Masters Program Notes: Keyboard Masterpieces, Jan 31 & Feb 1, 2009

Masters Program Notes: Keyboard Masterpieces, Jan 31 & Feb 1, 2009

Keyboard Masterpieces
Saturday, January 31, 2009 - 8 pm
Sunday, February 1, 2009 - 2 pm

Maximiano Valdés, conductor
Sara Davis Buechner, piano

Learn more about the performance on Saturday night at Symphony Prelude: 7:15 pm in the Upper Circle (Third Level) Lobby, free to all ticket holders.

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RAVEL
Pavane pour une infante défunte  (6’)*

MOZART
Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, K271 "Jeunnehomme"  (32’)*
    Allegro
    Andantino
    Rondeau: Presto
    Sara Davis Buechner, piano

INTERMISSION

McCUNE
Aquamarine (2004 ESO commission)  (7’)*

SAINT-SAËNS
Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op.78 “Organ”  (38’)*
    Adagio – Allegro moderato – Poco adagio
    Allegro moderato – Presto

*indicates approximate performance duration

Program Notes

Pavane pour une infante défunte
Maurice Ravel
(b. Ciboure, Basses Pyrénées, 1875 / d. Paris, 1937)

The piano version premiered in Paris on April 15, 1902. The orchestral version premiered in Manchester, England on February 27, 1911.
Last ESO performance: January 2008

“I have no qualms in speaking about this piece: the Pavane is far enough removed from the present to warrant my abandoning the role of composer for that of critic. In perspective, its qualities are no longer visible to me but, alas, its weaknesses stand out very clearly: the influence of Chabrier is too obvious and the form is quite uninteresting.”
Maurice Ravel, 1912

Maurice Ravel was only 24 when he wrote Pavane pour une infante défunte (“Pavane for a Dead Princess”) for piano, orchestrating it 11 years later. Alongside Boléro, it is one of his most popular works – his own 1912 misgivings notwithstanding. A pavane is a slow and stately dance, and this work’s title creates an image of a funereal procession. Yet its seemingly tragic allusions are misleading; Ravel had no specific impression in mind, saying he thought of the title, “because of the pleasure I got from the assonance of the words.” To those who interpreted the work too closely with its title, a lesson from Ravel himself is in order. Upon hearing one child play the piece particularly turgidly in its original piano version, Ravel chided, “Listen, my child…remember well that I wrote a Pavane for a Dead Princess, not a Dead Pavane for a Princess.”


Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, K.271 “Jeunehomme”
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
(b. Salzburg, 1756 / d. Vienna, 1791)

Composed in early 1777; it is known that Mozart performed it at a concert on November 4, 1777 in Munich.
Last ESO performance: June 2003

“…his first unqualified masterpiece in any form.”
Charles Rosen on Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.9, in The Classical Style, 1981

Mozart’s K.271 Piano Concerto has become familiarly known as the “Jeunehomme” Concerto – but modern research has cast doubt that such a “Mademoiselle Jeunehomme” ever existed. Mozart scholars Robert Levin and Michael Lorenz are satisfied that the woman in question, referred to in Mozart family correspondence, was actually Victoire Jenamy, a daughter of Jean George Noverre, a famous dancer who was one of Mozart's close friends. Dr. Lorenz’ research in the City Archive of Vienna established that Victoire was an excellent pianist, and that it was she who commissioned the concerto in Vienna in 1776.

An excellent pianist is necessary for this rather bold and innovative work. The piano makes its entrance after the briefest of introductions by the orchestra – a stroke he never repeated, though it certainly influenced those who came after him. The exchanges between orchestra and soloist throughout the remainder of the movement are much more equitable, rather than having the piano dominate the presentation of ideas.

The slow movement, in the relative minor key of C minor, has an operatic feel right from the sombre opening backdrop given out by the strings. The piano’s melody is an “aria” full of character and drama, and the entire movement brims with theatrical foreboding. The finale is a Rondo, which leaps from the piano in a rising figure which then dances and skips its happy song. Repeats of the Rondo theme are not simply returns, but are bold variations on it. In between them are equally innovative contrasting ideas – including an extended slow, surprisingly tender piano solo in a minuet tempo. The concerto marks a turning point in the maturation of Mozart; he was becoming a composer eager to expand on the forms of the day, and bring them to new levels of sophistication.


Aquamarine (2004 ESO commission)
Jeffrey McCune
(b. Calgary, 1965)

First performed: January 30, 2004; this is the work’s second performance by the ESO

“When I mentioned the project to my friends and colleagues, the response was immediate and unanimous: ‘PLEASE keep it soft!’ It seems not everyone shares my love of triple-forte-coupled-to-the-max-full-reeds-on-every-manual organ music!”
Jeff McCune, from his original program note for Aquamarine, Signature magazine, January 2004

(Program Note by the composer)
I’ve always loved the ocean, and never more so than when I saw the dazzling electric blue and emerald green seas around the island of Raiatea in the Society Islands of French Polynesia. The colours, like bands or rings, encircled the shorelines, and as the contours of the bottom changed, the intensity of the colours shifted from the faintest green through the deepest blue. I was particularly fascinated with the intermediate bands that shimmered somewhere between those of deep green and vivid turquoise – the colour of the gemstone aquamarine. The water there was especially clear and soothing, and it was from this impression that the idea for Aquamarine emerged.

When the Edmonton Symphony commissioned this work, we discussed the idea of creating a sort of companion piece for the Saint-Saens Symphony No. 3. In recognition of the beautiful warmth, colour, sensuality and peacefulness of the aquamarine seas of Polynesia, Aquamarine for Orchestra and Organ had its genesis.

Based on an undulating melodic idea that flows “between beats” like the bands of aquamarine seas, a theme first heard on the clarinets is cycled throughout the orchestra, eventually coming to the organ where it is augmented, and supported by the harp, piano and celeste. The melodic fragment is stretched out and expanded, the transformation producing a change of tempo, from the slow, broad twelve-eight time of the first half to a quicker four-four feel for the second half. Where the rhythm in the first half was primarily on the beat, the rhythm of the second half becomes mostly syncopated, like reflective facets on a beautifully cut aquamarine gem flashing in light. The syncopated rhythm is supplied mainly by the strings, with the organ supplying melodic contour. The textures in this work range from string and wind quartets to full orchestra with organ. The work tries to capture a sense of peace, reflection and contemplation, in homage to the stone, and the beautiful colour, of aquamarine.


Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op.78 “Organ”
Camille Saint-Saëns
(b. Paris, 1835 / d. Algiers, 1921)

First performed: May 19, 1886 in London
Last ESO performance: January 2004

“I gave everything to it I was able to give…What I have done, I will never do again.”
Camille Saint-Saëns speaking about composing the “Organ” Symphony, quoted by Jean Bonnerot in Saint-Saëns. Sa vie et son oeuvre, 1912

Franz Liszt was the composer who developed the concept of “thematic transformation,” a compositional technique in which a single melodic idea forms the foundation for an entire work, put through increasingly elaborate manipulation while maintaining its identity; in this way, a large work can be unified throughout its length. Liszt was also a great friend of Camille Saint-Saëns. Both of those factors feature prominently in Saint-Saëns’ last large orchestral work – his Third Symphony.

Saint-Saëns was a frequent, and very welcome, fêted visitor to London. The symphony was commissioned by London’s Philharmonic Society (it wasn’t yet the “Royal” Philharmonic at the time). Saint-Saëns conducted the premiere, at a concert at which he also performed the solo part of his Fourth Piano Concerto – all for a fee of merely 30 pounds; the Society felt the honour they did him compensated for the trivial amount of actual money.

The “Organ” Symphony can be seen as being in two large sections, “although…the Symphony in practice contains all four traditional symphonic movements,” Saint-Saëns wrote. The main theme of the entire symphony is heard after the slow introduction, aggressively in the strings. This theme, which undergoes a very Lisztian transformation through the whole piece, propels the dramatic first section forward, achieving a grandiose climax halfway through the movement. The bracing drama carries on, ebbing away as we arrive at the Poco adagio, the second part of the first large section. It is here that we have the first real contrasting melodic idea – and it is here that we first hear the organ. The deeply-felt string melody here, combined with the organ, lend a hymn-like quality to this section.

The main second part begins aggressively once again, the motto theme returning as the basis for a robust Scherzo, with touches of Mendelssohnian lightness in the woodwinds. The organ falls silent once again, whle the orchestral texture is made more transparent with some dazzling passages for piano four-hands. The organ, at last, is given full vent as the final section begins. The main theme returns now as the basis of a fugue, and the might and power of the organ is matched by the full intensity of the large orchestral forces. Designed to leave its audiences breathless, the work has been doing just that since its first, spectacularly successful premiere.

Only three months after the premiere, Franz Liszt died. Liszt had often stood by his friend, for example backing Saint-Saëns’ opera Samson et Dalila when even the Paris Opera wanted nothing to do with it. Soon after Liszt’s death, Saint-Saëns dedicated the score of his “Organ” Symphony, “À la mémoire de Franz Liszt.”

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.