Download Midori! - Britt Festival

Midori!
Fri d a y, August 15, 2008 at 8 p.m.
Pre - C oncer t Talk at 7 p.m.
Pro g r a m No t es by Stephen Aechternacht
Ludwig van Beethoven
(Born December 16, 1770 in Bonn, Germany; died March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria, age 56)
King Stephen Overture, Op. 117
(Completed in 1811, age 41)
Of Beethoven’s eleven overtures, King Stephen is one of the least frequently performed. Perhaps
conductors prefer the more dramatic overtures to Egmont, Coriolan and Fidelio to display their talents,
or it could be that King Stephen is a bit more illusive for the listener, as it shifts in mood from serious
to playful. Regardless, here are the salient facts regarding the work:
Playwright August von Kotzebue created both King Stephen and The Ruins of Athens for performances
on the same evening, and Beethoven graciously offered incidental music, including overtures, for both.
King Stephen was the national hero of Hungary, and the play recounts many of the historical facts
regarding his reign. The opening four chords of the work are decidedly modern in sound, although
each iteration of the idea is followed by a light-hearted moment in the woodwinds that suggest
a Hungarian folk melody. For what Kotzebue conceived as a drama, Beethoven’s overture seems
incongruous. Despite the aforementioned heavily laden chords, which are repeated later in the piece,
the music is mostly bright and cheery.
Recommended Recording: Herbert von Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic Deutsche Grammophon
429089 (Complete Beethoven Overtures-2 CDs)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(Born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria; died December 5, 1791 in Vienna, age 35)
Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551 “Jupiter”
(Completed in 1788, age 32)
If Franz Joseph Haydn invented the form of the modern symphony, Mozart perfected it. The astonishing
aspect of this act of perfection is that, while Haydn considered his symphonic output central to his career,
it was opera that remained Mozart’s chief interest, with the exception of his first few years in Vienna when
he was obsessed by composing piano concertos. To Mozart, composing a symphony was merely marking
musical time in between opera projects. The process seemed to keep him in compositional “shape” while
awaiting the next libretto for him to set!
Mozart began writing symphonies when he spent a year in London in 1764. He was strongly influenced
at age eight by his encounters with the music of Johann Christian Bach and Carl Friedrich Abel. Another
group of symphonies dates from his early days in Salzburg and Vienna (1767-1769) during which he met
the brothers Franz Joseph and Michael Haydn. Throughout the rest of his life, symphonies came similarly
grouped, with gaps between symphonic outbursts.
Mozart’s last symphonic explosion took place during the summer of 1788, coming in between two of his
greatest operatic masterpieces, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte. The former premiered at the Burgtheater
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in Vienna on May 7. Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 received its premiere in Vienna a scant six weeks later.
Mozart followed with Symphony No. 40, premiered one day short of a month later in July. Then, mirabile
dictu, Symphony No. 41, his mightiest symphonic utterance, found the light of day only 16 days later!
No composer has ever come close to Mozart’s prodigious output, not to mention his staggering ability to
produce one masterpiece after another at a breakneck pace, and no composer ever will.
Let us begin by addressing the symphony’s moniker, “Jupiter.” First of all, Mozart never named it so.
Thirty-eight years after Mozart’s death, the impresario Johann Peter Salomon visited Mozart’s widow and
son, with his friend Vincent Novello. Novello recalled, “Mozart’s son said he considered the Finale to his
father’s Symphony in C Major to be the highest triumph of instrumental composition, and I agreed with
him.” So did Salomon, who then christened the work Jupiter, comparing its symphonic weight to the
largest planet in our solar system. In his final, finest and largest scale symphony, Mozart unknowingly set
the stage for Beethoven, whose nine symphonies would change symphonic thought forever. It is truly a
seminal and prophetic symphony of the highest order.
During the early 19th century, Jupiter was known as “the symphony with the fugal finale.” Six years before
the composition of this symphony, Mozart discovered the music of Bach. He synthesized the Baroque
polyphonic mentality into his own musical vocabulary, and crowned this symphony with a massive fuguelike denouement paying obeisance to Bach. While the previous three movements are masterpieces in their
own right, displaying creativity, balance and tonal complexity, the finale is the crowning achievement of
what the masterful writer on Mozart, Michael Steinberg, calls, “one of the most splendid manifestations of
that rich gathering—in we call the classical style.”
Recommended Recording: Sir Charles Mackerras, Prague Chamber Orch. Telarc 80139 (with Symphony
No. 40)
Dmitri Shostakovich
(Born September 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg; died August 9, 1975 in Moscow, age 68)
Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, Op. 99
(Completed in 1948, age 42 as Op. 77; published in 1955 as Op. 99)
The year 2006 saw a worldwide celebration of the centennial of Dmitri Shostakovich’s birth. Cycles of
symphonies, concertos and string quartets were released commercially on compact disc, festivals of his
music were given, panels debated his place in Russian music and history, operas were staged, and movies
were released that plumbed the depths of the mind, the twisted politics and grave emotions of the greatest
Russian composer born in the 20th century.
Shostakovich trained as both a pianist and a composer. Although he was a brilliant pianist in his youth,
composition won out, and he rarely performed on piano as an adult. His Symphony No. 1, completed
when he was still a teenager, catapulted him into the international limelight, and subsequently his music
became more abstract and experimental. Soviet officials began to worry that Shostakovich, along with
some of his young cohorts, were going a little too far, straying from the Soviets’ political goal of “Socialist
Realism” in music and art. Shostakovich and his circle didn’t heed the warning signs, and as in the words
of his Soviet biographer Rabinovich, they “raced recklessly forward…and very soon found themselves in a
cul-de-sac.”
The situation snapped in 1934 with Shostakovich’s lurid opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. In the opera, the
composer sets both a rape and a flogging to music, and the title character commits a series of murders, then
drowns herself! It was just too much for the authorities, and Pravda declared it “Muddle instead of music.”
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Shostakovich was bitterly attacked (even Stalin himself joined the chorus of critics) and in 1936 he quickly
withdrew his Symphony No. 4, which was in rehearsal for its premiere. Shostakovich felt that this visionary
and experimental work might push Stalin and his artistic hack cronies over the edge…at times the composer
even feared for his life.
Shostakovich exonerated himself with his apologetic Symphony No. 5, but he spent the rest of his life falling
in and out of favor with his Soviet taskmasters, who were always looking over his shoulder at his scores.
One way the composer mollified the authorities was to accept their “invitations” to write music for Soviet
propaganda films (nearly half of his music is for the cinema!). After Stalin’s death in 1953, Shostakovich’s
life was less troubled, although some of his later works still rankled Soviet officials. The score for his
Symphony No. 13 included five poems of the controversial Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. This work
depicted some of the less flattering aspects of life in contemproary Soviet Russia, including anti-Semitism,
the humor-numbing and fear-mongering dreariness fostered by a crushing regime, unscrupulous State-run
shops that cheat Russian housewives out of money and the emptiness of not being able to freely chose one’s
career. Once again the composer was in hot water, but being as resilient as he was, somehow managed to
regain favor. After his death, the self-same critics that dogged him throughout his career praised him as a
true genius.
Today, Shostakovich’s place in music history is firmly planted. He is the heir to Tchaikovsky and Mahler,
and despite looking over the edge of the abyss of despair, his contribution to music is impressive in its scope.
He believed in writing music that was good, beautiful and inspired. After his death, his friend and fellow
composer Aram Khachaturian declared him “the conscience of Soviet music.”
Like Haydn, Shostakovich’s reputation is founded on an impressive set of symphonies and string quartets
(fifteen each). He composed a half-dozen concertos, two each for piano, cello and piano. The Violin
Concerto No. 1 sat on Shostakovich’s desk for over seven years. It is unclear why. Was he still afraid of
Stalin? Was he unhappy with the work? Was he tinkering with it? Did dedicatee David Oistrakh approve of
it? We may never know.
The work is more symphonic than concerto-like. It is in four movements rather than the traditional three,
and the sequence of movements mimics his Symphony No. 10 (slow, fast, slow, fast) which he completed
just before unveiling the concerto. The work begins with a brooding and mysterious Nocturne, similar to
some of the darker movements of his earlier symphonies. A Scherzo follows: a bustling, swirling affair that
uses Shostakovich’s musical monogram of DSCH (the notes D, E flat, C and B) which appears in several of
his works. The following Passacaglia is the emotional heart of the work. Longest of the four movements, it is
also the most profoundly moving. It is an arch of such depth and beauty that it may be the pinnacle of the
composer’s pathos and personal struggle as expressed in music. Here at once is music of sadness and longing;
grief and tender mercy. An extended cadenza for solo violin, again employing the DSCH fingerprint, builds
a bridge to the final movement, a Burlesque. Here is Shostakovich’s “summing up” mentality at its best. As
if in a return from a journey, Shostakovich brings matters to a satisfying conclusion, and the movement is a
perfect foil to the emotionally wrought penultimate Passacaglia releasing the listener from introspection
to celebration.
Recommended Recording: Midori, violin, Claudio Abbado, Berlin Philharmonic Sony 93088 (with Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto)
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