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Saturday, April 29, 2017

Program Notes

Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op. 21
Felix Mendelssohn
(Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1809; died in Leipzig, Germany in 1847)

Of all the great prodigies to grace Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Felix Mendelssohn may indeed stand above them all, even above Schubert, and perhaps even Mozart. As brilliant intellectually as he was in music, Mendelssohn enjoyed an extraordinarily cultured childhood. His grandfather was the famous philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, and his parents were both gifted in art and letters. Felix was raised in wealth and a near embarrassment of culture as the Mendelssohn home was a gathering place for many of Europe’s leading figures in the arts and the sciences. Most cherished were the concerts that the Mendelssohns hosted every week, inviting the greatest musicians of the time, and where Felix himself began performing on the piano at a very early age together with his famously talented sister, Fanny. In this divinely cultured atmosphere the prodigy Felix began to compose, and by the age of 16 had written one of his great masterpieces, his Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20, for eight strings, often considered one of the “great [musical] miracles of the 19th Century.”

A year later in 1826 Mendelssohn created what is arguably his finest work, the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream for two pianos, and then quickly reworked it for full orchestra. It was written for one of the many literary evenings at the Mendelssohn home to accompany a reading of that classic Shakespeare play. The magical-mythical setting and characters of Shakespeare’s great comedy fired young Felix’s imagination. The Overture begins with one of the finest fairytale openings in the repertoire, with four woodwind and brass chords quietly and dramatically rising up like the mists of twilight. Then the pianissimo and quicksilver strings conjure up all of the tale’s fairy dust like a thousand tiny tornados – another one of the great moments in music. The main theme that presents next is pure joy.

Responding to his publisher’s query if the Overture had a specific program to it, Mendelssohn explained:

“I believe it will suffice to remember how the rulers of the elves, Oberon and Titania, constantly appear throughout the play with all their train, now here and now there; then comes Prince Theseus of Athens and joins a hunting party in the forest…then the two pairs of tender lovers, who lose and find themselves; finally the troop of clumsy, coarse tradesmen, who ply their ponderous amusements; then again the elves, who entice all – and on this the piece is constructed. When at the end all is happily resolved… the elves return and bless the house, and disappear as morning arrives. So ends the play, and also my overture.”

The Overture was publicly performed a year later, cementing the young Mendelssohn’s musical fame, and it has been cherished ever since.

Concerto for Piano and Strings (1979)
Alfred Schnittke
(Born in Engels, Saratov Oblast, Russia (formerly in the USSR) in 1934; died in Hamburg, Germany in 1998)

Schnittke was born to Russian-German Jewish parents in Engels, the capitol of a curious part of the new Soviet Union in 1934 called the Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. It was carved out for the many Germans living there, but soon after Schnittke’s birth, in 1941, the Germans invaded Russia, and its special status was revoked. His father was a journalist and moved the family to Vienna. It was there that the young Schnittke learned about music, chiefly Mozart, whose influence would remain a guiding star throughout his musical life. Schnittke studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory and was soon creating the controversial types of pieces that would characterize his life’s work – first, much in the style of Shostakovich, then as a 12-tone serialist, and eventually into his own unique voice. His works rarely met with Soviet political approval, and he therefore had to make his living as a composer for film. He composed soundtracks for nearly 70 films but remained active writing “serious” music, eventually creating a large body of works that remained somewhat under the radar. Recognition and acclaim for his music only began in the 1980’s, and primarily outside of Russia. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he moved to Hamburg in 1990 where he lived until his death.

Like Shostakovich and Prokofiev, Schnittke took some drubbings from the Soviet politburo for being formalist and offensive. As he suffered through years of writing film music under the dictates of both the Soviet ideologues and of film directors, he came to a profound conclusion:

“My lifelong task would be to bridge the gap between serious music and music for entertainment, even if I broke my neck in the process.” Both his experiments in film music and his newfound mission contributed to his mature composing voice as he sought to capture “… the interaction of the serious and unserious…it is the constant interaction of the most serious with absolute emptiness…as so often happens in life’s most vivid moments.” His compositional mission meant mixing styles at his whim, such as writing “pop” sounding melodies over chaotic orchestral backgrounds, turning banal themes into giant musical complexities, or slipping into jazz. Musicologists call this polystylistic. Schnittke described it better:

“I have this dream of a unified style where fragments of serious music and fragments of music for entertainment would not just be scattered about in a frivolous way, but would be the elements of a diverse musical reality…”

Although such an approach might result in pastiche at the hands of a less visionary composer, Schnittke managed to create his music with a profound logic, using different genres and styles as his tools, much as Mozart did. His Concerto for Piano and Strings of 1979 is a good example of this. The first notes from the piano ring out like sonic beacons – one might imagine the beginning of a Debussy piece – but they then carry forward into a harmonious but peculiar theme which will return throughout the work as its unifying voice. As Schnittke described such moments, “I set down a beautiful chord on paper—and suddenly it rusts.” Repeated notes soon drone which establishes another major motive of the piece, and then the third main piano theme appears, a minimalistic-like accompaniment, quasi-Beethoven “Moonlight” Sonata, and yet, completely in its own world, moving about seemingly aimlessly. Schnittke is leading us through an inner sanctum – a very sonically gripping place. The strings join in before their main theme which sounds like the closing chords of Strauss’s famous opening to Also Sprach Zarathustra, but turned upside down.

From this point the music begins to move and grow, employing these main themes in various ways, and Schnittke leaves the inner sanctum out into a world filled with motion and comedy and fear. For comedy, the piano begins a jazz-like riff over plucked bass notes, but jazz only in essence – it’s more an homage to a Shostakovich piano sonata turned rhapsodically jazzy. And then comedy turns to tragedy, such as when the “Strauss string theme reappears,” the piano accents the ending, first harmonically, then quickly turning into colossal tone clusters at instrument-breaking volume. It’s a vivid moment of joy becoming violent and dangerously powerful. Modern playing techniques in the strings such as harmonics and glissandi dot the work’s landscape, often simply as an intriguing background for the soloist’s playing, sometimes as though dredged out of a surreal dreamscape, as one musicologist observed, “cracking the world of appearances and revealing the tragic depths.” And just as with Liszt’s music, Schnittke’s pianist must be as much a poet as a virtuoso to let this music speak its truth and show its soul. The Concerto creates a world beyond real, completely vivid and compelling, to finally fade back into its inner-psychological space, leaving us spellbound.

 

Symphony No. 4 in D-minor, Op.120
1. Zeimlich langsam – Lebhaft
2. Romanze: Ziemlich langsam
3. Scherzo: Lebhaft
4. Finale: Langsam – Lebhaft

Robert Schumann
(Born in Zwickau, Germany in 1810; died in Endenich, Germany in 1856)

1841 was Schumann’s year for symphonies. All four of them were at least sketched out in that year, three of them completed, along with a kind of symphonette in three movements. His second full symphony was his D-minor. Schumann withheld it from publication for another ten years, however, and in the meantime seriously revised it. When it at last came to be published in 1851, it was given the later opus number and the No. 4 in sequence – this is the version performed on this program.

The influence of two of Schumann’s musical heroes are vivid in this great Symphony – Bach for his genius at counterpoint, and Beethoven for his exploration of psychological angst. The Symphony’s slow introduction is indeed rife with such angst. A slow, brooding motive appears in the strings – this is a restless and somewhat tortured theme that easily foreshadows Bram Stoker’s Dracula by about 50 years. This mistily falling and rising theme becomes the incubus motive for the whole Symphony. Schumann begins to incrementally aggravate the theme until it flows into the movement’s main Allegro, which eventually works its way into a new theme in D Major, ending this very stormy movement in a blaze of sunlight.

The second movement is disarmingly original. The first chord is the same that begins the first movement and reminds us of Beethoven’s opening to the Allegretto of his Symphony No. 7. Then, a theme is introduced that is entirely reminiscent of Renaissance carols – a burnished antiquity is evoked. Following this short section Schumann then recollects himself as the Symphony’s motivic theme materializes out of the Renaissance fabric. The next section then inverts that originally despairing motive into a violin rhapsody, a wonderfully sweet expression woven out of heartache.

The scherzo’s first theme is again a derivation of the Symphony’s motive, and likewise, so is the trio section, which is a wistful theme that appears to grow out of the rhapsodic changes that Schumann gave us in the second movement. Instead of the usual return to the first theme to end this movement type, however, the trio lingers in the clarinets, low strings and violins, and then slowly broadens into the finale.

There are few moments in Western music to compare with this finale’s opening. From the shadowy depths grows a magnificent unfolding, its gravity all the more meaningful because it’s crafted out of the Symphony’s somber opening motive. The angst has been burned away and what’s left is reveling in an effervescent beauty. To be sure, there are memories of less happy themes from the previous movements, but Schumann bends them back into brightness. Saluting Bach, this finale is a masterstroke of contrapuntal writing including a section, around midway through, where a fugue begins to form, only to lead to the celebratory call in the horns that reflect a brief section from the first movement. The ending, almost manically giddy, ends one of the magical symphonies in the repertoire, and one of Schumann’s great masterpieces.

Program notes by Max Derrickson