Our 81st season opens with a rousing curtain-raiser, Smetana's overture to The Bartered Bride. Horacio Gutierrez is a familiar face at our concerts--this is his fifth performance with the orchestra. Previous appearances have feature the third piano concerto of Prokofiev (1982), Chopin's first concerto (1987), Rachmaninoff's third concerto, (1991), and Beethoven's "Emperor" concerto (2000) At these programs, he returns to the warm Romanticism of Chopin's Concerto No.1. We close this program with a showpiece for the orchestra: Strauss's tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra.
 

Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884)
Overture to The Bartered Bride

Smetana worked on his second opera, The Bartered Bride (Prodaná nevesta), between 1863 and 1866. The first production opened in Prague on May 30, 1866, though an early version of the overture, for piano, four hands, may have been performed some three years earlier. Previous Madison Symphony Orchestra performances of the overture include two concerts in 1929 and 1934, and three staged productions of the opera, in 1938, 1939, and 1983. Duration 7:00.

Smetana, a lifelong Bohemian patriot, came of age during the unsuccessful revolt against Austrian rule in 1848. His music would become one of the most beloved symbols of Czech national pride. Smetana's most overtly nationalistic works are the six symphonic poems written during the 1870s, collectively titled Má vlast ("My Homeland"), but The Bartered Bridefrom a decade earlier has also become a beloved landmark in Czech music. The opera is based on a libretto by his countryman, Karel Sabina. Ironically, Smetana the devoted nationalist was not fluent in the language of his homeland until long after the opera's premiere--in composing the opera, he worked from a version of the libretto translated into German. It was produced, however, with spoken dialogue and music in Czech, and Smetana's idealized version of peasant life, and his use of Czech musical style quickly made this a hit. Smetana made several changes to the score over the next few years, and the work became one of the most enduringly successful operettas of all time.

Like many 19th-century operas, The Bartered Bride centers on an arranged marriage. (The original Czech title can be literally translated as "The Sold Bride" or "The Purchased Fiancée.") In this case, a young peasant girl, Marenka, has been betrothed to Vasek, son of a wealthy landowner, Tobias Micha. She, however, is in love with a young farmhand with a mysterious past, Jenik. In true operetta fashion, when Jenik's true identity is finally revealed--he is in fact Micha's long-lost eldest son--everything is set to rights and the story ends happily for all.

Unlike most 19th-century overtures, which were typically the last stage of an opera's composition, Smetana composed this overture shortly after beginning work on The Bartered Bride. It shares much of its music with the finale of Act II, but the overture may in fact have come first. The fugal opening theme has the bustling rhythmic vitality that characterizes much of the opera's music. A sudden crescendo ushers in the second main theme, a syncopated dance tune with a distinctly Czech flavor. Both themes are reworked in a concise development section, and there is a brief recapitulation. Smetana saves one surprise for the end, a brief, wistful passage that reworks the second theme, but this is quickly brushed aside, and the overture closes with a brilliant coda.
 

Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)
Concerto No.1 in E minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op.11

Chopin composed this concerto in 1830, and he was the soloist at the first performance, in Warsaw, on October 11, 1830.  This work has already  appeared in our repertoire three times--previous soloists were James Tocco (1972), Emanuel Ax (1979), and Horacio Gutierrez (1987).  Duration  39:00.

"I best understand the piano and laugh at those who think that I am a fool because I reject 'higher' perspectives and write only for the piano.  That is my solid ground--on that ground I stand the strongest." - Chopin

"Yesterday's concert was a success--I haste to let you know.  I must tell you that I was not a bit,  not a bit nervous, and I played the way that I play when I'm  alone.  The hall was full, and we first heard Goerner's  symphony, and then my noble self's E minor Allegro [the first movement of the concerto], which I just reeled off--one can do that on a Streycher piano.  Furious applause!  Soliwa, the conductor was delighted.  His aria with chorus was sung beautifully by Panna Wolkow, who was dressed like a cherub in a sky blue gown.  After the aria came the Adagio and Rondo  ...big applause, after which--the usual farce --I was called up.  No one hissed, and I had to bow four times.  (I can do this properly now that Brandt has shown me how!)   ...I assure you, I have never succeeded in playing so comfortably with the orchestra."

Chopin follows Classical tradition by setting the first movement (Allegro maestoso) in sonata form, but his Romantic nature is heard in his free treatment of the form and his sensitive melodies.  The concerto opens with an extended orchestral tutti in which Chopin presents all of the first movement's main themes.  The piano enters in E minor with the forceful opening theme and an ornamented version of its more passionate answer.  The second theme, a flowing cantabile melody, is heard in E major.  An orchestral tutti ends the lengthy exposition and signals the development, which begins with a major-key treatment of the second theme and continues with piano passage-work.  After a full recapitulation, the movement ends with a final orchestral statement of the opening themes.

Chopin described the second movement (Romanze: Larghetto), the most pianistic of the three, as having "...a romantic, calm, and partly melancholy nature.  It is intended to convey the impression one receives when the eye rests on a beloved landscape that recall beloved memories--for example, a fine moonlit spring night."   The form of the movement is simple: two lengthy sections in Major are separated by a brief agitato episode.  Throughout the movement, the piano weaves a rhythmically free melody above a sparse accompaniment.  Near the end of the movement, there is a plaintive interruption by the soloist, and a quick return to the quiet character of the opening.

The main theme of the final movement (Rondo: Vivace), presented by the piano after a short orchestral introduction, is based on the Krakowiak, a Polish folk dance that is supposed to have originated near the Polish capital.  The theme returns in various guises throughout the movement, but its lively rhythms surface in almost all of the contrasting episodes, giving a Polish flavor to all of this brilliant finale.
 

Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Also sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spake Zarathustra"), Op.30

Strauss composed the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra in 1896, completing the score on August 24, and leading the premiere performance in Frankfurt on November 27 of the same year. The Madison Symphony Orchestra has performed the work once previously, in 1996. Duration 33:00.

While working on his opera Guntram in 1892, Strauss read Nietzsche’s "prose-poem" Also sprach Zarathustra for the first time. Guntram eventually came to reflect many of Nietzsche’s philosophical views, particularly his rejection of Christian belief. In Zarathustra (1883-85), his most widely-known work, Nietzsche uses as protaganist the ancient Persian mystic Zoroaster (Zarathustra). Through the story of this prophet, Nietzsche introduced the concept of the superman, a person driven by what Nietzsche called the "will to power" to rise above the "weak herd" of humanity. (Not surprisingly, Nietzsche’s philosophy was celebrated and grotesquely distorted some fifty years later by the Nazis.) After the premier of Guntram in 1894, Strauss began seriously to consider the composition of a tone poem based upon Also sprach Zarathustra. The score is prefaced by a lengthy excerpt from the opening of Nietzsche’s poem--in which Zarathustra, after ten years as hermit, rises to greet the dawn and resolves to descend from his mountain retreat and spread his wisdom amongst the people below. Strauss’s program for the work is not a narrative and literal depiction of Zarathustra’s journey, but a more abstract interpretation of ideas from Nietzsche.

Friedrich Nietzsche

In "Of the Dwellers of the Unseen World," Nietzsche depicts the religious faith of the masses as a barrier to evolution toward the superman. In Strauss’s tone poem, the strings begin with a quiet and lyrical passage, and the horns intone a Credo from the Latin Mass. This chant expands into a lush passage for strings, and organ--Strauss’s ironic comment on religious faith. The English horn and solo viola introduce a new section, titled "Of Great Longing." Here, Strauss directly combines the C tonality of the opening and the B tonality that represents humanity throughout Also sprach Zarathustra in a passage that caused controversy when the work was first performed. Religious faith intrudes again, now in the guise of a plainchant Magnificat from the organ, but this is soon swept away by a rising flurry of strings.

"Of Joys and Passions" celebrates the passion of the human spirit in an agitated and richly chromatic string theme, played above a harp accompaniment. Trombones suddenly cast a dark shadow on this passage, which gives way to more somber section titled "The Song of the Grave." Here, Zarathustra laments and celebrates the death of his youth, and Strauss creates a dark and misty texture of strings and woodwinds.

A clear turning point in this work comes when Strauss quietly begins a fugue titled "Of Science" in the basses. Here, he skillfully blends together the themes of "nature" and "humanity," and leads into an enormous orchestral climax. This scientific fugue gives way to an intense scherzo titled "The Convalescent"--a reference to the cathartic point in Nietzsche’s narrative when Zarathustra recovers from a long illness of the soul to emerge as a prophet. This comes to a peak with a massive brass outburst--the opening motive--and after a brief enigmatic passage, the section ends with more lighthearted music for solo strings and woodwinds. In the "Dance Song," Zarathustra comes upon a group of young women dancing and joins in their revelry. This, the longest section of the work, begins as a somewhat incongruous Viennese waltz for solo violin, but builds gradually into an impassioned statement for the full orchestra.
The final orchestral climax comes in the "Song of the Night-Wanderer." Here is Strauss’s most direct depiction of the action in Nietzche’s poem: of a scene where Zarathustra, surrounded by his disciples suddenly, at the stroke of midnight, intones words of warning and promise between the striking of the bells:

 ONE! O humanity, take heed!
 TWO! What does the deep voice of midnight say?
 THREE! "I have slept my sleep--
 FOUR! "awakened from the deepest dream, and plead:
 FIVE! "the world is deep,
 SIX! "and deeper than the day can read.
 SEVEN! "Its woe is deep--
 EIGHT! "and its joy deeper still than grief can be.
 NINE! "Woe saith: Hence! Go!
 TEN! "But joys all want eternity--
 ELEVEN! "--want deep, profound eternity!"
 TWELVE!