Mendelssohn. Symphony No. 3 Scottish Symphony No. 4 Italian. Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra Sebastian Lang-Lessing

Transcription

1 Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3 Scottish Symphony No. 4 Italian Sebastian Lang-Lessing

2 Mendelssohn FELIX MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 Scottish [39 15] 1 I. Andante con moto Allegro un poco agitato II. Vivace non troppo III. Adagio IV. Allegro vivacissimo Allegro maestoso assai 9 13 Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 Italian [28 04] 5 I. Allegro vivace II. Andante con moto III. Con moto moderato IV. Saltarello (Presto) 5 32 Sebastian Lang-Lessing conductor Total Playing Time From the conductor None of Mendelssohn s symphonies opens with the prodigious energy level of his Symphony No. 4, the Italian Symphony. The beginning is an explosion of form, and the typical Mendelssohn staccatos set us in an atmosphere of lively and exuberant joie de vivre. The musicians have to practically split themselves in two down the middle to keep this energy and at the same time leave room for lyricism. As if trying to find a point of balance between the two energetic corner movements, the scherzo is rather calm and songlike, and the slow movement is a song without words which moves slowly but constantly forward as it sings. This symphony, inspired by Mendelssohn s Italian sojourn, is in every respect a travel symphony.the composer leads us through many places, sometimes quickly, sometimes smoothly, sometimes sedately, sometimes even wildly. And so movement is a fundamental element. This is a journey which looks for answers and doesn t always find them, which is clear from the many phrases ending with question marks. The path leads from a light, shining A major to a restless, searching A minor. Is this announcing the symphony s sister work, the Scottish Symphony, which moves harmonically in the opposite direction, but still carries within it this restless driving movement? The Journey was for many of the Romantics, in literature and painting as well as music, a real source of inspiration. The exploration of other cultures became an engine for their own creativity and for engaging in debate with their own traditions. Here, the journey is the destination. The Scottish is Mendelssohn s last symphony and was completed at a distance of ten years from his other travel symphony, the Italian. The orchestral colours which Mendelssohn finds in this symphony cover an enormous range. Dark tones dominate the sound palette. The mixture of colours is made even stronger by the sometimes compressed polyphonic structure which, in the first movement especially, draws itself together like a finely-woven net, more and more tightly. 2 3

3 There is much to be read in this masterwork; programmatic elements like Scottish mists or folk melodies are not hard to discover. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn remains an absolute symphonist: he is no programmatic painter in sound. The mastery and further development of the form means a great deal to him. His journey to Scotland provided him with inspiration. The completion of the symphony many years later makes it a reflection on a much longer journey, the journey of life. For those who come after, final symphonies have a strong symbolic power, because they are assumed to be in some sense a testament, taking on the quintessence of the artist s total creative achievement. Sebastian Lang-Lessing Chief Conductor and Artistic Director In addition to his extraordinary musical talents, Mendelssohn was also a gifted linguist, translator, conversationalist, letter-writer and sketch-artist. Mendelssohn s first voyage to the British Isles in 1829 offered many opportunities for him to exercise his hobbies and skills. He sketched many vistas of British landscape and life (including a memorable vignette of industrial Birmingham) and excitedly described to his family back home his impressions of English culture. A trip to Edinburgh brought forth this account, in a letter dated 30 July 1829: In the depths of twilight we visited today the palace where Queen Mary lived and loved; there is a little room there, with a spiral staircase near the door; that s where they came up and found Rizzio in that room, and dragged him out, and three rooms further on is a dark corner, where they murdered him. The chapel next door is missing its roof now, much grass and ivy are growing there, and the decrepit altar is where Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. It s all ruined and crumbling now, and the bright sky shines down into it. I think that there today I ve found the beginning of my Scottish symphony. A sketch has been found of the opening 16 bars of the introduction which bears the same date as the letter, but the symphony itself was slow to evolve. In sunny Italy in 1831 he wrote: Who can wonder that I find it impossible to return to my misty Scottish mood? I have therefore laid aside the symphony for the present. It was nearly a decade later that Mendelssohn resumed work on it, finally completing it in the spring of The Scottish Symphony, No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56, was not published with its current descriptive title in Mendelssohn s lifetime, and the composer made no particular effort to accentuate in print its ethnic inspiration, preferring to refer to it in music alone. The score carries this instruction: The individual movements of this symphony must follow straight on from one another and not be separated from each other by the usual long break. The content of the individual movements can be given to the listener on the concert program as follows: Introduction and Allegro agitato Scherzo assai vivace Adagio cantabile Allegro guerriero and Finale maestoso. Nevertheless, many critics of the time identified an extra-musical narrative at play. Schumann identified in it a distinctive popular tone, a folk tone. He felt that it transported him to Italian climes, hearing in the opening movement ancient Italian melodies. Another critic wrote: We can t help but read a whole fairy-tale into it, something thoroughly in the old German manner like Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, or Snow White. 4 5

4 We who now know the work by its nickname Scottish can more readily identify in the music the foggy, veiled atmosphere suggested by Mendelssohn s sketches and described in his letters. The epic quality of the first and last movements reminds us of the Scottish ballad form, which, as Thomas Grey has noted, was one of Scotland s greatest cultural exports of the time, along with the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Works of Ossian by James Macpherson. The symphony s recitative-like introduction allies with a certain melancholic reverie to create a powerful sense of narrative which each listener can interpret in a personal way, and it is perhaps this quality that has made the symphony so popular to this day. Undeniably Scottish elements come more to the fore in the two central movements: the pentatonic touches and rustic nature of the scherzo bring Scottish tunes to mind, a flavour additionally reinforced by the characteristic sounds of bagpipes alluded to in the orchestration. The pizzicato accompaniment in the Adagio seems to suggest the popular 19thcentury image of the ancient Gaelic bard singing to the accompaniment of his own harp. 4 The Italian Symphony, No. 4 in A major, Op. 90, is today one of Mendelssohn s best-known and most frequently played works; the composer, however, was so obsessed with refining it that the symphony was only published after his death. He spent many years revising and tampering with, as he called it himself, all four movements. The first sketches for the piece date from 1831, when he had temporarily put aside the beginnings of the Scottish. He wrote to his sister: The Italian symphony is making great process. It will be the jolliest piece I ve done, particularly the last movement. The amiable atmosphere of a bright, sunny Italy is immediately struck up in the beginning of this heitere (merry) Symphonie, as Mendelssohn called it in correspondence. There is no slow introduction, and an unbridled carnivalesque atmosphere suffuses the whole first movement, from the opening theme s repeated calls to revelry, to the many motifs that resemble street cries and the bustle of festivities. Mendelssohn was in fact in the middle of the 1831 Roman carnival when he began sketching the movement. He found the end of the festival somewhat jarring, however: political unrest in the north had found its way to the south. The carnival has been interrupted, he wrote, people arrested, patrols in the street There is something very moving about this sudden switch from the wildest merriment to the most bitter gravity. There is a sudden switch between the first and second movements, but it is more a solemn than a bitter change. Schumann heard in it the deeply religious side of the Italian folk-life; a simple, pious melody is intoned, in the manner of an old church hymn; in our mind s eye we witness a solemn procession passing by. The minuet and trio are seemingly less Italianate in inspiration than the other movements but many critics have identified a kind of homesickness in the horn calls of the trio. In 1856 a commentator sounded a familiar note that should be understood within the larger context of German nationalism of the time: And these Waldhörner (forest horns) in the trio, is it not as if [the composer], amidst the paradise of Italy s natural beauties, were suddenly smitten with a true German yearning for the beloved green of his native forests? The finale wears its Italian character on its sleeve; Mendelssohn himself designated it a saltarello, a Neapolitan leaping dance of medieval origin. Sebastian Lang-Lessing Erin Helyard Sebastian Lang-Lessing is Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (TSO). Awarded the Ferenc Fricsay Prize in Berlin at the age of 24, he subsequently took up a conducting post at the Hamburg State Opera, was appointed resident conductor at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and later Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy. Under his direction, the Opéra de Nancy was elevated to national status, becoming the Opéra National de Lorraine. His international career started at the Opéra Bastille de Paris, followed by engagements at Los Angeles Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Washington National Opera, Hamburg State Opera, Opéra de Bordeaux, and the opera houses of Oslo, Stockholm and Cape Town. Concert engagements have included performances with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the principal German radio orchestras, Orchestre de Paris, Radio France Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Toulouse and major orchestras in Australia. He has worked on numerous cycles including the symphonies of Sibelius, Schumann, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert, and has always been an advocate for the music of Mendelssohn. Sebastian Lang-Lessing rediscovered the French composer Guy Ropartz, and has begun a complete recording of his symphonies which has been acclaimed in the international press. His CDs with the TSO include the music of Brett 6 7

5 Dean, the four Schumann symphonies, Mozart Arias with Sara Macliver, Romantic Overtures, and works by Bruch, Mendelssohn, Franck, D Indy and Saint-Saëns. Forthcoming TSO recordings include Grieg s Peer Gynt Suites, Mozart symphonies, and Mendelssohn and Ravel piano concertos with soloist Kirill Gerstein. A leader in music of the Classical and early Romantic periods, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra enjoys a high profile nationally and internationally through its world-wide broadcasts and award-winning recordings. Winner of backto-back Best Classical Recording limelight Awards in 2007 and 2008, the TSO is the only Australian orchestra to have released recordings of the complete symphonies of Beethoven and Schumann. The TSO also champions music by Australian composers, and the Australian Music Program, founded in 2003, is one of the TSO s key initiatives. To date, the TSO has released on the ABC Classics label 18 CDs featuring works by Australian composers ranging from Peter Sculthorpe and Richard Meale to Elena Kats- Chernin and Brett Dean. The TSO, which is resident in Hobart s purposebuilt Federation Concert Hall, has a full complement of 47 musicians. German-born Sebastian Lang-Lessing has been the orchestra s Chief Conductor and Artistic Director since Declared a Tasmanian Icon in 1998, the TSO enjoys a high level of support among the Tasmanian community. Concert seasons are presented in Hobart and Launceston, and regular tours are made of Tasmanian regional centres. Since 2005, the TSO has presented an annual Sydney Season at City Recital Hall Angel Place. International touring has taken the orchestra to North and South America, Greece, Israel, South Korea, China, Indonesia and Japan. The TSO celebrated its 60th anniversary in Major international soloists who have appeared with the orchestra include Daniel Barenboim, Alfred Brendel, James Ehnes, Lisa Gasteen, Håkan Hardenberger, Nigel Kennedy, Radu Lupu, Igor Oistrakh, Valery Oistrakh, Heinrich Schiff, Howard Shelley, Isaac Stern, Paul Tortelier and Jian Wang. A versatile orchestra, the TSO has also appeared with a range of popular and jazz artists including Kate Ceberano, Roberta Flack, James Morrison, Anthony Warlow and The Whitlams. Executive Producers Martin Buzacott, Lyle Chan, Robert Patterson Recording Producer Haig Burnell Recording Engineer Veronika Vincze Editing Thomas Grubb (Symphony No. 3), Veronika Vincze Symphony No. 4) Mastering Virginia Read and Thomas Grubb (Symphony No. 3), Virginia Read (Symphony No. 4) Editorial and Production Manager Hilary Shrubb Publications Editor Natalie Shea Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd Cover Photo Alpine tarn, Walls of Jerusalem National Park, Tasmania. Ted Mead/Photolibrary For the Managing Director Nicholas Heyward Manager, Artistic Planning Simon Rogers Australian Music Program Director Lyndon Terracini Concertmaster Jun Yi Ma Recorded 2-3 November 2007 (Symphony No. 4) and March 2009 (Symphony No. 3) in the Federation Concert Hall, Hobart. ABC Classics thanks Alexandra Alewood, Katherine Kemp and Virginia Read Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Universal Music Group, under exclusive licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited. 8 9

6 10 11