Programme Notes
Dvořák’s Cello Concerto Fri 24 November 2023 • 20.15
PROGRAMME conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada cello Daniel Müller-Schott Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) Cello Concerto in B minor, Opus 104 (1895) • Allegro • Adagio, ma non troppo • Finale: Allegro moderato intermission Emily Howard (1979) Magnetite (2007) Antonín Dvořák Symphony No. 7 in D minir, Opus 70 (1885) • Allegro maestoso • Poco adagio • Scherzo Vivace-Poco meno mosso • Allegro Concert ends at around 22.20 Most recent performances by our orchestra: Dvořák Cello Concerto: Mar 2018, cello Truls Mørk, conductor David Zinman Howard Magnetite: first performance Dvořák Symphony No. 7: Jan 2021 (online), conductor Leonidas Kavakos One hour before the start of the concert, Sam Wamper will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €5. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden. Cover: Photo Loren Gu (Unsplash)
Magnetite crystal, close-up. Photo Geza Farkas.
Antonín Dvořák in 1891. Photo Jan Mulač, Prague.
A Bohemian in America Prague Conservatory, season 189192. A searching question troubles the students of the composition class: ‘What is Mozart?!’
Bride), virtually the new world of composition in Bohemia and Moravia. An entire generation of young Czech composers has fed off this work to enrich their own work. As did Dvořák and his own students, Josef Suk and Víteslav Novák.
The teacher fixes his students with a piercing stare. They shuffle helplessly and perspiring on their benches. Their teacher is notorious for his cryptic and unclear questions, but this one surpasses them all. The twelve young men rack their brains to answer the puzzle by applying their knowledge of music theory and analysis. To no avail. They are all wrong. The teacher takes one young man by the arm and leads him to the window. He points a finger skywards and proclaims: ‘Remember this for all time: Mozart is the sun!’.
Nevertheless, the nationalist ideal sometimes troubled Dvořák. He felt trapped by being associated only with his Slavonic Dances and operas often depicting humorous tales of old from the Czech countryside. It was an honourable role as musical ambassador of Bohemia, but he also wanted to be taken seriously as a European composer. This ambition was made convincingly manifest in his later symphonies and his Cello Concerto: a brilliant synthesis of Western European formal structure and Bohemian lyricism.
The teacher of composition was Antonín Dvořák. In his youth he had earned a meagre wage as a viola player in dance halls and some time later as a church organist. But now he had developed into the figurehead of Czech classical music. To a young, still evolving group of talent he taught Bohemian folk music and the architect of classical music Beethoven. He would pass on the lessons he was taught by his former mentor, father of Czech music, Bedřich Smetana, still held in the highest esteem in his homeland thanks to his cycle of symphonic poems Má Vlást (My Country, 1874-1879, comprising the unforgettable movement Vltava), and his worldfamous opera Prodaná Nevesta (The Bartered
It was the cellist Hanus Wihan, founder of the celebrated Czech String Quartet, who encouraged Dvořák to compose the Cello Concerto. The work was created in the years 18941895, when Dvořák was director of the National Conservatory of Music of America in New York. On his return to Bohemia, he reworked the last movement in response to the death of his childhood sweetheart Josefína Čermáková. In the middle movement, he had already reworked her favourite song ‘Leave me alone’, a song Dvořák had composed in 1887. However, in the final movement he created a musical eulogy in her memory that slowly and softly faded away before the firm final chords.
Travel in a magnetic crystal
Magnetite by British composer Emily Howard (b.1979) is similarly one that after ten minutes of playing time gently fades into oblivion. Howard grew up with a fascination for music and numbers. She started out studying science and computer studies at Oxford University before finally devoting herself to the study of music at Manchester University. With a passion for connecting mathematicians, scientists and musicians, she founded PRiSM, the Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music. Magnetite is a fine example of such connections. The work, a sonically lush and powerful piece, was written for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in 2008, the year in which the orchestra’s home city was designated European Capital of Culture. Its title Magnetite refers to the mineral that is the oldest known magnetic substance. The very visual composition – ‘a journey deep inside one of these crystals’ in the words of Howard herself – treats the listener to the most fascinating orchestral sounds. The sudden eruptions from the brass section ensure from the beginning an ominous atmosphere of expressive power, with ethereal, almost weightless episodes on the journey. It was therefore no surprise to read in The Telegraph: ‘This is music much concerned with the elemental and the crystalline, and it explores that region sure-footedly, relishing orchestral colour in the way the best contemporary Nordic composers do, with ear-catching harmonies commuting between the granitic and the silvery.’
Dvořák’s darker Seventh
Antonín Dvořák’s dark-hued, somewhat sombre Seventh Symphony displays relatively few Czech nationalist features. One reason for this may be that he intended the work for the Philharmonic Society in London. Or was he perhaps going through a crisis in his compositional style?
The Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick had advised Dvořák to drop the nationalistic Slavonic themes, whilst Brahms was trying to get him to abandon Bohemia and to settle in Vienna. Dvořák himself was having none of this. In the Austrian capital city there was a strong anti-Czech sentiment; and therefore for him to leave Prague and relocate to Vienna was out of the question.
The reviews were full of praise: critic Ebenezer Prout even preferred this symphony to those of Brahms. In London he felt much more appreciated: after three concert tours he had been appointed an honorary member of the Philharmonic Society. It was therefore in London where he conducted the premiere of his Seventh Symphony on 22 April 1885. The reviews were full of praise: critic Ebenezer Prout even preferred this symphony to those of Brahms. The work begins with a restless menace expressed in a dark melody played by cellos and double basses. Some moments recall Brahms’ Third Symphony, to which Dvořák had clearly wanted to respond. The emotional second movement, Adagio, has a quasi-religious middle section in which a church organ style links hands with Wagner. In the complex Scherzo one can hear the Bohemian fieriness and in the Trio the atmosphere of the Bohemian countryside. In the Finale the sombre and despairing atmosphere returns, the setting for dramatic conflicts to be fought out once more, in a way that occurs in no other of Dvořák’s symphonies. Clemens Romijn
Andrés Orozco-Estrada • conductor Born: Medellín, Colombia Current position: Music Director Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, Filarmónica Joven de Colombia, Orquesta Sinfónica Freixenet de la Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía, Music Director Designate of the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne Education: Instituto Musical Diego Echavarria; Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts, composition with Uroš Lajovic Breakthrough: 2004, debut TonkünstlerOrchester Niederösterreich Subsequently: Music Director Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi, Houston Symphony Orchestra, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt and Wiener Symphoniker; principal guest conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra; professor of orchestral conducting at the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts; guest appearances with Wiener Philharmoniker, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestera Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2013
Photo: Martin Sigmund
Photo: Uwe Arens
Daniel Müller-Schott • cello Born: Munich, Germany Education: cello with Walter Nothas, Heinrich Schiff and Steven Isserlis; further studies with Mstislav Rostropovich Awards: Aida Stucki Prize 2013, Opus Klassik 2020 Breakthrough: 1992, at age 15: First Prize Tchaikovsky Competition Moscow Subsequently: Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, radio orchestras of Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Leipzig, Hamburg; orchestras of Boston, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia; Co-Artistic Director Vevey Spring Classic Festival 2024 World premieres: works by Georg Alexander Albrecht, Sebastian Currier, Olli Mustonen, André Previn, Peter Ruzicka, Jörg Widmann Chamber music partners: Renaud Capuçon, Janine Jansen, Igor Levitt, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Simon Trpčeski Instrument: Matteo Goffriller ‘Ex Shapiro’ (1727) Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2012
Musicians
Agenda Music for Breakfast 2 Sun 3 December 2023 • 10.30 Jurriaanse Zaal, de Doelen with Rachel Browne (violin), Matthew Midgley (double bass) and colleagues from the orchestra Parry Two Intermezzi for String Trio Onslow String Quintet ‘The Bullet’ Midgley Folk Trio Bridge Three Traditional English Songs Thu 7 December 2023 • 20.15 Fri 8 December 2023 • 20.15 Sun 10 December 2023 • 14.15 conductor Lahav Shani violin Janine Jansen Sibelius Violin Concerto Pärt Swan Song Debussy La mer Fri 15 December 2023 • 20.15 Sun 17 December 2023 • 14.15 conductor Andrew Manze soprano Carolyn Sampson mezzosoprano Marianne Beate Kielland tenor Daniel Behle bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni chorus Groot Omroepkoor Vaughan Williams Serenade to Music Rijnvos Europe (commission, World Premiere) Beethoven Symphony No.9 Proms: Christmas Classics Fri 22 December 2023 • 20.30 Sat 23 December 2023 • 20.30 Sun 24 December 2023 • 14.15 conductor Adam Hickox Prokofiev Lieutenant Kijé: Troika Humperdinck Hänsel und Gretel – selection Rossini Overture La Cenerentola Ravel Ma mère l’oye – selection Tchaikovsky The Nutcracker: Suite No.1
Viola Clarinet Anne Huser Julien Hervé Roman Spitzer Bruno Bonansea Galahad Samson Honorary Clarinet/ José Moura Nunes Conductor Bass Clarinet Yannick Nézet-Séguin Kerstin Bonk Romke-Jan Wijmenga Lex Prummel Janine Baller Principal Guest Bassoon Francis Saunders Conductor Veronika Lénártová Pieter Nuytten Tarmo Peltokoski Lola Descours Rosalinde Kluck Marianne Prommel León van den Berg First Violin Marieke Blankestijn, Olfje van der Klein Bassoon/ concertmeester Contrabassoon Cello Quirine Scheffers Hans Wisse Hed Yaron Meyerson Emanuele Silvestri Eugene Lifschitz Saskia Otto Horn Joanna Pachucka Arno Bons David Fernández Alonso Mireille van der Wart Daniel Petrovitsch Felipe Santos Freitas Silva Mario Rio Rachel Browne Wendy Leliveld Gé van Leeuwen Maria Dingjan Richard Speetjens Marie-José Schrijner Eelco Beinema Laurens Otto Carla Schrijner Noëmi Bodden Pierre Buizer Pepijn Meeuws Petra Visser Yi-Ting Fang Sophia Torrenga Trumpet Hadewijch Hofland Alex Elia Double Bass Annerien Stuker Simon Wierenga Matthew Midgley Alexandra van Jos Verspagen Ying Lai Green Beveren Jonathan Focquaert Robert Franenberg Trombone Second Violin Pierre Volders Charlotte Potgieter Harke Wiersma Alexander Verbeek Arjen Leendertz Cecilia Ziano Remko de Jager Ricardo Neto Frank de Groot Laurens van Vliet Bass trombone Flute Tomoko Hara Rommert Groenhof Juliette Hurel Elina Staphorsius Joséphine Olech Jun Yi Dou Désirée Woudenberg Tuba Bob Bruyn Hendrik-Jan Renes Eefje Habraken Flute/piccolo Maija Reinikainen Percussion Beatriz Da Baião Wim Ruitenbeek Danny van de Wal Babette van den Berg Ronald Ent Oboe Melanie Broers Martijn Boom Remco de Vries Lana Trimmer Adriaan Feyaerts Karel Schoofs Anja van der Maten Harp Oboe/Cor Anglais Charlotte Sprenkels Ron Tijhuis Chief Conductor Lahav Shani