This opening concert of our 2007-2008 season begins and ends with works that feature the organ. Organist Thomas Trotter returns to Madison to perform Barber's Toccata Festiva--a 20th-century tribute to the Baroque organ masters--and a work in the grand French Romantic tradition, Guilmant's Symphony No.2. Mr. Trotter last appeared with the Madison Symphony Orchestra in 2004, when he played Jongen's Symphonie Concertante for the dedication of the Overture Concert Organ. Maestro DeMain also leads the orchestra in two fine works, Debussy's picturesque Nocturnes, and the moving seventh symphony of Sibelius.
 

Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Toccata Festiva for Organ and Orchestra, Op.36

Barber composed the Toccata Festiva in 1960 and it was premiered in Philadelphia on September 30, 1960, by organist Paul Calloway, with conductor Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. This is our first performance of the work. Duration 16:00.

When the Philadelphia Orchestra got a magnificent new concert organ in 1960, Samuel Barber was engaged to write a bravura piece for the dedication concert. The enormous instrument--at that time one of the world's largest organs--was the gift of the philanthropist Marty Curtis Bok, and she personally commissioned Barber to write the dedication piece. Bok and Barber had a long history together--as a 14-year-old, Barber had been one of the first students at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, which Bok had founded. She became his most important patron, and helped him out at several points in his career. Among other things, she helped Barber and his longtime partner Gian Carlo Menotti buy the house in Mount Kisco, NY that was to be their retreat for three decades.

For his part, Barber had a lifelong interest in the organ. He had started his professional career at age 12 as an organist.. Though there are a few early unpublished organ pieces, it was not until 1958 that he published his first solo organ work, Wondrous Love, Variations on a Shape-Note Hymn. The Toccata Festiva is a much more ambitious piece, using the full sound resources of the orchestra and of a large, powerful concert organ.

The toccata is among the oldest of keyboard genres. The earliest toccatas seem to be written out versions of what were originally improvisations, but by the Baroque, composers from Frescobaldi to Bach wrote much more substantial toccatas in several sections, alternating between several musical textures. Barber's toccata is very much in this spirit. He begins with a forceful passage for full orchestra from which the organ gradually emerges in a flurry of ornamentation. There follows a long contrasting section of a more reserved character. The opening texture returns briefly, and there is another contrasting episode, with solo voices from the orchestra playing above a shimmering background from the orchestra. This builds to peak, and eventually leaves the organ to play an extended solo cadenza. There is brief recapitulation of the main ideas before the piece ends in the same forceful style as the opening.
 

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)
Nocturnes

Debussy composed the three Nocturnes in 1897-1899. The first complete performance was in Paris on October 27, 1901. The Madison Symphony Orchestra has performed the set or movements from Nocturnes on several occasions, beginning in 1932 and most recently in 1986. Duration 25:00.

Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894) was a startling piece for its time, and established Debussy as a leading French composer. He followed up the Prelude with a pair of even more ambitious works: his opera Pelleas et Melisande, and an orchestral work initially titled Trois Scènes au Crépuscule (Three Twilight Scenes)--probably a reference to a series for poems by his friend Henri de Régnier. Debussy originally intended the set as a solo work for the Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, writing to Ysaÿe in late 1894 that: "I am working on a set of three nocturnes for violin and orchestra that are meant for you. The first is scored for strings; the second for three flutes, four horns, three trumpets, and two harps; the third is a combination of both of these groups. This is, in fact, an experiment in the various arrangements that can be made with a single color, like the study of gray in painting." It is unclear whether or not he actually finished a version with solo violin, but between 1897 and 1899 he recast the Nocturnes as a orchestral piece, with a women's chorus added for the final movement. Two of its movements were performed on the Lamoreaux concert series in 1900, and Camille Chevillard conducted the entire set on the same series a year later. Debussy later made extensive revisions to the score, and this version, which was not published until 1930, is the one known today.

The nocturne was a well-established genre in the 19th century. in works by Chopin and many others: short piano works with lyrical, usually calm melodies evoking the night. Debussy was clearly after something different, explaining: "The title Nocturnes is to be interpreted here in a general and, more particularly, in a decorative sense. Therefore it is not meant to designate the usual form of the nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests." Debussy is often described as a musical Impressionist. Though he himself hated the term, this fascination with light and subtle shadings of color make it particularly appropriate for this piece.

The opening movement Nuages (Clouds) begins with a calm, harmonically static murmuring, from which little fragments of melody emerge. There is a contrasting idea middle section, but no real change in the placid mood. According to Debussy, "Nuages renders the immutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading away in gray tones lightly tinged with white."

Debussy reportedly told a friend that Fêtes (Festivals) was partly based upon his recollection of a village festical with a military band, but also provided a more ethereal description: "Fêtes gives us the vibrating atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession (a dazzling fantastic vision) which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged in it. But the background remains persistently the same: the festival, with its blending of music and luminous dust, participating in the cosmic rhythms." The character here is much more exited and rowdy, with a lively dance rhythm interwoven with sinuous woodwind melodies, and sudden flashes of brass. The character becomes more serious in a marchlike episode that becomes almost strident, but the opening mood returns before a quiet and mysterious closing passage.

According to Debussy, Sirènes (Sirens or Mermaids) "depicts the sea and its countless rhythms, and presently, amongst the waves silvered by the moonlight, is heard the mysterious song of the Sirens as they laugh and pass on." Debussy was fascinated by new timbres, and here he adds wordless women's voices, not so much as voices but as instruments in the orchestra, adding their color to a calmly undulating musical texture. There is no traditional development of themes, but instead a constant ebb and flow of melodies leading to a quiet conclusion.
 

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Symphony No.7 in C Major, Op.105

Sibelius composed his seventh and final symphony between 1918 and 1924. He conducted the premiere in Stockholm on March 24, 1924. This is our first performance of the work. Duration 22:00.

By the time he completed his final symphony in 1924, Sibelius's career as composer was nearly over. He completed only one more major piece, the tone-poem Tapiola, before retreating to his country home for most of the last 40 years of his life. Ironically, he was at the peak of his career in the mid-1920s. He was well established as Finland's greatest composer and widely recognized as the finest of 20th-century symphonists. He was flooded by offers to guest conduct and the newly-founded Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY had offered him a huge sum to take over as director. But Sibelius was struggling personally, suffering bouts of depression and battling alchoholism...or rather, embracing it. He wrote in 1923 diary entry that: "Alcohol, which I gave up, is now my most faithful companion. And the most understanding! Everything and everyone else have largely failed me." At the same time his relationship with his wife Aino was at a breaking point. He had been so embarrassingly drunk at a performance of his Symphony No.6 in 1923, and so consistently drunk afterwards that just a few weeks before the premiere of the seventh symphony she told him that she would not attend. By 1927 he was deeply depressed, and increasingly lost confidence as a composer. He completed almost no works after 1931, and though he worked sporadically on an eighth symphony for over a decade, he finally threw the manuscript into his fireplace in 1945.

The symphony that came out of these troubled times is one of his finest works. He initially planned it in 1918 as a three-movement work, but by 1924 it had morphed to a single moment, with several interconnected sections. Sibelius was initially uncomfortable about labeling this a symphony, premiering it as a "symphonic fantasy." But when it was published in 1925, Sibelius gave it the title Symphony No.7 (in one movement). There are several distinct sections in this compact work, and an amazing amount of thematic unity and development. Writing to a friend in 1918 about the new work, he said: "As usual, I am a slave to my themes and submit to their demands."

It begins simply, with a quiet rising scale in the strings that twists unexpectedly at the end. A twirling woodwind idea and several other themes emerge from this atmospheric music. This introduction swells gradually, and there is a grand solo pronouncement from the trombone--a theme that will reappear at important moments in the symphony. The introduction winds to close, and the mood becomes abruptly more excited, and Sibelius introduces a bright scherzo-style music. The mood shifts again, becoming more agitated, and the trombone theme is expanded threateningly by the full brass section. The music again turns light, returning to the opening woodwind theme before a long transition. The trombone theme enters a third and final time, beginning the symphony's exalted concluding section, which gradually fades towards the calm mood of the introduction and then expands to a stirring final chord.
 

Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911)
Symphony No.2 for Organ and Orchestra in A Major, Op.91

Guilmant finished this piece in 1910. Organist Joseph Bonnet played the premiere in Paris on December 31, 1911, with the Lamoureux Orchestra, conducted by Camille Chevillard. This is our first performance of the work. Duration 32:00.

Guilmant was one of the great French organists of the "golden age" of French organ music, a contemporary and colleague of Franck, Saint-Saëns, Vierne, and Widor. He was born in the provincial town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, and after initial studies with his father--also an organist--and at the Brussels Conservatory, Guilmant settled in Paris, eventually serving as organist at the prestigious new parish church La Trinité. Throughout his career he was associated with the organ-building firm, Cavaillé-Coll, and was often brought in to perform inaugural concerts on their instruments. He toured widely as recitalist in Europe and America, and in 1896, he joined the faculty of the Paris Conservatoire as organ teacher.

Guilmant's musical interests were broad: he was well aware of the latest developments of the French avant garde, but was also passionately interested in the music of Couperin, Handel, Bach and earlier composers, editing hundreds of pieces from the 17th and 18th centuries for publication. He composed a sprinkling of vocal pieces and a few small instrumental works, but the vast majority of his works are for organ. He published over 50 collections of music with titles like The Practical Organist and The Liturgical Organist--music still very much in use by church musicians today. He composed several small works for organ and orchestra--many for his popular concerts at Paris's Trocadero. Guilmant's most ambitious works for organ are a series of eight multi-movement sonatas, written between 1875 and 1906. He later orchestrated two of the sonatas as symphonies for organ and orchestra. The first sonata was transformed into the Symphony No.1 in 1878, and in the summer of 1910, he orchestrated the eighth sonata as the Symphony No.2. This piece, dedicated to his student Joseph Bonnet, was to be his last completed major work. He never heard it played: it was not premiered until some nine months after his death.

The Symphony No.2 is in five movements. The opening (Introduction et Allegro) begins with a nervous string figure and quiet theme in the basses. The organ enters subtly, first with a growing pedal note, and then finally with grand restatement of the theme. The body of this movement, set in a Classical sonata form, begins with a fugal theme played by the orchestra. The organ carries a more lyrical second idea in conversation with the orchestra. There is a long, intense development, focussing largely on the fugue. Both themes are recapitulated, and Guilmant ends the movement with a forceful coda, and a stirring reprise of the introduction.

The second movement (Adagio con affetto) begins with a highly sentimental melody in the organ. Strings introduce an even gentler idea in the middle section. The opening theme returns, building gradually to subdued climax, and the movement ends in a brief, ethereal coda. The following movement is a complete contrast, a rollicking Scherzo, carried almost entirely by the orchestra. There are two contrasting trios, the first a pastoral interlude introduced by solo oboe, and the second, a more hymnlike idea supported by the organ pedals.

The organ begins the fourth movement (Andante sostenuto), with a thoroughly Wagnerian texture that is gradually reinforced by the orchestra. This leads directly to the finale (Intermède et Allegro), which begins with short, mysterious interlude: a horn solo picked up by the cellos. This mood is quickly broken, however, and the body of the movement is a grandiose double fugue, the first subject laid out by the orchestra and the second by the organ.
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program notes ©2007 by J. Michael Allsen