Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Programme Notes Online Henry E Rensburg Series Beethoven s First Piano Concerto Thursday 22 March 2018 7.30pm sponsored by Investec WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791) Overture, The Abduction from the Seraglio Unlike most of Rossini s, every one of Mozart s mature operas from Idomeneo onwards begins with an overture that relates to it in some significant way. If it does not anticipate the melodic material of the opera it is designed at least to put the audience in the right frame of mind for the drama that is to follow. Mozart s priority in writing an overture for Die Entführung aus dem Serail (also known for no good reason as Il Seraglio) was to furnish it with music which in rhythm, harmony and orchestral colouring would create an atmosphere appropriate to the opera s Turkish setting. That much is clear from the bustling, exotically inflected Presto with which it begins. In the middle of the piece, however, the tempo slows down to Andante to accommodate an anticipation of the aria in decorously European style that Belmonte, the Spanish hero of the opera, is to sing as soon as the curtain rises on the first act. First performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1782, Die Entführung inspired the Emperor s famous remark, Too beautiful for our ears, my dear Mozart, and vastly too many notes, to which Mozart truthfully replied, Just as many as are necessary, your Majesty. Gerald Larner 2018
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) Piano Concerto No.1 in C major, Op.15 Allegro con brio / Fast, with vigour Largo / Very slow Rondo: allegro scherzando / Rondo: fast, playful Beethoven always liked to make a good first impression. As an aspiring composer, he knew that his best way of winning fame and fortune was as a pianist. Anyone who s seen the film Immortal Beloved will know how Beethoven s performing career ended, but for much of his youth he was something of a star in keyboard-crazy Vienna. Such a reputation needed careful maintenance and the work Beethoven finally published in 1801 as his First Piano Concerto was actually his third attempt in that form! He d been working on it since at least 1795. You wouldn t know it. For starters, it s in C major the brightest, most confident key in western music. That meant Beethoven could use trumpets giving an irresistible swagger to the climaxes of the Allegro con brio first movement. But if you expect Beethoven piano music to feature frenzied hammering of the keys, you re in for a surprise. The young Beethoven took his cues from Mozart though with its brilliance and verve there must have been plenty here to make Viennese ladies hearts pound. And the Largo, with its tender piano melody floated over soft strings (and later, throbbing woodwind), is sure to have had them swooning. This is still Beethoven, though and there s never been any composer, before or since, who could mix comedy, grandeur and sheer, unstoppable energy as dazzlingly as he does in the concerto s final Rondo. Such a clever young man! Richard Bratby 2018 CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)
Ibéria from Images Par les rues et par les chemins / In the streets and lanes Les parfums de la nuit / The perfumes of the night Le matin d un jour de fête / The morning of a feast day If Debussy s Images can be compared with pictures of any kind they are not paintings or still photographs but moving pictures with the vital difference that the visual element can be seen only in the mind s eye and only when the imagination is stimulated by the magical suggestions of time, place, colour, character and movement in the music. Even the composer could be surprised by its evocative potential: after listening to a rehearsal of the third movement of Ibéria he delightedly told a friend of his perception of people and things waking up. There s a man selling watermelons and urchins whistling, I see them quite clearly. Certainly, there is more for the eye in Ibéria than in the other two Images for orchestra but, like many impressionist paintings, both Gigues and Rondes de printemps (Spring Rounds) are vibrant with atmosphere even where the imagery is elusive. In spite of the rival claims of earlier works like Nocturnes and La Mer and the later Jeux, not to mention his Images and Préludes for piano, the Images for orchestra is surely the greatest achievement of Debussy s impressionism (a term he hated, incidentally). It took him seven years to do it beginning with Ibéria in 1905 and ending with Gigues in 1912 but what he finally produced, in a series of poetic tributes to the three countries that meant most to him, was a work unsurpassed in its breadth and variety by any composer of his time. I hear the sounds of the roads of Catalonia and at the same time the street music of Granada, said Debussy of the first movement of Ibéria which was uncommonly perceptive of him since, apart from attending a bullfight just across the border at San Sebastian, he had never been to Spain. Perhaps he felt, like Bizet, that actually knowing Spain would only get in the way. As well as
being part of a long tradition (next in line after Ravel) of French composers fascinated by the music of Spain, which he studied eagerly, he had a sense of atmosphere so authentic in both perception and communication that Manuel de Falla was moved to describe it as nothing less than miraculous. First movement Ibéria is more than just a Spanish rhapsody, however. Linked by an intricate network of thematic cross-references, its three movements are as finely wrought in construction as they are abundant in picturesque detail. Debussy begins by gathering some of the main themes together in a preliminary survey of the streets and lanes of Andalusia. While there is no actual folk material in Par les rues et par les chemins, the setting is unmistakable from the opening bars onwards in the rhythms rattled by castanets or plucked by strings and in the cheerful sevillana dance tune introduced by clarinets. While the observations might seem accidental, every tiny motif is carefully chosen for both its immediate effect and its long-term value. And while the route might seem haphazard, it actually follows a ternary course by way of a central slower section coloured at first by delicate string harmonics, characterised by a soulful melody for oboe and solo viola in unison and interrupted by the entry of a brass band with vigorous horns, brilliant trumpets and grumbling trombones and tuba. Some of the material from the middle section is worked into the reprise of the opening section when the initial tempo is resumed. Second movement One of the principal attractions of southern Spain for visitors from France was the comparatively liberated sexuality of the night life. In Les parfums de la nuit Debussy could indeed, as the title suggests, be luxuriating in the heady floral scents of the night, but there are surely more senses than one involved in this extraordinarily voluptuous music. The seductive rhythms derive largely from that of the habanera, which makes its first clear entry in a rich texture of lower strings after an introduction which is not
only fragrant with celesta arabesques, violin glissandos and chromatic sighs on woodwind but also reverberant with allusions to material from the previous movement. The expressive line poised by the oboe on the habanera rhythm in the strings is an echo of the soulful melody introduced by the same instrument in Par les rues et par les chemins, which is also the source of the melancholy horn tune heard a little later. Much of this seems to happen somewhere in the distance. But with the entry of a short but passionate exclamation high on first violins the action gets nearer and more heated until, after a recall of the sevillana, it moves away again. Third movement You can t imagine how naturally the transition works between Parfums de la nuit and Le matin d un jour de fête, said Debussy after hearing a successful rehearsal of Ibéria. It sounds as though it s improvised. As a flute and solo violin linger over the night-time scents, day-time life stirs in quietly throbbing march rhythms on the lower strings. Morning bells ring out and activity increases with lively echoes of sounds from the day and the night before on trumpet and on a raucous combination of oboe and piccolos; holiday celebrations are clearly about to begin. Debussy is too subtle a composer, however, to indulge himself in a sustained high-profile march. There are two short march-time passages, both of them plucked by strings as though on a giant guitar and accompanied by military drum. But two other fiesta episodes come between them: one mingles shrill street-wise clarinets with more expressive woodwind and trumpets; the other features a fiddler whose somewhat laboured dance music accelerates into the second march passage and then returns to stimulate a recall of the brass-band music on woodwind and to precipitate the joyous coda. Gerald Larner 2018 CLAUDE DEBUSSY La Mer three symphonic sketches
De l aube à midi sur la mer / From dawn to midday on the sea Jeux de vagues / Games of waves Dialogue du vent et de la mer / Dialogue of the wind and the sea Debussy completed the orchestration of La Mer at Eastbourne in 1905. He had started the work two years earlier while on holiday at Bichain in Burgundy, which is nowhere near the sea. But, as he explained, he had an endless store of memories of the sea and, to my mind, they are worth more than the reality, whose beauty weighs down thought too heavily. Besides, La Mer is not just an exercise in observation. Declared enemy of the symphony though Debussy was, his three symphonic sketches are at least as symphonic as picturesque. At the same time, while the imagery is clearly inspired by the movement of the sea and the changing light, it is more often a case of generalised atmosphere than specific detail. First movement In De l aube à midi sur la mer it is safe to assume only that it opens in darkness and ends under the bright sun of midday and that those two events correspond to the slow introduction and the expansive coda. Prominent among the features that begin to take shape in the introduction is a theme on muted trumpet which it is revealed when it appears, gloriously transformed, as a chorale on four horns in the coda was intended from the start to carry the sunrise message of the whole movement. Second movement The central scherzo, Jeux de vagues, is so flexibly constructed that it seems to proceed on spontaneous impulse and so resourcefully scored that it seems to reflect every chance change of wind and current. Resourcefully abundant in melodic ideas, it presents new themes not only in the opening section but also in the central development, and in what might otherwise be called a recapitulation violins and cellos introduce a waltz that rises
through the strings in ever increasing animation before the wind drops and leaves the sea comparatively becalmed. Third movement There is little calm in the last movement, an eventful rondo, which opens with the low rumble of an approaching storm on cellos and basses. As well as its descriptive function, however, the Dialogue du vent et de la mer has a long-term structural duty to perform. Within a few bars it recalls two motifs from the beginning of the work, including the muted trumpet theme which was converted to the midday horn chorale. The chorale appears once more towards the end of the movement where intoned by the whole of the brass section in counterpoint with the wind-swept rondo theme on woodwind it fulfils its long-destined function of welding the whole work, symphony and seascape, indivisibly together. Gerald Larner 2018