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| New Year’s Celebration
Concerts Program notes Georg Frederic Handel (1685 – 1759) "Handel is the greatest composer who ever lived. I would bare my head and kneel at his grave" Beethoven (1824) 1685 was a good year for north German musicians. In Halle, Georg Frederic Handel took his first breath on February 23, while 50 miles away in Eisenach Johann Sebastian Bach began his life’s journey on March 21. These two men became the Baroque era’s greatest composers, although they never met. It is an oversimplification to characterize Bach as “the introvert” and Handel as “the extrovert”, but Handel’s fame was unrivalled during his lifetime and his operas, oratorios, and concertos were performed in concert halls across Europe. As a young musician, Handel traveled to Italy where he stayed for three years, absorbing the popular Italian musical styles. Returning to Germany briefly as court composer for the Elector of Hanover, he found fame and fortune in London, where he lived and worked for more than 45 years. Court composer to King George I and II, Handel concentrated first on operas and then oratorios. His “Messiah” was immediately successful; following its Glasgow premiere in 1742, ladies were asked to wear skirts without hoops and gentlemen to leave their swords at home in order to fit more people into the concert hall. An independent and strong-willed individual, Handel was also known for his sense of humor. When a friend complained of a terrible piece he had just heard in Vauxhall Gardens, Handel replied “You are right sir, it is very poor stuff. I though so myself when I wrote it”. We remember Handel today not just for his
“Messiah”, but other oratorios such as “Israel in Egypt” and
“Judas Maccabaeus”, his royal commissions for King George’s barge
excursions “Water Music” and “Royal Fireworks Music”, two sets of
wonderful Concerti Grossi, and dozens of delightful instrumental concerti.
Concerto for in G minor for Trumpet
and Strings (1717) Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975) The early years of the Soviet Union
allowed Shostakovich much artistic freedom, but Lenin’s decisions in the
early 1930’s to purge his political rivals and eliminate “enemies of
the revolution” sent shock waves through the political and artistic
communities. Shostakovich’s brilliant Lady Macbeth of Mtensk was
enjoying great success in 1934 in both Moscow and Leningrad when Joseph
Stalin attended a performance and vilified the “gnash and screech” of
the music. The next day, the Soviet newspaper Pravda denounced
Shostakovich and put the composer’s freedom, indeed his very life, at
risk. Shostakovich’s public apology was his
Fifth Symphony, written in 1937, which he called his “Creative Reply of
a Soviet Artist to Justified Criticism”. Yet even while outwardly
mollifying his critics, the music contains powerful subversive messages of
strength and protest that would mark much of Shostakovich’s subsequent
compositions. “There is a special form of self-defence
in the Soviet Union. You say that you're planning such and such a
composition, something with a powerful, killing title. That's so that they
don't stone you. And meanwhile you write a quartet for your own quiet
satisfaction. But you tell the administration that you're working on the
opera Karl Marx or The Young Guards, and they'll forgive you your quartet
when it appears.” Dmitri Shostakovich Was he a willing Communist or a dissident
hero? The debate rages to this day. His life was tormented by
official critics who openly accepted him one day, banned his music the
next, threatening to send him off to a Gulag prison. The music
itself is indisputably the work of a great master: Russian in style,
it draws from an extremely diverse number of sources including Russian
folk songs, jazz, and J. S. Bach. His operas, ballets, piano works,
and 15 symphonies earned him international acclaim, while other
compositions like his 15 string quartets – written in a very personal
style – have taken longer to enter our repertoire. Shostakovich
also wrote music for dozens of films, the income from which supported him
through the many lean years. Some observe the Russian character as
being one of extremes, and the same can be said of Shostakovich’s music.
The stirring, brilliant music is balanced by music of utter loneliness and
despair; mocking, brittle music by the unabashedly lovely. Without
question his is one of the most important musical voices of the 20th
century – a voice of despair, pain, triumph, glory, and above all –
humanity. Piano Concerto No. 1 (1934) Scored for solo piano, string orchestra,
and a single trumpet, the first movement, Allegro moderato, is a
high-spirited gallop through several quick tempos and contrasting moods.
A melancholy, meandering theme wanders in from time to time, banished by
bright rhythms only to return at the end. The second movement, Lento,
begins as a slow waltz – pensive and spare. A briefly energetic
middle section quickly subsides and our waltz again spins out its timeless
melody, as if floating in mid-air. The brief third movement, Moderato,
opens with the solo piano and is in a darker, pensive mood. But
soon the final movement interrupts us: Allegro brio, full of
glittering passagework and taut rhythmic figures. The banal trumpet
melody that interrupts us thrice – and closes the work – comes from a
satiric portrait of an American from an earlier opera. Here, in
mock-bombastic style, Shostakovich gives us a “wink” to tell us he
wasn’t really serious, or was he? Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828) Schubert wrote so quickly that he was
considered by some to be clairvoyant. Largely unnoticed and unpublished in
his lifetime, it took most of the 19th century for musical
folks to realize his true status. Living his entire life in poverty,
the center of a large social circle of intellectuals – artists, writers,
poets, lawyers – Schubert died at the age of 31 from syphilis contracted
at the end of his 25th year. Taught violin and piano as a child, he soon surpassed his teachers and at the age of 11 was accepted into Vienna’s Imperial Court chapel choir, which brought admission to a well-respected boarding school. Here Schubert began his musical education in earnest, earning the following compliment from his organ teacher Ruzicka: “This one’s learnt it from God” Schubert’s father ran a small private school, and urged his son to “get a real job” upon his graduation. This Schubert did, earning his teaching credentials and teaching at his father’s school for several years before summoning up the courage to quit and devote his life to music. Exempted from military service not only for his poor eyesight (those trademark spectacles!) but because he was under 5 feet tall, Schubert soon fell into a circle of friends who would encourage and support him for the rest of his brief life. His early musical successes came with songs: his first masterpiece, “Gretchen am Spinnrade” (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel) was composed in 1814, followed by “Erlkonig” the following year and then a flood of works that changed the course of the “art song” forever. By the time Schubert was in his early 20’s, he was out on his own, drinking with friends late into the Viennese night, writing symphonies, songs and chamber music in the afternoons. Amazingly prolific, he sometimes turned out several songs in a single day, and more than 100 in his most productive years. Some of his most famous songs are: “An Die Musik” (a hymn to music), “Der Tod und das Madchen” (“Death and the Maiden”), and “Die Forelle” (“The Trout”). “Death and the Maiden” is also the nickname for a well-known string quartet, which uses this song as the basis for a set of incredibly lovely variations in the slow movement. “Trout” is the nickname for a wonderful quintet: piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass that does the same thing with the “Trout” song theme. We can’t leave the subject of Schubert’s songs without mentioning his two revolutionary song cycles. Based on the theme of love and loss, “Die Schone Müllerin” (“The Happy Miller”) marks a turning point in the history of song. No one had ever composed a song cycle like this before, with its exquisite marriage of text and music, each forming a perfect whole. Near the end of his life, Schubert composed “Die Winterreise” (“Winter’s Journey”), musical reflections on love, loss, and death. Eight out of ten musicians will answer the question “What music would you like played at your funeral” with the answer “the slow movement from Schubert’s cello quintet”. Try it yourself with your musical friends! This astounding piece, written for the unusual combination of 2 violins, 1 viola, and 2 cellos, is among his greatest compositions – and one of his longest, taking well over an hour to perform. But ah, what an incredible hour!! Other Schubertian favorites of mine include his Quartettsatz (string quartet movement), the “Unfinished” Symphony (No. 8), and the G Major/Minor string quartet. When he died, penniless, his friends raised a subscription for his burial and chose a plot as close to Beethoven – who had died the previous year, but at the riper age of 57 – as possible. Later, the city of Vienna moved the graves of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert into a “Musicians’ Grove”. Had Schubert lived longer, the course of
classical music might well have turned out differently. He lived and
died in the shadow of the great Beethoven, but had Schubert lived to 57 he
would have mastered Vienna as surely as Beethoven did. On
Schubert’s grave is an epitaph that hints at what was lost by his early
demise: “The art of music here entombed a rich possession,
but even fairer hopes” Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major
(1816) |