Program notes by J. Mark Baker

Jessie Montgomery

Born 8 December 1981; New York, New York

Records from a Vanishing City

Composed: 2016

First performance: 27 October 2016; New York, New York

Last MSO performance: MSO premiere

Instrumentation: flute; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets (2nd doubling bass clarinet); 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 14 minutes

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She was born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Since 1999, Montgomery has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African-American and Latinx string players. Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral music. She holds degrees from The Juilliard School and New York University. Last season, the MSO was one of several co-commissioners of Rounds, a concerto fashioned for pianist Awadagin Pratt.

The composer has said that Records from a Vanishing City was inspired by her childhood on New York City’s Lower East Side. That was during the 1980s and ’90s, when that neighborhood was a vital center of the City’s artistic community, prior to its present-day gentrification. Montgomery explains that the term “records” takes two meanings:

1) a varied assemblage of old LPs she inherited from James Rose, a departed family friend; 2) her personal memories of the music she heard while growing up. She has also cited the timbral world of Bartók and Britten –as well music of the Big Band Era – as influences on this eclectic work. She expounds further:

I had this imagery of the city vanishing, and as the piece goes from beginning to end, there’s a sense that these themes are evaporating. In the last section, in the winds, there are solos, and the themes are swirling around each other, weaving in and out of each other … An idea will be stated, and then it evaporates, and then another one comes in, and it evaporates in relation to it … Throughout the course of the piece, there’s a section that’s super structurally obvious, and then the material begins to split apart and vanish as it gets toward the end.

Commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and dedicated to the memory of James Rose, it was premiered at Carnegie Hall.

Sergei Prokofiev

Born 23 April 1891; Sontsovka, Ukraine

Died 5 March 1953; Moscow, Russia

Violin Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Opus 63

Composed: 1935

First performance: 1 December 1935; Madrid, Spain

Last MSO performance: March 2013; Edo de Waart, conductor; Ilana Setapen, violin

Instrumentation: 2 flutes; 2 oboes; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 2 horns; 2 trumpets; percussion (bass drum, castanets, cymbals, triangle, snare drum); strings

Approximate duration: 26 minutes

In the last years of Tsarist Russia, Sergei Prokofiev, still in his 20s, made his name as a composer of music both weighty and sardonic. Following the Revolution, making his home mainly in the United States and then Paris, his mode of expression progressively became more settled and, one might say, more polished. He spent the last 17 years of his life back in the Soviet Union, however, both spurred on and restrained by the cultural policies of Stalin’s regime. Throughout his life, he occupied himself with music for the stage and was one of the 20th century’s most distinguished creators of symphonies, concertos, and piano sonatas.

The second violin concerto dates from about the same time as two of Prokofiev’s best-known works: the ballet Romeo and Juliet (1938) and that favorite of children’s concerts, Peter and the Wolf (1936). He had only recently repatriated himself to Russia, and his Opus 63 would be his last commission from the West – from the French violinist Robert Soetens, who had played the 1932 premiere of Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins with Samuel Dushkin.

The concerto’s basic layout is traditional, with two fast movements surrounding a slow one. The soloist states the main theme of the opening sonata-form Allegro moderato, alone and unequivocally in G minor. Muted violas and basses enter in the distant key of B minor, but the tonic is soon restored, and the lyrical second theme is cast in the relative major B-flat. Elegant in its simplicity, the Andante assai is set in 12/8 meter in E-flat major. Though there are ample opportunities for bravura, the soloist’s chief demand is to spin out seamless cantabile phrases over pizzicato strings and staccato woodwinds. A set of continuous variations, it is a prime example, stated British music writer Hugh Ottaway, of “Prokofiev’s endearing blend of innocence and sophistication.”

The finale – Allegro, ben marcato – recalls the sort of peasant rondo we know from several wellknown violin concertos of the 19th century. Its principal sections are set in 3/4 meter, with forte chords from the soloist. In the coda, the soloist cavorts frenetically in 5/4 above a bass line and percussion. The concluding whirlwind is marked tumultuoso, and the castanets remind us that the work’s premiere was scheduled for Madrid.

Anton N Dvo K

Born 8 September 1841; Nelahozeves, Bohemia

Died 1 May 1904; Prague, Bohemia

Symphony No. 8 in G major, Opus 88

Composed: 1889

First performance: 2 February 1890; Prague, Bohemia

Last MSO performance: September 2014; Edo de Waart, conductor

Instrumentation: 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo); 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn); 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons; 4 horns; 2 trumpets; 3 trombones; tuba; timpani; strings

Approximate duration: 34 minutes

We wouldn’t be far off the mark if we called Antonín Dvořák the most versatile composer of the Romantic era. The Czech master’s list of works includes operas, chamber music, choral music and songs, symphonies, concertos, tone poems, and other orchestral music.

Cheerful, lyrical, and optimistic, Antonin Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony takes its inspiration from the Bohemian folk music the composer so greatly loved. In his handling of symphonic form, Dvořák shows the influence of his friend Brahms, but he has filled the work with melodies that have an unmistakable Czech flavor in their tunefulness and rusticity.

Though set in the key of G major, the first movement (Allegro con brio) opens with a melody in G minor before a birdlike flute melody takes us to the home key. Listen throughout for harmonic shifts between major and minor, à la Schubert. The Adagio begins with a lovely clarinet duet. Like Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, the movement is inspired by peaceful landscapes and depicts a summer day interrupted by a thunderstorm, but ends contentedly. For the third movement, Dvořák wrote a melancholic waltz in 3/8 time. The middle section is rife with yearning, Czech-inspired melodies.

The finale opens with a trumpet fanfare that soon gives way to a beautiful cello melody before plowing headlong into the Allegro ma non troppo. The movement progresses through an agitated middle section, modulating between major and minor throughout. Following a slow, lyrical section, the symphony concludes with great exhilaration, aided by brass and timpani.