Siegfried Idyll
Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner  composed this piece for chamber orchestra in 1870.  It was premiered privately on his wife's 33rd birthday, celebrated December 25, conducted by the composer.  Although few moments in Wagner's life were ruled by tenderness--he was one of the meanest, most self-centered of all the great composers--his relationship with his second wife, Cosima, was consistently tender. 

Cosima Liszt, daughter of the famous composer, was married to a brilliant pianist-conductor, Hans von Bulow, who became one of Wagner¹s most ardent disciples.  Wagner, who was in an unhappy marriage, took notice of Cosima --perhaps too much notice.  They became lovers in the summer of 1864 and conceived a child, born the following August.  A second daughter was born to them two years later.   von Bulow accepted both children as his own.    The local uproar forced Wagner to retreat from Munich and he took a house in Switzerland overlooking Lake Lucerne.   When Wagner¹s wife died, Cosima finally left Bulow to join him.   "If it had been anyone but Wagner, I would have shot him", was Bulow¹s resigned comment. In June of 1869 von Bulow's divorce was final, in July a third child, Siegfried, was born, and in August Cosima and Wagner were married at last.

A family tradition of celebrating birthdays with a bit of Hausmusic   was begun by Cosima when on Richard's birthday in 1869 he was awakened by a blast of Siegfried's horn at dawn.  The next year, Wagner wrote a chamber piece and   carefully rehearsed the 15 musicians who, at 7:30 am, would play it on the stairway leading to Cosima¹s room as a surprise for her birthday. In her diary, Cosima wrote, "As I awoke...no longer could I imagine myself to be dreaming...such music! When it died away, Richard came into my room with the children and offered me the score of the symphonic birthday poem. I was in tears, but so were all the rest."

Wagner incorporated into this orchestral lullaby the German children's song "Schlaf, mein Kind"  (sleep my child) and his son's "Bird Song",  (Wagner heard a birdsong at the moment of Siegfried's birth, noted it down, and used it in this piece)  and two motifs from the opera Siegfried.

Violin Concerto in A Major
W. A. Mozart

"You yourself do not realize how well you play the violin", wrote Leopold Mozart to his son.   Leopold, a violinist, was disappointed in Wolfgang's unconcealed preference for the piano.  Nobody had been more celebrated in Europe than Leopold Mozart's  two young children, Wolfgang and his sister, as they performed on keyboard instruments throughout Europe.

 In 1772  at age 16 Mozart became concert-master in the employ of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, Hieronymus Colloredo, who changed the musical life of Salzburg by cutting back on funds.   At a time when Italians were favored in the world of music and were paid more than the locals, Wolfgang established himself as the chief composer of instrumental and secular vocal music, composing to meet the demands of this post and to provide new works for the instrument with which he earned his salary. 

On his Italian tours Mozart had  had plenty of opportunity to study the concerto form on its native soil where Vivaldi and other Italians had established the norm.  But Mozart gave each of his violin concertos an individual personality.  The Fifth Violin Concerto, K219 , while clearly revealing the influence of the Italian tradition, reflects as well the contemporary French style, and the "Turkish" style then in fashion.  (The designation "alla turca" in Mozart¹s day  referred to the music of the elite troops of the Ottoman Empire, with its strong Hungarian flavor. )

During his tenure in Salzburg, he composed five violin concertos. Contradicting  his father's belief that he didn¹t know what a good violinist he was, Mozart  described one of his performances saying,  "I played as if I was the greatest violinist in all Europe." (The autographed score of K. 219 is in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., one of the Library's most prized possessions.)

Symphony No. 5 in B flat major
Franz Schubert

It began innocently enough as a family string quartet.  In 1813, the 16-year-old Schubert went to work for his father as an assistant schoolmaster and played quartets with father Schubert on cello and brothers Ferdinand and Ignaz on violins.   A year later, his friend Josef Doppler began sitting in on the twice-weekly sessions. Word got around and more string players, and wind players, joined them.   The group's repertoire expanded to chamber arrangements of symphonies and then finally to symphonies themselves.  When people started coming around just to listen the players had to keep moving to larger and larger spaces.  In 1816, when the practice sessions were still rather intimate affairs, Franz composed a symphony for them, his fifth.  The work's modest scoring - without drums and trumpets - may have been tailored to the available players.

"To call this work Mozartian", wrote one Schubert scholar, "is to pay Mozart a compliment."  One lesson Schubert appears to have learned from Mozart (and put into practice with his Fifth Symphony) was economy.   This Symphony seems to aspire to the classical ideal: the most said in the least space.  The crisp yet graceful opening of the first movement drops us into a Mozartian world of bouncy rhythm and rapid-fire dialogue between the sections of the orchestra.

TONIGHT'S CONDUCTOR

Randall Fusco is a pianist who has become increasingly active as a conductor over the past five years.  He studied conducting at the University of Illinois and has been conductor of the Hiram Chamber Orchestra since 1998. He was a Conducting Fellow at the Conductor's Institute of South Carolina in the summer of 2000.  Last November he conducted the Youngstown Opera Guild's production of Verdi's La Traviata .

Mr. Fusco is in frequent demand as a piano soloist and collaborative artist. He has performed solo and chamber music concerts throughout the United States, has   appeared as soloist with numerous orchestras in Northern Ohio and has recorded chamber music with  hornist William Slocum, saxophonist James Umble, tubist John Turk, and trombonist Elliot Chasanov.  He has made two recordings with Cleveland Orchestra bassoonist Barrick Stees on the Centaur label.

Mr. Fusco is an Associate Professor of Music at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio.

TONIGHT'S SOLOIST

Ioana Missits was born in Romania and came to study in the United States at age 19.  She joined the Second Violin section of the Cleveland Orchestra in the fall of 2000, having previously served as a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the orchestra of the Michigan Opera Theater and Chicago's Grant Park Symphony.  Her awards include First Prize at the Citta di Stresa competition in Italy, the Paul Rolland Memorial Prize, the Joseph Gingold Award, and First Prize in the Romanian National Violin Competition.

She has appeared as soloist with the Cluj, Satu-Mare, and Constanta Philharmonic Orchestras, the Perrysburg Symphony and the Bowling Green Philharmonia.

Additional musicians for tonight's concert: Anton Hilfreich, Violin;  Gretchen Hallerberg, Cello, Monica Bearden, Clarinet

Program notes by Ginger Kuper