Chamber Music at the Bella: Night 2

Trio for Flute, Cello, and Piano, Op. 45

Louise Farrenc

(1804 to 1875)

Despite her obvious talents as a pianist, composer, and teacher, the male-dominated society of mid-19th-century Europe held Farrenc (born Jeanne-Louise Dumont) back from achieving the full lofty reputation she deserved. With the recent swell in interest in female composers, she has finally begun to receive the respect she has always deserved. Anyone who enjoys the music of Farrenc’s early-romantic contemporaries, such as Chopin and Schumann, is likely to respond to her music, too. It has plentiful melodic appeal, poetry, and drama. Her catalogue includes large quantities of piano music (she composed for the instrument exclusively during the 1820s), numerous chamber works, and a handful of compositions for orchestra.

Metamorphosen, TrV 290

Richard Strauss

(1864 to 1949)

On 2 October 1943, the opera house in Munich, Germany — Strauss's home city — was destroyed by Allied bombs. The composer was moved to write to his biographer, Willi Schuh: “this was the greatest catastrophe which has ever been brought into my life, for which there can be no consolation and in my old age, no hope.”

Immediately afterwards, he sketched a few bars of music he labelled “Mourning for Munich.” He put them aside, after they reminded him of a waltz he had composed in 1939 for a documentary film about Munich, a film that was never released. He revised the waltz by adding a sombre, minor-key section inspired by the destruction of the opera house, and christened the resulting concert work Munich: A Memorial Waltz.

In September 1944, conductor Paul Sacher commissioned a new work from Strauss. The following February, the Semper Opera House in Dresden (where eight Strauss operas had premiered, as well as three of Wagner's) suffered a similar fate to Munich's.

Then, the Vienna State Opera was heavily damaged on 12 March 1945. The next day, Strauss turned back to the 1943 'mourning' sketch and used it as the point of departure for Metamorphosen (subtitled “a study for 23 solo strings”), the work he composed in response to Sacher's commission. He completed it on 12 April, mere weeks before the end of the war.

Flute Quartet in D Major, K. 285

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(1756 to 1791)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his mother set out from Salzburg in 1777 in search of a more grateful home for his brilliant talents. It was not to be. They spent three months in the German city of Mannheim, where Mozart received a commission for some flute quartets from a wealthy nobleman, Ferdinand De Jean — but he was never paid for them. They are exceptionally beautiful pieces, demonstrating his ability to write effectively for the flute — despite stating he didn’t care for the instrument.

Two Pieces for String Octet, Op. 11

Dmitri Shostakovich

(1906 to 1975)

Shostakovich was just 19 (and a recent graduate from the St. Petersburg Conservatory) when he composed this sombre and pulsating piece in 1924 and 1925. In it, he used the same instruments Felix Mendelssohn had used in his youthful work from 100 years previously: four violins, two violas, and two cellos. There’s a sharp contrast in character between the sections, the sombre Prelude and the propulsive Scherzo

Program notes by Don Anderson © 2023