Program Notes: Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony, and the Haydns
Featuring Carol Lieberman, violin
and Mark Kroll, fortepiano
March 3 & 5, 2006
M. Haydn: Overture in G major
Johann Michael Haydn (1737-1806) was the younger brother, by five years, of Franz Joseph Haydn, one of whose concerti is also being heard in this program. Both brothers were born in the Austrian village of Rohrau, not far from Vienna, and were choristers as boys. Michael is said to have had the sweeter voice. While the elder Haydn ended up as court composer for the Princes Esterházy at nearby Eisenstadt, the younger’s appointments took him somewhat farther afield. Apart from a brief stint as Kapellmeister for the bishop of Grosswardein (now Oradea in Romania), Michael Haydn spent all his composing life, from 1763 to his death in 1806, in Mozart’s birthplace of Salzburg. Indeed the two composers came to be very good friends, and Haydn succeeded Mozart as cathedral organist when Mozart left Salzburg for Vienna in 1781. Most of Haydn’s output was in sacred music, but he also composed many instrumental works, among them many symphonies.
The present work, in a single movement marked Allegro molto, served as the introduction to a Latin cantata written for use at a Benedictine Abbey near Salzburg.
Michael Weinstein: Chamber Symphony
Composer Michael Weinstein writes the following. “I can easily label myself as an unabashed neo-classicist, yearning for the old ways and yet mindful that I am living in the 21st century. An intuitive pull towards referential tonality is balanced by a lot of musical education. Not one to accomplish anything directly or easily, I essentially write music that is relatively “tonal” sounding but conceptually incorporates the serial techniques I learned about as a theory/composition student. This weekend you will hear my chamber symphony, a work of approximately twenty minutes’ duration that is very traditional in terms of form and structure. I compose “abstract” thematic music that uses the typical contrapuntal and developmental techniques associated with the classical style and heavily dependent for coherence on pitch connections over musical time. The overall structure is simple: three movements, fast — slow — fast. Rather than keys (since I have been taught that “tonality is dead”) I choose pitch centers, and these are classically predictable too: Eb for the first and last movements and Bb for the second movement. But what makes the music a little unusual, despite the “tonal” sound, is my near constant use of tone rows to generate melodic material. The brush of the full chromatic range of 12 pitches gives me an ability to paint the musical “tonal” canvas either sharply focused (as in mimicking a major scale) or in a blurry “impressionistic” or even dissonant fashion. The first movement row is Eb-G-F-F#-Ab-Bb-A-B-C-C#-D-E, the second movement is Bb-G-C#-D-F-B-C-Eb-Ab-A-E-F#, and the third movement uses the first row again but with a different ordering of the pitches. The first movement has multiple sections that refer to sonata form. The second movement is a tuneful ABA aria. The last movement is an energetic, single-minded romp towards the final Eb, also using sonata form elements. The piano sketch was started on February 2, 2005 and finished by June 1, 2005. The orchestration took approximately one month for each movement.”
F. Haydn: Concerto for Violin & Fortepiano in F major
Most of Haydn’s works in concerto form were written in his younger days. (Two notable exceptions are the trumpet concerto and sinfonia concertante, both dating from the 1790s.) Apart from a doubtful concerto for 2 horns (played by the BCO in November 2002), this is his only surviving “double” concerto, the keyboard part having been originally conceived for organ rather than piano or harpsichord. There is significant personal history behind this work: it was written for Haydn’s former love, Josepha (or Therese) Keller, on the occasion of her becoming a nun, which was apparently the choice she made after rejecting Haydn’s romantic attentions! Haydn subsequently turned instead to Josepha’s elder sister Maria Anna and did indeed wed her, but the marriage was an unhappy one. The couple never officially separated, and the marriage ended only with Maria Anna’s death in Baden-Baden in 1800. The ceremony celebrating Josepha’s taking of the veil was given on May 12, 1756 (Mozart had been born just four months earlier!), and Haydn led the performance, which also included another of his concerti (for organ in C, Hob.XVIII: 1) and a Salve regina (Hob.XXIIIb: 1).
Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 (“Italian”)
Felix Mendelssohn was inspired to begin his A-major symphony (the title “Italian” was his own) during a trip he made to Italy in 1830-31. It was not until two years later, however, specifically on the 13th of March, 1833, that he finished it in Berlin, when an invitation for a symphony from the London Philharmonic Society served as the impetus to complete the work. He conducted the first performance himself in London on May 13, 1833. Mendelssohn’s own words tell us that that he began the work with great enthusiasm and joy and indeed had sketched out the entire score in 1831, but in the following year the composition was going anything but smoothly, and Mendelssohn complained that it had cost him some of the bitterest moments of his life. Certainly there is no reflection of that bitterness in this rich and vibrant music.
From the opening bars, the exuberant first movement seems to conjure up the sunny skies and landscapes of the Italian countryside. The slow movement in D minor, known as the “Pilgrims’ March”, is said to have been inspired by a solemn religious procession in Naples or Rome. The third movement is a relaxed, airy dance movement dominated by lyrical strings, with horns, then somewhat more martial trumpets in the trio. The finale, a thrilling Saltarello (Roman dance with a hopping step), seems to us virtually flawless, but Mendelssohn was not happy with it and intended to revise it (as well as the first movement). What the nature of the revisions would have been must remain a mystery, because Mendelssohn died before implementing his plans, and the symphony was published only after his death as Opus 90, when it received the number 4, though it was actually written earlier than the Symphonies we now know as Nos. 2 & 3 (and after No. 5). Usually, a minor-key symphony finale would have one or two contrasting episodes in major keys, but in this work Mendelssohn remains in the minor throughout, never letting the excitement lapse for a moment.
