Heights Chamber Orchestra Concert, Sunday February 23, 2003
Program Notes
Overture in D
major: “In the Italian style" and
Symphony No. 3 in D-major
Franz Peter Schubert (31 January 1797 to 19 November 1828)
Schubert was a true Romantic who lighted the way for many composers who
followed. Early in adult life, he chose to devote himself to friends and music,
largely abandoning materialistic life in order to create. He said, "I
have come into the world for no purpose but to compose."
In
July 1815, Schubert composed his third symphony, in all its essentials, in eight
days, proving at age 18 that he had achieved full mastery of symphonic
technique. With friends he privately performed the work during the same summer
(none of his nine symphonies had a public performance in his lifetime) and then,
as with his other orchestral works, it was placed on a pile and forgotten while
he created new works. Not until February 1881, in London did the public hear the
complete work.
He
composed his "Italian" overture in November 1817, and his circle of
friends first performed it privately, as usual. At this time in Vienna,
Gioacchino Rossini was the rage, to the dismay of the basic Germanic composers.
Schubert, of course, fully embraced Rossini's appealing style and caught to
perfection the delightful spirit of the Italian's operatic music. Consisting of
a theatrically dramatic Adagio and a sprightly Allegro, the work
echoes not only Rossini and the Italian style but also the wit and spontaneity
of a youthful Schubert. It became his first orchestral work to enjoy a public
performance.
In
the autumn of 1819, Schubert endured a time of unusual personal and artistic
insecurity. He moved in student circles that were constantly watched by the
police, and saw one of his best friends arrested, with himself receiving a
warning for "maliciously reviling the authorities".
Schubert
worshipped Beethoven with almost blind adoration. When in 1827, he heard that
the master had seen some of his songs and praised them; he summoned courage to
visit the dying Beethoven, standing in silent veneration at the bedside for
several hours. Schubert was a torchbearer at the funeral and afterward went with
friends to a tavern to drink to their departed hero. He raised a toast "to
the one who will be first among us." To
follow Beethoven to the grave. Then, in prophetic vision, begged his friends
that, should he die soon, they would bury him near Beethoven.
The final years of Schubert's
life produced uninterrupted creation of new music that neither despair nor
futility could smother. He lived with friends, moving place to place, and in
autumn of 1828, his health began to rapidly deteriorate.
He died late in the afternoon of November 19 and two days later was
buried in the Währing cemetery, close to Beethoven as he had requested. Franz
Schober, his devoted friend, read a poetic farewell:
“May peace at last is with you!
Angel-pure soul!
In the full bloom of Youth,
the
stroke of Death has seized you
and extinguished the pure light within you!"
Concerto
for Cello in G-minor RV 416
Antonio (Lucio) Vivaldi (4 March 1678 to 28 July 1741)
Antonio
Vivaldi (1678-1741) was 25 years of age when he was appointed maestro di violino
at the Pio Ospedale della Pieta. This was one of four institutions in Venice
that took in orphaned or indigent children and
prepared them for musical careers. Vivaldi maintained an affiliation with the
Pieta for most of his life, first as violin teacher, then as composer.
Even when he was engaged on extensive performing tours all over Europe,
Vivaldi was contracted to send two manuscript concertos a month by mail to the
Pieta for the use of the students there.
The concerto is the form most closely associated with Vivaldi the composer. He
was one of the first international musical superstars, a charismatic performer
who was variously described as vain, egotistical,
fiery, mercurial, demonic, and hyper-sensitive – in short, the quintessential
concerto soloist! His manner of writing concertos offered the perfect vehicle
for himself, and was immediately imitated all over Europe.
Contemporary musical commentators suggested that Vivaldi was possessed of “an
excess of mercury in his disposition” and described his violin playing as full
of a “peculiar force and energy”, though sometimes “wild and
irregular”.
The
Concerto in g minor RV 416 is one of about 25 concertos Vivaldi wrote for the
cello students at the Pieta (he produced least 500 concertos in all). The
concertos for cello range from relatively simple student works, to
compositions of virtuoso proportions. In all his cello concertos, Vivaldi sets
the solo passages to the spare accompaniment of keyboard plus continuo cello –
indeed, the entire lyrical second movement takes this form, allowing for a
tonally spacious and rhythmically flexible approach. The outer movements are
full of the “demonic” energy for which Vivaldi was notorious.
Trauermusik for cello and strings
Paul Hindemith (16
November 1895 to 13 March 1963)
A
primary innovator of musical modernism, Hindemith was composer, conductor,
violist, educator and theoretician. He played all the standard musical
instruments at least passably and was a virtuoso on viola and viola d'amore. As
an educator, he significantly influenced musical composition in Europe and the
U.S. between the two World Wars.
By
1930, Hindemith had consolidated his researches and began to produce a series of
masterpieces that included Concert Music for Strings and Brass (1930),
the opera Mathis der Maler (1934-1935), Symphony "Mathis der
Maler" (1934) and Trauermusik (1936). He also began a remarkable
series of sonatas for every major instrument, almost all becoming a part of
standard repertory. When the Nazis forced him out of Germany, he went to first
to Switzerland and England, then settled in the U.S. where he joined the Yale
University faculty.
Hindemith was in London in January 1936, to perform his new viola
concerto when King George V died, the day before the performance. As a tribute,
with the nation in mourning, Hindemith composed "Trauermusik" (Mourning)
for viola and string orchestra in the space of six hours. It was performed in
studio concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra the following day, with Hindemith
playing the solo part. The music, a bit over eight minutes, is haunting and
touches the heart. It was observed that several musicians wept openly at the
initial performance.
Tonight’s
Director
Tonight, Reinmar Seidler will both conduct and play the solo
role both for the Vivaldi concerto and the Hindemith Trauermusik. He leads a busy musical life that includes
performance, direction, education and research. A member of the first generation
of "Specialist/Generalist" musicians, Mr. Seidler plays both modern
and period cello, performing a repertoire that spans over 400 years. Cleveland
Heights audiences will remember him primarily as principal cellist with Apollo's
Fire.
He has conducted and performed widely at
music festivals, both home and abroad. As guest director, he recently led the
Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra in the Boston premiere performance of the
"Passion According to St Luke",
previously attributed to J.S. Bach. As educator, he is a faculty member of
the New England Conservatory, Extension Division; and Affiliate Artist at Tufts
University.
He also founded and directs ICARUS: the
Boston Collegium Musicum, now presenting a concert series called "From the
Library of J. S. Bach", consisting of rarely-heard works from Bach's
circle.