PROGRAM NOTES
20 March 2009 Concert
OVERTURE TO THE CREATURES OF PROMETHEUS
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)
The Greek god Prometheus has an important and complicated role in our well-being. Defying the chief god, Zeus, he brought fire, and thus civilization, to humans. On the other hand, his defiance set off a chain of events that led eventually to Pandora opening the jar that contained hard labor, disease, and all the other evils of the world, as we know it.
During his first decade in Vienna, as Beethoven was making the transition from pianist to orchestral composer, he provided the music for The Creatures of Prometheus, a ballet loosely based on the character of the mythic god. It was choreographed by Salvatore Viganò and had its première on March 28, 1801. Today only the overture survives in concert repertoire. The work is relatively brief--a 16-measure Andante followed by a spirited, forceful Allegro molto con brio (fast, with a lot of fire!)-- and contains the same harmonic progression as the introduction to the First Symphony, written a year earlier.
Toni Empringham
CONCERTO FOR CLARINET AND ORCHESTRA IN A
MAJOR, K. 622
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
There is no music closer to my heart than this magnificent concerto. To me, the concerto is hauntingly beautiful in the way it spends much time in minor keys in the outer movements. The famous Adagio second movement is the musical embodiment of gentle tranquility and is the centerpiece of the concerto.
The Mozart Clarinet Concerto is considered to be the signature work for clarinet and orchestra. It was written near the end of Mozart’s life in 1791 for his close friend Anton Stadler (1753-1812), who premièred the work in Prague on October 16 of that year. Mozart also wrote the famous Clarinet Quintet, K. 561, for Stadler. The Clarinet Concerto was Mozart’s last instrumental work. There is no known surviving autograph of the concerto, probably due to the fact that Stadler pawned the score shortly after Mozart’s death. The work was written for an instrument known today as a basset clarinet, which in Mozart’s time was known as a bass clarinet. The basset clarinet extends the range of the A clarinet a major third from a C sharp down to an A. Mozart’s publisher published the concerto transcribed for the regular clarinet and made editorial decisions as to how to deal with the low notes only available on the basset clarinet, as well as articulation, dynamics, and ornamentation. Therefore it is up to the performer to decide these musical elements. Since the mid twentieth century there are modern reconstructions of Mozart’s original score for basset clarinet, as well as modern basset clarinets. Some elements of the reconstructed score are being used in tonight’s performance.
Many have recorded the Mozart concerto. One of the most revered by clarinetists is the recording by Robert Marcellus on a modern clarinet with the Cleveland Orchestra. There are also recordings by David Shifrin with the Mostly Mozart Orchestra, and Sabine Meyer with the Berlin Philharmonic that use modern basset clarinets.
Bradley Cohen
SYMPHONY NO. 2: “THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS,”
Op. 16
Carl Nielsen (1865 -1931)
When one hears the name Nielsen, the first thing that comes to mind is probably a TV rating system. The composer Carl Nielsen had little name recognition outside of his native Denmark (where his face appears on the 100 kroner note showing how proud the Danes are of their composer) until the 1960s, when a new interest in his music emerged. Nielsen was born the same year as Jean Sibelius. However, Sibelius had advantages that Nielsen could not duplicate, gaining him international recognition due to exposure by prominent conductors of the early 20th century and a state stipend from Finland from 1897 till his death in 1957. Nielsen, on the other hand, was born seventh of 12 children to a house painter who also played violin and cornet to supplement his income. As an adult, Nielsen’s main source of income was playing second violin in the Royal Opera Orchestra until the state realized his compositional gifts. He was provided with some financial assistance in 1901 and finally a more generous amount in 1925, near the end of his life.
Nielsen's Symphony No. 2, Op. 16 (1901-02) was inspired by a depiction of the four temperaments hanging on the wall of a village inn on the Danish island of Sjaeland. The composer fashioned a symphony based on the temperaments, cautioning that his treatment of them was not intended to be programmatic; instead, these four states merely provide an outline of the moods in the work. Nielsen described the musical depictions in the symphony's four movements thus: "The impetuous (Allegro collerico), the indolent (Allegro flemmatico), the melancholy (Andante malincolico) and the cheerful (Allegro sanguino). However, the impetuous man can have his milder moments, the melancholy man has impetuous or brighter ones, and the boisterous, cheerful man can become contemplative, even quite serious--but only for a little while. The lazy, indolent man, on the other hand, only emerges from his phlegmatic state with the greatest of difficulty, so this movement is both brief and uniform in its progress."
In addition to displaying the composer's masterful talent for sonic portraiture, this symphony also demonstrates one of Nielsen's highly individual techniques, which he called "progressive tonality": a series of adventurous modulations that bypass the formal key relationships characteristic of most Classical and Romantic symphonies. Within the third movement is one of the earliest examples of polytonality.
A year after Nielsen conducted the first performance of “The Four Temperaments” for the Danish Concert Association in December 1902, he had the opportunity of conducting the work with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Whereas in Copenhagen the reviews had been quite appreciative, in Berlin he took a beating--so badly, in fact, that for once he lost his spirits and had difficulty in starting to compose again. The symphony was not often heard thereafter until the 1960s.
Bill Malcolm
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6, 2009.