Echoes from the Baroque

May 26, 2010, 7:30 pm

Enmax Hall, Winspear Centre

Echoes from the Baroque

2009 Midweek Classics

  • William Eddins, conductor
    Lucas Waldin, conductor
    Jeremy Spurgeon, organ
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Edmonton's Jeremy Spurgeon performs a dramatic baroque concerto on the Davis Concert Organ. Bach's orchestral suite gave the German master a chance to compose a series of charming and inventive dance movements. Mozart paid homage to Handel by arranging his works for more colourful and substantial orchestral forces. Poulenc based his suite on music by the 16th century composer Claude Gervais. Bizet's masterful Symphony in C, written at the age of 17 and then lost for 78 years, provides a wealth of sublime orchestral sonorities and melodies.

J.S. Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 4
Handel: Organ Concerto, Op. 4 No. 1
Handel: Acis and Galatea: Overture (arranged by Mozart)
Bizet: Symphony in C
Poulenc: Suite française

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$65 Dress Circle (A)
$53 Terrace (B)
$39 Orchestra (C)
$25 Upper Circle (D)
$20 Orchestra Front (F)
(click map for interactive version)

Tickets subject to applicable service charges.

Thank you to our series media sponsor: radio canada

Program Information

J.S. Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D Major, BWV1069 (19')*

Handel: Acis and Galatea: Overture (arranged by Mozart) (4')*

Handel: Organ Concerto in G minor, Op. 4 No. 1 (17')*
Jeremy Spurgeon, organ

Intermission

Poulenc: Suite française (d'aprés Claude Gervaise) (12')*

Bizet: Symphony in C major (34')*

Program Notes

Orchestral Suite No. 4 in D Major, BWV 1069
Johann Sebastian Bach
(b. Eisenach, Saxony, 1685 / d. Leipzig, 1750)
 
Composed between 1723 and 1729 in Cöthen
Last ESO performance: 1974
 
Bach wrote suites in the French style for solo instruments as well as for orchestra. In this style, a long, formally-constructed opening movement is followed by a series of French dance movements. The four orchestral suites that have come down to us are probably only a few of many such works he wrote, and were written during a time Bach supervised the weekly concerts of the Collegium musicum, an orchestra of skilled amateurs and students, which took place at the Zimmermann Café on Leipzig’s main street.
 
Each suite is scored for a different combination of instruments; doubtless Bach tailored each to the orchestra on hand for a particular performance. The fourth suite calls for three oboes, a bassoon, three trumpets, timpani, and strings, while Bach would have led the musicians from the harpsichord. The overture begins in an atmosphere of great ceremony, though the second subject is a skipping, lighthearted fugato (not quite a full-blown fugue, in which a melody is repeated in different keys and starting at separate points in the score), which plays up the contrasting “voices” of the woodwinds, trumpets, and strings to great effect.
 
The four dances which follow are: a pair of Bourrées, a dance with folk roots in the Auvergne region with a duple metre and an accent on the upbeat; a Gavotte, with roots in Breton and also in duple time; a pair of Menuetts, a more courtly dance in triple metre; and lastly, a Réjouissance, a term coined not as an actual dance, but in the spirit of “rejoicing” as its title would indicate – a way of capping off a work like this with celebration and liveliness.
 
 
Acis and Galatea: Overture (arr. Mozart)
George Frideric Handel
(b. Halle, 1685 / d. London, 1759)
 
First performance of the opera: June 10, 1732 in London
Mozart’s arrangement completed November 1788
This is the ESO premiere of music from Acis and Galatea
 
Handel returned to Ovid’s story of Galatea the nymph and her love for the shepherd Acis several times in his career. The first dates from his days in Naples, where he composed an Italian cantata for three voices, likely performed for the first time at the wedding of the Duke of Alvito in July 1708. Ten years later, John Gay prepared an English version for which Handel wrote an almost entirely new score, this time for the Duke of Chandos. In 1732, Handel combined his Italian and English versions into an even larger-scale work, which he called a “serenata,” but which is an opera in all but name, and was presented by his opera company at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket. John Mainwaring, Handel’s first biographer, referred to the work as, “one of the most equal and perfect of all his compositions.”
 
Mozart was born three years before Handel died, and was a great admirer of the elder composer’s music. In 1788, Mozart was appointed music director of a society of rich Viennese nobles, who paid to have older works revived and performed. Mozart rearranged and conducted several of Handel’s works for concerts presented by this society, among them Acis and Galatea. It is Mozart’s arrangement of the overture that we will hear this evening.
 
 
Organ Concerto in G minor, Op.4 No. 1
Handel (see above)
 
First performance: February 19, 1736 in London
Last ESO performance: October 2004
 
Handel was a consummate musician – and an equally consummate businessman. As baroque opera as an art form waned in popularity, for example, he turned to the oratorio form, and won great success. But because both operas and oratorios are long works requiring “breaks” in the action, Handel came up with another way of keeping his audiences enthralled. He pretty much invented organ concertos.
 
Handel led performances of his works from the keyboard, and he nearly always improvised his own part. Often, he would extemporize on the organ in between acts of his oratorios, and this led him to write out parts for his string orchestra to play while he made up his part on the spot. It was only later that many of these spur of the moment works were assembled, eventually into two published sets. The six concertos that make up his Opus 4 were the first, and were published with Handel’s blessing in 1738.
 
It is likely that the concerto published as the first of the set was the last composed. It is in a four-movement “church concerto” style, slow-fast-slow-fast sequence. In the opening movement, the orchestra presents a serious-minded theme which is taken up and developed all through the movement on the organ. The second movement is also introduced by the orchestra, though answered by extended organ passages that retain the improvisatory flavour its original performance would have had. Organ begins the third movement in an air of sombre reflection – evocative of the organ’s roots in church music. But it serves as a brief setup for the final movement, in which the lilting tempo is muted by its minor-key setting. This dialogue between orchestra and organ is a measured finale, not without a rhythmic drive, but an ending of elegance as opposed to gaiety.
 
 
Suite française (d’après Claude Gervaise)
Francis Poulenc
(b. Paris, 1899 / d. Paris, 1963)
 
First performance: 1935 in Paris
Last ESO performance: September 1999
 
Both Francis Poulenc and Georges Auric were members of the short-lived but important circle of composers known as “Les Six.” In 1935, Edouard Bourdet commissioned both men to compose incidental music for his new play La reine Margot. The period piece told the tale of the queen of Henri IV, who became King of France in 1594. Poulenc was given Act II for which to compose music. He decided to set the music of a composer from that time, but updating the harmonies and musical style to 1930s France. He chose Claude Gervaise (1540-1560), who managed in his brief life to compose and publish a set of Danceries, which Poulenc used for his music.
 
Poulenc’s Suite française is scored for winds with percussion and harpsichord. Five of the seven movement are rescorings of the music of Gervaise. The first and fifth movements are original Poulenc compositions, but based on the ancient French dance form the Bransles, and are meant to be evocative of the play’s title character.
 
 
Symphony in C Major
Georges Bizet
(b. Paris, 1838 / d. near Paris, 1875)
 
First performance: February 26, 1935 in Basel
Last ESO performance: March 2000
 
Georges Bizet wrote two symphonies. One, he laboured over throughout his maturity (he died tragically young at only 37 years old), a work based on his travels in Italy following his Prix de Rome victory in 1857. The other symphony was an inspired flash of juvenilia, written at only 17 years old – a work which he disavowed later in life.
 
Yet the young man’s Symphony in C has certainly achieved a fame and acceptance that the later work, called Roma, has failed to capture. Because of his reluctance to acknowledge the work, it was not published in his lifetime, nor performed until 60 years after his death. The work’s opening movement begins with a rhythmic pattern from which a wealth of brief melodic ideas spring, all very busy and breezy. A horn call ushers in a more sedate counter-subject, though the rhythmic pulse is still there underneath. A sense of hushed anticipation is presented as the second movement begins, ushering in a long, languid song for the oboe (Lidia Khaner). Many have compared the oboe’s cantilena to arias to come in Bizet’s operas Carmen and The Pearl Fishers. It is answered by a section of quiet passion in the violins, all set to pizzicato in the lower strings. Halfway through the movement (a true “echo of the baroque,” as our concert’s title would indicate), Bizet presents a fugue, though the oboe’s beautiful song returns to re-establish the mood of the movement.
 
The third movement bears the stamp of the “Father of the Symphony,” Franz Josef Haydn. The Allegro vivace is a merry, timpani-punctured dance, answered by a Trio section complete with the musette drone Haydn used so often in his own trios, lending a folk-like feel. The finale is sunny and effervescent, with several melodies entering and exiting, all in a delightful scamper, leading to a mischievous coda.
 
Program Notes © 2010 D.T. Baker

Artist Information

william eddins
William Eddins, conductor

William Eddins is in his fifth season as Music Director of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. A native of Buffalo, New York, he currently resides in Minneapolis with his lovely wife Jen, a clarinetist, and their two boys Raef (AKA Raefster; Munchers) and Riley (AKA Squeaky; The Imp; Dr. No).

Bill has been playing piano since he was five when his parents bought a Wurlitzer Grand piano at a garage sale. He started conducting during his sophomore year at the Eastman School of Music, and most of the '80s were spent trying to decide whether to pursue a career in conducting or piano. The quandary was answered for him when he realized that the life of a poor, starving pianist was for the birds. In 1989 Bill decided to study conducting with Dan Lewis at the University of Southern California, from whence he managed to land assistant conductor posts with the Chicago Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra in 1992.

Bill has many non-musical hobbies including: cooking, eating, discussing food, and planning dinner parties. He is also quite fond of biking, tennis, reading, and pinball. Unfortunately, due to pianistic paranoia his days in the martial arts are long over.

Bill is committed to bringing classical music to the greater public. He has started a podcast – Classical Connections – which is dedicated to exploring the history of classical music and highlights live chamber music performances in which Bill has taken part (check it out for yourself at Bill Eddins' website). He has also produced a solo piano CD – Bad Boys, Volume I – which features Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata and Albright's Nightmare Fantasy Rag. His latest recording, on the Naxos label, features American music for cello and orchestra.

Jeremy SpurgeonJeremy Spurgeon, organ
British-born Jeremy Spurgeon won scholarships to study both piano accompaniment and organ at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester and later studied organ with Lionel Rogg at the Geneva Conservatoire where he gained the Premier Prix de la Classe de Virtuosité.
 
In 1980 he came to Edmonton as director of music at All Saints' Cathedral and has since appeared in concert with many Canadian and international ensembles, singers and instrumentalists, including the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Richard Eaton Singers, Pro Coro Canada and Edmonton Opera. Jeremy has performed as piano accompanist and organist across Canada and Europe.



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