PROGRAM NOTES
Carl Maria von WEBER
(1786 – 1826)
Overture to “Der Freischutz”
Composer, conductor, virtuoso, novelist, and essayist, Carl Maria von Weber is one of the great figures of German Romanticism. Weber was the quintessential Romantic artist, turning to poetry, history, folklore, and myths for inspiration and striving to create a convincing synthesis of fantastic literature and music. Weber's works, especially his operas “Der Freischütz”, “Euryanthe”, and “Oberon”, greatly influenced the development of the Romantic opera in Germany. He was also an innovative composer of instrumental music, and his works influenced composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Felix Mendelssohn. His orchestration has also been highly praised and emulated by later generations of composers; in fact, Hector Berlioz referred to him several times in his “Treatise on Orchestration” while Claude Debussy remarked that the sound of the Weber orchestra was obtained through the “scrutiny of the soul of each instrument”.
Carl Maria Weber was the eldest of the three children of Franz Anton von Weber and his second wife, Genovefa Brenner, an actress. In 1798, Weber went to Salzburg to study with Michael Haydn and, subsequently, to Vienna to continue his studies with Abbé Vogler. Vogler was so impressed by his pupil's talent that he recommended him to the post of Director at the Opera in Breslau. His personal life during this time remained irregular: he left his post in Breslau in a fit of frustration, was on one occasion arrested for debt and fraud, and was involved in a variety of scandals. However, he remained successful as a composer. Suffering from tuberculosis when he visited London, he died there during the early morning hours of June 5, 1826. He was buried in London, but 18 years later his remains were transferred to and re-buried in Dresden.
Weber composed Der Freischütz (the “Free Shooter”) between 1817 and 1821. The inspiration grew out of Weber’s fascination with German Romantic writers and their themes of nature, mysticism, nationalist spirit, medieval knights, and other tales of long ago. The plot is a convoluted variation on the Faust Legend, and tells of magic bullets, invisible spirits, and pacts with the devil. Weber focused his version of the story around a naïve hero, Max, who wants to win the hand of his love, Agathe, by gaining the magic bullets he needs to become the best huntsman in the region. Weber saw the story as a conflict between good and evil, light and darkness. Today the opera is rarely staged, but its overture remains one of Weber’s most popular orchestral works. By his use of dark orchestral sonorities and the introduction and development of themes and motifs from the opera itself, Weber sets the tone of the opera and allows the overture to have a far more important function than traditional overtures.
OF NOTE:
Weber's cousin, Constanze, was the wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and, like Mozart, Weber was yet another addition to the tragic-early-death category of composers. As was the case with geniuses such as Schubert, Mozart, Chopin, and Gershwin, all of whom died in their thirties, Weber’s death at the age of thirty-nine was an incalculable loss to music.
Carl REINECKE
(1824-1910)
Concerto for Flute & Orchestra in D Major, opus 283
Although, technically, he was a Dane, the composer, conductor, and pianist Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke (1824-1910) was born in what is today the Hamburg district of Altona. He and his sister, Betty, grew up with their father, as their mother died of consumption in 1828. Their father, Johann Peter Rudolf Reinecke (1795-1883), was a respected music theorist and author of several textbooks. By all accounts, he was also a strict taskmaster and home-schooled both children and, in addition to the usual subjects, gave them musical instruction. Carl first devoted himself to violin-playing, but when he heard Clara Wieck (Schumann) and Franz Liszt in concert, in 1835 and 1841 respectively, he decided to become a concert pianist himself. Although his father objected vigorously, young Carl took his first classes at the Leipzig Gewandhauslater and made his first public appearance as a pianist at age twelve. At the age of 19, he undertook his first concert tour as a pianist through Denmark and Sweden, after which he relocated to Leipzig, where he studied under Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt. In 1846, Reinecke was appointed Court Pianist for Christian VIII in Copenhagen and remained in that position until 1848, when he resigned and went to Paris. After a brief time in Paris, he was engaged as a piano and composition teacher at the Cologne Conservatoire between 1851 and 1854.
In 1860, Reinecke was appointed director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and professor of composition and piano at the Leipzig Conservatory. Reinecke considered it his responsibility as director to represent and guard the tradition of the Classical composer. He strongly championed the music of pre-Classical composers, particularly Bach and reaching back as far as Palestrina. As a teacher, he firmly believed in a thorough grounding, and as a stern disciplinarian, he achieved a high standard of virtuosity from his players. During his tenure, he transformed the Leipzig Conservatory into one of the most renowned and respected institutions in all of Europe. He is also remembered as one of the most influential and versatile musicians of his time, serving as a teacher for 35 years, until his retirement in 1902, with his students including Edvard Grieg, Leoš Janáček, Isaac Albéniz, and Max Bruch.
After retirement from the conservatory, Reinecke devoted his time to composition and continued touring as a piano soloist. He was also a talented painter and poet, and he authored a number of books and essays.
Reinecke died in Leipzig at the age of 85, leaving behind a rich artistic legacy that influenced numerous areas of music, including performance and composition. His works are rightfully celebrated for their melodic beauty and depth. Reinecke published the first of his well over three hundred works in the 1830s, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Liszt were at the height of their fame. Such was Reinecke’s longevity that when his final scores were printed, Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Scriabin, and Debussy were probing new musical directions.
Written in 1908, when Reinecke was 83 years old, the flute concerto is written in the German Romantic Era three-movement style of Mendelssohn and Schumann. Its harmonic idiom is the rich language of Romanticism, even suggestive of Brahms at times, and Reinecke’s mastery of the orchestra is omnipresent in the warm and imaginative orchestration which creates a part that easily stands on its own in its varied and creative independence from the solo voice. One of the most beloved of concertos for performers, its lack of virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake, haunting poetics, and fantasy-like quality distinguish it from the stereotypical concerto. It received its world premiere in 1909 in Leipzig with the Gewandhaus Orchestra, the soloist being Maximilian Schwedler, to whom the work is dedicated.
OF NOTE:
In 1904, at the age of 80, he made recordings of seven works playing on piano roll for the Welte-Mignon company, making him the earliest-born pianist to have his playing preserved in any format. He subsequently made a further 14 recordings for the Aeolian Company's "Autograph Metrostyle" piano roll visual marking system and an additional 20 for the Hupfeld DEA reproducing piano roll system.
Antonin DVOŘÁK
(1841 - 1904)
Symphony No. 6 in D Major, opus 60
Widely regarded as the most distinguished of Czech composers, Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904) is considered one of the major figures of Nationalism (making use of folk influences in works of other genres). Born in Nelahozeves, near Prague, where he spent most of his life, Antonín Leopold Dvořák’s father was a was a butcher, innkeeper, and professional player of the zither. Early in his life, Dvořák's parents recognized his musical talent and made certain that he received musical education at the village school. Dvořák studied the organ, violin, and viola in Prague, and developed into an accomplished enough violist to join the Bohemian Provisional Theater Orchestra. In 1871, he gave up playing in the orchestra in order to compose. as a young man and worked as a café violist and church organist during the 1860s and 1870s while composing symphonies, chamber music, and a Czech-language opera. During this same time period, Dvořák fell in love with one of his pupils, Josefína Čermáková, and wrote the song cycle, Cypress Trees, for her. She married another man, however, and, in 1873, Dvořák married her sister, Anna.
In the 1870s he won a three-year government grant (the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick was among the judges) designed to help the careers of struggling young creative artists. Brahms helped Dvořák obtain a contract with his own publisher, Simrock, in 1877. The association proved a profitable one despite an initial controversy that flared when Dvořák insisted on including Czech-language work titles on the printed covers rather than German titles. His Stabat Mater (1880) was performed abroad and, after a successful performance in London in 1883, he was invited to visit England. In the 1880s and 1890s, Dvořák's reputation became international in scope due to a series of masterpieces that included his three final symphonies. The 1890s represented a time of creative and personal renaissance. From 1892 to 1895, Dvořák served as the director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. He became director of the Prague Conservatory in November 1901 and remained in that post until his death, from heart failure, on May 1, 1904.
The similarities between the Second Symphony of Johannes Brahms and Antonin Dvořák’s Sixth Symphony are striking. Both symphonies are in the key of D Major; both first movements, in triple meter, begin with a sequential move to e minor; and the last movements, which both feature note-against-note counterpoint in strict quarter notes, employ similar harmonic patterns. There can be no doubt about Dvořák’s debt to his colleague and friend as he frequently borrowed musical ideas that caught his fancy from the likes of Richard Wagner, Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, and Bedrich Smetana. Given the wealth of similarities, it is unlikely that Dvořák wished to conceal the connection and, if anything, it seems that he was writing an homage to Brahms.
Dvořák conducted this symphony on his first visit to England (1884) at a concert of the London Philharmonic Society. It was the first of his symphonies to be heard outside of his own country and immediately became a favorite of the English public. While the rich colors and textures of Czech folk music are always present, they burst through to dominate the third movement in particular and brought the audience at its premiere to its feet with demands for an encore.
OF NOTE:
Though Dvořák had written five (then unpublished) symphonies before this one, the score was issued as ‘Symphony No. 1’, a situation arousing some surprise among audiences at the music’s maturity and accomplishment. “The Symphony showed itself to be a ripe work by an experienced composer whose artistic development had led him to his own individual form of expression”, wrote Moravian ethnomusicologist František Bartoš. “With its maturity, individuality, sure touch and masterly construction of symphonic form, the composition proved itself to be the work of a master.”