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NOTE:  These program notes are published here for patrons of the the Madison Symphony Orchestra and other interested readers.  Any other use is forbidden without specific permission from the author.

Madison Symphony Orchestra Program Notes
February 26-27-28, 2010
84th Season / Subscription Concert No. 6
Michael Allsen

Estonian conductor Anu Tali led the Madison Symphony Orchestra last season, and we are delighted to welcome her back this year.  In November 2008 she led a program warmly remembered by members of the orchestra for an insightful reading of Shostakovich’s Symphony No.9, and a powerful work by Estonian composer Veljo Tormis.  She returns with more music from her homeland: Eller’s lyrical Dawn.  Pianist Stephen Hough returns to perform Tchaikovsky’s passionate first piano concerto.  (This is Mr. Hough’s third appearance at these concerts: he was soloist in Rachmaninoff’s first concerto in 1998, and in 2006, he played the Concerto No.4 by Saint-Saëns.) We end with a fine early work by Sibelius, his Symphony No.1.


Heino Eller (1887-1970)
Dawn

Eller composed this symphonic poem between 1918 and 1920.  The composer conducted the premiere at the Vanemuine Theater in Tartu, on August 27, 1921.  This is our first performance of the work.  Duration 9:00.

Heino Eller, sometimes called the “Father of Modern Estonian Music,” came of age during heady days in his homeland: the period known as the “National Awakening,” a movement of cultural pride and political independence that began in the late 19th century and culminated with the Declaration of Independence in 1918, and a successful war of independence in 1918-20.  This ended centuries of domination by outside powers, first by Sweden, and later Imperial Russia.  The “Awakening” was a political and literary movement but it also saw the founding of the great singing festivals that remain an important symbol of Estonian cultural pride today.  

Eller was in fact one of the earliest important native Estonian art music composers.  His earliest training was as a violinist, but he also studied as a teenager with composer Rudolf Tobias.  He spent most of the war years in Russia—first as a violinist and then as a composer at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and his music includes influences of Scriabin and Debussy.  But he also channeled the folk music of Estonia.  Upon his graduation from the Conservatory in 1920, Eller returned to Estonia and spent the next 50 years as one of Estonia’s most respected teachers, first at the Higher Music School in Tartu and later at the Tallinn Conservatory.  He was an influence of the next two generations of Estonian musicians, and several of his students, notably Eduard Tubin, Kaljo Raid, and Arvo Pärt composed music widely known outside of Estonia.  Eller’s music is less well-known in this country, but he remains a central figure in Estonia—his Homeland Melody is one of the nation’s most beloved pieces of patriotic music.  In recent years, Estonian conductors—notably Neeme Järvi and Ms. Tali—have championed his music around the world, and many of his works have been recorded in the last ten years.

The symphonic poem Dawn (Koit) was an early work, completed while he was still a student of Maximilian Steinberg at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.  The work provides a fine programmatic picture of daybreak—Eller said: “I have put all my love for nature into it.  This love goes back to my childhood, when I strolled along the banks of Emajõgi. And until today this it has been a part of me, it has been the essence of all my works.”   It also shows Eller’s nationalistic affinity for Estonian folk style.  Dawn begins with a long oboe solo above quiet string chords—a flowing melody based upon the most ancient of Estonian singing styles.   This melody is developed by a lush full orchestra before a sudden pause and timpani roll that introduces a more pastoral episode that is painted in bright Impressionistic colors.  This builds to a grand climax in the full orchestra.  A mysterious passage dominated by bells leads to a quiet coda, a reworking of the opening melody in strings and solo horn.

    [NOTE:  My thanks to Mr. Risto Lehiste of the Estonian Theatre and Music Museum—repository of Eller’s papers and autographs—for his assistance with this note. - MA]


Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No.1 in B-flat Minor, Opus 23    

This work was written in late 1874.  The first performance was on October 25, 1875 in Boston, with Hans von Bülow as piano soloist.  The Madison Symphony Orchestra has performed the concerto on seven previous occasions—soloists have included Edward Collins (1937), Peter Paul Loyanovich (1949), Marian Perkins (1954), James Tocco (1969), Earl Wild (1980), Vladimir Viardo (1992), and Vladimir Feltsman (2004).  Duration 32:00.

The early history of this concerto gave no clue of its eventual popularity.  When Tchaikovsky finished the work in December of 1874, he asked Nicolai Rubinstein to listen to a performance.  Tchaikovsky considered Rubinstein to be the “best pianist in Moscow”" and planned to dedicate the new concerto to him, so he quite naturally sought Rubinstein's criticism.  On Christmas Eve, he met Rubinstein at the Moscow Conservatory, and played through the entire concerto, which had not yet been orchestrated, while Rubinstein sat in stony silence.  In a letter to his patron, Mme. von Meck, Tchaikovsky described how, immediately after the final chord, Rubinstein launched into a scathing attack on the concerto, calling it “worthless,” “unplayable,” and “vulgar.”  Deeply insulted, Tchaikovsky stormed out of the room.  Rubinstein followed, and attempted to conciliate the composer by offering to perform the concerto, if Tchaikovsky would only revise the concerto according to his suggestions.  Tchaikovsky answered, “I will not alter a single note!  I will publish the work exactly as it is!”

While we only have Tchaikovsky's emotional version of this incident, it is hardly surprising that he decided to dedicate the concerto to someone other than Rubinstein.  When he sent a score for the German pianist-conductor Hans von Bülow, Bülow enthusiastically replied, “The ideas are so original, the form is so mature, ripe, distinguished in style...”  Bülow performed the work for the first time while on tour in Boston.  There is an interesting historical footnote to this first performance.  When Bülow sent a telegram to Tchaikovsky telling him of the ecstatic response to the concerto's premiere, it was apparently the first cable ever sent between Boston and Moscow.

The opening movement begins with a vast introduction (Allegro non troppo), opening with the familiar four-note horn motive.  The solo part takes control almost immediately with crashing chords, expanding upon this theme.  The body of the movement (Allegro con spirito) begins with a nervous syncopated tune that, according to legend, Tchaikovsky heard from a blind Ukrainian beggar.   Clarinet and woodwinds introduce a more lyrical second idea.  The development culminates in a first enormous cadenza, and an abbreviated recapitulation leads to an even larger virtuoso moment.

Though they are dwarfed by the huge opening, the second and third movements are just as innovative.  The second movement manages to combine a traditional slow movement form with a lighter scherzo.  The main theme of the outer panels (Andante semplice) is a popular French tune Il faut s'amuser, danser et rire (“You must enjoy yourself by dancing and laughing”).  This was apparently a great favorite of Tchaikovsky's but it may also have been a melancholy tribute to Désirée Artôt, a soprano who had broken his heart a few years earlier.  The central section (Prestissimo) has fleeting scherzo style that is brought to a sudden conclusion by a bark from the brass and brief cadenza.  The finale (Allegro con fuoco) is a kind of rhythmic showpiece with constantly shifting and combined meters.  A fiery main theme alternates with widely contrasting material, but the whole movement dances, until a cadenza and broadening of the tempo lead to a brilliant coda.


Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Symphony No.1 in E minor, Op. 39

Sibelius composed this symphony in 1898-99, and conducted the first performance in Helsinki on April 26, 1899.  A much-revised version was premiered the next year in Stockholm.  The Madison Symphony Orchestra has performed the Symphony No.1 twice previously, in 1957 and 1983.  Duration 38:00.

By the late 1890s Sibelius was already a star in his native Finland and was attracting increasing notice in other musical centers in Europe.  He had made his mark with grand, nationalistic works like the choral symphony Kullervo and other self-consciously Finnish pieces—mostly on themes from Finland's national epic, the Kalevala.  By the end of the decade Finnish audiences were waiting just as expectantly for his first symphony as Viennese audiences had waited for Brahms's first a few decades before.  A young, important composer was obviously expected to a symphony, the most important of all orchestral genres....and Sibelius would in fact become one of the finest symphonists of his age. But at least part of the expectation came from nationalistic pride.  Like Estonia, Finland was under the thumb of Russia at the time: in early 1899, Czar Nicholas II instituted a whole series of repressive laws aimed at squelching Finnish culture and political freedom.  In this atmosphere, Sibelius was increasingly a symbol of Finnish cultural independence.

Ironically, the first symphony he produced was not a stirring patriotic work or even a particularly “Finnish” one—though he was certainly writing plenty of those at the same time (his enduringly popular tone-poem Finlandia was premiered just a month after the symphony).  If Finland was under the political yoke of Russia, this symphony was just as clearly influenced by Russian music, particularly Borodin and Tchaikovsky.  Sibelius had heard Tchaikovsky's “Pathetique” symphony in Helsinki in 1894 and was deeply impressed.  When some colleagues remarked on the echoes of the “Pathetique” in his Symphony No.1, Sibelius replied that “...there is much in that man that I recognize in myself.”  But this is just as clearly a work by a skilled composer who already had a musical voice of his own, and much of the musical personality that makes the later symphonies so distinctive is already there in the first.

The opening movement begins quietly, almost mysteriously, with a melancholy clarinet solo (Andante, ma non troppo).  Without a transition, this idea is transformed into a declamatory main theme (Allegro energico).  This is built into a great orchestral climax before harp and flutes introduce a lighter contrasting idea.  The woodwinds introduce a third idea, a solemn canon marked tranquillo.  The development is long and intense, and freely intermixes elements from all of these themes.  In the recapitulation, Sibelius freely reorchestrates his main themes.  The coda contains a brief reminiscence of the opening clarinet solo, a flurry of activity, and a savage trombone phrase, before the movement ends with a pair of dry pizzicato chords from the strings.  (The same chords reappear at the close of the finale.)

The slow movement (Andante, ma non troppo lento) begins with a complete change of mood, a quiet string theme above a pulsing background.  There is a brief fugato from the woodwinds before a broader version of the main theme.  Horns introduce a tranquil new idea and there is brief section of contrasting mood before the opening character returns.  This builds into a turbulent orchestra climax before subsiding quietly.

The scherzo (Allegro) begins with rough, rhythmic ideas passed from section to section.  This music is developed furiously until mood is broken by a serene idea from the horns.  After all of the sound a ferocity of the opening, this middle section is surprisingly quiet and pastoral.  The movement closes with a varied reprise of the opening music.

The finale is marked Quasi una Fantasia—in the manner of a fantasia—possibly a reference to the close interconnections between all of its themes.  The beginning is reprise of the quiet clarinet theme from the opening movement, now transformed into a passionate string passage.  After a brief interlude the cellos introduce an impassioned idea that seems like a moment of pure Tchaikovsky, and music that follows is turbulent and highly dramatic.  The contrasting cantabile music is pure Sibelius, however: emotional yet reserved.  The turbulent music returns in a long development, worked into an even higher peak of tension.  The opening movement's melody returns again, now returned to the clarinet, and gradually reworked, leading to a fervent reprise of the cantabile.  There is one final grand peak before the music ends with two string chords.
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program notes ©2010 by J. Michael Allsen