This was a term for someone
who had completed an apprenticeship in a trade or craft but was not yet a master; it was
the tradition in Germany for them to travel from town to town, gaining experience. Songs
of a Travelling Journeyman might well be a better translation, and in that regard may well
have had an added autobiographical meaning for Mahler, who was himself in the process
of building a career in a similar fashion; Kassel was his fifth stop since his first
conducting appointment at Bad Hall in 1880.
The lyrics are by Mahler himself, and were heavily influenced by Des Knaben
Wunderhorn, the collection of German folk poetry that was one of his favourite books.
The four songs are:
I. When My Sweetheart is Married (Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht) — expressing
grief over losing one’s beloved to another.
II. I Went This Morning Over the Field (Ging heut Morgen ubers Feld) — the happiest
song of the four, reveling in the joy and beauty of nature. Reality intrudes at the end,
though, promising no happiness for the author.
III. I Have a Gleaming Knife (Ich hab’ein gluhend Messer) — full of despair; his lost
love is like a knife in his heart. Everything reminds him of her, and he longs for death.
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IV. The Two Blue Eyes of My Beloved (Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz) — a
gentle, lyrical song leading to resolution. Everything has changed, and the poet wishes he
could go back to the way things were before he met his love.
Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix (from Samson et Dalila) Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
In 1867, Saint- Saëns started work on what he intended to be an oratorio on the story of
Sampson and Delilah, but his librettist, Ferdinand Lemaire, persuaded him to turn it into
an opera.
Negative reaction to a private performance of Act II in 1870 led to the work being
abandoned for two years, but Saint- Saëns’ visit to Weimar in the summer of 1872 to see
Liszt conduct Das Rheingold led to Liszt’s offering to produce the opera, if completed, at
Weimar.
The finished score in 1876 elicited no interest from any of the French opera houses, so
Liszt used his influence to arrange the successful premiere, in a German translation, at the
Grand Ducal Theatre in Weimar on December 2, 1877, Eduard Lassen conducting.
The opera wasn’t performed in France until 1890, but its popularity grew throughout the
following decade, with performances in Italy, New York and London.
In Act II, the Philistine woman Delilah, intent on seducing the Hebrew Sampson in order
to discover the secret of his strength, tells him that she is his if he wants her. When he
confesses his love for her, she sings her main aria, Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix (My heart
opens to your voice).
It is one of the most popular arias in the mezzo-soprano repertoire.
Aragonaise and Habanera from Carmen
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Carmen is probably the one opera more than any other that has been responsible for
making its composer’s name known throughout the world, and yet the opera that was to
become one of the most popular ever written was given anything but a warm reception on
its debut.
Bizet began work on Carmen in 1873 and finished it the following year. It was first
performed at the Opera-Comique in Paris on March 3, 1875, and fared poorly.
The criticisms were wide-ranging: The music was too symphonic; it followed Wagnerian
theories too closely; there weren’t enough gypsy characteristics. Above all, the story —
the violence of which was still somewhat remarkable for the time — was a little too bold
for the polite tastes of the French public. To make matters worse, the performance by the
first Carmen, Célestine Galli-Marie, emphasized the “brutality” of the character as
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opposed to the “softened animalism” of the original, which Bizet preferred and which
was incorporated into the role by many later interpreters.
The complaints about the subject matter were, perhaps, understandable. While Carmen is
strictly an opera comique, or opera with spoken dialogue (although it is often performed
with recitatives composed by Bizet’s friend Ernest Guiraud in 1875), it enlarged and
transformed the various opera comique elements and essentially brought the tradition to
an end. It can be more accurately viewed as an early work in the verismo or realism style,
which dealt with contemporary and sometimes sordid subjects and culminated in the
operas of Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Puccini in the 1890s.
The work is infused with the local colour of the Spanish influence, and the warm tones of
the south run right through the opera.
Carmen was performed 37 times in the three months following its premiere, but after 50
performances it was virtually neglected in France for 10 years despite its growing worldwide success.
It was a success Bizet did not live to see; the composer died in Bourgival, near Paris, on
June 3, 1875, exactly three months to the day after the premiere of the work that would
ensure his immortality.
Symphony No.7 in A Major, Op. 92
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Beethoven started work on his Seventh Symphony in the second half of 1811, finishing it
on April 13, 1812, and conducting the premiere himself at the University of Vienna on
December 8, 1813.
Those are the dry facts, but they hide a fascinating story that makes it difficult not to
write about the circumstances of the premiere instead of about the music itself.
It may not come as much of a surprise to learn that the concert was one of the most
successful that Beethoven ever experienced; what may come as a surprise, however, is
the reason why.
At the time, the Napoleonic Wars were at their height in Europe. On June 21, 1813, the
Duke of Wellington’s army had defeated the French, under Napoleon’s younger brother
Joseph Bonaparte, at Vitoria in Spain. On October 30, at Hanau, near Frankfurt, Austrian
and Bavarian armies had attempted — unsuccessfully — to block Napoleon’s retreat
back to France from Leipzig.
Beethoven’s December concert was actually a benefit event for Austrian and Bavarian
troops wounded at Hanau, and its overwhelming success was primarily due not to the
Seventh Symphony but to the other new work on the program — Beethoven’s Op. 91,
Wellington’s Victory, or The Battle of Vitoria.
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Although premiered in the full orchestral version, the work had originally been written
for the panharmonicon, a mechanical instrument invented by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel,
who also gave us the first reliable metronome as well as designing some of Beethoven’s
ear trumpets. It was Maelzel who had arranged the concert, and between the two main
works another of his inventions, a mechanical trumpeter, played some marches composed
especially for the concert by Dusek and Pleyel.
So great was the success of Wellington’s Victory that the critic from the local Wiener
Zeitung newspaper referred to the Seventh Symphony as a “companion piece.”
Beethoven’s annoyance, however, was lessened somewhat by the warm reception also
given to the symphony, the second movement having to be encored.
The whole evening was such a success that the entire program was repeated another three
times before the end of February, and a glance at the list of musical personalities involved
in the performances makes fascinating reading: the first and second violinists of the
renowned Schuppanzigh Quartet, Ignaz Schuppanzigh and Joseph Mayseder, were
concertmaster and principal second violin respectively; Louis Spohr acted as assistant
concertmaster; Mauro Giuliani, the guitarist/composer, played cello; and Meyerbeer, the
Hummel and played percussion in Wellington’s Victory under the direction of Salieri,
who acted as sub-conductor for the percussion and artillery.
Star-studded benefits, it would seem, are nothing new.
October 24, 2010