ITZHAK PERLMAN, VIOLIN ROHAN DE SILVA, PIANO SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2017 • 8PM
PROGRAM NOTES Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major, op. 2, No. 2 (R. 31) (published in 1709) ANTONIO VIVALDI (Born March 4, 1678 in Venice Died July 28, 1741 in Vienna) Vivaldi obtained his first official post in September 1703 at the Pio Ospedale della Pietà, one of four institutions in Venice devoted to the care of orphaned, abandoned and poor girls. As part of its training, the school devoted much effort to the musical education of its wards, and there was an elaborate organization of administrators, teachers and associates who oversaw the activities of the students. Part of his duties as violin teacher required Vivaldi to compose at least two new concertos as well as other instrumental pieces each month for the regular public concerts given by the Ospedale. The featured performers in these works were occasionally members of the faculty, but usually they were the more advanced students—the difficulty of Vivaldi’s music is ample testimony to their skill. These programs offered some of the best music in Italy, and they attracted visitors from all over Europe. Among the many notable foreigners who attended Vivaldi’s concerts at the Pietà was King Frederick IV of Denmark, who installed himself and his retinue of some 70 attendants in Venice for two months during the Carnival season of 1709. (The weather was so cold that year that some of the smaller canals froze over. The locals joked that Frederick had brought the frigid temperatures with him from Scandinavia.) A regatta on the Grand Canal was staged in his honor, and he frequented the city’s many theaters, stocked up on Venetian glass, and had his portrait done by Luca Carllevarijs, the noted painter and engraver who pioneered capturing Venice’s breathtaking cityscapes. Frederick found the program at the Pietà, he said, “very much to my taste,” and Vivaldi, eager to spread his reputation and music beyond the Alps, petitioned the King to accept the dedication of the set of 12 violin sonatas he was planning to issue as his op. 2 at that time with the Venetian publisher Antonio Bortoli: “Welcome therefore, O great King, not the offer which is in no proportion to your person, but consider the heart that brings it,” read the mandatorily obsequious dedication. Frederick did, but there is no record of Vivaldi receiving any reward as a direct result of the exchange, though the royal imprimatur did give the ambitious composer a significant marketing advantage. The op. 2 sonatas were indebted in form and style to the works of Arcangelo Corelli, one of the Baroque’s most influential composers, who was still active in Rome in 1709, teaching, preparing his op. 6 Concerti Grossi for publication and enjoying his substantial collection of paintings. The A-Major sonata (op. 2,
No. 2; No. 31 in Danish musicologist Peter Ryom’s authoritative 2007 catalog of Vivaldi’s works) follows the model of the sonata da camera, the “chamber sonata” that was light in expression, comprised four movements, had little counterpoint, and included dance-based sections. The A major sonata opens with a “Prelude in the Manner of a Caprice,” with two fast fanfare-like sections punctuated by slow cadences and a more lyrical closing stanza. (Vivaldi, not known today for his vocal works, composed his first opera four years later and went on to write more than 50 of them.) The angular lines of the following Corrente mirror the running and jumping motions of the original dance. The Adagio is succinct and poignant, qualities Vivaldi later used in his stage works. The closing Giga was derived from a lively English folk dance that became popular as the model for instrumental compositions by French, German and Italian musicians when it migrated to the Continent in the mid-17th century. Sonata No. 5 for Violin and Piano in F Major, op. 24, “Spring” (1800–1801) LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (Born December 16, 1770 in Bonn Died March 26, 1827 in Vienna) Among Beethoven’s early patrons in Vienna was Count Moritz von Fries, proprietor of the prosperous Viennese banking firm of Fries & Co. and treasurer to the imperial court. Fries, seven years Beethoven’s junior, was a man of excellent breeding and culture. A true disciple of the Enlightenment, Fries traveled widely (Goethe mentioned meeting him in Italy) and lived for a period in Paris, where he had himself painted by Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (remembered for her famous portraits of Marie Antoinette and Mme. de Staël) and, with his wife and baby, by François Gérard (court painter to Louis XVIII). Fries’ palace in the Josefplatz was designed by one of the architects of Schönbrunn, the Emperor’s suburban summer residence, and it housed an elegant private theater that was the site of frequent musical presentations. In April 1800, Fries hosted what developed into a vicious pianoplaying competition between Beethoven and the visiting German virtuoso and composer Daniel Steibelt (1765–1823), which Beethoven won in a unanimous decision. Following that victory, Beethoven composed for Fries two sonatas for violin and piano (op. 23 and op. 24) and the String Quintet, op. 29, whose dedications the Count eagerly accepted. Fries remained among Beethoven’s most devoted patrons, providing him with a regular stipend until he tumbled into bankruptcy in 1825 following the Napoleonic upheavals; the Seventh Symphony of 1813 was dedicated to Fries. The F-Major sonata, “Spring,” one of Beethoven’s most limpidly beautiful creations, is well characterized by its vernal sobriquet.