THE CHAIRMAN DANCES                                      JOHN ADAMS
(born 1947)

John Adams was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and, growing up in Vermont and New Hampshire, he was strongly influenced by the intellectual and cultural institutions of New England. He received both his BA and MA degrees from Harvard University, where he was active as a conductor, clarinettist, and composer.
The Chairman Dances was written in 1985 to a commission from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Subtitled ‘Foxtrot for Orchestra’, the piece is described by Adams as an ‘out take’ from Act III of the opera he was working on at the time, Nixon in China. Although the piece incorporates several dance-like tunes, it should be noted that the word ‘dances’ in the title is a verb rather than a noun. It is meant to depict Madame Mao gate-crashing a presidential banquet, hanging paper lanterns, and performing a seductive dance. Chairman Mao descends from his portrait, and the two dance a foxtrot, back in time together. The piece ends with the sound of a gramophone winding down. Musical references of this piece can still be found in the third act of Adam’s opera.

Sandpaper Ballet and Chicken Reel                          

Leroy Anderson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and studied at Harvard. When he didn’t win a fellowship for further study in Europe, Anderson found the most direct route into a musical career closed off. So he went on to Graduate School, where he cultivated his Danish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese and Swedish! This accomplishment subsequently made him invaluable to military intelligence during World War II.

            In 1936, Arthur Fiedler, the radical young conductor of the Boston Pops, heard Anderson’s arrangements of some school songs at a Harvard Night Pops concert, and instantly recognised and valued qualities that the Harvard music department had not. He asked Anderson to submit some pieces to the Pops. Two years later, Anderson obliged with Jazz Pizzicato and, at Fiedler’s request, its complement, Jazz Legato, and both immediately became encore favourites. Sandpaper Ballet was written during five days before its first recording in 1954. Anderson said, “Many years ago while the soft shoe dance was still popular in vaudeville, sometimes dancers would sprinkle sand on the stage to create a crackling sound while performing. The drummers imitated this sound by attaching sandpaper on wooden blocks which they rubbed rhythmically against each other. This was the background for my piece Sandpaper Ballet. The sandpaper covered blocks are in this case imitated by two drummers. They use sand-paper in three different strengths, coarse, medium and fine, to create different effects.” Of Chicken Reel (1946), the composer said, “When I got out of the Army, I went back to Fiedler and asked if he needed any new arrangements. I said I had an idea for one called Chicken Reel, and he tried it out. Oh, he really liked that one. He had only one suggestion: ‘Let’s put in a punch at the end,’ he said. ‘Why don't you throw in the sound of a rooster crowing?’ We worked out the ending like that. We had the clarinetist blow into the mouthpiece without the instrument to achieve the effect, and it proved to be just what was needed to make the piece right!”

Trumpet Concerto                                                        ARUTIUNIAN
                                                                                                            (born 1920)
Andante – Allegro energico
Meno mosso
Tempo I

Alexander Arutiunian was born in Yerevan, Armenia, and graduated from the Conservatory there in 1941, and then, in 1946, studied composition for two years at the House of Armenian Culture in Moscow. On his return to Armenia he claimed the position of Musical Director of the Royal Philharmonic Society and, in 1954, was appointed Musical Director of the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra. The Concerto for Trumpet in A flat was Arutiunian’s sixth major composition and is his most famous work. Although not commissioned to write the concerto, he had intended to write one in 1943 and was inspired by his friend and native trumpeter, Tsolak Vartazarian, Principal Trumpet of the Armenian Philharmonic, but unfortunately Vartazarian was killed in military action during the war and the work got sidelined until its first performance in 1950. It did, however, became much better-known through performances by Timofei Dokshizer who introduced it to a wider audience when he emigrated to the United States, and was also the first to record it.

The Trumpet Concerto was written as a concert piece that could be enjoyed by all audiences alike. As with much of his music, it is strongly influenced by his nationality, incorporating melodic and rhythmic flavours of Armenian folk music, but avoiding using any actual folk tunes themselves. Although written in three parts, the concerto was not conceived to have separate ‘movements’, and these parts should be considered more as sections within a one-movement work, and are joined together without pause. After the brief declamatory opening the work gets underway with a lively, dancing and lyrical theme. This is contrasted in the Meno mosso with a reflective interlude featuring beautiful slow melodic and sometimes haunting lines sung by the muted trumpet. The Tempo I sees the return of the spirited opening theme, and is now usually performed with a cadenza written in 1977 by Dokshizer, described by Arutiunian himself as ‘Wonderful’!

Adagio for Strings, Op 11                                                                         BARBER
                                                                                      (1910 – 1981)

Samuel Barber was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1910, and studied piano and composition at the Curtis Institute. Among his many awards were the Prix de Rome (1935) and the Pulitzer Prize (1935 and 1936). His works show a respect for romantic tradition as well as an original mind.

                Few twentieth century pieces have caught the public imagination more than the Adagio for Strings. Barber’s original score dates from 1936, when it formed the central movement of his String Quartet in B minor, Op 11. In 1937, Toscanini heard Barber’s Symphony No.1 at the Salzburg Festival and asked the composer to supply a piece for his first season with the newly-formed NBC Symphony Orchestra. Barber offered the First Essay and the Adagio, which were both broadcast on NBC radio on November 5, 1938. The inward nature of the latter probably helped reinforce its public significance, with performances at the funerals of such luminaries as President Roosevelt and Albert Einstein.

The hushed but expressive theme, its modal flavour imparting an evocative timelessness, unfolds in a series of dynamic terraces; intensity increasing as the rapt mood is effortlessly sustained. Cellos take up the theme, and the music reaches an impassioned climax. A heartfelt pause, and the melody resumes its elegiac course, resolving as if with a benediction, on an imperfect cadence.

The extent to which the Adagio overshadowed his other works understandably caused Barber frustration in later years. Yet it is difficult to gainsay Aaron Copland’s description: ‘The sense of continuity, the steadiness of the flow, the satisfaction of the arch that it creates from beginning to end... makes you believe in the sincerity which he obviously put into it’.

Tintagel                                                 

Sir Arnold Trevor Bax was born in London in 1883 and entered the Royal Academy of Music at seventeen, studying piano with Tobias Matthay and composition with Frederick Corder. Whilst still a student, he began composing and, by the time he graduated in 1909, he had achieved a certain measure of recognition. With Tintagel in 1917 and his first symphony in 1922, his fame was secure, a fact established on November 13, 1922, with a successful all-Bax concert in London. Financially independent, he did not have to earn a living from music and, consequently, could devote his entire energies to composition. He was named Master of  the King’s Musick in 1941, and died in Ireland in 1953.

 

            Tintagel is Bax’s most famous tone poem, and contains the breath and heartbeat of Celtic lore and poetry. There are, in fact, various musical scores associated with the town on the North Cornish coast, including Elgar’s Second Symphony, completed there, and a tone poem by Rutland Boughton. In the late summer of 1917, Bax spent six weeks at Tintagel, where his companion was the pianist, Harriet Cohen, with whom he was having a passionate love affair, an affair which had reached the point where he was faced with choosing between her or his wife and children, and the orchestral full score is dedicated to ‘Darling Tania’, i.e. Harriet Cohen – with love from Arnold. Bax wrote an extended programme note to this work, though how far it celebrates his own passionate concerns for the moment, the listener must decide. But the vision of the sea, notable for its sense of sheer physical elation, underlined by the difficult and often exultant horn parts, give the music a personal impact that may well be driven by more than watching the breakers in an admittedly evocative and romantic setting.

 

            The composer explains: “Though detailing no definite programme, this work is intended to evoke a tone picture of the castle-drowned  cliff of Tintagel, and more particularly the wide distances of the Atlantic as seen from the cliffs of Cornwall on a sunny but not windless summer day. In the middle section of the piece it may be imagined that with the increasing tumult of the sea arise memories of the historical and legendary associations of the place, especially those connected with King Arthur, King Mark, and Tristram and Iseult. Regarding the last named, it will be noticed that at the climax of the more literary division of the work, there is a brief reference to one of the subjects in the first act of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

The music opens after a few introductory bars with a theme given out on the brass which may be taken as representing the ruined castle, which is then worked to a broad diatonic climax, to be followed by a long melody for strings, which may suggest the serene and almost limitless faces of the ocean. After a while, a more restless mood begins to assert itself; a wailing, chromatic figure is heard, the motif of the ‘sick’ Tristan, played by oboe and solo violin, which then gradually dominates the music. Soon after this, there is a great climax which suddenly subsides, followed by a passage which will, perhaps, convey the impression of immense waves slowly gathering force until they smash themselves upon the impregnable rock. The theme of the sea is heard again, and the piece ends as it began, with a picture of the castle still proudly fronting the sun and wind of centuries.” The work was written during October 1917, though the orchestration was not completed until January, 1919.

Symphony no 6 in F (Pastoral), Op 68                        BEETHOVEN
                                                                                                     (1770 – 1827)
            Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the country:
                            Allegro ma non troppo
                        Scene by the brook: Andante molto mosso
                        Merry gathering of country folk: Allegro, leading to
                        Thunderstorm – tempest: Allegro, leading to
                        Shepherd’s song – glad and grateful feelings after the storm:
                            Allegretto

‘Pastoral symphony, or Recollections of country life: an expression of feeling rather than tone-painting’ – this was Beethoven’s own heading for his work. But since the titles he gave to the movements do suggest scenic tone-painting, and since the end of the second movement enshrines three named bird-calls, Beethoven’s disclaimer is more intended to warn the listener against too much seeking for descriptive detail.

            The orchestral depiction of birdsong, thunder and other sounds had long been common (chiefly in opera), and the 6/8 ‘rocking’ rhythm was an accepted symbol for pastoral peace. But to incorporate a whole series of such things on a narrative basis into a fully worked-out Viennese symphony, this was something new. Beethoven departs from his norm here and writes five rather than four movements, the last three played without a break. It is in the key of F major, which the composer often used for his more cheerful music.

            The symphony was first given on the same occasion as the Fifth Symphony. The basic classical orchestra is used for the first three movements, but because the prevailing mood is gentle, no trumpets are called for until the third movement and no drums until the fourth. In that fourth movement Beethoven bursts out of the classical frame: the storm calls for the extra excitement of a piccolo (in addition to the two flutes) and for the extra weight of two trombones (an exception to the general orchestral rule that trombones go in threes). The trombones then remain for the finale.

            The ‘happy feelings’ make the first movement more serene, less assertive than Beethoven’s first movements generally are. Its opening effervescent theme for strings, over a sustained pedal point in violas and cellos, might very well reflect Beethoven’s own joy in the presence of nature. This theme is repeated continuously throughout the movement, though often in altered form. There is no second subject as such, nor even a formal development, but only a further repetition of fragments of this theme. After the exposition (repeated), a little falling phrase is passed with particular charm from instrument to instrument. The first fortissimo for all participating instruments does not arrive until the recapitulation. A coda makes a brief visit to another key before a quiet ending.

            The second movement (in B flat) depicts the murmuring brook by a close-moving, undulating motion in the strings. Two cellos join in this effect while the others align themselves with the double-basses. Above the murmur, a smooth melody unfolds. Eventually, after an enriched return of the opening, Beethoven briefly lets the birds sing (overlappingly): a nightingale (flute), quail (oboe) and cuckoo (clarinet).

            The third movement (returning to F major) shows the expected lively 3/4 rhythm of a scherzo but applies it to a humorous evocation of clumsy, countrified music making. An oboe tune is accompanied by a seemingly inept bassoonist who appears to be restricted to three ‘safe’ notes. A central section changes to a rough dance-rhythm, before the scherzo returns, but there is a quickening and then an interruption . . .

            . . .  A trembling single note on cellos and double-basses indicates distant thunder and the full tempest eventually arrives. The key is F minor, but as the storm abates there is a return to a happier F major, confirmed by a simple rising-scale on a solo flute . . .

            . . . which passes straight into the ‘thanksgiving’ of the final movement. It begins with warmly held chords over which the shepherd’s call, or ranz des vaches is heard from a solo clarinet, then a solo horn, anticipating the ‘true’ principal theme of the movement which now rises from the violins. Beethoven dwells on the theme, expanding it with florid melody and hardly leaving it for a single bar. A muted horn gives a last echo of it as the symphony quietly closes.

Symphony No7 in A, Op 92                                     
Poco sostenuto – Vivace
Allegretto
Presto – Assai meno presto
Allegro con brio

With his Russian campaign in ruins, Napoleon’s power was sinking in 1812-13, but Europe still felt the ravages of war. A benefit concert held in the hall of Vienna University in aid of wounded Austrian and Bavarian soldiers was the occasion of the first performance of the seventh symphony on 8 December, 1813, which Beethoven himself directed. Highly successful from the first, it is a work which conveys great energy, particularly in its first and last movements. It is equally famous for the stillness and inwardness of its slow movement, with its ‘melody’ dwelling for so long on one repeated note. A classical orchestra is used: two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, with timpani and strings.

            A long, slow introduction in 4/4 time rises to a climax, and the main faster section in 6/8 begins quietly with a repeated rhythmical figure on the woodwind, from which a confident, cheerful melody develops. The rhythm persists even when the music turns to E major to close the exposition with a heavy ascent on the strings, followed by two empty bars like a question-mark. The exposition is repeated, and the development puts a new urgency into the music without losing its onward flow, leading to the recapitulation. When that ends (again with the ascent and question-mark), the cellos and double-basses begin a quieter diversion which soon switches to full-orchestral vigour again for the conclusion of the movement.

            A new key of A minor is announced by a chord on woodwind and horns. The lower strings now set up a kind of solemn dance, subdued at first but then gathering force and richness. A contrasting section in A major brings an easeful melody on clarinets and bassoons. The A-minor dance melody returns, varied, and the contrasting melody also makes a second appearance. But it is the ‘solemn dance’ which concludes the movement in a stripped-down bleakness, with a woodwind chord of A minor (like that of the opening) to seal the final bars.

            The third movement, in A major, is a scherzo which begins in the usual vigorous 3/4 (in two parts, each repeated) but with a surprise in store! The central contrasting section, or trio, turns out to be in 2/4 and is marked ‘much less fast’ (Assai meno presto). Its smooth tune in D major on clarinets, bassoons and horns is worked up to a forceful climax. The main section (Presto) returns. The trio is also heard again in full, and the main section again. A snatch of the trio is again heard (now not in D major, however), suggesting that there might even be a third statement. But this is not to be, as the faster music dismisses it and the movement ends.

            A brief call to attention, with trumpets and drums prominent, launches the finale on its whirlwind of a dance, where the trumpet-and-drum rhythm is a conspicuous feature. A quieter strain moves into C sharp minor, and then there is an emphatic close in E major. A repetition of all the previous material is marked. Beethoven is in fact using the framework of a traditional sonata-form movement, but the effect of the formal divisions is less striking than the succession of whirling or indeed stamping figures, interrupted by silent bars of expectation. Cumulative repetition keeps up the drive as the symphony rushes headlong to a close.

Symphonie fantastique, Op 14                         

Rêveries (Largo) – Passions (Allegro agitato e appassionato assai)
A Ball (Valse: allegro non troppo)
Scene in the fields (Adagio)
March to the Scaffold (Allegretto non troppo)
Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath (Larghetto – Allegro - Ronde du Sabbat)

Unveiled in Paris on 6 December 1830, this was by no means the first French symphony – but it was the first to show Beethoven’s revolutionary impact, and remains the most often played of French symphonies. Its conception is unique: five ‘episodes in the life of an artist’, all based on a recurring musical theme meant to denote a lover’s obsession. It reflects Berlioz’s own stormy relationship with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, but the episodes cannot claim to be literally autobiographical.

            Seeking the maximum force, expression and variety of tone-colour, the composer hoped for an orchestra of 220 players (the first performance had about 150). Among his demands were: high E flat clarinet as well as the usual clarinets; two cornets as well as two trumpets (in those days the trumpets still lacked valves, so could not play melodies as readily as the valved cornets); two tubas instead of one, and either piano or tubular bells to suggest the church bells in the finale. In the ‘Scene in the fields’, a distant thunderstorm is evoked by four-note rolled chords on the timpani.

            The first movement is the only one that can be regarded as traditionally symphonic. A slow section (Rêveries) leads to the main faster section (Passions), which has an exposition clearly marked to be repeated, and then what corresponds to a development followed by a recapitulation. But the impact is much more strongly of mood than of structure. The theme heard at the beginning of Passions on a solo clarinet, drawn out, first-rising and then falling, is the so-called idée fixe, an obsessional phrase which will take various guises.

            The second movement is in waltz-time: at a ball, the loved one is seen amid brilliance and festivity. The scene in the countryside presents a dialogue between the pipes of two shepherds (one oboe, one cor anglais). Rural tranquillity cannot console the distressed lover, for her theme rises in his imagination. Finally the lack of an answer from the second shepherd signifies desolation in the thundery landscape.

            The fourth movement is a nightmare march. The lover is being taken to the scaffold! The terrible moment arrives – the drums roll – the fatal theme is shrieked out by the high clarinet. Finally, another nightmare – a witches’ Sabbath in which the beloved participates. The grotesque dance in 6-8 time is succeeded by the measured tread of the Dies irae, a church chant from the Mass for the dead, before both these themes are heard together.

Symphonic Dances from West Side Story                     BERNSTEIN
(1918 – 1990)

Although Leonard Bernstein is not generally thought of as an orchestral composer, his compositions include three symphonies, several works for solo instrument and orchestra, and a number of suites derived from his theatre and stage works. It would be more accurate to say that Bernstein never tackled a work the same way twice, giving rise to a number of hybrid compositions, the ambiguity of which shows a composer caught between the European classical tradition and the American vernacular of jazz and musical.

Opening at Broadway’s Winter Gardens Theatre on September 26, 1957, West Side Story notched up a total of 1,025 performances either side of its first American tour. With a book by Arthur Laurents and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, this urban update of the Romeo and Juliet story broke new ground for music theatre, not least through the extensive and virtuosic choreography of Jerome Robbins.

Lukas Foss and the New York Philharmonic gave the first performance of the Symphonic Dances on February 13, 1961, Bernstein dedicating the score to Sid Ramin, who, with Irwin Kostal, prepared the orchestration under the composer’s supervision. Rather than take matters in chronological order, the Symphonic Dances freely re-order a selection of numbers from the musical, making for a coherent and satisfying suite. The Prologue graphically depicts the violence between two street gangs, the Sharks, Puerto Rican immigrants, and the Jets, native Bronx Teenagers. Somewhere recalls the aspirations of the lovers, Maria and Tony, for a future of peaceful co-existence. A Copland-like Scherzo leads into the testosterone-fuelled high-school dance of Mambo. It is here that Maria and Tony first meet, join together cautiously in a Cha-Cha, and realise their mutual attraction in the Meeting Scene. The antagonism of the rival gangs, however, barely suppressed in a tense fugue on the song Cool, erupts in the Rumble, during which the gang leaders are killed. After a pensive flute cadenza, Maria’s I Have a Love looks forward to the musical’s tragic yet cathartic outcome, a brief reminiscence of Somewhere providing a questioning conclusion.

Suite from Things to Come                                      

Bliss studied with Stanford, Vaughan Williams and Holst, and served in the army during World War I. During the immediately ensuing years his output suggested that a daringly experimental talent had been born in Britain. His Colour Symphony (1922), based on the heraldic symbolism of primary colours, was also striking, but Bliss's later works revealed a change of direction. The independence and vigour of expression were still there, but were now related rather to the English romantic tradition. His knighthood in 1950 and his appointment as Master of the Queen’s Music in 1953 seemed to consolidate his conservatism.

      The music from which this suite of six movements is formed was written in 1935 for H. G. Wells’s film, ‘Things to Come’. In the film the author envisaged our present civilisation destroyed by a world war, and showed a saner and finer world built on the ashes of the old. Bliss skilfully composes music which  both enhances the visual effect of the film, whilst successfully evoking these same pictures when heard alone in the concert-hall, for example at the opening of Pestilence, or in the incessant drive of Machines. The film opens with a children's party at Christmas time; among the toys are tin soldiers, trumpets and drums (Ballet for Children). The enemy attack from the air without warning (Attack). After years of fighting, disease ravages mankind (Pestilence). A new hope is born (Reconstruction). New and powerful machines build the new world (Machines). The final movement is simply entitled March.

In the Steppes of Central Asia                              BORODIN
                                                                             (1833-1887)

The Five, the so-called Mighty Handful, so named by the Russian critic and librarian, Vladimir Stasov, were the principal nationalist composers in later nineteenth-century Russia, following the example of Glinka, their forerunner. Borodin, like some others of the group, followed another profession than music, winning distinction as a professor of chemistry. His work as a composer was limited by his other duties and preoccupations, and at his death he left a number of compositions unfinished, to be completed by his friend Rimsky-Korsakov and others.

The illegitimate son of a Georgian prince, Borodin was given the name of one of his father’s serfs. He was brought up by his mother in relatively privileged cultural surroundings that brought acquaintance with a number of Western European languages, and a profound interest in music, a continuing enthusiasm that at times distracted him from his increasingly distinguished work as a scientist. His activity as a composer was stimulated by his meeting with Balakirev, self-appointed leader of the group of Russian nationalist composers, and association with Mussorgsky, César Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov.

The ‘musical picture’ In the Steppes of Central Asia was completed in 1880 and published two years later. Intended as a contribution to a series of illustrations from episodes in Russian history to mark the silver jubilee of Tsar Alexander II, it depicts the progress of a caravan across the steppes, escorted by Russian troops. Borodin makes use of a Russian melody and a contrasting oriental theme, which he later combines, winning wide contemporary popularity for its composer.

Symphony No 4 in E minor, Op 98                 
Allegro non troppo
Andante moderato
Allegro giocoso
Allegro energico e passionato

Brahms’s final symphony, which reasserts the commanding mood of the first, yet with even a hint of tragedy, was the only one to receive its first performance under the composer’s baton, at Meiningen on October 25, 1885. The form of the last movement is unique in the symphony up to that time – a passacaglia, a set of variations built over a short recurring theme in the bass. The achievement of that structure was already forecast in his St Anthony Variations.

            The first movement observes the usual sonata-form construction, but opens with a captivating and unusual ‘singing’ melody. The exposition is repeated, and the development starts as if once again the music has returned to the opening. But the recapitulation, with subtlety, presents the opening theme, not in singing form, but in slow, solemn notes. The end comes in the minor key and with full orchestra, except for the trombones, which are reserved for the finale.

            The second movement presents a gentle summons on the horns which turns the music to E major, with its remarkable juxtapositions with the Phrygian mode, and thence to one of the composer’s most fetching lyrical melodies as a second subject on the cellos, growing thematically out of strongly marked semiquaver triplets. The third movement, opening with a rollicking tune in C major, has all the energy and exhilaration expected of a scherzo, but in 2/4, rather than ¾ time. Moreover it is not in scherzo form, but in a taut, small-scale sonata-form, where the second subject, in G on the violins, is almost as jolly as the first.

            The finale starkly unleashes the trombones, together with brass and woodwind, to deliver the sequence of eight chords in the home key, remarkably harmonised, which is its theme. It is founded on a chaconne bass which Bach used for the last chorus of his 150th church cantata. In all, thirty variations follow, merging one into the next so that the effect is of large symphonic periods, and not small piling of bricks. The first twelve are in the home key, with the first nine rugged in character and greatly varied in all that Brahms adds above or below the theme itself. With the next two (10 and 11) tension grows less as they prepare the way for the moving flute solo (Var. 12). Here in placid style and in a broader 3/2 time this instrument cloaks the theme in a disguise hard to penetrate. Variations 13, 14 and 15, still in 3/2 time, are set in the major key, each of them enveloped in a kind of mist. And when, after being silent for ten variations, the trombones re-enter at the fourteenth with solemn pp chords, remote and impressive, the mood is that of some far-removed spirit world. Then at the sixteenth variation, the minor key and ¾ tempo return. From here, ten further variations are hammered out remorselessly by full orchestra. The omission of trombones from the remaining five variations reduces the tension to a degree, though the underlying mood of agitation is far from relieved. A Più allegro coda of no less than fifty-nine bars follows. In a great outburst of wintry sounds, defiant in their opposition to the major key, Brahms takes the notes of the adapted chaconne theme and, in partly canonic form, drives them through a extraordinary series of modulations which stand out like an epitome of all the many chromatic harmonies heard not only in this movement, but throughout the symphony. As the end approaches, there is a turn towards a more positive E major, but this in term is rejected, and the tragic E minor leaves its mark of destiny.

Academic Festival Overture, Op 80                                       BRAHMS
                                                                                              (1833-1897)
                       
The university at Breslau (then a German city, but now Wroclaw, Poland) conferred on Brahms an honorary doctorate of philosophy in 1879. With four symphonies and other major works already to his credit, the composer was at the height of his fame. His response, when he was gently prodded to make one, was this concert overture built on student songs, which Brahms conducted at its first performance at Breslau in 1881. With piccolo, double-bassoon, three trombones, tuba, bass drum, cymbals and triangle, the orchestra is unusually large for the composer, resulting in a jollity which was doubtless intended to suit the festive occasion.

            Brahms pretended to belittle the work as a pot-pourri, that is, merely a stringing together, but the music can be analysed in the usual symphonic first-movement form, and is kept under his habitually restraining hand. The tunes, including an initiation song, The Foxes’ Ride, as a duet for two bassoons, make their appearance and reappearance, with the climax reserved for the most famous of the songs, presented once only, as a coda at the end, Gaudeamus igitur, the words of which run:

            So let us rejoice while we are young …
After joyful youth and troublesome age, the ground will have us!

Symphony No 2 in D, Op 73                                                 BRAHMS
                                                                                                            (1833-1897)
                        Allegro non troppo
                        Adagio non troppo
                        Allegretto grazioso, quasi andantino
                        Allegro con spirito

Brahms’s symphonies, a series which he delayed launching until he was over forty, are ‘classical’ in the context of his time. They inherit the structures and melody-types bequeathed by Beethoven, and they move cautiously forward from Beethoven’s and Schubert’s harmonies, not making the big jump into chromatic language with Liszt and Wagner. The Beethoven legacy may not have been without its burden. When challenged on the resemblance of the main theme of the finale of his first symphony to the ‘Joy’ theme of the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth, Brahms is said to have replied: ‘Any ass can see that!’ Brahms’s symphonies do, however, avoid the Viennese minuet or its successor, the scherzo in 3/4 time, seeking some other light contrast to set between the slow second movement and weighty finale.

         After delaying until his mid-career to launch his first symphony, Brahms was sufficiently confident to begin writing his second immediately after. On 30 December 1877 it received, under Hans Richter’s baton in Vienna, its successful first performance. Away from the gravity and portentousness of his First Symphony, this is a sunny work and there has even been the suggestion that it represents ‘Brahms’s Pastoral symphony’. A tuba is added to the orchestral force required in the previous symphony.

         The first movement opens with a three-note phrase on cellos and double-basses, D-C sharp-D, which appears merely introductory but in fact gives a pointer to much of what happens later in this close-packed music. A ‘Romantic’ horn-call follows as the principal theme, and later a tune emerges in F sharp minor for violas and cellos in thirds, a special warmth of tone being felt from the fact that the cellos take the upper line. Density of texture and continuity of flow are achieved within a sonata-form frame, with an unmistakable feeling of repose at the coda in the smooth singing of horns and strings.

         A subtle first movement is followed by an equally subtle second (in B major), begun by a slow, outpouring theme on the cellos. A later theme in lighter vein with syncopated accents moves on into a more stormy section, and finally a variant of the first part returns.

         Not called a scherzo, the third movement in G major is nevertheless light, melodious and rhythmically engaging. A graceful section in 3/4 time (oboe solo, with a notable pizzicato accompaniment for the cellos) is succeeded by a contrasting section (trio) in 2/4. The first section, varied, returns and is followed by a different trio in 3/8 and then by yet another return. But in all these sections a permutation of the same musical germ may be found.

         A sonata-form structure makes a powerful finale for the symphony, starting sotto voce on strings alone with a theme which uncurls towards mighty deeds, followed by a broader second subject.  In the development Brahms indulges in the most dextrous contrapuntal tricks: themes are inverted, combined, or shaped anew. All these feats of inspired craftsmanship, never artificially contrived, lead to the recapitulation and to the intensely dramatic and wonderfully effective coda. Brahms wrote to Eduard Hanslick, the famous critic: ‘So many melodies fly about, one must be careful not to tread on them’.

Concerto No 1 in G minor                                            
for violin and orchestra, Op 26        
Allegro moderato, leading to
Adagio
Allegro energico

The first (and the only famous one) of Bruch’s three violin concertos had its first hearing on 24 April 1866 at Koblenz, with the composer conducting and with a soloist not destined for historical celebrity, Otto von Königslöw. But in revising it, Bruch sought the assistance of Joachim, the famous associate of Brahms, who two years later gave the first performance of the work in the form now known. The composer was again the conductor.

            Not to be found here is the spirit of mighty effort which goes into Brahms’s concerto. Instead, there is brilliance with a tinge of melancholy, as in Mendelssohn’s concerto: like that work, Bruch’s is in a minor key with a major-key finale and, between them, a smoothly intense middle movement linked to the first without a break. Like Mendelssohn, Bruch hastens to introduce the soloist, without a prolonged orchestral tutti. True to tradition, it has three movements, but in terms of sheer musical material there is as much in the finale as in the other two movements put together and although the conventional fast-slow-fast sequence is retained, the surprising fact is that sonata form is used for all three movements, while tradition calls for ternary song form for the slow movement and (usually) a rondo for the finale. Bruch was naturally aware of this and, not without reason, first chose the title  Fantasy for the work. However, he allowed Joachim to persuade him that Concerto  was a more effective title.

            The additional title Vorspiel (Prelude) was retained for the opening Allegro. The absence of any marked division between the movements emphasises the Fantasy  character, as do the recapitulations in the first and second movements, which are clearly abbreviated and turned into transitions. The Hungarian-style theme of the finale, which has a close affinity with that of Brahms’s Violin concerto, may have been provided by Joachim, who was Hungarian born.

            The first movement avoids ‘strict’ form altogether, and is not complete in itself, but  is a kind of large-scale, ruminating prelude to what is to come, comparable in many ways to the Vorspiel of a Romantic opera. Like many operatic preludes, it has a structural significance, to be discovered when the rest of the music is heard. The linked slow movement comes to a full close; the finale is self-contained in its own pattern. Unusually, the material of the orchestral introduction bears no  relation to the main body, and is not heard again. Preceded by a little repeated phrase on the woodwind which acts as a motto for the prelude, the violin embarks on a long delivery, rhapsodic at first and then with an assertive theme. After a high trill, the soloist eventually yields to the orchestra, where the rhythm  in the bass is important in the design. The first main subject has some grandeur, whilst a second more romantic subject completes the material. The discussion is close and fairly equally divided, and partly for this reason no disappointment is felt by the absence of a formal reprise. The themes seem to coalesce and melt into the violin’s final cadenza. The orchestra then breaks out in E flat (allegro moderato), and so leads into the Adagio.

            The peaceful but intense main subject, reinforced by the use of the solo violin’s lower strings, has an important continuing phrase, and there is a separate ‘second subject’, first to be heard in the bass under the soloist’s passage-work. An interesting point is the version in G flat major; the later recapitulation is not precise, but the effective coda is allusive. An energetic orchestral introduction  leads from E flat to G major, which the solo violin establishes with a strong bravura main theme,  making effective use of double-stopping. A good deal is made of this in various guises; then after a bridge subject comes a broader second main theme. The development is clear to follow; there is a tutti climax, before an important coda, again allusive. An abbreviated version of the opening theme serves as the closing statement.

The Chronicles of Narnia Suite

Geoffrey Burgon came relatively late to music. As an adolescent he became interested in jazz and taught himself the trumpet in order to join a jazz band at school. He began composing when he entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama although he was still intent on becoming a trumpet player. Composition, however, began to absorb him more and more and when he asked his teacher Peter Wishart whether he thought he would make a composer, Wishart’s reply was, “Well, you don’t seem to be able to stop, do you?”

      Burgon published his Chronicles of Narnia Suite in 1991, from music he had written for the highly-successful BBC TV dramatization of C S Lewis’s series of seven books written in the 1950s. In the first book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, we are introduced to four sibling children, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, who are sent to a large house during World War two to live with a kind old Professor. There they find a giant wardrobe in an empty room. The wardrobe leads to the land of Narnia, a fictional setting for all seven books, controlled by the White Witch, and where it is always winter, without Christmas, no less! They learn that the true ruler of Narnia, Aslan the lion, will return to rescue Narnia from its eternal winter…and so the story unfolds. The other books contain many more characters and places.

A Shropshire Lad         (Orchestral Rhapsody)                             BUTTERWORTH
(1885 – 1916)

George Butterworth was born in 1885 and was killed in action in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. His response to the poetry of Houseman was intense, and he composed a strikingly beautiful cycle of songs from that poet’s series A Shropshire Lad. One of these, Loveliest of trees, the cherry now, became the theme for A Shropshire Lad, an orchestral rhapsody, scored with economy but great subtlety of colouring.

            The main subject is deftly hinted at in the evocative opening phrases for violas and clarinets, and the interplay between woodwind and strings as the first climax is prepared is proof of this composer’s high technical skill – a mastery which always lets the music’s ideas come through with maximum effect. The tender passage which follows this climax, marked by quiet string work and some lovely oboe phrases, is lit with poetic radiance. Soon another climax emerges, with brass carrying the melodic line for a spell. But stillness returns and the work fades into the mists of the countryside with some violin writing which shares the same lineage as that in Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending.

Courtly Dances from ‘Gloriana’                                           BRITTEN
(1913 – 1976)

In February 1952, Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne. During March of that year, Britten went skiing in Austria with George and Marion Harewood. Lord Harewood suggested to Britten that he should write a ‘big national opera’ to mark the Queen’s Coronation in June 1953. Permission was obtained from the Queen and the project went ahead, based on Lytton Strachey's book ‘Elizabeth and Essex’. The opera, entitled Gloriana, was first performed on June 8 at a Royal Gala at Covent Garden in the presence of the Queen, who had been crowned six days earlier. That first performance is already a legend; the audience, stiff with diplomats, civil servants, and others to whom Merrie England would have represented a musical experience of the most adventurous and intellectual kind, had no idea what to make of Gloriana. Many were bored, many openly showed their disrelish, and many regarded the choice of subject as an outrage against good taste. But the audiences in the 1953-4 Covent Garden season liked the work and it was toured by Covent Garden to the Rhodes centennial exhibition in Bulawayo, formerly Southern Rhodesia, in August and in the then British provinces in 1954. It was, however, to wait another twelve years for its next staging.

         Realising, perhaps, that the music’s stage future was dim, Britten extracted a concert suite of four movements (with optional tenor solo), which was first performed in Birmingham in September 1954, published the choral dances for unaccompanied chorus, and combined the five courtly dances which occur during different parts of the action. The dances are played without a break, beginning with a lively March, followed by a quick Coranto. A slow and majestic Pavane is contrasted with a traditional Morris Dance, quick and with many dotted rhythms. The final dance, La Volta, is fast and rhythmic in 6/4 time, culminating in a return of the opening March.

Chants d’ Auvergne                                         
La pastrouletta è lo chibaliè
Deux Bourées: (i) N’aï pas iéu de mîo  (ii) Lo calhé
Bailèro
Lou boussou

Joseph Canteloube (1879-1957) studied at the Schola Cantorum in Paris. His compositions include instrumental works, songs, and the operas Le Mas and Vercingétorix. Today he is best known for his delightful collection of Songs from the Auvergne.

The first two books, containing eleven songs, came out in 1924. Book I included perhaps the best-known, Bailèro, which Canteloube heard in 1900, sung by a shepherdess on a mountainside overlooking Vic-sur-Cère, in Cantal, her song was accompanied by a distant shepherd singing the refrain. The first book also contains three examples of the bourée, the characteristic dance of the Auvergne, but they bear little resemblance
In his arrangements, Canteloube presented the words of the songs in the original Auvergnat dialect, and he respected the inflections and modal character of their melodies. He is fond of drone basses and the characteristic ‘la-la-las’, but as an urban musician of his day, he accompanies these melodies with all the rich colouring of the modern orchestra. He is never afraid to apply chromatic harmony for expressive purposes, to bring out both the sentiment and humour of the songs. His orchestration is bright and colourful, with a wide sonority and a special fondness for the rustic upper woodwind. The country folk who people these songs are rough and tender by turns, obsessed with the follies and delights of love. Their world is made up of the trees and pastures of the Auvergne, dotted between hills and rivers, and their companions are more often birds and animals than their fellow human beings. These songs evoke a French countryside whose natural grandeur can still be admired, and whose distinctive social milieu has not entirely vanished even today.

Rhapsody, España                                                  

Having first earned his living as a French government official, Chabrier became a composer of repute without venturing into symphony or concerto. Back from a journey to Spain in 1882, he is said to have played to the French conductor Charles Lamoureux, a brilliant piano fantasia on Spanish themes which the conductor encouraged him to score for orchestra. The result, España, features some sumptuous and sparkling orchestration, with two harps helping to simulate the sound of guitars and prominently used extra percussion, especially the tambourine. After an opening that sets the atmosphere, a solo muted trumpet in a low register delivers a pattering tune, taken over by solo horn. Later the whole horn section peals out a joyous descending theme, leading to a climax. A change of mood then brings a softer melody
on violins and flutes, whilst there are also moments full of humour, such as when the trombones attempt to speak up for themselves, only to be met with a teasing jingle from the tambourine and others. Of the three melodies which Chabrier freely develops in such an exhilarating manner, the first and second owe their origins to two Spanish dances, the Jota and Malagueña respectively.

The London Suite         (London Everyday)                                  COATES
(1886 – 1957)

It was The London Suite, more than any other work, which finally made Eric Coates a familiar name with the general public. The composer wrote it during the autumn and early winter of 1932, following what was now, for him, a tried-and-trusted format, the three-movement suite. The inspiration came quite simply from the vistas available to him from his top-floor Baker Street apartment. The BBC arranged the first performance and, by all accounts, the work was respectably, if not outstandingly, played. But the reception was not what the composer had hoped for. It just didn’t seem to capture the popular imagination and, in particular, failed to impress Arthur Brooks, the Columbia Company’s recording manager, into whose studios Coates was shortly to venture. The plan was to commit the Two Symphonic Rhapsodies to wax, and the composer had hoped an invitation might be forthcoming to include the new suite as well. None materialised but, even so, the ever-optimistic Coates went along to the sessions with the carefully-prepared score and parts of The London Suite in his case.

What ensued, not only with regards the actual recording of The London Suite, but also its meteoric rise to fame, was one of those fortuitous accidents, best assigned to divine intervention! The newly-formed London Philharmonic Orchestra was booked for the recording, and quickly committed the Two Rhapsodies to wax. With nearly fifty minutes of recording time left, Arthur Brookes somewhat reluctantly agreed to Coates recording The London Suite. The first two movements went without a hitch, but the first take of the Knightsbridge March was spoilt by a playing error, and the second, whilst musically perfect, suffered damage to the master disc. Coates was now out of time and appealed to the LPO’s players to see if they would finish the recording off in unpaid overtime. This they agreed to, and the Columbia Gramophone Company, although they didn't know it at the time, was in possession of its best-selling record!

At first, however, the Suite’s prospects still didn’t look too rosy. Even the publishers baulked at the idea of printing it, feeling that it was too difficult for the average orchestra, and made no more than a tentative offer to issue the second movement. But fortune was preparing to smile on the composer once more. Unbeknown to him, in the depths of BBC Broadcasting House, a new programme was in the final planning stages, ‘In Town Tonight’, destined to run, on and off, for twenty-seven years and become one of the most celebrated radio shows of all time. With just hours to go before the first broadcast, producer Eric Maschwitz decided he would like a signature tune and asked the BBC Gramophone Library to send up some potentially suitable recordings. Amongst the pile of discs was the newly-pressed London Suite. Maschwitz played it and the moment he heard the Knightsbridge March, he knew he had found the right piece!

It seemed that the Knightsbridge March had touched a chord in the nation’s soul as no other work had done since Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory. Covent Garden, described as a ‘tarantella’, is a lively movement, totally descriptive of the bustle associated with that part of London, but it’s a ‘tarantella’ only in that it employs that dance’s 6/8 rhythm, as the main theme has a Cockney exuberance about it! Quite why Coates decided to feature the popular tune, ‘Cherry Ripe’, is not clear. Perhaps the reference to cherries was natural in describing Covent Garden with its fruit and vegetable market! Or maybe he just happened to spot a similarity in the interval between the first two notes of his tune and the older melody. Westminster carries the subheading of ‘Meditation’. The lovely opening chord-sequence played by strings and woodwind traces the outline of the main theme that soon emerges on a solo cello. This lyrical outpouring eventually gives way to a slightly more pressing idea presented by violins and horns which builds to an imposing climax before subsiding to allow the first tune to return, now played by all the strings. In this full orchestral guise, the quasi-religioso flavour, albeit somewhat ‘à la Ketèlbey’, is more in evidence, intended, perhaps, to portray the great Abbey at Westminster. There will, however, be no doubt as to the source of inspiration of the final bars.

As for the finale, the composer himself said: ‘It is extraordinary the way in which the Knightsbridge March never fails to rouse the dullest of audiences. I cannot understand the reason for it, but over and over again, when I have been conducting it in public, both in this country and abroad, the moment the double-basses begin the reiterated quaver beats at the opening I can feel a sensation of excited anticipation coming from the audience and striking me in the back of the head’. Pages have been written attempting to explain the remarkable appeal of this fine piece, but no words can even begin to account for its magic. In bald terms, it contains two splendid principal themes, a riveting fanfare figure and truly masterly orchestration. But the end result is much, much more than that! Coates wrote a sequel in 1936, the London Again Suite.

Appalachian Spring Suite                                   COPLAND (1900 – 1990)

The score carries the inscription 'Ballet for Martha'. Appalachian Spring was composed for Martha Graham's company, and with her choreography was given its first performance on 30 October 1944 in Washington, DC. Deliberate Americanism, equally characteristic both of Graham and Copland, achieved artistic success in this work. The original scoring was for only thirteen instruments but Copland, in 1945, arranged the music for symphony orchestra though still using modest resources. A piano (a 'normal' orchestral instrument with the composer) is required, as well as assorted percussion including tabor, a rustic drum without snares.'

            The music is continuous but with frequent changes of tempo. A beginning in A major gives a typical Copland sound (suggesting stillness and openness), which will be recalled at the close of he work, when the vigorous action is over. In a programme note, the composer himself divided the music structurally as follows:

            Very slowly: Introduction of the characters, one by one, in a diffused light.

            Fast: A sudden burst of unison strings in A Major arpeggios starts the action. A                                         sentiment both exalted and religious gives the keynote to this scene.

            Moderate: Duo for the bride and her intended - scene of tenderness and passion.

            Quite fast: The revivalist and his flock. Folksy feelings - suggestions of square                                           dances and country fiddlers.

            Still faster: Solo dance of the bride - presentiment of motherhood. Extremes of                                          joy and fear and wonder.

            Very slowly (as at first): Transition scenes reminiscent of the introduction.

            Calm and flowing: Scenes of daily activity for the bride and her husband-farmer.

[This section presents five variations on a theme which is first given out by a solo clarinet - a tune called Simple gifts, which the composer borrowed from a collection of melodies from the rural American 'Shaker' community.]

            Moderate (coda): The bride takes her place among the neighbours . . . Finally the couple                                        are left 'quiet and strong in their new house'.

Rodeo, ballet-suite for orchestra                                  COPLAND
(1900 – 1990)

Aaron Copland occupies an unassailable position in American music. The son of Jewish emigrants from Poland and Lithuania, he was born in Brooklyn in 1900, into circumstances comfortable enough to allow him to study music. He took lessons from Goldmark, a distinguished emigrant from Vienna, and in 1920 went to Paris, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger, the first of her American pupils. In Europe he was able to meet a number of the leading young composers of the day and to see performances by Diaghilev’s Ballets russes. At the same time he was feeling his way towards a characteristically American style of composition that should be as clearly recognisable as the national style of the late nineteenth-century Russian composers. In 1924 Copland returned to America, where his compositions began to attract interest. At the same time he continued to maintain contact with musical trends in Europe and with expatriate American composers.

Rodeo was commissioned by the Ballet russe de Monte Carlo, as a cowboy ballet for its own repertory, having first been impressed by Billy the Kid. It proved an enormous success, receiving twenty-two curtain calls on opening night, as the audience was plainly delighted with the ‘cowgirl-gets-her-cowboy’ plot. The ballet scenario, as described in the programme, deals ‘with the problem that has confronted every American woman, from earliest pioneer times, and which has never ceased to occupy them throughout the history of the building of our country; how to get a suitable man!’ The plot traces the adventures of a cowgirl at Burnt Ranch, who competes with the city girls for the attention of local cowboys. The story carries her to a rodeo, then to a Saturday night dance at the ranch house. A roper and a wrangler fight for her. The girl then realises she is in love with the roper and goes off with him, whilst the wrangler finds consolation with the rancher’s daughter!

In the autumn of 1942, Copland adapted four dance episodes from the ballet score into an orchestral suite which received its first performance at a concert by the Boston Pops Orchestra, under the baton of Arthur Fiedler, on May 28, 1943. The first movement (Buckaroo Holiday)  uses motives from two American folk-songs, ‘Sis Joe’ and ‘If He’d Be a Buckaroo by His Trade’, which the composer found in Our Singing Country. In the ever-popular finale (Hoe Down), he quotes two square-dance tunes, ‘Bonyparte’ and ‘McLeod’s Reel’. The intervening movements are entitled Corral Nocturne and Saturday Night Waltz respectively.

A Promenade Overture                                                          JOHN CORIGLIANO
(born 1938)

New-Yorker, John Corigliano, wrote hisPromenade Overture in 1981 for the centenary of the Boston Symphony, but with the specification that the work would be played by the Boston Pops, who gave the first performance, under the direction of John Williams, on July 10, 1981.

Corigliano grew up in the world of symphony orchestras.  His father, also named John, was the first American‑born-and‑trained concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. It is only natural, then, that the younger Corigliano, when he became a composer, should write a great deal of music for orchestra.  Corigliano’s best-known works include his sensuous music for the Francois Girard film ‘The Red Violin’ (1997), his touching tribute to AIDS victims, Symphony No. 1 (1991), and his heady Pulitzer Prize winner, Symphony No. 2 (2001). His output, in a consciously accessible style, ranges from concertos to film scores and includes much vocal and dramatic music.
A Promenade Overture represents a particularly witty example of his re-imagining of the past, a reversal of one of music history’s most curious pieces, Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony. Haydn used this work, politely to point out to his patron that the court musicians wanted to leave the summer estate and return to Vienna. At the end of the symphony, Haydn had the musicians leave the stage, one by one, until only two violinists remained. Corigliano’s work is an about-face, with the musicians parading on stage (a note on the score reads: ‘Exhibitionism (up to a point) is encouraged!’) as they play. “It is a fun piece”, says Corigliano. “[It] starts out with four percussionists on stage with no conductor and no orchestra. The horns and trumpets play an opening fanfare backstage that just happens to be the last bars of the ‘Farewell’ Symphony backward. Then, section by section, the orchestra walks on stage while playing, even the cellos. There is a twist at the end, but we won't play spoiler here!” He adds, “It is really not hard, but it becomes hard because most orchestra musicians are not used to memorizing even eight bars of music!”

Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune                           

'Impressionism' is the label that clings to the music of Claude Debussy, though it was not one he liked. It was a term first attached in the 1870s to the work of painters such as Monet, whose concern with the effects of light and colour made their images fleeting rather than firm. In outdoor paintings Monet would allow night and fog, for example, to obscure the outline of objects seen. Thus Debussy's music often avoids regular, sharply outlined phrases; likewise its chords seem to pass meltingly from one to the next.

            With its delicate, suggestive orchestral colours, and with a time-span much briefer than that of most 'descriptive' orchestral works, this prelude was seen as a revolutionary work. But, so far from having to battle with a puzzled public, it was an immediate success and won an encore at its first performance in Paris in 1894.

            The poet Stéphane Mallarmé, known personally to the composer, published in 1876 his L'après-midi d'un faune: a faun (the mythical creature, half-man, half-goat), resting in a warm afternoon, speaks of his remembered love-ecstacies. In an early programme-note, written or at least approved by Debussy, the piece is called 'a very free illustration of the poem'. In the final section the faun, 'tired of pursuing the timorous flight of the nymphs and naiads, succumbs to intoxicating sleep'. A flute, the traditional instrument associated with such scenes of rustic love-making, has a prominent part, with three flutes required. Also heard are two 'ancient cymbals' or crotales, whose delicate chime is used only towards the end. The air of haziness and languor is conveyed by the flute's opening tune, suggesting an initial ambiguity of key. A contrast of sound comes with a smoother, rather heavier section, before the return of the original theme as the music fades into sleep.

Danses sacrées et profanes                                            DEBUSSY
                                                                                                            (1862 – 1918)

In 1903 Pleyel commissioned Debussy to compose a work to demonstrate the musical potential of his company’s new design of harp, a ‘chromatic harp’ with a string for each semitone, which they had devised in 1897. Not to be outdone, the rival Érard firm, principal manufacturer of the conventional pedal harp, hired Ravel to write a piece to display the expressive range of their instrument. Érard’s design eventually proved the more successful, but like Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro, Debussy’s Danses (1904) are now equally well-established in the conventional pedal-harp repertoire. The Danse sacrée begins with strummed chords over a misty background, and showcases increasingly complex and rapid figurations and harmonies, all amid reticent shadows of the orchestral support: it has an antique character, coloured by modal rather than tonal harmony, influenced perhaps by the style of Satie’s Gymnopédies for piano (two of which Debussy orchestrated), but far more sophisticated. In the composer’s own words: ‘It’s not possible to write down the exact form of a rhythm, any more than it is to explain the different effects of a single phrase’. The contrasting Danse profane introduces a gentle waltz theme in D major, with a definite hint of virtuosity, which is developed with exquisite grace and increasingly elaborate harp ornamentation, and builds to an impassioned climax and deliberately understated, almost tongue-in-cheek finish. Interestingly, both works initially provoked criticism in Paris for a lack of formal structure and, strangely enough, for perceived dissonance. Later, the Swiss conductor, Ernest Ansermet, pointed out that the Danse sacrée wasbased on a piano piece by his teacher, Francisco de Lacerda, whilst composer, Manuel de Falla, claimed the Danse profane as one of Debussy’s ‘Spanish’ pieces.

Summer Night on the River                                                   DELIUS
                                                                                      (1862-1934)

The baptismal names Fritz Theodor Albert reveal Delius’s German descent, but he was born in Bradford, calling himself Frederick Delius. He was in his mid-twenties before enrolling for study at the Leipzig conservatory. There he met Grieg, who was to influence him both in harmonic style, and in a belief in folk-music as a composer’s raw material. He made his home in France but his appearance at a Delius Festival in London in 1929 (by which time he had become blind) was the moment of his most significant recognition.

         The tone poem Summer Night on the River is a companion piece to On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, and was introduced at the same concert, in Leipzig on the 2nd October, 1913. However, it was not intended to be the kind of impressionistic setting that The First Cuckoo is. The pictorial description is direct rather than suggestive, the vague harmonies bring up a picture of mists settling over the river, with the rhythms suggest the rocking of small boats. A cello solo is the main melodic idea – a beautiful song, creating an atmosphere of peace and mystery that embraces the river on a summer night.

Symphony No 8 in G major, Op 88                            DVOŘÁK
Allegro con brio                                              (1841-1904)
Adagio
Allegretto grazioso
Allegro ma non troppo

Dvořák’s nine symphonies span a period of nearly thirty years. The first two were written in 1865, and the last in 1893. In 1884 Dvořák bought a small property at Vysoka and it was there that, in the autumn of 1889, he wrote his Eighth Symphony, commemorating his admission as a member of the Emperor Franz Josef’s Czech Academy of Science, Literature and the Arts on the score’s title page. The first performance was in Prague in February 1890, followed by a performance in London under the composer’s direction in April, and in June in Cambridge, where he received an honorary doctorate from the University. The symphony was published in London by Novello, strong supporters of the composer, whose Vienna publisher, Simrock, had proved keener to buy shorter pieces, for which there was always a ready market. A performance under Richter in Vienna had to wait until January 1891. Apart from its hint of birdsong, the relaxed and happy feelings of this symphony suggest the nickname of Dvořák’s ‘Pastoral’, showing the composer’s desire to bring freshness to symphonic form. The symphony, scored for an orchestra that includes piccolo, cor anglais and tuba, in addition to the pairs of other woodwind instruments, four horns, trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani and strings, is imbued with the spirit of Bohemia. Trombones and tuba are, however, absent from the two middle movements, thereby rendering the outer ones more emphatic.

            The opening is deceptive – a sustained tune in G minor, sung by the cellos, conceals the point that the movement is to be anchored to G major, which emerges with a solo flute in a high, chirruping tune. After a brief climax, another pair of themes arrives, a soft, introspective theme on the strings in E major, and a lively, march-like tune on the flutes in B minor, which is then expanded by the full orchestra. A short, vigorous development quietens over a long, subdued timpani roll, when the recapitulation begins, the first theme now softly breathed by horns and cellos.  After another climax, the cor anglais recalls the flute’s chirruping theme in a lower register, and the music then sets off again, taking in the march theme on its way to a confident finish.

            The slow movement brings a similar ambivalence, with its two contrasted moods. One section in C minor is pensive, even wistful, with lingering, repetitive phrases on paired woodwind, whilst the other, in C major, is more vigorous, incorporating a happy melody for flute and oboe, as well as a high violin solo. Both sections are, in turn, brought back in varied guise.

            The third movement, in the form of a scherzo, but without the usual suggestion of humour or abruptness, begins with a swinging song-like theme in G minor on the strings. No less attractive is the contrasting central section (trio) in the tonic major, with its tune on flute and oboe, originally heard in the composer’s opera, The Stubborn Lovers. After a literal repeat of the first part, a coda merrily turns the melody-line of the trio from 3/4 into a quick 2/4 time.

            A trumpet fanfare begins the finale, ushering in a gently-lilting cello theme, the subject of a series of variations. The theme, reminiscent of the ‘chirruping’ theme from the first movement, comprises two short sections, each repeated. After the fourth variation, the music changes to a march with a mock-grumpy theme in C minor. The fanfare returns in varied form, and four other variations follow, the last one extended and quickened to provide for a joyful finish.

In Nature’s Realm, Op 91                                            DVORAK
                                                                                              (1841 – 1904)

Dvorak must be considered the greatest of the Czech nationalist composers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and he certainly enjoys the widest international popularity. His achievement was to bring together music that derived its inspiration from Bohemia’s woods and fields with the classical traditions continued by Brahms in Vienna. His three overtures In Nature’s Realm, Carnival and Othello were originally given the titles ‘Nature’, ‘Life’ and ‘Love’, and were intended as a trilogy of symphonic poems, the first of them dedicated to Cambridge University, where Dvorak received an honorary doctorate in 1891, and the second to the University of Prague, where he had received a similar honour a year earlier, the period of their composition. The three overtures are united thematically, by a recurrent pastoral theme, which makes its first appearance, appropriately in In Nature’s Realm.

In Nature’s Realm, according to the composer, presents ‘the emotions awakened in a solitary walk through meadows and woods on a quiet summer afternoon, when the shadows grow longer until they lose themselves in the dusk and gradually turn into the early shades of night’. A tranquil melody in bassoons and violas, with answering statements in the flute, comprise the first subject. After a loud repetition of this theme in full orchestra, the strings present a new sensitive subject. A climax, and a forceful restatement of the first theme, precede a fantasia section where the two melodies are developed freely. The coda is brought in with a loud recall of the first theme in horns and trumpets, but ends serenely.

Rusalka’s Song To The Moon                                               DVORÁK
                                                                                      (1841-1904)
At a time when verismo opera was all the rage, Dvorák turned to the world of fairy tales for his penultimate opera, Rusalka. Dvorák was highly influenced by both Smetana and Wagner, who were both former conductors at his provisional theatre. Smetana was one of the first composers to include part of the folklore and culture of former Czechoslovakia into his music. Dvorák also followed this tradition by incorporating the Slavonic dances into his musical compositions. The opera Rusalka represents this nationalistic movement by combining both the folk customs and dances of Czechoslovakia, as well as the enlightenment’s concern with moving towards the mystical wonders of nature. Nature represented the simple and peaceful state of the human consciousness. People began to search for music that displayed these qualities of nature and Dvorák used nature as a theme throughout Rusalka.
The musical structure was flexible, more deeply expressive, less laden with coloratura, and more varied in the musical resources than its operatic predecessors. The importance of the orchestration is made apparent in the beginning of the aria of ‘Song to the Moon’ from Act I, by dramatically evoking the night. The harmonic depth of the accompaniment was beautiful not only in its lyrical mastery, but also in setting the scene of a mystical forest. His bewitching tones depict the moonlit forest which creates absolute silence and stillness over the audience.
The libretto, by Jaroslav Kvapil, combines elements from three fairy tales, Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s Undine, and Gerhart Hautpmann’s The Sunken Bell. The lyrics also display the nationalistic usage of Bohemian mythological stories and in its unique descriptions of nature which was characterized during the enlightenment. In the beginning of the aria, Dvorak uses large arpeggiated chords to invite the audience into the fairy tale land of Rusalka. The good-natured old Spirit of the Lake, Jezibab, is enjoying the singing of the Wood Nymphs, when his daughter, Rusalka, approaches him sadly. She tells him that she has fallen in love with a handsome young prince and wishes to become human in order to know the bliss of union with him. Deeply saddened, the Spirit of the Lake consents to her request and leaves. All alone, Rusalka sings this beautiful aria, confiding in the moon the secrets of her longing.

Overture, Cockaigne                                      

The composer's subtitle for the work is 'In London Town', and its main title is a pun - cockaigne as a literary term for a land of make-believe, and cockney as the nickname for a Londoner. It celebrates the pomp and high spirits of London life, and was born at a time when patriotism found satisfaction in the successful military campaign which was bringing the South African War to an end. The first performance, in London on 20 June 1901, was conducted by the composer.

            Celebration is conveyed not only in the themes but also by the exuberant orchestral writing, culminating in the addition of an organ. In a section imitating a marching band, the printed score suggests the reinforcement of the three standard trombones by another two. A combination of small bells and triangle presumably represents the jingles of a horse's harness.

            Although a pattern of sonata-form (exposition - development - recapitulation) can be traced in the work, the overall feeling is one of continuous development, with reappearances of principal themes and an enormous climax at the end. Given the 'scenic' character of the whole, the commonly accepted labelling of principal themes makes sense. The animated opening section produces a broad 'citizens' theme for full orchestra; a quieter section yields a smooth and gentle 'lovers' theme for strings; later there is a military-band march and the hint of a Salvation Army presence in the beat of tambourine and bass drum. The citizens' and lovers' themes and the marching-band themes, with subsidiary material, all recur. Finally, as the organ enters, the citizens' theme gets its apotheosis, not in the home but shifting quickly home to C major for the final few bars, clinched by the kettledrums.

Overture, Froissart                                                     

Far removed from London musical institutions and Continental conservatories was an intense, poetic, entirely self-taught aspiring composer in Worcester who in today’s parlance would be described as a peripatetic violin teacher. In a letter dated 1 January 1890, Edward Elgar (1857-1934) was invited to write an orchestral work for that year’s Three Choirs Festival in Worcester. This had undoubtedly been provoked by the rapidly growing local reputation he was gaining as player, composer and conductor, yet even so it was a bold choice. Elgar decided on the form of a descriptive overture and, fired by references in Scott’s Old Mortality to the medieval chronicler Froissart, he started work in April, prefacing the score with a quotation from Keats: ‘When Chivalry lifted up her lance on high’.
Yet it was probably the two most significant events of the previous year that prompted the 32-year-old composer to undertake this idealised portrait of knightly valour and fidelity to a lady-love: his marriage, and the overwhelming impression created by performances at Covent Garden of Die Meistersinger. The arresting opening has the unmistakable imprint of Elgar, but the jaunty, dotted ‘knightly’ figure that pervades much of the overture’s thematic material can be traced back directly to the music with which Walther von Stolzing is introduced to the assembled mastersingers. Two things immediately impress in this astonishingly assured first essay in extended form: the music’s characteristic blend of ebullience and wistfulness, and the orchestration which already has in embryo all the distinguishing features that were so soon to earn the epithet ‘Elgarian’. The composer retained a lifelong affection for the work: revising the score for publication in 1901 he wrote to his friend Jaeger: ‘What jolly healthy stuff it is – quite shameless in its rude young health!’.
Froissart was easily Elgar’s most ambitious orchestral work to date. Indeed its adventurous sonata structure had no precedent in his output. The Andante presents three distinct ideas. The first descends by mainly arpeggio steps into the depths before covering wider and wider intervals to reach the D from which it began. There follows a march motif on the horns. The third is a theme that starts chromatically and describes the shape of Wagnerian ‘love’. Against the accompaniment of continuous dactyls at the Allegro moderato, the Wagner tune expands to include a falling seventh and is developed imitatively between the violins. A tutti statement of the arpeggio and march themes from the introduction ends the first subject group, and a gradual diminuendo is managed with the repetitive charm of Dvorák. The second subject in F derives equally from the first tune of the introduction and the love theme, and there are many quick Elgarian ‘hairpins’, those sudden accesses of passion he made so much his own. Elgar's attitude to development was idiosyncratic. This is the only one of the three concert overtures to attempt extended manipulation of the exposition’s data in five closely knit sections; the others introduce new and largely independent material. If the logic of the development was diffuse the recapitulation is notably succinct. By various short cuts Elgar reaches the second subject in twenty-five instead of sixty bars. With the cello as protagonist, the tone is now more richly scored. The coda starts with a tamed version of the march against a magical background of six-part violins. Over a dominant pedal the Wagner motif takes over in the wind, while the initial semiquavers of the work build to a brief summary of the essential materials and a final stringendo to the end of Elgar's first orchestral success.

 

Chanson de matin                                                                  

Without formal conservatory training, Edward Elgar rose from modest provincial origins to become his country's leading composer, and the first native-born Englishman to establish a firm place in the international repertory of symphony, overture and concerto. He grumbled on occasions at the need to earn money by writing a number of shorter pieces, instead of giving his time to larger works, but from his earliest days he kept sketch-books of ideas and, as a good craftsman, he would never waste any that were left over from other compositions if he could make something else from them! Thus in 1899 Elgar orchestrated an earlier sketch for violin and piano which suggested itself as a companion-piece to Chanson de nuit: he called it Chanson de matin and foresaw, correctly again, that it would attain immense popularity.

Chanson de nuit                                                      

During a visit to London in late October 1897, to conduct three of the Bavarian Highland Scenes at a Crystal Palace Promenade Concert, Elgar left with Novellos a new violin piece - another slow G major melody with a contrasted episode of darkly descending steps. Provisionally he called it Evensong, which the publishers persuaded him to change to Chanson de nuit, offering 10 guineas for the copyright. Elgar replied:

"I wish you could arrange terms for it which would leave me some interest in it: the last Violin piece I wrote [Salut d'amour], which unfortunately I sold some years ago for a nominal sum, now sells well - I understand 3000 copies were sold in the month of January alone. An orchestral arrangement of this piece no doubt materially helped the sale, and the piece you now have would arrange satisfactorily for a small orchestra. In any case I accept the terms you offer."

When published, the new piece approached the popularity of Salut d'amour.

Wand of Youth Suites I & II(extracts)                      
Overture – Sun Dance – Fairies and Giants - Moths and Butterflies – Wild Bears

Like most children, Edward and his brothers and sisters engaged in fantasy games, but theirs were more ambitious and purposeful than most. At tender ages (Edward was eleven at the time), they staged a play based on their fantasy world from which adults, lacking an understanding and appreciation of children, were banned. Elgar composed a few simple tunes to be played as incidental music by an improvised band using whatever instruments the Elgar children could lay their hands on. A few years later, Elgar committed the tunes to one of his sketchbooks.

We do not know what sort of reception the play or its music received but it clearly made a lasting impression on Elgar. Some 40 years later, having passed his fiftieth birthday, he dug out his sketchbooks and set to work turning the incidental music into these two charming suites. The pieces may be melodically and structurally simple but the orchestration is delightful, far in advance of what the youthful Elgar could have achieved with the limited resources and skills then available to him. Curiously, Elgar chose to disregard the chronology and gave the suites the opus number 1, demonstrating to the world his wish that they should be regarded as no more than a new arrangement of his earliest surviving work.

The first suite begins with a vigorous Overture, where even in such an early work, Elgar’s fondness for the falling 7th interval is already evident. Sun Dance is a tour de force from every point of view, where the flashes of reflected sunlight are presented in especially graphic fashion. Fairies and Giants concludes the first suite, where the Fairies’ fleetness of foot is heard, contrasted with the more ponderous movement of the Giant. Moths and Butterflies is an essay in woodwind virtuosity. The middle section features an expressive melody passed between violins and flute. Nothing more exhilarating as a Finale can be imagined than the Wild Bears movement. Rhythmic impulse and a rich fund of orchestral resources combine to leave the impression of a fully-matured style. It is as if the elder composer had decided to give the boy whose work this is, the benefit of his experience, and to round off his play-music with a brilliant flourish saying, “There you are! That’s what you were really after, isn’t it?”

Sea Pictures, Op 37                                                    
Sea Slumber Song - In Haven (Capri) - Sabbath Morning at Sea - Where Corals Lie - The Swimmer

Written immediately after the Enigma Variations, Elgar’s Sea Pictures have had a curious performance history. Whilst they were well accepted by the public from the outset, when the striking contralto, Clara Butt, appeared at the Norwich Festival in October 1899 dressed in a mermaid outfit and not in a corset (“guiltless of all confinement” was the contemporary description), the songs have suffered from rather stuffy academic and critical commentary centering on the lack of profundity of their poems. Actually, however, in the era when Mahler was integrating the banal and the sublime in his Second and Third symphonies, and not too long before Berg would be setting lyrics from picture postcards in his Altenberg Lieder, these exquisite miniatures of Elgar are quite cutting-edge, ushering in a new aesthetic more inclusive of popular culture. Certainly in the age of Gilbert and Sullivan, the line between the opera house and the music hall was unclear. Additionally, looking at the creation of these five lyrics, it is enlightening to note that the first composed was penned by Elgar's wife. Perhaps her husband did not want to upstage her work with excerpts from Milton or Shakespeare!
The cycle is a marvel of interwoven musical thought. One simple rising and falling motif from In Haven (Capri) is the sole building block for the five numbers. The ocean is the comforting, lullaby-singing mother in Sea Slumber Song, peaceful and storm-tossed by turns in the Alice Elgar and the Browning. Perhaps the most remarkable three minutes in all of Elgar is the heart-wrenching Where Corals Lie, with verses by Richard Garnett the younger, a major Pre-Raphaelite figure. The final song, The Swimmer, sets the poetry of Adam Gordon, a figure whose suicide would have been familiar to all in the original audiences. The intensity of its striving only increases the yearning for death. For the composer, Sea Pictures is a diving down to the depths of his soul, an antidote to the celebratory veneer of the Enigma. From this point onward, the sea would become a poignant emblem of death for English composers, from Finzi’s Channel Firing, to Britten’s Peter Grimes.

March, Pomp and Circumstance No 1 in D                 ELGAR

“I’ve got a tune that will knock ‘em - knock ‘em flat,” Elgar announced to his friend Dora Penny, Dorabella of the Enigma Variations, in May 1901, referring to the tune from the trio section from his March in D major. The march was given its first performance, along with a second march in A minor on 19 October 1901 at Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool with the Liverpool Orchestral Society Orchestra conducted by the composer. The great acclaim afforded the work there was surpassed at the London première three days later. The conductor, Henry Wood, recorded: “The people simply rose and yelled. I had to play it again - with the same result; in fact, they refused to let me go on with the programme. After considerable delay [and] merely to restore order I played the march a third time. And that, I may say, was the one and only time in the history of the Promenade concerts that such an orchestral item was accorded a double encore.” This was, of course, even without the subsequent association with A.C. Benson's words Land of Hope and Glory, which were added to the tune in Elgar’s Coronation Ode of 1902.

Cello Concerto in E minor, Op 85             ELGAR
            Adagio - Moderato, leading to
                        Allegro molto
                        Adagio
                        Allegro ma non troppo

The ‘autumnal’ period of Edward Elgar (1857-1934) after the First World War is marked by this concerto, his last major work, which was given its first performance under the composer’s baton on October 27, 1919 with Felix Salmond as soloist. It is unusual in being in four movements rather than three, and in its nominally ‘heavy’ (but lightly used) brass section - 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones and optional tuba - besides double woodwind, timpani and strings.

            The first movement opens with a further unusual touch, the slow introduction declaimed ff  and nobilmente by the soloist before the orchestral violas present the flowing main theme, which the cello soon takes over. A contrasting theme with a distinctive lilt is heard from clarinets and bassoons. The music takes on a new warmth in moving from E minor to E major, but dies away in the minor key. Orchestral cellos and basses hold a single low note as a link into the second movement.

            After an echo of the slow introduction to the first movement the soloist launches into a kind of scherzo, basically in the relative major key of G. Rapid articulations of repeated notes for the solo instrument contrast with a particular rhetorical phrase which has a gap like an intake of breath. The impetus is continuous to the end.

            The third movement, in B flat, is short and, in its brevity and eloquence, perhaps the most remarkable of all. The orchestral accompaniment is reduced to clarinet, bassoons and two horns. It starts with an introductory, questioning phrase in the orchestra. The ‘answer’ is supplied by a sweeping, elegiac melody for the solo instrument passing to remote keys and then returning to the tonic. The original questioning phrase needing an answer returns, but the movement ends there, unfulfilled.

            The orchestra begins the finale softly but almost gruffly. After a few bars the cello intervenes with the original introductory music from the first movement and passes to an eloquent cadenza. Now, in a more resolute vein than anything previously in the concerto, the main part of the finale begins. It is built on a rhythmic transformation of that introductory material to the first movement. The soloist’s skills both of expression and of agility are tested and at length a new intensity envelops the music. There is a change to the triple time of the slow movement and a passionate recall of the opening bars of the concerto in their original key. The time for tender recollection is now over, as a brisk coda in E minor ends the work.

Enigma Variations, Op 36ELGAR
                                                                                                (1857-1934)

Elgar’s title was simply Variations on an original theme, with the dedication ‘to my friends pictured within’. Over the theme itself he placed the word ‘Enigma’, about which he wrote elsewhere as follows:

The enigma I will not explain – its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the variations and the theme is often of the slightest texture; further through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played.

It has been conjectured that this ‘hidden’ tune is Auld Lang Syne, but the work is self-sufficient, and straightforward in construction. The theme is in three-part design, (minor – major – minor), and some variations come to a complete stop, others simply flow into the next. Equally, it may be seen that the work has its larger dimensions or ‘movements’ in the symphonic sense. An opening ‘movement’ in forthright vein spans the first four variations and pivots on the keynote G (minor and major). A new movement now begins (Variations V-VII) – two ‘serious’ variations sealed by a jocular one. A third movement has two further variations in the home key (VIII, X) enclosing the centre-piece of Nimrod. A finale begins with Variation XI, which reasserts the home key, culminating in XII (representing the composer himself) which, with its midway plunge into E flat (the key of Nimrod), is like a distillation of all that has gone before.

Theme:Begins in the minor key; after a few bars there is a new tune (clarinet solo) in the major; then strings lead back to the first tune. Strings and clarinets hold a chord which leads without a break into…
Variation I: (‘CAE’ – Elgar’s wife, Caroline Alice). Begins softly; leads to a climax in the middle in which trombones, tuba, and timpani join; quiet end.
Variation II: (‘HDS-P’ – Hew David Steuart-Powell, an amateur pianist). Fast and light. Begins on violins alone and ends with a single note on cellos and basses pizzicato.
Variation III: (‘RBT’ – Richard Baxter Townshend). Rather light and waltz-like; a prominent bassoon solo and quiet end.
Variation IV: (‘WMB’ – William Meath Baker, apparently an emphatic man!) Loud, heavily accented, and bringing in all departments of the orchestra at the end.
Variation V: (‘RPA’ – Richard Penrose Arnold, a son of Matthew Arnold, the poet). A serious mood is struck in the violins’ lower register; in contrast is a sunny outburst on woodwind. The first strain returns, then the second, then first again. A long, subdued timpani roll leads without a break from the minor key into…
Variation VI: (‘Ysobel’ – Isabel Fitton, a viola-player). The major key takes over for this graceful and thoughtful melody, violas having the main tune.
Variation VII: (‘Troyte’ – Arthur Troyte Griffith, a very close friend). Rather fierce. Timpani solo at the start and most of the way through.
Variation VIII: (‘WN’ – Winifred Norbury). Clarinets begin the tune: the mood is fresh and delicate. At the end, violins hold a single note which leads into…
Variation XI: (‘Nimrod’ – August Johannes Jaeger: the Bible refers to ‘Nimrod, the mighty hunter’, and Jaeger, whose name is German for hunter, was a close friend who worked for Novello’s, Elgar’s publishers.) Slow and majestic. Full orchestral climax, dying away right at the end.
Variation X: (‘Dorabella’ – Dora Penny). Muted strings start a playful dialogue with woodwind. Brass silent throughout.
Variation XI: (‘GRS’ George Robertson Sinclair, with an energetic bulldog!) Fast and boisterous.
Variation XII: (‘BGN’ – Basil Nevinson, a cellist). A solo cello opens this expressive variation – and ends it, passing straight into…
Variation XIII: (‘***’ – Lady Mary Lygon, a friend who had been on a sea voyage; this attribution has been queried but not re-assigned). Shortly, over a slow, wave-like accompaniment, a clarinet plays a falling melodic scrap from Mendelssohn’s overture A Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. This returns at the end.
Finale: (‘EDU’ – Edoo being a pet-name of his wife’s for Elgar himself). Beginning quietly, like a far-off march coming nearer, it builds gradually into the mightiest climax of the work.  

Symphonic Picture from 'Porgy and Bess'                   GERSHWIN   (1898 – 1937)
arr. Bennett

Having successfully tackled the forms of the rhapsody, concerto, overture, prelude and variations, Gershwin began thinking of writing an opera, but the problem of a suitable libretto had to be resolved. He remembered a Theatre Guild production he had seen some years earlier, a play called Porgy by DuBose Heyward. The American flavour, and the poignant story of the love of Bess for the crippled Porgy, impressed themselves strongly on Gershwin's consciousness. The more he thought of it, the more he felt that this was an ideal subject for an opera, a native American opera, possibly a folk opera.

            The libretto was prepared by Heyward in collaboration with Ira Gershwin. Then George Gershwin set to work on the music, going to Charleston, South Carolina, for several weeks and living in a shack on the waterfront, in order to absorb the music of the Gullah Negroes. It took him eleven months to put his opera down on paper, and an additional nine months for the orchestration. Though the music makes use of certain Negro idioms, the songs are genuine Gershwin. Several of them, including Summertime and I Got Plenty of Nuthin', are famous outside their operatic context. Its première took place in Boston on 30 September 1935, but it was not immediately successful. The critics felt that, though there were lovely songs in it, the work was neither opera nor musical comedy, but a sort of hybrid product. However, it did not have to wait indefinitely for full recognition and in 1955  it was the first American opera ever to be performed at La Scala, Milan.

            The story, set in a Negro tenement in Catfish Row, Charleston, tells how Porgy falls in love with Bess, who is lured away from him by a character called Sportin' Life. The score is most memorable for its succession of wonderful songs, choral chants, folk tunes and street melodies - many strongly ethnic in character and idiom. The recitatives are moulded after the inflexions of Negro speech, whilst the songs are grounded either in Negro folk music or in those American popular idioms that sprang out of Negro backgrounds. Gershwin's street cries emulate those of Negro vendors in Charleston, and his choral pages are deeply rooted in spirituals and 'shouts'.

            An excellent orchestral tone poem was made from the opera's basic melodies by Robert  Russell Bennett. Entitled Symphonic Picture, the work was written at the request of conductor, Fritz Reiner, who introduced it with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on 5 February 1942. The various  sections of Bennett's tone poem are: Scene of Catfish Row with the peddlers' calls; Opening of Act II; Summertime and Opening of Act I; I Got Plenty of Nuthin'; Storm Music; Bess, You Is My Woman Now; It Ain't Necessarily So; and the finale, Oh, Lawd I'm on My Way.

RHAPSODY IN BLUE                                                          GERSHWIN   (1898 – 1937)
                                                                                    

George Gershwin, born Jacob Gershvitz to Russian immigrant parents in Brooklyn, was deflected from street games in down-town Manhattan into music by the family purchase of a piano in 1910. Four years later he had left school to earn a living as a pianist and ‘song-plugger’ in Tin Pan Alley, before long contributing his own songs with growing success. With some tuition in the techniques of composition he turned his attention, at the same time, to music of a less immediate commercial appeal. His principal contemporary reputation, however, rested largely on the songs he wrote for Broadway with his brother Ira Gershwin, both aspects of his career coming together in his opera Porgy and Bess, which he started writing when he was at the height of his commercial fame, in 1934.

It was ten years earlier, in 1924, that Gershwin had responded to a commission from Paul Whiteman, an exponent of symphonic jazz, for a concerto for piano and jazz band. The result was Rhapsody in Blue, a work that represents a step in the American search for a musical identity. It was orchestrated for Gershwin by Whiteman’s arranger Ferde Grofé. Whiteman himself had enjoyed an earlier career as a viola-player in major American orchestras in Denver and San Francisco, before becoming one of the best known of the post-War band-leaders.

The imitations of vocalized ‘blue’ notes, the use of added-note harmonies favoured by dance-bands of the time, and a profusion of appealing melodies gained an immediate following for the piece. The term rhapsody seems to allude to Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies and Gershwin emulates their succulent tunes with, this time with an American flavour. The design has no complications. A famous low trill on the clarinet and a skyward ascent lead to the first theme, which eventually leads to a more sentimental melody which becomes the main and most memorable theme of the work. Although Gershwin did receive some formal musical training, his abiding weakness was structure. Thus, notwithstanding a great love for the piece, Leonard Bernstein disparaged the Rhapsody in Blue as ‘not a composition at all [but] a string of … terrific tunes … stuck together with a thin paste of flour and water’. 

Symphony No 5 in B flat major, Op 55                      GLAZUNOV

                                                                                                            (1865 – 1936)
Moderato; Maestoso; Allegro
Scherzo (Moderato)
Andante
Allegro; Maestoso

Glazunov’s Fifth Symphony is composed in the form of a four-part cycle, with traditional contrasting of the movements. However, its contents are distinctive, and typical of the composer. Like his other compositions, it abounds with Russian musical fingerprints, though more frequently than in earlier works, rendering its melodies particularly flexible and diverse in expression.

The Fifth Symphony was composed in 1895, and is dedicated to Taneyev, whose monumental Oresteia, based on Aeschylus, was first performed in the same year. Glazunov’s work met with approval from Rimsky-Korsakov, who found in it the beginning of something new, although a few years later his youngest daughter, Nadezhda Nikolayevna, expressed dislike for it, when she played it through, rather badly, we are told, with Stravinsky. The first movement opens with a strong motif in the lower register of the orchestra, answered by the woodwind, the outline of the first subject heard from bassoons and cellos in the Allegro that follows the solemn introductory section. The material forms the substance of the transition that leads to the secondary theme, heard first from flute and clarinet with harp accompaniment, as it shifts in harmony from D minor to the dominant key of F major. There is a technically-assured development, before the varied return of the material and the excitement of the final section of the movement. The G minor Scherzo has a reminiscence of Mendelssohn about it and a more direct debt to Tchaikovsky. It includes a trio section, and elements of both return at its conclusion. The principal theme of the E flat major Andante is first heard from the violins. An interruption by the brass introduces contrasting material, before the return of the thematic substance of the first section of the movement. The symphony, very properly, ends with a rondo, always with rhythmic and melodic suggestions of Russia, both in its principal theme and in its contrasting episodes.

Overture, ‘A Life for the Tsar’                              
                                                                                                            (1804 – 1857)

Mikhail Glinka, sometimes affectionately known as the ‘father of Russian music’, was born on his family’s estate near Smolensk. His schooling in St Petersburg brought him into wider contact with Western music and his later career, initially with a government sinecure in the Ministry of Communications, allowed him to pursue a somewhat irregular course of musical activity as a composer and as a drawing-room performer. Travel to Italy and later to Germany gave him an opportunity to broaden his experience still further, and to acquire, through lessons with Siegfried Dehn in Berlin, some technical competence as a composer.

In 1834, on the death of his father, Glinka returned to Russia, dreaming about writing a national Russian opera. ‘My most earnest desire’, he wrote to a friend, ‘is to compose music which would make all my beloved fellow countrymen feel quite at home, and lead no one to allege that I strutted about in borrowed plumes!.’ By 1836 he had completed an opera that he had at first called Ivan Susanin, later to be known as A Life for the Tsar, and based on historical events of 1612, when the Russian, Susanin, was instrumental in saving the new Romanov Tsar from the Polish army. The overture’s dignified introduction highlights a theme for oboe, whilst, in the main part, a vigorous theme undergoes transformation and elaboration before the second main subject appears on the clarinet.

Concerto for piano and orchestra in A minor   GRIEG
Allegro molto moderato                                  (1843-1907)
                   Adagio, leading to
Allegro moderato molto e marcato

The concerto was completed in the summer of 1868, while Grieg was on holiday in Denmark. The twenty-five-year-old composer was staying near Copenhagen, and had deliberately set time aside for composition. By now he had become interested in the folk music of Norway, and his music was beginning to show a more nationalist romanticism, and fewer traces of Schumann. Nonetheless, when he came to plan the concerto, it was Schumann’s A minor Piano Concerto of 1841-5 that provided the structural basis for his own lyrical masterpiece, though the orchestration reflects the later nineteenth-century preference for larger resources. Nevertheless, this had led critics to deride the work as a weak imitation of the earlier concerto. However, generations of pianists and music-lovers have decided otherwise and, in a letter to his parents, Grieg described the effect the closing bars had on Liszt, who played through the concerto when Grieg visited him in Rome: ‘He suddenly stopped, rose to his full height, left the piano and walked with stalwart, theatrical step through the great hall of the monastery, while he fairly bellowed the theme. At the G natural, he stretched out his arm commandingly like an emperor and shouted “G, G, not G sharp!”’ Grieg gave the first performance in Copenhagen in 1869, with himself at the piano.

The first movement begins with the famous timpani roll and the piano’s cascading octaves. But then, instead of an orchestral exposition, followed later by a conventional solo entry, piano and orchestra share the exposition between them. The pace then slows for the arrival of the warmly romantic second subject in C major, on the cellos. After an animated development, the opening material return, with the second subject again stated by the cellos, now in the tonic major, and more warmly accompanied. A long, exciting cadenza (fully written-out by the composer, of course) is followed by a brisk coda.

The key shifts to the remote one of D flat for the softly-breathed melody on muted strings which opens the second movement, itself a wonder in terms of orchestration, with solo horn adding its plaintive ‘blue’ notes to the filigree of the texture. The opening tune is finally glorified by the soloist, with great power and strength, before the sound dies away.

But there is no pause, as the finale follows on immediately, a rhythmic utterance of clarinets and bassoons and a flourish on the piano, which lead to the main theme given out by the soloist in a Norwegian folk-dance rhythm. In the next main theme, the piano also takes the initiative with three strong deta