4f3eb5d47a79c2.38206185

65FEBRUARY / MARCH 2012 MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA

Minnesota OrchestraGilbert Varga, conductor

Thursday, March 22, 2012, 11 am

Friday, March 23, 2012, 8 pm

Saturday, March 24, 2012, 8 pm

Orchestra Hall

Orchestra Hall

Orchestra Hall

Felix Mendelssohn

Franz Joseph Haydn

Robert Schumann

I N T E R M I S S I O N ca. 20’

Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Opus 21 ca. 11’

Symphony No. 52 in C minor ca. 22’

Allegro assai con brio

Andante

Menuetto: Allegretto

Presto

Symphony No. 3 in E-fl at major, Opus 97, Rhenish ca. 32’

Lebhaft

Scherzo: Sehr mässig

Nicht schnell

Feierlich

Lebhaft

mar 22, 23, 24Varga, Haydn and Schumann

Minnesota Orchestra concerts are broadcast live Friday evenings on stations of Minnesota Public Radio.

The concerts are also featured in American Public Media’s national programs, SymphonyCast and Performance Today.

Regional broadcasts are supported by the Minnesota Orchestra and by Patterson, Thuente, Skaar and Christensen.

M i n n e s o t a O r c h e s t r a All materials copyright © 2012 by the Minnesota Orchestra.

6666 MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA SHOWCASE

Gilbert Varga, conductor

London-born Gilbert Varga has an international reputation as conductor of both symphony and chamber orchestras. He has conducted the Minnesota Orchestra in eight of the past ten seasons, most recently leading Dvorák’s Eighth Symphony and the Walton Cello Concerto in October 2010. Recent, upcoming: His calendar includes engagements with such ensembles as the Philadelphia Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.Prior posts: In 2008 Varga concluded a ten-year tenure as music director of the Basque National Orchestra. Earlier he held positions with the Hof Symphony, Hungarian Philharmonic, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and Malmö Symphony.Recordings: His newest release features Ravel and Prokofi ev concertos with pianist Anna Vinnitskaya and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.Background: He initially focused on chamber orchestras, including the Tibor Varga Chamber Orchestra, founded by his late father.More: intermusica.co.uk.

one-minute notesMendelssohn: Overture to A Midsummer Night’s DreamMendelssohn’s delightful overture captures the essence of

Shakespeare’s comedy—magic, mishaps and humor come vividly to life.

Haydn: Symphony No. 52Emotional intensity rules in this work from Haydn’s Sturm und Drang

period, dramatic in its use of minor keys, alternations of loud and soft,

wide melodic range and rich textures. The eminent Haydn scholar

H. C. Robbins Landon called it “the grandfather of Beethoven’s Fifth

Symphony,” which would not appear for more than 30 years.

Schumann: Symphony No. 3, RhenishThis fi ve-movement symphony also brings Beethoven to mind: it opens

with rhythmic energy in the manner of the Eroica, full of syncopations

and rhythmic displacements. The charming second and third movements

function as interludes. The solemn fourth brings polyphony to a theme in

the trombones, and the fi nale is a joyful return to sunlight.

In 1827, when Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream is fi rst performed: • Freedom’s Journal, the fi rst newspaper

owned and published by African-Americans, is founded in New York City

• Englishman James Simpson constructs a sand fi lter for purifying London’s water supply

• The Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) Railroad is incorporated to offer a shipping route faster than the Erie Canal

Schumann conducts the premiere of his Rhenish Symphony in 1851, the year: • In London, Queen Victoria opens the fi rst

world’s fair—the Great Exhibition • The New York Times begins publication,

offering issues daily except Sunday • The University of Minnesota is founded,

becoming the fi rst collegiate institution in the Minnesota territory

at the same time...

Artistmar 22, 23, 24

Concert Previewwith Courtney Lewis3/22 at 10:30 am3/23 at 7 pm3/24 at 7 pmOrchestra Hall Auditorium

Post-concert Q&A3/24, post-concertStay after the Saturday night concert for a Q&A with conductor Gilbert Varga.



elix Mendelssohn grew up in the most cultivated household in Berlin, and it is a measure of the Mendelssohn family’s sophistication that one of their recreations was reading Shakespeare’s plays

together in the Schlegel-Tieck German translation. Fanny Mendelssohn later remembered the impact of one play in particular: “We were saying yesterday what an important part the Midsummer Night’s Dream has always played in our home ….We were really brought up on theMidsummer Night’s Dream, and Felix especially made it his own…”

‘the fi nest music ever inspired by shakespeare’Felix indeed “made it his own” during the summer of 1826, when the 17-year-old composer wrote an overture to that play that remains today the fi nest music ever inspired by Shakespeare. Years later, in 1843, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia asked Mendelssohn to write incidental music for a production of the same play to be given in Potsdam that fall. Mendelssohn, now 34, reached back across the span of 17 years to recapture the magic he had created as a teenager and wrote a suite of 12 more numbers to accompany the play.

In the Overture, our focus for these concerts, young Mendelssohn captured the spirit of Shakespeare’s play perfectly. Th e instant this music begins, we feel ourselves transported to the woods outside Athens, where Puck fl its mischievously through the forest, the “rude mechanicals” rehearse their play and lovers are mysteriously transformed.

Th e beginning is magic. Four soft chords lift us into the land of make-believe, and a glistening rush in the violins suggests the gossamer fl ickering of tiny wings. All seems

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set when, over heavy stamping, the orchestra shouts out a vigorous tune that ends with a great hee-haw. Th is is the braying of Bottom, the rustic actor who is transformed into an ass. A cascade of shining chords leads to a surprise—a false ending—and aft er returning to the fl ickering “fairyland” of the beginning, the Overture vanishes on the same four chords with which it began.

Instrumentation: 2 fl utes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets,

tuba, timpani and strings

Program note by Eric Bromberger.

Felix MendelssohnBorn: February 3, 1809, Hamburg

Died: November 4, 1847, Leipzig

Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Opus 21

mar 22, 23, 24Program Notes

he well-worn epithet that proclaims Haydn to be the “Father of the Symphony” has by now been pretty much laid to rest. Th at honor, if it can be said to apply to any one individual, would go to Johann Stamitz, who

died the year Haydn wrote his fi rst symphony in 1757. But next to Haydn, no other composer in history has been the parent of so many great symphonies, and no one did more to bring the form from its fl edgling state as a successor to the Italian operatic overture (the sinfonia, consisting of two fast movements framing a central slow one) to a full-fl edged maturity that would make the symphony the dominant instrumental genre of the 19th century.

Haydn’s career as a symphonist spanned nearly four decades and produced more than 100 works in the genre. One might imagine them being produced on an assembly line—but that was not Haydn’s way. Close investigation of his vast symphonic output reveals that there is no such thing as a “typical” Haydn symphony, no matter how modest a work it may be. Nearly every one features something unusual, new, diff erent, original or distinctive.

tFranz Joseph HaydnBorn: March 31, 1732, Rohrau, AustriaDied: May 31, 1809, Vienna

Symphony No. 52 in C minor


6868 MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA SHOWCASE

Program Notesmar 22, 23, 24

n the evening of September 2, 1850, Schumann and his family arrived in Düsseldorf, where he had agreed to take up the position of music director.

a fresh startSchumann had spent the previous six years in Dresden, in various stages of depression, and now he was delighted to escape a city he associated with creative blockage and make a fresh start. In Düsseldorf he and Clara were feted with a fl urry of concerts, dinners and dances, and four weeks later they traveled 30 miles up the Rhine for the enthronement of Archbishop Geissel of Cologne as a Cardinal. Th ough the Schumanns were not Catholic, this solemn ceremony in the still-unfi nished cathedral made a deep impression on the composer.

His spirits revived, Schumann plunged into work, quickly composing his Cello Concerto and beginning to conduct the Düsseldorf orchestra. In the midst of this, he set to work on a new symphony. Th is would be listed as his Th ird, even though it was the last of the four he composed: he sketched the fi rst movement between November 2 and 9, made another quick visit to Cologne, and had the entire work complete on December 9. Th e composer led the successful premiere of the Th ird Symphony in Düsseldorf on February 6, 1851. Th ings happened faster in those days: from the time Schumann sat down before a blank sheet of manu script paper until he led the premiere, only 96 days had passed.

Schumann himself contributed the nickname Rhenishfor the new symphony, but that name needs to be understood carefully. Th is music paints no scenes and tells no story; it does not set out to translate the fabled Rhine into sound. Rather, it is music inspired by a return to the river on which Schumann had spent happy student days 20 years earlier and which was now the

i

a work of the sturm und drang What sets Symphony No. 52 apart from the crowd is an exceptional intensity. Haydn scholar H.C. Robbins Landon calls it “the grandfather of Beethoven’s Fift h Symphony, also created with mathematical precision and in extreme conciseness.” It even shares the same key, C minor.

Symphony No. 52 was composed in 1771 or 1772, which puts it with the dozen or so symphonies Haydn wrote in the late 1760s and early 1770s that are commonly referred to as his Sturm and Drang (Storm and Stress) symphonies; this applies especially to Nos. 44 to 48. Th e Sturm und Drang movement takes its name from literature of the period, which emphasized emotional intensity, dark pathos, stormy moods, restless anxiety and a general avoidance of the elegant and superfi cial language common to the age. In music, this form of expression manifested itself in the frequent use of minor keys, persistent and dramatic alternations of loud and soft , rich textures, a large harmonic palette, frequent and dramatic wide leaps between notes, unusual formal designs, much use of syncopation, and wide tessitura (melodic range).

allegro assai con brio. Most of these qualities can be observed in the symphony’s opening moments alone. Th e overall design of the fi rst movement is traditional, but it does incorporate one strange feature, namely the twofold presentation of the second theme—a buoyant, cheerful idea in E-fl at major.

adagio. Th e second movement is by contrast far more relaxed, even genial, and though the basic keynote remains C, the tonality is now C major, not C minor. Violins are muted throughout, conferring a further air of genteel repose. A little fi llip—four quick notes on two pitches—initially seems innocuous enough, but gradually works its way into the very fabric of the music, becoming almost an obsession.

menuetto: allegretto; presto. Th e Menuetto returns to C minor and a mood of sobriety, while the fi nale, Presto, hurtles on with grim determination and all the force Haydn can muster into one of his most powerful Sturm und Drang symphonies.

Instrumentation:2 oboes, bassoon, 2 horns and strings

Program note by Robert Markow.

Robert SchumannBorn: June 8, 1810, ZwickauDied: July 29, 1856, Endenich

Symphony No. 3 in E-fl at major, Opus 97, Rhenish



mar 22, 23, 24Program Notes

setting for his new job and, he hoped, a return to health. Several movements originally had descriptive titles, but Schumann excluded these from the completed score: he wanted this symphony understood purely as music. To his publisher, Schumann explained simply that the symphony “perhaps mirrors here and there something of Rhenish life.”

energy, charm, grandeurlebhaft. Th e structure of the symphony is unusual: it opens with a huge and dramatic sonata-form movement, which is then followed by four relatively short movements. Th e opening Lebhaft (lively) has no introduction—Schumann plunges directly into this music with a theme that swings and thrusts its way forward. Th e Rhine has become a slow fl atland river by the time it reaches Düsseldorf, and one inevitably feels that the Rhine of Schumann’s fi rst movement is the river upstream as it rolls through the deep gorges and past the fabled castles of the mountains of western Germany.

Th e opening is full of a resounding energy that carries all before it, but this music is also remarkable for its syncopations and rhythmic displacements: the eff ort to beat the downbeats will quickly end in confusion, so skillfully has Schumann written against the expected pattern of the measures. Th e second subject is a delicate, waltz-like tune introduced by the woodwinds, but it is the opening material that dominates this movement, and—pushed on by some terrifi c horn calls—this theme drives the movement to a splendid close.

scherzo: sehr mäs schnell. Th e next two movements, melodic and charming, function as interludes. Th e Scherzo, “very moderate,” is like a comfortable country dance that fl ows along the easy swing of its main theme; the trio section turns a little darker, and Schumann ingeniously combines these themes in the reprise. Th e third movement, marked simply Nicht schnell (not quickly), alternates the clarinets’ delicate opening idea with the violas’ expressive second subject. feierlich. Th e atmosphere changes completely in the fourth movement, marked Feierlich (solemn). Silent until now, three trombones darkly intone the somber main idea in E-fl at minor, which Schumann treats to some impressive polyphonic extension, developing this idea in tight canon. In his manuscript Schumann had originally headed this movement “In the character of the accompaniment to a solemn ceremony,” and surely

this music was inspired by the ceremonial enthronement of Cardinal Geissel in the vast Cologne Cathedral. Th is solemn movement drives to a grand close on a series of ringing chords.

from darkness into lightlebhaft. Out of their echoes, the fi nale bursts to life. Commentators have universally been unable to resist comparing this moment to stepping from out of a dark cathedral into the sunlight—and they may well be right. Th is music leaps to life, but it is worth noting that Schumann marks this beginning dolce: “gentle, sweet.” Like the fi rst movement, also marked Lebhaft , the fi nale overfl ows with energy, and Schumann drives it to a climax that recalls the solemn trombone theme from the fourth movement, now played so loudly that it should shake the hall, and a quick reference to the grand swing of the opening of the fi rst movement. A brisk coda drives this wonderful music to a close fully worthy of its nickname.

Despite Schumann’s enthusiastic return to the Rhineland, things did not go well in Düsseldorf. He proved an indiff erent conductor, soon there were intrigues against him, and periods of black depression inevitably returned. In a sad irony, Schumann attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Rhine in Düsseldorf in 1854; he was rescued by fi shermen but placed in an asylum from which he never emerged. Many critics feel that the music of Schumann’s fi nal years shows a decline, yet everyone who hears the Rhenish Symphony knows that this is an exception to that bleak rule—its power and happiness and assured technique make this the fi nest work of Schumann’s fi nal period. How sad it is that a work written at age 40 should have to be from a composer’s “fi nal period.”

Instrumentation: 2 fl utes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns,

2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani and strings

E.B.


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