Program Notes

ETHEL SMYTH

born: April 22, 1858 in Marylebone, England - died: May 9, 1944 in Woking, England

“On the Cliffs of Cornwall”

Prelude to Act II of The Wreckers (1906)

premiere: November 11, 1906 in Leipzig, Germany

Dame Ethel Smyth was both an accomplished composer and outspoken member of the women’s suffrage movement. Smyth’s father, a career military officer, strongly opposed his daughter pursuing a career in music. Nonetheless, Smyth began studies at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1887. Smyth quickly became dissatisfied with the experience and after a year, began private studies with Heinrich von Herzogenberg. During these early years in Europe, Smyth made the acquaintance of such eminent musicians as Johannes Brahms, Clara Wieck Schumann, Joseph Joachim, Edvard Grieg, Anton Rubinstein, and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. After travels throughout Europe, Smyth returned to England in 1890. Over the next few decades, Smyth earned success and recognition both at home and abroad, especially in the realm of opera (although she composed effectively in a wide range of instrumental and vocal genres). New York’s Metropolitan Opera performed the U.S. premiere of Smyth’s Der Wald in March 1903. It was the Met’s first presentation of an opera by a woman composer.

At the start of the second decade of the 20th century, Smyth became strongly involved in the English suffragette movement. Her 1910 composition The March of the Women emerged as an anthem for the movement. In March of 1912, Smyth took part in a suffragette demonstration that led to her serving two months in Holloway Prison. When Thomas Beecham, Smyth’s friend and advocate, visited her in prison, he found the composer leading fellow suffragette inmates in a rousing performance of The March of the Women. In 1922, Ethel Smyth was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire — the first female composer to be given this honor. She was also awarded honorary degrees from St. Andrews and Manchester Universities, as well as an honorary doctorate in music from Oxford University.

Smyth’s opera The Wreckers began as a setting of Henry Brewster’s French-language drama Les Naufrageurs. Attempts to stage the opera in French-speaking countries proved unsuccessful. The premiere took place on November 11, 1906 at the Neues Theater in Leipzig. The opera was performed in a German translation with the title Strandrecht. Smyth and Alma Strettell created an English-language libretto for The Wreckers, which received its concert performance at at London’s Queen’s Hall, on May 30, 1908, conducted by Arthur Nikisch. A staged production followed on June 22, 1909, performed at His Majesty’s Theater in London, led by Sir Thomas Beecham. The Wreckers is based upon tales of 18th-century Cornish natives who lured ships onto Cornwall’s rocky shores by disabling warning lights. Once the ships had wrecked, the natives would rob and kill the sailors. Into this story, The Wreckers weaves the tragic love affair of Mark, a young fisherman, and Thirza, wife of Pascoe, the village leader and preacher. “On the Cliffs of Cornwall” serves as the atmospheric orchestral introduction to the opera’s second act.

EDVARD GRIEG

born: June 15, 1843 in Bergen, Norway - died: September 4, 1907 in Bergen, Norway

Piano Concerto in A minor Opus 16 (1868)

premiere: April 3, 1869 in Copenhagen, Denmark

Edvard Grieg’s beloved Piano Concerto was the product of a particularly happy period in the Norwegian composer’s life. In 1867, Grieg and his wife, Nina, were married. The following April, their daughter, Alexandra, was born. That summer, Edvard, Nina and Alexandra Grieg traveled to Søllerød, located near Copenhagen. The Grieg family vacationed in a rented cottage. There, Edvard Grieg composed the A-minor Piano Concerto. The premiere of the Concerto, which took place in Copenhagen on April 3, 1869, was generally well received by the Norwegian press. One critic viewed the work, which incorporated Norwegian folk idioms, as presenting “all Norway in its infinite variety and unity,” and compared the second movement to “a lonely mountain-girt tarn that lies dreaming of infinity.”

In early 1870 in Rome, Grieg met the great Hungarian pianist and composer, Franz Liszt. During one visit, Grieg presented the score of the A-minor Concerto to Liszt, who played through the work, often shouting his approval. As Grieg related: “Finally, (Liszt) said in a strange, emotional way: ‘Keep on, I tell you. You have what is needed, and don’t let them frighten you.’” Liszt did suggest some changes to the score, finally published in 1872. Grieg was never totally satisfied with the Concerto, and continued to pen revisions until the time of his death. Despite the composer’s misgivings, the Grieg A-minor remains one of the most popular of piano concertos.

The Concerto is in three movements. The first (Allegro moderato) features one of concert music’s most famous and dramatic openings. The second movement (Adagio) opens with an extended introduction spotlighting the muted strings. This precedes the entrance of the soloist, whose

presence dominates the remainder of this brief and affecting slow-tempo movement. The finale (Allegro moderato molto e marcato) begins with a short introduction that anticipates the soloist’s presentation of the main theme — a jaunty rhythmic passage based upon a Norwegian folk dance known as the halling. The flute initiates a lovely contrasting interlude, but the spirited halling motif soon returns. The closing pages present the orchestra’s majestic transformation of the interlude, accompanied by the soloist’s grand flourishes.

Edvard Grieg (1891), portrait by Eilif Peterssen

JOHANNES BRAHMS

born: May 7, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany - died: April 3, 1897 in Vienna, Austria

Symphony No. 4 in E minor Opus 98 (1885)

premiere: October 25, 1885 in Meiningen, Germany

Johannes Brahms composed his Fourth (and final) Symphony during the summers of 1884 and 1885, while vacationing in the Alpine village of Mürzzuschlag. On August 29, 1885, Brahms forwarded the manuscript of the Fourth Symphony’s opening movement to his friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg (wife of Ethel Smyth’s teacher, Heinrich von Herzogenberg), along with the following playful correspondence:

Will you allow me to send you a piece of a piece of mine, and would you have time to glance at it and send me a word about it? Generally speaking, my pieces are, unfortunately, pleasanter than I am, and people find less in them that needs putting right! The cherries in this part of the world never grow sweet and are uneatable—so that if the thing is not to your taste don’t hesitate to say so. I am not at all eager to write a bad No. 4...

In a letter of September 6, Mme. von Herzogenberg confessed: “(t)he movement from the Symphony has already been heaving many sighs and groans under my unskilled hands...there are many passages where I still get quite lost.” And, after hearing a piano duet performance of the Symphony, critic Eduard Hanslick, commented: “I feel as though I am being thrashed by two frightfully clever fellows.”

The eminent German pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow was thrilled by the score, and invited Brahms to conduct his Meiningen Orchestra in the October 25, 1885 premiere. The favorable response prompted that Orchestra to perform the Symphony during its autumn tour of Germany and Holland.

On March 7, 1897 in Vienna, the mortally-ill Brahms attended his final orchestral concert, in which Hans Richter conducted the E-minor Symphony. The audience became aware of Brahms’s presence, and applauded after each movement.

At the conclusion of the Symphony, the audience leapt to its feet and offered a massive ovation in tribute to Brahms. The frail composer summoned his remaining energy to rise and acknowledge the cheers.

As biographer Florence May described:

Tears ran down his cheeks as he stood there, shrunken in form with lined countenance, strained expression, white hair hanging lank, and through the audience there was a feeling as of a stifled sob, for each knew that he was saying farewell. Another outburst of applause and yet another; one more acknowledgment from the master, and Brahms and his Vienna had parted forever.

It is entirely appropriate that the Fourth Symphony served to mark the Brahms’s farewell to his beloved Vienna. The work represents the summit of the composer’s extraordinary symphonic output. While each of the Four Symphonies is a masterpiece, the E-minor is an extraordinary synthesis of Classical (and even pre-Classical) form with searing Romantic passion and lyricism. The Fourth Symphony’s dramatic power— couched in a miraculous economy of utterance—continues to move and amaze audiences.

The Symphony is in four movements. The first (Allegro non troppo) begins with the violins’ immediate presentation of the principal theme, based upon alternating pairs of descending and ascending notes. The second movement (Andante moderato) is a series of variations on a theme, introduced at the outset by the horns and woodwinds. Brahms once described the stirring third-movement scherzo (Allegro giocoso) as “Alexander the Great’s march to India.” In the finale (Allegro energico e passionate), Brahms uses his version of music from J.S. Bach’s Cantata No. 150 as the underlying structure for a series of variations. The movement is also cast in a general A—B—A form, with two fiery outer sections and a central, lyrical episode. The concluding “A” section gathers intensity to the shattering final bars.