PROGRAM NOTES
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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
(1756-1791)
Overture to “Don Giovanni”, K. 527
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was the last of seven children, of whom five did not survive early childhood. By the age of three he was playing the clavichord, and at four he began writing short compositions. The young Mozart gave his first public performance at the age of five at Salzburg University, and in January 1762, he performed on harpsichord for the Elector of Bavaria. At age 13, he entered the employment of the Archbishop of Salzburg as Konzertmeister of the orchestra and court organist. From 1763 - 1766, Mozart toured London, Paris, and other parts of Europe, giving many successful concerts and performing before royalty. The frequency of Mozart’s requests to tour angered the Archbishop so much that Mozart was finally dismissed in 1781 with the now-famous kick in the backside from the Archbishop’s secretary. Mozart left Salzburg happily, hoping to find his fortune in Vienna. No longer a child prodigy, he was still in demand as a performer and was very active as a composer.
Mozart's career faltered in the late-1780s in Vienna, the situation in Prague was much different. There, Mozart's music was much beloved and his sponsors virtually begged him to move from Vienna. Following a performance of Le Nozze di Figaro and a concert in January 1787, which Mozart himself conducted, he received an opera commission from impresarios Pasquale and Domenico Guardasoni. Mozart collaborated again with Lorenzo da Ponte, his librettist for Figaro. Da Ponte selected a theme found in various guises throughout western literature, the story of Don Juan, the inveterate seeker of sensory pleasures.
Mozart did not begin composing the music until July because he had to wait for da Ponte to finish the libretto. According to legend, he composed the Overture last, and the story is that he wrote it the day before the opera premiered on October 29, 1787. The story is that the musicians sight-read the music from scores whose ink was still wet.
On October 28, 1787, the day before its premiere in Prague, Mozart entered in the catalog of his compositions, "The Rake Punished, or, Don Giovanni, opera buffa (comic opera) in two acts." The opera centers on Don Giovanni, the seducer of 2,000 women, who murders the father of one of his victims in a street fight. In time, he finds himself in a churchyard in front of the statue of his victim, which he jokingly invites to dinner. To his surprise, the statue accepts the invitation. When the unwelcome apparition arrives, it announces that Don Giovanni is a doomed man; the earth opens and Hell's flames swallow the miserable reprobate.”
Don Giovanni was a huge success in Prague. Mozart wrote to his friend Gottfried von Jacquin, "My opera 'Don Giovanni' had its first performance on October 29th and was received with the greatest applause."
Don Giovanni's overture is far more than the introduction to the action of the opera. It gives its listener a taste of what is to come. The opera itself is a blend of the comic and serious, and the overture reflects that amalgam. Like the opera, the overture is, in essence, not a derivative of action, but a work born out of a relationship of opposing forces in conflict. The result produced some of Mozart's finest writing.
VICTOR-ANTOINE EDOUARD LALO
(1823-1892)
Cello Concerto in d minor
Prelude: Lento – Allegro maestoso
Intermezzo: Andantino con moto
Introduction - Andante
Of Spanish heritage, but born in Lille, France, Edouard Lalo left home at age 16 because his father, a veteran of the Napoleanic Wars, did not want him to be a professional musician. Traveling to Paris, he enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied violin, and took private instruction in composition while supporting himself by performing and giving lessons. In the 1850s, Lalo became an important member of a movement to revive chamber music in France and, by mid-decade, had already composed two piano trios. In 1855, Lalo helped found the Armingaud Quartet; this ensemble was created to promote the music of Franz Josef Haydn, W.A. Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Felix Mendelssohn. As a composer, Lalo's career is a testament to the virtue of persistence as he toiled for decades trying to establish his name by writing chamber music, songs, and opera (the standard ticket to success for a French composer of that period). Yet his great breakthrough to public acclaim came late, when he was already in his fifties, in the guise of the Symphonie espagnole, premiered by the celebrity violinist Pablo de Sarasate. Likewise, the creation, in 1871, of the Societe Nationale de Musique, whose program was to promote the works of contemporary composers, provided Lalo with an impetus to continue composing. During the 1870s, Lalo composed several impressive works, including the Violin Concerto in F Major, the Symphonie espagnole, the Cello Concerto in d minor, and the Fantaisie norvegienne for violin and orchestra. In 1881, Lalo offered his opera Le Roi d'Ys to the French Opera and, as had occurred with a previous opera, theaters refused to produce his work. Perhaps wishing to offer a consolation prize, the Opera asked him to compose a ballet. The resulting ballet, Namouna, was performed in 1883 to a less-than-appreciative audience. Throughout the 1880s, however, Lalo continued promoting Le Roi d'Ys and the opera was finally performed at the Opera-Comique in 1888 to an extremely favorable reception. Following this belated triumph, Lalo embarked on several new projects, including Neron, a pantomime, which was performed in 1891, and a new opera, La jacquerie, which remained unfinished at the time of his death on April 22, 1892.
Composed in 1876 for the virtuoso cellist Aldolphe Fischer, the Cello Concerto in d minor was a favorite of cellists from its premiere on December 9, 1877 at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris where it was conducted by Jules Pasdeloup with dedicatee Adolphe Fischer as the soloist. At the time, aside from the concerti by Robert Schumann and Camille Saint-Saëns, there were few contemporary concertos for the instrument by major composers. Violinists and pianists had long enjoyed star status as soloists, but the cello was still considered a dubious platform for a solo career. Although written in a traditional three-movement format, the concerto is anything but traditional as Lalo called upon not only his Spanish heritage to imbue the concerto with Spanish idioms, but also places the soloist squarely in the foreground as the protagonist. The solo part is extremely virtuosic, and the orchestra is called upon for much more than merely providing background accompaniment. By not relying upon the traditional concerto structure, Lalo is able to create a concerto that is simultaneously virtuosic and tuneful, trailblazing and accessible, and powerful and exuberant. In the early part of the 20th century, it was a staple of cellists such as Pablo Casals, Gaspar Cassado, and Pierre Fournier.
PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY
(1840-1893)
Symphony No. 1 in g minor, opus 13 “Winter Daydreams”
Allegro tranquillo
Adagio cantabile ma no tanto (“Gloomy land, misty land”)
Scherzo: Allegro scherzando giocoso
Finale: Andante lugubre – Allegro moderato
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born into a family of five brothers and one sister. He began taking piano lessons at age four and showed remarkable talent but, by age nine, he exhibited severe nervous problems because of his overly sensitive nature. As a result, his studies were redirected and he was sent to St. Petersburg to study at the School of Jurisprudence. The loss of his mother in 1854 dealt a crushing blow to the young Tchaikovsky. In 1859, he took a position in the Ministry of Justice but longed for a career in music, attending concerts and operas at every opportunity. Finally, he enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied composition with Anton Rubinstein. In 1866, he relocated to Moscow where he had accepted a music professorship at the new conservatory. On July 18, 1877, Tchaikovsky made perhaps the biggest mistake of his life when he married Antonina Ivanova Milioukov, a somewhat unstable former pupil who had decided she was hopelessly in love with him. In a letter to his patron, Nadezhda von Meck, he wrote that “I faced a painful choice: I must preserve my freedom at the price of the girl's ruin . . . or I must marry. I could only make the latter choice.” Given Tchaikovsky's own sexual inclinations, it is not surprising that the marriage was a complete disaster. After only a few weeks, he found his situation to be unbearable and so arranged to send his wife to Moscow while he traveled. A reunion was inevitable and, after only a few days in Moscow, he became so depressed that he waded into the icy river, hoping to catch pneumonia. When this failed, he traveled to St. Petersburg where a doctor recommended divorce and a change of surroundings as the only solution. In 1888 and 1889, Tchaikovsky went on successful European tours as a conductor, where he met, among others, Johannes Brahms, Edvard Grieg, Antonin Dvořák, and Charles Gounod. Throughout his last years, he was continually plagued by anxiety and depression. In 1893, he composed the Symphony No. 6 "Pathétique" and witnessed its successful premiere in October of that year. He died just ten days later.
The Symphony No. 1 in g minor "Winter Daydreams", Op. 13 was composed in 1866 just after Tchaikovsky accepted a professorship at the Moscow Conservatory. The composer's brother, Modest, claimed this work cost Tchaikovsky more labor and suffering than any of his other compositions. Even so, he remained fond of it, writing his patroness Nadezhda von Meck in 1883 that "although it is in many ways very immature, yet fundamentally it has more substance and is better than any of my other more mature works."
Work on his first symphony proved sluggish. A scathing review by César Cui of the cantata he had written as a graduation piece from the St. Petersburg Conservatory had shattered his morale. This, along with his intense work schedule strained Tchaikovsky's mental and physical health tremendously. He started suffering from insomnia and pains in his head which he thought to be strokes. In fact, he became convinced he would not live to finish the symphony. A successful performance of his revised Overture in F Major in St. Petersburg lifted his spirits as did a change of scene for the summer with his family. Nevertheless, he again soon worked himself into nervous and physical exhaustion by composing day and night. A doctor declared him "one step away from insanity" and ordered complete rest. Fortunately, Tchaikovsky complied.
Despite his lack of progress, Tchaikovsky sought the opinion of his former teachers Anton Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba when he returned to St Petersburg at the end of August. He had hoped for approval of what he had written. Both men were negative. He immediately stopped work on the symphony until just before the conservatory's Christmas break, shifting his attention to completing a commissioned work. Once back at work, he included the modifications requested by Rubinstein and Zaremba as a condition for their reconsidering the work.
Even after resubmitting the manuscript with their insisted changes, they still disapproved of the symphony on the whole. This time, however, they passed the adagio and scherzo movements as "being fit for performance." These two movements were performed in St. Petersburg on February 23, 1867, but with no success. Tchaikovsky, who had looked upon St. Petersburg as the premiere musical location in Russia and been obsessed with having his symphony performed there first, was thoroughly disillusioned. As a result, he discarded all but one of the revisions. The premiere of the Symphony No. 1 finally took place in Moscow on February 15, 1868, to great success.
Although framed in the standard four movement format, Tchaikovsky gave the symphony the descriptive title of Winter Daydreams. He also provided atmospheric titles to the first two movements (Daydreams of a Winter Journey and Land of Gloom, Land of Mist) while basing the last movement on the Russian folk song “I will plant, young one.” He freely confessed later in life that he could not write within the proper rules of Western sonata form which both Rubinstein and Zaremba thoroughly embraced. Prior to this symphony, Tchaikovsky had been content to mold his music as best he could to the practice of previous composers. In composing his Symphony No. 1, he realized that he would have to work around the rules in order to grow and develop as a composer. This meant adapting formal structures to accommodate his musical ideas.
I Will Plant, Young One
I will plant, young one,
A few flowers,
The flowers will start blooming,
And tearing at my heart.
I gazed at the flowers,
With my heart fainting,
With my little heart fainting,
Waiting for my friend.
How is my joy coming along,
He’s not coming soon.
I see, I see, that my joy
Doesn’t want to love me.
Love, love, my joy,
Whomever you wish!
I said farewell to you,
Now you say farewell to me!