Concert Series III, 2011-2012 Season
Carl Maria von Weber
Der Freischütz Overture
Weber's operas, while still a staple in Europe, are less well known in the States. Der Freischütz, first performed in 1820, is celebrated as being one of the first "Romantic" operas (Weber's own term), considered so in large part because of its historical and supernatural content. It also represents an important phase in German opera between singspiels like Mozart’s Magic Flute and the grand folk-tale-based epics of Wagner. The story is set in Germany just after the Thirty Years War and involves the requirement that the young man who wishes to be the next head forester (and marry the current head forester's daughter, of course) has to win a shooting contest. Our hero, Max, is sufficiently in love with Agathe and sufficiently unconfident in his shooting skills that he makes a pact with the Devil (here called Samiel), meeting his henchman, and eventually Samiel himself in the eerie Wolf's Glen at midnight to have the magic bullets forged. Pacts with the devil are generally not a good thing, and this instance is true to form. In the event Max seems to have shot Agathe (but hasn't); he is forced to confess his reliance on the devil, and his wedding is delayed a year while he proves himself.
The overture concentrates more on the rural setting and the qualities of the characters than on the supernatural: the gorgeous opening with a chorus of French horns clearly refers to the forests and hunting; the energetic music that follows is based on one of Max's arias, and the big, memorable tune played first by the violins and then the flute anticipates Agathe's early aria of hope and love. The supernatural is evoked at the very end of the slow introduction, as the strings tremolo and the cellos play a slow line, and at the beginning of the fast section with some turbulent syncopated music. Otherwise the occasional creepy chord or minor-mode interjection reminds the audience of the evil spirits at work behind the story.
Victor Herbert
Cello Concerto No. 2, Op. 30, E Minor
Victor Herbert is best known nowadays for his operettas: Naughty Marietta and Babes in Toyland may be the most familiar today, but in his time he was a central figure in the classical music life of this country. Trained as a cellist in Germany, he played principal cello in the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, where his wife, Thérèse Foerster, was a soloist. He directed the 22nd Regimental Band for seven years and eventually had his own orchestra, which toured around the country playing light music. He was becoming increasingly well known as an operetta composer as he took the reins of the Pittsburgh Symphony, drilling it to a quality comparable to the Boston and New York orchestras. After the turn of the century he chiefly made his living as a prolific writer of both operas and operettas.
The Second Cello Concerto, which, like the first, he wrote for himself to play, is the single instrumental work of his that has enjoyed more or less uninterrupted attention, and it is said to have inspired Dvorak to write his durable B minor concerto, which Alison Eldredge played last time she appeared with the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra.
The work is in three movements with no pauses in between. The first movement begins with the orchestra playing the passionate main idea, which the cello soon takes up (in a slow tempo) and alters. The orchestral material is written in triple time, but it often feels as thought there are two beats in a measure. The tension between three (waltz) and two (march) is the primary rhythmic feature of the movement, and it is certainly what gives it its drive. The second time the cello enters, the shape of the opening idea has disappeared, but its rhythmic energy remains, and the tempo is quite fast. These two ideas alternate twice to give the overall shape of this movement. If the unremitting passion and rhythmic complexity of this movement seems surprising from an operetta composer, the middle movement is truer to type. It is an utterly delicious tune (slightly reminiscent of "Stranger in Paradise" from Kismet) with a tugging heartbeat accompaniment in the strings. In the later part of the movement the high strings play the tune and the cello decorates; the little triangle tinkles add just the right amount of cheese. This moves immediately into the last movement, whose material you will recognize: it's from the fast section of the first movement, and the cello develops it. A bit more than half way through, the cello has some fast and furious passagework, which leads into a repetition of the second movement theme, combined with a version of the opening theme of the movement. This passage work happens again, and the movement comes to a climax with the cello again returning to the slow movement tune and the orchestra playing the opening theme of the whole concerto: everything fits with everything else. More virtuosic passage work and a final blast of the opening material end the work.
Pyotr Illych Tchaikovsky
Suite No. 3 in G Major, Op. 55
Tchaikovsky wrote two kinds of suites. The more familiar is the set of pieces assembled from his ballets, the Nutcracker Suite being probably the best known of these. The other kind of suite, of which this is an example, is the set of movements originally designed to be played with no accompanying ballet. It is essentially a symphony, but the quality and shape of the movements would be unusual in a symphony "proper." The first three movements are all relatively short, and the first one has a pastoral and relatively undramatic character not very characteristic of symphonies. The last movement, which is longer than the other three put together is a set of variations on a Classical-like theme, which, again, is not characteristic of symphonies.
This work was written and first performed in 1885, as Tchaikovsky was fully recovered from his disastrous marriage and beginning to enjoy a really solid reputation. It was an immediate and enormous success, which is not surprising considering the grateful nature of most of the material and the brilliant writing for the orchestra.
The first movement alternates two tunes: the first (lasting over two minutes) a gentle pastoral ditty passed around the orchestra. The second, not that different in character, but accompanied by a gentle, perky, boom-chick accompaniment. Both these tunes get kitted out with elaborate accompaniments and passionate counterpoints, but the essence of the movement is their delicacy and grace.
The second movement "Melancholy Waltz" is perhaps more grumpy than melancholy, with the cellos grunting along on the offbeats under an indubitably sad little tune introduced by the violas. The highlight of the movement is the middle section, where the divided violas (and later violins) split the "tune" (it's not very tuneful) between them, each taking over the note that the other has just left, both playing intentionally clumsy accents on the first beats of each bar. This surely anticipates Shostakovich's interest in making a familiar and too-comfortable musical type uncomfortable and even grotesque.
After a delicate and madcap Scherzo—positively Schumann-like in its caprice—the theme and variations begin. The theme has the air of something that could have been written by Haydn or Mozart, but it is Tchaikovsky's invention. This is one of his surprisingly numerous forays into neoclassicism. The variations start out very conservatively, with the theme always clearly audible and the alterations in each decoration simply decorative, if also fantastically colorful. The fifth variation, which changes to triple time, moves a bit further away from the theme, as does the sixth. The seventh is "too short," as is the eighth, and by the ninth we're in a new key, and the theme is less easily audible. Variation 10, which features a solo violin, brings the theme back to our notice in a kind of limping waltz rhythm, and variation 11 plays the tune relatively straight, at least for a while. The finale, a polacca (or polonaise) uses the tune from time to time, but its main function is to bring the house down with its energy and high spirits.
Notes by Mary Hunter