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Sunday, April 29, 2018

Program Notes

 

Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 6

  1. Allegro maestoso – Tempo giusto

Niccoló Paganini: (Born in Genoa, Italy in 1782; died in Nice, 1840)

Paganini’s name became synonymous with virtuosity in his lifetime and has remained so ever since.  So gifted was the young Italian violinist that audiences couldn’t help but speculate over the marvel of a Paganini concert.  The greatest legend to associate with Paganini began in Vienna: an audience member was so excited by a particularly fast passage that he swore for days that he had seen the Devil helping Paganini play.  For his part, Paganini was much like a rock star and he capitalized on the gossip.  He began to wear only black, arriving at concerts in a black carriage led by pitch black horses, stoking audience imagination.  Before long he was being called “Der Hexensohn,” (The Witch’s son).  That Paganini loved to gamble, womanize and drink only added to his mystique.  But his virtuosity was genuine – Paganini’s recitals were, from almost all accounts, jaw dropping.

In order to showcase his mythological prowess, Paganini had to write much of his own music – no one had written sufficiently dazzling, impossibly virtuosic music.  Concerti were what most audiences wanted to hear in the early 19th Century, so Paganini wrote six of them.  His First Concerto is presumed to have been written in 1813 – 14.  It reveals a composer mastering that craft as well as the virtuoso approaching the peak of his abilities.  It also reveals that Paganini had learned some tricks.  The work was originally written in Eb Major, and the violin was to be tuned a half-step higher, a technique called scodatura.  Doing so creates two dazzling effects: first is that some of the pyrotechnics can be performed much more effectively on open strings (for example, the open D string was now tuned to Eb), and secondly, the key itself subdues the orchestra while the “tuned up” violin sounds all the more bright.  But this was, really, just sparkle in a galaxy of fine music, and today, the whole Concerto is typically played in D Major.

The first movement alone is almost a concerto unto itself, both in its general feel and in length – a fairly bold innovation for its time.  The long orchestral introduction revolves around several catchy melodies, but when the violin finally enters, Paganini deliberately holds back on the excitement – in effect, he’s teasing the listener.  In short order, however, the soloist is tastefully displaying some extremely difficult passage work, and when the cadenza arrives, the virtuosic delights abound.  Audiences, reportedly, gasped at Paganini’s spellbinding techniques: breakneck-speed arpeggios, multiple-stopping thirds, which he played chromatically and in harmonics, “ricochet” bowings, and left-hand pizzicatos.  Today, Paganini’s First Violin Concerto remains a wonderful testament to one of Western music’s greatest, and most-storied, musicians.

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E minor, Op. 64

  1. Allegro molto appasionato
  2. Andante
  3. Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: (Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1809; died in Leipzig, Germany in 1847)

Mendelssohn composed his beloved Violin Concerto at a time when Europe was infatuated with pyrotechnical violin concertos that were meant to dazzle and wow, yet contained slim musical merit.  In no small part Paganini’s musical “magic shows” were to blame here, except that Paganini’s compositions were excellent.  Still, the jaw-dropping recitals that Paganini introduced to audiences in the first half of the 19th Century clearly set the stage for Europe’s insatiable appetite for musical titillation.  Nonetheless, when Mendelssohn’s masterpiece Concerto was given its premiere in 1845, with its unforgettable themes and its expert craft, it was received with enormous enthusiasm.

To be fair, Mendelssohn’s Concerto offers plenty of virtuosic play for the violinist, but it’s obvious that Mendelssohn had something serious and lasting to say, and this is clear from its opening theme.  That first theme, sweeping, haunting and wonderfully lyrical, had been lurking in Mendelssohn’s mind for the past seven years and it “gave [him] no peace” until he gave it voice in his Concerto.  It’s truly one of Western music’s most treasured melodies.

Likewise, the beautiful second movement is one of Mendelssohn’s own pieces of magic, one of his most beautiful songs, an Andante that that feels as though clouds are melting into pitches.  The finale is a quick-silver affair, begun with a fanfare-ish introduction, followed by the soloist catapulting the violin, and us, into revelry.  One delightful detail of its main theme is that, as mercurial as it is, the upper woodwinds play along with the soloist, all of them at breakneck speed, creating an aurally 3-dimensional effect.

The entire concerto is filled with Mendelssohnian charms and it became almost instantly famous, remaining one of the key works in the violin concerto repertoire ever since.  As another one of Europe’s great violin virtuosos, Joseph Joachim (1831 – 1907), said of it in 1906:

“The Germans have four violin concertos … [Beethoven, Brahms, Bruch and Mendelssohn’s].  But the dearest one of them all, the heart’s jewel, is Mendelssohn’s.”

Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64

  1. Andante – Allegro con anime
  2. Andante cantabile (con alcuna licenza)
  3. Valse: Allegro moderato
  4. Finale: Andante maestoso – Allegro vivace

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: (Born in Kamko-Votinsk, Russia in 1840; died in St. Petersburg in 1893)

Tchaikovsky’s epic Symphony No. 5 of 1888 opens with what seems to be a search for the right words – a slow introductory theme played by the clarinets and strings, a shadowy, halting and disheveled sort of march.  Tchaikovsky called its first two bars the “Fate” motto, and they were, in fact, fashioned from a phrase that he picked from Russian composer Mikhail Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar (1836) which accompanies the words “turn not into sorrow.”  Tchaikovsky’s motto, though at first gloomy, will be heard countless times throughout the Symphony and speak in many voices, morphing from desperate to glorious.  But to best understand this masterpiece, one must recall the words of Tchaikovsky’s contemporary, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881): “There is an indispensable measure of suffering even in the happiness of the Russian people, for without it, its happiness is incomplete.”  Such is the masterful music of this Symphony in which sorrow and joy, and Fate, exist side by side.

For Tchaikovsky, however, Fate is not essentially tragic so much as it is unstoppable, and as Dostoyevsky put it, equal parts sorrow and joy.  Through all of Tchaikovsky’s musical craft that flows after the introductory bars, the first movement is the essence of this Symphony: no matter its guise, Fate persists.  As this first movement ends, it builds colossally and almost violently, but then breathlessly dies away, in a musical analogy of “To be continued…”

The second movement continues the tale somberly.  Its opening chords are drenched in longing which then open up to maybe Tchaikovsky’s most exquisite melody which is played by the French horn. So full of deep yearning, so beautifully sorrowful and joyful, it is one of the great musical passages in Western music.  Near the end of the movement, however, the Symphony’s Fate motto appears again, suddenly and enormously, reducing the melancholic reverie to a few quiet heart-stopping breaths.

The third movement brings some release as Tchaikovsky, arguably the greatest of all ballet composers, returns with a waltz of remarkable grace.  Light and syncopated as it is, this waltz, too, is sabotaged by an aftershock of the opening motto with a sly cruelty in the last bars, which prepare us for the finale.

The last chapter (Finale) of this Symphonic tale is a battle between dark and light, like so many Old Russian fairy tales.  It is ripe with some of Tchaikovsky’s most exciting orchestral moments, enchantingly kaleidoscopic colors, and a pace that keeps us at the edge of our seats.  The ending coda is a grand affair, filled with spine-tingling moments and a rush to a final fanfare of the Fate motto that is at last, and gloriously, transformed into triumph.

Program Notes by Max Derrickson