Peoria Symphony Orchestra May 7, 2016 Program Notes by Michael Allsen

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1 Peoria Symphony Orchestra May 7, 2016 Program Notes by Michael Allsen This all-english program, Legendary London, opens with a rarely-played work by Malcolm Arnold, a suite from the 1959 ballet Sweeney Todd, on the story of the bloodthirsty barber of Victorian London. Former Beatle, and enduring pop star Paul McCartney, has turned occasionally Classical concert music in the last quarter century he colorful Spiral heard here is one of Sir Paul s most successful Classical works. Young Nicholas Stovall, principal oboe of the National Symphony Orchestra, joins the Peoria Symphony Orchestra to play the Oboe Concerto of Vaughan Williams: a deceptively modest-sounding virtuoso piece that makes references to the sound of English folk music. We end with Elgar s great musical tribute to friendship, the Enigma Variations. Malcolm Arnold ( ) Suite from Sweeney Todd, Op.68a Arnold s ballet score Sweeney Todd was composed in 1959, and the ballet premiered in Stratford-on-Avon on December 10, The suite heard here dates from 1984, and was assembled by David Ellis, working with the composer. Duration 20:00. Malcolm Arnold, among the most important British composers of his generation, began his career as a trumpeter, eventually playing in the London Philharmonic Orchestra. By the late 1940s, however, he turned all of his attention to composition. He became a prolific and successful composer, creating a host of works for band and orchestra (including several concertos and nine symphonies), operas, ballets, chamber music, and well over 100 film scores. At its heart, Arnold s music is conservative, even Romantic, in style, though he brought in an eclectic range of musical influences, eclecticism which he brought to bear on his witty score to the 1959 ballet Sweeney Todd. Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, is one of the most gruesome figures in British fiction. Though there are a few possible historical incidents that the story might have been based upon, these are much disputed, and Mr. Todd seems to have been largely a fictional figure, appearing first in an 1846 penny dreadful pulp novel. In the novel, and many later adaptations, Todd cuts the throats of his customers and dispatches the bodies to the baker Mrs. Lovett to be baked into meat pies and sold to her unsuspecting customers. There have been many stage and film adaptations over the past 150 years probably the best-known is Stephen Sondheim s 1979 musical Sweeney Todd. Arnold s involvement with the story came with a 1959 commission from the Royal Ballet. The ballet Sweeney Todd, choreographed by John Cranko, was inspired in part by the look of Victorian toy theatres small and gaudily-painted cardboard stages with paper-doll actors that were popular in 19th-century England. In this version of the story, Todd is pursued by a group of bumbling, incompetent police (modeled on the slapstick Keystone Cops of silent movies). They are unable to capture him, but he is

2 eventually shot by one of his intended victims. Todd is deeply in love with Johanna, and locks her fiancé Mark in his shop it is Mark who kills Todd. Arnold s score contrasts several styles of music, appropriate to the various characters and tinged with bitter humor. The Suite presents seven sections of the ballet, played without pauses. It begins mysteriously, with a vaguely threatening atmosphere (Moderato e misterioso), before an explosion of agitated music that depicts police whistles, screams, and figures hurrying about in the darkness with torches. The loopy Allegretto that follows is music for the inept police. The next episode (Vivace) underscores Todd s murder of a rich man he has lured into the shop. The police arrive to investigate (Allegro vivace) but miss Todd again, and in the following sequence (Allegretto), he sneaks away stealthily. There is a sweet waltz-tinged Andante as Todd tries to propose to Johanna, but she rejects him. Todd returns to his shop to take care of Mark, but is himself killed in a frenetic musical sequence. In the end there is a satirical finale, Virtue Triumphant (Allegro con brio), with jaunty showbiz dance music. This leads to a lilting pas-dedeux for Mark and Johanna complete with chirping songbirds! and a final tongue-in-cheek dance. Paul McCartney (b.1942) Spiral McCartney originally composed this as a solo piano piece, and Richard Rodney Bennett orchestrated it for the 1999 album Working Classical. Duration 10:00. Paul McCartney has followed a long and winding road since he and another teenager from Liverpool, John Lennon, formed a band called The Quarrymen in 1957 to play Rock-n-Roll songs at a local dance. The Quarrymen morphed into The Beatles, a band that conquered English music in the early 1960s, and then invaded America in 1964, launching the phenomenon that came to be known as Beatlemania. The Beatles stopped touring in 1966 to work exclusively in the studio a move considered at the time to be professional suicide, but which paid off in a series of the greatest Rock albums of all time. After he left the band in 1970, and The Beatles formal breakup in 1971, McCartney continued to make music, first with his band Wings, and then as one of the most successful solo acts in pop music history. He shows no signs of slowing down as a creative artist today. As early as his time with The Beatles, McCartney has been interested in inserting Classical references into his songs (think, for example of the string ensemble used with emotionally devastating effect in the 1966 song Eleanor Rigby). His first foray into Classical concert music was his 1991 Liverpool Oratorio, commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to celebrate its 150th anniversary. In 1999, McCartney recorded his fourth Classical album, Working Classical, the title a pun on his own beginnings as working class kid in Liverpool: roots of which he remains proud. The album contains a mixture of songs, pieces for string quartet, and three works for full orchestra, A Leaf, Spiral, and Tuesday. For McCartney, compositions like this are always a partnership he doesn t read music, and has no formal training. In the case of Spiral, his collaborator was the late Richard Rodney Bennett ( ), one of England s

3 most prominent composers, who transformed McCartney s piano composition into an orchestral score. Spiral begins with delicate, impressionistic music: a quiet sustained chord from the strings, little arabesques from flute and oboe, and a calm idea from low strings and brass. A solo string quartet introduces a note of unease, and the music moves to a briefly strident climax before a return of the limpid calm of the opening. One more appearance of the unsettled music from the solo strings quickly disappears in the more tranquil music of the ending. Ralph Vaughan Williams ( ) Concerto in A minor for Oboe and String Orchestra Vaughan Williams composed the work in for oboist Léon Goossens, who was the soloist in the first performance in Liverpool, on September 30, Duration 19:00. Vaughan Williams composed his Oboe Concerto directly on the heels of his great wartime work, the Symphony No.5 the concerto in fact reuses music from a scherzo movement originally intended for the symphony. Its premiere, as part London s famed Proms series, was scheduled for July 1944, but the concert was cancelled due to German V-1 rocket attacks on the city. It appeared several weeks later on a program by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. The soloist and inspiration for the concerto was Léon Goossens ( ). Goossens was a member of distinguished British musical family: his father was the great conductor Eugène Goossens, and his brother (a conductor and composer) and sisters (both harpists) were also successful musicians. Goossens, certainly one of the great oboists of the 20th century, was noted for his flexibility and gorgeous sound, and the composers who wrote works for him reads like a Who s Who of British 20th-century composers. In addition to Vaughan Williams, the list includes Edward Elgar, Arnold Bax, Benjamin Britten, Arthur Bliss, his brother Eugene Aynsley Goossens, and many others. Several writers have commented on the fact this concerto s outwardly placid, sometimes folklike nature masks the fact this is truly a virtuoso piece. Though there is little flashiness until the third movement, the soloist has to display tremendous endurance and musicality, playing with very few breaks. The opening movement (Rondo Pastorale: Allegro moderato) uses Vaughan Williams s trademark English folk-song style in the lush main theme. There are two contrasting episodes, the first dancelike and humorous, and the other a more meditative solo for oboe. The brief middle movement (Minuet and Musette: Allegro moderato) is light and whimsical, with a quirky little minuet, and the musette a folk bagpipe making occasional appearances in the strings. The must substantial movement is the scherzo (Finale (Scherzo): Presto). The oboe enters with a furious line over complicated counterpoint in the strings, eventually leading to a rhythmically intense main theme. The oboe lays out a contrasting lyrical idea above quiet string chords, which is broadly developed. Near the end, the oboe makes one brief attempt to introduce the agitated music of the opening, before ending in the more serene mood that dominates the second half of this movement.

4 Edward Elgar ( ) Variations on an Original Theme ( Enigma ), Op.36 Elgar composed this work in It was first performed in London, on June 19, Duration 29:00. Writing to his friend August Jaeger in 1899, Elgar described a recently-completed composition: a set of variations that depict thirteen of his musical and non-musical friends. Elgar incorporates several enigmas into this work. The first is the theme itself, which he labels enigma. Each variation is titled according to the person represented, but their identities are hidden by his use of initials and nicknames. (Elgar himself soon gave away the secret identities, however.) He also states that there is another larger theme, which is never actually played, that nevertheless runs through and over the entire work. Elgar s biographers have expended reams of paper in pursuit of this mystery. Possible candidates proposed for the larger theme include: God Save the Queen, Rule Britannia, Auld Lang Syne, a theme from Mozart s Cosi fan tutte, and the major scale. It has also been suggested that this unplayed theme might be a non-musical concept such as friendship. The answer is probably unknowable: the usually articulate Elgar was notably vague on this point. There is even the possibility that Elgar, whose sense of humor was well known to his friends and associates, was being deliberately obscure as a joke! The Enigma Variations was the first of Elgar s works to be widely heard, and it remains his most popular work today. It consists of a brief theme and fourteen variations. (Elgar adds a self-portrait to the depictions of his friends.) Theme. Elgar s theme, only 17 measures long, is deceptively complex and contains a huge amount of melodic and harmonic raw material to be used in the succeeding variations. It begins with strings alone, in minor, and then shifts to contrasting material in Major, returning to minor in the last phrase. Supposedly, Elgar improvised the theme at the piano for his wife Alice, and the later orchestral piece was born from the two of them amusing themselves by imagining how various friends of theirs might play it. Variation 1 ( C. A. E. ), L istesso tempo. Caroline Alice Elgar was married to the composer in 1889, and according to Elgar, her life...was a romantic and delicate inspiration. This section stays close to the harmonic and melodic outlines of the theme, but fleshes it out with ornamentation and lush orchestration. Variation 2 ( H. D. S.-P. ), Allegro. Hew David Stuart-Powell was a gifted amateur pianist who often played trios with Elgar (a violinist) and the cellist Basil Nevinson (the B. G. N. of Variation 12). The toccata-style figuration probably refers to Stuart-Powell s habitual warm-up routine, although the highly chromatic melody is probably intended a joke this pianist was notoriously conservative in his musical tastes. Variation 3 ( R. T. B. ), Allegretto. Richard Baxter Townsend was an author with a passion for amateur theater. According to his friends, Townsend had an extremely high voice, but loved to play old men in comic roles: growling his lines as low as he could, and suddenly breaking into a high falsetto. There is accordingly a humorous contrast between low and high textures in this variation.

5 Variation 4 ( W. M. B. ), Allegro di molto. In this variation, Elgar pokes gentle fun at a somewhat pompous country gentleman and scholar, William M. Baker. During one of Elgar s visits to his home, Baker officiously read an itinerary of the day s activities and left the music room with an inadvertent slam of the door. The tittering of his guests is heard in the middle of this variation. Variation 5 ( R. P. A. ), Moderato. Richard P. Arnold, son of the poet Matthew Arnold, is characterized in this section. He is alternately solemn and lighthearted. This variation continues without pause into Variation 6. Variation 6 ( Ysobel ), Andantino. The viola s prominent role in this variation refers to Isobel Woods, an amateur violist. The figure given to the violas throughout this section is taken from a beginner s exercise in crossing strings. Variation 7 ( Troyte ), Presto. The architect Arthur Troyte Griffith was a boisterous friend and sometime piano student of Elgar s, although he was apparently not a star pupil. Elgar notes that he tried...to make something like order out of the chaos, but that...the final despairing slam records that the effort proved to be in vain. Variation 8 ( W. N. ), Allegretto. Elgar was associated with Winifred Norbury, an elderly devotee of music, through his connections with the Worcestershire Philharmonic Society. The music depicts both her stately 18th-century home and her characteristic laugh. This variation continues directly into the next. Variation 9 ( Nimrod ), Adagio. The title is a labored pun on the name of August Jaeger, one of Elgar s closest friends: Jaeger in German means hunter, and Nimrod was the mighty hunter of the Book of Genesis. This movement is not a portrait of Jaeger s forceful character, but rather depicts a long conversation between Elgar and Jaeger on the grandeur of Beethoven s music. Elgar has provided some reminiscences of the slow movement of Beethoven s Pathetique sonata in the opening bars. Variation 10 ( Dorabella - Intermezzo ), Allegretto. According to at least one Elgar biographer, he fluttering nature of this section refers to the voice of Miss Dora Penny, an acquaintance of the composer. Elgar himself referred to this as...a dance of fairy-like lightness. This section serves as a bridge between the serious Variation 9 and the more rowdy Variation 11. Variation 11 ( G. R. S. ), Allegro di molto. George Robertson Sinclair was organist of Hereford Cathedral, but this music also refers to his bulldog Dan. One day, during a picnic, Dan slipped down a muddy bank into the River Wye, and had to swim for a time, looking for a place to climb out. In the opening bars, we hear Dan sliding down the slippery slope, paddling in the water, and barking with joy when he finds a landing-place. The more majestic tones of the brass depict Dan s master. Variation 12 ( B. G. N. ), Andante. Basil G. Nevinson, an amateur cellist, was a longtime friend of Elgar s. In this section the theme is expressively developed by the cellos. Variation 13

6 follows immediately. Variation 13 ( *** - Romanza ), Moderato. Being intentionally enigmatic, Elgar let the asterisks...stand for the name of a lady who was, at the time of the composition, on a sea voyage. (In all probability, it was his friend Lady Mary Lygon.) According to Elgar, we hear...the distant throb of the engines of a liner. He also quotes a melody from Mendelssohn s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. Variation 14 ( E. D. U. - Finale ), Allegro. The stirring finale is about Elgar himself: the initials refer to his nickname, Edoo. This brilliant finale certainly presents the composer in an optimistic light. The quotations from Variations 1 and 9 are programmatic: Elgar saw his wife Alice and August Jaeger as the two greatest influences on his life and his music. program notes 2016 by J. Michael Allsen

7 For program page: Malcolm Arnold Suite from Sweeney Todd, Op.68a Moderato e misterioso Allegretto Vivace Allegro vivace Allegretto Andante Allegro con brio Paul McCartney Spiral INTERMISSION [I m guessing please confirm this!] Ralph Vaughan Williams Concerto in A minor for Oboe and String Orchestra Rondo Pastorale: Allegro moderato Minuet and Musette: Allegro moderato Finale (Scherzo): Presto Nicholas Stovall, oboe Edward Elgar Variations on an Original Theme ( Enigma ), Op.36 Theme Variation 1 ( C. A. E. ), L istesso tempo Variation 2 ( H. D. S.-P. ), Allegro Variation 3 ( R. T. B. ), Allegretto Variation 4 ( W. M. B. ), Allegro di molto Variation 5 ( R. P. A. ), Moderato Variation 6 ( Ysobel ), Andantino Variation 7 ( Troyte ), Presto Variation 8 ( W. N. ), Allegretto Variation 9 ( Nimrod ), Adagio Variation 10 ( Dorabella - Intermezzo ), Allegretto Variation 11 ( G. R. S. ), Allegro di molto Variation 12 ( B. G. N. ), Andante Variation 13 ( *** - Romanza ), Moderato Variation 14 ( E. D. U. - Finale ), Allegro

Eloq uence. Symphony No. 7 ELGAR. Enigma Variations. London Symphony Orchestra Pierre Monteux

Eloq uence. Symphony No. 7 ELGAR. Enigma Variations. London Symphony Orchestra Pierre Monteux Eloq uence DVOR ÁK Symphony No. 7 ELGAR Enigma Variations London Symphony Orchestra ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904) Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70 1 I Allegro maestoso 10 42 2 II Poco adagio 10 34 3 III