Program Notes: Beethoven Violin Concerto

CLASSICS 2022/23

BEETHOVEN VIOLIN CONCERTO

PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor

JAMES EHNES, violin

Friday, April 21, 2023 at 7:30pm

Saturday, April 22, 2023 at 7:30pm

Sunday, April 23, 2023 at 1:00pm

Boettcher Concert Hall

BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61

I. Allegro ma non troppo

II. Larghetto

III. Rondo: Allegro

— INTERMISSION —

BRUCKNER Symphony No. 7 in E major, WAB 107

I. Allegro moderato

II. Adagio: Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam

III. Scherzo: Sehr schnell

IV. Finale: Bewegt, doch nicht schnell

CONCERT RUN TIME IS APPROXIMATELY 2 HOURS AND 6 MINUTES WITH A 20 MINUTE INTERMISSION

FIRST TIME TO THE SYMPHONY? SEE PAGE 7 OF THIS PROGRAM FOR FAQ’S TO MAKE YOUR EXPERIENCE GREAT!

Friday’s concert is dedicated to richard and Jo sanders

saturday’s concert is dedicated to Lang investment group

sunday’s concert is dedicated to sharon L. menard and eLizabeth neva

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

PETER OUNDJIAN, conductor

Recognized as a masterful and dynamic presence in the conducting world, Peter Oundjian has developed a multi-faceted portfolio as a conductor, violinist, professor and artistic advisor. He has been celebrated for his musicality, an eye towards collaboration, innovative programming, leadership and training with students and an engaging personality. Strengthening his ties to Colorado, Oundjian is now Principal Conductor of the Colorado Symphony in addition to Music Director of the Colorado Music Festival, which successfully pivoted to a virtual format during the pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021.

Now carrying the title Conductor Emeritus, Oundjian’s fourteen-year tenure as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony served as a major creative force for the city of Toronto and was marked by a reimagining of the TSO’s programming, international stature, audience development, touring and a number of outstanding recordings, garnering a Grammy nomination in 2018 and a Juno award for Vaughan Williams’ Orchestral Works in 2019. He led the orchestra on several international tours to Europe and the USA, conducting the first performance by a North American orchestra at Reykjavik’s Harpa Hall in 2014.

From 2012-2018, Oundjian served as Music Director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra during which time he implemented the kind of collaborative programming that has become a staple of his directorship. Oundjian led the RSNO on several international tours, including North America, China, and a European festival tour with performances at the Bregenz Festival, the Dresden Festival as well as in Innsbruck, Bergamo, Ljubljana, and others. His final appearance with the orchestra as their Music Director was at the 2018 BBC Proms where he conducted Britten’s epic War Requiem.

Highlights of past seasons include appearances with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Iceland Symphony, the Detroit, Atlanta, Saint Louis, Baltimore, Dallas, Seattle, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. With the onset of world-wide concert cancellations, support for students at Yale and Juilliard became a priority. In 2022/2023 season Oundjian will conduct the opening weekend of Atlanta Symphony, followed by return engagements with Baltimore, Indianapolis, Dallas, Colorado and Toronto symphonies, as well as a visit to New World Symphony.

Oundjian has been a visiting professor at Yale University’s School of Music since 1981, and in 2013 was awarded the school’s Sanford Medal for Distinguished Service to Music. A dedicated educator, Oundjian regularly conducts the Yale, Juilliard, Curtis and New World symphony orchestras.

An outstanding violinist, Oundjian spent fourteen years as the first violinist for the renowned Tokyo String Quartet before he turned his energy towards conducting.

PHOTO: DALE WILCOX

CLASSICS BIOGRAPHIES

JAMES EHNES, violin

James Ehnes has established himself as one of the most sought-after violinists on the international stage. Gifted with a rare combination of stunning virtuosity, serene lyricism and an unfaltering musicality, Ehnes is a favourite guest of many of the world’s most respected conductors including Ashkenazy, Alsop, Sir Andrew Davis, Denève, Elder, Ivan Fischer, Gardner, Paavo Järvi, Mena, Noseda, Robertson and Runnicles. Ehnes’s long list of orchestras includes, amongst others, the Boston, Chicago, London, NHK and Vienna Symphony Orchestras, the Los Angeles, New York, Munich and Czech Philharmonic Orchestras, and the Cleveland, Philadelphia, Philharmonia and DSO Berlin orchestras.

Recent orchestral highlights include the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall with Noseda, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig with Shelley, San Francisco Symphony with Janowski, Frankfurt Radio Symphony with Orozco-Estrada, London Symphony with Harding, and Munich

Philharmonic with van Zweden, as well as his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Lincoln Center in spring 2019. In 2019/20, Ehnes was Artist in Residence with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which includes performances of the Elgar Concerto with Luisi, a play/ direct programme leg by Ehnes, and a chamber music programme. In 2017, Ehnes premiered the Aaron-Jay Kernis Violin Concerto with the Toronto, Seattle and Dallas Symphony Orchestras, and gave further performances of the piece with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Alongside his concerto work, James Ehnes maintains a busy recital schedule. He performs regularly at the Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Center Chicago, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Ravinia, Montreux, Chaise-Dieu, the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Verbier Festival, Festival de Pâques in Aix, and in 2018 he undertook a recital tour to the Far East, including performances in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. As part of the Beethoven celebrations, Ehnes has been invited to perform the complete cycle of Beethoven Sonatas at the Wigmore Hall throughout 2019/20. Elsewhere Ehnes performs the Beethoven Sonatas at Dresden Music Festival, Prague Spring Festival, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, at Aspen Music Festival (as part of a multi-year residency) and at Bravo Vail Festival during his residency week also including the Violin Concerto and Triple Concerto with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Runnicles. In 2016, Ehnes undertook a cross-Canada recital tour, performing in each of the country’s provinces and territories, to celebrate his 40th birthday.

As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with leading artists such as Andsnes, Capucon, Lortie, Lugansky, Yo-Yo Ma, Tamestit, Vogler and Yuja Wang. In 2010, he formally established the Ehnes Quartet, with whom he has performed in Europe at venues including the Wigmore Hall, Auditorium du Louvre in Paris and Théâtre du Jeu de Paume in Aix, amongst others. Ehnes is the Artistic Director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

James Ehnes plays the “Marsick” Stradivarius of 1715.

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61

Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770 in Bonn, and died on March 26, 1827 in Vienna. He composed his Violin Concerto in 1806, and conducted its premiere on December 23, 1806 in Vienna, with Franz Clement as soloist. The score calls for flute, pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, timpani and strings. Duration is about 42 minutes. The Violin Concerto was last performed by the Orchestra on January 10, 2019, with conductor Brett Mitchell and violinist Itzhak Perlman.

In 1794, two years after he moved to Vienna from Bonn, Beethoven attended a concert by an Austrian violin prodigy named Franz Clement. Of his style of violin performance, RussianAmerican violinist and musicologist Boris Schwarz wrote, “Clement’s playing was graceful rather than vigorous, his tone small but expressive, and he possessed unfailing assurance and purity in high positions and exposed entrances.” To Clement, then fourteen years old, the young composer wrote, “Dear Clement! Go forth on the way you hitherto have travelled so beautifully, so magnificently. Nature and art vie with each other in making you a great artist. All wishes for your happiness, and return soon, that I may again hear your dear, magnificent playing. Entirely your friend, L. v. Beethoven.” Beethoven’s wish was soon granted. Clement was appointed conductor and concertmaster of the Theater-an-der-Wien in Vienna in 1802, where he was closely associated with Beethoven in the production of Fidelio and as the conductor of the premiere of the Third Symphony. It was for Clement that Beethoven produced his only Violin Concerto.

The five soft taps on the timpani that open the Concerto not only serve to establish the key and the rhythm of the movement, but also recur as a unifying phrase throughout. The main theme is introduced in the second measure by the woodwinds in a chorale-like setting. A transition, with rising scales in the winds and quicker rhythmic figures in the strings, accumulates a certain intensity before it quiets to usher in the second theme, another legato strophe entrusted to the woodwinds. The development is largely given over to wide-ranging figurations for the soloist. The recapitulation begins with a recall of the five drum strokes of the opening, here spread across the full orchestra sounding in unison. Though the hymnal Larghetto is technically a theme and variations, it seems less like some earth-bound form than it does a floating constellation of ethereal tones, polished and hung against a velvet night sky with infinite care and flawless precision. Music of such limited dramatic contrast cannot be brought to a satisfactory conclusion in this context, and so here it leads without pause into the vivacious rondo-finale. The solo violin trots out the principal theme before it is taken over by the full orchestra. This jaunty tune returns three times, the last appearance forming a large coda.

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

ANTON BRUCKNER (1824-1896) Symphony No. 7 in E major

Anton Bruckner was born on September 4, 1824 in Ansfelden, Upper Austria, and died on October 11, 1896 in Vienna. His Symphony No. 7 was composed in 1881-1883, and premiered on December 30, 1884 in Leipzig, conducted by Arthur Nikisch. The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, four horns, four Wagner tubas (a hybrid of horn and euphonium), three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. Duration is about 64 minutes. The Orchestra last performed this piece March 6-8, 2009, conducted by Hans Graf.

Anton Bruckner was an unlikely figure to be at the center of the 19th century’s fiercest musical feud. He was a country bumpkin — with his shabby peasant clothes, his rural dialect, his painful shyness with women, his naive view of life — in one of the world’s most sophisticated cities, Vienna. Bruckner had the glory — and the curse — to have included himself among the ardent disciples of Richard Wagner, and his fate was indissolubly bound up with that of his idol from the time he dedicated his Third Symphony to him in 1877. While “Bayreuth Fever” was infecting most of Western civilization during the last quarter of the 19th century, there was a strong anti-Wagner clique in Vienna headed by the critic Eduard Hanslick, a virulent spokesman against emotional and programmatic display in music who championed the cause of Brahms and never missed a chance to fire a blazing barb at the Wagner camp. Bruckner, teaching and composing in Vienna within easy range of Hanslick’s vitriolic pen, was one of his favorite targets. He called Bruckner’s music “unnatural,” “sickly,” “inflated” and “decayed,” and intrigued to stop the performance of his works whenever possible. Bruckner felt that much of the rejection his symphonies suffered could be attributed to Hanslick’s scathing reviews. When honor and renown finally came to the composer late in his life, Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph asked the old man what he would like more than anything else. Bruckner requested that the Emperor make Hanslick stop saying nasty things about his music. It is little wonder that Bruckner sent an unusual request to the Vienna Philharmonic Society after they had scheduled his Seventh Symphony for its Viennese premiere in the wake of the work’s success in Germany. He thanked the Society for its kind consideration, but asked them to withdraw the performance “... [because] of the influential critics who would be likely to damage my dawning success in Germany.” It was the adoration of Wagner and his music that both fueled his creativity and caused him to suffer at the hands of the most powerful critic of his day.

Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony is intimately linked with his devotion to Wagner. Like all of his instrumental works, it aims at adapting Wagner’s theories and harmonic and instrumental techniques to absolute music, and securing a place for them in the symphony. In addition to this pervasive, general influence, the Seventh Symphony bears an even more direct connection with the Master of Bayreuth. About a year after Bruckner had begun work on the score in September 1881, reports of Wagner’s deteriorating health began to filter back to Vienna from Venice, where Wagner had gone to escape the harsh German climate. Bruckner later wrote to his friend and devoted pupil Felix Mottl concerning the fall of 1882, “At one time, I came home and was very sad. I thought to myself, it is impossible that the Master can live long. It was then that the music for the Adagio of my Symphony came into my head.” To make the tribute unmistakable, Bruckner made the dominant orchestral sonority in the movement a quartet of “Wagner tubas” (brass

CLASSICS PROGRAM NOTES

instruments of burnished tone color that are a cross between the horn and the euphonium), which were designed especially by Wagner for use in his operas. Most of the slow movement was already sketched when the news of Wagner’s death on February 13, 1883 reached Bruckner, and he added the concluding section specifically as a memorial to his idol. Later, he referred to this magnificent Adagio as “Funeral Music — a Dirge to Wagner’s Memory.” It was fitting that this music should also have been played a dozen years later at Bruckner’s own funeral in Vienna and his burial in St. Florian.

After the death of Wagner, Bruckner went ahead with the Seventh Symphony, and completed the score in September 1883. He dedicated the work to “Mad” King Ludwig of Bavaria, Wagner’s most important patron. Arthur Nikisch, then only 29 and already moving into a dominant position as one of the era’s great conductors, planned the premiere for Leipzig in June 1884, but the performance had to be put off twice. Not only did Nikisch have to overcome the resistance of the anti-Wagner/Bruckner faction, but he also had to deal with the conservative Gewandhaus administration, which refused to have anything to do with the affair, and insisted that it be moved to the Municipal Theater. They missed staging a hit, the first unspoiled acclaim Bruckner had ever received. A good deal of the Symphony’s success must be credited to Nikisch, not just because he gave a splendid reading of the new work, but also because he invited the local critics to his home a few days before the premiere so that he could familiarize them with the music at the piano. Bruckner was moved and overjoyed by his reception in Leipzig, as one unnamed critic reported: “One could see from the trembling of his lips, and the sparkling moisture in his eyes, how difficult it was for the old gentleman to suppress his deep emotion. His homely but honest countenance beamed with a warm inner happiness such as can appear only on the face of one who is too good-hearted to succumb to bitterness even under the pressure of the most disheartening circumstances. Having heard this work and now seeing him in person, we asked ourselves in amazement, ‘How is it possible that he could remain so long unknown to us?’”

The Symphony made a triumphant procession through the major German cities. The Munich premiere in early 1885 was so rapturously received that its conductor, Hermann Levi, called the composition “the most significant symphonic work since [the death of Beethoven in] 1827.” (This encomium not only praised Bruckner but was also a slap at Brahms, whose Third Symphony had appeared just two years earlier.) Though the work received the expected critical battering when it reached Vienna, the public was finally willing to grant the patient Bruckner his due, and he was recalled to the stage three or four times after each movement by the applause. Among the audience at the Viennese premiere was Johann Strauss the Younger, King of the Waltz, who desperately wanted to write a successful grand opera and be recognized as a “serious composer.” Strauss sent a telegram to Bruckner with a terse, but meaningful message: “Am much moved — it was the greatest impression of my life.”

The opening movement of the Seventh Symphony is on the grand, architectural scale that characterizes the greatest works of Bruckner. Its three themes occupy broad paragraphs that give the music a transcendent spaciousness unmatched by the creations of any other composer. The first theme is presented immediately by the cellos and solo horn above a tremulous accompaniment in the violins. Bruckner liked to tell the story that this melody came to him in a dream, which he considered a good omen. Kapellmeister Dorm, an old friend from Linz, he

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would say, appeared to him while he slept, whistled this tune, and prophesied, “With this theme, you will make your fortune.” Bruckner immediately hopped out of bed, lit a candle, and wrote down the precious melody. The nocturnal inspiration proved effective because Dorm’s words came true as this work carried Bruckner’s name across the musical world. The long opening theme is succeeded by a second, more lyrical motive with a turn figure (a favorite melodic device of Wagner) played by oboe and clarinet over a repeated-note background in the horns and trumpets. After one of Bruckner’s characteristic, ringing brass climaxes, the movement’s third theme appears, a quiet but somewhat heavy peasant dance presented in near-unison by woodwinds and strings. The development section begins with an inversion of the opening theme played by clarinet, after which the various melodies of the exposition are again assayed. The recapitulation commences quietly and without preparation, and includes the earlier themes in heightened settings. The coda is based on the first motive and rises to a wondrous, stentorian close that seems to rattle the very gates of Heaven.

The Adagio, Bruckner’s moving memorial tribute to Wagner, consists of two large stanzas of music that alternate to form a five-part musical structure: A–B–A–B–A. The “A” section is dominated by a solemn chorale for the quartet of Wagner tubas that passes into the full orchestra after the opening phrases. The contrasting music is brighter in mood, with a hint of the lilting Austrian country dance, the Ländler. The tension is controlled through the long span of this movement with consummate mastery by pacing each return of the chorale theme so that it is richer in texture and more magnificent in sonority than the preceding presentation.

The third movement is one of Bruckner’s great, whirling Scherzos. A powerful, ostinatolike rhythm in the strings supports the open-interval theme presented by the trumpet and the legato answering phrase sounded by the clarinet. These three motives are combined and developed with an irresistible urgency as the Scherzo unfolds. The central trio, slower in tempo and sweeter in mood, derives from a lyrical melody entrusted to the string choir.

The finale is based on two thematic elements: a heavily dotted motive played in the first measure by violins, and a hymnal theme for strings over a wide-ranging pizzicato bass line. The movement follows a broad sonata outline, with some glorious orchestral climaxes based on the dotted-rhythm melody. To round out the structure of the Seventh Symphony, the opening theme of the first movement is superimposed on the closing pages of the finale to create one of music’s most overwhelming bursts of brilliant orchestral sound.

©2022 Dr. Richard E. Rodda