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Monthly Archives: April 2013

Program Notes: Tara Erraught

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Johannes Brahms: Zigeunerlieder (Gypsy Songs), Op. 103

More than half of Brahms’ total output was vocal, including over two hundred art songs and an additional hundred folksong arrangements. Most of them are serious, introspective, resigned or elegiac in mood. Ardent, impulsive effusions are rare, and the musical pictorialism so dear to Schubert is likewise largely absent. But there are always exceptions to generalizations and the Zigeunerlieder (Gypsy Songs) are just that. In 1887-88, Brahms set eleven Hungarian folk texts, translated into German for him by Hugo Conrat, as vocal quartets with piano accompaniment. He described them to a friend as “excessively joyful.” Biographer Malcolm MacDonald reminds us that they “skillfully combine the appeal of his two most popular and successfully marketed works, the Hungarian Dances and the Liebeslieder Waltzes. In 1889, Brahms transcribed eight of them (omitting Nos. 8-10) for solo voice and piano. All are love songs.

Ottorino Respighi: Three Songs

Respighi’s name is so closely linked to his sensual, sensational musical portraits of Rome (the pines, fountains and festivals) that it is all too easy to overlook his contributions to the vocal repertory, which include nine operas of various dimensions and about 75 songs. The haunting “O falce di luna calante” (The setting crescent moon) is set to words by Respighi’s favourite poet, Gabriele d’Annunzio, and deftly captures the quality of gentle, pale light of a silver crescent in the sky. “Nebbie” (Mists), set to a poem of Ada Negri, was composed for mezzo-soprano, but tenors (including Pavarotti) have adopted it as well. This extraordinary song is sung to grim, slow-moving blocks of sound in the accompaniment while the vocal line twice rises and falls over the range of an octave and a half, simultaneously covering the dynamic range of piano to fortissimo and back. “Notte” (Night), also set to a poem of Negri, makes a perfect companion to “O falce de luna calante” with its poetic evocation of the perfumed night.

Antonin Dvořák: Four Songs, Op. 82; “Na to bych se podivala” from The Stubborn Lovers, Op. 17

Dvořák’s four songs Op. 82 were originally sketched and composed to German texts, then later translated into Czech and English. The words come from verses from the book Lyric Poems and Translations Based on Bohemian Literature and Folk Poetry by Ottilie Malybrok-Stieler. Biographer Paul Stefan describes these songs has having “great emotional intensity and lyric finish.” Concertgoers familiar with Dvořák’s Cello Concerto may recognize phrases from “Lasst mich allein!” that later went into the concerto. This is a love song in which the lady begs to be left undisturbed so as to better savour the memories of her beloved. This strophic song is justly regarded as one of Dvořák’s greatest. The remaining songs also address aspects of love, the second in the context of work bringing comfort to a pained heart, the third a reflection of the warmth and beauty of nature renewed, and the fourth a metaphor for a brook burbling along bearing the poet’s sorrow.

The aria “Na to bych se podivala” comes from the composer’s second opera, a one-act rustic comedy called Tvrdé palice in Czech. It was rendered into German as Dickschädel (Numbskull), from which it made its way into English variously as The Stubborn Lovers, The Obstinate Children or the Pig-headed Peasants. An arranged marriage has been set by two village neighbors for Toník and Lenka, who really love each other but pretend not to because their marriage has been arranged without consulting them first. The youngsters’ godfather comes up with a ruse: Toník’s father is rumored to want to marry Lenka, and Lenka’s mother wants to marry Toník. It’s totally improbable, but it gives Lenka the opportunity for a sprightly aria whose opening line, “I’ll have to look into this!”, sets the tone for what follows.

Hugo Wolf: Six Mörike Songs

Wolf may well be the only major composer who is remembered today for his songs alone. In his musical depictions of poets’ words, Wolf has few equals and no superiors. Accents, pauses, harmonic twists, modulations, textures and figurations all play a role in illuminating the text, in both the vocal and the piano writing.  The essence of Wolf’s vocal compositions can be summarized in Kurt Oppens’ observation: “The singer recites a poem while singing a song.”

Wolf first became acquainted with the poems of Eduard Mörike (1804-1875) in 1878. Mosco Carner assesses the songs resulting from the Wolf-Mörike relationship as “giving the impression of having been written out of the very heart of lyricism, and this thanks to the peculiar quality of Mörike’s verses, which are irradiated by a lambent glow and evergreen freshness of imagery.” Skillful use of chromaticism and dissonance, a wide-ranging harmonic palette, and a keen sensitivity to nuance of word and tone are all qualities to be admired in these songs. The 53 songs in the Mörike collection were all written within the brief period of February to November, 1888, and all but three are about some aspect of love.

George Frideric Handel: “Dopo notte” (Ariodante); “Lascia ch’io pianga” (Rinaldo)

Between 1711, when Rinaldo was first seen on a London stage, and 1741 – thirty years later – when Deidamia was produced there, over forty operas flowed from Handel’s pen, many of them hits on the order of a Steven Spielberg film today.

Ariodante (1734) comes from near the end of this run of runaway successes. Ariodante (a male contralto role) is a prince in love with Ginerva, daughter of the King of Scotland. Through various machinations, he is tricked into believing that she has been unfaithful. Near the end of the opera, he has learned the truth about the infamous plot. In “Dopo notte”, one of Handel’s most exuberant arias, he expresses renewed confidence in life, now that his troubles appear to be over.

Fire-breathing dragons, dancing mermaids, a black cloud full of demons, a sorceress, an enchanted palace, two full armies, chariots, war machines, a “battle symphony” with four trumpets and much more went into Rinaldo, the first of Handel’s London operas. Rinaldo also holds a special place in the annals of opera in North America. In Act I, Rinaldo’s fiancé Almirena is been abducted by the evil sorceress Armida. In Act II, Almirena bewails her miserable state in one of the most famous of all Handel arias, “Lascia ch’io pianga”.

Gioachino Rossini: “Una voce poco fa” (Il barbiere di Siviglia)

Great operatic comedies are far less plentiful than operatic tragedies. The Barber of Seville (1816) indubitably stands at the very pinnacle of this repertory, and year after year ranks as one of the Top Ten most frequently performed operas in the repertory. Rosina’s entrance aria, “Una voce poco fa”, is indicative of the Barber’s irrepressible good humor and spirit of rascality. It captures to perfection the personality of the coy and clever heroine as she sings first of her secret love for the mysterious stranger Lindoro, and then of her determination to pursue the object of her desire – and woe to anyone who tries to obstruct her!

 

Program notes by Robert Markow, 2013.

Program Notes: Simon Trpčeski

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Program Notes: Simon Trpčeski

Schubert: 16 German Dances, D. 783 (Op. 33)
So indelibly is the name Johann Strauss embedded in our consciousness as the purveyor of Viennese dance music that we tend to forget such music existed well before the Waltz King appeared on the scene. Not just minor, forgotten figures like Pamer, Faisatenberger and Wilde, but the likes of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Hummel contributed countless minuets, Deutsche Tänze (German dances), marches, contredances, and later écossaises and waltzes, either for large-scale social functions or for intimate parties. Schubert alone composed some four hundred little piano pieces of this nature across his creative life.

A “German dance” is a simple dance of folk character in triple metre; in Schubert’s hand it eventually gave way to the waltz. The sixteen pieces that make up D. 783 (Op. 33) mostly date from 1823 and 1824. These miniature gems – all sixteen take only about ten minutes to play – are, with two exceptions, laid out in the identical format of two eight-bar phrases, each phrase repeated in an AABB pattern. (The second phrase of Nos. 1 and 10 are double length.) Yet Schubert’s imagination never permits a feeling of repetitiveness or routine; each dance contrasts with its neighbors in tonality, articulation, harmonic activity, dynamic level and articulation.

Schubert: Fantasy in C major, D. 760 “Wanderer Fantasy”
Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major, composed in late 1822, proved to be the most pianistically difficult and structurally advanced music he ever composed. Nearly everything he wrote for the piano was meant for his own use, but the Wanderer Fantasy was an exception, written for a pupil of Hummel. The subtitle “Wanderer” derives from a song of the same title, written by Schubert in his nineteenth year. The Fantasy’s slow movement incorporates the tune of the “Wanderer” song. The text, by the obscure poet Georg Philipp Schmidt, speaks of Byronic gloom, melancholia, loneliness, the search for happiness, estrangement, and of course, wandering – all subjects dear to the hearts of nineteenth-century Romanticists. Schubert set this text to music in 1816 and it became one of the most popular art songs of the entire nineteenth century. The title “Wanderer” was not assigned by Schubert, who called the work simply Fantasy in C major. It was affixed, as were so many fanciful nineteenth-century subtitles, by enterprising publishers with a view towards sales. In form, it closely paralleled Franz Liszt’s efforts in the direction of an extended, unbroken composition that develops from a germinal melodic cell or “motto,” which passes through various metamorphoses in its
course through the piece.

The work opens with the “motto” – the melodic-rhythmic pattern that pervades the entire composition – a long-short-short pattern on the same pitch. The second theme (E flat major) is in a lyrical vein but retains the rhythmic motto, while the third theme reverses the pattern. The Adagio consists of the “Wanderer” tune in C sharp minor, followed by seven variations, some quite brilliant. The motto rhythm becomes transformed in the third section (corresponding to a scherzo third movement) into a robust triple metre. The song-like Trio passage is derived from the second theme of the first movement. The finale, in addition to its exceptional technical demands, offers a rare instance of fugal writing in Schubert’s music. The fugal subject, too, is based on the motto rhythm.

Bach-Liszt: Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543
If Franz Liszt had done nothing more than transcribe, arrangeor paraphrase other composers’ works, he would still remain a formidable figure in music history. With composers from A to Z (literally, from Allegri to Zichy) he reworked in some fashion hundreds of pieces ranging from three-minute songs to hour-long symphonies. Strangely, he did little with Bach – just seven works, though those seven rank among Bach’s mightiest organ compositions. The Prelude and Fugue in A minor is a composite work of two independent parts later joined together, the Prelude sometime between 1708 and 1717, the Fugue about 1719. The Prelude is in 4/4 metre, the Fugue in 6/8, but both are built from arpeggiated chords and descending chromatic lines. The Prelude is full of flourishes, arabesques, runs, contrapuntal development and passionate intensity, while the four-part fugue is a veritable cathedral in sound. It is not difficult to identify passages where Liszt brings in the all-important pedal line from the original organ score, sometimes reinforcing it in octaves for even greater power and grandeur.

Franz Liszt: Soirées De Vienne, Valses-Caprices d’après Schubert
No one did more to popularize Schubert’s music in the nineteenth century than Franz Liszt. Among his efforts in this direction, he chose a number of Schubert’s waltzes, filtered them through the alembic of his own musical personality and produced a series of nine works he called Soirées de Vienne, or Valse-Caprices, which he published in 1852. Liszt borrowed a total of 35 dances from seven different waltz sets and used anywhere from one to seven waltzes for each Soirée. In No.7 he used three, all from D.783, which we heard in Schubert’s original form prior to intermission. No. 5 uses just two waltzes, yet it is, at about ten minutes in length, one of the longest of the Soirées. The sixth is by far the most popular and the only one in a minor key. It features a sturdy opening theme, echt Viennese lilt and numerous passages of scintillating filigree decorating Schubert’s charming melodic lines.

Pianist Leslie Howard, who has recorded Liszt’s entire output for solo piano, notes that Schubert’s waltzes “contain a wealth of delightful music which, as Liszt perceived from the beginning with his customary astuteness, requires rescuing and assorting with discreet habiliments for public use. Liszt concocted continuous suites from selected dances, often making a better point than Schubert did of the sheer originality of them by the use of contrasting tonality, and from time to time allowing himself the occasional variation, introduction, interlude or coda.”

Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2 in C sharp minor
The original solo piano version of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody, by far the most popular of Liszt’s nineteen rhapsodies, dates from 1847. Since then, almost countless arrangements, rearrangements and disarrangements have appeared for everything from simplified piano reductions to full orchestra, and in everything from Bugs Bunny cartoons to feature films (100 Men and a Girl). Liszt explained the title as follows: “By using the word ‘rhapsody,’ my intention is to indicate the fantastic-epic nature which I believe this music to possess. Each of these pieces seems to me to resemble part of a series of poems which all express national fervor. … [The rhapsodies] have their origins in the proud and warlike ardor and the profound grief which gypsy music can depict so well.”

Structurally, the rhapsodies are free in form, the overall shaping forces generally defined by areas of contrast and overall gathering momentum. Like many of them, No. 2 begins with a slow introduction leading into an Andante mesto, which features a passionate theme. The second main part is the friska, which begins quietly gradually building in speed, texture and volume. Finally we hear the principal theme of the friska in the major mode – a sort of brilliant cancan-esque dance tune.

 

Program Notes by Robert Markow, 2013

Program Notes: Doric String Quartet

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Franz Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in G minor, Op. 20, no. 3

A strong new current of artistic expression swept through central Europe during the late 1760s and early 1770s, known as Sturm und Drang (storm and stress). While not every work was stormy or stressful, the moniker served notice that composers were turning away from the light, gentle, superficially pleasing world of the style galant (courtly style) to infuse their music with greater emotional depth and stronger subjective feelings. Sturm und Drang was evident in the relatively large number of works written in unusual keys (especially in the minor mode).

Another important new aspect of the Op. 20 quartets was the liberation of the cello part from servitude as a mere bass accompaniment, and the full participation of all four instruments as near-equals. It was probably sheer coincidence that an early edition of these quartets used as its frontpiece a drawing of a rising sun (hence, the nickname “Sun” Quartets), but the symbolism, accidental or otherwise, is obvious, signifying both the rise of a new musical style and the ascent of Haydn as a fully mature composer of string quartets. These works bear another nickname as well, Die grossen Quartette, which translates as either the great quartets or the large-scale, fully-formed quartets (in contrast to the slighter works that preceded them). Both designations are apt.

There are additional unusual features to be found in the Quartet Op. 20, No. 3. The division of the fiery main theme of the first movement into seven-bar phrases creates a most irregular pattern. The development section of this movement begins in the same key as the exposition (G minor), another exceptional procedure. The minuet movement continues the tone of tragedy and dark passion, possibly providing the model for Mozart in the analogous movement of his famous G minor symphony some years later. Following a slow movement of exceptional breadth and depth, a spirited sonata-form finale brings the G minor quartet to a close.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold: String Quartet no. 3 in D major, Op. 34

Millions of movie-goers have thrilled to the brash, swashbuckling themes, the sumptuously scored love music and the grandly heroic evocations of historical pageantry in Korngold’s film scores like The Adventures of Robin Hood, Anthony Adverse, Of Human Bondage, Kings Row, Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk and others. But late in life, Korngold returned to composing strictly classical music as he had done back in Vienna before his twelve-year stint in Hollywood. The third string quartet, composed in 1944-1945 while Korngold was living in Hollywood, was the first happy result of this decision. It was also the first concert work in which Korngold incorporated themes from his films, a move he made assuming that his film scores would soon be forgotten. (How wrong he was!). The first performance was given by the Roth Quartet in Los Angeles in 1946. The score is dedicated to Korngold’s friend, the great conductor Bruno Walter, also living in Hollywood at the time.

The first movement is laid out in traditional sonata form, with a flowing, twisting and highly chromatic opening theme followed a minute or two later by a more relaxed, lyrically expressive second theme dripping with nostalgia.

The Scherzo has the character of a grisly, macabre dance as might be enacted by wraiths or gnomes. By way of total contrast, the central Trio passage is warmly romantic, based on a theme from Korngold’s own favorite film score, Between Two Worlds.

Film romance appears in the slow movement as well. The main theme comes from the love music in The Sea Wolf, its gently rocking rhythm suggestive of the motion of ocean waters. Near the end, a descending three-note motif, heard a dozen times, might be heard as the haunting call of a siren.

The Finale is all energy, virtuosity and rambunctious behavior. The second theme comes from Korngold’s final film score, Deception, which was still unreleased at the time he wrote the quartet.

Franz Schubert: String Quartet no. 14 in D minor, D. 810 (Death and the Maiden)

Schubert began his Quartet in D minor in early 1824. The previous year had brought him to the nadir of despair and frustration. Not least of the reasons for his depression was a prolonged stay in the hospital during which he came to the realization that his illness (most certainly syphilis, for which no cure then existed) was probably fatal and that he had not long left to live. The prevailing dark, somber and tragic mood of the D minor quartet reflects this despondent state of mind, and the composer’s gloomy thoughts on life and death, the past and the future. All four movements are in minor tonalities (in itself highly unusual), and there are just two extended passages where the music moves into the major mode (the fourth variation of the second movement and the Trio of the third).

The quartet takes its nickname, Death and the Maiden, from a song of the same title Schubert had set seven years earlier to a poem by Matthias Claudius. Schubert borrowed the song’s opening passage, slightly modified, to serve as the basis of a set of variations for the second movement. This passage represents the slow tread of Death as it approaches the girl. Curiously enough, Schubert’s score makes no mention of any subtitle; “the Death and the Maiden quartet” is an appellation assigned by later generations. The work was first performed in public in Vienna on February 1, 1826 at the residence of Josef Barth.

The work opens with music of great visceral impact, a full, chordal figure hurled forth with vehemence by the entire ensemble. The embedded triplet figure is destined to play a major role throughout the entire quartet.

The theme Schubert uses to construct the variations of the second movement is eminently suited to its purpose. Each of the five ensuing variations explores some aspect of this simple G minor subject, adding new layers of meaning, figuration and expressivity.

The Scherzo also derives from borrowed material, this time a re-working of one of Schubert’s German Dances from D. 790. Like the first movement, the music is bold in its gestures and often strikingly agitated.

The final movement is almost manic in its unflagging momentum and urgency. Again the triplet figure pervades the music, and is found as an element in each of the three themes. The music reaches almost unbearable levels of intensity, culminating in a veritable whirlwind of notes that brings the quartet to a sensational close.

Program notes by Robert Markow, 2013.

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