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Program Notes for Virginia Symphony Orchestra Classics #9 - 1-3 March 2012 By Laurie Shulman ©2011 First North American Serial Rights Only Nineteenth-century Germans called England Das Land ohne Musik [the land without music] – because England had no home grown composers of international stature. The most gifted British music students went to Leipzig and other German cities for conservatory training, to learn how to compose and perform in the Viennese symphonic tradition. Lacking first tier native composers, England welcomed German musicians such as Mendelssohn and Bruch. They enjoyed great success in Britain. Everything changed at the turn of the 20th century. Beginning with Edward Elgar, England produced a bumper crop of splendid musicians, reasserting herself a musical powerhouse with a distinctive national voice for the first time since the Elizabethan era. The first half of this program samples the initial flowering of this English musical renaissance, which has continued into the 21st century. Ms. Falletta opens with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Overture to The Wasps, a concert overture inspired by ancient Greek theater. Vaughan Williams composed incidental music for Aristophanes’s comedy The Wasps in 1907 for a production at Cambridge University. He eventually extracted a five-movement suite from the score. The overture has secured a sturdy niche in the repertoire. At the beginning we hear the unmistakable buzz of the stinging insects, but soon Vaughan Williams turns to the memorable, folk-like themes that are his trademark. Sometimes whole-tone, elsewhere modal, these tunes give the overture a specifically English character. The Wasps is a wonderfully upbeat opener. VSO principal cello Michael Daniels is the soloist in Sir Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor. This work figured prominently in the soundtrack to Anand Tucker’s 1998 film Hilary and Jackie, a biopic about the legendary English cellist Jacqueline DuPré and her fraught relationship with her sister. Daniels never saw the film, but he had long been an admirer of the piece, listening to recordings from forty years ago by DuPré herself.. “This concerto is a 20th-century masterpiece,” he declares without hesitation. “There are other cello concertos by Kabalevsky, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich, but none of them is as magnificent as the Elgar. The Elgar and Dvořák are now considered the two greatest concertos ever written for the instrument.” Elgar’s breakthrough work was the Enigma Variations (1899), which catapulted him to international fame. Virtually overnight, he found himself at the forefront of British composition. Nearly two decades later, the England he loved was mired in a desperate war. Elgar’s world was disintegrating politically, personally, and professionally. His state of mind comes through in this eloquent, nostalgic, passionate, and deeply felt concerto. “I definitely hear this work as valedictory,” says Daniels. “The effects of the Great War transferred to his musical style, which was different from his previous compositions. His wife had been having serious health problems; in fact, she died shortly after the concerto’s premiere in autumn 1919. Elgar’s own health was declining. He was in his sixties, and I believe he felt that life as he knew it was over. This concerto was his last major composition. Even though Edward Elgar lived another fifteen years, he did not write another large-scale piece.” William Alwyn represents the next generation of English composers after Elgar and Vaughan Williams. His contemporaries were Walton, Arnold, Britten, and Tippett, and he has been overshadowed by them. There’s a good chance, however, that you’ve heard at least part of Lyra Angelica, Alwyn’s 1954 concerto for harp and string orchestra. Figure skater Michelle Kwan used excerpts from it for her long program at the 1998 US National Championships and the Nagano Olympics. VSO principal harp Barbara Chapman has wanted to play Lyra Angelica for years, and was delighted when JoAnn Falletta immediately agreed that it was a good fit with this program. Alwyn was a poet as well as a composer. His inspiration for Lyra Angelica was “Christ’s Victorie and Triumph” (1610), an epic poem by Giles Fletcher that was the model for Milton’s Paradise Lost. “Alwyn was obviously a spiritual man,” says Ms. Chapman. “The first movement is Christ among us. The third movement is the Passion; it has its own fabulous theme, with three dissonant chords at the beginning. I hear it as the road to Golgotha, the march to the cross. The last movement is resurrection and ascension. Alwyn brings back the first movement theme, now in E major. The skies open, the sun shines, and there is jubilation everywhere. “The beauty of it is that you don’t need to know any of this in order to appreciate Alwyn’s writing. I’m so drawn to his melodies. The themes are just gorgeous!” In addition to complementing the English works on the first half, Lyra Angelica’s Christian subtext provides a transition to Mozart’s Mass in C major, K.317, known as the “Coronation” Mass. “This entire concert is a celebration of our rich VSO talent,” says Ms. Falletta. “We are so fortunate to have great principal players like Mike [Daniels] and Barbara [Chapman]. And I am immensely proud of our splendid Virginia Symphony Chorus. This Mozart Mass shows off how truly excellent they have become under the direction of Robert Shoup.” The source for the nickname “Coronation” is disputed. Some scholars believe it derives from the ceremonial crowning an image of the Virgin in a church near Salzburg; others believe this mass was performed when the Austrian Emperor Leopold II was crowned King of Bohemia in 1791. Mozart’s setting, from 1779, is a missa brevis [short mass]. Both its arias and choruses hint at the operatic wonders Mozart would compose over the next decade. More extended notes by Laurie Shulman about each of the works on this program are available on the VSO web site, www.virginiasymphony.org. Overture to The Wasps Ralph Vaughan Williams Born 12 October, 1872 in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, England Died 26 August, 1958 in London Approximate duration 9 minutes If you think you hear the buzzing of wasps at the beginning of this overture, you’re right, but don’t let that ominous sound deter you from enjoying one of Vaughan Williams’s most engaging and upbeat pieces. The title comes from a comedy by the ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes, who also wrote plays entitled The Birds, The Frogs, The Clouds, and The Acharnians. The plot of The Wasps concerns the Athenian legal system, which allowed for jurors to be paid for their service on the bench. During times of war, when most of the young men were off at battle, old men managed the jury. The two principal characters in The Wasps are Philocleon, one such old man, and his son Bdelycleon. They struggle with the ethical issues of a populace eager to pursue litigation because they are compensated for sitting in judgment. At the request of the Greek Play Committee at Cambridge University, Vaughan Williams composed an entire set of incidental music for the play in 1907. Both Cambridge and Oxford had long-standing traditions of presenting fully-staged performances of Greek drama in the original language, with music. In fulfilling the commission, Vaughan Williams joined a distinguished group of British composers, including Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford, who had written similar scores. The premiere took place in Cambridge on 26 November, 1907. Vaughan Williams’s original score comprised 18 numbers, from which he extracted a 25-minute orchestral suite in 1914 consisting of five movements. The overture, which opened the suite as well as the original production, has never lost its popularity and enjoys a healthy life as an orchestral concert opener. Following the angry opening drone of the wasps, the overture takes its principal material from themes associated with the play’s main characters. The music is completely different in style and idea from the Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis or the Fantasia on Greensleeves, two of Vaughan Williams’s better known orchestral pieces. The wasp drone is whole-tone based, reflecting the impressionist influence of Vaughan Williams’s teacher Maurice Ravel. The balance of the overture, however, has an Edwardian flavor, with original themes that bear the staunch, upright imprint of English folk music. Philocleon has two themes: a jaunty woodwind melody in dotted rhythm and a broad, lyrical string theme that sounds as British as ‘Danny Boy’ is Irish. Eventually, Vaughan Williams superimposes the two together. His orchestration is vivid throughout, enhanced by sparkling use of cymbals, triangle, bass drum and harp. The full score comprises two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, percussion, harp and strings. Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Op.85 Sir Edward Elgar Born 2 June, 1857 in Broadheath, near Worcester, England Died 23 February, 1934 in Worcester Approximate duration 30 minutes The Great War (1914-18) marked the end of Britain’s golden age, when her international hegemony had been virtually unassailable. For Edward Elgar, the end of this era was particularly poignant. Before the war, he had close ties and many friends in Germany. Afterward, both his career and his health were faltering, and he found himself beset with the simple financial worry of making ends meet. In this troubled state, Elgar commenced work on his Cello Concerto in spring 1918. His attention was deflected that summer by an intense focus on chamber music. The results, a Violin Sonata, a String Quartet, and a Piano Quintet, were Elgar’s first chamber works since his student years. Felix Salmond was the cellist of the quartet that performed both larger chamber pieces. Salmond worked closely with Elgar as the concerto moved up on his priority list. Because Elgar had considered a career as a concert violinist, he understood string playing. Thus he was both responsive to and appreciative of Salmond's many suggestions to fine-tune the concerto. Elgar conducted Salmond at the premiere, which was unsuccessful largely because of insufficient rehearsal time. The concerto rapidly achieved its place in the repertoire, however, and is now acclaimed as being on a par with Dvorák's magnificent Cello Concerto. Certainly it is the greatest masterpiece of Elgar's maturity. The Concerto is scored for woodwinds in pairs plus optional piccolo, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones (optional tuba doubling bass trombone), timpani, solo cello and strings. MUSICIANS’ CORNER The Elgar Cello Concerto is unusual in form. The first two and last two movements are paired, with formal breaks occurring only between the second (a symphonic scherzo) and third (Adagio) movements. The soloist opens the concerto with a bold recitative that is as much in chords as it is in melody. That recitative returns to form a unifying link, first as a bridge to the second movement (thinly disguised as pizzicato), then again in the finale. Elgar awards the main theme, a lilting, questioning melody in 9/8 time, to the violas. The entire first movement is filled with elusive, understated gestures. This is no showpiece for the simple sake of virtuosity, but rather a profound and thought-provoking musical statement. Elgar’s mercurial scherzo places extreme technical demands on the soloist. A perpetual motion movement, it is just a little lopsided, with emphasis slightly off the beat. Elgar often sends the cellist scurrying about quite high in its tessitura. The Adagio is emotionally central to the Concerto and the only movement in which the opening recitative does not figure prominently. Strings dominate the orchestral support. “The third movement is a vocal lament, definitely a commentary on life for him and others at that point in time,” says Michael Daniels. “Even though it is paired with the fourth movement, it stands out in the piece. It is a unique elegy, in the very distant key of B-flat major. I am certain it will be emotionally draining in performance, making it especially daunting to launch directly into the last movement, which is the most challenging technically.” Larger scale than its predecessors, the finale takes as much time in performance as the three previous movements combined. It recalls the bursting self-confidence of Elgar’s 1899 masterpiece, the Enigma Variations. His apparently lighthearted gambol incorporates heartfelt reminders of the Adagio and a final quotation from the opening recitative. They make a powerful statement, undoing the happy-go-lucky atmosphere established so effectively earlier on. The final impression we have is, as Michael Kennedy has so aptly noted: . . . overpoweringly the music of wood smoke and autumn bonfires, of the evening of life; sadness and disillusion are dominant. – L.S. ©2011 Lyra Angelica for harp and strings William Alwyn Born 7 November 1905 in Northampton, England Died 11 September 1985 in Southwold, England Approximate duration 23 minutes William who? If you know a 20th-century English composer with this first name, it is William Walton, of Crown Imperial, Belshazzar’s Feast, and Henry V fame. William Alwyn has been overshadowed by Walton and other British composers of his generation such as Malcolm Arnold, Benjamin Britten, and Michael Tippett. Yet Alwyn had his own substantial career, and his music is a wonderful discovery. His orchestral music includes five symphonies, but his bread and butter was composing for film, radio, and TV. Beginning in the 1930s, he wrote more than 100 cinema scores, including music for such classics as The Devil is a Woman (1935), Desert Victory (1943), Odd Man Out (1947), The Master of Ballantrae (1953), Bedevilled (1955), The Swiss Family Robinson (1960), and The Running Man (1963). Alwyn was a renaissance man; he painted and wrote poetry as well as music. His principal instrument was flute, and he played in the London Symphony Orchestra from 1927, after graduating from the Royal Academy of Music. He also joined the Royal Academy’s faculty, becoming an advocate for young composers. After 1955, he left teaching in order to focus on film composition, which he regarded as a venue for experimentation. He believed that writing film music polished his technique and broadened his dramatic range. Late in life, he turned to opera. Alwyn’s music is neoclassic, with an emphasis on counterpoint. Although his middle symphonies combine diatonic and twelve-tone elements, his other works favor postimpressionism. They share the modal/folk song inflections of other English composers such as Vaughan Williams and Delius. All these influences are present in Lyra Angelica, his 1954 concerto for harp and strings. Its rhapsodic, sumptuous music proved irresistible to the American figure skater Michelle Kwan, who used excerpts from Lyra Angelica for her long program at the 1998 US Championships and at the Olympic Games in Nagano. Lyra Angelica’s first performance took place at the opening night of the 1954 Promenade Concerts (popularly known as ‘the Proms’), in London. The harpist was Sidonie Goossens, sister of the conductor and composer Eugene Goossens and the oboist Leon Goossens. For the premiere, Alwyn wrote a brief composer’s note. Lyra Angelica [Angel’s Songs] was inspired by my intense love of the 17th-century metaphysical poets: George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, John Donne, and Thomas Traherne, of whom Giles Fletcher is probably the least known today, although his masterpiece, the epic poem “Christ’s Victorie and Triumph” (1610) was the direct inspiration for Milton’s Paradise Lost. My concerto for harp and strings is a cycle of four elegiac movements, each illustrating a quotation from Fletcher’s text: I. Adagio - “I looke for angels’ songs, and hear Him crie.’ II. Adagio, ma non troppo - “Ah! Who was He such pretious perills found?” III. Moderato - ‘And yet, how can I let Thee singing goe, When men incens’d with hate Thy death foreset?” IV. Allgero giubiloso - “How can such joy as this want words to speake?” In my interpretation of these lines I have tried to capture in musical terms the sensuous imagery and mystical fervour of the poem as a whole. The concerto is of symphonic proportions, but it is free and rhapsodic in style. I have tried to sustain this rapt mood by interweaving the solo harp and strings into a continuous web of luminous sound. , According to the composer’s widow, William Alwyn considered the harp concerto to be his most beautiful composition. Mary Alwyn chose its first movement to be played at her husband’s funeral. In 1987, Lyra Angelica was the major work anchoring a concert honoring Alwyn’s life and work at the 15th-century Church of the Holy Trinity in Blythburgh, Suffolk. Alwyn scored Lyra Angelica for harp and strings. IN THE SOLOIST’S WORDS: Barbara Chapman on Lyra Angelica Although this weekend is the first time VSO Principal Harp Barbara Chapman has performed Lyra Angelica, this piece has been on her radar screen for a long time. She describes it as on her ‘life list,’ a composition she definitely wanted to learn. “I first played Alwyn’s Naiades for flute and harp 30 years ago and found it manageable, playable, delightful to play,” she recalls. “Then I became aware that he had composed extensively for harp, including this concerto for harp and strings, but I had never heard it played live. When I suggested Lyra Angelica, JoAnn [Falletta] was thrilled. It fits very well with the English theme of this program, and the music is so beautiful.” The project was easier planned than executed. “It was an adventure locating the score,” Ms. Chapman explains. “Alwyn’s publisher is Alfred Lengnick, a minor English publishing house now handled by Ricordi London. I discovered that Lyra Angelica had never been engraved. All that was available was a photostat of the manuscript in fair copy. And no piano reduction existed – just the full score.” Nevertheless, she was committed to the project. “This work has potential to become central to the harp literature,” she says. “Alwyn is emerging from the shadows in England. There’s been a William Alwyn Conference in the past couple of years, and he is getting some recognition. Lyra Angelica is stunning repertoire: so well written, and it fits the hands well. In the entire score, I cannot find a place that is unplayable – it’s just a yummy, yummy piece!” Chapman points out that Alwyn loved poetry; he knew languages and loved allegories. “He did so much more than write and play music. He was also a painter and read extensively in English and French poetry. Giles Fletcher’s poetry is a springboard for the imagination. Lyra Angelica is especially appropriate as we move toward the Lenten season, especially followed on this program by the Mozart Mass.” – L.S. ©2011 Mass in C major, K.317 “Krönungsmesse” [“Coronation” Mass] Wolfgang Amadè Mozart Born 27 January, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria Died 5 December, 1791 in Vienna Approximate duration 24 minutes Most listeners don’t know much sacred music by Mozart apart from the Requiem and the Exsultate jubilate. Quite a bit more exists, most of it from his Salzburg years. When Mozart returned in January 1779 from his ill-fated trip to Mannheim and Paris, Salzburg’s Archbishop Colloredo appointed him court and cathedral organist. In this capacity he was expected to compose as well as perform a considerable amount of music for church services and other ceremonial occasions. The so-called “Coronation” Mass dates from March 1779, and was almost certainly composed for Easter services a couple of weeks later. The subtitle is a 19th-century label. It probably arose from this Mass having been performed at the coronation of Emperor Leopold II as King of Bohemia in late summer 1791; Antonio Salieri is believed to have conducted that performance. Some fifteen complete masses survive from Mozart’s Salzburg years, plus a few miscellaneous mass movements. In a famous letter to the Italian pedagogue Padre Martini in 1776, Mozart described the Salzburg custom. Masses were to last no longer than three-quarters of an hour. This meant a shorter musical component, with little or no repetition of text. The truncated approach has come to be known as a Missa brevis or ‘short mass.’ The ‘Coronation’ is something of a hybrid: a bit longer than most of Mozart’s other masses, calling for a fairly large orchestra, and with some text repetition, but it is still concise at well under a half hour. The music of the opening Andante maestoso recurs at the end, a unifier that occurs in Bach’s Magnificat and other sacred pieces. The most interesting aspect of this Mass, however, is its arias, which clearly foreshadow the direction Mozart would take in his vocal writing during the operas of the 1780s. Many writers have noted similarities between the Agnus dei theme and the Countess’ aria, “Dove sono” in The Marriage of Figaro. Opera buffs who know Così fan tutte will also detect a thematic relationship between the Mass’ Kyrie theme and Fiordiligi’s Act I aria, “Come scoglio.” Even those who are not fans of opera will take pleasure in Mozart’s elegant writing for chorus and orchestra as well as the soloists. It is easy to understand why K.317 is considered to be his finest mass. Mozart scored the mass for two oboes, two horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani; a quartet of vocal soloists; soprano, mixed chorus, organ, and strings. The string complement consists of first and second violins and basso, which would mean celli and basses – but no violas; the absence of violas was also in keeping with Salzburg tradition. The Salzburg orchestra might have reinforced the bass with bassoon.