Events

• Anton Nel, piano

• November 18-19, 2011 8:00 PM
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• where: Dell Hall directions
• conductor: Peter Bay

Alberto Evaristo Ginastera
b. 11 April 1916 in Buenos Aires, Argentina; d. 25 June 1983 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Variaciones Concertantes para orquesta de camera, Op. 23 (Concert Variations for Chamber Orchestra). Commissioned by Asociación Amigos de la Música de Buenos Aires, it received its first performance in June of 1953 by the orchestra of the association with Igor Markevitch conducting.

No account of Argentinean music is complete without mention of Alberto Ginastera as to date he is the only Argentine to acquire an international reputation for his compositional skills. Born in Buenos Aires, Ginastera began music study at the age of seven and entered the Williams Conservatory at twelve, where his talent was recognized and nurtured. At the age of twenty, when he graduated from the National Conservatory, Ginastera was already seen as a rising star in Argentine music. As recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he traveled to the United States and studied with Aaron Copland at the Tanglewood Music Center.

Written during Ginastera’s second stylistic period, “subjective nationalism,” the Variaciones Concertantes were composed during a difficult time in his career. Political conflicts with the Perón government had forced Ginastera to resign as director of the music conservatory at the National University of La Plata and he instead supported himself by scoring films and accepting commissions. His music however, with very few exceptions, was clearly characterized by native “gauchesco” harmonies and rhythms and allusions to the “pampas.” Although no actual folk material is present in the Variaciones Concertantes, an Argentine atmosphere is evoked through Ginastera’s own melodies and rhythms bearing witness to the special synthesis between art, music and Argentine folklore, albeit couched within an international musical language.

A musical characteristic of folkloric material is idealized from the open strings of the guitar. In the Variaciones Concertantes this technique is first heard in the harp and the mournful solo cello statement of the theme. Two interludes, first by strings, then winds, bookend seven character variations featuring varying solos within the orchestra, each exploiting the distinctive character of the instruments. All voices of the small orchestra are treated soloistically giving a magnificent close-up portrait of the ensemble. A fascinating mosaic of timbre and expressive resources, some of the variations belong to the decorative, ornamental or elaborative style while others are written in the contemporary manner of metamorphosis, taking elements of the main theme and evolving from it new material.

Following the opening Interludio, the Variazione giocosa is an intricate frolic for the flute, which leads directly into a high-energy Scherzo featuring clarinet. The elegiac Variazione drammatica for the viola is the longest in the set, with modal chords which seem to stretch the register of the instrument. A dark duet for oboe and bassoon, the Variazione canonica expands on the feelings pronounced by the viola. The brief yet brilliant Variazione ritmica for trumpet and trombone is a macho fanfare for the ensuing unbridled whirlwind of Variazione in modo di Moto perpetuo for the violin. To wind up the central group of variations, the horn offers a lyrical sentiment on the original theme in Variazione pastorale. Ginastera rounds this off with a reprise of the main theme again accompanied by the harp but this time with the more emphatic and disconsolate double bass playing the solo. A final variation for the full ensemble ensues with the Variazione in modo di Rondo. This is a virtuosic malambo, the competitive gaucho dance very familiar to Ginastera. The steady repeated notes symbolize tapping feet, with virtuosic and jazzy flourishes coming from all instruments.

While many of Ginastera’s works have entered the international repertory, the Variaciones Concertantes carry particular distinction. Much of Ginastera’s early work was folk-based: Panambi, Danzas Argentinas, and the ballet Estancia, but his approach to folk music transformed itself throughout his career. In the instance of Variaciones Concertantes he had absorbed the folk traditions without further need to quote them and thus developed his own cosmopolitan style that won Ginastera a strong global reputation.

César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck
b. 10 December 1822 in Liege, Netherlands. d. 8 November 1890 in Saint-Clotilde, France.

Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra, M. 46 (Variations symphoniques). Premiered May 1, 1886 with Louis Diémer as soloist at the annual orchestral concert of the Société Nationale de Musiquè. Composed in gratitude for Diémer’s performance of the substantial piano part in Franck’s tone poem Les Djinns.

Belonging to Franck’s later ouvre, the concerto-like Variations symphoniques holds a prominent place in Franck’s repertoire of the late Romantic period. Suddenly around 1880 Franck began producing virtually all of the works for which he became posthumously famous: the Symphony in D minor, several tone poems, the F-minor Piano Quintet, the Violin Sonata, the String Quartet, and a few splendid works for solo piano. This mature style consists of richly chromatic harmony (derived from passages of Beethoven, with streaks of Wagnerian chromaticism), a predilection to cyclic form (where thematic ideas from the beginning of a work recur in changing guises throughout), and a musical state of overall calmness infused with pangs of harmonic and melodic tension.

Known to request of his students at the Paris Conservatory, “Modulate! Modulate!” Franck composed in a kind of musical development where initial material was subject to manipulation throughout the entire composition. (Liszt had been using this same technique of thematic metamorphoses at least twenty years previous.) A result of this style, the Symphonic Variations is a continuously evolving dialogue, really, an organized fantasia in variation form. There is no obvious break between one variation and the next, but rather one section connects directly to the following, allowing a steady flow of tension and release. The work is divided into three sections performed without a break resembling the fast-slow-fast plan of a standard three movement concerto: a dramatic and troubled introduction; variations on a lyrical theme that is only somewhat related to the motives in the introduction; and a sparkling, high-spirited finale. The home key is F-sharp minor, but the Symphonic Variations culminates in the more brilliant, crowd-pleasing major key.

Two themes of four measures, one in the strings and the other the piano, are developed, changed, and mixed up, creating an ideal joining together of soloist and orchestra. The principal material of the introduction is reminiscent of the theme of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto. In unison, the strings grumble a harsh, belligerent motive in dotted rhythms, to which the piano responds with a gentle melancholic, sighing proposal. These two conflicting motives underpin the entire work and the fundamental dramatic conflict is presented.

With a shift in meter from 4/4 to a calmer 3/4 time Allegretto quasi Andante, the piano enters with the pleasant, gracefully rocking theme upon which the variations will be based. The following six variations flow in such a continuous and unbroken sequence that listeners mustn’t try too hard to keep track. The solo piano leads off with an exquisite treatment of the first theme over a scampering of dense chordal progressions. After an orchestral response, in which the dotted rhythm grows increasingly prevalent, the piano presents a full version of the waltz theme. From here, the brilliantly virtuosic soloist becomes a decorative foil to the thematic elaboration in the orchestra.

The finale is a mini-movement in itself, complete with first and second themes, development, recapitulation and coda. With a shimmering trill, the piano at last leads the music into the sparkling, joyous Allegro non troppo. A sonata-rondo of sorts, here both the pompous dotted-rhythm and sighing motives are transformed into an exuberant dance. A chase ensues between soloist and orchestra to conclude one of César Franck’s finest orchestral achievements.

Franz Liszt
b. 22 October 1811 in Doborján, Hungary. d. 31 July 1886 in Bayreuth, Germany.

Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major, S. 125. The first performance was on January 7, 1857 in Weimar with Hans Bronsart von Schellendorff, Liszt’s pupil and concerto dedicatee, at the piano with the composer conducting.

Written during his virtuoso period, 1839 to 1840, in his manuscript Liszt dubbed the Second Piano Concerto in A Major a Concerto symphonique, essentially a symphony with piano obbligato. Pilfered from the works of Henry Charles Litolff, Liszt liked the label and was intensely interested in its connotations. He admired his slightly younger colleague and even dedicated the First Piano Concerto to him. The borrowed title was ultimately dispensed with as Liszt recognized that whatever its hybrid qualities were, his A Major Concerto was more concerto than symphony.

During this time, Liszt became influenced by Franz Schubert, who had originated the concept of a “unifying theme” in his Wanderer Fantasy. This concept was one of thematic metamorphoses, a drawing together of diverse material from a single melodic source. Beethoven had used such a device in his Choral Symphony with the transformation of the “Ode to Joy” as did Hector Berlioz in his Symphonie fantastique which introduced the idée fixe. With Liszt, this became a compositional device to which he turned often, in the thirteen symphonic poems, the Faust and Dante Symphonies, and the B minor Piano Sonata. The form, in turn, influenced the leitmotif (a recurring theme linked to a literary or fictional person, place, or idea) which unifies Wagner’s operas and Strauss’ tone poems.

Within this musical lineage, Liszt’s piano concertos play pivotal roles. In 1839, Liszt sketched out the two concertos and based each work on a single theme, in one uninterrupted movement. The scoring, material and layout of the Second Piano Concerto also suggest the influence of Carl Maria von Weber’s Konzertstück in F minor; Liszt was highly familiar with this work, performing it often in his touring days. The soloist does not dominate the thematic material and in fact, after the opening, the pianist never plays the theme in its original form again. Instead, the soloist’s role is to construct imaginative adaptations that lead the listener through each section without breaking the continuity, as here in the Second Piano Concerto, from the gentle nocturne to a dazzling scherzo to the martial finale.

Falling into divisions corresponding more or less to the respective movements of a conventionally structured work, the treatment of the theme is not a series of variations, but rather a chain of metamorphoses with the effect of seamlessness. The transformations assume various characteristics: sentimental, somber, martial, sensuous, peaceful, and heroic, all with the ever present sparkling runs, cadenzas, hurling octave passages, glissandi, thundering chords and whispered sentimentality that is Liszt at his best. Without a doubt, the Second Piano Concerto is a masterpiece, inwardly envisaged and lyrical, improvisatory and rhapsodic, yet lacking none of the brilliance one would expect from Franz Liszt.

Paul Hindemith
b. 16 November 1895 in Hanau, Germany. d. 28 December 1963 in Frankfurt, Germany.

Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber. Premiered by the New York Philharmonic conducted by Artur Rodzinski on January 20, 1944

Paul Hindemith, who is sometimes called the ‘twentieth century Bach’, was a master of counterpoint, on which all his music is based. He wrote in the old forms of fugue, sonata and suites, using his own unusual harmonic and melodic language. He was an excellent violinist and became leader of the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, where he married the daughter of the conductor. A central musical figure between WWI and WWII, on the rise of Hitler, Hindemith was persecuted by the Nazis as his wife was half-Jewish, and his own musical compositions were considered degenerate. His interest in composing music for practical rather than artistic purposes ultimately turned the Nazis against him. As a result, Hindemith emigrated to Switzerland in 1938 and then to the United States in 1940, joining the music faculty of Yale University, where he later became head of the School of Music.

Soon after he arrived, he met choreographer Leonid Massine for whom he agreed to write a ballet based on the music of Carl Maria von Weber. However, Hindemith discovered that Massine intended to use costumes and sets designed by Salvador Dali, whose work he detested, and the ballet project was dropped. As a result, Hindemith decided to salvage his sketches for use in an orchestral work which eventually became Symphonic Metamorphosis. The work is for large orchestra and is based on four of Weber’s lesser-known pieces which Hindemith altered and elaborated. It is structured in four complementary movements, resembling a short symphony.

Hindemith and his wife used to play Weber’s music for piano-four hands and were very familiar with the Weber opus numbers from which Hindemith takes his themes. As the title of the work suggests, the Symphonic Metamorphosis follows the tradition of variations on the melody of another composer, as for example Brahms’ Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn or Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and is infused with Hindemith’s Bach-like style and orchestral coloring. Formally this work is like a small symphony using borrowed themes and is light and spirited, characterized throughout by swirling woodwinds, marching brass and exotic sounding percussion.

The first movement Allegro is a swaggering march of Eastern European style with a prevailing, robust Hungarian flavor. This is based on Weber’s Huit Pièces pour le pianoforte à quatre mains, Op.60 of 1818. The vigorous second movement Scherzo is distinctly oriental sounding with an emphasis on percussion. Hindemith borrowed the overture of Weber’s incidental music from the Carlo Gozzi play (later turned opera by Giacomo Puccini) Turandot which is in turn based on an original Chinese tune. Hindemith, however, treats it to a slight variation by incorporating his own jazzy, fugal style.

A short, tender Andantino slow movement, with a minor-key melody, is introduced by the woodwinds and is based on Weber’s siciliana Six Pièces pour le pianoforte à quatre mains, Op.10 of 1809. In lyrical contrast to the proceeding movements, there is a wistful quality to the principal theme, presented first by the clarinet and bassoon. A brief central section, featuring a more pastoral melody and flowing figuration, precedes the restatement of the initial theme, now accompanied by solo flute and resembling bird song.

Fanfares open the Marsch finale, which like the first movement is based on Weber’s Huit Pièces. The music’s patently ironic manner recalls the style of Hindemith’s younger contemporary Dmitri Shostakovich. Weber’s original theme is a funeral march to which Hindemith doubles the tempo to make music which is certainly too fast for mourning. The music grows increasingly spectacular, ending in a grand fortissimo.

© Jeanne Rogers

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