Program Notes: Evocations of Time & Place
Featuring Boston Symphony principal John Ferrillo, oboe and Sandra Stecher Kott, violin
Friday, September 15, 2006 at 8pm & Sunday, September 17, 2006 at 3pm
Throughout history, composers have had many varied motivations for creating new works: contractual obligations to a church or royal court; commissions from or for specific artists or ensembles, or for specific occasions; the internal desire (or compulsion!) to send a particular musical utterance out into the world. Notably, and especially from the nineteenth century on, composers have often looked to literature, art, poetry, folksong, and nature for inspiration.
In the middle nineteenth century Norwegian artists in general were eager to establish their national identity, especially in terms of its distinction and independence from neighboring Swedish and Danish culture. Much of Edvard Grieg’s orchestral output (including the famous Peer Gynt) was incidental music for plays, often based on Norse history and legend. Grieg’s suite “From Holberg’s Time,” written in the early 1880s, was offered as a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Norwegian-born playwright Ludvig Holberg (often referred to as the creator of Norwegian-Danish literature, or “Scandinavia’s Moliere”). While most of Grieg’s other string orchestra works are transcriptions from piano pieces or songs, the “Holberg” Suite was always and originally conceived for string orchestra. Grieg subtitled the work “in olden style,” and in addition to its abundant invention and energy, it offers us an interesting perspective on how the 19th-century musical world thought of “early music.”
John Harbison’s Snow Country was commissioned by Cambridge physician and arts patron Maurice Pechet, and composed at Token Creek, Wisconsin in January 1979. The composer has characterized it as a winter pastorale for oboe and strings, and offers the following note:
In Snow Country the oboe plays many roles, from soloist to accompanist
To a colorist within the string doublings. Two tonalities, B minor and C
Minor, are placed in equilibrium in this piece, giving a certain sense of
Ambiguity and unease. A more tranquil middle section in F major
Suggests a warmer solution, but the winter landscape returns, with the
Plaintive voice of the oboe fusing with, and finally emerging from, the
Sound of the surrounding strings.
Wayne Barlow wrote The Winter’s Passed in 1938, a year after joining the faculty of the Eastman School of Music, where he would serve until his retirement in 1978. He had studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg, and with Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson at Eastman. The Winter’s Passed (subtitled “Rhapsody for Oboe and Strings”) is a romantic fantasia for oboe and string orchestra (with a prominent solo violin), taking as the basis for much of its melodic material two Appalachian folksongs: “A Poor Wayfaring Stranger” and “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair.” The work is designed not as a flashy virtuoso showcase, but rather as a demonstration of the composer’s lush harmonic treatment of the melodies, and an exploration of the affecting tonal quality of the oboe, alone, in combination with the solo violin, and together with the massed strings.
Ottorino Respighi, born into a musical family in Bologna in 1879, settled in Rome in 1913 and never left it. His largest orchestral works (and his greatest successes) would celebrate the city: Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome, Roman Holidays. But one of his passions was “early music,” and in 1908 he had begun editing manuscripts of Monteverdi, Vitali, and other Italian Renaissance composers. He found many works for lute that appealed to him, and in 1917 produced his first suite of Ancient Airs and Dances based on these lute pieces for early masques and ballets. The second suite came in 1924, and the third in 1932. While the first two suites were scored for full orchestra, the third set is for string orchestra; its four movements are based on a passacaglia by Italian composer Ludovico Roncalli, an air by French lawyer/physician/amateur lutenist Jean-Baptiste, and two anonymous pieces.
We don’t know much about the circumstances that led Johann Sebastian Bach to compose his concerto for oboe and violin — was it written for specific players? or for a specific occasion? Although originally composed for these instruments, the work survived only in Bach’s transcription for two harpsichords. Persuasive evidence of the original instrumentation and the score’s reconstruction were not available to performers until 1970. (The original concerto dates from Bach’s years in Cothen (1717-1723), whereas the harpsichord transcription was made in Leipzig (1739-1750).) The concerto follows the traditional Italianate three-movement form. The lively first movement integrates soloists and orchestra in the unfolding of thematic material and the display of rhythmic energy. The central Adagio is a serene duet of quite vocal character, in which the oboe and violin develop their lyrical material through seamless interchanges, echo effects, and other contrapuntal and ornamental devices. The final Allegro, in an energetic duple meter, is notable for its rhythmic ritornello theme and the technical virtuosity on display from the soloists (especially the brilliant triplet figuration in the solo violin).
