Program Notes 2025
Live at Deertrees July 15
Maurice Duruflé was a superb organist, a gifted composer, and an influential teacher. As a composer he was a perfectionist who would spend years on a work before allowing it to be published. As just one example, he spent six years writing his masterpiece, the Requiem. As a result, his output was slim: a total of 20 works, only 14 of which he allowed to be published with opus numbers, and most of which were for the organ.
Duruflé spent his early years as a boy chorister in the Rouen cathedral, where he gained intimate familiarity with plainsong and also began working as a church organist. He spent several years at the Paris Conservatoire, where he earned first prizes in composition, harmony, counterpoint, improvisation, and fugue. He soon began his lifelong career as organist at St-Etienne-du-Mont in Paris. He also began teaching harmony at the Conservatoire. And after his marriage in 1953 to the brilliant young organist Marie-Madeleine Chevalier, the pair became a renowned touring and teaching duo.
During his lifetime, Duruflé was considered a conservative composer. When he once was asked why he wrote in a relatively conservative language, he replied, “It is because I have always been surrounded by Gregorian chant, which is of course rather traditional.” Yet in his compositions he combined traditional liturgical music with the musical waves sweeping early 20th-century France. Like Debussy, Duruflé combined ancient scales with impressionistic harmony. His students at the Paris Conservatoire called what they learned from him “the Duruflé style,” a style influenced by the organ, by Bach, Faure, and Ravel, and by a modal language. You’ll hear what they meant in the Prélude, Récitatif, et Variations, which Duruflé wrote while still a student at the Conservatoire (it won that year’s composition first prize).
The piano begins the Prélude with attention-grabbing chords and Impressionistic-sounding runs. The viola enters with a tender theme, the flute comes in with its own flowing, lyrical melody, and the three elements then combine in a richly textured movement that builds in intensity until subsiding directly into the Récitatif, which like the Prélude is marked “lent et triste.” While the Prélude opens with solo melodies and ends with all three instruments joining animatedly together, in the Récitatif Duruflé reverses the pattern. All three instruments open the movement, then give way to the viola, whose plaintive melody leads directly into Variations on a modal flute theme. The Variations are varied rhythmically (the second variation), modally (the third variation, with its interesting canon), and in mood, as a more somber third variation gives way to a playful fourth. The coda is animated, colorful, and joyful. Duruflé dedicated the work to Jacque Durand, the prominent music publisher of Debussy’s and Ravel’s works.
Sound Bites began as a commission from the Aolis Collective, a group of Dutch double reed wind players. It was completed in 2001 and was premiered by that group at the International Double Reed Society Conference at the University of West Virginia in August of that year.
The piece languished in a desk drawer for several years, and the fact that it was scored for 2 Oboes, 2 Oboes d’Amore, 2 English horns, 2 Bassoons and a Contrabassoon, an unusual and cumbersome ensemble at best, made the chance for future performances unlikely to say the least.
In 2023 I took the piece out again and discovered more possibilities than I had originally exploited in the score. Moreover, it provided an opportunity to recast the work for forces that might be more readily available, and also to tighten the writing, rebalance sonorities, and pare things down to a more economical scale.
Keeping the “bones” of the piece, I rewrote it for the standard woodwind quintet, and that is the version you will hear today.
David Post, 2025
Beethoven’s ingenuity comes face to face with Mozart’s Classical style in this delectable Quintet, which “possesses in its melodies and effects, a charm which will never grow old,” as Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny wrote. Beethoven was riding a wave of public acclaim when he wrote it. He had taken Vienna’s salons by storm as a brilliant improviser and keyboard virtuoso, he had demonstrated his mastery of Viennese Classical form, and he had launched a major career as a composer. Mozart remained a fundamental influence, particularly in Beethoven’s chamber music for winds. At the same time, Beethoven increasingly was asserting his own strong musical personality.
Beethoven most likely modeled the Opus 16 Wind Quintet on Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452, written a dozen years earlier: Beethoven’s Quintet is written in the same key of E-Flat major, scored for the same instruments, and given the same three-movement structure. You can hear external similarities throughout the Quintet, from the first movement’s long, stately introduction to the last-movement rondo with its hunting theme. This being Beethoven, though, it’s no surprise that he didn’t stick faithfully to the Classical script. With all of Opus 16’s surface nods to the Mozart Quintet, there are noteworthy substantive differences – in the way, for instance, that Beethoven focuses on thematic development, and especially in the prominent role assigned to the piano.
The appeal of the Opus 16 Quintet lies in its freshness and affability. The first movement charms with its genial themes, its engaging dialogue between piano and winds, a briefly stormy development section that ends, playfully, with a return in a Classically incorrect key, and a graceful coda. The Andante cantabile is striking for the beautiful melody with which the piano opens the movement, and for the increasingly elaborate embellishments and rich instrumental textures as the movement progresses. High spirits reign in the good-natured last movement, a rondo in which, as in the other movements, the piano glitters.
An impish Beethoven enlivened the premiere of the Quintet. According to Ferdinand Ries, in the finale “Beethoven suddenly started improvising, taking the Rondo subject as his theme and entertaining himself and those listening for quite some time. This was not the case with the accompanists, however; they were very annoyed…. It did indeed look very droll to see these gentlemen, expecting to begin at any moment, raising their instruments to their mouths incessantly and then quietly putting them down again.”
When the Quintet was published in 1801, Beethoven included a Quartet arrangement for Piano and Strings, also designated Opus 16, probably in an effort to appeal to as wide an audience as possible.
The folk music of Bohemia was part of Dvořák’s life from the time he was a small boy, when he would listen to his father, a butcher and innkeeper, play the zither at weddings and other celebrations in their village. Later young Antonín joined in, playing along on a fiddle. Later still, when he was on his way to becoming a highly regarded, Classically trained composer, he was inspired by the Czech independence movement to return to the music of his youth and incorporate its sounds and rhythms into his own music. He had no interest in a literal transcription of folk tunes; rather, he wrote original melodies and rhythms that perfectly captured the spirit of native Czech music. One of his favorite folk forms was the dumka (Czech plural dumky), a pensive, often brooding lament, originally Ukrainian, that was popular throughout the Slavic world. Dvořák gave the name to several of his works, including two piano pieces, the second movement of the A Major Piano Quintet, and of course this unconventional trio – unconventional because instead of three or four traditional movements, it is composed of six short dumky. In Dvořák’s hands, the dumka becomes a work of sharply contrasting parts, from plaintive melodies to gay dances, and of rapidly changing moods that range from melancholy to jubilant.
While the Trio’s six dumky are linked structurally – each is written with alternating slow and fast sections – and while all shift between major and minor modes, thematically and tonally each has its own character. Dvořák marked the first three “attaca subito,” meaning that they are to be played as a unit, without pause. The first dumka, “Lento maestoso,” establishes the pattern: an impassioned melody, stated first by the cello, is followed by a rollicking dance, then a return to the original mood. The opening mood of the second, “Poco adagio,” is more doleful than the first, while that of the Andante third is lyrical and tranquil. Interestingly, in this third dumka it is the slower opening that is in a major key, with the dance that follows in the minor.
A sense of sadness pervades the somber, Russian-sounding fourth dumka (“Andante moderato quasi tempo di Marcia”), with its melancholy march rhythms. That mood is banished by the capricious, rhythmically driven fifth dumka, the only one marked Allegro. Here, in another reversal of pattern, the outer sections are faster than the middle. With the final dumka, “Lento maestoso,” Dvořák returns to the sentiments of the first, alternating darker passages with vigorous dances before ending with a spirited outburst. Dvořák was the pianist at the Trio’s premiere in Prague in April 1891, where the work was enthusiastically received, as it has been ever since.
Live at Deertrees July 22
The New Grove Dictionary calls Heitor Villa-Lobos “the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music,” citing his “achievement in creating unique compositional styles in which contemporary European techniques and reinterpreted elements of national music are combined.” That’s a very dry way to describe a very colorful composer, whose unique voice had a profound musical impact on his country and won him international fame.
From his earliest years Villa-Lobos rebelled against expectations. His father, an amateur musician, taught him the cello and the clarinet, but Heiter liked the guitar, which he taught himself. His mother expected him to be a doctor, but Heiter was captivated by Brazilian popular music and preferred the life of Rio’s street musicians. As a teenager he left school and began a decade of traveling throughout Brazil, collecting folk and traditional music while at the same time teaching himself composition. The ethnic music he discovered and adapted, combined with his own experiments in rhythm and harmony, contributed to the creation of his distinctive musical voice. Brazilian critics savaged his early works, with their daring balance of vernacular music and Modernist techniques. But he had supporters, including the pianist Artur Rubinstein, who began playing his music abroad. By the time he went to Paris in 1923, he already had begun to develop a following. And by the time he moved back to Brazil in 1930 – having met and been influenced by Debussy, Stravinsky, and Varese – he was an international star, as well as a national hero for his championing of Brazilian folk and popular music.
Villa-Lobos’s output was enormous. His range was equally impressive: He could apply Bachian contrapuntal techniques to Brazilian themes (the nine pieces of Bachianas brasileiras), or base a masterful set of fourteen technically complex pieces on the chôros, a rhythmic, improvisational, uniquely Brazilian musical form. Or he could surprise with the unexpected, as he does in The Jet Whistle, with its exotic pairing of two instruments of contrasting range, timbre, and texture. From the opening notes, Villa-Lobos has fun with the instrumental contrasts, as the flute chirps over the cello’s long, low lines. When the two reverse roles, the flute becomes flamboyant while the cello accompaniment lumbers. Twice in the movement, Villa-Lobos has the two instruments move in opposite directions, the flute to the top and the cello to the bottom of their ranges. The mood changes in the second-movement Adagio, where the flute’s cool melody intertwines with the cello’s at times dissonant counterpoint. In a boisterous finale, the cello eggs on the flute, which charges higher and higher in a series of pyrotechnic runs until the flutist blasts air into the mouthpiece – a screech that reminded Villa-Lobos of a jet engine on takeoff.
In Hungary in the years before World War II, Ernö Dohnányi was practically his own musical institution – a multitalented pianist, composer, conductor, and teacher whose prestige and influence were almost as great as Liszt’s had been a generation earlier. By the time he was in his twenties, Dohnányi had won international acclaim as a brilliant pianist, had earned important prizes for his compositions (his 1895 Piano Quintet was promoted by Brahms), and had been invited by Josef Joachim to teach at the prestigious Berlin Musikhochschule. In 1915 he returned to Budapest to teach at the Music Academy, where he immediately became a dominant presence. Until he withdrew following the pro-Nazi government’s anti-Semitic edicts early in the 1940s, Dohnányi headed just about every major musical institution in the country. He left Hungary before the end of the war and eventually came to the United States, where he lived until his death.
As composers, Dohnányi and Bartók headed in different directions. Dohnányi’s principle influence was late 19th-century European Romanticism, especially the music of Brahms. He was quite prolific – his output included about two dozen major piano and chamber works and numerous symphonic works (including his well-known Variations on a Nursery Song), plus four operas, a Mass, and two cantatas – and his compositions were widely admired. Bartók faulted Dohnányi for not being Hungarian enough in his music. But while for Dohnányi Hungarian music was more of a flavoring than an essence of his style, he used its rhythms and modalities effectively, and it was an important element in works like the Serenade for String Trio.
The Serenade is a vivacious, tightly constructed work that gives a modern cast to an 18th-century form. It is distinguished by sprightly rhythms, beautiful melodies, modally inflected harmonies, and deft scoring for the three instruments. It opens with a spirited march that immediately introduces a Hungarian flavor: the brief movement’s middle section is a moody folk-sounding melody played over a drone accompaniment. The Hungarian influence continues to be heard in the Romanza — in the long-lined, evocative melody played by the viola over off-the-beat pizzicatos, as well as in the passionate middle section with its striking textures. Next comes a breathless, scampering Scherzo that features a nimble opening fugue, a short lyrical trio, and irregular rhythms. The Theme and variations offer a fine example of Dohnányi’s technical adroitness. The theme itself is a variation of the first movement’s folk melody. In the five variations that follow, the three instruments engage in an ongoing dialogue as they blend with and complement one another. At the end of the giddy Rondo finale the Hungarian melody from the first movement makes its final appearance, giving a satisfying sense of unity to a thoroughly delightful composition.
With the Piano Trio in B-Flat Major, Beethoven arrived at another pinnacle. For several years, starting with the massive Eroica Symphony, he had been composing tempestuous, conflict-ridden works in what has been called his heroic period. Just as revolutionary, however, were several compositions that were distinguished by spaciousness, serenity, and lyric breadth. Among this group was the great piano trio that he dedicated to one of his most important patrons, Archduke Rudolph. A young brother of the Austrian Emperor, Rudolph was a talented pianist who at 16 began studying piano and composition with Beethoven. It was the beginning of a lifelong close relationship. Beethoven dedicated many important works to Rudolph, including three piano sonatas, a violin sonata, the last two piano concertos, the Grosse Fuge, the Missa Solemnis, and the monumental Piano Trio that bears his name.
The B Flat Major Trio is a noble work, dramatic in scope and in the richness of its harmonies. The Trio’s first movement – a gracious, easy-paced Allegro moderato — begins with one of Beethoven’s most beguiling melodies, a broad, flowing legato theme that is first introduced by the piano alone, then repeated with the cello and violin joining in. Beethoven quickly establishes that the cello will range widely, that modulations will be surprising, and that textures and sonorities will be lush. Among the many delights of the complex movement are the ingenious way Beethoven develops his opening theme, phrase by phrase; the extended pizzicatos in the development section; the quiet trills that, after some teasing, lead back to the recapitulation; and a brief but imposing coda.
After tranquility comes impishness. The Scherzo begins humorously with a rising scale, then continues on its lighthearted way to an extended trio with two themes, the first a mysterious fugato, the second a flashy Viennese-like waltz. Unusually, Beethoven repeats the sections before ending with the Scherzo proper and a coda that brings back the fugato. Serenity returns with the Andante cantabile, whose chorale-like theme is followed by a set of exquisitely ornamented variations. Then, as he so enjoys doing, Beethoven jolts the listener again with another abrupt change of mood. Donald Francis Tovey has a wonderful description of the last movement: “When the finale of the B flat Trio shocks us with unseemly conviviality before the slow movement has finished dying away, Beethoven has no apologies to offer. The outrageous jocularity continues unabashed, until not only the proportions, but the actual mysterious quality, of the finale develop a sublimity of their own. It is a marvelous study in Bacchanalian indolence.” Over the course of four movements, Beethoven the alchemist has melded transcendent beauty with bravura wit to create musical gold. Not surprisingly, Beethoven himself thought the Archduke was one of his finest creations.
Live at Deertrees July 29
Today’s concert gets off to a cheerful start with this Trio from the French composer and woodwind instrumentalist François Devienne. There’s an elegant portrait in the Library of Congress by Jacque Louis David of Devienne holding a flute. That David would paint Devienne’s portrait attests to the importance of this gifted French musician, who during his lifetime enjoyed a Europe-wide reputation as a brilliant woodwind composer and performer.
Devienne was a child prodigy who gave the word “workaholic” new meaning. From an early age he threw himself into music, studying and performing on the bassoon, the flute, and the oboe. According to one observer, “Quite unlike other children, who have to be promised money if you want to get them to do anything, Devienne would leave off work only when his brother had given him few écus, on condition that he would go and enjoy himself.” By the time has was 20, he was playing bassoon in the Paris Opera Orchestra and writing the first of his more than 300 instrumental compositions, a body of work that included concertos for flute and bassoon, 21 flute quartets, and many other virtuosic chamber works for wind instruments. In addition, he wrote several popular comic operas. A central figure in Parisian musical circles, his packed days included composing, performing his own works, playing in a number of orchestras, and teaching. He wrote a treatise on flute technique that became an influential instructional guide, and he was the first to be named professor of flute in the new French Conservatoire. Perhaps not surprisingly, eventually the frenetic pace took its toll, and he died at 44 “from a mental derangement which had degenerated into true madness,” according to an obituary.
Although during his lifetime he was lauded as “the Mozart of the flute,” Devienne’s compositions for that instrument drifted into relative obscurity until the flutist Jean Pierre Rampal revived them in the 1960s. Among the rediscovered treasures is this Trio in E-Flat Major, the last of a set of Six Trios for Flute, Viola, and Cello. Like the others in the set, this one is a deft two-movement work marked by melodious writing and elegant phrasing. From the opening measures, the Trio demonstrates Devienne’s gift for melody – it’s clear why his name was associated with Mozart’s during his lifetime. The melodies flow, supported by uncomplicated harmonies. The flute takes the lead in much of the first movement, which is filled with cheerful runs and playful interactions. The chipper second-movement Rondo includes a viola solo, a minor-key episode, and a pleasing cello ostinato. Overall, it’s a work of easy charm from a flute virtuoso.
According to folk belief, if you were bitten by a tarantula you died – unless you had the energy to dance the venom away. That belief was the root of the tarantella, a wildly energetic folk dance from 16th-century southern Italy that purportedly had the power to drive out the poison. Saint-Saëns zestfully captures the spirit of the dance in a dashing and devilish Tarantelle. From its playful ostinato opening to its frenzied finish, this Tarantelle is exuberant, witty, and dramatic. There are wild scales and arpeggios, manic trills and grace notes, virtuosic exchanges that challenge the instrumentalists, and an infectious rhythm throughout. The pace is briefly slowed by a more lyrical middle section before the hectic energy returns in a mad dash to the end. As you would expect from Saint-Saëns, it’s all great good fun.
At the time Saint-Saëns wrote the Tarantelle he was a 21-year-old rising star: a keyboard virtuoso who had been giving concerts since he was 10, a composer whose works already included three symphonies, and a gifted organist who in 1857 – the year he wrote the Tarantelle – was appointed organist at the Church of the Madeleine, a post he would hold for many years. Wagner, Liszt, and Rossini by then had expressed their admiration for the gifted young artist.
Years later Saint-Saëns told an amusing story about how Rossini gave the Tarantelle a boost. Saint-Saëns wrote it for the first flutist and the first clarinetist of the Académie Royale de Musique. A short time after the three gave the work its premiere, Rossini – who had retired to Paris and had become a revered musical authority there – came up with a clever ploy to promote the piece and its young composer. Rossini had the Tarantelle performed at one of his famous salons. As Saint-Saëns told the story, “As there was never a written program for these evenings, Rossini let it be known that the piece was his. You can imagine the extent of success under such conditions! When the piece was at the encore, Rossini took me into the room and made me sit next to him, taking my hand so that I could not escape. Then came a procession of admirers and courtiers, with ‘Ah, master! What a masterpiece! What wonderful music!’ And when they had finished the range of congratulations, Rossini calmly replied, ‘I completely agree. But the work is not by me, it’s by this gentleman here.’” And with that the Tarantelle was launched. Saint-Saëns continued to perform the popular piece, and several years later he prepared an orchestrated version.
After you’ve made musical history with The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring, what do you do next? If you’re Stravinsky, you turn to jazz.
In 1917 Stravinsky, having fled Russia, was stranded with his family in Switzerland and in desperate need of income. He and the novelist C. F. Ramuz decided to create a simple-to-stage theater piece, to be read, played, and danced, that they could take on tour. They adapted a Russian folklore version of the Faust legend, in which a soldier trades his violin (his soul) to the devil in exchange for a book containing the secrets of wealth. Years later, the soldier wrests his fiddle back from the devil and uses it to win the hand of a princess. But when he tries to return to his old home to visit his mother, the devil claims his soul. The opening performance of The Soldier’s Tale was a success, but the production was immediately shut down because of the deadly flu epidemic that was sweeping through Europe. The following year, Stravinsky created this five-movement Concert Suite for clarinet, violin, and piano.
The Soldier’s Tale marked what Stravinsky called his “final break with the Russian Orchestral School” and the beginning of his fascination with the syncopated rhythms of American jazz, which Stravinsky heard for the first time when his friend the conductor Ernest Ansermet returned from a trip to the United States with sheet music. As Stravinsky later wrote, “My knowledge of jazz was derived exclusively from copies of sheet music, and as I had never actually heard any of the music performed, I borrowed its rhythmic style not as played, but as written…. Jazz meant, in any case, a wholly new sound in my music….”
That new sound is evident from the first notes of the jazz-inflected Suite, in the constantly shifting meters of the Soldier’s March. Independent rhythms play out against each other, with the bass of the piano keeping up a steady ostinato pulse while the violin and clarinet gambol, entering on a different beat almost every measure or phrase. Throughout – from the soldier’s gritty fiddling, through the Little Concert that cures the princess and the celebratory dances that follow, to the raucous, propulsive Devil’s Dance – Stravinsky mixes rhythmic complexity with acerbic wit and a wide range of styles. The fourth piece is a delicious parody of three musical dances – a swooping tango, a loopy waltz with an excess of grace notes, and a syncopated rag that Aaron Copland called “a kind of extract of ragtime that is more characteristic of Stravinsky than it is of Afro-American music.” Even so, it is as irresistible as the rest of this clever and groundbreaking work.
The outlines of Mendelssohn’s life are familiar: He was the most beloved composer of his lifetime, an extravagantly gifted child prodigy who had composed fugues, symphonies, and operas by the time he was 12; who stunned the musical world with his glorious Octet, written when he was 16; who set off a Bach revival when at 20 he conducted Bach’s St. Matthew Passion; who as a conductor turned the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra into a European powerhouse; who founded the prestigious Leipzig Conservatory; who toured Europe as a brilliant pianist, was especially beloved in England, and won the admiration and friendship of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
1n 1844 an exhausted Mendelssohn took a break from his travels and retired to Frankfurt to rest and compose. Among his new works was this String Quintet in B-Flat Major (sometimes referred to as the Viola Quintet). While he had composed his impressive first string quintet years earlier, at the age of 17, this one is considered a “mature masterpiece” – ironic, since he was still only 38 when he wrote it. Ironic, too, that it wasn’t published during Mendelssohn’s lifetime because he never thought it was good enough. Yet it’s a masterful demonstration of what Charles Rosen called Mendelssohn’s “control of large-scale structure unsurpassed by any composer of his generation.” The seamlessly constructed first movement is a good example. From two contrasting themes – the first violin’s exuberant rising arpeggios over tremolos, and the viola’s softer, more lyrical, falling second theme – Mendelssohn constructs a dramatic, forward-surging movement driven by tremolos, swirling triplets, and an orchestral-sounding fullness from the strings.
While the first movement’s exhilarating spirit has frequently been compared to that of the Octet, the second movement, Andante scherzando, is a variant of another familiar Mendelssohn form, the scherzo. Although slower than Mendelssohn’s usual scherzo, this dancelike scherzando is typically light and graceful, with pizzacatos adding playfulness. Then the mood of the Quintet takes a dramatic turn. After the exuberance of the first movement and the playfulness of the second, the Adagio e lento turns dark and mournful. The movement opens in a somber minor-key mode with what sounds like a funeral march, with a steady beat of dotted rhythms under a dirge-like cello. The violin introduces a second, lyrical theme in G Major, and for the rest of the movement minor and major vie for dominance. In a stunning ending the major key is ascendant, as pathos gives way to calm. Geniality is restored in the festive Allegro molto vivace, which ends with a triumphal flourish. With its fugal imitations and contrapuntal complexities, the movement reflects Mendelssohn’s love of Bach. It’s also the movement that dissatisfied him and caused him to withhold the work from publication.
Live at Deertrees August 5
At the time Debussy wrote the Petite Suite, he hadn’t yet written the groundbreaking works –Prélude à laprès-midi d’un faune, La Mer, the opera Pelléas et Mélisande – that would transform Western European ideas about music and pave the way for the musical revolutions of the 20th century. But already it was clear that he was working toward a singular vision of what music should be. From his earliest days as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, Debussy established himself as a rebel intent on following his own rules. When his composition teacher Ernest Guiraud chastised him for breaking traditional rules of theory, Debussy proclaimed, “There is no theory. You merely have to listen. Pleasure is the law.” Debussy won the school’s prestigious Prix de Rome and earned a study trop to Rome, but he hated that city and returned to Paris, where he threw himself into the bohemian world of poets, painters and writers. All of them helped shape Debussy’s revolutionary musical language.
One of his earliest compositions after returning from Rome was the Petite Suite. It’s a delightful set of four pieces, the first two inspired by poems by the Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. Debussy may have written it at the request of his publisher for some four-hand music that skilled amateur pianists could play together. That may explain why the Petite Suite is simpler and more straightforward than other works that soon would follow. There’s a hint of what is to come – the whole-tone scales and fluid rhythms that would be a part of Debussy’s distinct musical voice – but for the most part these pieces are distinguished by memorable melodies and a 19th-century French charm.
In “En Bateau” (in the boat), a simple lyrical melody over rippling arpeggios depicts a boat gliding dreamily at night across a quiet lake. A more playful middle section suggests that some of the revelers may have had more amorous interests, but the piece ends as languidly as it begins. Verlaine’s poem “Cortege” describes a processional in which a pet liveried monkey and a page accompany a fine lady up the stairs to her rooms. The monkey dances around playfully, while the page tries to peek up the lady’s skirt. Debussy’s exuberant score captures the festiveness and the humor of the scene. In the third piece, “Menuet,” Debussy refreshes and updates a classic Baroque dance. The Suite ends with a rhythmically driven “Ballet” that bursts with joie de vivre.
Debussy and his publisher Jacque Durand first performed the Petite Suite privately at a salon on March 1, 1889. A hit, it was transcribed for violin and piano a few years later, and in 1894 a colleague, Henri Büsser, arranged it for orchestra.
If you’re known to the world as the “Sunshine Composer,” you can be pretty sure you’ve brought a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. Although Moritz Moszkowski is hardly a household name today, in his day he was lionized as a brilliant pianist, a composer of sparkling salon pieces for the piano, a conductor, and a renowned teacher. Of his piano compositions, Paderewski said, “After Chopin, Moszkowski best understands how to write for the piano.” As a teacher, first in Berlin and then in Paris, he influenced scores of musicians who came to study with him.
By the turn of the century Moszkowski was a wealthy and much lauded artist. But his life took a downward turn. A problem with his arm had forced him to give up concert touring. He began suffering from health problems. Then, in a disastrous financial move, he sold the lucrative copyrights to his music and invested all the money in Polish, Russian, and German securities – investments that were swept away by the first world war. Sick and broke, he refused help from his many friends. A relief committee headed by Paderewski arranged a benefit concert in New York, but he died before the money could reach him. “Moszkowski dead!” one musical journal wailed; “So painful an announcement has not stricken the entire musical word since the deaths of Chopin, Rubinstein, and Liszt, of whom he was a worthy successor.”
The Suite for Two Violins and Piano, which Moszkowski wrote at the zenith of his popularity, shows him at his most virtuosic, brilliant, and irresistibly charming. The opening Allegro energico is, as its title demands, propulsively energetic, from the rush of violin double stops that dramatically open the movement to the big chords that close it. Both of the movement’s themes – a rhapsodic opening melody and a more lyrical second theme that emerges after the piano’s staccato chords – are passionate. Every passage is sonically rich, and the music surges throughout except for a surprising quiet pause before a build to a wild finish. Both the second and third movements, with their graceful melodies and striking rhythms, show Moszkowski at his Romantic best. The second movement, a charming waltz, is as lyrical and elegant as the first is fiery and dramatic, while the more sober third movement exudes Romantic soulfulness. Especially effective in this low-key Lento is the graceful canon between the two violins. What’s striking here too is how seamlessly the music flows among the three instruments. Then it’s as if Moszkowski is saying, “Now let’s have some fun,” with a high-spirited finale that dances buoyantly along, takes a brief lyrical break, then barrels to a giddy perpetual-motion coda. Not surprisingly, audiences loved it.
By the time Elgar wrote the Piano Quintet in A Minor, the self-taught musician from the provinces had turned into a British national icon, acclaimed, knighted, and heaped with honors. Elgar was beloved for works as wide-ranging as the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance marches, and a First Symphony that the conductor Hans Richter called “the greatest symphony of modern times.” Elgar turned to chamber music late in his career. In the summer of 1918, exhausted and depressed by the war, he moved from London to an idyllic Sussex woodlands cottage. That summer he worked simultaneously on three major chamber works: the Violin and Piano Sonata in E Minor, the String Quartet in E Minor, and, most ambitious of all, the intensely Romantic Piano Quintet — a work that, as Elgar wrote to a friend, “runs gigantically and in a large mood.”
Elgar’s wife Alice suggested in her diary that the Quintet was inspired by a local legend about impious Spanish monks who, having engaged in blasphemous rites, had been struck by lightning and turned into a grove of withered trees near the cottage. Alice speculated that the Quintet’s “wonderfully weird beginning” represented those sad and sinister trees. Elgar himself described the first movement as “ghostly stuff.” It begins with an eerie introduction: an austere piano motif that is interrupted repeatedly by muttering strings, followed by a sighing motif and a plaintive rising phrase from the cello. The main body of the movement bursts out with a vigorous march and a lilting, Spanish-sounding dance. Elgar skillfully traverses this rich palette of musical ideas, altering pace and mood to create an unsettling effect. The emotional temperature rises through a powerful fugato at the end of the exposition and a driven, agitated development section. At the end, emotions spent, the introductory material returns and the movement fades away.
The exquisitely beautiful Adagio, which develops from the viola’s spacious opening melody, is as calming as the first movement is unsettling. While the music rises to several impassioned climaxes, for the most part the movement is dominated by the elegance and serenity of its long melodic lines. A striking feature of the Quintet is its variety of textures, which range from the clean lines of the Adagio to a Brahmsian thickness that at times has the first and last movements sounding symphonic. The third movement highlights another distinguishing feature: the Quintet’s cyclical organization, through which Elgar unifies the work emotionally as well as technically. The movement begins with a quotation from the first movement’s eerie opening, and other uneasy references later creep in. But overall the concluding Allegro is splendidly vigorous, noble, and grand. Although the ghosts reappear, by the end they are triumphantly banished.
Live at Deertrees August 12
If Max Reger’s light, airy, and totally ingratiating Serenade for Flute, Violin, and Viola in G Major were the only composition of his that you had heard, you’d be hard-pressed to understand why much of his music generated passionate controversy. Reger was a familiar and popular musical presence in turn-of-the-century Germany. His massive output over two decades included more than 1000 compositions in every genre, including 200 pieces for the organ alone. In addition to churning out often mammoth compositions, he kept up a punishing concertizing schedule, giving 150 or more piano and organ concerts a year throughout Europe. Meanwhile he was teaching and acting as director at the Leipzig conservatory and later conducting the Meiningen court orchestra.
Like Brahms, whom he greatly admired, Reger stood at an intersection of musical styles. Ahead lay the lush harmonies and the chromaticism of Wagner, Liszt, and their late Romantic followers, while behind were the Baroque and Classical forms and structures. In his music Reger embraced the new while never abandoning the older formal structures. Traditionalists admired works like his Bach-inspired organ chorales and his Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart. But they blasted other compositions for being too long, harmonically dense, extremely chromatic, and complex. Yet these were exactly the qualities his Modernist supporters admired. Schoenberg, thought Reger was a genius; Hindemith called him “the last giant of music.”
Reger is at his most accessible in the G Major Serenade. The work is a charming example of his skill at embracing both tradition and innovation. Here he is the Classicist who revered Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, while at the same time he deftly blends in Modernist elements. The work opens with an impish Vivace that sounds like a throwback to an earlier era. Almost immediately, though, Reger modulates to another key, a distinctive characteristic of his music. Reger wrote a book on modulation, and you can hear throughout this movement how central the concept was to him. (Later in today’s program you’ll hear how Brahms also used modulation, in the technique that Schoenberg named “developing variation.”)
Throughout the Vivace, Reger moves with ease between two themes, one rhythmically bouncy, the other longer-lined and pensive. After a playful ending, a tender flute melody opens the expressive Larghetto. This is a heartfelt movement in which chromaticism – another characteristic of Reger’s style – plays an important role, adding richness. Then it’s back to friskiness, in a good-humored Presto driven by scampering triplets that are interrupted occasionally by slow, flowing legato passages. Throughout the movement, these passages put brakes on the forward momentum. But the triplets prevail – until the end, when, in a surprise, Reger brings the Serenade to a quiet close.
In 1920, Ravel was one of ten composers asked to contribute to a commemorative tribute honoring Debussy, who had died two years earlier. Ravel’s contribution was a Duo for Violin and Cello. Two years later, the Duo had become the first movement of the Sonata for Violin and Cello. Ravel dedicated the Sonata to Debussy, the composer with whom his name was always linked – not always to Ravel’s pleasure. “For Debussy the musician and the man, I have had profound admiration,” he said, “but by nature I am different from Debussy.” Much of that difference lay in their approach to composing. Ravel was a meticulous craftsman who worked slowly and fastidiously. “My objective,” he once said, “is technical perfection.” So it’s no surprise that it took Ravel as long as it did to finish the Sonata.
By the time he began the Duo, Ravel had moved away from lush Impressionism and toward a leaner, more spare style. He described the Sonata as a turning point in his musical evolution. It was, he said, “music stripped to the bone, the allure of harmony rejected, and increasingly the emphasis returns to the melody.” Economy of means, as he called it, doesn’t mean dry, though. The Sonata is a stunning work, taut, cyclic in nature, and marked by a richness of melodies, a great variety of textures and timbres, and a vast range of colors. One critic aptly described it as “bristling with virtuosity and lyricism which spits like an angry cat.”
The Allegro begins in striking fashion, with an ascending and descending violin ostinato that alternates between major and minor. Immediately the cello, floating above the violin, introduces the songful first theme, then drops to a lower register to present a jagged sequence of leaping sevenths. These two motifs – the gentle major/minor triads and the hard-edged leaping sevenths – will recur in cyclical fashion throughout the Sonata. The violin introduces a second lyrical theme over the cello’s syncopation, and this mix of themes and motifs drives an Allegro that, as Ravel promised, favors melody, not harmony.
The delicious second movement is a robust scherzo that plays with instrumental articulation, as violin and cello pluck (pizzicato) and bow (arco) their way through music that gallops energetically along before finally melting into whimsy with a smile-inducing closing glissando. Next Ravel turns his full attention to melody, in a serene slow movement that the cello opens with a stately, chorale-like theme, and that features a turbulent middle section and a recurrence of the sevenths from the first movement. The Sonata closes with a brilliant, virtuosic finale powered by the Sonata’s rich variety of rhythms, motifs, and colors, in a thrilling movement that makes two instruments sound almost orchestral.
To Wagner, Brahms was a traditionalist whose music belonged to the past. To Schoenberg, he was a progressive whose innovations influenced Schoenberg’s own musical ideas. In a way, both were right. Brahms’s reputation as a traditionalist and a conservative came from his championing the music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and from his use of traditional Classical structures in his own music. What he did within those structures, however, was another story. While he understood traditional sonata form –two or more themes presented in an exposition, elaborated on in a development section, and resolved in a recapitulation – he was innovative in his treatment of it. As Jan Swafford notes, “A Brahmsian movement is often made of succinct melodic ideas that begin to transform as soon as we hear them, and continue to evolve and recombine throughout, accompanied by the sort of abrupt key changes that used to be confined to the development section.” This is the technique that an admiring Schoenberg named “developing variation,” and that Brahms uses in the superb A Major Piano Quartet.
The first movement of the Quartet gives a good sense of how developing variation works. Instead of traditional thematic development, Brahms develops a wealth of motives incrementally and in complex relationships. Brahms opens with a striking two-part thematic statement: The piano begins a gentle, irregular motive, in triplets, which the cello answers with a flowing phrase in eighth notes. The strings repeat the triplet motive, immediately after which these two ideas begin evolving harmonically and melodically. Meanwhile, the two contrasting meters play out against each other throughout the sonata-form movement. When, for example, after an intense transition the piano introduces a second theme, the rhythmic pattern of three notes against two reemerges, with the piano this time picking up the eighth-note rhythm and the cello countering with triplets.
While the first movement reflects Brahms’s admiration for Schubert, the beautiful second shows his affection for Schumann. Tranquil, at times ardent, and melodically rich throughout, the Adagio is striking for its long, arching piano themes, the muted sonorities of the strings, and especially the strange, somewhat ominous arpeggios that twice interrupt the melodic flow before closing the movement. Brahms next presents a Scherzo that is surprisingly light and amiable, although the minor-key Trio, which opens with a fiery canon, is made of sterner stuff. The vivacious Finale is marked by exuberant, Hungarian-style themes that sweep the music to a joyful conclusion. It is marked, too, by a continuation of rhythmic irregularities. At the start of the movement, for instance, Brahms seems to be having a good time disguising where the beat falls. This playing with meter is another element that increasingly will become a distinguishing feature of Brahms’s musical style.
Stay in Tune! Join Our Email List!
Quick Links: