Midweek Classics Program Notes: Strings Attached, September 24, 2008

Midweek Classics Program Notes: Strings Attached, September 24, 2008

Strings Attached
Wednesday, September 24 – 7:30 pm

William Eddins, conductor
Nikki Chooi, violin
Joshua Roman, cello
DaXun Zhang, double bass

LAVALLÉE
O Canada (arr. Chapman)  (1’)*

GLUCK
Orphée et Eurydice: Overture  (5’)*

J.S. BACH
Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, BWV 1041  (15’)*
    Allegro
    Andante
    Allegro assai
    Nikki Chooi, violin

BOCCHERINI
Cello Concerto No. 9 in B-flat Major, G.482  (19’)*
    Allegro moderato
    Andante grazioso
    Rondo: Allegro
    Joshua Roman, cello

INTERMISSION

BOTTESINI
Double Bass Concerto No. 2 in B minor  (19’)*
    Allegro moderato
    Andante
    Allegro
    DaXun Zhang, double bass

HANDEL
Water Music – selections (arr. Harty)  (20’)*
    Allegro
    Air
    Bourrée
    Hornpipe
    Andante espressivo
    Allegro deciso

*indicates approximate performance duration

Strings Attached - Program Notes

Orphée et Eurydice: Overture
Christoph Willibald Gluck
(b. Erasbach, Germany, 1714 / d. Vienna, 1787)

First performance of the opera: October 5, 1762 in Vienna
This is the first performance by the ESO of the overture. The Dance of Blessed Spirits, also from Orphée et Eurydice, has been performed often by the ESO.

“Its ‘noble simplicity’ reaches out through time and can move us today, so its effect on the opera world when it was new must have been sensational.”
Denis Forman, A Night at the Opera

The opera Orphée et Eurydice is probably more important than it is famous. Premiered in 1762, Gluck’s opera is one of many musical versions based on the familiar Greek myth about the lyre-playing husband who risks everything to win his wife back from the underworld. What Gluck’s opera did, however, was begin a process of reformation of opera as a genre, moving it from the excesses of the day in which singers and extraneous display had priority over the drama and the music. This reform, however, is not apparent in the conventional, yet engaging and richly melodic overture.


Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, BWV 1041
Johann Sebastian Bach
(b. Eisenach, Saxony, 1685 / d. Leipzig, 1750)

First performance: likely at one of the many collegium concerts held in Leipzig, beginning in 1729
Last ESO performance: November, 1985

“In his youth, and well into old age, he played the violin with a clear, penetrating tone.”
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, writing about his father

It is likely that Bach wrote the A minor Violin Concerto while in Cöthen (1717-1723), before he came to Leipzig. A great admirer of Vivaldi, Bach took the Vivaldi concerto form as an inspiration for his own such works. The opening orchestral material features prominently through the entire first movement, while the violin solo ornaments above the orchestral texture. While very much in the Vivaldi mold, Bach’s concerto interconnects the soloist and orchestra much more cohesively than the Italian model.

The slow movement is in the relative major key of C. The orchestra is heard in an “ostinato,” a repeated pattern over which the violin plays a lyrical, languid passage of beauty and tenderness. The dance of the final movement is given a strong lilt from its 9/8 metre, made clearly a work by Bach by the incorporation of counterpoint (the simultaneous presentation of more than one musical idea) in the orchestra, as the violin leads the dance. But there is still a nod to Vivaldi in the soloist’s flashy arpeggios and ample chances for display.


Cello Concerto No. 9 in B-flat Major, G.482
Luigi Boccherini
(b. Lucca, Italy, 1743 / d. Madrid, 1805)

First performance: pieced together from extant Boccherini works many years later, the first performance of the concerto in this form is unknown
Last ESO performance: January 1999

“Boccherini's music is alternately gloomy, tender, rending, gracious and even excessively gay.”
Composer André-Ernest Grétry

The music of this, the most famous and often-played cello concerto by Luigi Boccherini, is certainly by Boccherini, but it’s not a Boccherini concerto. The work has come to us through the hands of Friedrich Grützmacher (1832-1903), a German composer who stitched together some of Boccherini’s music into what is now known as the composers Ninth Cello Concerto.

The opening movement’s music is taken from a sonata (G.565), and features ornaments which take the cello to its uppermost range. It is very much in the early classical mold. The slow movement has music from the G.480 Cello Concerto, and is a cantabile for the cello, which sings its song often to gentle string pulses, but also at times in unison with the strings. The final movement, taken from another concerto, is a Rondo, the main theme of which is a skipping figure for the solo cello, interrupted by string passages that either contrast with it, or provide a skipping momentum of their own. This movement also features some daunting high notes for the soloist.


Double Bass Concerto No. 2 in B minor (ed. Lucio Buccarella)
Giovanni Bottesini
(b. Crema, Italy, 1821 / d. Parma, 1889)

Last ESO performance: May 2004

“He’s my favourite. He was a decent musician, overall – clearly respected by Rossini and Verdi and others. The (concerto’s) tunes are singable, and the music is entertaining, and generally, it’s fantastically conceived for the instrument. It’s written by a bass player, and it could not have been written by anybody else.”
American double bassist Edgar Meyer

It was money that decided the fate of Bottesini, known as the “Paganini of the double bass.” Musically gifted as a child, an opportunity was available to him – but only for bassoon or double bass, as those were the only instruments open for scholarships at the Milan Conservatory. His choice was obviously the right one – he showed a talent for it from the outset, and when he finally turned to composing for his instrument, it was as a composer first and foremost, not as a double bassist who wanted to compose.

The B minor Concerto for Double Bass opens rather dramatically, the solo instrument making a grand entrance. It is a brisk and stern movement, leading to a middle movement canzone full of melancholy, with the double bass revealing itself as an instrument capable of a deeply melodic, singing character. The finale rushes in headlong, a strong announcement in the orchestra answered by rapid passages from the bass, leading to an exciting exchange which never flags, punctuated by a high-spirited conclusion.


Water Music: selections (arr. Harty)
George Frideric Handel
(b. Halle, 1785 / d. London, 1759)

First performance: July 17, 1717 on the Thames between Whitehall and Chelsea
Last ESO performance: the entire Water Music was played by the ESO in March 2006
Last ESO performance of the Hamilton Harty arrangement: November 1993

“A City Company’s Barge was employ’d for the Musick, wherein were 50 Instruments of all sorts, who play’d all the Way from Lambeth…the finest Symphonies, compos’d express for this Occasion, by Mr Hendel (sic); which his Majesty liked so well, that he caus’d it to be plaid over three times in going and returning.”
The Daily Courant, July 19, 1717

Baron Kielmansegge was Master of the Horse in Hanover, Germany, when the future King George I of England was Elector of Hanover. It was the Baron’s invitation to that English king, on July 17, 1717, that had barges filled with nobility taken on a pleasure ride down the Thames. Another barge housed the orchestra which performed music by the King’s favourite composer, George Frideric Handel.

The music which caused such delight among the river party that day has done so ever since, and is now known as the Water Music. The work’s popularity led to numerous transcriptions and arrangements throughout Handel’s life – although the manuscript of the original work is now lost. The three suites by which we now know the music best were pieced together from two harpsichord versions prepared by Handel’s copyist and friend, J.C. Smith the Elder. This evening’s performance features six movements chosen from among the suites arranged for a modern-sized symphony orchestra by Irish composer/conductor Hamilton Harty (1879-1941).

Program Notes © 2008 D.T. Baker

Program notes © 2008 by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and its respective annotators. All Rights Reserved. Program notes may not be printed in their entirety without the written consent of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra; excerpts may be quoted if due acknowledgment is given to the author and to the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. For reprint permission, contact D.T. Baker, Music Resource, by email, dave.baker@winspearcentre.com.

These notes appear in galley files prepared for Signature magazine, official publication of the ESO, and may contain typographical or other errors, or may differ from the final print version. Programs and artists subject to change without notice.