Program Notes:
Pasternack plays Mozart

Featuring concert artist Benjamin Pasternack, piano
November 19 & 21, 2004

• Beethoven: Overture to The Creatures of Prometheus
  
• Tison Street: Symphony No. 5 (Colonial Scenes)
  
• Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major ("Elvira Madigan")
  

Beethoven: Overture to "The Creatures of Prometheus"

Apart from an early effort called "Music for a Ballet of Knights" (Musik zu einem Ritterballett), Beethoven wrote only one work for dancers, his hour-long ballet, The Creatures of Prometheus. This came about as the result of a commission from the Italian dancer and choreographer Salvatore Viganò (1769-1821), who had been appointed master of the ballet in Vienna in 1799 by the Empress Maria Theresa. Each year Viganò produced an original ballet for the Imperial Court, and for his third production in 1801, he turned to Beethoven, who had by this time established himself as a composer (and pianist) of note: already behind him were his first two symphonies, his first six string quartets, eleven of his piano sonatas, and his enormously popular Septet, among many other works. The ballet was premièred on March 28, 1801, and went on to a successful run of 22 further performances. The overture, now a staple of the concert repertoire, is at once recognizably from Beethoven's hand. In its original context, the overture led without pause into the first number of the ballet, but for stand-alone use, a concert ending has been appended.

Tison Street: Symphony No. 5 (Colonial Scenes)

When conductor Steven Lipsitt asked me to write a work for the Boston Classical 25th anniversary season he requested something that would connect to the orchestra's venue Faneuil Hall, the city itself, or to William Billings (1746-1800), Boston's first major composer. Being an admirer of the architecture of old Boston, I thought of using the designs for Faneuil Hall as a source of musical ideas. Also Billings' anthem "Africa" had a wonderful theme with a third phrase that immediately suggested possibly a concluding "tombeau de" Billings. But what else?

A book came to mind that I had come across years ago, "Country Walks Near Boston". Besides the maps and the various descriptions of reservations and trails in our area, it included all kinds of geological and historical information to enhance the experience of the walks. In particular, two quotes from original 17th century sources, in that wonderful 17th century prose style, gave an especially vivid impression of what things were like at a point in time centuries ago in the colonial era.

I thought it would be possible to create a musical evocation of the "feel" of those moments and, putting it together with my other ideas, make a suite of "Colonial Scenes" for chamber orchestra. In the process of composing I decided to add an intermezzo which features solos for violin and 'cello. The movements are as follows:

I. Governor Winthrop explores Spot Pond

February 7, 1632. The Governor, Mr. Nowell, Mr. Eliot and others, went over Mistic River at Medford; and, going North and East among the rocks about two or three miles, they came to a very great Pond, having in the midst an island of about one acre, and very thick with trees of pine and beech; and the pond had divers small rocks standing up here and there in it, which they therefore called Spot Pond. They went all about it upon the ice. From thence (towards the Northwest about half a mile) they came to the top of a very high rock beneath which (towards the North) lies a goodly plain, part open land and part woody from whence there is a fair prospect, but it being then close and rainy, they could see but a small distance. This place they called Cheese Rock, because when they went to eat, they had only cheese (the Governor's man forgetting, for haste, to put up some bread).

- Governor John Winthrop

II. Architectural Drawings for Faneuil Hall

a. Theme: East Elevation

b. Variation 1: South Elevation

c. Variation 2: West Elevation

d. Variation 3: North Elevation

e. Coda

III. Intermezzo

IV. Earthquake 1638

"It came with a rumbling noise or low murmur like unto remote thunder. As the noise approached nearer, the earth began to shake and came at length with that violence as caused platters and dishes, and such like things as stood upon shelves, to clatter and fall down; yea, persons were afraid of the houses themselves, so powerful is the mighty hand of the Lord as to make both the earth and sea to shake, and the mountains to Tremble before Him when He pleases; and who can stay His hand?"

- William Bradford

V. At the Tomb of William Billings

The first movement begins with the first phrase of Billings' "Africa" stated in the horns, with the motive then transformed into a kind of introduction leading into the body of the movement. The music is full of the feel of a February day in Boston, the cold fresh wind with drizzle, ice and the enthusiasm and exertion of the hike. Later there's a suggestion of the search for the missing bread. At the end is a polytonal appearance of one of the themes (in D) with a motive from Billings (in E-flat).

The second movement continues in a slightly more modernist style. Architecture and music both involve proportion. Here the proportions of each façade translate into the musical proportions of time and frequency, time being sometimes height, sometimes horizontal extension.

The third movement, free of programmatic content, is a song-like dialogue between principal violin and principle 'cello. A brief remembrance of the Billings theme occurs near the end.

In the fourth the perils and anxieties of an earthquake are offset by the rock solid certainty of God's might as felt in the appearance of the last phrase of Billings' anthem.

Billings' grave is somewhere in the graveyard just off Boylston street in the Common. For the last movement, in the tradition of composers (especially French ones) memorializing earlier composers with a "tombeau de...", I envisioned someone standing there under the trees at dusk, a church bell in the distance, imagining a romantically transformed version of the old anthem.

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major ("Elvira Madigan")

After Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781, much of his income was derived from public concerts in which he played his own music. Mozart had already written about a dozen keyboard concertos. A number of these had been written for pianists other than Mozart himself. Then in Vienna he wrote three new concertos (nos.11-13) for his own use in the 1782-3 season and in 1784 composed no fewer than six masterpieces in the form (nos.14-19); 1785 saw the production of three more great piano concertos, among them this triumphant C-major score. Mozart finished it on March 9, just in time for the première the following day.

The opening of the concerto was aptly described by C.M. Girdlestone as "a tiptoed march, in stocking feet". The theme is very similar to one Mozart had used to open one of his Church Sonatas for organ and strings (no.15, K.328, of 1779, which also happens to be in C). This first movement is commonly marked Allegro maestoso, but the manuscript actually offers no tempo indication at all, and while some find the "majestic" label fitting, the great pianist Alfred Brendel, for one, regards it as contrary to the spirit of the piece. He finds more a suggestion of comic opera in the music. That view is certainly universally acknowledged insofar as the finale is concerned. We are reminded again and again by annotators that the next year would see one of Mozart's greatest comedies, The Marriage of Figaro (the overture to which, by the way, will be heard in the upcoming BCO Valentine's Day concert in February.) One of the innumerable brilliant touches in the first movement comes just as the orchestral introduction is ending-there is a cadence that might be the signal for the piano to enter, but instead Mozart inserts a delicious little extension in which first the oboe, then the bassoon, then the flute usher in the soloist.

In the late 1960s, this work came to be known as the "Elvira Madigan" Concerto because the slow movement was used (ad nauseam) in the 1967 Swedish film of that name. In the movie the music is used in a way that I must say I find distinctly annoying: the beginning of the slow movement starts up and fades out repeatedly (endlessly) in scene after scene. Though the movie was a hit in its day, I suspect that nowadays there are comparatively few people who've ever heard of it, in which case it seems to me it's time for the nickname to be dissociated from Mozart's score. The music itself deserves its renown, to be sure. The strings, muted throughout, offer up a gorgeous theme over hushed triplets, one that seems to epitomize the elegance of the 18th-century drawing room.

The finale bears the tempo marking Allegro vivace assai-fast and very vivacious. This rondo movement is all good humor; even the minor-key episodes are very brief and barely cast a shadow on the fun. In 1786, there were three further great piano concertos to come, but after that it seems the fickle public began to grow weary of Mozart the concertizing pianist, and he turned to other forms, opera among them, to earn his bread. There would be only two more piano concertos (but a wealth of other masterworks) before his tragically early death in 1791.

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