Winter Thaw
February 3, 2008 — 3 pm, Sanders Theatre
André Raphel Smith, Guest Conductor
Arvo Pärt,
Fratres
Felix Mendelssohn,
Concerto for Violin in E Minor, Opus 64
1. Allegro molto appassionato
2. Andante
3. Allegretto non troppo; Allegro molto vivace
Janet Sung, Violin
Intermission
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Opus 36
1. Adagio molto — Allegro con brio
2. Larghetto
3. Scherzo: Allegro
4. Allegro molto
Arvo Pärt was born in Paide, Estonia, on September 11, 1935. He composed Fratres in 1977, in its original form for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, string quartet, double bass, and percussion, but later made arrangements for a half dozen different ensembles including the most recent version, heard here, for orchestral strings and percussion.
Until the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, the little country of Estonia had been under Soviet domination since 1940, which saw the end of the short-lived Republic of Estonia established at the end of World War I. Thousands of Estonians emigrated during the war and after, principally to the United States and Canada, as well as to Sweden and elsewhere. Many of them were creative artists who kept their culture alive in self-exile. A more recent émigré who made a considerable splash in the west is Arvo Pärt, born in Estonia during the last years of the republic. He was educated at the conservatory in Tallinn, graduating in 1963. Already at that time he had been working for some years as a sound director for Estonia radio. His early work showed the expected influence of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but he broadened his stylistic range and scope with two award-winning large-scale works composed while still in conservatory: the children's cantata Meie aed ("Our Garden") and the oratorio Maailma samm ("Stride of the world"). He became the first Estonian composer to use the twelve-tone technique (Necrology, 1959), not allowed then in countries of the Soviet bloc. He was awarded official prizes for some works, and attacked for others, particularly the Credo for piano, chorus, and orchestra, which was banned because it contained the text, "I believe in Jesus Christ." He composed widely in orchestral, vocal, and chamber forms, his early works often employing serial organization of pitch and rhythm, as well as collage effects.
Pärt's early twelve-tone phase passed into a long period of artistic silence, during which he undertook profound study of Franco-Flemish choral music of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, from Machaut to Josquin. He began to delve into the ancient liturgical chants, and these unleashed a deep mystical strain in him. (He was by no means the only composer, during the last decade or so of the Soviet hegemony in eastern Europe, to revive artistic mysticism and a religious bent.) In the Third Symphony of 1971 he revived old polyphonic forms and ideas from Gregorian chant. His studies led by 1976 to his rediscovery of the triad and the possibilities of extreme simplicity. Soon afterward he and his family emigrated to Vienna, then moved to Berlin. During the 1980s he produced a growing body of music with liturgical connections.
Fratres (the Latin title means "brethren") is a work to which Pärt has returned a number of times, creating more than a half dozen versions for different instrumental combinations since 1977. The original version was for ten instruments (five winds and five strings). On the small end of the scale, there are versions for either violin or cello with piano. At the large end, the most recent version, calls for orchestral strings plus percussion.
All versions have in common a feeling of timelessness created by a basically slow tempo and a slow mathematical rotation of ideas over a sustained open fifth, which itself evokes an antiquity of mysticism in an age of belief. Over this fifth, a hymn-like theme returns a number of times, transposed downward by a minor third or a major third each time, which produces an increasingly rich sonority. The continuity of the sound and the suggestion of chant in the open fifths seems to explain the title's reference to the medieval monks, whose lives were surrounded and shaped, in part, by the continuous singing of liturgical melodies.
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Violin Concerto in E Minor, Opus 64
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg on February 3, 1809, and died in Leipzig on November 4, 1847. He planned a violin concerto as early as 1838, but it was not until 1844 that he settled down to serious work on it; the finished score is dated September 16, 1844. The first performance took place in Leipzig under Niels Gade's direction, with Ferdinand David as the soloist. The concerto is scored for solo violin with an orchestra consisting of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets all in pairs, timpani, and strings.
Ferdinand David (1810-1873) was one of the most distinguished German violinists and teachers of his day. When the twenty-seven-year-old Mendelssohn became director of the Gewandhaus concerts in Leipzig in 1836, he had David, just a year his junior, appointed to the position of concertmaster. The relationship between composer and violinist was marked in a letter from Mendelssohn to David on July 30, 1838: "I'd like to write a violin concerto for you next winter; one in E minor sticks in my head, the beginning of which will not leave me in peace."
But having said as much, Mendelssohn was not in a hurry to complete the work. He sketched and drafted portions of it in at least two distinct stages over a period of years, and his correspondence with David is sometimes filled with the violinist's urgent plea that he finish the piece at last. Busy with many administrative activities, Mendelssohn wasn't able to work seriously on the concerto until July 1844. By mid-September the concerto was finished.
David was Mendelssohn's adviser on matters of technical detail regarding the solo part; he must have motivated the composer's decision to avoid sheer virtuoso difficulty for its own sake. In fact, David claimed that it was these suggestions of his, which made the concerto so playable, that led to the work's subsequent popularity. It is no accident that Mendelssohn's concerto remains the first major Romantic violin concerto that most students learn.
At the same time it is, quite simply, one of the most original and attractive concertos ever written. The originality comes from new ways Mendelssohn found to solve old formal problems. Ever since Antonio Vivaldi had set his seal on the Baroque concerto with over 500 examples, certain features had been passed on from one generation to another. First of all, the traditional concerto built its first movement on a formal pattern that alternated statements by the full orchestra (ritornellos) with sections featuring the soloist. This was effective when the ritornellos were short summaries of the main idea and functioned like the pillars of a bridge to anchor the soloist's free flight. But as first movements took on the shape of a symphonic sonata form, the orchestral ritornello got longer and longer. Instead of waiting perhaps a minute or two to hear the soloist, the audience had to wait five minutes or more. Proportions seemed skewed.
In his last two piano concertos, Beethoven tried to change that somewhat by introducing the soloist, establishing his personality at the outset, and then proceeding with the normal full orchestral ritornello. Mendelssohn takes the much more radical step of dispensing with the tutti ritornello entirely, fusing the opening statement of orchestra and soloist into a single exposition. This was part of his design from the very beginning. Even the earliest sketch of the first movement shows the two measures of orchestral "curtain" before the soloist introduces the principal theme.
The other problem of the concerto form that Mendelssohn attacked in a new way is that of the cadenza. Normally, just before the end of the movement, the orchestra pauses on a chord that is the traditional signal for the soloist to take off alone. Theoretically only two chords are necessary after this point for the movement to end (though in practice there is usually a somewhat longer coda). But everything comes to a standstill (as far as the composer's work is concerned) while we admire the sheer virtuosity of the soloist, despite the fact that the cadenza might be outrageously out of style with the rest of the piece or that it may be so long and elaborate as to unbalance the composition to which it is attached.
The problem is not perhaps quite so serious when the composer himself provides the cadenza, because it is then at least in an appropriate style. But the absurdity of coming right up to the end of the movement and suddenly putting everything on hold is unchanged. Mendelssohn's solution is logical and utterly unique. He writes his own cadenza for the first movement, but instead of making it an afterthought, he places it in the heart of the movement, allowing the soloist the chance to complete the development and inaugurate the recapitulation! Until that time—and rarely afterwards—no other cadenza ever played so central a role in the structure of a concerto.
Finally, Mendelssohn linked all the movements together without a break, a pattern that had been used earlier in such atypical works as Weber's Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, but never in a work having the temerity to call itself a concerto. Yet we can't imagine the Liszt concertos and many others without this change.
The smooth discourse of the first movement, the way Mendelssohn picks up short motives from the principal theme to punctuate extensions, requires no highlighting. But it is worth pointing out one of the loveliest touches of orchestration at the arrival of the second theme, which is in the relative major key of G. Just before the new key is reached, the solo violin soars up to high C and then floats gently downward to its very lowest note, on the open G-string, as the clarinets and flutes sing the tranquil new melody. Mendelssohn's lovely touch here is to use the solo instrument—and a violin at that, which we usually a high voice—to supply the bass note, the sustained G, under the first phrase; it is an inversion of our normal expectations, and it works beautifully.
When the first movement comes to its vigorous conclusion, the first bassoon fails to cut off with the rest of the orchestra, but holds his note into what would normally be silence. The obvious intention here is to forestall intrusive applause after the first movement; Mendelssohn gradually came to believe that the various movements of a large work should be performed with as little pause as possible between them, and this was one way to do it (though it must be admitted that the sustained bassoon note has not always prevented overeager audiences from breaking into applause). A few measures of modulation lead naturally to C major and the lyrical second movement, the character of which darkens only with the appearance of trumpets and timpani, seconded by string tremolos, in the middle section. Once again at the end of the movement there is only the briefest possible break; then the soloist and orchestral strings play a brief transition that allows a return to the key of E (this time in the major mode) for the lively finale, one of those brilliantly light and fleet-footed examples of "fairy music" that Mendelssohn made so uniquely his own.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 2 in D, Opus 36
Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized in Bonn on December 17, 1770, and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. The Second Symphony was composed during the summer and fall of 1802; its first performance took place on an all-Beethoven concert given at the Theater-an-der-Wien in Vienna on April 5, 1803 (the program also included the First Symphony, as well as the premieres of the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the oratorio "Christ on the Mount of Olives"). The symphony is scored for flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets in pairs, timpani, and strings.
Few pieces of music can more directly disprove the old romantic notion that the emotional character of a composition reflects the inner moods of the composer while he was writing it than Beethoven's Second. During the summer of 1802 Beethoven lived for several months in Heiligenstadt, northwest of Vienna. He went there on the advice of his doctor, who suggested that the rural quiet of the village might improve his hearing, which had already begun to concern him deeply. But when no improvement was forthcoming, Beethoven fell into a suicidal despair. On October 6, 1802, he gave vent to his emotions by writing—in a document now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament—a passionate outburst expressing his unhappiness. Then he sealed it up in his papers (where it was discovered after his death, a quarter of a century later) and went on with the business of composing.
Despite Beethoven's mental torment, the works sketched and completed at Heiligenstadt that summer—especially the Second Symphony—remained vigorous and energetic in the unmistakable early Beethoven manner. At the same time, the Second is a step forward on the path of The Nine, conquering wider territory than the First. His elemental materials—in the first Allegro little more than an arpeggiated tonic chord—grow into astonishing shapes. The full orchestra takes up the theme, fortissimo, and the simple D-major arpeggio rushes up to a strongly accented C-natural, the first emphatic out-of-key note; as so often happens in Beethoven's music, that kind of event has important consequences later on. The intrusive C-natural comes into its own near the end of the movement, when the woodwinds suddenly insist on inserting it into the tonic chord, thus generating a vast coda, almost a new development section.
The slow movement is one of the most leisurely Beethoven ever wrote ("indolent" is the word that most analysts have used to describe it). It is a full-scale slow-movement sonata form, complete with development and a good deal of internal repetition. But for all its length, the Larghetto never loses momentum, and it remains deliciously pastoral throughout, with just momentary twinges of pain. Beethoven calls his third movement a "scherzo" for the first time here. It is a hearty joke with whirlwind alternations of dialogue and sudden bendings of pitch to lead off to distant keys. The Trio plays similar games: the strings roar gruffly on F-sharp major, only to be reminded by the woodwinds that F-sharp is not the home key here, but simply the third of D, to which the chastened strings immediately return.
The finale fuses wit with Beethoven's newly won breadth and grandeur. The pick-up that begins the principal theme—answered by a sullen growl in the bass—is designed for aural tricks. But the great moment appears at the end, when a quiet idea that has passed almost unnoticed earlier on now generates an enormous developmental coda with a whole new developmental section, in which the ubiquitous tremolo in the strings, heard throughout the symphony, returns with a fortissimo shake on C-natural, the note that had upset the course of the home tonic back in the first movement. The size of the last movement and the extended coda clearly unsettled one critic, who wrote after the first performance: "Beethoven's Second Symphony is a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect." But for us, it is alive with tremendous verve and energy.
© Copyright 2008. Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)