Download Voices of Bohemia Program

Sydney Symphony Orchestra Fellows – April 2016
Voices of Bohemia
Czech characters:
Dvořák: hacek on r
Leoš: hacek on s
Janáček: hacek on c
Martinů: little circle above u
Sunday 3 April at 3pm
Lennox Theatre, Riverside Theatres Parramatta
Wednesday 6 April at 1.15pm *
St James’ Church, King Street
Sunday 10 April at 4pm
Wyvern Music Forestville
Voices of Bohemia
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Von Biber (1644–1704)
* Sonata No.4 in C
for trumpet, violin, 2 violas, double bass and vibraphone continuo
Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904)
* Four songs from Cypresses
for string quartet
2. Death Reigns in Many a Human Breast (Allegro ma non troppo)
8. In Deepest Forest Glade I Stand (Lento)
9. Thou Only Dear One, but for Thee (Moderato)
11. Nature Lies Peaceful in Slumber and Dreaming (Allegro
scherzando)
Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)
Mládí (Youth)
for wind sextet
Allegro
Andante sostenuto
Vivace
Allegro animato
with guest artist Alexei Dupressoir bass clarinet
INTERVAL
Biber
* Sonata à 3
for trombone, 2 violins, cello, double bass and vibraphone continuo
Esa-Pekka Salonen (born 1958)
Catch and Release
for clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, percussion, violin, and
double bass
Tema
Aria
Games
Bohuslav Martinů
* Nonet
for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and
double bass
Poco Allegro
Andante
Allegretto
**************
The performance on Sunday 10 April will be recorded for later
broadcast by Fine Music FM.
Estimated durations: 6 minutes, 11 minutes, 17 minutes, 20-minute
interval, 7 minutes, 22 minutes, 17 minutes
The concert will conclude at approximately 4.35pm (Parramatta),
2.05pm (St James), 5.35pm (Forestville)
Foreign character notes:
Kroměříž has 3 haceks: on the e, 2nd r and z
Dvořák: hacek on the r
Čermáková: hacek on the initial C
Janáček: hacek on the c
Polička: hacek on the c
ABOUT THE MUSIC
BIBER Two Sonatas
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber was the leading violin virtuoso of
his generation. His reputation survived well into the late 18th
century, when Charles Burney wrote: ‘Of all the violin players of
the last century, Biber seems to have been the best, and his solos
are the most difficult and fanciful of any music I have seen of the
same period.’
Biber was born in Wartenberg in Bohemia, north of Prague. In
1671 he joined the service of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg.
Biber’s arrival in Salzburg represented a great loss to his previous
employer Prince-Bishop Karl, Count Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn from
Kroměříž (in Moravia), especially since Biber had absconded – ‘the
fellow who slipped away’, wrote the Count – under the pretext of
collecting new instruments.
Biber is most famous today for his violin sonata cycle based on the
Mysteries of the Rosary. As well as exploiting violin virtuosity for
emotional effect, Biber experimented with scordatura: tuning the
violin strings differently for each sonata, for symbolic as well as
expressive reasons. He was equally resourceful in his treatment of
brass instruments, as can be heard in his two sonatas in this
concert. In the first (Sonata No.4), he pits a brilliant part intended
for valveless trumpet against the virtuosic first violin part. Trumpet
and fiddle imitate each other. As in most Baroque pieces featuring
the trumpet, there is a slow movement in which the trumpet does
not play. This provides a contrast of tonality and of tessitura.
The inclusion of trombone as an equal partner in Biber’s Sonata à
3 is pioneering. This instrument was more often used to double the
lower voices in choirs, and in funeral music. The solo in Mozart’s
Requiem (100 years after Biber) is a reminder that in German the
‘last trump’ is a trombone! In the Sonata à 3, unlike the sonata with
trumpet, the movements feature trombone and violin alternately. It
is the trombone, unexpectedly, that is to the fore in the fast
movements, the violin in the slow – until the slow penultimate
section, which is also for trombone.
Biber does not distinguish, in his titles, between church sonata and
chamber sonata. These two examples, which may well have been
played by church musicians, are chamber musical in style. They
reveal a very Bohemian fascination with complex rhythms and folk
music.
In this concert the keyboard continuo part is arranged by the
Percussion Fellow to be played on vibraphone.
DVOŘÁK Four Songs from Cypresses
The cypress tree symbolises mourning because of its dark hue,
and death, because once cut down it cannot grow again.
Cypresses is the title of the collection of poems from which Dvořák
made a cycle of 18 songs in 1865. These pieces are the closest in
this concert to being literally voices of Bohemia. Dvořák’s
Cypresses are his own arrangements for string quartet of some of
his songs (twelve in total) – these versions date from 1887. When
Dvořák composed the songs (among his earliest) he was in love
with the actress Josefina Čermáková. Dvořák later married her
younger sister Anna, but he remained very fond of Josefina, and
his revisiting of Cypresses may have been nostalgia for an early
love. The now mature Dvořák expresses a range of feelings – but
these ‘cypresses’ are love songs, not death songs.
JANÁČEK Mládí (Youth)
In July 1924, the month he turned 70 years young, Janáček
composed a wind sextet as ‘a kind of reminiscence of my youth’.
This light-hearted nostalgia trip – Mládí or ‘Youth’ – grew from a
cheeky little March of the Blueboys for piccolo, recalling the
composer’s blue-uniformed monastery choirboy days in Brno
(Moravia). This tune became a scherzo-like third movement with a
gentle trio section.
The sprightly oboe theme of the first movement (Andante)
embodies the Czech speech rhythm of ‘Youth, golden youth!’;
subsequent wistfully falling phrases reflect enchantment
experienced from afar; and there is unequivocal yearning in the
horn’s final drawn-out sigh on the ‘golden youth’ motif.
The second movement (Moderato), variations on a darkly Slavonic
theme, adds a sense of regret, even pain, to the nostalgically
falling phrases which underline the distance from youth, but the
final variation eventually finds reconciliation in the major key.
With a flute theme clearly reminiscent of the ‘golden youth’ motif
(which will eventually reappear in its own right), the finale (Con
moto) casts a wiser, yet benign, eye over the follies and frivolities
of youth.
The sextet is scored for flute (doubling piccolo), oboe, clarinet,
horn, bassoon, bass clarinet.
SALONEN Catch and Release
The composer writes …
The title comes from the sport of fishing. I had thought of
composing this piece as a birthday present for the composer
Magnus Lindberg – well known as a fisherman in the eastern parts
of the Finnish Gulf. The plan was never realised.
Work on the composition took place between 2002 and 2006. The
practical impulse for completing the work was a commission from
bassoonist Jussi Särkkä, artistic director of the Crusell Music
Festival in western Finland. The fee we agreed on was a bottle of
beer, which Mr Särkkä high-handedly changed into a bottle of
champagne. Catch and Release was first performed by the Avanti
Chamber Orchestra, in the Crusell Festival, on 26 July 2006.
For years I had thought of composing for the instruments used in
The Soldier's Tale – partly for practical reasons, since Stravinsky's
piece is too short for an entire concert and needs a companion. I
thought it would be interesting to write for an ensemble that is
rather ‘impossible’, dry and lacking resonance. Could I make the
weird ensemble ring properly in music based on harmony and
overtone resonance? At the first rehearsal, hearing the matt sound
of the drums against the jeering ensemble, I thought: ‘Dammit, this
sounds like The Soldier's Tale!’ I relaxed when the sound palette
widened and deepened.
I added the vibraphone to the second movement in order to
‘reverb’ the harmony, because I didn't find any other way to extend
the ring of the ensemble beyond its basic dry sound. That is the
only significant exception to Stravinsky's instrumentation. The third
movement is a preliminary study for my Piano Concerto
(premiered in New York 2007). The idea is a confrontation of
three- and four-beat rhythmic models until they come into conflict
and kind of burn each other out.
About the composer…
Composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is a restless
innovator whose music combines intricacy and technical virtuosity
with playful rhythmic and melodic innovations. His pieces for
symphony orchestra include LA Variations (1996), Foreign Bodies
(2001), Insomnia (2002), Wing on Wing (2004) and Nyx (2011), as
well as concertos for pianist Yefim Bronfman and violinist Leila
Josefowicz (the latter won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award and
was featured in an Apple ad campaign for iPad). In 2014 the
Tonhalle Zurich Orchestra, where Salonen was the first-ever
Creative Chair, premiered Karawane for orchestra and chorus, to
great acclaim.
Salonen is the Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the
Philharmonia Orchestra and Conductor Laureate for the Los
Angeles Philharmonic, where he was Music Director from 1992
until 2009. He is currently Composer-in-Residence at the New
York Philharmonic, Artistic Director and cofounder of the annual
Baltic Sea Festival, which he cofounded to promote unity and
ecological awareness among the countries around the Baltic Sea.
Salonen and the Philharmonia have curated landmark multidisciplinary projects, such as the award-winning RE-RITE and
Universe of Sound installations, which allow the public to conduct,
play, and step inside the Philharmonia with Salonen through audio
and video projections. Salonen also drove the development of an
app for iPad, The Orchestra, which allows the user unprecedented
access to the internal workings of eight symphonic works.
MARTINŮ Nonet
Bohuslav Martinů composed his Nonet in 1959. It was
commissioned to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Czech
Nonet, one of the very few permanent ensembles of this kind in the
world. The Czech Nonet consists of one each of flute, oboe,
bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and double bass. They gave the
first performance at the Salzburg Festival that year. Martinů
himself was Czech (from Bohemia); he fled Europe for the United
States during World War II. He returned in the 1950s, but not to his
homeland, and it was in Switzerland, as he was dying from cancer,
that he composed the Nonet – generally considered his chamber
music masterpiece.
In Martinů’s Nonet reflective music expresses the nostalgia of an
exiled composer nearing the end of life, but it also has sunny
moments and an elegance and clarity that looks back to the
Classical style of Haydn. To this concert’s Voices from Bohemia it
brings music strains recalling the playing of country musicians. The
first movement, Poco allegro, is energetic but contained. The
Andante that follows is more intense and mournful, and the colours
are expressive: listen in particular for the poignant sound of the
oboe, a richly singing viola solo and the noble theme given to the
horn. The mood lifts for the final Allegretto with sprightly rhythms
and brilliant melodic ideas, finishing with a hymn to the fields and
forests of Martinu’s birthplace, Polička (in Bohemia, on the border
with Moravia).
Based in part on notes by Yvonne Frindle (Biber), David Garrett
(Dvořák), Anthony Cane (Janáček) and Esa-Pekka Salonen
Sydney Symphony Orchestra © 2016
Future Fellowship Concerts
FRENCH ACCENTS
Wed 20 Jul, 1.15pm
St James’ Church, King Street, Sydney *
Fri 22 Jul, 8pm
Manning Entertainment Centre, Taree
Sun 24 Jul, 2pm
Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre
DEBUSSY Syrinx for solo flute
RAVEL Introduction and Allegro *
PROKOFIEV Quintet *
DEBUSSY arr. Schoenberg Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune *
POULENC Sonata for trumpet, trombone and horn
BIZET arr. Farrington Jeux d’enfants
DEBUSSY arr. Farrington Clair de lune
DIVERSIONS
Sat 17 Sep, 8pm
Blue Mountains Concert Society, Springwood
Wed 21 Sep, 1.15pm
St James’ Church, King Street, Sydney *
Sat 24 Sep, 6pm
Sydney Opera House, Utzon Room
MOZART Quintet in E flat for piano and winds, K452 *
TAKEMITSU Rain Coming
MOZART String Quartet in B flat, K458 (The Hunt) *
IBERT Divertissement *
CLASSICAL CREATURES
A Family Concert
Sun 2 Oct, 2pm
Riverside Theatres Parramatta
SAINT-SAËNS Carnival of the Animals
PROKOFIEV Peter and the Wolf
MUCH ADO...
Celebrating Shakespeare
Sun 27 Nov, 3pm
Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music
KORNGOLD Suite from Much Ado about Nothing
with spoken text from the play
BRIDGE There is a willow grows aslant a brook
with spoken text from Hamlet
BRITTEN Sinfonietta
SCHREKER Chamber Symphony
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