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Madison Symphony Orchestra Program Notes
September 26-27-28, 2008
83rd Season / Subscription Concert No. 1
Michael Allsen
This 83rd season of the Madison Symphony Orchestra—Wisconsin’s oldest
continuously-existing orchestra—celebrates Maestro DeMain’s 15th season
as our Music Director. He has chosen two favorites as a tribute
to his own Italian-American heritage. We open with Mendelssohn’s
high-spirited “Italian” symphony, a young German’s tribute to his first
tour of Italy. Respighi’s Pines
of Rome is an Italian composer’s tribute to the landscape and
history of his own beloved hometown. After intermission, we climb
“the mountain”—Rachmaninoff’s notoriously difficult third piano
concerto. Making his fourth appearance at these concerts is
pianist Garrick Ohlsson, who made his Madison debut in 1984 with this
work. He returned to these concerts in 1985 to play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.25, and again in
2002 for Brahms’s second concerto.
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Symphony No.4 in A Major, op.90
(“Italian”)
Mendelssohn composed the Symphony
No.4 in 1830-33, and conducted the
first performance in London on May 13, 1833. He later revised the
score extensively. The Madison Symphony has played the symphony
on five previous occasions, beginning in 1929, and most recently in
1993. Duration 27:00.
Like many young men of wealthy nineteenth-century families, Felix
Mendelssohn was able to indulge in the tradition of the “grand
tour”—indeed, Mendelssohn seems to have spent most of his early
adulthood as a tourist. Mendelssohn's letters from this period
show him to be a keen and enthusiastic observer of the lands and
cultures he visited. During 1830-31, Mendelssohn was in Italy,
touring and socializing with other artistic-minded travelers (including
Hector Berlioz). Italy seems to have been one of Mendelssohn's
favorite stopovers. In a letter of 1830, he wrote: “This is
Italy! What I have been looking forward to all my life as the
greatest happiness is now begun, and I am basking in it.”
That Mendelssohn would write a symphony inspired by festive Italian
culture comes as no surprise. His traveling experiences provided
inspiration for some of his finest musical works. His “Scotch”
symphony (No.3) and the Hebrides
Overture, are two of the very best musical observations of
Scotland ever written. Most of the Symphony No.4 was sketched out
during his Italian tour. In February of 1831, he wrote from Rome
to his sister Fanny: “The ‘Italian’ symphony is making great
progress. It will be the jolliest piece I have ever done,
especially the last movement. I have not found anything for the
slow movement yet, and I think that I will save that for Naples.”
Like Mozart, Mendelssohn has the historical reputation of effortless
talent, but the “Italian” symphony was actually the product of many
revisions. In another letter of 1831, Mendelssohn complained to
Fanny that the piece was not falling together as well as he had
originally thought, and was costing him an undue amount of
effort. He completed the score in Berlin in March 1833, and
conducted the first performance a few months later in London.
However, Mendelssohn revised the score extensively in 1837, and at the
time of his death he was planning to revise the Saltarello yet
again. The 1837 version of the symphony (the version known today)
was probably never performed during Mendelssohn's lifetime, and was
only published after his death.
None of the creative pains that the “Italian” symphony cost the
composer are evident in this, the “jolliest” of Mendelssohn's
symphonies. The exuberant opening movement (Allegro vivace) is in 6/8 and is
set in a thoroughly Classical sonata form. The opening theme is
stated by the strings over a background of repeated chords in the
winds. The second theme, announced by the woodwinds, is no less
festive. Mendelssohn introduces a new, rather martial theme at
the beginning of the fugal development section. A lengthy and
dramatic crescendo leads into the recapitulation, which includes a
brief reworking of the martial theme from the development.
In his letter to Fanny, Mendelssohn wrote that he intended to “save”
the slow movement until he arrived in Naples, and the Andante con moto seems in fact to
have been inspired by a religious procession that the composer
witnessed in that city. The clarinet's opening figure sounds much
like the chant intonation of a priest, and the plodding pizzicato bass
line sets up a rather doleful mood for the main theme of the
movement. This main theme is not in itself Italian, but may have
been based upon a melody by Mendelssohn's composition teacher, Carl
Friedrich Zelter.
The third movement, marked Con moto
moderato, is in the spirit of a courtly Classical minuet.
At the center of this movement is a lovely, pastoral trio with sonorous
horns and delicate woodwind lines, that sounds much like Mendelssohn's
later incidental music to A
Midsummer Night's Dream.
The finale, titled Saltarello
(Presto), is actually a combination of two Italian dances: the Saltarello, a jumping dance of
ancient origin, and the Tarantella,
a frantically fast and whirling couple dance. According to
Italian tradition, the Tarantella
is danced by the victim of a tarantula bite—the victim dances until he
or she is cured (or dead). There is no stopping for breath in
this energetic finale, which is not without a few dark
moments. We hear directly from the composer's heart in this
last movement—as Mendelssohn wrote to Zelter from Rome: “...I am
enjoying the most wonderful combination of gaiety and seriousness, such
as can only be found in Italy.”
Ottorino
Respighi (1879-1936)
The Pines of Rome
The Pines of Rome was composed in 1923-24. The first
performance was on December 14, 1924, in Rome. It has already
been performed five times—between 1956 and 1999—at these concerts
Duration 21:00.
The “Roman trilogy” of Respighi—the most successful Italian composer of
his generation—includes three large symphonic poems that are easily his
most famous works: The
Fountains of Rome (1916), The
Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman
Festivals (1928). In these works, the composer creates a
sonic portrait of his city—from Fountains,
celebrating the great Bernini monuments, to the wild revelry of Festivals, Respighi paints a
colorful, programmatic picture of the Eternal City. For the
central work, The Pines of Rome,
Respighi uses images of the ancient trees that line Rome’s parks and
promenades to spur on four programmatic episodes. The four
movements are played without pauses.
In the score, Respighi provides the following description of the first
section, Pines of the Villa Borghese:
“Children are at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, dancing
‘Ring around the Rosy’; they mimic marching soldiers and
battles; they chirp with excitement like swallows at evening, and
they swarm away.” The music is appropriately light and
high-spirited, with quick woodwind and horn lines beneath trumpet
fanfares.
For Pines near a Catacomb, he
turns to a much darker, “quasi-Medieval” texture. Respighi was
fond of using Gregorian chant or chantlike themes in his orchestral
works, and the Lento second
movement begins with a quiet chant that builds gradually towards a
tremendous orchestral statement near the end of the movement.
Here, we see “the shadows of the pines that crown the entrance to a
catacomb. From the depths rises a dolorous chant which spreads
solemnly, like a hymn, and then mysteriously dies away.”
In his description of Pines of the
Janiculum, the composer notes: “There is a tremor in the
air. The pines of the Janiculum hill are profiled in the full
moon. A nightingale sings.” This is profoundly calm and
quiet night-music, carried by the softer voices of the orchestra
throughout. At the very conclusion, a recording of a
nightingale’s singing is added to the orchestral texture—probably the
very earliest instance of a composer using prerecorded sounds in a
concert piece.
The final section is titled Pines of
the Appian Way. Respighi gives the following colorful
description of an ancient Roman army on the march: “Misty Dawn on
the Appian Way. Solitary pines stand guard over the tragic
countryside. The faint unceasing rhythm of numberless
steps. A vision of ancient glories appears to the poet;
trumpets blare and a consular army erupts in the brilliance of the
newly risen sun—towards the Sacred Way, mounting to a triumph on the
Capitoline Hill.” The movement opens quietly, with a slow and
inexorable march, but builds gradually towards an enormous brassy peak
(with several brassy knolls along the way…). To create this
picture of Roman military might, Respighi’s score calls for six bucinae—Roman war trumpets. [Note: He also provides the
helpful suggestion that modern trumpets may be used if bucinae are not available!
-MA]
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Concerto No.3 for Piano and Orchestra
in D minor, Op.30
Rachmaninoff composed this work in
1909, and was the soloist in its first performance on November 28,
1909, with the New York Symphony Society, under conductor Walter
Damrosch. Previous performances of the concerto by the Madison
Symphony Orchestra have featured Carroll Chilton (1969), Garrick
Ohlsson (1984), Horacio Guttierez (1991), and Celine Licad
(2003). Duration 41:00.
In 1909, Rachmaninoff spent the summer at the Russian country estate of
his wife's family preparing for his upcoming American tour, practicing
and working on a third piano concerto to be unveiled at his American
debut in New York. Rachmaninoff, the last in a long line of
Romantic pianist/composers, was then at the peak of his powers, and was
acclaimed throughout the world. A trip to America was a solid
career move for any Old World virtuoso of that time—if American
audiences were notoriously conservative, tours in this country were
also notoriously profitable. He looked forward to his first trip
to America with anticipation and some nervousness. His ocean passage to
New York anything but relaxing—the ever-driven Rachmaninoff spent
virtually the entire trip in his stateroom, practicing on a silent
keyboard. (Stravinsky, remembering Rachmaninoff's unrelenting
seriousness, once described him as a “six-and-a-half-foot-tall
scowl.”) Though the premiere of his new concerto under Walter
Damrosch in November was a great success, the composer remembered the
second New York performance, conducted by Gustav Mahler, with special
fondness. Mahler went to great lengths to perfect the complex
orchestral accompaniment during a marathon rehearsal. One account of
this event notes that, after the rehearsal had gone and hour and a half
past its scheduled ending time, , Rachmaninoff and Mahler paused to
discuss a troublesome passage. When a few brass players at the back of
the room began to pack up, Mahler fixed them with a steely glare and
stated: “As long as I am sitting, no musician has a right to get
up.” (Union rules were different in those days...)
The D minor piano concerto has firm place in the concert repertoire as
a virtuoso masterwork, and it is among the most difficult of
Rachmaninoff's piano works, making sizable demands on soloist and
orchestra alike. The concerto's appeal goes beyond piano pyrotechnics,
however—the sumptuous themes of its three movements are subtly
interrelated, imposing a kind of organic unity on this work. In the
first movement (Allegro ma non tanto)
the piano enters after only two measures of introduction, with a
subdued stepwise melody. Rachmaninoff steadfastly denied that
this melody was a Russian folk tune or Orthodox chant, asserting that
it simply “wrote itself.” The strings introduce a more poetic
second theme, which is taken up in an elaborate piano rhapsody. The
movement closes with a monumental solo cadenza, which is occasionally
supported by thematic fragments from the woodwinds. At the last
moment, there is a brief reminiscence of the opening theme.
The opening of the Intermezzo (Adagio)
is one of relatively few places in the concerto where the orchestra
takes the lead, introducing a lush and lyrical melody. After this
opening passage, however, the piano is fully in charge, spinning a free
set of variations on this opening theme. The variations gather momentum
towards the end, with the soloist playing ever-more complex and
chromatic figuration above occasional snippets of melody from the
opening movement. After a restatement of the main theme, a suddenly
aggressive piano passage and a few crisp brass chords lead directly
into the Finale (Alla breve).
The lengthy last movement is a fiery display of piano technique. Both
of its forceful themes are introduced by the soloist and elaborated
upon almost solely on the piano, during a prolonged variation-style
development section. An extended coda brings the concerto to an
exalted conclusion in D Major.
________
program notes ©2008 by J. Michael Allsen