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Madison Symphony Orchestra Program Notes
October 17-18-19, 2008
83rd Season / Subscription Concert No. 2
Michael Allsen

Guest conductor Chosei Komatsu leads this subscription program of American and English music.  We open with a bit of Americana, Copland’s stirring Outdoor Overture.   Cellist Alban Gerhardt joins us for Elgar’s profound Cello Concerto.  (This is Mr. Gerhardt’s second appearance with the Madison Symphony Orchestra: he last appeared at these concerts in 1999, playing the solo cello part of Strauss’s Don Quixote.)  Holst’s closely contemporary orchestra suite The Planets rounds out the program with a vast array of textures and moods, from the savagery of Mars to the ethereal mysticism of Neptune.


Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
An Outdoor Overture

Copland composed An Outdoor Overture in 1938, and it was premiered in New York City by the orchestra of the High School of Music and Art on December 16, 1938.  This is our first performance of the work.  Duration 9:00.

In 1938, Alexander Richter, director the New York’s High School of Music and Art approached Copland with a commission for “a single movement composition, somewhere between five and ten minutes in length…rather optimistic in tone, that would appeal to the adolescent youth of this country.”  Richter was at that time promoting an ambitious campaign called “American Music for American Youth,” to foster the creation of new works by American composers for American school orchestras, bands, and choruses.  Copland’s contemporary Howard Hanson had announced the campaign in 1937, and Copland’s work would be the first by a major composer.  It fit well with his interests in this period: in 1937, he had composed a chamber opera, The Second Hurricane, for performance by high school students.  The title, according to Copland’s autobiography, came from the music itself: “When Mr. Richter first heard me play it from a piano sketch , he pointed out that it had an open-air quality.  Together, we hit on the title: An Outdoor Overture.”  The work was an immediate success, and Copland created an equally successful version for concert band in 1941.

An Outdoor Overture heralds the beginning of Copland’s consciously “Americanist” phase: it was written while he was in the midst of composing Billy the Kid, the first of his great trilogy of American ballets: including Rodeo of 1942, and Appalachian Spring of 1944.   It begins with a bold statement that develops into a long lyrical trumpet solo.  (Copland cribbed some of this music from his Signature, a fanfare written earlier the same year.)  The second theme, marked “snappy and marchlike” is a workout for the brass and percussion: Richter told Copland “don’t forget the percussion section” and they are given some wonderful moments in this piece.    Solo flute introduces a new, more lyrical theme, which leads after a brief development to a more majestic march.  The conclusion is bright pastiche of all of this material, ending with a grand restatement of the opening material.

                   
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in E minor, Op.85

Elgar’s cello concerto was composed during the summer of 1919, and was first performed on October 27, 1919 in London.  The composer conducted the London Symphony Orchestra at the premiere, and Felix Salmond was the soloist.  It has been performed twice previously by the Madison Symphony Orchestra, with Shauna Rolston (1994) and Lynn Harrell (2000).  Duration 30:00.

The period at the end of the first world war was a time of pain and creativity for Elgar.  The war years were especially hard for him, as Elgar owed much of his success as a composer to German conductors and German audiences—a politically disastrous admission to make—and many of his close friends, both English and German, were lost in the war.  The final blow came in late 1919 and early 1920, when his beloved wife Alice grew ill and died.  His activities as a composer had always been interspersed with bouts of depression, but in 1918 and 1919 he had what was to be his final great burst of creative energy, producing several chamber works and his fine Cello Concerto.  These wartime works turn away from the calculated Edwardian pompousness of the Enigma Variations, his symphonies and the Pomp and Circumstance marches, toward a more introspective and profoundly sad character.

The Cello Concerto—his last large orchestral work—was completed in August of 1919 and was dedicated to his friends Sidney and Frances Colvin, longtime friends of the Elgars.   In June, he wrote to Sidney Colvin:  “...I am frantically busy writing & have nearly completed a Concerto for Violoncello—a real large work & I think good & alive... Would Frances & you allow me to put on the title page simply ‘to Sidney and Frances Colvin’?  Your friendship is such a real & precious thing to me that I should like to leave some record of it;  I cannot say whether the music is worthy of you both (or either!), but our three names will be in print together even if the music is dull & of the kind which perisheth.”

The concerto is sad but never dull, and has hardly perished:  it has remained one of the standard solo works for cello.  Though the style of the music is clearly Romantic, Elgar chose a highly individual four-movement form.  The opening movement, set very loosely in sonata form, begins with a brief passage for solo cello (Andante).  Elgar introduces and develops two broad themes in the body this movement (Moderato): a legato phrase heard first in the strings, and slightly livelier theme introduced by the clarinet.  After a free recapitulation, Elgar launches directly into the second movement.  This scherzo (Allegro molto) begins with a slow, introspective passage, but gradually builds up steam and quickens tempo, to introduce a quick-footed, and slightly sinister main theme in the cello.  The third movement (Adagio) is the heart of this concerto.  Elgar lays out a long, thoroughly Romantic melody in the solo cello, and gently develops it over the course of the movement.  As in the first movement, he ends in a tentative way, in this case a brief solo recitative, leading into the next, and final movement.  The finale (Allegro ma non troppo) is set in a free rondo form, but before things really get rolling, there is a brief cello cadenza that recalls the mood of the very beginning of the concerto.  Though the rondo is traditionally a light form, there is an underlying mood of pessimism in the main theme and the contrasting sections, particularly in a slow passage for the cello.  Near the end, Elgar brings back reminiscences from the first and third movement.  The concerto comes to an abrupt close with a final statement of the rondo theme.


Gustav Holst (1874-1934)
The Planets, Suite for Large Orchestra, Op. 32

Holst completed The Planets in 1917.  The first performance, on September 29, 1918, was a private concert by the New Queen’s Hall Orchestra in London, directed by Adrian Boult.  The first public performance took place two years later in London, on November 15, 1920.  We have performed the work twice previously, in 1972 and 1991.  Duration 50:00.

“There is nothing in the planets (my planets, I mean) that can be expressed in words.”
- Holst, to conductor Adrian Boult

When Holst began composing the music of The Planets in 1914, he was nearly 40 years old.  He had been an eclectic sampler or philosophies and mysticism since he was a young man, and this work came out of a brief flirtation with astrology.  His interest in the subject began the previous year, when he and fellow composer Clifford Bax made a trip to Spain together, and passed the time talking about astrology.  Holst never followed this “science” in a serious way—he seems to have used it only as source of musical inspiration.  In 1913, he wrote to a friend that “…I only study things that suggest music to me.  Recently the character of each planet has suggested lots to me, and I have been studying astrology fairly closely.”  As Holst suggested, the movements of The Planets are based upon the personalities attributed to the seven astrological planets:  Mars being “headstrong and forceful,” Neptune “subtle and mysterious,” and so forth.  [Note:  Earth plays no direct role in astrological calculations, and Pluto was not discovered until 1930.]

The music of The Planets is more massive and somewhat more radical than anything Holst had written up until this point (or afterwards).  The work uses a vastly expanded orchestra in which every woodwind section has been increased by one or two players, and augmented occasionally by such exotic timbres as bass oboe and bass flute.  Holst, who spent much of his youth as a trombonist in several bands, lavished a great deal of forceful and difficult music on a large brass section that includes six horns, four trumpets, three trombones, tuba and that most beloved of all British band instruments, the euphonium.  His score also calls for a large percussion battery (at least seven players), two harps, celeste, and in the final movement, organ and an offstage women's chorus.  Holst's acquaintances must have been surprised at the formidable and occasionally violent nature of this piece—the 5/4 rhythm and crashing dissonances of Mars must have seemed particularly shocking coming from this mild-mannered and unfailingly gentle man.  Despite its massive nature, The Planets also shows elements of his earlier style, which blended elements of Oriental and north African music, and Eastern mysticism, with the foursquare and solid harmony of English church music.

Holst completed the work in 1917, and his friend Balfour Gardiner arranged for a private performance in September of 1918.  Though this was apparently a rather slipshod reading of the piece (the schedule allowed for just over an hour of rehearsal time for this 50-minute work!), Holst was encouraged, and made a few minor revisions to the score.  Within a couple of years after the end of the war, there had been several performances in England and the United States.  The Planets was a tremendous success, and remains Holst's most popular work.  Holst himself was more than a bit bewildered by the work's popularity, and his daughter Imogen wrote of several occasions where the composer stood tongue-tied and uncomfortable, surrounded by reporters and gushing admirers.

Early audiences assumed that the first movement, Mars, the Bringer of War, was written in response to the first world war.  In reality, Holst completed this movement before the outbreak of hostilities, and probably had Mars's astrological significance in mind rather than current events. However, this movement still manages to convey a sense of Europe's inexorable slide towards a senseless conflict.  Holst sets up a savage 5/4 rhythm in the opening bars that underlies the whole movement.  An ominously rising theme is passed from bassoons and horns to the trombones, and eventually to the entire brass section.  As the volume builds, Holst introduces a sliding dotted-note countermelody.  The euphonium and trumpets introduce a contrasting idea and an accompanying fanfare.  The movement continues as a development of these paired themes, building towards a crashing conclusion.

Nothing could be more of a contrast to Mars than the calmly flowing Venus, the Bringer of Peace.  Holst sets aside the trumpets, trombones, and drums of the opening movement to focus on the more delicate colors of harps, woodwinds, and strings. The solo horn plays an upward-flowing melody, which is answered by descending woodwinds. A contrasting, but equally placid melody is introduced by solo violin.  This is no sharply-textured Boticelli Venus, but an Impressionist portrait in soft, watercolor textures on a constantly shifting rhythmic and harmonic background.

Mercury, the Winger Messenger opens with a feeling of perpetual motion, passing brief bits of melody from instrument to instrument. The orchestration is extremely light, focussing of the woodwinds and giving prominent passages to the celesta. A central episode uses an exotic melody first heard in the solo violin, and then repeated several times throughout the orchestra. Holst's daughter notes that the inspiration for this passage came from folk musicians that he had heard on a trip to Algeria. In its final section, Mercury returns to the nimble character of its beginning.

For Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, Holst returns to full orchestra, but this movement contains none of the threatening darkness of Mars—Holst described Jupiter as “…one of those jolly fat people who enjoy life.”   The main theme is a rollicking syncopated melody first heard in the horns. The first contrasting section turns to a slightly slower triple meter melody, again introduced by the horns. After a brief return to the opening texture, there is a second triple meter theme; a hymnlike melody marked Andante maestoso.   (A few years later, Holst did, in fact, use this melody to set a patriotic hymn.) To close off the rondo form, Holst includes a final statement of the main theme.

Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age begins with a feeling of timelessness: a static ostinato played by harps and flutes supports a slow and languid melody first played by the basses. The central section becomes more agitated, although never faster, moving in a long crescendo. After reaching maximum intensity, the mood subsides into a transformation of the opening music.

Uranus, the Magician begins with a fortissimo statement by unison brass. According to Adrian Boult, Holst was not acquainted with Paul Dukas's Sorcerer's Apprentice (l897) at the time he composed Uranus.  However, Holst's main themes are amazingly similar to those used by Dukas in his portrayal of magic gone astray: a humorous and somewhat eerie 6/4 melody that gives way to a spooky march. Both Dukas and Holst may have been inspired—whether consciously or not—by the “Witches’ Sabbath” movement of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.  Holst's magician is good-natured to the end, though—after a tremendous orchestral climax, the music quiets to a final statement of the march.

The closing movement, Neptune, the Mystic, returns to the 5/4 of Mars.   However Neptune is hushed and serene, characterized by sliding chromatic melodies played above a background of sustained chords and glissandos in the celesta and harps.   At the end, Holst calls for two offstage choruses of female voices.   There is no text—the women sing an unearthly hymn that fades gradually into space.
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program notes ©2008 by J. Michael Allsen