A Personal Recollection of Benjamin Britten

A Personal Recollection of Benjamin Britten.

The writer of these notes made an excited discovery of 20^th century English music when a teenager, and promptly wrote letters to Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten seeking advice and offering observations about their work. Back came warm and down-to-earth replies from both men, full of practical suggestions and kindly comments.

In the summer of 1957 Benjamin Britten spent a week at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival (in Ontario, not far from my home in Michigan), preparing for the first North American performances of his new opera, THE TURN OF THE SCREW. I had already obtained the recording of the opera (the first complete recording of a Britten stage work), and eagerly hopped on a bus to make the journey to Stratford. Britten, who knew I was coming, could not have been more friendly and welcoming. I, an eager-beaver teenager, was permitted to attend all the rehearsals, providing a glorious opportunity to see a great composer at work---and a wonderful conductor, as well, as I discovered. I was encouraged to get to know the cast members, every one of whom inscribed my precious LP recording album, and even was invited to sit in on a private rehearsal for a song recital given by Britten and Peter Pears. A page turner was needed from time to time, and I made myself useful, learning at close range what Gerald Moore meant when he pronounced Britten as the “finest accompanist in the world.” He struck me from the beginning as a figure of Mozartian versatility, spontaneity and sheer genius.

The next summer, cycling through England for the first time, I attended several concerts at Britten’s own Aldeburgh Festival, which took place each June in the village where George Crabbe had lived---an eerily beautiful place whch looked to be a living stage setting for PETER GRIMES. That was to be an introduction to an intensely “local,” “neighborly” artistic world which Britten made very much his own. He once said that in order to be universal an artist must first be able to focus upon his own friends and community. Britten’s life and career seemed to represent something quite simple, yet profound about the meaning of being a musician and citizen. Seven years later, having made the acquaintance of Imogen Holst (the delightful if slightly dotty daughter of the composer of “The Planets”), who was Britten’s tireless assistant at the Aldeburgh Festival, I found myself invited to be an assistant (and general Dog’s-Body) during the two weeks of the June Aldeburgh Festival. It was an amazing whirl of activity. Britten’s first “church parable,” CURLEW RIVER, was to be premiered; Britten conducted a performance of Haydn’s “Creation” which nearly caused the listeners to get up and dance in the isles. He brought Rostropovich over from Russia to play the Bach Cello Suites, one each evening at 11 p. m. in the parish church….he played SECONDO to Sviatoslav Richter’s PRIMO in a Schubert recital…he joined Peter Pears to perform WINTERREISE…Someone had the brilliant thought to persuade Richter and Rostropovich to appear TOGETHER in another 11 p. m. recital in the parish church---Britten turned pages.

Later, as a violinist in one of the London orchestras, I had the dizzying good fortune to participate in a performance of the “War Requiem,” conducted by Britten, as well as some orchestral concerts at Aldeburgh and London. There was a heart-stopping performance of Bach’s “St. John Passion,” as well.

I willingly skipped a four-star Verdi Requiem performance in London to go to Aldeburgh in mid-winter to help correct proof-sheets for a new Britten work about to be published. As I sat studying the manuscript I could see on the glass-top of the desk the reflection of seagulls circling over the sea before me---and in my mind I heard the “Dawn” Sea interlude from PETER GRIMES. We early-risers had seen Britten playing tennis at 6 a. m. during the Aldeburgh Festival---we were certain that he would still be doing that at the age of 85. A heart condition required a heart-valve operation, today as commonplace a procedure as an appendectomy. It was unsuccessful, leaving Britten partially paralysed. He slipped away at the cruelly early age of 63. No one who knew him can go through a single day without missing him.

Part: Symphony No. 2

Symphony No. 2 (1966)

Arvo Part (1935- )

In the last twenty years Arvo Part has become a widely recognised name in contemporary music, with a succession of works, many of them written for voices with Latin texts, which have won him a dedicated following. This was particular the case with music lovers who thirsted for new music without what was often felt to be a prevailing severe intellectualism and constricted emotional expression in much of the music composed since the 1950s. In America this desire for a simpler, more direct musical communication drew an entirely new audience to follow the work of such figures as Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, composers commonly labeled “minimalists,” whose work was marked by a sometimes deceptive simplicity, with great emphasis upon repetitive rhythmic patterns, the use of triadic sonorities quite divorced from traditional notions of “tonality,” and meditative, even spiritual connotations in creating moods, trance-like states of mind, with chanting, drumming and other evocations of non-western musical cultures.

Not long ago the work of Arvo Part would hardly figure in a discussion of 20^th century music---even as late as 1980 the article on Part in the New Grove Dictionary of Music consisted of a mere 25 lines. It was in 1982 that Arvo Part’s PASSIO brought wide attention to a newly evolving stage in his creative development, one which has become well known in a series of works with titles such as Litany, Miserere, Stabat Mater, Te Deum. While it is always enlightening to consider the earlier stages of a composer’s work, one might question the need to look back upon a composition dating from an early stage in his development (1966), moreover, one employing musical devices which have not remained part of his more mature style. And it is true that anyone familiar with the intensely quiet, “timeless” qualities of Part’s more recent work will be rather amazed by the Second Symphony of 1966. And yet the uniquely meditative and spiritual compositions written by Arvo Part in the last two decades might not have come into being without the composer having passed through the testing stages of his earlier, often deeply disturbing works such as the Second Symphony.

Arvo Part was born in Paide, a small town fifty miles from Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Long a part of thre Russian Empire, Estonia became an independent Republic in 1920, only to be absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1940, finally regaining its independence in 1994. As a child he trained as a pianist, also playing the oboe and playing percussion in a dance band. In his late teens he turned to composition, studying composition in Tallinn under Heino Eller, the leading composer of the day. By then the arts in Estonia were firmly in the grip of Soviet “socialist realism” orthodoxy, harshly rejecting western influences, particularly those of serialism and the post-Webernian work of composers such as Boulez, Nono and Stockhausen. But it was also a period during which young Polish composers (most memorably Krzysztof Penderecki) were asserting their artistic independence by their own quite individual `response to some of those very western influences found to be so pernicious by the authorities in Moscow. Although a Prokofiev-like neo-classicism can be found in some of Part’s very first compositions, as early as 1960 he began to toy with the serial technique in his first major work, the cantata NEKROLOG, which immediately was attacked in official circles for its “espousal of western formalism.” While western serial composers were officially “tolerated” after 1958, an unofficial ban remained in effect, and many younger, more adventurous composers were severely criticised for their “experimental tendencies.” As late as 1968 Part’s CREDO for piano, chorus and orchestra was savagely attacked, bringing about a crisis both artistic and spiritual on the composer’s part, plunging him into a long period of silence. In the 1970s Part’s life went through some profound changes, including a conversion to the Russian Orthodox faith, and in 1980 a decision to move to Vienna, and eventually to Berlin.

Part’s growth as a composer moved directly into an intense preoccupation with serial techniques in his earlier works of the 1960s, in many respects spurred on by the vivid example of his Polish contemporaries. An element of musical “collage” and musical quotation also enters his work, as well as a fascination with traditional contrapuntal techniques often employed in serial composition, such as canonic writing. Soon Part began to explore European music of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, including such composers as Perotin, Ockeghem and Josquin des Pres. And a highly individual response to a concept of bell-sounds referred to as “tintinnabuli music” is at the core of most of the later works, which set religious texts and focus upon spiritual concepts.

Thus it is fascinating to discover the basic elements which underlie the Second Symphony, a work of unusual expressive mystery and emotional power. Written for a full symphony orchestra, with a duration of about 15 minutes, the work carries no tempo markings, instead giving bald metronome markings for its three movements: quarter-note = 104-120 (fairly quick), half-note = 112 (quite lively), quarter-note = 48-60 (quite slowly). A somewhat bizarre novelty in terms of sound resources is the use of children’s toys to produce background noise---Mark Laycock recalls a performance in Boston in which three percussionists employed rubber duckies! There is a degree of “aleatoric” writing (in which precise rhythmic notation is abandoned to chance), as well as an underlying tonal structure which is serial in basic design, although of little direct concern to the listener.

Although often described as “non-narrative” in character, the opening movement of the symphony follows a clearly defined structure. It opens with an aleatoric (random) chattering of pizzicato notes in the strings, employing the twelve chromatic tones squeezed into the space of an octave, joined by background noise of children’s toys. The first of a series of sustained, lyrical lines (gradually taking on a nearly traditional “melodic” character) is heard in the solo horn, followed by random chattering now given to the flutes. The random element returns in pizzicato strings, now joined by the eerie rustle of cellophane being crushed, soon leading to another lyrical line, now in the clarinet, arching upward quite expressively, followed (as before) by the random chattering, now in the lower winds, creating a more agitated mood. Now bowed (and louder) the random strings figure returns, with background noise made by applying wood blocks to the piano strings. The next sustained line is heard in the bassoon, becoming more intense, now followed by random chattering in the brass. The next entry of the sustained line is given to the brass, circling from low to high registers, joined by ominous rolls on the tam-tam. Suddenly, with a dramatic glissando in the harp, we are swept into the higher reachs of winds and strings for a series of triads heaped one upon the other---“Pelion piled upon Ossa,” with distinct key centers of B, D, E, F, E-flat, etc. pressed into a sort of multi-tonal fortissimo wail, soon melting away into highly colored, dissonant clusters in the brass, joined by shrieking trills high in the winds. This rises in intensity, then settles back into a soft D Major chord, which then swells into a fullest fortissimo to end suddenly.

While Wilfred Mellers describes the second movement as “scherzoid,” Charles Ives would probably add that “this scherzo is not a joke!” Chugging into life with bouncy, rather carefree pairs of repeated notes (to be played with aleatoric rhythmic freedom), this three-minute interlude rapidly takes on a truly nightmarish character---what seemed “carefree” at first becomes mindless and brutal. The jabbering repeated notes, passed among brass and winds is punctuated by isolated sustained tones in the strings, each time swelling from soft to loud, moving from high to low registers. At midpoint the music flies into splinters, and faintly echoing Penderecki’s “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima,” with shards of sound sailing in all directions, a jagged pointillism is underway, with long sustained tones in the lower brass against a background of smacks and thuds in percussion and piano (using the flat of the hands directly on the strings). The sustained pitches rise, becoming yet more threatening, moving into the higher brass, joined by the winds to form a screaming, sinister wall of sound, to conclude by suddenly breaking off.

Moving immediately into the final movement we are confronted by a massive fortissimo string chord built up of superimposed fourths, stretching from highest to lowest pitches against which a thundering timpani drumbeat is heard: a rhythmically precise E-flat octave which is hammered out with mechanical deadliness, first a phrase of twelve notes, then eleven, ten, nine – and so on down to a single note. Each phrase is punctuated by a rapid scurrying figure in the strings, at first in an imperceptible DIMINUENDO, then rising again in volume, while the string pattern becomes progressively more hectic. This suddenly gives way to a section with the dry rattle of COL LEGNO strings (rapping the strings with the wood of the bow) against a tapestry of murmuring winds and brass. Brass figures begin to stand out, the winds begin to create a frenzied jabber, the entire orchestra rising in a huge CRESCENDO, out of which steals a tonal melodic fragment in the clarinet. In a startling, almost cinematic shift of orchestral mood and color, we suddenly find ourselves transported into a cloudless C Major, with a naïve little tune heard with traditional harmony and orchestration of blushing modesty. The melody is a passage from Tchaikovsky’s “Sweet Day-Dream” from an 1878 collection of children’s piano pieces. Three last dissonant crashes are turned aside by the cool sounds of open-string fifths, the children’s music continues, and drifts into silence.

What can this possible MEAN, many of us would ask. But then, we raise the same question with many of the works of Beethoven, of Mahler, of Debussy – and we are forced to supply our own private, unverifiable responses. Can this be another of those “Unanswered Questions?” Can it be related to the composer’s own personal struggle for creative integrity working under Soviet repression? A vision of the artist seeking some sort of personal salvation in a nihilistic world? Arvo Part himself might not be able to answer our questions – he might choose not to, or perhaps might not know the answer himself.

In his fine little 1997 book on the composer, Arvo Part’s most devoted interpreter, Paul Hillier, has this to say about the Second Symphony: “[There is] the feeling of savage, bitter scorn unleashed, barely relieved even by the dulcet conclusion. At the outset we are knocked off balance by the unexpected sound of children’s squeaky toys, the alienating effect of which lingers in the memory and permeates the whole piece; indeed, the beginning and end of this work may be said to inhabit childhood, the purity of which is invoked as something that might eventually overcome all the evil in the world.”

Britten: Four Sea Interludes from PETER GRIMES, Op. 33

Four Sea Interludes from PETER GRIMES, Op. 33

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)

The England of Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe was also the England of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd: a rich musical heritage stretching back to the beginnings of the Renaissance, and one which would survive the disruption of the Cromwellian period to extend into the age of Henry Purcell. Then something quite odd happened: English music slipped into a position of subservience to Continental influences, and by the 19^th century the Germans, whose own musical culture hardly existed during the age of the Tudor composers, were wont to speak of England as “das Land ohne Musik” [“the land without Music”] !

No one is quite certain why the early death of Henry Purcell in 1695 marked the beginning of a period of eclipse of English music. But there is no doubt who led the way in restoring English music to its proper place in the world, as was acknowledged by Richard Strauss himself, who a hundred years ago lifted his glass to toast “the success of the first English progressivist, Meister Edward Elgar, and of the young progressivist school of English composers.” More than anyone Elgar indeed led the way, especially with his “Enigma” Variations of 1899. It is not surprising that Strauss would admire Elgar, whose music, despite its underlying English character, is stylistically closely related to late 19^th century German music. This points to an awkward situation faced by English composers in Elgar’s time: to form a strong bond with the mainstream of contemporary continental music, or to renew the roots of musical “Englishry” which go back to the Elizabethan age, and to traditional folk music as well. Elgar chose the former route, while younger English composers (especially Vaughan Williams and Holst) chose the latter, in a manner somewhat parallel to that followed by eastern European composers such as Bela Bartok in forging a distinctly “national music.” (Ralph Vaughan Williams was himself a warm admirer of Bartok, and even wrote a book outlining his point of view, significantly entitled “National Music.” ) The next generation of English composers followed these divergent paths of English music in a varying ways, and even at the end of the 20^th century there still can be detected a split between the “cosmopolitan” and more “nationalist” composers. William Walton, for example, was very much a “cosmopolitan,” more influenced by his long residence in Italy than anything redolent of the English landscape. Benjamin Britten occupies a unique position as a composer of strong continental sympathies balanced by an equal bond with the distinctly English traditions of the past. Britten grew up with a profound love of the work of Henry Purcell, as well as an openness to contemporary music far beyond most young English musicians of his day. He helped to arrange for a performance of Schoenberg’s PIERROT LUNAIRE while a student at the decidedly conservative Royal College of Music, and unsuccessfully sought to use a travelling grant to study with Alban Berg, who would be a powerful influence upon the young composer.

Britten almost became an American composer, when he moved to the United States in 1939 in company with his partner, the tenor Peter Pears, and the poet W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood. The two writers remained in America, becoming citizens, and significantly were very much “European” artists as much as Anglo-American ones. At first intending to become a citizen, Britten initially found American life fascinating and stimulating, as can be heard in his sparkling opera PAUL BUNYAN, with a libretto by Auden, first performed at Columbia University in 1940. This was during a lively period at the end of the Great Depression, when Gershwin’s PORGY AND BESS, Virgil Thomson’s FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS, and the work of Marc Blitzstein and newly-arrived Kurt Weill were raising expectations for a great things in the field of American contemporary music theatre. While PAUL BUNYAN delighted its audiences, the critics (as Britten put it) “spat at it,” and the composer turned to writing orchestral and chamber music. Britten gradually realised that his roots remained in England, and received a powerful jolt when he read an appreciation by E. M. Forster of the work of George Crabbe, an early 19^th century English poet who lived in Britten’s own native East Anglia. Serge Koussevitsky, deeply impressed by Britten’s work, had commissioned him to compose an opera to be presented at the Boston Symphony’s summer school at Tanglewood, Massachusetts. Britten searched out the work of Crabbe, and in the poem “The Borough” found his subject: Peter Grimes. This also sealed his decision to return to England. He was only 28 years of age. In the March of 1942 Britten and Pears made a perilous crossing through submarine-infested Atlantic waters go home. Work on the opera began at once, and was completed in time for a sensational premiere on 7 June, 1945 at Sadlers Wells Theatre. The war in Europe had ended less than a month before; England was battered and exhausted, everyone was hungry for the renewal of life and spirit. For many the appearance of Peter Grimes symbolised that renewal. Interestingly, 1945 was the 250^th anniversary of the death of England’s last great composer before the period of eclipse, Henry Purcell---whose DIDO AND AENEAS had remained the one great English opera. Now there was another. (The promised Tanglewood performance took place in 1946, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.)

The impact of the first performance of PETER GRIMES was vividly described by the American literary critic, Edmund Wilson, who was present: “An unmistakable new talent of this kind is an astonishing, even an electrifying experience…. You do not feel you are watching an experiment; you are living a work of art. The opera seizes upon you, possesses you, keeps you riveted to your seat during the action and keyed up during the intermissions, and drops you, purged and exhausted, at the end.”

The opera is set in a fishing village on the North Sea coast of eastern England---a village very much like Aldeburgh, the birthplace of George Crabbe, and eventually the lifelong home of Britten himself.

Grimes is a fisherman, a grim and solitary figure, disliked, feared and eventually destroyed by his community. The opera opens with scene of an inquest in which an inconclusive verdict is handed down regarding the mysterious death of Grimes’ apprentice, due to a lack of evidence. Nevertheless, most of the inhabitants of the village are convinced that the fisherman is a murderer. Shown kindness and understanding by only a handful of his neighbors, Grimes takes on another apprentice, hoping to become a successful fisherman, determined to win respect in the community. However, Grimes is abusive to the new boy, and when he is accidentally killed, the fury of the town is aroused. With a lynch mob intent upon revenge, Grimes, who has lost his reason, is persuaded to put an end to his hopeless situation by sailing out to open waters, to end his life by sinking his boat. At the end, life in the village goes on as before.

Following the example of Alban Berg’s WOZZECK (itself influenced by Debussy’s PELLEAS ET MELISANDE), there are extended orchestral interludes linking a number of the scenes in PETER GRIMES, of which the “Four Sea Interludes,” are the most widely-known orchestral music by Britten (along with his popular “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra”). These are a vivid example of Britten’s rich musical imagination, being brilliantly-colored “tone poems” which create an unforgettable musical atmosphere. One can all but smell the sea air, and look up to behold the clouds scudding past.

1. Dawn. The opera opens with a prologue in which the inquest into the death of Grimes’ first apprentice takes place. Following this the orchestra paints a tonal picture of the North Sea, the rhythm of the waves, the wheeling of the gulls, the vast, often menacing skies.

2. Sunday Morning. This interlude serves as an introduction to Act II, which opens with Ellen Orford, a schoolteacher sympathetic to Grimes, sitting near the waterfront with the new apprentice, while from the distance are heard the sound of church bells and hymn-singing.

3. Moonlight. This introduction to Act III, outwardly poetic and peaceful, has also been described as revealing a “steely, menacing tranquillity.” Moving haltingly forward, the music is punctuated withripples of color in the flutes and harps. With these simple means we can imagine the welling of the seawater…the reflection of the moonlight..

4. Storm. At the end of the first scene of Act I Peter Grimes has made an unexpected (and unwelcome) appearance in a pub crowded with townspeople taking shelter from the storm outside. As if lost in his own world he sings the visionary words, “What harbour shelters peace, away from tidal waves, away from storms…a harbour evermore where night is turned to day…” Following the momentary stillness of that vision the curtain falls and the the astonishing Storm Interlude is heard, forming an introduction to the second scene. Growing up on the coast of the North Sea Britten had experienced such storms, and drew upon those terrifying memories in creating this powerfully atmospheric music.

Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22 (1868)

Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22 (1868)

Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)

Camille Saint-Saens was one of the great virtuoso pianists of his day, as can be verified by listening to the astonishing recordings which he made even in his advanced old age. He was an amazing child prodigy, both as composer and pianist----in his debut recital at the age of ten he offered to perform any of the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven as an encore! However, his pianistic activities were largely confined to his own works, among them five brilliant piano concertos, of which the Second Concerto in G minor is perhaps the most popular. Doggedly tradition-minded in outlook, Saint-Saens nevertheless was a warm friend of such path-breaking figures as Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and even won the admiration of Richard Wagner when he sat down to perform on the piano Tristan Und Isolde from the full score! He was the teacher of Gabriel Faure, and living well into the 20^th century, even knew the admiration of the young Maurice Ravel, and met the young Aaron Copland at the beginning of his studies in Paris in the early 1920s. (Saint-Saens also is remembered for his horrified reaction upon attending the premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring in 1913!)

Although deservedly regarded as a musical conservative, Saint-Saens showed a lively interest in structural innovation in many of his concertos and symphonies, as in the case of the opening movement of the Second Piano Concerto. Instead of a brilliant introductory flourish, the piano quietly unfolds an improvisatory prelude heard without the orchestra, with piano writing quite clearly influenced by the characteristic figuration of Johann Sebastian Bach’s keyboard works. Only after a quite discursive initial section for piano solo is the orchestra make a striking entry with a powerful Fortissimo declamation. This leads to the principal melody set out in the piano, again lyrical rather than dramatic, which is juxtaposed with a section in B flat Major, giving an initial impression that it will serve as a second subject. But while an extended developmental section follows, there is no clear-cut recapitulation. The meditative opening improvisatory music returns, with the orchestral declamation heard again at the end. While the orchestra has its role to play, much of this ten-minute movement is confined to the piano alone. In the remaining two movements of the concerto, which are by turns brilliant, dramatic and quite popular in their “Parisian” tone, the role of the orchestra is greatly expanded from the reticent position it occupies in this poetic and reflective opening movement.

NCO Concert

Foote Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op. 63 (1908)

Serenade for Strings in E Major, Op. 63 (1908)

Arthur Foote (1853-1937)

[The "editorial" remarks in brackets below were written by LRT - gene]

A native of Salem, Massachusetts, Arthur Foote is remembered today as perhaps the last of the grand school of Bostonian composers who came to prominence during the “Gilded Age” ( the final quarter of the 19^th century), a distinguished group, including John Knowles Paine (the first American professor of music, appointed to the Harvard faculty in 1875), George Whitefield Chadwick, Horatio Parker, and America’s first important woman composer, Amy Beach. After studies as a teenager at the New England Conservatory, Foote received training under Paine at Harvard (even before his teacher received his formal position), and in 1875 received the first Masters Degree in music ever given in the USA. It is notable that Foote was the first important American composer whose training entirely took place in this country.

HERE BEGINS REVISED VERSION – DISCUSSING THE correct piece!

Foote‘s works include songs, piano pieces, chamber works and orchestral works, among them several works for string orchestra. His Serenade for Strings, Op. 63 was recorded by the Boston Symphony under Serge Koussevitsky, and became a favourite repertory piece. Equally fine, although less often performed, is the Suite for Strings, Op.songs and piano pieces.

THE FOLLOWING IS A FINE DISCUSSION OF THE wrong pieces!:

Foote’s works include songs, piano pieces, chamber works and orchestral works, among them several works for string orchestra. His Suite for Strings, Op. 63 (1908) was recorded by the Boston Symphony under Serge Koussevitsky, and became a favourite repertory piece. Another fine work for string ensemble, unjustly neglected, is the Serenade for Strings, Op. 25.. Dedicated to Henry L. Higginson, founder of the Boston Symphony, it received its premiere in March, 1893 in Breslau, Germany.

Comprising five movement, the work opens with a Praeludium notable for its warmth of sonority and suave lyricism, qualities which it shares with several other late 19^th century string serenades, those of Tchaikovsky, Dvorak and Elgar. At the time Foote probably had not yet have heard the Elgar, but the likely influence of the Dvorak can be heard in the mood of the tender expressiveness of Foote’s music. As is the case with all the movements of this work, this opening movement is in an uncomplicated three-part structure, with a slight quickening of the tempo in the central episode.

The second movement bears the quite appropriate title, Air, for in its grave and restrained pathos there is an unmistakable influence of the celebrated “Air” from Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite. Especially affecting are the moments of dialogue between the violins and celli.

The Intermezzo turns away from the songful opening movements to provide contrast with its rhythmically pointed textures, with lively contrapuntal passages in the outer sections, and rustling triplet figures in muted upper strings as background to an arching solo cello melody.

The Romanze returns to the prevailing lyricism of the opening movements, again featuring melodic interplay between celli and violins. The music flows on into a central section of increasing agitation, then returns once again to the murmuring reflective mood of the opening.

The finale, which seems to hearken back to another contemporary string orchestra work, Grieg’s “Holberg Suite” of 1884, takes the form of an old Baroque dance form, the Gavotte, with its characteristic sprightly “three-four” pickup figure, crisp rhythms and clear-cut phrases. The central episode presents a sort of “musette” [Baroque bagpipe] drone over which divided violas unfold a flowing theme, which is soon taken over by divided violins. With a return to the elegant formalities of the first section, the movement comes to a courtly conclusion.

The Serenade for Strings was introduced by the Boston Symphony, and become a favourite repertory piece under Serge Koussevitsky, who made a celebrated recording of the work with that orchestra.

Comprising three movement, the Serenade exhibits a stylistic character rather reminiscent of another Serenade for Strings, .that of Sir Edward Elgar, with which it shares a nostalgic lyricism and suave late Romantic texture.

The opening Praeludium (Allegro Comodo) is a brief, songful movement in a basic thre-part structure, sweeping to a fullness of sonority before settling back to conclude quietly.

The second movement, “Pizzicato and Adagietto” (Capriccioso, Allegretto) opens with a lively section for plucked strings, perhaps suggestive of the Scherzo movement from Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. An extended central episode, with the strings now playing with the bows, is tender, reflective, even regretful in tone. The Pizzicato opening returns to round out the movement.

The concluding Fugue (Allegro Giusto) is a nimble, rousing movement, with a forthright, clearly-defining fugal subject which is subjected to the entire range of traditional contrapuntal devices, at the end rising into the upper register of the strings, culminating in a triumphant final statement.

NCO Concert

Mozart Symphony in C Major, K. 425, “Linz”

Symphony in C Major, K. 425, “Linz”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

In the summer of 1783 Mozart, who had recently married his wife Constanze in the teeth of strong opposition from his father Leopold, set out on a trip from Vienna to return to his hometown, Salzburg, hoping to bring about reconciliation with his father. This proved unsuccessful, and a rather dejected Mozart returned to Vienna a few months later. En route he stopped in the Austrian city of Linz, arriving on October 30^th to a hearty welcome from a local dignitary, Count Thun. Cheered by this reception, and learning that there was to be a concert presented on November 4^th (less than a week away!), Mozart plunged into action and composed a new symphony by November 3^rd, which was warmly received in its first hearing the Following Day! Even for such a quick worker as Mozart, the creation of the “Linz” Symphony over a single weekend seems all but miraculous---most musicians would be hard-pressed to COPY the score in four days, much less Compose it!

The Linz” Symphony in many respects belongs in the company of the other great later Mozart symphonies (Nos. 38-41), although it has tended to lag far behind those works in popularity and frequency of performance.

Like the “Prague” Symphony (No. 38), and the E-flat (No. 39), this work begins with a slow introduction, in this case one echoing the “French” style, with its dotted rhythms and majestic manner. More intimately “Mozartian” are the touches of melting chromatic lyricism which steal into the the musical texture midway. The principal subject (as is the case with No. 39) is at first deceptively quiet, unobtrusive, only to burst out in a full-throated fanfare-like melody heard over a driving bassline, which moves into the dominant key. Thus the first subject merges seamlessly with the second, the latter taking on a clear identity only when it unexpectedly steps into E Minor (the relative minor of the dominant key), for an assertive passage which presses on, becoming a closing section of great brilliance and energy. A thread of unaccompanied melody in the violins heard at the end of the exposition quite unexpectedly becomes the focus for the rather brief development, which quickly moves into the recapitulation. This is quite regular, at first steering the “merge” with the second subject in the direction of F Major, only to quickly swing back to the proper home key of C Major. The E Minor section returns in A Minor, quite smoothly leading back to the tonic key. The melodic “thread” forms the basis of a brief coda, at first gentle and quiet, then concluding with assertive closing gestures.

Although compact and modest in scope, the slow movement is in fact a thoroughly worked-out sonataform, with a lilting opening theme in the violins, and with a hushed transition leading to a more richly textured secondary theme, which steps briefly into C Minor, with characteristic chromatic inflection in the winds to round out the exposition. The development section is, if anything, more far-reaching than that of the first movement, with darker tones added with chromatic touches in the winds and violins, and a mysterious passage “on tiptoe, ” with hushed, yet restless figures passed between lower and upper instruments. The recapitulation lays out the basic elements very much as before.

The Menuetto is one of those “formal” minuet movements typical of Mozart---in contrast to the breezier, more “outdoors” character of many of Haydn’s symphonic minuets. The opening slurred two-note figure permeates the main minuet section, punctuated with a majestic fanfare-figure. The Trio section, marked Sempre Piano is a murmuring, meditative contrast, with doublings in the winds above and below the main violin melodic line.

The Presto finale, yet another sonataform, sets off at a whisper, interspersed with loud unison outbursts, leading to a bold transition theme which hammers its way into the dominant key for a graceful secondary theme, one which soon becomes an extensively worked-out Fugato. The closing section comprises no fewer than three themes (Mozart always tends to be a spendthrift with melodic ideas): first a buzzing, Pianissimo passage in sixteenth notes, blossoming into a whirling, legato passage (also in rapid notes), then a Fortissimo echo of the principal theme to round out the exposition. The development is brief, and memorable for its forcefulness, in which the transition theme sails around the orchestra from one instrumental voice to another. Once again the recapitulation is quite regular (perhaps the only hint that the composer was working against the clock!), with the closing section extended somewhat to wheel forward to end in jubilation.

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J.C. Bach Symphony in B-Flat, Op. 9, No. 1 [1773]

Symphony in B-Flat, Op. 9, No. 1 [1773]

Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782)

At the height of his popularity in the 1770s Johann Christian Bach (by then resident in London, where he was called JOHN Christian Bach) had won a European reputation second only to his older brother, Carl Philipp Emannuel Bach, who had been his principal teacher after the death of their father in 1750. Indeed, Johann Sebastian Bach himself was little known as a composer in his own lifetime, and only in the early 19^th century would gradual win his eventual position as one of the supreme figures in the history of western music. In his late teens J. C. Bach found his way to Italy, where he studied with the esteemed pedagogue, Padre Martini (who later would subject the teenaged Mozart to a battery of tests to prove his professional mastery). At the age of 25 Bach was appointed an organist at the cathedral in Milan (having converted to Roman Catholicism), an accomplishment which might be viewed as a rather ironic stage in the 200-year history of the Bach family as Lutheran church musicians! But Italy held a far stronger attraction to Bach as the land of opera, and it was in that field that he earned his fame. Within two years Bach made his way to London, where he was based for the rest of his life. There he was active as an opera composer, taught members of the royal family, and gained much notice as a keyboard virtuoso---even taking part in one of the earliest known public concerts featuring the as yet little-known “pianoforte.”

Bach was a composer of remarkable diversity and industry, composing a vast number of chamber works, keyboard compositions, concerti and symphonies. His keyboard concerti are of unusual historical importance, quite apart from their intrinsic quality, for these works were to have a powerful impact upon young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who met Bach when visiting London at the age of eight. Bach’s keyboard concerti carried on a tradition which had been established by J. S. Bach (who virtually Invented the solo keyboard concerto), and carried on into the early stage of composition for the pianoforte by C. P. E. Bach. Johann Christain Bach’s fluent Italian style, with its melting lyrical quality, often strikes modern listeners as “Mozartian, ” had a profound influence on the younger composer.

Some of those stylistic elements will be heard in this evening’s Symphony in B-flat, composed in 1773 (some nine years after Mozart’s encounter with Bach in London.) Scored for the standard orchestra of the day (pairs of oboes, horns, a bassoon and strings), the work follows the tradition of the Italian “sinfonia” (which originally formed the introductory music for an opera) in consisting of three movements. The opening Allegro Con Spirito springs into action with a fanfare-like first theme, with bustling string figuration soon swelling to a climax, then yielding to a lilting, lyrical second subject given to the oboes, with an energetic closing theme reminiscent of the opening theme. Development begins with material from the primary theme, the harmony darkening, moving into G Minor, with long sustained tones in the oboes over scurrying strings. The recapitulation is quite regular, with the closing theme becoming an energetic coda, with the sustained oboe passage returning to round out the movement.

The Andante (in E-flat major) is a simple three-part structure in triple metre, subdued, almost hymn-like in character, with a measured tempo somelike akin to a slow minuet. This is the sort of cantabile style in which J. C. Bach seems to prophesy the Mozart to come. There is a central section in C Minor, with the oboes in a prominent role, followed by a return of the opening section to bring the movement to a quiet close.

The Presto finale is a vivacious movement featuring a sprightly pricipal melody over a briskly trotting bassline. In the secondary theme the oboes adopt a “concertante” role (quite characteristic of Bach), continuing the lively repeated notes in a “drum bass” pattern. Development is brief, preoccupied with the principal theme, and as in the first movement, swings into the darker colours of G Minor. The recapitulation omits the principal theme, moving directly to the secondary theme, bouncing on to a lively conclusion.

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