Download PROGRAM NOTES – OPENING NIGHT – OCTOBER 4, 2013 By

Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra
29th Season -- 2013-2014
PROGRAM NOTES – OPENING NIGHT – OCTOBER 4, 2013
By Charles P. Conrad, DMA, © 2013
Beatrice Rana, Piano
Kirk Trevor, Conductor
Overture: Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Opus 27
Felix Mendelssohn, born 3 February 1809 at Hamburg; died 4 November 1847 at Leipzig
Today a calm sea would generally be considered a blessing, but before the days of steam
engines, it was not a good situation for sailing ships. On occasion, ships would be stranded for
days or even weeks if there were no wind to power them. Calm Sea and Properous Voyage
begins with this unwelcome weather — the static character and slow tempo of the music mirrors
the lack of movement of the ship. Finally the wind picks up, and the tempo quickens for the
majority of the overture. A striking timpani solo and trumpet fanfares announce the arrival at
port. There are solemn chords at the end – perhaps a symbolic statement of gratitude for the
safe passage through difficult circumstances.
The inspiration for this work, composed when the composer was just 19, in 1828, was a poem
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a beloved German poet with whom Mendelssohn
corresponded for years until Goethe’s death in 1832. Beethoven had written a work on this
same text in 1815, and Mendelssohn quoted a motive from Beethoven’s opera Fidelio in his
own overture. Biographer Henrich Edvard Jacob, in his book Felix Mendelssohn and His Times,
speculates that the reason for this quote is thematic: “The theme is liberation: [in Fidelio]
Pisarro’s prisoners were liberated and the rising wind at sea had liberated the beleaguered
ship.” Seven decades later, composer Edward Elgar would quote a melody from Mendelssohn’s
overture in his masterpiece Enigma Variations as his depiction of one of his friends who was on
a sea voyage.
The overture is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons,
contrabassoon, ophicleide (an obsolete brass instrument replaced in modern performances by
the contrabassoon and double bass), two horns, three trumpets, timpani, and strings. Its
duration is about twelve minutes.
Concerto in A Minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 54
Robert Schumann, born 27 January 1756, at Salzburg; died 5 December 1791 at Vienna
Robert Schumann was a significant composer and music journalist, but he started his career as
a pianist. Unfortunately, at the age of 19, he began using a chiropast, a device that many
pianists of the day employed in an effort to strengthen individual fingers, and sustained a career
ending injury. He was more fortunate in his choice of a spouse than in his choice of a finger
strengthener, however, and Clara Wieck Schumann performed the premieres of many of his
piano works, incl1uding the Piano Concerto in A Minor. Schumann had started to write a largescale Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra in 1841, and Clara convinced him to add two more
movements in order to make it into a concerto. He completed the full work in 1845; it would be
the only concerto for piano that he was to complete. The first performance was in the
Schumanns’ home city of Leipzig, with Clara as the soloist and Ferdinand Hiller, the dedicatee
of the work, as the conductor.
In 1839 Schumann had written an essay on the state of piano concertos that bemoaned the
number of hollow virtuosic showpieces that demonstrated the technical fireworks of the soloist
without showing any real musical depth. He wrote: “The separation of the piano from the
orchestra is something we have seen coming for some time...We must await the genius who will
show us in a newer and more brilliant way how orchestra and piano may be combined, how the
soloist, dominant at the keyboard, may unfold the wealth of his instrument and his art, while the
orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may interweave its manifold facets into the scene.”
Schumann’s concerto was received rather coolly at first, but in a few years it was popular all
over Europe, and received its New York premiere in 1859. According to his recent biographer
John Worthen, Schumann heard the work in performance on four occasions, all with Clara as
the soloist. He died as a patient in an insane asylum in 1856. Clara would champion the
concerto for the rest of her performing life, and around 1860 she played it at a concert attended
by a young Edward Grieg, who was instantly taken by the work. His own Piano Concerto in A
Minor was completed in 1869 and would become one of the most beloved of all piano
concertos, and the similarities in its style go beyond just the use of the same key.
The concerto is scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets, as
well as timpani and strings. Its duration is about 31 minutes.
Le Tombeau de Couperin
Maurice Ravel, born 7 March 1875 at Ciboure, France; died 28 December 1937 at Paris
When World War I broke out in Europe in 1914, Maurice Ravel was a patriotic Frenchman and
tried to enlist. Already nearly 40 and in less than excellent health, he was turned down on
numerous occasions, but was successful in securing a volunteer position caring for wounded
soldiers in hospitals in Biarritz. He saw first-hand the horror and terrible carnage of the trench
battles. He was not satisfied with his level of participation and wrote to a friend (quoted in
Madelein Goss’s biography Bolero: The Life of Maurice Ravel):
“I am quite aware, my dear friend, that I am working for my country when I compose! At least, I
have been told this often enough for the past two months to convince me; first to prevent me
from enlisting, afterward to console me for my disappointment. I wasn’t prevented, and I am not
consoled...I likewise care for the wounded every week, which is absorbing enough – the
unheard of number, as well as the variety, of needs which 40 men can have in the course of one
night!
I am also composing...I am beginning two series of piano pieces: first a
French suite – no, this is not what you think – there will be no Marseillaise, and it will have a
forlane, gigue, but no tango.”
Ravel wrote Le Tombeau de Couperin during the war, from 1914-1917. François Couperin
(1668-1733) was a French composer who was one of Ravel’s personal heroes – he revered him
more than J.S. Bach, but not quite as much as Mozart. The title might suggest that the work was
dedicated to the baroque era composer, but this is not the case. His name is connected to the
style and individual movements of the work. Each movement was written in memory of Ravel’s
friends and colleagues who died in the war. In 1919 Ravel arranged four of the six piano pieces
for chamber orchestra. Here are the dedications of the pieces:
Prelude – dedicated to the memory of composer and musician First Lt. Jacques Charlot.
Forlane – dedicated to the memory of painter First Lt. Gabriel DeLuc.
Menuet – dedicated to the memory of Jean Dreyfus.
Rigaudon – in memory of brothers Pierre and Pascal Gauden – childhood
friends of Ravel who were killed by the same exploding shell.
The work is scored for two flutes, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns,
trumpet, harp, and strings. Its duration is about 18 minutes.
Divertissement
Jacques Ibert, born 15 August 1890 at Paris; died 5 February 1962 at Paris
French composer Jacques Ibert wrote his Divertissement as a concert suite of pieces from his
incidental music to a play. The stage work was an 1851 five-act farce, Un Chapeau de paille
d’Italie (The Italian Straw Hat) that was the first successful play of the important French
dramatist Eugene Marin Labiche (1815-1888). The incidental music was first performed with the
play in 1929, and the composer put together the short six-movement suite in 1930. Ibert shows
the influence of 1920s jazz and cabaret styles in his work, which begins with a lively and
infectious Introduction. The second piece is a Cortege that begins slowly with a disembodied
flute solo. This is followed by a fast and furious march featuring quotations of the familiar
Wedding March from Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The music begins with a
funereal sort of sound, as one might expect, but the dark mood does not last long. Nocturne
starts with low strings on a long and angular melody that introduces Gershwinesque chords with
trombone glissandi and then a piano cadenza. The ensuing Waltz is full of references to
different styles of the dance, including a quote from Strauss’s famed The Beautiful Blue
Danube. A bassoon and muted trumpet start the action in Parade, which is set in the style of an
American Patrol – beginning softly as if the band is far away, then getting louder to a raucous
middle section while the band is directly in front of the listener, and finally softening as the band
moves away. Piano tone clusters introduce a rousing Finale, which seems to evoke a slapstick
Offenbach-style Can-Can, complete with police whistle.
Ibert burst onto the music scene in 1920 with his Escales (Ports of Call), a work he came to
regret, as it was so popular that it overshadowed later creations that he considered better and
more musically significant. It is interesting that Maurice Ravel had a similar experience when he
wrote Bolero. Ibert was to suffer the fate of so many musicians when the Vichy government
banned his work during the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944. He fled to
Switzerland and was invited by General DeGaulle to return after the puppet government was
ousted.
Divertissement is scored for three violins, two violas, two cellos, double bass, flute (doubling on
piccolo), oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, piano, and percussion. Its duration is
about 15 minutes.