OCTOBER 14, 15

Concerts of Friday, October 14, 2022, 8:00pm Saturday, October 15, 2022, 8:00pm NATHALIE STUTZMANN, conductor

NETIA JONES, video artist JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897) Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90 (1883) 35 MINS

I. Allegro con brio

II. Andante

III. Poco allegretto

IV. Finale: Allegro CÉSAR FRANCK (1822–1890)

Le chasseur maudit

(The Accursed Huntsman) (1882) 15 MINS INTERMISSION 20 MINS

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG (1874–1951)

Verklärte Nacht

(Transfigured Night), Op. 4 (1943 revision) 30 MINS Film by Netia Jones / Lightmap

Friday’s concert is dedicated to RON & SUSAN ANTINORI in honor of their extraordinary support of the 2021/22 Annual Fund

The use of cameras or recording devices during the concert is strictly prohibited. Please be kind to those around you and silence your mobile phone and other hand-held devices.

by Noel Morris

Program Annotator

Symphony No. 3 Symphony No. 3 is scored for two flutes (one doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, percussion and strings.

Afriend of Brahms described the composer as “equally lovable, cheerful, and deep.” But Brahms biographer Jan Swafford added, “with women, Brahms had a habit of straight-faced teasing that was often misinterpreted— especially by Clara, who generally missed the joke and waxed indignant.” By “Clara,” Swafford meant Clara Schumann.

First ASO performance: March 31, 1951 Henry Sopkin, conductor Most recent ASO performances: January 7–9, 2016 Ludovic Morlot, conductor

Brahms and Clara had shared a special bond since September of 1853 when he turned up on her doorstep. At the time, she was married to the famous composer and music critic Robert Schumann. Brahms was but a wide-eyed 20-yearold, but it was a three-way love fest. Robert became Brahms’s champion. Brahms became Robert’s disciple. And Clara, one of the greatest pianists alive, completed the circle. It was a synergy that burned with great energy until Robert suffered a breakdown the following February. After an attempted suicide, he was committed to an asylum, where he died two years later. In the wake of these tragic events, Brahms became devoted to Clara and her seven children. There’s no evidence that they were lovers, but they did remain best friends for the rest of their lives. Clara became Brahms’s confidante and, in many cases, was the first person to see his compositions. Often, they played them together at the piano, which might explain the fact that he published two-piano versions of so many of his works, including the symphonies. Brahms had had a fraught relationship with the symphony. Not long after he met the Schumanns, Robert published an editorial shouting to the world that Brahms would be the next great composer. He urged the younger composer to get to work on a symphony—comparable to writing a first novel—and Brahms froze. He made many aborted attempts over the years but did not issue his First Symphony until age forty-three—years after having established himself as a composer.

FRITZ LUCKARDT

Fast forward to May of 1883. Brahms celebrated his fiftieth birthday with a couple of friends, some cigars and plenty of wine. Soon after, he took his typical summer holiday away from Vienna. This time, he followed contralto Hermine Spies (a woman who inspired him to write numerous works) to the resort town of Wiesbaden, famous for its hot springs. Renting a cottage with a view of the Rhine River, the composer took brisk day hikes and enjoyed the local food. (Today, tourists can take a 3.5hour “Brahms Hike” through the forests and meadows around Wiesbaden.) Seated in an airy studio overlooking the river, Brahms wrote his Third Symphony. From this point on, there is much conjecture about what happened that summer. We don’t know what transpired between the composer and his muse, Hermine, but we do know he remained a bachelor. As for the symphony, he was tight-lipped about it, leaving it to others to discover the personal and cultural references within.

The Third Symphony opens with three bold chords outlining the tones F, A-flat, F. This is a recurring figure in the piece. Scholars believe these notes to be an acronym for Brahms’s motto as a happy bachelor: Frei aber froh—free but happy. The motto is a nod to his old friend Joseph Joachim, who used to say Frei aber einsam—free but lonely. (Years before, Brahms and Schumann co-wrote a piece for Joachim called the F-A-E Sonata, along with Albert Dietrich.) Making a connection to the Rhineland, Brahms pays homage to Robert Schumann, following those opening chords with a tune from Schumann’s Rhine Symphony (Rhenish). Brahms also honors Richard Wagner, who had died earlier that year. There are certain harmonies that bear a striking resemblance to the “Siren’s Chorus” from Wagner’s Tannhäuser. This doubles as a Rhine reference—one of the river’s most popular attractions is a 433-foot cliff known as the Lorelei. According to legend, a siren perches atop the Lorelei and lures sailors to their deaths. Brahms’s Third Symphony was premiered in Vienna in December of 1883. The critics raved, and orchestras around Europe clamored to play it. The American premiere followed in October of 1884.

Le chasseur maudit (The Accursed Huntsman) Le chasseur maudit is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, four trumpets, three

trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings. First ASO performance:

The German army humiliated the French in 1871. December 15, 1966 Yet, in the face of crippling war reparations and José Iturbi, conductor loss of territory, French culture blossomed. Just one Most recent month after the fall of Paris, composer Camille Saint- ASO performances: Saëns and a singer named Romain Bussine laid plans October 4–6, 2007 for an historic concert series celebrating French Robert Spano, conductor music. In 1874, a legendary group of artists (Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, and Berthe Morisot) launched the first Impressionist art exhibition. And in the 1880s, French culture produced some unforgettable works, including the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, the Moulin Rouge, and the present piece by César Franck. The Belgian-born organist César Franck was one of the charter members of Saint-Saëns’ composer collective, the Société nationale de musique. Franck is remembered as a titanic figure in a glorious tradition of church music in Paris, yet most of his work is lost to the ether. In general, the music which roared from those gargantuan pipe organs was improvised. Thus, when writers comment on the fact that Franck was most active as a composer later in life, what they really mean is that this was the period when he wrote things down. Franck based his symphonic poem The Accursed Huntsman on the then popular ballad “The Wild Huntsman” by Gottfried August Bürger. The piece was first performed in an 1883 concert of the Société nationale de musique. In Bürger’s poem, a member of the German nobility skips church to go hunting (“Sacrilège!”). In summary:

The Wildgrave blows his horn. “To horse, to horse,” he cries. As he gallops ahead of his hunting party, exploding through bush and brier, a yonder steeple glows in the early morning light. It is Sunday, “God’s own hallowed day.” In the distance, a bell tolls, summoning “the sinful man to pray” as two horsemen join the chase—one urging the Wildgrave onward, the other pleading with him to abort the hunt and remove himself to church. “While joying o’er the wasted corn,” the huntsman rides roughshod, savaging herds, crops, and peasants, alike. Crashing through a hermit’s chapel,

PIERRE PETIT

the huntsman proclaims, “Not God himself shall make me turn!” Suddenly, the huntsman’s hounds vanish; the wood goes dark. His horn refuses to sound, and demons rise up. High above, an awful voice hisses at him: “Be chased forever through the wood.” In an instant, the hunter becomes the hunted.

Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4 Verklärte Nacht is scored for strings.

In 1913, a Hamburg newspaper published a cartoon of a riot inside a concert hall—people ducking for cover, arms and legs flailing, fingers smashed into other people’s faces, and musicians wielding instruments as if they were Billy clubs. At the center of the mayhem stood Arnold Schoenberg conducting his own music. Five years before, Schoenberg had broken from away from tonal conventions in music (a move that revolutionized the way composers thought about melody and harmony). Verklärte Nacht comes from a period just prior to that break. One might call it a farewell to Romanticism or perhaps the apotheosis of it. Schoenberg grew up in a lower-middle-class Jewish neighborhood in Vienna. His parents FLORENCE HOMOLKA were not musical, but he picked up the violin at age 8 and began a journey into music marked by scarcity and sheer invention. He couldn’t afford to attend concerts but often heard military bands playing in the park. He couldn’t afford sheet music but managed to acquire a book of violin duets based on opera arias. With this music in his head, young Schoenberg started to compose. Later, he taught himself cello and joined an orchestra. There, he made friends with Alexander Zemlinsky. Just two years his senior, Zemlinsky gave Schoenberg counterpoint lessons and later arranged a performance of Schoenberg’s String Quartet in D. In September of 1899, the composer took a vacation with the Zemlinskys (Alexander and his sister, Mathilde, who was an accomplished artist and future wife of the composer). They settled into the picturesque Alpine village of Payerbach at Semmering. There, over a three-week period, Schoenberg wrote a sextet inspired by a poem by Richard Dehmel. Following the

First ASO performances: September 30–October 2, 1993 Yoel Levi, conductor Most recent ASO performances: March 23–27, 2004 Roberto Abbado, conductor

basic plot points of Dehmel’s verses, the composer created a tone poem in which a young couple walks together in the woods on a cold winter’s night. They are deeply in love. Standing under the trees, the woman works up the courage to make a confession: she carries another man’s baby. Terrified of losing the love of her life, she braces for his response. Tenderly, he takes her in his arms and tells her he will love the child as his own, transforming (transfiguring) this moonlit encounter into an ecstatic union of souls.

Schoenberg expanded his tone poem into a work for string orchestra in 1917 and made another revision in 1943 (heard in this concert). In 1912, the poet Richard Dehmel heard the piece in its original form and wrote to the composer: “Yesterday evening I heard your ‘Transfigured Night’, and I should consider it a sin of omission if I failed to say a word of thanks to you for your wonderful sextet. I had intended to follow the motives of my text in your composition, but I soon forgot to do so, I was so enthralled by the music.”

NETIA JONES, VIDEO ARTIST Netia Jones is a British director/designer and video artist working internationally in opera, staged concerts, performance and installation, using video, film and projected media in all of her work. She is director of LIGHTMAP, a mixed media partnership with whom she has created video, film, installation and interactive media projects in the UK, US and Europe, from large-scale external projection mapping to multi-projector integrated film in opera performances.