Download Program Notes - Roanoke Symphony Orchestra

February 12 & 13, 2012
Program Notes
Symphony No. 2, “Romantic”
Howard Hanson
(b. 1896, Wazoo, Nebraska; d. 1981, Rochester, New York)
Though he never achieved Bernstein’s universal fame, Howard Hanson had much in common
with Leonard Bernstein. Both were the sons of immigrants: Bernstein’s parents from Russia
and Hanson’s from Sweden. Both were esteemed conductor-composers, and both were
educators, although in that field Hanson definitely took the lead. For while Bernstein squeezed
in teaching at the Boston Symphony’s Tanglewood Institute in the summers and with his
famous “Young People’s Concerts” for television, Hanson devoted the greatest part of his
time and energy to guiding the next musical generation. For forty years (1924–1964), he
was director of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, building it into the
leading American musical school of that era.
And like Bernstein, Hanson had a larger-than-life persona. “Certainly he was a leader of
imposing, sometimes overpowering personality, who apparently could remember the name
of every student he ever met,” remembers his pupil Walter S. Hartley. Hanson developed
the Eastman-Rochester Symphony (now the Rochester Philharmonic) into an important
orchestra and was often invited to the podiums of America’s premier orchestras. Himself a
musical conservative, he became a tireless champion of American composers, regardless
of which end of the creative spectrum they came from. With his orchestra, he produced a
large catalogue of recordings of American repertoire.
Somehow Hanson managed to squeeze in his own creative work, including an opera
and six symphonies. His Fourth Symphony won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Music, but
his Second, which he subtitled “Romantic,” is his most popular work. Commissioned by
Serge Koussevitzky (who also played an important role in Bernstein’s career) for the Boston
Symphony, it was premiered in Boston in November 1930.
The subtitle “Romantic” was more than a name — for Hanson, it was a statement of faith.
In 1930, “Romantic” music was out of favor, and the neo-Classicism of Stravinsky and the
atonality of Arnold Schoenberg were “in.” At the time of the “Romantic’s” premiere, Hanson
wrote: “The symphony represents ... my escape from the rather bitter type of modern
musical realism which occupies so large a place in contemporary musical thought. Much
contemporary music seems to me to be showing a tendency to become entirely too cerebral.
I do not believe that music is primarily a matter of the intellect, but rather a manifestation
of the emotions. I have, therefore, aimed ... to create a work that was young in spirit, lyrical
and Romantic in temperament, and simple and direct in expression.”
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The warm, noble sound of horns — both solo and in quartet — provides the signature
color and also act as the thematic leaders in this symphony, just as they epitomized the
Romantic sound throughout the 19th century, from Mendelssohn to Tchaikovsky. But as
the first movement begins, we hear the woodwinds in a dark three-note ascending motive
that forms the slow introduction to this traditional sonata-form movement. When the tempo
accelerates, the horn quartet introduces a rather heroic descending theme. Like Romantic
composers such as Franz Liszt, Hanson will use this melody as a motto idea returning in all
three movements. A little later, mellow strings introduce a second theme: a true romantic
melody in the style of the 1930s and as warm and relaxing as your favorite easy chair. Keep
this tune in mind, too, for it will reappear much later in the symphony.
The tender second movement is even more melodious and full of sumptuously orchestrated
atmosphere. The woodwinds create a new theme out of the horns’ motto melody; the
relationship becomes more obvious when the horns take over. A middle section re-introduces
the ascending three-note motive from the symphony’s opening, and the horns seize on it
as an engine to power a slow, steady crescendo.
The horns launch the finale with a vivacious whoop of fanfares derived from the motto
theme, which will be expanded into a an exciting horn-led brass passage at the movement’s
midpoint. In its original form, the motto keeps making reappearances, at first discreetly,
then more boldly. The music builds to a grand close over pounding timpani;dominating the
action is the motto theme in the brass. But just before the end, Hanson can’t resist a last
romantic reminiscence of the strings’ mellow “arm-chair” theme from movement one.
"Du and Du" Waltzes from Die Fledermaus
Thunder and Lightning polka schnell, Op. 324
Johann Strauss II
(b. 1825, Vienna, Austria; d. 1899, Vienna)
Part fantasy and part reality, Old Vienna was the city devoted to the pleasure principle — a
feast for all the senses. Buildings decorated like wedding cakes dazzled the eyes. Sugarspun pastries teased the palate. And for over a century, if you loved music you were in
paradise: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and the Strauss family all made their
careers in Vienna between the 1780s and the 1890s.
Above all, Vienna was Europe's premier ballroom. In 1807, Vienna's first grand dance
hall, the Sperl, was opened and soon had many competitors. A wit said of the Congress
of Vienna of 1815, which deliberated the treaty concluding the Napoleonic Wars: “Le
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Congrès ne marche pas, il danse.” (“The Congress doesn't work - it dances.”) In the
following decade, Johann Strauss, Sr. rapidly became one of Vienna's most popular dance
conductor-composers, and when in 1829 he took over the orchestra at Sperl's, he became
the undisputed king. He reigned unchallenged until 1844 when his 18-year-old son Johann
II began leading the rival orchestra at Dommayer's Casino.
Worn out by overwork, Johann, Sr. died in 1849 at the premature age of 45. Johann II then
reigned as Vienna’s “Waltz King” until the end of the century, and his mastery and innovation
of the waltz form far exceeded his father’s. His mature waltzes, like the “Emperor” and “On
the Beautiful Blue Danube,” are complex works created more for the concert hall than for
the ballroom.
Not resting on his laurels, Johann II also became the father of the Viennese operetta: a
lighter form of opera based on the waltz and using spoken dialogue between the musical
numbers. Today his Die Fledermaus (“The Bat”) of 1874 remains the most popular of all
operettas: a tale of how a philandering Viennese husband gets his comeuppance. Eisenstein
and his wife, Rosalinda, have been bickering over their extracurricular romances when
each, unbeknownst to the other, is invited to a party at Prince Orlofsky's lavish palace. At
this waltz-propelled ball, Eisenstein unknowingly falls for his own wife, who has disguised
herself as a Hungarian countess. Rosalinda, however, recognizes him, and when he tries to
seduce her with a watch, she pockets it for future evidence. When her identity is revealed
in the last act, the chastened Eisenstein promises to remain faithful.
Act II of Die Fledermaus takes place at the ball at Prince Orlofsky’s palace, and it features
the beguiling series of waltzes we’ll hear at this concert. “Du” is the familiar form of “you” in
German used for family members and close friends. As the champagne flows freely courtesy of
the generous Russian prince, the barriers break down and all the partygoers begin addressing
each other as “du” in the charmingly sentimental chorus contained in these waltzes.
When Viennese stage action involved a particular spectacle, the polka was often turned
to for various special effects from the orchestra. Especially popular was a variant of the
traditional dance, the schnell (fast) polka, sometimes called the explosion polka, which
is the case with Strauss’s Thunder and Lightning polka, characterized by its incessant
timpani rolls and cymbal crashes.
Adagietto from Symphony No. 5
Gustav Mahler
(b. 1860, Kalischt, Bohemia; d. 1911, Vienna, Austria)
The summer of 1901 turned out to be the most productive of Gustav Mahler's career.
Because of his nonstop conducting career from September through May, only the summer
months were available for composing. In 1901, a new summer home awaited him: a splendid
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villa he had had built in the village of Maiernigg on the shores of the peaceful Wörtersee
in southern Austria. The composer was delighted with this retreat: “It's too beautiful, one
shouldn't allow oneself such a thing,” his puritan conscience complained. Up a steep path in
the woods was his little composing cottage or Häuschen, meagerly furnished with a piano,
a worktable, and a chair or two. Here he began composing his Fifth Symphony, as well as
eight orchestral songs, including three of his great Kindertotenlieder (“Songs of the Death of
Children”) and three other songs to poems by Friedrich Rückert. Not surprisingly, the songs
fertilized the symphony, and some of their themes and moods infiltrated its movements.
Before he was able to return the next summer to complete his Fifth Symphony, another
major event happened. That winter, he met and married the alluring Alma Schindler, 19
years his junior. As he returned to Maiernigg in June 1902, he brought his new bride, already
expecting their first child. Yet, as Alma Mahler ruefully recalled, the routine at the Mahler
villa changed hardly at all to accommodate their new status; everything still revolved around
providing Mahler with peace and solitude for his composing. Nevertheless, new feelings of
joy surely influenced the symphony's continuation as he created the gorgeous Adagietto
(which his friend the Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg believed was a love song to Alma)
as its fourth movement.
Often played on its own as we will hear tonight, the Adagietto’s sensuous beauty speaks for
itself. Slow and dream-like, it is, if not a love song to Alma, surely an expression of the peace
of his composing retreat. Its serene music, scored for just strings and harp, recalls one of his
Rückert songs from 1901, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (“I am lost to the world”),
which ends with the words: “I live alone in my own heaven, in my love, in my song.”
Selections from “West Side Story”
Leonard Bernstein
(b. 1918, Lawrence, Massachusetts; d. 1990, New York City)
In 1989, the year before he died, Leonard Bernstein complained to a musician in the
Israel Philharmonic: “I don't feel happy that people will remember me because of “West
Side Story,” even though I love the piece. I would rather people remembered me for my
serious compositions.”
These are strange words from a composer who earlier in his career had proselytized for the
breaking down of artificial barriers between popular music and "serious" art music. In “West
Side Story,” he had triumphantly proven that the two can be fused together successfully.
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Many a composer of symphonies and concertos would give his eyeteeth to be remembered
as the creator of “West Side Story”!
Opening on Broadway on September 26, 1957, the musical updated Shakespeare's
“Romeo and Juliet” to contemporary New York City, where prejudice and feuding teen
gangs separate the Polish Tony from the Puerto Rican Maria. Working with a dream team
of collaborators — Arthur Laurents writing the book, Stephen Sondheim contributing the
lyrics, and Jerome Robbins devising the revolutionary choreography — Bernstein created
music that glorified every twist in this timeless love story, from brash, streetwise dances
to the most tender of romantic ballads.
In 1961, “West Side Story” moved on to Hollywood, where its film version won ten Academy
Awards. In various symphonic arrangements, its superb songs remain staples of the concert
hall today, as in the arrangement by Jack Mason we’ll hear tonight. It features seven of the
songs, including the rapturous duet “Tonight,” which Maria and Tony sing on a tenement fire
escape taking the place of Shakespeare’s balcony, and “America,” the exuberant salute to
their new country performed by the Puerto Rican immigrants at the big dance at the gym.
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, copyright 2011
RSO program notes are also available online at rso.com/notes
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