Program - Munich Symphony Orchestra, Philippe Entremont, Conductor and Pianist (Saturday, October 29, 2005 - 7:30 p.m.)
Contents
Introduction
This performance supported by Mace and Kay Braverman, Southgate Development, Lepic-Kroeger Realtors; Kevin and Pat Hanick, Lepic-Kroeger Realtors; John and Sue Strauss; and W. Richard and Joyce Summerwill.
Tour Direction: Columbia Artists Management, LLC, Tim Fox / Angela Delecke, 1790 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
Management for Mr. Entremont: Columbia Artists Management, LLC, Personal Direction: Tim Fox, http://www.cami.com.
The 2005-2006 Hancher Auditorium season is supported by CRST International.
Program
Program subject to change.
Carl Maria Von Weber
Overture to Oberon
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Concerto in C Major, No. 21, K. 467
- Allegro maestoso
- Andante
- Allegro vivace assai
Intermission
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73
- Allegro non troppo
- Adagio non troppo
- Allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino
- Allegro con spirit
About the Artists
The Munich Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1945 and soon secured an important place in the concert life of Munich. A regular concert series, as well as performances of operas, operettas, musicals, ballets and oratorios are evidence of the adaptability and flexibility of this ensemble. Recent tours have included Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Japan, undertakings which have helped lay the foundation for the orchestra's reputation abroad. The Munich Symphony Orchestra also makes regular appearances in the most renowned concert halls of Europe, such as the Salzburg Grosses Festspielhaus, Berlin Philharmonic Hall, Frankfurt Alte Oper, as well as at major venues in Lucerne and Milano.
The pillar on which all activities of the Munich Symphony Orchestra rest is the subscription series of concerts, which for 40 years now has taken place in the Herkulessaal of the Residenz and in the Prinzregententheater, the two most popular concert halls in Munich. Also important is the orchestra's work with young artists and leading soloists and singers such as Renée Fleming, Juan Diego Flórez, Lucia Aliberti, Hildegard Behrens, José Carreras, Plácido Domingo, Simon Estes, Edita Gruberova, Dame Gwyneth Jones, Vesselina Kasarova, Waltraud Meier and Dame Margaret Price.
The Munich Symphony Orchestra's touring activities have recently led them to São Paulo, New York, Mexico City and Shanghai. The year 2004 began with a concert tour with Renée Fleming to Paris, Düsseldorf, Munich and Dortmund. In October 2004, the orchestra went on tour with Juan Diego Flórez performing concerts in Hamburg, Dortmund, Munich and Frankfurt and in November 2004 the Munich Symphony Orchestra visited Japan and Korea. During the 2005-06 season tours to Spain, Italy and the U.S. are planned. Since 2004 Philippe Entremont has been principal guest conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra.
The exceptional career of Philippe Entremont began at the age of 18 when he came to international attention by having a great success in New York's Carnegie Hall playing Jolivet's piano concerto and Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1. Since then he has pursued a top international career as a pianist, and for the last 30 years also on the podium.
Philippe Entremont has directed the greatest symphony orchestras of Europe, Asia and America: Philadelphia, San Francisco, Detroit, Minnesota, Seattle, St. Louis, Houston, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Montréal, The Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orquesta Nacional de España, the Academy of Santa Cecilia of Rome, l'Orchestre National de France, the orchestras of Göteberg, Stockholm, Oslo and Warsaw, the NHK of Tokyo, the KBS Orchestra of Seoul, the Vienna Symphony and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Bergen, to name a few. He has worked with the world's greatest soloists, both instrumental and vocal.
He was music director of the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra between 1981 and 1986, after which he became music director of the Denver Symphony. He was also chief conductor of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra until 2002. After having served as music director and chief conductor of the Vienna Chamber Orchestra for almost 30 years, he is now conductor laureate for life. He was also music director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra and is now their conductor laureate.
In 1997 he founded the biennial Santo Domingo Music Festival, of which he is artistic director and conductor of the Festival Orchestra. In October 2004 Philippe Entremont was named principal guest conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra, which he conducts on international tours, as well as throughout Germany. He is also principal guest conductor of the Orquestra de Cadaqués. In 2006, in connection with the Mozart Year, he will be the conductor in charge of the Super World Orchestra, based in Tokyo.
His renown as an orchestral conductor and his experience at consistently working to develop orchestras' artistic potential have brought him numerous international tours, playing before full houses: ten tours in the U.S. and seven in Japan with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, a tour of 11 concerts with the Orquestra de Cadaqués in capitals of countries in the Orient, as well as a recent tour in Switzerland and Germany conducting the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra. As principal guest conductor of the Munich Symphony Orchestra he leads several tours in 2005 and 2006, during which he conducts from the keyboard as well as on the podium: 11 concerts in Spain in May 2005, 29 concerts in the U.S. in October and November 2005 and 15 concerts in England in November 2006.
One of the most recorded artists of all time, Entremont has appeared on many labels, notably including CBS Sony, Teldec and harmonia mundi, and he has garnered all of the leading prizes and awards in the industry. The Swiss label Cascavelle recently released his recording of the complete works of Ravel for solo piano and four hands, as well as his unedited recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, done in 1958 with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Pierre Monteux. For that same label Entremont has recorded two Mozart piano concertos, playing and conducting the Munich Symphony Orchestra.
Officer of the French Legion of Honor, commander of the Order of Merit, commander of the Order of Arts et Lettres, Entremont has also been awarded the Arts and Sciences Cross of Honor of Austria. He is president of the Bel'Arte Foundation of Brussels and is director of the famed American Conservatory of Fountainebleau, a post formerly held by the legendary Nadia Boulanger.
Program Notes
Overture to Oberon, Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
If any composer can be called the father figure of the Romantic movement in music it would be Carl Maria von Weber, whose works, writings, and playing inspired artists and audiences alike. His piano music led to the stylistic development of Chopin, Liszt and Schumann, while his operas paved the way for Wagner. Although his life was cut short by tuberculosis, he influenced the whole course of music.
Weber wrote extensively for the stage, allowing his fertile imagination to conjure up the imagery of romantic legends. His operas were full of the atmosphere of these legends with ghosts, specters, goblins and the mythology so richly found in German folk art. Except for his opera, Der Freischutz, Weber had the unfortunate knack for choosing libretti that were largely unstageable and noted for their dramatic entanglements. However, he was a masterful orchestral composer, and the overtures to his operas tend to outclass the vocal parts. In the tradition of opera of his time, he wrote the overture after the rest of the opera had been completed. Thus he had the license not only to provide an imaginative orchestral summary of the opera, but also to instill in it all the poetry of the drama to follow.
Oberon was Weber's last opera, commissioned by Charles Kemble, lessee of the Covent Garden Theatre. He accepted the commission, disregarding medical advice that he take a long holiday in Italy for his failing health. However, he needed the money to provide security for his young family. The opera was given its premiere at Covent Garden on April 12, 1826. Two months later Weber died of consumption. The story of his struggle to compose the work and complete it while literally on his deathbed is in itself befitting an opera by a Verdi or Puccini.
The Overture to Oberon was finished just three days before the opening performance of the opera. It is a symphonic piece representing the fairy music, the storm and the love strain present in this tale of the king of fairies. The story takes place in a jumble of exotic places: fairyland, Baghdad, stormy seas, caverns where mermaids dwell and Charlemagne's court in the ninth century. It opens with the horn's rising three notes signaling the proceedings that are to follow.
The blend of woodwinds with flutes and clarinets evokes the imagery of fairies and mortals much as they do in the music of Mendelssohn. The orchestral color adds to the fairy music to fill out Oberon's world. There are themes to represent the lovers' escape from Baghdad, a knight's prayer, the storm, and a preview of the heroine's great aria as she is about to be rescued from shipwreck. The sounds of the overture are so fresh and triumphant it is hard to believe that this music was written by someone so close to death.
Piano Concerto in C Major, No. 21, K. 467, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
After Mozart moved to Vienna from Salzburg in 1782, his innovative ventures into composing keyboard concertos for the new fortepiano lifted the piano concert to popular status. In this respect it is interesting to note that whereas only three of his more than 50 symphonies were published during his short lifetime, seven of his original 21 concertos for solo piano gained that distinction. For the next three to four years Mozart was able to enjoy the most prosperous and perhaps the happiest period of his career. He was the toast of Vienna musical circles as composer, performer and teacher. Around 1782 Vienna experienced a boom in public and private concert productions, and Mozart took advantage of this surge in musical interest. He inaugurated Lenten subscription concerts which immediately took hold as a local custom. In the course of about six weeks Mozart gave no less than six public recitals.
The Piano Concerto in C Major, K. 467, according to the composer's own catalogue, was completed on March 9, 1785. Therefore it must have been written during a period of 27 days following completion of the D-minor concerto, noted by the composer's catalogue as having been finished on February 10, 1785. During this same period Mozart was also teaching private pupils, held a "quartet party" with his father and Joseph Haydn to play through some of the new quartets he dedicated to Haydn, and participated in a number of public and private concerts. This frenzy of activities and productivity was in the nature of Mozart in his hey-day. On March 10, the day after completing the concerto, he was scheduled to play the work as the centerpiece of one of his subscription concerts to showcase an innovative new fortepiano design. According to an advertisement for the concert: "On Thursday, March 10, 1785, Kapellmeister Mozart will have the honor of giving in the Imperial and Royal Court Theater a Grand Musical Concert for his own benefit including not only a new, just finished fortepiano concerto to be played by him, but also an especially large fortepiano with pedals will be used for improvisations."
The C-Major Concerto opens with a military style march that has been described both as "majestic in its breadth and grandeur" and as a "tiptoed march, in stocking feet" suggestive of a comic opera. As Mozart did not offer tempo indications in his original manuscript, one may expect different emphases by different conductors. For all we know, perhaps that was the composer's intent, or in haste he neglected them as he was going to conduct the work himself! In any event, the extensive orchestral introduction ends with brief statements by separate woodwinds to usher in the piano with its cadenza-like brilliance. The orchestra returns to support the soloist as the themes are developed. Toward the end of the movement there is space for a solo cadenza.
The Andante is one of most lyrical of slow movements written for a concerto whose stirring elegiac theme and sense of melancholic poignancy is said to have produced weeping in the audience during the concerto's very first performance. Fragments of the theme were used in the 1967 Swedish film Elvira Madigan that was a widespread hit in its day. The appeal that the film's background music to a "chronicle of hopeless love" had on theater-goers for a number of years resulted in the whole work being subtitled the "Elvira Madigan Concerto," much to the consternation of music critics. They felt this title trivialized Mozart's score as the music of the entire concerto deserves renown in its own right.
The finale, marked Allegro vivace assai, is a fast and vivacious rondo that imparts a sense of playfulness and good humor with contrasting material by the orchestra alternating with the statements by the piano. There is a final cadenza for the soloist before the orchestra has its final say and ends the concerto.
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73, Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897)
Brahms was characterized as a hold-over from the Classical period of music and anti-Romantic by the adherents of the so-called New German School led by Liszt and Wagner. The image of Brahms as a timid conservative had been promulgated by Wagner himself and promoted by Hugo Wolf in his journal writings. Brahms kept out of the debate that was carried on by his supporters. Interestingly enough, we now tend to consider Brahms as one of the great masters of the Romantic style of music and may not understand how he could have had the reputation of being anti-Romantic. However, in his day Brahms was an advocate of the Classical principles and adhered to the tradition of sonata-form, rondo, passacaglia, fugue and variation. He was a perfectionist who considered precision above beauty in music. He once counseled a friend regarding composition to "go over it again and again until there is not a bar you could improve on." He argued against harmony that used exaggerated colorization and programmatic music using sound as a means of painting pictures or telling a story. Yet Brahms composed delightful melodies, fluid rhythms, and rich harmonies that were more musically in touch with the period than those of many of his critics. He had definite ideas on the method of composing. In a letter to his friend George Henschel he wrote: "There is no real creating without hard work. That which you would call invention, that is to say a thought, is simply an inspiration from above for which I am not responsible it is a gift which I ought even to despise until I have made it my own by right of hard work. And there is no need to hurry about that either."
We can understand from this creed why it took Brahms almost 20 years to complete his First Symphony when he was 43 years of age. He had prepared himself to write orchestral music with his two Serenades, Op. 11 and Op. 16, and his Piano Concerto in D minor, Op. 15. However, as he admitted to friends, he was always haunted by having to live up to a standard set by Beethoven. After overcoming this hurdle with the Symphony in C minor, Op. 68, first performed on March 8, 1877, he began work on the Symphony in D major during a happy holiday in Pörtschach in the late summer of that same year. He finished it within the short space of four months, although it is likely that he had been sketching its ideas over a longer period as was his usual habit in composing. Brahms, in a good mood, wrote to his friend, the critic Hanslick, "the melodies come flying in such profusion that one has to be careful not to tread on them." He was apparently amused by the curiosity of a number of his supporters about the new work and jokingly warned his concerned publisher, Simrock: "The new symphony is so melancholy that you won't be able to bear it. I have never yet written anything so mournfully in the minor—the score will have to appear with black borders."
While intended to mislead his supporters there may be some truth in his remarks, as there often is in humor. Although the Second Symphony is conventionally thought of as Brahms's sunniest and most genial symphony, it has its darker moments. Brahms told Clara Schumann that the first movement was "quite elegiac in character." In response to a friend inquiring about the apparent gloom and dissonance in this movement, Brahms excused himself on the grounds that "the passage reflected my usual habitual melancholy." The first performance was given on December 30, 1877, in Vienna, with Hans Richter conducting the orchestra. It was a spontaneous triumph and because of its lyrical nature has been occasionally dubbed Brahms's "Pastoral" Symphony.
The work is in four movements and follows the principle of ternary form: the first and last sections are founded on what is basically the same theme, while the middle movements provide harmonic and thematic contrast. The first movement opens with the basses ushering in a three-note phrase by the horns. This is quickly joined by the woodwinds providing a sort of haunting refrain. The cellos and violas introduce an opulent song and the movement leisurely develops with long, graceful waltz-like themes. The sunny character of the movement changes as the music becomes more agitated and the dissonant nature of the trombones intrudes with a foreboding sense of gloom. The rest of the movement balances the two major moods and ends quietly on the opening theme.
The slow movement, in three parts, has an eloquent song-like theme for the cellos, repeated by violins. Then the solemn-sounding bassoon introduces the long middle section in which the strings join the horns and woodwinds in a graceful dance. The music slowly, but inexorably, works into the somewhat mournful statements made by the bassoon and brass against shivering strings before the brass sounds the movement's end.
The second half of the symphony is in a much lighter vein and probably is the basis for the "Pastoral" designation by some. The third movement opens with a capricious serenade by the clarinets and bassoons accompanied by plucked strings in the cellos. The theme is varied and elaborated and then returns to the basic theme as the movement is brought to a close.
The finale begins in an undertone by the strings that are joined by the full orchestra building to as powerful a statement as any Brahms ever wrote. It is a triumphal declaration that forms the basic character of the finale before the second theme is sounded by the strings, and then by the woodwinds with string accompaniment. The two themes are alternated and then interwoven in a vigorous fashion in the extended coda before the work ends in a blaze of glory.
Professor emeritus Arthur Canter is a retired clinical psychologist on the faculty of the UI Department of Psychiatry. An amateur music historian, he has been a long-time contributor of program notes for Hancher concerts and participant in the musical life of Iowa City.
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The University of Iowa Center for Macular Degeneration
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