Pinchas Zukerman joins us at these concerts, both as guest conductor and as violin soloist. Maestro Zukerman last appeared with the Madison Symphony Orchestra in October 2001, when he performed Mozart's third violin concerto, and (with cellist Amanda Forsyth) Brahms's "double" concerto. He also appeared with the orchestra in 1974, playing the Sibelius violin concerto. At these programs he will play and conduct Bach's first violin concerto. Our program begins with Weber's overture to Der Freischütz--a landmark in the history of German Romanticism. We close with Tchaikovsky's epic struggle with Fate, the Symphony No.4.
 

Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Overture to Der Freischütz, Op.77

Weber composed his opera Der Freischütz between 1817 and 1820. It was first performed in Berlin on June 18, 1821. The opera's overture, however, was played separately in Copenhagen in September of 1820. The Madison Symphony Orchestra has previously performed the overture in 1944, 1976, and 1986. Duration 10:00.

In 1817, while Weber was working as Kapellmeister to the court of Dresden, he and his friend Friedrich Kind discussed a new sort of opera. Italian opera had long ruled Germany's stages, and few German operas, other than Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Beethoven's Fidelio had had a lasting impact. Kind, a poet and playwright created a German libretto based on a legend from a popular collection titled Gespensterbuch ("book of ghost tales") by August Apel and Friedrich Laun. Der Freischütz ("The Free-shooters") tells the story of the huntsman Caspar, who has sold his soul to the Devil (Samiel) in exchange for magic bullets that never miss. To escape Samiel, Caspar tricks the young Max into using the bullets in a shooting contest for the hand of Max's beloved Agathe. Caspar expects the final bullet to kill Agathe, transferring the curse to Max. However in the end, heaven intervenes, and Caspar is shot instead, his soul forfeit to Samiel.

Though Kind produced the libretto fairly quickly, many other projects intervened, and Weber did not finish the score until May of 1820. The premiere in Berlin a year later was everything Weber could have hoped for--his diary entry for that night reads: "Everything went splendidly and was sung con amore... verses and flowers came flying. Soli Deo Gloria!" Performances of the opera were quickly mounted across Europe, and the opera was even performed in America just four years later. Its importance goes beyond mere popularity however--Der Freischütz contained innovations that would have a tremendous impact on German Romantic opera. The famous "wolf's glen" scene, for example, was widely admired, and many later works attempted to achieve the same integration of orchestral color and stage effects. Wagner's later practice of having musical motives stand for characters, ideas, and objects from the plot is also pioneered in Weber's opera.

The overture to Der Freischütz provides a summary of the most important moments of the story. After an ominous string passage, a horn quartet sets a pastoral mood. The idyllic calm of this introduction is broken by string tremolos and the music associated with the evil Samiel and the forging of the magic bullets in the wolf's glen. The second main idea is drawn from Agathe's hopeful Act II aria Leise, fromme Weise!  In the development section the two themes battle it out, and Samiel seems to triumph in the recapitulation, only to be vanquished by a joyful return of Agathe's music. The overture ends like the opera, in a mood of rejoicing.
 

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Concerto No.1 in A minor for Violin and Orchestra, BWV 1041

This concerto was probably composed between 1717 and 1723 at Cöthen. It has not been performed by the Madison Symphony Orchestra since 1932. Duration 15:00.

In 1717 Bach joined the musical establishment of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. Though Cöthen itself was a rather dull provincial town, the Prince was a true music-lover and maintained a fine musical establishment, including a few excellent soloists and a small orchestra. Bach served his as Kapellmeister in Cöthen, and much of his surviving orchestral music dates from his time there: including most of the "Brandenburg" concertos, most of his orchestral suites, and two surviving violin concertos. A dozen years later. the concertos also found a home in the performances of Bach’s Collegium musicum in Leipzig, a group of amateur and professional players that Bach directed throughout the 1730s. While the orchestral suites are French in inspiration, his violin concertos have close ties to Italy. In the previous generation, Italians like Corelli had developed a concerto form that became the compositional blueprint for composers across Europe. The world champion of Baroque concerto composition was Bach’s Italian contemporary Antonio Vivaldi, who composed hundreds of concertos in the early decades of the 18th century. Bach and other German composers avidly copied and imitated Vivaldi’s works.

The A minor concerto closely follows the Italian model, a three-movement, fast-slow-fast plan. It is important to remember that the original conception of this concerto was what we might think of as chamber music: Bach had an orchestra of about a dozen players in mind, and there is a clear sense of musical intimacy in these Cöthen works. There are certainly some flashy solo passages, but the solo violin is there--particularly in the outer movements--to expand on musical material presented by the full string section. The opening movement (Allegro) is based on an alternation between passages for the full ensemble(ritornellos) and solo passages that develop these ideas. The second movement (Andante) is a bit more innovative, with a repetitive bass figure that supports a lovely, winding series of triplets in the solo line. The final movement (Allegro assai) is set in a sprightly gigue rhythm, and returns to the same ritornello form as the opening Allegro.
 

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, (1840-1893)
Symphony No.4 in F minor, Op.36

Tchaikovsky’s fourth symphony was composed between May 1877 and January 1878. The first performance took place in Moscow on February 22, 1878. The work has been performed on three earlier Madison Symphony Orchestra programs, in 1978, 1992, and 2001. Duration: 43:00.

Tchaikovsky was capable of profound musical creation, even during disastrous times in his personal life. In the spring of 1877, when he was hard at work on sketches for the fourth symphony and doing preliminary work on his opera Eugene Onegin, he received an increasingly passionate series of love letters from Antonina Milyukova, a conservatory student. When she finally threatened to commit suicide if he refused to meet her, Tchaikovsky visited her, but firmly refused her proposals of marriage. Within a few weeks, however, he relented, and they were married in July. Just why Tchaikovsky--rarely a completely balanced individual in his own right--impetuously agreed to this marriage remains something of a mystery. He may have wanted to silence nasty whisperings about his homosexuality. He had in fact, announced to his family in the fall of 1876 that he intended to "fight my nature with all of my strength" and marry as soon as possible. Whatever the reason, this marriage was an unmitigated disaster for both of them. Within a few days of the wedding, Tchaikovsky found Antonina's presence unbearable, and he fled Moscow to Kamenka, making excuses about needing seclusion to compose. His teaching position forced Tchaikovsky to return to Moscow in September, and he promptly attempted suicide. Failing suicide, he fled again, now to St. Petersburg, where doctors recommended a permanent separation from his wife and a change of scenery. He fled to the small Swiss town of Clarens in October, and stayed away from Russia for nearly six months. Though he made trips to Paris, Florence, and Vienna during this period, he found Clarens a congenial place to work. He finished three large works there during the early months of 1878: completing the Symphony No.4 on January 6, Eugene Onegin just a month later, and in a final burst of creative energy, composing the Violin Concerto during a 26-day period in March and April. Several smaller works come from this same amazing period as well.

At the very time he was going through his tragic marriage with Antonina, Tchaikovsky was forging a much longer-lasting and in many ways more significant relationship with another woman, Nadezdha von Meck. Madame von Meck was an enormously wealthy widow who became attracted to Tchaikovsky’s music and began to write to him in 1877. Tchaikovsky eagerly seized upon this relationship, and for the next fourteen years they carried on a deeply personal correspondence, each sharing their innermost thoughts with the other. They purposely never met one another in person--it is reported that they did run into one another by chance on at least two occasions, but never spoke. Though this may seem to have been a curious and barren relationship, is it really so far from countless anonymous romances conducted by email and IM in our own time?  The benefits to Tchaikovsky were boundless: here was a woman who was not even remotely interested in a conventional marriage or physical relationship, but who nonetheless wanted to share his intellectual and emotional life. Beyond the emotional support he craved, Madame von Meck also became his patron, granting him an annual salary that allowed him freedom from teaching duties to compose. This passionate long-distance relationship continued until 1891, when it was broken off, apparently at her insistence.

The Symphony No.4 is perhaps the greatest work of this calamitous period, and its success did much to restore Tchaikovsky’s confidence. The work is a masterpiece in purely musical terms, but the composer himself invited a much more personal interpretation. In explaining the work to Madame von Meck, he wrote: "I should be sorry if symphonies that mean nothing should flow from my pen, consisting only of a progression of harmonies, rhythms and modulations. Most assuredly, my symphony has a program, but one that cannot be expressed in words; the very attempt would be ludicrous...shouldn’t a symphony reveal those wordless urges that hide in the heart, asking earnestly for expression?" Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky continued his letter with a long and detailed description of the program. Although he never mentions the disastrous marriage in this letter--she was, after all, intimate with the details, and had given him financial support throughout the episode--his narration is painfully autobiographical.

The opening movement begins with a massive statement by the brass and woodwinds. In his narration, Tchaikovsky described this theme as "...Fate, the inevitable force which halts our aspirations towards happiness." If the opening theme is angry and powerful, the cantabile second theme is more resigned. "The feeling of despondency and despair grows ever stronger and more passionate. Isn't it better to turn from reality and lose ourselves in dreams?" As an answer to Tchaikovsky's plea, there is a dreamlike interlude of happiness and relaxation, marked by a lilting oboe solo. This dream is of course rudely shattered by Fate, with a mighty recapitulation of the opening material.

The second movement, marked "Andatino in the manner of a song," presents a lovely but dejected melody in a very free set of variations. Tchaikovsky describes the movement as "another phase of suffering." As narrator, he sits alone late at night, recalling happy and sad scenes from his youth. "How sad, yet sweet, to lose ourselves in memories of the past." The melody stated in the opening by the oboe, returns in undecorated form at the very end, played in darker tones by the bassoon.

The outer sections of the scherzo (Allegro vivace) are dominated by light pizzicato playing by the strings. Here, Tchaikovsky describes the music as "fleeting arabesques" coming into the mind of a man who has drunk just a little bit too much wine before falling into a troubled sleep. There is a central episode, lightly played by woodwinds and brass; the narrator's brief memory of a drunken peasant singing with a distant military band.

The famous opening passage of the finale (Allegro con fuoco) provides a technical display for the strings and woodwinds, but it also represents the narrator's observations of the festive and rather frenzied happiness of those around him. Darker moods intrude, in the guise of a minor-key Russian folk melody played by the woodwinds, but these are always overcome by exuberance. The movement's climax comes with a restatement of the "Fate" theme from the first movement. Even this forbidding theme is conquered by the festive opening melody, and the symphony closes with a brilliant coda. In Tchaikovsky's words, "Rejoice in the happiness of others, and life will still be possible."
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program notes ©2007 by J. Michael Allsen