Romantic Chopin PROGRAM NOTES

Did you know?

Boulanger and her sister organized relief efforts for WWI soldiers who had been musicians.

Lili Boulanger: D’un matin de printemps

Marie-Juliette Olga Boulanger (known as Lili) started out as a prodigy in a highly musical family. Her mother was a Russian aristocrat who had married a Conservatory teacher much older than herself. From a very early age, Lili experienced serious illness; she died prematurely in 1918, just 24 years old. Her older sister Nadia, by contrast — also an unusually gifted musician — lived until the age of 92 (she died in 1979) and became one of the most influential teachers in music history, as well as a pioneering female conductor. Unlike Nadia, Lili focused her creative energy on composing. Aware that her time was running out as her physical condition deteriorated, she pushed herself to beat the clock. D’un matin de printemps (“On a Morning in Spring”) was written together with its longer counterpart, D’un soir triste (“On a Sad Evening”), during the last year of her cruelly short life, from the spring of 1917 to early 1918 — a period when the First World War, which inflicted such catastrophe in France in particular, was still raging. Both Lili and Nadia were deeply affected and organized relief efforts for soldiers who had been musicians.

D’un matin began as a piece for violin (or flute) and piano and was also scored as a piano trio; she subsequently orchestrated it. The music, lasting less than half as long as its companion, is both animated and subtle. Boulanger transforms the material through her extraordinarily refined ear for orchestral colors.

soloist’s point of view as a guide, giving the first movement’s expansive proportions a sense of leisurely exploration. A lightly accompanied cadenza near the end highlights Chopin’s imaginative rethinking of virtuosic embellishments.

The slow movement, a “Romance,” is often associated with the shy composer’s love for a young soprano who had been a fellow student in Warsaw. Chopin’s ravishingly beautiful elaborations of the principal melody, set against muted strings, give a foretaste of one of the later nocturnes. The composer himself likened this Romance to “a meditation … by moonlight.”

Aspects of Chopin’s love for his native Poland come to the fore in the scintillating rondo finale, in which, after a faux-serious intro, he lets loose with a polka-like main theme. Suggesting a joyful folk dance, the theme appears in ingenious new guises at each return. A year after he left Poland for good, the land would be in revolt against its Russian overlords.

Edward Elgar: Variations on an Original Theme for Orchestra, Op. 36 (“Enigma”)

Did you know?

Edward Elgar won his international breakthrough when his Variations on an Original Theme for Orchestra was premiered in 1899. This work has become universally known as Enigma Variations owing to a puzzle the composer hinted at in his note for the first performance.

Did you know?

Frédéric Chopin was born Fryderyck Franciszek Chopin of Poland. He changed his name when he was exiled due to Russian suppression.

Frédéric Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11

It was during his final years in his native Poland that a young composer-pianist named Fryderyck Franciszek Chopin completed all but one of his small handful of works combining piano and orchestra. These include his two piano concertos, which are therefore of the same vintage and reflect similar musical approaches. Despite its official number (the result of being published first), Chopin in fact composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor after the work we know as No. 2. He gave the premiere during what turned out to be his final public performance in Poland before he set out westward. Only 20 years old at the time, Chopin had set out on a European tour just three weeks before the November Uprising, a rebellion by subjugated Poles against suppression by the Russian Empire. He found himself an unwilling exile, eventually settling in Paris in 1831 and rebranding himself as Frédéric Chopin. The pianist here is not just the protagonist but the true gravitational center. Although his overall design follows the conventions of the era, Chopin introduces a unique poetic style and attitude into his writing for the solo part. This highly personal slant reveals the inspiration he found in the shape and flexibility of contemporary Italian bel canto opera and its characteristically rhapsodic lyricism.

The opening theme is majestic but soon yields to a variant that is more reflective; the latter plays a major role in the development. The second theme, in the major, has a nostalgic character and further tilts the balance away from the grandiose. All of these ideas are laid out first by the orchestra, thus sharpening our anticipation of the piano’s entrance. Chopin repeats this lengthy exposition, but with the

The English composer Edward Elgar won his international breakthrough when his Variations on an Original Theme for Orchestra was premiered in 1899. This work has become universally known as Enigma Variations owing to a puzzle the composer hinted at in his note for the first performance. The enigma in question (to this date unsolved) involves the idea of a hidden melody — a tune that is never stated outright but only hinted at indirectly by all the music we hear played. The theme and variations that are written in the score thus form a kind of accompaniment or countermelody implicitly spelling out a music that is never heard directly. You might think of the sounds we actually hear as a sort of shadow cast by this invisible “enigma”…

Each of the variations Elgar developed from the theme that we do hear is, moreover, associated with figures from his inner circle. The composer cautioned that these are not “portraits” but that “each variation contains a distinct idea founded on some particular personality or perhaps on some incident known only to two people.”

Another “enigma” is that Elgar identifies these in his score using only initials. Still, his commentary has made them for the most part easy to decipher. The clues suggest the following figures in Elgar’s life: his beloved wife and constant moral support, Caroline Alice Elgar (I); Hew David Steuart-Powell, a pianist Elgar delighted to hear warm up at the keyboard (II); the amateur actor Richard Baxter Townshend, who could vary the pitch of his voice to imitate a wide spectrum of personalities (III); the confident country gentleman William Meath Baker (IV); the poet Matthew Arnold’s artistically sensitive son, Richard Penrose Arnold (V); Isabel Fitton, a viola student of Elgar (VI); the architect Arthur Troyte Griffth, another student of the composer, who is comically depicted doing battle with the keyboard — before simply giving up (VII); the graceful elderly music patroness Winifrid Norbury (VIII); A. J. Jaeger, Elgar’s closest friend, who continually encouraged his efforts — this variation, known as “Nimrod,” is the most-famous part of Enigma and recalls the profundity of Beethoven’s slow movements (IX); Dorabella Penny, to whom Elgar felt especially close (X); the organist George R. Sinclair, along with his pet bulldog Dan (XI); the generous cellist Basil G. Nevinson, an inspiration for Elgar’s later Cello Concerto (XII); possibly his former fiancée Helen Weaver — this variation (which he also calls a romanza), introduces still another enigma, since Elgar concealed the subject’s identity by using only asterisks (XIII); and, finally, Elgar himself, in a masterful, opulent expansion of the theme that suggests how closely his personality is intertwined with the presence of his wife and his friend Jaeger (XIV).

Mozart & More Metro Series

Valentina Peleggi CONDUCTOR (pg.6-7)

GIPPS (1921-1999)

Seascape, Op. 53

MOZART (1756-1791)

Symphony No. 36 in C Major, K. 425, “Linz”

I. Adagio - Allegro spiritoso

II. Poco adagio

III. Menuetto

IV. Presto

Intermission

DAMIEN GETER (B. 1980)

I Said What I Said

SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)

Chamber Symphony Op. 73a

N’ Kenge: Legends

Pops

Chia-Hsuan Lin CONDUCTOR (pg.8-9)

N’ Kenge SINGER (pg.72)

May

13 SAT • 8:00 pm

SMALLS (1943-1987)

The Wiz Medley

SMALLS

Believe in Yourself from “The Wiz” arr. HOLCOMBE

Negro Spirituals Medley

BILLY STEINBERG (B. 1950) and TOM KELLY (B. 1952)

So Emotional

SHANNON RUBICAM (B. 1951) and GEORGE MERRILL (B. 1956)

I Wanna Dance with Somebody

GERSHWIN (1898-1937)

Fascinating Rhythm

ALEN (1905-1986)

Stormy Weather

INTERMISSION

BIZET (1838-1875)

Habanera/Dat’s Love from “Carmen”

BERNSTEIN (1918-1990)

I Feel Pretty from “West Side Story”

SMOKEY ROBINSON (B. 1940)

My Guy

CAROLE KING (B. 1942)

Natural Woman (Symphony Feature)

STEPHEN SCHWARTZ (B. 1948)

Defying Gravity from “Wicked”

2:20 approximate program length

2022-2023 CONCERT SEASON

Music For A Cathedral Space

The E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Series

Father Anthony Marques, Rector | Daniel Sañez, Artistic Director