AHE Program Boccherini Night Streets

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Boccherini Night Streets


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Boccherini Night Streets MOZART

Adagio and Allegro K. 594 for Mechanical Organ ARR. FOR STRING QUINTET

BOCCHERINI

String Quintet Op. 25 No. 6 in A minor CAMBINI

String Quintet No. 23 in G major BOCCHERINI

String Quintet Op. 30 ‘Night Music of the Streets of Madrid’

Canberra

Thursday 16 March, 7:00pm

University House, ANU

Berry

Friday 17 March, 7:00pm

Berry Uniting Church Hall

Southern Highlands Saturday 18 March, 5:00pm

‘Kooyong’ - Sutton Forest

Sydney

The Cell Block Theatre, Darlinghurst

Sunday 19 March, 5:00pm

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The Ensemble The Australian Haydn Ensemble (AHE) was formed in late 2011 and launched its first subscription season in 2012. AHE has rapidly claimed a place among Australia’s finest orchestras and chamber music groups. The ensemble specialises in the music of the classical era, performing on historical instruments under the leadership of Artistic Director, Skye McIntosh. Formed from a group of dedicated musicians with national and international experience,

AHE has built a reputation for its vivacious performances, which are faithful to the soundworlds that would have been familiar to Haydn and his contemporaries.

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AHE have recently released their chart topping debut ABC Classics album, performed at the Melbourne festival, throughout Australia and toured to America. They present five tours annually and include regional performances and education projects at the core of their activities.


Musicians Skye McIntosh

Anton Baba

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & VIOLIN (JOSEPH PANORMO, LONDON, 1820)

CELLO (PETER ELIAS, SWITZERLAND, 2002)

Caroline Hopson

Dr Daniel Yeadon

VIOLIN (ANONYMOUS, CA. 1750, GERMAN)

CELLO (WILLIAM FORSTER II, LONDON C.1780)

James Eccles VIOLA (ANONYMOUS, CA. 1730, TYROL, AUSTRIA)

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Artistic Director's Message I have always loved Boccherini. He speaks in a unique musical language which I think is evocative in a way that no other composer of the time seems to approach. Interestingly, upon discovering the music of Giuseppe Cambini, and particularly the string quintet that we perform in this program, we hear echoes of this style. It is my feeling that Cambini draws a bridge between the more wild nature of Boccherini’s music and what we are more familiar with in the language of Mozart. Mozart’s Adagio and Allegro for Mechanical Organ is performed in a historical arrangement for string quintet and is a reinterpretation of Mozart's original manuscript. It gives us a somewhat different glimpse of the Mozart we normally know and love. Cambini’s beautiful quintet is essentially unknown today and it is a great pleasure to introduce this work to you. Prolific in his time - he should not be forgotten today. The manner in which he features the different instruments weaving around one another is progressive and inspired, and at times breathtakingly beautiful. Boccherini’s famous Night Music of the Streets of Madrid completes our program and is a fascinating work. Boccherini imitates the sounds of church bells, the soldier’s drum, popular street dances and the curfew call from the night watch. We are glad that his request for it not to be published outside of Spain was ignored and we hope you enjoy hearing it today!

Skye McIntosh ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & VIOLIN

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About The Music letter to his wife Constanze wrote: “the works [of the instrument] consist solely of shrill little pipes, which sound too high-pitched and too childish for my taste… I would give the whole thing up, if I had not such an important reason to go on with it … to slip a few ducats into the hand of my dear wife”.

W.A. MOZART (1756-1791)

‘Fantasy in F minor’ K. 594 for Mechanical Organ (1790) ARR. FOR STRING QUINTET

I. II.

Adagio Allegro - Adagio

While this concert is built around Boccherini’s vividly programmatic work, ‘Night Music of the Streets of Madrid’, we begin with an 18th century example of ‘programmed’ music. If there was one must-have item in the great historical houses and institutions of Mozart’s day, it was an automata (Mechanical Organ).

Typically however for Mozart, some creative strain led to exceptional musical results, with K.594 and K.608 in particular now both highly celebrated.

These were very complex and expensive machines, ranging in size from hand-held toys to vast cabinets occupying an entire wall, with a rotating barrel pinned to strike teeth or reveal the valves of an organ pipe at just the right moment, thus enabling it to recreate music. Such machines have their origins in the hydraulic organs first described in 3rd century BC Greece, and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven were all commissioned, sometimes reluctantly, to write for these popular devices, which otherwise played simple arrangements of folk tunes.

Each is in the sombre and lugubrious key of F minor, which has led American musicologist Neal Zaslaw to conclude that these must have been the works used for one of Deym’s grandest exhibits, a glass coffin in which the effigy of the great Austrian military hero, Field Marshal Ernst Gideon, Baron von Laudon (dedicatee of one of Haydn’s symphonies), could be viewed by the public. These works survive, in spite of the lack of an autograph manuscript from Mozart, due to popular transcriptions made for pipe organ, wind quintet and string quintet. WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART, 1756-1791

Three of Mozart’s works for mechanical organ survive. K. 594 (1790), K. 608 and K. 616 (1791) are all written in response to a commission from Count Josef Deym’s Müllersche Kunstgalerie in Vienna, a place dedicated to exquisite oddities. The task did not appear to please the composer, who in a 7


LUIGI BOCCHERINI, 1743-1805

in 1757 to take postings at the Burgtheater. Bucking the trend of the more traditional centres of London, Paris (where he did appear at the Concert Spirituel) and Vienna for musicians of the period, Boccherini finally settled in Spain, working under wealthy patronage in Madrid. This relationship ended trivially due to disagreement with the King regarding Boccherini’s choice of melody in a new trio. The composer subsequently spent ten very productive years in the nearby town of Las Arenas in the Gredos Mountains.

L. BOCCHERINI (1743-1805)

String Quintet Op. 25 No. 6 in A minor I. II. III. IV.

Allegro non troppo Minuetto & Trio Largo cantabile Finale. Allegro giusto

Luigi Boccherini was one of great cellists of the 18th century who dramatically expanded the technical and expressive possibilities of the instrument through his numerous compositions which feature it so prominently. Boccherini composed some 113 quintets (of 125 in total) for string quartet with an additional cello, matched only in number by Cambini, as well as many dozens of cello-centric quartets and twelve virtuosic concertos.

Spain enchanted Boccherini, and there are traces of the country’s music, as well as its warm air and clear skies, to be heard in many of his compositions. His music is characterised by rich and repetitive melodic material, unique textures and sonorities, and a sense of optimism and lightness rarely heard north of the Pyrenees. He revealed his musical philosophy in 1799 in a letter to the poet Marie-Joseph Chénier: “I know well that

Born in Lucca, Italy, he was sent by his father, also a cellist and bassist, to study in Rome before the pair travelled together to Vienna 8


music is made to speak to the heart of man, and this is what I try to do if I can; Music without Feelings and Passions is meaningless.”

his fiancée when leaving Naples after an unsuccessful opera production. As White et al cautiously suggest, “after lurid hardships on the voyage, his freedom was finally bought by a wealthy Venetian… but the authenticity of this romantic adventure is also open to serious doubt.”

His string quintet Op. 25 No. 6 captures intense passion and drama in A minor. The French musicologist Yves Gérard offers a fine depiction of this work: “The initial feverish excitement of the Allegro non molto makes one wonder where the movement is going… The Minuetto again cultivates flexibility between binary and ternary division of the bar, whilst in the contrasting Trio the viola and the second violin have a kind of slow, languorous dance containing in its middle part some guitar-like effects. The two violins give out the singing, winding, very ornate theme of the Largo cantabile, before the first violin takes charge in a lyrical solo simply accompanied by the other parts… The last movement, a spirited Allegro giusto, is held together by the initial unison of the quintet." The final minutes provide an outstanding opportunity for the virtuosity of the ensemble to be unleashed.

Once Cambini arrived in Paris, his musical contributions are much clearer to follow and rank in significance and prolificacy next to the greatest composers of the period. He appeared at the GIUSEPPE MARIA CAMBINI, 1746-1825 Concert Spirituel, one of Europe’s most famous concert series, in May of 1773, and over the next twenty years had almost 600 instrumental works and at least 14 operas published or performed to his name. Cambini also continued to profit through the Revolution, unlike many of his expat peers, writing revolutionary songs as well as leading private concerts for Armand Seguin, an arms builder, for whom he composed over 100 string quintets.

G. CAMBINI (1746-1825)

String Quintet No. 23 in G major I. Allegro maestoso II. Andante assai III. Allegretto

Cambini’s musical language epitomizes the French aalant style, seeking an immediacy and simplicity that would be appealing for the increasingly middle-class audience of published music, contrasting the formality and technicality that listeners of the late 18th century heard in baroque music. White and others suggest that “Cambini's works show facility far above the average and a degree of craftsmanship adequate to his purpose and imagination. He never tried to do more than please his audience, and in this he was

We are thrilled to introduce you to a potentially new musical voice from the 18th century, that of the mysterious Giuseppe Cambini. Little about him before the early 1770s can be verified, but we know he was born in the colourful Tuscan port city of Livorno. He is rumoured to have studied with an otherwise unknown Polli, played quartets with the likes of Manfredi, Nardini and the great Boccherini, and, most fabulously, to have been captured by Barbary pirates with 9


justly successful. He was the galant Parisian composer par excellence – facile, charming, brilliant and very occasionally novel.”

one of only two composed by Boccherini that directly depicts a scene from his observations of the world around him, we are very fortunate to have program notes that the composer wrote himself that perfectly illuminate the Madrid of 1780:

The Allegro maestoso mixes the idyllic, lyrical charm of G major with the discontent and uneasiness of its relative minor using some beautiful exchanges between the upper and lower strings. In the outer portions of the Andante assai the mood is predominantly one of lamentation, however some very fine melodic writing for the two cello makes for a blissful middle section of this movement. The G major affect is maintained in the final movement, well described by Ebhardt in a quote from 1830: “Rustic charm, also a leaping and joking sense of cheerfulness.”

“This quintettino describes the music that one hears, at night, in the streets of Madrid, beginning with the bell of the Ave Maria and ending with a military retreat (Il tamburo dei Soldati the Soldier’s drum). All that is not prescribed by the rigour of counterpoint must aim at the rendering of the truth that one has tried to represent. Le campane de l’Ave Maria: Ave Maria of the parishes - Ave Maria of the quarters in the town.

L. BOCCHERINI (1743-1805)

Minuetto dei Ciechi: Then the Minuet of the Beggars. The violoncellists will hold their instrument across their knees and, using the nails of their hand, will imitate the sound of a guitar.

String Quintet Op. 30 ‘Night Music of the Streets of Madrid’ (1780) I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII.

Le campane de l’Ave Maria – The Ave Maria Bell Il tamburo dei Soldati – The Soldiers’ Drum. Minuetto dei Ciechi – The Minuet of the Blind Beggars Il Rosario (Largo assai, allegro, largo come prima) Passa Calle (Allegro vivo) Il tamburo – The Drum Ritirata (Maestoso) – The Retreat

After a brief pause, the Minuet is repeated, and then it leads on into Il Rosario, the Rosary, but without a strict time beaten. Passa Calle (Allegro vivo): Passacaglia of the street-singers. (“Los Manolos,” i.e. low-class Madrilenos. Also a nice play on words: the bass pattern is a passacaglia, while “Passe calle” - the street - was a local term for a type of street singing).

“In Op. 30… you will find one that has the title ‘The Night Music of the Streets of Madrid.’ This piece is absolutely useless and even ridiculous outside Spain because the audience cannot hope to understand its significance nor the performers to play it as it should be played.” Luigi Boccherini

Ritirata: Retreat of Madrid with Variations. One will imagine that the retreat begins to be heard in the distance, so that it must be played piano, so softly that it is scarcely audible; the indications crescendo and marcando must be strictly observed.” PROGRAM NOTES BY ANTHONY ALBRECHT

For this extraordinary programmatic work,

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