THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY College of Music presents
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor
Guilherme Leal Rodrigues, Graduate Associate Conductor featuring Bang-Shyuan Chen, Piano (Winner, 2024 Doctoral Concerto Competition)
Friday, November 1, 2024 7:30 p.m. | Opperman Music Hall
Pastorale d’été (H.31)
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488
Arthur Honegger (1892–1955)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Allegro (1756–1791)
Adagio
Allegro assai
Bang-Shyuan Chen, piano
Guilherme Leal Rodrigues, conductor
Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 “Scottish” Felix Mendelssohn Andante con moto-Allegro (1809-1847)
Vivace non troppo
Adagio
Allegro vivacissimo-Allegro maestoso assai
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.
Honegger: Pastorale d’été
Arthur Honegger was born in France in 1892. Though his parents were Swiss, Honegger spent much of his life in France, where he began advanced music study at the Paris Conservatory in 1912. An advocate of “modern” music, he was a prominent exponent of Les Six, a group of young French composers among whom figured Francis Poulenc and Darius Milhaud.
Throughout his long career (Honegger died in 1955), Honegger compiled an impressive list of compositions including five symphonies, several operas, much chamber music and film music. Perhaps his most famous composition, Pacific 231 (which evokes the revving up of a locomotive), expresses many characteristics of Honegger’s music with its jarring rhythms, explosive dissonances, and little concern for traditional harmony.
Tonight’s piece, however, shows Honegger at his tonal and melodic best. Pastorale d’été (“summer pastoral”) was written in 1920 when Honegger was vacationing in the Swiss Alps. As an epigraph to the composition, Honegger chose the following words of the renegade French poet Arthur Rimbaud: J’ai embrassé l’aube d’été (“I have embraced [also: hugged or kissed] the summer dawn”). That embrace begins musically with a slow rocking 4/4 rhythm; the sound of a solo horn rises above the susurration of the strings. Birds can be heard, also the murmurings of wildlife both animal and plant. These are the Alps, so you might also imagine an Alpenhorn sounding in the mountainous distance. The composition contains a second section, at first only a little faster, then Vif et gai (“lively and cheerful”), announced by clarinet and oboe. But that sudden vitality winds back down to the original tempo and mood; the solo horn returns; and the piece closes with the quiet twittering of flute and then clarinet.
It takes not much imagining to summon up other musical evocations of the natural world—Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune or Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, for example—as you listen to Honegger’s charming tone poem. Interestingly, just several years before his death Honegger wrote an autobiography whose self-evident title, Je suis compositeur (“I am a composer”), underscores the musician’s absolute dedication to his art.
—Bill Hemminger
Mozart is largely responsible for the creation of the “modern” piano concerto. He wrote them primarily for himself to support his career as a performer. His spending habits consistently placed him in financial difficulties, and he usually desperately needed to concertize. Only his operas exceed his piano concertos in musical genius, and historical significance. He composed some twenty-three of them, starting about 1767. No other genre of his is so consistently high in quality and maturity. K.488 was written in March of 1786, along with what many consider to be his best, K.491—so typical of Mozart to toss off two masterpieces in short order!
While the concerto—employing a variety of solo instruments, or groups of solo instruments—had been a staple of concerts for over a hundred years by Mozart’s time, it was the advent of the piano by the late eighteenth century that enabled the genre to reach its highest expressive possibilities. Only the sonority and tonal weight of the piano really provides for an equal partner to the orchestra, and thus a foundation for the dramatic interplay between solo
and accompaniment that is basic to the genre. Mozart’s contribution, other than his consummate musical genius, of course, was to “beef up” the role of the orchestra from one of simple accompaniment to that of co-protagonist in the musical drama. He also established a clear succession of sections in the form of the first movement (there are almost always three movements in a concerto, as opposed to generally four in a symphony).
The various sections of the first movement feature one or the other of the orchestra and soloist, and simultaneously provide for a pleasing series of melodies, key areas, and dramatic interplay between the performers. Those who find pleasure in keeping track of the “progress” through the movement may wish to note at least six clear sections. The second movements of Mozart’s concertos vary considerably in their structures and moods. The main thing, I believe, to listen for in this second movement is simply the tragic hopelessness that Mozart creates in his rare use of the key of F sharp minor—he was quite careful and deliberate in his key choices. That mood is cheerfully swept away by the infectious gaiety of the last movement. It’s a rondo in its form, which simply means that the listener can easily follow the main theme as it alternates with some attractive contrasting sections.
—William E. Runyan
Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3 in A minor “Scottish”
Mendelssohn was a prodigy, born into a distinguished family of Jewish bankers and philosophers. He and his sister Fanny—also a talented composer, conductor, and pianist—were raised in a warm, intellectual, highly supportive artistic family. They matured early, and a stream of musical compositions flowed from them both. Mendelssohn was clearly one of the most important German composers of his time, and infused the expressiveness of early romantic music with the clarity and intellectuality of Mozart and Haydn’s classicism. This exquisite balance found expression in a wide variety of musical genres; Mendelssohn was as at home writing Protestant oratorios such as Elijah and St. Paul as he was composing chamber music and symphonies. He created a significant body of work in his relatively short life, including major works for orchestra that constitute an important part of today’s repertoire. These works (from his maturity) include six concert overtures, six concertos, and five symphonies.
His musical style reflects, to a large degree, his upbringing and his personality—it speaks of discipline, balance, and an overall cheerful, largely untroubled mien. While his compositions reflect solicitude for clear, balanced musical structures, and an obvious avoidance of excess of romantic emotion and empty virtuosity, there is nevertheless a sentimental and emotive quality to them. And this is certainly true of his symphonies. The numbering of them is hopelessly confusing; suffice it say that Symphony No. 3 was the last composed of the five. Like some others of Mendelssohn’s works, to a degree it is a reflection of his travels, in this case to Scotland in1829. He visited the ruins of Holyrood Castle, where he conceived the opening of the “Scottish” symphony, later going on to visit Sir Walter Scott, the Highlands, and the Hebrides Islands. The symphony—not finished until 1842—is in general, a somewhat darker composition than most of the composer’s works. It is innovative in the sense that Mendelssohn called for the connection of all four movements in performance—a characteristic that later composers adopted to create the singlemovement tone poem.
The first movement is prefaced by a slow introduction, followed by the faster movement, proper. The basic motive heard in the introduction will be encountered not only in the ensuing fast section, but also throughout the symphony—quite progressive for a composer of that time. The expected dance-like movement (usually heard as a third movement, but here is second) opens with the tune in the clarinet, in a distinct Scottish folk style. Mendelssohn
continues his innovations by couching this movement in two counts, rather than the usual three counts, to a bar. It’s almost more than a dance in its rather wild and careening scramble. The following adagio movement has moments— including a section that sounds a bit like a funeral march—that may remind some of the solemnity of the composers’ oratorios. The last movement is really in two large sections—the first is rather tumultuous and anxious, and includes some rather dissonant counterpoint (remember Mendelssohn’s key role in the revival of J. S. Bach’s works). A rather mysterious, murky, chromatic passage in the woodwinds dissolves all that and leads us to the last part. It’s a majestic one that includes a sonorous hymn and triumphant fanfare-like passages. The darker moments that had thitherto set much of the mood of this last symphony are resolved in exultation.
—William E. Runyan
Members of the University Symphony Orchestra Personnel
Alexander Jiménez, Music Director and Conductor
Guilherme Leal Rodrigues, Graduate Associate Conductor
Violin 1
Masayoshi Arakawa‡
Ioana Popescu
Francesca Puro
Hope Welsh
Emily Palmer
Hannah Jordan+
Stacey Sharpe
Violin 2
Angel Miller*
Christopher Wheaton
Carlos Cordero
Nicole Vega
Alex Roes
Tori Joyce
Joan Prokopowicz
Viola
Jeremy Hil*
Harper Knopf
Emelia Ulrich
Spencer Schneider
Cello
Mitchell George*
Thu Vo
Emma Hoster
Natalie Taunton
Angelese Pepper
Ryan Wolff
Bass
Alex Lunday*
Kent Rivera
Layla Feaster
Flute
Pamela Bereuter*
Steven Fireman*
Nikkie Galindo*
Oboe
Steven Stamer*
Nic Kanipe
Clarinet
Connor Croasmun*
Anne Glerum*
Travis Irizarry
Andrew Prawat*
Bassoon
Georgia Clement*
Ryder Kaya*
Horn
Jordan Perkins
Giovanni Pereira*
Thomas Langston*
Vincent Aldoretta
Trumpet
Noah Solomon*
Johniel Najera
Timpani
Jordan Brown
Orchestra Manager
Melody Quiroga
Orchestra Stage Manager
Carlos Cordero
Orchestra Librarians
Guilherme Rodrigues
Thomas Roggio
Library Bowing Assistant
Victoria Joyce
‡ Concertmaster
*Principal/Co-Principal