PROGRAM NOTES .
NOTES BY LORI NEWMAN/ RAVEN CHACON
Raven Chacon
Ashdla’ (2022) Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon was born in Fort Defiance, Arizona, within the Navajo Nation in 1977. He holds degrees from the University of New Mexico (BA in Fine Arts) and the California Institute of the Arts (MFA in music composition). In 2022, he became the first Native American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his work Voiceless Mass. Written in 2022, Chacon’s Ashdla’ was commissioned by I Musici de Montréal. The work is scored for string orchestra. Approximately 7 minutes. About Ashdla’: “Chacon has a series of compositions that are titled after Navajo words for numbers. The works in the series are musical studies, but the sequence of the numbered titles does not follow a chronological order. Numbers are assigned to the compositions according to formal considerations, effects, or instruments used; spatial relations between players; and other musical or non-musical factors. Ashdla’ (five) is the fourteenth composition in this series.” ●
NOTES BY DAVID B. LEVY
Ludwig van Beethoven
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61 (1806) Ludwig van Beethoven was born on December 15 or 16, 1770, in Bonn, Germany, and died in Vienna, Austria, on March 26, 1827. His Violin Concerto, Op. 61 was composed in 1806, a particularly productive year that also yielded the three String Quartets, Op. 59 (“Razumovsky”),
the Fourth Symphony, Op. 60, and the Fourth Piano Concerto, Op. 58. The work received its first performance in Vienna on December 23, 1806, with Franz Clement as soloist. Beethoven dedicated the work to his friend Stephan von Breuning. It is scored for flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings. Approximately 45 minutes. Beethoven completed only one violin concerto, although among the surviving fragments from his youth in Bonn is an incomplete Concerto in C Major. Two Romances, Op. 40 and 50, and the “Triple” Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Cello complete the résumé of Beethoven’s compositions for violin and orchestra. Composed in 1806, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto stands in solitary splendor, not only among his own works, but among all other works in the genre. Even its closest rival, the Violin Concerto by Johannes Brahms, was modeled closely on Beethoven’s towering example. Beethoven himself had several models from which to work, including the violin concertos of Mozart and Haydn. Works for violin, including concertos, by Kreutzer, Rode, and Viotti also were important models. These violinist-composers are better known by pupils of the violin than by the general public, but they were most certainly known by Beethoven, who, although not primarily a violinist, had a working knowledge of the instrument. Thanks to the research of Clive Brown and a subsequent recording by Rachel Barton Pine, we now know that Beethoven had a more direct model for his Violin Concerto. The work owes its existence to an 1806 commission from Franz Clement (1780–1842), a Viennese musical prodigy and virtuoso who was the concertmaster of Vienna’s Theater an der Wien with whom Beethoven had previously worked on other projects. Clement’s virtuosity
“Concerto, composed with mercy, for Clement, first violinist at the Theater an der Wien.” —Ludwig van Beethoven
was matched by a phenomenal memory, and he was alleged to have been able to commit to memory large-scale choral works and operas, including Haydn’s The Creation and Beethoven’s Fidelio, upon only one hearing. Two important compositions were featured on a concert organized by Clement that took place in the Theater an der Wien of April 7, 1805. One of them was the first public performance of Beethoven’s mighty “Eroica” Symphony, Op. 55, under the composer’s direction. The other was a Violin Concerto in D Major composed and performed by Clement—a work whose outer movements were a clear influence on Beethoven’s own concerto in the same key. Clive Brown’s research reveals that Clement most likely played a role in the evolution of Beethoven’s masterpiece. Curiously, many details of the solo part were left undecided and unwritten, even after Clement gave the work its first performance on December 23, 1806. The fact that Beethoven wrote the following pun on the autograph of the score, “Concerto par Clemenza pour Clement, primo violino al Theatro a Vienne, dal L. v. Bthvn. 1806” (Concerto, composed with mercy, for Clement, first violinist at the Theater an der Wien), strongly suggests Beethoven’s respect for Clement and his own concerto. The earliest Viennese critics had a difficult time coming to terms with the lofty vision expressed in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. This is understandable in part because its first movement alone is one of the longest and most symphonically conceived works of its kind. The immense and tuneful orchestral ritornello that begins the work, with its five taps on the kettledrum, immediately reveal the scope of Beethoven’s sublime plan, a work characterized by Maynard Solomon as filled with “inner repose,” despite its moments of real drama and (in the development section) pathos. No less sublime is the exquisite dialogue between soloist and orchestra that defines the second movement, a serene Larghetto that is loosely structured along the lines of a theme and variations. A brief cadenza (Eingang) for the soloist at the continued on 14
The New Mexico Philharmonic
nmphil.org
13
