Wolfgang Amadé Mozart 250 th Anniversary Celebration

Transcription

1 The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra John Hsu, Artistic Director & Conductor Wolfgang Amadé Mozart 250 th Anniversary Celebration Saturday 11 March :00 pm SEHKS Conclave Rome City Auditorium Rome, Georgia Sunday 12 March :00 p.m. Peachtree Road United Methodist Church 3180 Peachtree Road NW Atlanta, Georgia

2 program Symphony in D Major, K. 196/121 Allegro molto Andante grazioso Allegro Concerto in F Major, K. 459, for fortepiano and orchestra Allegro Allegretto Allegro assai Andrew Willis, fortepiano intermission Symphony in G Minor, K. 550 (first version) Molto Allegro Andante Menuetto: Allegretto Allegro assai The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra John Hsu, Artistic Director & Conductor Violin Viola Flute Karen Clarke Melissa Brewer Catherine Bull Cora Cooper Elena Kraineva Stephen Redfield Oboe Yuyu Chu Violoncello George Riordan Gesa Kordes Brent Wissick Susan Brashier Ute Marks Eckhart Richter Ruth Johnsen Martha Bishop Bassoon Keith Collins Violone Anna Marsh Melanie Punter Horn Keyboard Richard Seraphinoff Daniel Pyle Celeste Holler

3 The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra was founded under the leadership of Lyle Nordstrom, along with foundingmembers Catherine Bull, Jeanne Johnson, Daniel Pyle, and Eckhart Richter, who felt the need for a permanent, professional, historical-instrument orchestra in the Southeast. The unique, transparent sheen of early instruments, coupled with their capability of a delightful variety of articulations, allows voices and instruments to blend into a unified, yet clear, sound that is very difficult to achieve with modern instruments. Since its founding in 1997, the ABO has been applauded for its freshness and verve, and for its delightful, convincing performances of a wide range of earlier works. The Orchestra received initial generous support from the Atlanta Early Music Alliance and a variety of individuals, and has also depended on donations of time and money from the musicians themselves. The ABO is a not-for-profit corporation based in Atlanta, and is 501(c)3 (tax-exempt). Contributions, which are tax-deductible, are greatly appreciated and are central to the survival of a venture such as this. If you would like to support the ABO and its future programming, please send checks made out to The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, 303 Augusta Avenue SE, Atlanta, GA There is also a great opportunity for friends of the arts in the community to serve on the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra board. Please visit our website at for more information on the ABO. John Hsu is the Old Dominion Foundation Professor of Music Emeritus at Cornell University, where he taught for 50 years ( ). He was the founder and conductor of the erstwhile Apollo Ensemble (a period instrument chamber orchestra) and a renowned virtuoso player of the viola da gamba and baryton. As both a conductor and an instrumentalist, he has been awarded grants by "The Fund for U.S. Artists at International Festivals and Exhibitions," a public/private partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Information Agency, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. He has performed throughout North America and Europe, and made award-winning recordings. Among them are his CD of Haydn Baryton Trios (with violist David Miller and cellist Fortunato Arico), which was chosen Winner in the Music Retailers Association's Annual Award for Excellence in London, 1989; and his CD Symphonies for the Esterhazy Court by Joseph Haydn (with the Apollo Ensemble), which was nominated for the 1996 International Cannes Classical Music Award. In recognition of his edition of the complete instrumental works of Marin Marais ( ), the most important composer of music for the viola da gamba, and for his performances and recordings of French baroque music for the viola da gamba, the French government conferred on him the knighthood Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres in May of He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, which awarded him the Honorary Doctor of Music degree in He is also Artistic Director Emeritus of the Aston Magna Foundation for Music and the Humanities (the pioneering musical organization in the historical performance movement in this country, founded by Albert Fuller in 1972). As conductor of the Cornell Symphony Orchestra, he has performed all nine Beethoven Symphonies, based on the new Bärenreiter edition by Jonathan Del Mar, completed in Pianist Andrew Willis performs in the United States and abroad on pianos of every period. Noted for his mastery of early keyboard instruments, Willis recorded several Beethoven sonatas in the first complete recording of the cycle on period instruments, a project directed by Malcolm Bilson and presented in concert in New York, Utrecht, Florence, and Palermo, in which his recording of Op. 106 was hailed by The New York Times as a Hammerklavier of rare stature. He has also recorded Schubert lieder and Rossini songs with soprano Julianne Baird, early-romantic song cycles with soprano Georgine Resick, and music of Rochberg, Schickele, Luening, Kraft, and Ibert with flutist Sue Ann Kahn. Willis has appeared as soloist with period-instrument chamber orchestras such as The Mozart Orchestra, the Apollo Ensemble, and the Philadelphia Classical Symphony. Recent recital appearances include the National

4 Music Museum, the University of Michigan, and early-music societies in San Diego, Los Angeles, and London. At the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he has been a member of the keyboard faculty since 1994, he serves as Director of the biennial Focus on Piano Literature, at which he premiered Martin Amlin s Sonata No. 7 in 2000; his premiere recording of this and other Amlin works is a new release on Albany Records. He is currently investigating further aspects of historical performance, playing Chopin and Fauré on an 1848 Pleyel grand, and 18th-century Italian masters and J. S. Bach on a replica of a 1735 Florentine piano.. Andrew Willis studied piano with Mieczyslaw Horszowski at The Curtis Institute of Music, with George Sementovsky and Lambert Orkis at Temple University, and with Malcolm Bilson at Cornell University. For a number of years, his multifaceted musical career was based in Philadelphia, where he served as keyboardist of The Philadelphia Orchestra for several seasons. Program Notes by John Hsu With a few exceptions, Mozart s symphonies may be divided into two categories, his earlier three-movement symphonies in the Italian style and his later four-movement symphonies in the Viennese style. Although Mozart composed his first symphony, the one in E-flat Major, K. 16, in London when he was eight years old, it was probably during his visits to Vienna in and to Italy in that he first developed his skills as a symphonist. But it was during the last decade of his life, when he settled in Vienna, that he, along with Joseph Haydn, brought the Viennese Classical symphony genre to its pinnacle. The multi-movement symphony for an orchestra of mixed instruments, composed for the purpose of concert performance, derived primarily from the multi-sectional Italian opera overture of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, often also called sinfonia. It evolved from the overture by expanding the three sections of the overture into three independent movements: fast-slow-fast. The first movement is generally cheerful and brilliant, the second melodious and expressive, and the last light-hearted and dance-like. The Viennese composers expanded this into a four-movement work by adding a menuet as the third movement. Mozart s Symphony in D Major, K , is a prime example of an Italian overture-symphony, both in its formal structure and in its origin. The first two movements were composed originally as the two-movement overture to his comic opera, La finta giardiniera, K. 196, performed at the 1775 carnival in Munich. The independent Allegro movement K. 121, probably composed in 1775, was added as the finale to form a threemovement symphony. This is a youthful, entertaining, and theatrical piece of music comprising a curtain raiser, a song, and a dance, by the teenage composer. In contrast to this youthful work is the Symphony in G Minor, K. 550, which together with the Symphony in E- flat, K. 543 and the Jupiter Symphony, K. 551, forms the trilogy of Mozart s last symphonies, the apex of his symphonic output. These masterpieces, composed during the summer of 1788, were not commissioned works, and the reason for their creation is unknown to us. Perhaps they were intended for some projected concerts that never came to pass. In any case, the rapidity of their production was typical of his prolificacy during the last decade of his life in Vienna. This Symphony in G Minor is arguably the most original of Mozart s symphonies. It is grand in design and unprecedented in the density of musical ideas and the intensity of musical expression. The first movement begins surprisingly with a quiet but passionate first theme with a rhythmically agitated accompaniment instead of a sonorous and bright theme expected of the beginning of a molto allegro first movement. This initial theme, composed of a thrice repeated step-wise motive followed by a upward skip, imparts a feeling of yearning that is an affective contrast to the tranquility of the lyrical second theme. The repetition of this theme and the repetition of its main step-wise motive also serve as the vehicle for harmonic exploration in the development section of the movement. This section of 65 measures starts with two abrupt chords that propel the tonality to f-sharp minor, almost the farthest related key to g minor, which creates the suspense of how to bring about the return to the tonic key. By the reiteration of the first theme in a series of

5 sequences, the composer deftly arrives at the D-major chord, the dominant of g minor. The section ends with the magical extended passage above the dominant pedal point based on the descending stepwise motive of the theme that allows the overlapping of the development and the anticipatory and surreptitious entrance of the recapitulation. The second movement is an intensely emotional piece expressed by the sensitive use of dissonance and the clarity of sparse texture. The strings play throughout, and the winds broaden the spectrum of instrumental color by occasionally doubling the strings or playing the ornamental figure of pairs of fast notes. It is most surprising that the melodic outline of the first four measures of this emotive main theme actually presents the impersonal four-note fugal subject from the coda in the finale of the Jupiter Symphony in a totally different guise. With the sequential entrances of the viola, second violin, and first violin, each one measure apart, and playing the intervals of a fourth, a fifth, then a sixth respectively, the downbeats of the first three measures followed by the resolution of the dissonant seventh of the dominant chord to the note G in measure 4, the fugal subject from the Jupiter is heard in E-flat major: E-flat - F - A-flat - G. As is the case in Haydn s symphonies of the same period, the title Menuet/Menuetto in Mozart s later symphonies no longer denotes the traditional French baroque menuet. Rather, it had become a generic term for a dance movement. In this third movement, the music suggests a rustic dance in triple time, the choreography of which calls for syncopations and phrase structures of predominantly three-measure and six-measure groupings, coupled with a Trio section, perhaps for solo dancers, that provides more imaginative instrumental sonority, melodic refinement, and a welcome change in tonality. The finale is a powerful and exciting movement in sonata form. The main theme consists of two motives, a soft ascending arpeggio by the strings followed by a loud reply of a repeated harmonic progression by the full orchestra. The rhythmic vitality of this theme, with the fleeting motion of the strings and the chordal punctuation of the winds, predominates throughout the movement. The appearances of the lyrical second theme provide moments of welcome repose from the relentless forward thrust of the music. Excitement is further generated by adventurous harmonic explorations in the extended 80-measure development section. It begins with a succession of diminished chords, then the first sequence of modulation from d minor to c minor, mostly through the descending circle of fifths, followed by the extended sequences of modulations from c minor to c-sharp minor, through the ascending circle of fifths, then reverts to the descending circle of fifths to return to the dominant of g minor. This section ends with an interrogative diminished-seventh chord for which the answer, after a suspenseful silent, is the appearance of the recapitulation, thus bringing a wildly exuberant ending to this great symphony. Concerto in F Major, K. 459, is one of Mozart s symphonic piano concertos in which the orchestra is musically an equal partner with the soloist, and the wind instruments play soloistic parts as well as accompaniment. This is perhaps the happiest piano concerto by the composer. It is a work that exudes buoyancy and cheerful lightheartedness throughout. The occurrence of musical events in each movement shows a carefree attitude towards formal structure that seems surprising yet spontaneous and worry-free. There is not a moment of great pathos or anxiety in the entire work. The orchestral exposition begins the Allegro first movement with a jaunty dance-like theme in cut-time, which is followed by a series of short melodies that tumble forth in succession like the patterns in a kaleidoscope. The solo exposition begins with the piano alone as expected, but the repeat of the main theme is played by the oboe and bassoon accompanied by the piano playing broken-chord figures in triplets. Following the appearance of the second theme, first as a dialogue between the strings and winds, then repeated and embellished by the piano, the rhythmic motive of the main theme and the triplet figures of the piano return and together predominate throughout the movement. The carefree dance character of the movement is greatly enhanced by the brilliance of the piano part, which contributes to the scintillating quality of the overall orchestral sonorities. The outpouring of youthful and innocent happiness in this movement is suggestive of ballet music for fairy tales. The second movement is not a slow movement as expected. It is instead an elegant and graceful dance-like movement in C major, 6/8 meter, and moderate tempo, marked Allegretto. In texture it is a chamber music work in which the wind choir and the piano carry on extended dialogues, with the strings mostly providing harmonic accompaniment. Structurally the movement is a truncated sonata form that has no development section. The first

6 tutti section, which announces only the first theme, serves as an orchestral introduction to a complete exposition with two themes played by he soloist and orchestra in partnership. The second theme, evocating the feeling of a valse triste, is the only suggestion of melancholy in this movement. The recapitulation, which is the repeat of the exposition in its entirety, but with the appropriate change in the tonality of the second theme, leads to a coda that starts with full orchestral sonority, becomes softer with the repetition of an ascending scale played in succession by the winds and piano, and then fades into silence. The Allegro assai finale is the most symphonic of the three movements in terms of thematic material, formal design, and orchestration. It is a sonata/rondo movement, the duality of which brings to the piece the rich variety of thematic contrasts of a rondo and the dramatic structural organization of the sonata form. The rondo refrain (the main theme) is whimsical in character and homophonic in texture, and the piano and the winds are presented as equal partners in a dialogue. Then comes a surprising thematic contrast in the juxtaposition of this refrain with the serious contrapuntal first couplet, which is a 4-voice fugato, with the piano silent. The solo exposition, which also begins with the main theme, is followed by the piano s display of virtuosity that continues almost throughout the movement. This display, consisting primarily of fleeting broken-chord figures in triplets, serves mostly as accompaniment to the orchestra s quotations of motives of the main theme and the fugal subject. This music is intensified in the development section by a series of harmonic modulations. It is intensified further in the recapitulation by the enrichment of texture, by the addition of a piano accompaniment to the winds answers in the refrain, and by the introduction of another voice in the fugato which repeats the rhythmic motive of the refrain. Thus the music increases in sonority, momentum, and intensity till the very end of this brilliant masterpiece, which the composer himself considered one of his grand piano concertos. (Additional note by Daniel Pyle Mozart s name which he was given at his baptism was Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart: Johann Chrysostom in honor of the saint of the same name, and Theophilus in honor of his godfather. Amadeus, by which we know him, is simply a Latin translation of the Greek Theophilus, He also used the form Amadeo at times, but the form he himself used most often was Amadé or Amadè. ) Hotel accommodation for The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra musicians is graciously provided by Support is also provided by

7 Embellish A Melody! Bach Club ($ ) Vivaldi Club ($ ) Anonymous Martha Bishop Anonymous Donald N. Broughton & Susan L. Olson Dr. & Mrs. David Bright Fitzpatrick & Lewis Public Relations LLC Dr. & Mrs. Peter DeWitt James E. Honkisz & Catherine A. Binns Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta Dr. Henry Kahn & Mary Gilmore--Kahn Janie R. Hicks Dr. & Mrs. William P. Marks, Jr. Douglas Leonard Dr. & Mrs. Ephraim R. McLean Nancy Musselwhite Michael Clifford & Sandra Murray Daniel Pyle & Catherine Bull Mr. & Mrs. Thomas J. Thomas Lois Z. Pyle Mr. & Mrs. Paul Timm-Brock Donald E. Snyder Larry Thorpe & Dr. Barbara Williams Telemann Club ($ ) Roger S. Austin Patrick L. Boyle & Paula G. Ciembor Handel Club ($ ) Stratton H. Bull George Riordan & Karen Clarke Susan K. Card Susan Wagner Anne Halliwell Dymples E. Hammer Mr. & Mrs. Allan R. Jones Shawn Pagliarini & Russell Williamson Eckhart & Rosemary Richter Hans & JoAnn Schwantje The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra would like to thank the following persons and establishments For contributing their time, talents, and energy in regard to the details of ABO concerts. Atlanta Early Music Alliance (AEMA) Janice Joyce & Chris Robinson Don Contreras Eckhart & Rosemary Richter Nancy & Wayne Musselwhite George & Ann Gerakitis Janie Hicks Valerie Prebys Arsenault Terri Hunt OmniContractors Sandy Fitzpatrick & Randy Lewis Susan Wagner Ted Huddleston Linda Bernard & RyeType Design Martha Bishop William & Ute Marks Peachtree Road United Methodist Church: Scott Atchison, Michael Shake, and Amir Zaheri The ABO would also like to acknowledge the several thousand dollars worth of rehearsal time that has been graciously given to the orchestra by its members. These concerts could not be given without their enthusiasm and support. ABO Board of Directors President: Eckhart Richter Janice Joyce Vice President: Shawn Pagliarini Cathy Adams Vice President for Development: Janie Hicks John Lemley Secretary: Nancy Musselwhite Melanie Punter Treasurer: Peter DeWitt Scott Atchison Daniel Pyle, Resident Director Ephraim McLean

8 The final concert of this season! Fairest Isle: An English Sojourn music by Handel, Boyce, Purcell, J. C. Bach, & Mozart Dana Maiben, guest director 21 May 2006 And next season The Mozart Celebration continues! Master pieces from Salzburg Symphony 27 in G; Violin Concerto in G; & Symphony no. 29 in A 23 September 2006* Symphony no. 18 in F; Regina coeli in B-flat; & Symphony no. 25 in G minor 19 November 2006* *dates subject to change Visit our web-site at