BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 1

Anthony (Toney) Trionfo has performed across the United States, in Canada and South America. He began studying the flute at age eleven and is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion work. In 2020, he co-curated “Learning to Listen: A discussion addressing the nuances of the Black experience within classical music” in addition to the Sphinx Organization’s “Illuminate!” series. Anthony is also a creator of the Umoja Flute Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to cultivating flutists of African descent. He’s also on the faculty of MusicAlly, an international virtual learning platform that provides musical instruction to all interested students, regardless of financial constraints, and serves on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee of the Aspen Music Festival and School.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918)

PRELUDE TO THE AFTERNOON OF A FAUN (1894)

Scored for: three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, antique cymbals, two harps, and strings Performance time: 10 minutes First Grant Park Orchestra performance: July 3, 1937, Henry Weber, conductor

Claude Debussy and renowned French poet Stéphane Mallarmé possessed a strong mutual admiration. In 1890, the composer began working on a musical setting of Mallarmé’s “Afternoon of a Faun,” a dreamy monologue chronicling a half-human, half-goat creature and its sensual adventures after waking from a midday nap. Though the original project dissolved, Debussy continued to daydream about bringing the faun’s thoughts to life through music, and after a few more years’ work, his textless tone poem “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” enjoyed a positive debut. Reception from both Mallarmé and the audience was so positive, in fact, the orchestra played the entire piece again that same evening! Of the music, the poet declared, “I wasn’t expecting anything like that! It prolongs the emotion of my poem and conjures up the scenery more vividly than any color.”

The hazy rhythmic feel and lack of a clear tonal center in “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” may sound nebulous, but it’s actually precisely crafted, thus serving as a solid foundation for Debussy’s bountiful sonic palette. The music’s texture is weightless, with slender orchestration that omits trumpets and trombones, uses percussion sparingly, employs restrained woodwind writing, and divides strings into several parts to encourage chords to blossom.

Offering his thoughts about how his tone poem connected to Mallarmé’s poem, Debussy shared a few sentiments, intriguing in their lack of specificity: “It is perhaps the dream left over at the bottom of the faun’s flute? ...it is the general impression of the poem. If the music were to follow it more closely, it would run out of breath…. All the same it follows the ascending shape of the poem as well as the scenery…. As for the ending, it’s a prolongation of the [poem’s] last line: ‘Couple farewell, I go to see what you became.’”

SAVERIO MERCADANTE (1795-1870)

FLUTE CONCERTO NO. 2 IN E MINOR, OP. 57 (1814)

Scored for: strings and solo flute Performance time: 19 minutes

First Grant Park Orchestra performance

Italian composer, conductor, and teacher Saverio Mercadante studied several instruments, but wrote more concertos, chamber music, and solo works for flute than any other instrument. His E minor flute concerto is perhaps his best-known work, though Mercadante also was a prolific and influential operatic composer. He wrote his Second Flute Concerto before the age of 20, after forging his birth certificate in order to be able to study music at the Naples Conservatory—a conservatory to which he would later be appointed director. Having led the school’s orchestra and established himself as a dependable composer, Mercadante transitioned easily from his schooling to a lifelong career in music.

Though he went on to write more than 60 operas, Mercadante focused heavily on writing for flute for a period of roughly six years. During this time, he wrote several concertos, a duo concerto, and almost 20 other chamber works featuring flute. Part of this attention was due to his school’s curriculum focus on instrumental music, and Mercadante also was wonderfully inspired by his colleagues, including two flutist classmates who went on to play in the Teatro San Carlo orchestra, and to one of whom he dedicated several of his compositions.

The concerto’s structure is built on the musical traditions of the time in which it was written, including each movement’s individual structure, which certainly makes sense for a composer at the beginning of his career. The piece skillfully demonstrates his ability to write crisp and deliberate counterpoint; counterpoint is generally defined as a musical building block that considers the combination of multiple melodies and how they interact, both linearly and vertically.

Mercadante’s E-minor flute concerto is brilliant in its balance between showcasing the soloist’s technical capabilities while remaining elegant and in cooperation with the orchestra. As was typical in the 19th century, the orchestra begins the concerto with a spritely introduction, and the solo flute and ensemble then trade moments in the spotlight with an abundance of flowing opportunities for the flute to showcase its agility. Though it in no way sounds showy, the concerto—particularly, the first movement— is quite a technical challenge for the soloist. In the Allegro maetoso, for example, Mercadante included several different demanding passages, including sections with large leaps between notes, syncopations, and unexpected accents on beats that could feel unnatural to a player. The middle movement, a statuesque Largo, is a buoyant, longphrased aria for flute with orchestra used mostly as a supporting entity. Mercadante’s jaunty closing Rondo—a musical form that consists of a melody that repeats but is separated out by other musical material—effortlessly combines a virtuosic yet listenerfriendly solo part supported by gentle accompaniment from the orchestra. Although Mercadante became most known for his works for voice, his flute repertoire is proof that he knows how to make other instruments sing.