Norwegian conductor Arild Remmereit joins us for this midwinter program. Members of the orchestra have very warm memories of Maestro Remmereit's first appearance with the orchestra in 2003--his American debut--and we are delighted to welcome him back to Madison. We also welcome back violinist Jennifer Frautschi, (and her 1722 Stradivarius!). She first appeared with the orchestra in 1997, playing the Chausson Poème, and--in company with her sister Laura--the Bach Concerto for Two Violins. She returned in 2000 to perform the Bach E Major concerto. At this program, she plays Glazunov's demanding Violin Concerto. We begin, appropriately, with a Norwegian appetizer: selections from Grieg's incidental music to Peer Gynt. We end with Dvorák's Symphony No.7, a musical tribute to his mentor, Johannes Brahms.
 

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)
Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46
Peer Gynt Suite No. 2, Op. 55

Grieg composed the incidental music to Peer Gynt in 1874-76. It was first performed with a staged production in Oslo on February 24, 1876. We have performed selections from the two suites many times over the years at youth programs, and the entire first suite appeared on a subscription program in 1989. Duration 30:00.

In 1874, Henrik Ibsen asked Grieg to compose a set of incidental works for a planned production of his Peer Gynt. This was a meeting of the two Norwegian superstars of the age. Grieg was already recognized as the finest musician in his native Norway, and his music was widely admired in his homeland. Ibsen, some fifteen years older than Grieg, was just as famous, though his plays sometimes scandalized his audiences with their stark realism and sometimes bitter irony. Staging Peer Gynt was (and remains today) a formidable challenge. It was not, in fact, originally intended as a stage play--unlike Ibsen's usually realistic works it is a fantasy, composed entirely in verse. It also includes innumerable scene changes. The incidental music turned out to be a larger task than Grieg had anticipated: in the end, he produced an enormous set of pieces for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra, nearly two dozen in all, lasting an hour and half.

Peer Gynt was at some point a real figure--an 18th-century adventurer--but a whole series of legends grew up around him. By the time Ibsen borrowed him from Norwegian folklore, Peer was equal parts Sinbad, Don Juan, and Prodigal Son. The essential story is that of a young man whose father wastes his inheritance. Though Peer's mother tries to raise him up to reclaim the family fortune, he proves to be a slacker, seducing (and leaving) a young girl, Solveig, and launching into a whole series of improbable adventures. Among other things he escapes a "shotgun wedding" when he gets the daughter of the Mountain King pregnant, meets figures representing Satan and the ghost of Lord Byron, spends many years in Morocco and Egypt, and eventually survives a shipwreck. He finally arrives back home, barely aware of who he is. Solveig, who has waited for him all these years takes his head onto her lap and forgives him in the end.

Though Grieg's complete incidental music to Peer Gynt is occasionally performed today, the music is best known in a pair of orchestral suites he extracted from the score a decade later. The Peer Gynt suites, published in 1888 and 1893, have remained some of his most popular concert music. Suite No.1 begins with Morning--music that has been used everywhere from commercials to cartoons for its evocative picture of sunrise at the beginning of a beautiful day. In the first act, Peer returns home from life as an outlaw in the mountain just in time for his mother's death. The Death of Ase is a solemn lament that accompanied this moment in the play. Anitra's Dance was originally music for a young Bedouin woman who catches Peer's eye with a sexy belly-dance. In the Hall of the Mountain King paints a picture of a band of rather nasty trolls partying away, as the tempo increases and the music becomes more and more furious. Suite No.2 begins with Ingrid's Lament, music for a young farm girl, whom Peer kidnaps and seduces on her wedding night. After an agitated passage, the movement has deeply sad music for the strings. The opening flurry of anger returns at the end, but the music soon fades away in a mood of resignation. The Arabian Dance is exotic music driven by percussion in its opening section. There is brief movement of lyricism before a return of the sprightly opening music. The final two sections are drawn from the conclusion of the play. The Return of Peer Gynt accompanies Peer's return to his homeland as a broken old man. This is stormy, nervous music throughout. Just as Peer seems to the stumble in exhaustion, there is a quiet transition--as close to Wagnerian style as Grieg ever managed--and the mood changes for Solveig's Song. This was originally sung by Solveig as a kind of benediction for the prodigal Peer, but here is transformed to a lyrical song for violins and harp. [NOTE: Maestro Remmereit will be selecting a smaller set of works from the two suites for this program.]
 

Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936)
Violin Concerto in A minor, Op. 82

Glazunov composed this concerto in 1904, and conducted the premiere in St. Petersburg, with Leopold Auer as soloist, on February 17, 1905. The Madison Symphony Orchestra has played the work twice previously, in 1940 (with Michael Wilkomieski) and 1971 (with Thomas Moore). Duration 19:00.

Glazunov was one of the most talented Russian musicians of his age. A child prodigy, his first symphony had its successful premiere when he was only sixteen. (Though a few critics accused Glazunov's wealthy parents of having had the symphony "ghost-written" by a more experienced composer.) He soon attracted international attention as both a composer and as a conductor. He joined the faculty of the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1899, and took over as its director in 1905. Glazunov maintained this position until 1930, and was able to guide the Conservatory successfully through the turbulent years of revolution and political purges after 1917--in part, because his international reputation offered it a certain amount of protection.

As a composer, Glazunov was of the generation following Tchaikovsky and the great Russian nationalists, the "Mighty Five"--one of them, Rimsky-Korsakov, was in fact his earliest composition teacher. Though much of his music uses distinctly Russian idioms, he was strongly attracted to Western European forms as well, and these two threads come together in most of his works. Most of his best music, including the Violin Concerto, was written by the time he was forty. Glazunov had little interest in the startling developments in the avant garde of the early 20th century, and both his contemporaries and later writers have criticized his later music for its increasingly academic conservatism.

The Violin Concerto, however, is a work written when he was at the peak of his powers as a composer. It was written for his colleague at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Leopold Auer, who must have coached him on some of the difficult technical aspects of the last section. The concerto was a success at its premiere, and was later popularized around the work by Auer's students Jascha Heifetz and Nathan Milstein.

The concerto is in a series of interconnected movements. The solo line takes over almost immediately at the outset (Moderato) with a long, moody Romantic melody. The sweeter second theme, also introduced by the violin is marked tranquillo, and leads to a brief orchestral transition. The next main section (Andante sostenuto) features a gorgeous melody for the soloist, beginning in the lowest register of the instrument, but gradually floating above the entire orchestra. There is another animated transition, and Glazunov then returns to the concertos opening material, now developed intensely and decorated by the violin and solo voices from the orchestra. The movement culminates in an extended solo cadenza and a bridge to the final movement (Allegro). This begins with a spirited call and response between the brass and the violin. Glazunov introduces a series of contrasting ideas, and a whole range of virtuoso techniques before ending the concerto in a brilliant coda.
 

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)
Symphony No.7 in D minor, Op. 70

Dvorák composed his symphony in 1884-85 and he conducted the London London Philharmonic Orchestra in the premiere, on March 17, 1885. Our only previous performance of the symphony was in 1987. Duration: 36:00.

In December 1884, Dvorák wrote to a friend: "I am now busy with the new symphony (for London), and wherever I go, I have no thought for anything but my work, which much be such as to move the world--God grant that it be so!" He was describing the composition of his seventh symphony, generally considered to be his finest symphonic work. Earlier that year, he made the first of eight successful visits to England. English audiences adored his music, and shortly after arriving he was named an honorary member of the London Philharmonic Society. This honor came with a commission for a new symphony. Though this was his major reason for writing the Symphony No.7, there were several other factors at work as well. He had been deeply moved by the premiere of Brahms's third symphony in 1883, and it is clear that he wanted to respond in a musical way to this work by his mentor and friend; his letters and diaries from this period speak of wanting to live up to Brahms's confidence in him and to produce a work of similar depth. There are even musical clues that in some sense the Symphony No.7 is a "symphony about Brahms." Its musical forms, its intense thematic development, and the rhythmic quirks of the third and fourth movements all pay tribute to Dvorák's mentor. What is put in the background in this work--undoubtedly on purpose--are the Czech musical styles that had played such an important part in his Slavonic Dances and earlier symphonies. It seems that though Dvorák remained a strong Bohemian patriot, he was trying to break out of the nationalist mold he had created in so much of his earlier music.

The symphony's reception in London was everything Dvorák could have hoped for, and after a few revisions, he sent it off to his publisher Simrock. In his long years struggling for recognition the contract with Simrock, acquired with the help of Brahms, had been a blessing, though Simrock had also profited enormously by publishing popular pieces like the Slavonic Dances. Now, Dvorák was finally in a position to bargain. Simrock offered 3000 marks for the symphony, but Dvorák stood his ground until the published doubled his price. The score was published by Simrock in1885 as the Symphony No.2. Its present numbering--No.7--reflects its actual place in the composition of Dvorák's symphonies.

The first movement (Allegro maestoso) begins with a brooding melody in the low strings that is the basis for several later ideas. A horn call and a woodwind passage announce a contrasting major-key ideal played by the flute and clarinet. There is a short, but intense development section Dvorák recapitulates the main ideas, though in reverse order: the second theme returns first in a flowing clarinet solo before he finally returns to the tragic mood of the opening.

A melancholy clarinet solo above pizzicato strings opens the second movement (Poco adagio). This is answered by the strings and other solo woodwinds, building to a related idea that critic Donald Tovey once called "one of the profoundest in any symphony since Beethoven." A final, more pastoral theme is introduced by the horns. All three melodies find their way into the development before Dvorák restates them, and ends the movement with a final statement of the opening idea, now in the oboe above string tremolos, and a quiet epilogue.

While the second movement probably shows Dvorák at his most "Brahmsian," the scherzo (Vivace) hearkens back his Bohemian roots. The opening dance has the feel of a furiant, a fast Czech folk dance much used by Dvorák. However, he introduces one of Brahms's favorite rhythmic devices, pitting triple-meter melody against a duple-meter accompaniment. The central trio changes the character briefly, with solo woodwinds above, before the opening mood returns. There is one more brief slow episode before he closes with a furious coda.

The finale (Allegro) begins with a long, dark introduction that builds intensity until Dvorák introduces a forceful off-beat main idea. From this point the movement has an unstoppable rhythmic energy. There are occasional breaks in the intensity, but the mood remains tempestuous throughout, culminating in a fierce coda.
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program notes ©2008 by J. Michael Allsen