Program Notes: Stoltzman & The British Are Coming!

Featuring superstar clarinetist Richard Stoltzman

Friday, November 16, 2007 at 8 pm
Sunday, November 18, 2007 at 3 pm

• Elgar: Introduction and Allegro for Strings
  
• Holst: Saint Paul’s Suite
  
• Elgar: Serenade in e minor
  
• Finzi: Concerto for Clarinet & Orchestra
  

Elgar: Introduction and Allegro for Strings, in G Major, for string quartet & string orchestra, Op. 47 (1905)

A.J. Jaeger, Edward Elgar’s dear friend at the music publishing house of Novello, has secured a place in music history as “Nimrod”, the musical portrait Elgar painted as part of his ‘Enigma’ Variations for orchestra of 1899.  (The “Nimrod” theme appeared repeatedly in piano reduction in the recent Ken Burns PBS series, The War.)  But Jaeger may claim a further footnote as the impetus for the Introduction and Allegro of five years later.  He suggested that the composer should write a “brilliant quick string scherzo” for the London Symphony Orchestra, “a real bring-down-the-house torrent of a thing”.  The result met the latter requirement famously, but was on a somewhat grander scale than Jaeger might have imagined.  The idea of writing a score for string quartet and string orchestra - although it recalls the baroque concerto grosso - was something of a novelty in 1904, when Elgar began work on the piece (it was finished in 1905).  Elgar himself had been a violinist and so knew the intricacies of writing for stringed instruments, and the violin is the first solo player to appear in the Introduction and Allegro.  Incidentally, the score has an American connection:  Elgar was awarded an honorary doctorate from Yale in 1904, and he dedicated his Opus 47 to Professor S.S. Stanford of that university.

The music begins with a dramatic call to attention, accompanied by descending triplets; soon the solo violin mirrors that figure with a rising motif, and ir then treats the descending idea more gently than had the full band.  Presently, the viola comes on in E-flat with a more expansive, arcadian solo, a lyric section inspired by a tune Elgar heard Welsh country people singing while he was vacationing in the Malvern Hills; this is not a folk song despite being reminiscent of one.  There is a reprise of the opening, and we move from the Introduction to the Allegro.  This is in modified sonata form (normally first subject, second subject, development, and recapitulation, sometimes with coda), but it is here with a fugue in place of the development.  Again, it was Jaeger who suggested the fugue.  The first subject, which Elgar described as “smiling with a sigh,” is a treatment of the violin idea from the Intro; when this has run its course, a sort of “scrubbing brush” theme (this apt description is that of Frank Howes) leads to the second subject, which in turn is based on the Introduction’s descending triplets, here presented with greater sweep and nobility.  The “Welsh” melody reappears quietly; then the busy fugue  - Elgar called it a “devil of a fugue” –  begins softly in the minor, a new theme.  The characteristic “scrubbing brush” motif tries to reassert itself, but it succeeds only on its second try later in the recapitulation.  The “Welsh” tune forms the basis of the coda, and the whole ends on a single plucked chord.  Alex Ross in the New Yorker eloquently wrote, “the Introduction and Allegro finds a perfect balance between energy and elegy, never ceasing to scamper back and forth between the two.”  Oddly enough, almost the identical sentiment was expressed by another annotator in regard to the Finzi Clarinet Concerto that concludes our concert.

Holst: Saint Paul’s Suite, Op. 29 #2 (1912-13)

Gustav’s Holst’s career was very different from that of Elgar, who never held a professional position but managed to live mainly by his composing.  Holst, by contrast, worked as a teacher at a variety of school and university posts, mostly in London.  He was even briefly a lecturer at Harvard in 1932.  The school with which he was longest associated, though, was St. Paul’s Girls’ School in Hammersmith, where he worked from 1905 until his death in 1934, while simultaneously holding other positions and teaching adult classes in the evenings.  Despite this onerous work load, Holst managed to compose a large number of fine scores, most famously the great suite for large orchestra, The Planets.  He never begrudged the hours lost to composition, though:  “In spite of the obvious drawbacks of having to teach six hundred girls every week, I consider that I have learnt as much through my school teaching as I did as a trombone player in the…orchestra.”  The present suite, another of the composer’s better known scores, was written in 1912-13 for the girls of St. Paul’s, whom Holst hoped to challenge with something more interesting than the usual, rudimentary material for academic instruction.  His daughter Imogen, herself an accomplished musician, later wrote that her father “must have had considerable faith…that the day would ever come when a school orchestra would be able to play the second movement up to time.”

The opening Jig is a compelling dance that accelerates toward the end, making it irresistible.  The second movement, the one that Imogen Holst found so potentially daunting for young students, is an Ostinato with a violin solo.  High strings have the “obstinate” part, while lower strings and the violin have more freedom.  The succeeding Intermezzo begins pizzicato before the solo viola presents the main theme; soon, the strings en masse echo the viola’s rising theme, but give it, just momentarily, a strong flavor of Moorish North Africa, perhaps reflecting Holst’s visit to Algeria in 1908.  The violin takes up this theme before a much faster middle section ensues, sounding very much like something Bartók might have found in his studies of Hungarian folk song.  The Intermezzo contains solos for the violin, too, and the little pseudo-Algerian idea makes a comeback before the two solo instruments join together for a short duet.  We skip back from North Africa to Hungary; the viola theme shows up in the strings, and a  serene, chamber-like passage concludes the movement.  The finale combines two old English tunes:  one, the Dargason - which to some ears has something of the sea and sailors about it - is not far distant in tempo and mood from the opening Jig.  (It was also used by Holst in his vibrant Suite #2 for wind band.)  The other old tune is none other than the well-beloved Greensleeves, which, in Holst’s clever hands, serves as a counterpoint to the Dargason.

Things slow down to allow the solo violin one more appearance:  it trills into the upper reaches, just as the rest of the players bring everything to a smart conclusion.

Elgar: Serenade in e minor, Op. 20 (spring 1892, publ. 1893)

The Elgar of the Introduction and Allegro was a well-established and revered composer.  The Elgar of the Serenade, though no youngster (he would turn 35 in 1892), had a way to go before making his reputation.  Around 1889, Elgar wrote three pieces for strings, now lost, called Spring Song, Elegy, and Finale,  which were likely the original material for the present serenade.  The great string serenades of Dvorak (1875) and Tchaikovsky (1880) had been half-hour-long works of five and four movements respectively.  Elgar’s serenade is on a much more modest scale, in three short movements running only about twelve minutes.  It is not short on beauty, however.  The first movement Elgar marked Allegro piacevole (agreeably, pleasantly).  The minor tonality might seem to make such a term inapposite, but, despite the key, there is nothing particularly ominous or tragic in the opening theme, and overall piacevole fits the mood perfectly.  The slow movement, Larghetto, is almost as long as the two outer movements together.  It is the kind of wistful, bittersweet music that would become an Elgar hallmark.  Instead of the expected quicksilver finale, the Allegretto maintains the leisurely pace; indeed, there is not a hurried moment in the entire score.  Toward the end of this brief finale in 12/8 time, there is a meter change to 6/8, and the first movement’s theme is quoted before the work comes to its gentle close.

Elgar himself led the first performance by the Worcester Ladies’ Orchestral Class.  The first professional performance was given in Antwerp in July of 1896, again under Elgar’s direction.  He reported that it made “a sensation” on that occasion.  The serenade remained one of Elgar’s own favorites among his works throughout his life, and he made his own recording of the score in August 1933, the year before his death.

Finzi: Concerto for Clarinet & Orchestra (strings), Op. 31 (1948-9)

Gerald Finzi is much less well known, especially in this country, than the other two composers on our program.  He is as quintessentially “English” a composer as Elgar or Holst, yet he was the son of an Italian father (who died when Finzi was 7) and a German mother, both Jews.  (Holst, too, was the scion of a German family and was actually born Gustavus von Holst!)  Finzi was born in London in 1901 and, like Elgar, (and because of his modest lifestyle) was mostly able to live on his earnings as a composer.  He did teach at the Royal College of Music in the early 1930s, a post he obtained with the help of Ralph Vaughan Williams.  There are some interesting family connections.  After Finzi died in 1956, his son Christopher, today a conductor, married Hilary Du Pré, the sister of the renowned cellist Jacqueline Du Pré.  Their story is partly told in the film, Hilary and Jackie.

By 1948 Gerald Finzi’s reputation was well established, and he was asked to provide a score for the 1949 Three Choirs Festival in Hereford.  Finzi had had a great success with his Bagatelles for clarinet, which had been performed by Pauline Juler in 1943, and he began work on a concerto for her.  Around the time of the premiere, however, Juler was to be married, and so the first performance was given instead by Frederick “Jack” Thurston, one of the great clarinetists of the 20th century, with Finzi conducting.

The turbulent opening of the Concerto might lead the listener to expect a work more dramatic than pastoral in nature, but the soloist’s soft entry does something to dispel that notion.  Even though the tempo marking is Allegro vigoroso, and the home key is c minor, there is a gentleness which pervades this work.  As Diana McVeagh wrote: “Throughout, the balance between energy and repose is most skillfully maintained.”  (See Alex Ross’s observation above about the Introduction and Allegro.)  The slow movement has a decidedly eerie feel at the start, and the rondo finale with its blithe melody is perhaps the most “English” of all.

Other Finzi compositions the curious concertgoer might wish to investigate include the aforementioned Bagatelles, his lovely Christmas cantata, Dies Natalis, the late cello concerto, and several moving choral works and song cycles.

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