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RSO Cookbook |
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Roswell Symphony Orchestra PROGRAM NOTES Overture
to the Tragedy, Coriolan, Op. 62 . . . Ludwig van
Beethoven Although Coriolanus is often identified with Shakespeare, Plutarch was the first to tell the story of the legendary Roman general, Gaius Marcus Coriolanus, who vanquished the Volscian tribe, captured their capital city of Corioli and took its name as his, at around 500 B.C. When Coriolanus came home from battle to find that the privileges of his patrician class had been diminished, he was enraged, went over to the enemy and led the Volscian troops against his own people. Nothing could persuade him not to destroy Rome, until his wife and mother pleaded with him. His mother succeeded where no one else could, wearing down his pride and determination. He then yielded and withdrew, abandoning his conquest and, in the end, committing suicide. It was Beethoven’s contemporary, the popular Austrian dramatist, Heinrich Joseph von Collin (1772-1811), who inspired Beethoven to write his Overture to Coriolan, although Beethoven did know the traditional versions of the tale by Plutarch and Shakespeare. The story of Coriolanus appealed to Beethoven because of its themes of freedom for the individual, recklessness, daring, pride, and the power of female persuasion; its most predominant themes of love and patriotism were qualities for which Beethoven had much respect. The play, Coriolan (in German) was first performed in 1802 and was very popular for several seasons, but when Beethoven wrote the Overture in 1807, it was no longer frequently performed. Nevertheless, his composition quickly became a popular concert piece. It was first performed at a subscription concert in Vienna during March 1807, at the palace of Beethoven’s patron, Prince Lobkowitz. Beethoven intended this dark, dramatic overture to present a musical portrait of the play’s hero. The first theme outlines the impulsive mood of Coriolan’s complex emotions, and the more lyrical second theme may depict the pleading of the general’s wife and mother. The work’s quiet ending mirrors Coriolan’s despair and resignation about death. The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra,
in G Major . . . Maurice Ravel Maurice Ravel was the son of a distinguished engineer and inventor. In the 1870's, when his father was working on railroad construction projects in Spain, Maurice was born on the French side of the nearby border, and the family returned to Paris a few months later. At the age of seven, Maurice Ravel began his musical studies; at eighteen, he began to write music, at twenty, he was a published composer. In the late 1920's, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra was approaching its fiftieth season, Ravel was one of the composers to whom it offered commissions for compositions to be performed for the first time during the 1930 31 anniversary celebration. Stravinsky, Hindemith, Respighi were among those who accepted and wrote new works for the orchestra, but Ravel, after airing the possibility of writing a piano concerto, sent nothing because he had several other projects in mind at the time. In addition to the concerto, he was thinking of an opera on the subject of Joan of Arc that was never to be written. Ravel worked off and on for more than two years on the concerto, which was to be his last orchestral composition. Shut off from the rest of the world at his country home, he spent ten to twelve hours a day at his desk, especially during the period in 1931 when he was simultaneously writing both the Concerto in G and Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. The G Major Concerto was barely finished in time for its premiere in Paris on January 14, 1932. The soloist was Marguerite Long, to whom the work is dedicated; the composer conducted. Later, Ravel told a newspaper interviewer that this work was a “concerto in the strict sense, written in the spirit of Mozart and Saint Saens.” “I believe,” he said, “that a concerto can be both gay and brilliant without necessarily being profound or aiming at dramatic effects . . . . In the beginning, I thought of calling my work a 'divertissement,' but afterwards considered this unnecessary, since the noun 'Concerto' adequately describes the kind of music it contains.” The first movement, Allegramente, with its whip crack opening, is a work of hard and brilliant wit, forceful and energetic. The slow movement, Adagio assai, contemplative and rhythmically complex with hints of the blues, somehow also arouses recollections of every kind of concerto slow movement from Bach and Mozart to Gershwin. The finale, Presto, is brief and brilliant. It contains a flash of jazz, fanfares, and piano flourishes. A rather small orchestra is called for in the score: flute, piccolo, oboe, English horn, clarinet in B-flat, clarinet in E-flat, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, tam-tam, triangle, wood block, whip, harp and strings. Symphony No. 4, in A Major,
Op. 90 (Italian Symphony) . . . Felix
Mendelssohn Felix Mendelssohn was a child prodigy. He began composing at a very young age, and although most of his early works do not have the level of musical invention of his later compositions, they are often more refined in conception and surer in execution than the music many prominent mature composers of his time were producing. The Italian Symphony, completed when Mendelssohn had just turned twenty-four, was never published in his lifetime because he never was fully satisfied with it. The last movement caused him considerable anguish, and he always talked about plans to revise it. His judgment about this symphony’s quality, however, has never been shared; historically, critics have often called this a “perfect” work, many noting that the last movement is a particular “gem.” In the spring of 1829, when he turned twenty one, Mendelssohn received urgings from his father to take a protracted trip so that he could “examine the various countries closely and to fix on one where [he] wished to live. [He] was to make [his] name and gifts known, and was to press forward in [his] work.” He traveled first to Britain, where his work came to be so admired that it had a very influential effect on the course of music there. His journeys to the British Isles inspired his Hebrides Overture and the Scottish Symphony. The German poet, Goethe, suggested Mendelssohn go on to Italy for the next part of his trip. Beginning in May 1830, Mendelssohn spent about a year and a half there. While in Italy, he sketched his sunny Piano Concerto No. 1 and began this Italian Symphony. After he returned home, he pronounced his dissatisfaction with the score, but when the London Philharmonic Society invited him to present a new symphony, it inspired him to work on it again. The first performance, given on May 13, 1833, in London, was followed by several other performances in London, too, all of them successful with knowledgeable musicians and with audiences. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn always was unhappy with this work and felt that both the first and last movements needed to be completely rewritten. Almost two years after he died, the symphony was performed in Germany for the first time, apparently lightly edited by his friend Ignaz Moscheles. In the spring of 1851, this best loved of all the Mendelssohn symphonies was finally published. Joining principles of classicism and romanticism, it has a special place in the nineteenth century canon. The Italian Symphony, a work of warm harmonies and engaging melodies, is Mendelssohn's most classically styled piece, following the style of Haydn and Mozart. Mendelssohn remarked that all of Italy is in this work: its people, its landscapes and its art. The underlying rhythm of the first movement, Allegro vivace, suggests an Italian dance, the tarantella, as the music makes its way through an updated Classical first movement in sonata form. The movement opens with a loud string pizzicato followed by pulsating rhythm in the woodwinds before the violins announce the sunny and spirited first theme. This movement has three themes. After the initial violin subject, a more leisurely clarinet theme follows, and then the third theme, which Mendelssohn treats fugally. The second movement, Andante con moto, is a solemn processional that may have been a pilgrims' march and was probably motivated by Mendelssohn’s experience of a religious procession in the streets of Naples. It has a nostalgic and elegiac character and begins with counterpoint in two voices. The strings and winds play the principal material, while underneath there is an omnipresent “walking bass.” The third movement, an elegant, smooth, flowing Con moto moderato, is a minuet in everything but name and contains an ingratiating middle section. The trio is particularly beautiful. The finale, Presto, in exuberant good spirits, has the most Italian character of the symphony's four movements. This quick movement takes the style of a saltarello, a lively Roman or Neapolitan country folk-dance dating from the 16th century, performed by a man with a woman partner, who holds her apron up in the air as she dances. The Italian Symphony is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, kettledrums and strings.
Introduction and Allegro Appassionato,
Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra, in G Major, Op. 92 . . . Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann is often thought of as the incurable Romantic who refused to give up his musical ties to his Classical predecessors. He was married to the great pianist (and talented composer) Clara Wieck Schumann. The Schumanns refused to ally themselves with the radical new forms and styles of the “music of the future,” that Liszt and Wagner invented, preferring to remain with those of Haydn and Mozart, of Beethoven and Schubert, which Robert Schumann and his friend Felix Mendelssohn felt they could bring up to date. During the 1830's and 1840's, all of these composers (except Wagner) were in fact trying to modernize the concerto form, looking for ways to tighten up and integrate its movements and ways to write a whole concerto compressed or abbreviated into a single movement. Schumann began with a Fantasy for piano and orchestra, which, in fact, he later expanded into his three movement Piano Concerto, and a few years later, he composed an extraordinary Konzertstück or Concert Piece for four horns and orchestra in which three movements run together without pause, as they do in his still later Cello Concerto. This Introduction and Allegro Appassionato is also called Concert Piece in its subtitle. The music begins with a rhetorical device that Schumann liked: the first phrase does not seem to have a proper start, but sounds as though a door has been opened on a musical discourse already in progress. Piano and winds share the introduction's fine melodic ideas, which are heard again in the course of the Allegro appassionato. Schumann composed this work in Dresden during the few days from September 18 to 20, 1849, and on the 26th he had finished orchestrating it. It was first performed in public on February 14, 1850, at a concert of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, with Clara Schumann as soloist. The orchestral instruments required are pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Contact the RSO office at 505-623-5882.
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