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Saturday, October 15, 2016

Program Notes

“Vltava” (The Moldau), No. 2 from Má Vlast (My Homeland)
Bedřich Smetana

(Born in Litomyšl, near Prague, in1824; died in Prague (Czech Republic) in 1884)

Smetana is renowned as the Father of Nationalist Czech music – or, Bohemia, as it was called in his day. He determinedly dedicated his life to creating such music, beginning with operas whose themes were conspicuously nationalistic, and branching out into purely instrumental works with Bohemian roots. Yet, in a life filled with disappointments, sorrows and tragedies – several of his children died in infancy, his first wife died of tuberculosis, his career was constantly harangued and judged – probably the cruelest blow of Smetana’s life came in the summer of 1874 when he began to lose his hearing due to syphilis, being completely deaf by 1875. Despite all of these hardships, he began in 1874 the series of six symphonic tone paintings of his Má Vlast, which serve as a testament to the man who was indefatigable about succeeding in his musical mission.

Má Vlast transformed the tone poem idea made famous by Liszt, one of Smetana’s musical heroes. If a tone poem is a work linked by one ever-changing theme, Smetana morphed Liszt’s idea by creating a whole network of movements linked by a set of themes, large and small, playing larger and lesser roles to unify the whole. In Smetana’s hands, Má Vlast became multiple symphonic poems within a symphonic poem. This Symphonic Suite, as Smetana called it, is a gathering of six musical vignettes of all things Bohemian, geographically, iconically and folk-music centered. The movements were written to be played either separately, in groupings, or all together in one concert. Since its premiere in 1879, the most treasured of the six has been without question his second tone poem, Vltava, better known in its German translation as the Moldau.

Smetana provided general notes for each movement telling the tone poem’s “story.”  For the Moldau he wrote:

“Two springs pour forth in the shade of the Bohemian forest, one warm and gushing, the other cold and peaceful. Coming through Bohemia’s valleys, they grow into a mighty stream. Through the thick woods it flows as the merry sounds of a hunt and the notes of the hunter’s horn are heard ever closer. It flows through grass-grown pastures and lowlands where a wedding feast is being celebrated with song and dance. At night, wood and water nymphs revel in its sparkling waves. Reflected on its surface are fortresses and castles—witnesses of bygone days of knightly splendor and the vanished glory of martial times. The Moldau swirls through the St. John Rapids, finally flowing on in majestic peace toward Prague to be welcomed by historic Vysehrad. Then it vanishes far beyond the poet’s gaze.”

With marvelous tone painting, Smetana depicts the two springs at the opening by two crystalline flutes, growing in tandem, then adding orchestral forces until we hear what is undoubtedly the loveliest theme Smetana ever penned: the sweeping (mighty stream) Moldau theme played by full strings. The horns call for the hunt, and then pass by the graceful short-note folk dance of the wedding feast in the strings and woodwinds. By moonlight, the mythical nymphs are represented by the double reeds. The climax of the work arrives with the chaotic dissonance of the St. John Rapids, made more thrilling with the piercing shrieks of the piccolo, and then arriving in the grand capital city of Prague with brass and majesty. A reprise of the key four-note motive from the first tone poem of the cycle, the picturesque 11th Century castle Vysherad, is heard in a stately fanfare while the twirling flutes from the poem’s beginning soon ebb serenely away. A hearty good night by way of two forceful chords ends the Moldau’s musical journey.

Piano Concerto No. 3, Sz. 119

  1. Allegretto
  2. Adagio religioso
  3. Allegro vivace

Bela Bartok

(Born in Nagyszentmiklóslós, Hungary in 1881; died in New York City in 1945)

Bela Bartok (1881-1945) is one of Hungary’s greatest gifts to music. His accomplishments include being one of the 20th Century’s most outstanding composers, virtuoso pianist, conductor, teacher and premier ethnomusicologist (called “Comparative musicology” in Bartok’s times). His early musical career, however, seemed headed toward being one of the 20th century’s finest concert pianists. Having graduated from the Budapest Conservatory in 1903 and already mastering composition, Bartok was soon recognized as a great young piano virtuoso. At the Rubinstein Prize (for Piano) in Paris in 1905, however, he lost the competition to (the soon to become famous) pianist Wilhelm Backhaus – a decision he felt to be political and unfair. A sensitive and intense man, Bartok felt the loss greatly and in hindsight seems that this event threw Bartok into a life focused on composing. For the next three decades he devoted himself to composing, teaching, conducting, and collecting folk tunes around Eastern Europe and Africa with his colleague, Zoltan Kodaly.

With Hitler’s violent rise in Europe, however, Bartok became increasingly outspoken against Fascism. The music establishment was fast becoming a puppet to political ideology, and in 1940 Bartok had little choice but to flee Hungary. He came to America and settled in New York. Unfortunately, since his music was far better known in Europe than in the United States, it was like starting over. Through his ethnomusicological research, he received a research grant to catalog and study collections of Romanian folk music at Columbia University in 1941. Shortly afterwards he began to succumb to leukemia. Dying and impoverished, he began the Third Piano Concerto in 1945 as a birthday gift for his wife, Ditta, and as a way to provide her with some sort of financial comfort after his death. Bartok completed all but the last 17 bars that year before he died, and his student, Tibor Serly, finished the Concerto from the sketches penned by Bartok.

Though much of Bartok’s music is modern-esque and dissonant, the Third Piano Concerto is almost the opposite. The first movement, Allegretto, opens with gently pulsing strings and a gracefully lyrical opening theme from the piano. The entire work is harmonically tonal, tenderly rhapsodic, and brimming with a quiet joy. The music in this movement retains a transparent quality and the solo piano part is tempered and linear, rarely evoking bravura.

Adagio religioso, the second movement, begins like a setting sun on a summer evening. Clarinet and strings state a simple, lyrical theme in a loose canon scheme, and the piano answers with a hymn – chorale in flavor, subdued, prayerful. The two sections converse, until giving over to the sounds that surround the night scene as the orchestra and piano sing of chattering insects, summer night noises, lightning bugs, winds from the horizon, a space filled with nightingale song. Though the force of this middle section is more electrically charged than the sections that open and close it, the intent remains steadfast – the summer night, the meditation, and an enveloping calmness as darkness settles in. In all of Western music, there are few endings as simple and beautiful as the closing of this second movement.

The Allegro vivace closes the whole work in the form of a rondo in syncopated overdrive. It is very Bartokian in its spirit and rhythmical interplay, complex yet completely playful. As so many finales are intended to do, this one is a release of energy, a jubilation, a spirited dance. In the closing bars, the piano becomes suddenly outrageous, pegging out octaves for both hands to end this masterful Concerto with breathless exuberance.

Symphony No. 4 in B♭ Major, Op. 60

Adagio – Allegro vivace
Adagio
Allegro vivace
Allegro ma non troppo

Ludwig van Beethoven

(Born in Bonn in 1770; died in Vienna in 1827)

Whereas Beethoven’s Third and Fifth Symphonies grab a listener by the collar in their intensity, the Fourth takes one by the hand to enjoy the civilized pleasures of humor, joy and sunny weather. In its special way, the Fourth is no less a masterpiece than its symphonic neighbors, if perhaps an underrated one.  The techniques that Beethoven experimented with here became inspirational both for him and for composers to follow, and a listener will often be surprised to hear passages and tonal colors that harken of music yet to come: the Introduction in particular became extremely important not only to Beethoven but several other composers; the Fourth’s sonorities (the earthy feel of Bb Major) would later inform his Eighth Symphony and the Andante movement of his Ninth; and its finale was a virtual proving ground for the break-neck finale of his Seventh.  Perhaps most important and musically ingenious, though, is how Beethoven experiments with musical motion – compositional techniques in moving music forward.

The first movement begins with an historic passage.  Over a static, sustained chord, the winds open with a passage of sinking intervals.  Leonard Bernstein described it as “mysterious” and “tip-toeing its tenuous weight . . . through ambiguous keys.”  It’s a magical introduction, glowing with an inner strength while it meanders through sound and time.  Brahms loved it so much that he virtually replicated it in the finale of his Second Symphony.  So did Mahler in opening to his First Symphony.   Beethoven himself saw its potential and explored the idea even further with the beginning of his towering Ninth Symphony.  Next, however, comes a delicious surprise.  The orchestra departs from that beautiful introductory mysterium by essentially starting up a lawn mower (for Beethoven, it would have been a steam engine of some sort) – yanking on the pull cord and revving up a machine.  It’s a wonderful bit of humor, and when the machine starts moving, there’s no stopping it until the end when it suddenly seems to just quit working.  Along the way, there’s a pause as the built-up momentum of the movement quiets down . . . all sound stops, save for a tremolo – a roll – on the timpani.  This, in effect, takes lack of motion and infuses it with momentum – like the silent speed of a catapulted object.  In this way, Beethoven found that he could manipulate musical motion even without rhythm.  Brahms would use this same technique decades later also in his Second Symphony.

The second movement is both motion and beauty.  For motion, Beethoven turns again, mainly, to what Sir George Grove called the “timpani motive” (although it’s heard first immediately in the strings) to tap out a subtly motoric motive – one to which all the instruments contribute – underneath a serenely floating theme.  That rhythmic motive has an easy, happy pace and serves as a kind gentle and steady heartbeat.   The themes above it are beautiful, with variations and wanderings that are as fresh and simple as any music Beethoven ever wrote.  Hector Berlioz was mesmerized by this movement:

“[It] seems to have been breathed by the archangel Michael . . . standing on the threshold of the empyrean.”

The third movement scherzo is a fun romp with devilish energy.  In the first part, Beethoven creates a kind of motion-dissonance by fitting two-beat phrases into three-beat measures, on which Berlioz whimsically commented that the “cross-rhythms have in themselves real charm, though it is difficult to explain why.”  Then appears a counter melody where the bassoon (an integral instrument in this Symphony) recalls the mysterious introductory falling motive of the Symphony’s beginning, but is now humorously recast so that it seems the downward intervals will continue forever.

To end such a Symphony of movement and gracious fun, Beethoven chooses the grandest of all motion makers: perpetual motion, launched by those wonderfully whisking sixteenth notes that immediately begin this movement.  From there, it’s a whirl of motion, joy and excited tidings until the end.

 

Program Notes by Max Derrickson