ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA A CLASSICAL SPECIAL CONCERT. January 22, 2016

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1 ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA A CLASSICAL SPECIAL CONCERT January 22, 2016 WOLFGANG AMADUES MOZART Overture to Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), K. 620 WOLFGANG AMADUES MOZART Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467 Allegro maestoso Andante Allegro vivace assai Vadym Kholodenko, piano INTERMISSION PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 Andante sostenuto Andantino in modo di canzona Scherzo: Pizzicato ostinato Finale: Allegro con fuoco Overture to Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), K.620

2 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Born January 27, 1756, Salzburg Died December 5, 1791, Vienna Mozart wrote two operas in the final summer of his life, and both were premiered in September They could hardly be more unalike. La Clemenza di Tito, an opera seria composed for the festivities in Prague surrounding the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia, is a somewhat stiff (and unbelievable) fable of the virtues of royal mercy. The other project appears to have been closer to Mozart s heart. Earlier that summer, Mozart and his friend Emanuel Schikaneder, a dramatist and impresario, came up with a plan for a new opera that almost defies classification. It is more Singspiel than opera and (improbably) combines music-hall fun with high Masonic idealism, all of it welded together with some of the finest music Mozart ever wrote. La Clemenza di Tito has never enjoyed much popular success it is admired at a distance by connoisseurs but The Magic Flute charms every audience that sees it; someone once suggested (without too much exaggeration) that God created the earth so that Mozart could write The Magic Flute. As he often did, Mozart delayed writing the overture until almost the last minute: the premiere of The Magic Flute took place in Vienna on September 30, and Mozart wrote the overture on the 28 th. Curiously, though Mozart was pressed for time, he did not base the overture on themes from the opera his frequent practice but instead wrote one using entirely new material. The only part of the opera that appears in the overture is three solemn chords. Three was a number with mystical meaning in Masonic ritual (the overture is in E-flat Major, a key with three flats), and in the opera those chords herald the beginning of Sarastro s ritual initiation of Tamino in Act II. These three massive chords, solemnly intoned by the full orchestra (an orchestra that includes three trombones), open the overture s brief introduction, setting the tone for the opera s high moral message. But at the Allegro the music bursts forward suddenly, establishing the mood of sparkling fun that is also so much a part of The Magic Flute. The overture is in sonata form, and the exposition begins as a fugue, introduced by the second violins. Mozart will use this fugal opening as the first theme group; the second, the simplest of lyric figures, arrives in the solo woodwinds. And then a surprise: Mozart brings matters to a complete halt at the end of the exposition, and back come the three solemn chords from the overture s beginning. Within that solemn context, the development begins in minor-key urgency,

3 pressing ahead on the fugal material. The overture drives to a great climax and, riding along the splendid sound of timpani and the large brass section, comes to a ringing close, having established perfectly the mood for the action that will follow. Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467 WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART The Piano Concerto in C Major comes from the summit of Mozart s fame in Vienna. He completed it on March 9, 1785, barely in time for its premiere the following day, when it was the centerpiece of one of his popular subscription concerts. This was an extremely busy time for the 29-year-old composer. Not only was he working as composer, performe, and teacher, but also his father was visiting from Salzburg, and the elder Mozart who had expressed strong misgivings about his son s launching a career in Vienna now was forced to admit that Wolfgang had found dazzling success in his adopted city. It was during this visit that Haydn pulled the elder Mozart aside and offered the most sincere compliment any composer ever paid to another: Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition. Though he both led the orchestra and played the piano at the premiere, Mozart did not understand the piano concerto as a vehicle to display his virtuosity. Instead, he conceived the piano concerto as nearly symphonic in nature: in thematic material capable of growth and change, in the close integration of soloist and orchestra and particularly in their mutual development of the musical argument. Mozart s biographer Alfred Einstein notes that Mozart may have written few symphonies during his years in Vienna, but he did not really need to write symphonies. His piano concertos are full of symphonic thinking. The symphonic character of this concerto is most evident in its extraordinary first movement, which is as long as the final two movements combined. Mozart marks it Allegro maestoso, a marking that needs to be understood carefully. The key of C Major was a particularly good one for trumpets and timpani in Mozart s era, and their presence would sometimes produce a stern, martial quality in his music. Majestic this opening movement certainly is, but it lacks that martial trumpet-and-drums quality. Instead, there is nobility in this movement, and there is also a kind of regal restraint. The concerto opens quietly but firmly with

4 a little march tune. This march will become the backbone of the movement, and it serves many turns: as theme, as accompaniment figure and at one point Mozart even treats it fugally. The entrance of the piano is understated the soloist here is neither a heroic protagonist nor a rival of the orchestra and soon the piano introduces the movement s other principal ideas: an extraordinary chromatic episode in the wrong key of G minor and a serenely simple melody of Mozartean grace. The lengthy development of these ideas, shared by soloist and orchestra, runs through a range of mood and expression before the movement winds down gently and concludes on a wisp of the march tune. Extraordinary as the first movement is, it finds its match in the Andante, which has haunted audiences for two centuries. Mere verbal description cannot begin to suggest the expressiveness and sudden shifts of mood that mark this endlessly beautiful music. But while this music may be beautiful, it is not relaxed, and beneath its elegant surface are jagged edges, wide skips and stinging dissonances. Particularly striking here is the orchestral sonority Mozart creates: he mutes the upper strings, giving them a silky, dark sound, while middle strings introduce the triplet accompaniment that throbs throughout and lower strings lay out the pizzicato bass line. Over this accompaniment, first violins have the soaring, arching main melody, full of expressive turns and dark shading. After two such movements, the finale a rondo marked Allegro vivace assai ( very fast and lively ) can seem a little conventional. Strings introduce the tightly chromatic main idea, the piano quickly picks it up, and the music whirls off on its bright way. Of particular interest here is the writing for orchestra. We do not immediately think of Mozart for his orchestration, but this finale is striking for its deft exchanges between winds and strings, for the quiet but effective writing for trumpets and horns, and particularly for the wonderful writing for solo woodwinds, each of whom assumes an individual character here. Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Born May 7, 1840, Votkinsk

5 Died November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg The Fourth Symphony dates from the most tumultuous period in Tchaikovsky s difficult life, and its composition came from a moment of agony. When he began work on the symphony in May 1877, Tchaikovsky had for some years been tormented by the secret of his homosexuality, a secret he kept hidden from all but a few friends. As he worked on this score, one of his students at the Moscow Conservatory, a deranged young woman named Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova, declared her love for him. Knowing that such a prospect was hopeless, Tchaikovsky put her off as gently as he could, but she persisted, even threatening suicide at one point. As fate would have it, Tchaikovsky was also at work on his opera Eugen Onegin at this time and was composing the scene in which the bachelor Onegin turns down the infatuated young Tatiana, to his eventual regret. Struck by the parallel with his own situation and at some level longing for a normal life with a wife and children Tchaikovsky did precisely the wrong thing for some very complex reasons: he agreed to Antonina s proposal of marriage. His friends were horrified, but the composer pressed ahead and married Antonina on July 18, The marriage was an instant disaster. Tchaikovsky quickly abandoned his bride, tried to return, but fled again and made what we would today call a suicide-gesture. He then retreated to St. Petersburg and collapsed into two days of unconsciousness. His doctors prescribed complete rest, a recommendation Tchaikovsky was only too happy to follow. He abandoned his teaching post in Moscow and fled to Western Europe, finding relief in the quiet of Clarens in Switzerland and San Remo in Italy. It was in San Remo on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean and far from the chaos of his life in Moscow that he completed the Fourth Symphony in January The Fourth Symphony has all of Tchaikovsky s considerable virtues great melodies, primary colors and soaring climaxes and in this case they are fused with a superheated emotional content. The composer s friends guessed, perhaps inevitably, that the symphony had a program, that it was about something, and Tchaikovsky offered several different explanations of the content of this dramatic music. To his friend Serge Taneyev, Tchaikovsky said that the model for his Fourth Symphony had been Beethoven s Fifth, specifically in the way both symphonies are structured around a recurring motif, though perhaps also in the sense that the two symphonies begin in emotional turmoil and eventually win their way to release and triumph in the finale. For his patroness, Madame Nadezhda von Meck, who had supplied the money that

6 enabled him to escape his marriage, Tchaikovsky prepared an elaborate program detailing what his symphony meant. One should inevitably be suspicious of such explanations (and Tchaikovsky himself later suppressed the program), but this account does offer some sense of what he believed had shaped the content of his music. The symphony opens with a powerful brass fanfare, which Tchaikovsky describes as Fate, the inexorable power that hampers our search for happiness. This power hangs over our heads like the sword of Damocles, leaving us no option but to submit. The principal subject of this movement, however, is a dark, stumbling waltz in 9/8 introduced by the violins: The main theme of the Allegro describes feelings of depression and hopelessness. Would it not be better to forsake reality and lose oneself in dreams? This long opening movement (it is nearly half the length of the entire symphony) has an unusual structure: Tchaikovsky builds it on three separate theme-groups which evolve through some unusual harmonic relationships. Like inescapable fate, the opening motto-theme returns at key points in this dramatic music, and it finally drives the movement to a furious close: Thus we see that life is only an everlasting alternation of somber reality and fugitive dreams of happiness. After so turbulent a beginning opening, the two middle movements bring much-needed relief. The contrast is so sharp, in fact, that Taneyev complained that these were essentially ballet music made to serve as symphonic movements; Taneyev may have a point, but after that scalding first movement, the gentle character of the middle movements is welcome. The Andantino, in ternary-form, opens with a plaintive oboe solo and features a more animated middle section. Tchaikovsky described it: Here is the melancholy feeling that overcomes us when we sit weary and alone at the end of the day. The book we pick up slips from our fingers, and a procession of memories passes in review The scherzo has deservedly become one of Tchaikovsky s most popular movements. It is a tour de force for strings (which play pizzicato throughout), with crisp interjections first from the woodwinds and then from brass. Tchaikovsky makes piquant contrast between these quite different sounds, combining all his forces only in the final moments of the movement. The composer notes: There is no specific feeling or exact expression in the third movement. Here are only the capricious arabesques and indeterminate shapes that come into one s mind with a little wine Out of the quiet close of the third movement, the finale explodes to life. The composer

7 described this movement as the picture of a folk holiday and said, If you find no pleasure in yourself, look about you. Go to the people. See how they can enjoy life and give themselves up entirely to festivity. Marked Allegro con fuoco, this movement simply alternates its volcanic opening sequence with a gentle little woodwind tune that is actually the Russian folktune In the field there stood a birch tree. At the climax, however, the fate-motto from the first movement suddenly bursts forth: But hardly have we had a moment to enjoy this when Fate, relentless and untiring, makes his presence known. Given the catastrophic events of his life during this music s composition, Tchaikovsky may well have come to feel that Fate was inescapable, and the reappearance of the opening motto amid the high spirits of the finale represents the climax both musically and emotionally of the entire symphony. This spectre duly acknowledged, Tchaikovsky rips the symphony to a close guaranteed to set every heart in the hall racing at the same incandescent pace as his music. -Program notes by Eric Bromberger