THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
Members of the University Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor
Guilherme Rodrigues, Graduate Associate Conductor
Saturday, April 20, 2024
7:30 p.m. | Ruby Diamond Concert Hall
Symphony No. 35 in D Major, K. 385 “Haffner”
PROGRAM
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Allegro con spirito (1756–1791)
Andante
Menuetto
Finale: Presto
Le Boeuf sur le toit, Op. 58
Guilherme Rodrigues, conductor
INTERMISSION
Suite from Puclinella
Darius Milhaud (1892–1974)
Igor Stravinsky
Sinfonia (Overture) (1882–1971)
Serenata
Scherzino
Tarantella
Toccata
Gavotta (con due variazioni)
Minuetto-Finale
To Ensure An Enjoyable Concert Experience For All…
Please refrain from talking, entering, or exiting during performances. Food and drink are prohibited in all concert halls. Recording or broadcasting of the concert by any means, including the use of digital cameras, cell phones, or other devices is expressly forbidden. Please deactivate all portable electronic devices including watches, cell phones, pagers, hand-held gaming devices or other electronic equipment that may distract the audience or performers.
Recording Notice: This performance may be recorded. Please note that members of the audience may at times be included in this process. By attending this performance you consent to have your image or likeness appear in any live or recorded video or other transmission or reproduction made in conjunction to the performance.
Florida State University provides accommodations for persons with disabilities. Please notify the College of Music at (850) 644-3424 at least five working days prior to a musical event to request accommodation for disability or alternative program format.
Mozart: Symphony No. 35
Let me try to get this straight - this symphony got its nickname, “Haffner”, on account of a serenade written in 1782 to celebrate the elevation to the nobility of Sigmund Haffner. However, this serenade was not your actual Haffner Serenade (K250); that was written six years earlier for a marriage in the same family. So why, one wonders, does this symphony, rather than the latter serenade, pick up the nickname? The reason, it transpires, concerns money. Mozart was usually a bit silly where his finances were concerned, but suffered an unaccustomed excess of acumen in the train of this serenade. In those simple days before copyright law took its stranglehold, anyone with the appropriate skills could cash in on a successful bit of music. Mozart, aware that his serenade might be a “hit,” got in first with a wind band arrangement, and further capitalized with a hurried rejig (including enlarging the instrumentation) of four of the movements to form the Symphony No. 35. The nickname, it seems, was just a bit of advertising “hype” to cash in on the topicality of its content.
Writers often mention the unseemly haste with which this symphony was born, inciting the conclusion that it is consequently “sub-standard” Mozart. Nothing, surely, could be farther from the truth. The symphony effectively gestated during the composition of the serenade, its movements fully realized, and hence coordinated to his usual standard, in that context. For a man of Mozart’s extraordinary fluency, the final bit of midwifery would have been an absolute doddle.
The First Movement (allegro con spirito) reflects the celebratory nature of original serenade, opening on a grandiloquent gesture answered by a gentle phrase on violins. The exposition is pursued with such vigor and inventiveness that the listener may find amusement in playing “spot the second subject buried amongst all the hustle and bustle.” Unusually, the Second Movement (andante) is not a variation, but a ternary form, its identical outer sections contrasting an elegant, lyrical flow with some of those prim, “pecked” marching phrases so characteristic of Mozart. Reflecting the relatively simple requirements of a serenade, the Third Movement is a bog-standard, no-frills menuetto, with trio. It’s perhaps a bit strait-laced, but that’s the nature of the dance. The Finale (presto), showering sparks of darting energy, zips through a full sonata form in a mere four minutes, an extended coda being tossed in for good measure.
– ©Paul SerotskyMilhaud: Le Boeuf sur le toit
Between 1919 and 1920, the French composer Darius Milhaud set out to create “fifteen minutes of music, rapid and gay, as a background to any Charlie Chaplin silent movie.”
The result was Le Boeuf sur le toit, a jubilant and colorful work for chamber orchestra. The title translates as “The Ox on the Roof.” It may have been taken from the sign-board of a tavern. Or perhaps it was inspired by a Parisian urban legend about a man who lived on the top floor of a flat with a pet calf that quickly and disastrously turned into a full-grown ox. The composer insisted that the title referenced a Brazilian folk dance. He wrote, “haunted by my memories of Brazil, I assembled some popular melodies – tangos, maxixes, sambas, and even a Portuguese fado – and transcribed them with a rondo-like section recurring between each successive pair.”
Milhaud’s music was not premiered as incidental music for a Chaplin film. Instead, it became the score for a Surrealist ballet by Jean Cocteau, performed by clown-acrobats from the acclaimed circus troupes, the Cirque Médrano and the Fratellini. Later, Milhaud explained that his uptempo music accompanied choreographed movements which suggested “a slow-motion film.” The ballet’s scenario has been described as “pleasantly devoid of all meaning.” (Harding) The music is a cheerful romp which combines Latin-American swing with quirky moments of polytonality, in which more than one key is heard simultaneously.
– Timothy JuddStravinsky: Pulcinella Suite
In 1920 Stravinsky was living with his family in Switzerland, in difficult financial straits, and in the midst of a deep quarrel over contracts with the great impresario of the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev—his collaborator in the big early successes. About this time, Diaghilev had found some music in the Naples Conservatory supposedly by the baroque composer, Pergolesi (1710-1736). We currently know that many of the attributions were incorrect—but it really doesn’t matter, now. The upshot was that Diaghilev more or less made peace with Stravinsky by commissioning him to compose a brief ballet based on these short works. Stravinsky wasn’t sure that he wanted the project, but finally assented, and responded with a score that was a startling throwback to the simple, graceful harmonies and rhythms of almost two centuries earlier. Picasso provided stage and costume designs, based upon a re-interpretation of old, traditional Italian themes, and the choreographer did likewise, using eighteenth-century ballet steps. Stravinsky preserved much of the nature of these old pieces, simply adding some pungent harmonies here and there, displacing the beats, and orchestrating them with a distinctly modern feel. But, all in all, the winsome, conservative, and charming result was a far cry from what the world then knew as Stravinsky. What is more, the startling simplicity of Pulcinella clearly was a harbinger of the composer’s major shift into what would be called “neo-classicism.” He stayed with the approach for decades, melding concepts from two different centuries into a personal style.
Pulcinella (the name is that of Punch or Polichinelle from seventeenth-century Neapolitan commedia dell’arte) was given its première in Paris in May of 1920, with the orchestra suite receiving its first performance two years later by Monteux and the Boston Symphony. It opens with a little “sinfonia,” essentially a miniature overture, and perhaps the most well known of the movements. After a “serenata”—a graceful interpretation of the traditional siciliano rhythm—there follows a scherzo in two brief contrasting parts. The tarantella is a vivacious Neapolitan dance (said to ward off the effects of a tarantula bite) that leads right into the “toccata.” Toccatas customarily are instrumental showpieces and this one features the winds, especially the two brass players, ending with a “blat” from the trombonist. The Gavotta is our friend from the Bach orchestra suite, with the usual accents—although this one is unusually pastoral in nature. After two variations the brass noisily start the “Vivo,” which doesn’t last long, but is interesting for the “scratchy” solo in the double bass, and notorious for the constant rude interruptions from the trombone—smearing away in a most un-classical style. The Horns and bassoons begin the graceful minuet, which includes an elegant solo in the trombone, but as it approaches the end, Stravinsky’s modern harmonic tendencies come to the fore, as some pungent dissonances prepare the arrival of the finale. It’s a scurrying mad dash, familiar to those who know Histoire du soldat, from about the same time. All in all, it’s easy to understand the positive reception accorded Pucinella in Paris at its première; it was tuneful, unassuming, imaginative, and a new breeze in music for the times. It remains so today.
William E. RunyanViolin I
MaryKatherine Whiteley‡
Stacey Sharpe
Gabriela da Silva Fogo
Keat Zhen Cheong
Catherine Yara
Madelyne Garnot
Jean-Luc Cataquet
Violin II
Tommaso Bruno*
Thomas Roggio
Michael Mesa
Gabriel Salinas-Guzman
Alyssa Donall
Harshul Mulpuru
University Symphony
Orchestra Personnel
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor
Viola
Luiz Barrionuevo*
Marina Akamatsu
Margot Elder
Abigail Felde
Keara Henre
Hunter Sanchez
Cello
Angelese Pepper*
Marina Burguete-Diago
Thu Vo
Liam Sabo
Luke Ponko
Bass
Maximilian Levesque*
Christian Maldonado
Alejandro Bermudez
Megan Hipp
Flute
Lindsey Kovach*
Emma Cranford
Allison Acevedo
Oboe
Nic Kanipe*
Andrew Swift
Clarinet
Audrey Rancourt*
Dave Scott*
Andrew Prawat
Hannah Faircloth
Bassoon
Josie Whiteis*
Cailin McGarry*
Horn
Thomas Langston*
Brianna Nay*
Tarre Nelson*
Leslie Bell
Trumpet
Vito Bell*
Vance Garven*
Trombone
Grant Keel*
Timpani and Percussion
Landon Holladay*
Kylan Bigby
Orchestra Manager
Heather Simpson
Orchestra Stage Manager
Alejandro Bermudez
Orchestra Librarians
Will Whitehead
Guilherme Rodrigues
Administrative Assistant
Marina Akamatsu
‡ Concertmaster
* Principal