THOMAS ZEHETMAIR 14 – 15 Oct 2021
SCO.ORG.UK
PROGRAMME
Season 2021/22
THOMAS ZEHETMAIR Please note that this is a change to the previously advertised programme (Aurora).
Thursday 14 October, 7.30pm The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh Friday 15 October, 7.30pm City Halls, Glasgow Bach Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041 Mozart (arr. Zehetmair) String Trio fragment, K. Anhang 66 Mendelssohn Overture, Die schöne Melusine Haydn Symphony No 92 in G Major 'Oxford' Thomas Zehetmair Conductor/ Violin Please note there will be no interval.
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Our Musicians
YOUR ORCHESTRA FIRST VIOLIN Cecilia Ziano Ruth Crouch Kana Kawashima Aisling O’Dea Fiona Alexander Amira Bedrush-McDonald Wen Wang Ruth Slater SECOND VIOLIN Gordon Bragg Rachel Spencer Sarah Bevan-Baker Stewart Webster Niamh Lyons Cheryl Crockett VIOLA Adam Newman Felix Tanner Brian Schiele
FLUTE André Cebrián Emma Roche OBOE Robin Williams Julian Scott CLARINET Maximiliano Martín William Stafford BASSOON Julian Roberts Alison Green HORN Patrick Broderick Jamie Shield TRUMPET Peter Franks Shaun Harrold
Liam Brolly CELLO Philip Higham Su-a Lee Donald Gillan Eric de Wit BASS Ben Burnley Adrian Bornet
Kana Kawashima First Violin
The orchestra list is correct at time of publication
TIMPANI Louise Goodwin HARPSICHORD David Gerrard
W H AT YO U ARE ABOUT TO HEAR Bach (1685-1750) Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041 (1717–29) Allegro moderato Andante Allegro assai
Mozart (1756-1791) String Trio fragment, K. Anhang 66 arr. Zehetmair (1788-91)
Mendelssohn (1809–1847) Overture, Die schöne Melusine (1834) Haydn (1732-1809) Symphony No 92 in G Major 'Oxford' (1789) Adagio - Allegro spiritoso Adagio cantabile Menuetto: Allegretto Presto
––––– For a piece of music that’s so familiar and so widely loved, it’s surprising how little we know about the origins of Bach’s Violin Concerto in A minor, the opening work in today’s concert. For example, where and when he wrote it. Received wisdom was long that the Concerto dates from his years as Kapellmeister to the Duke of Anhalt-Köthen in 1717 to 1723 – where he wrote much orchestral music, including the orchestral suites and the Brandenburg Concertos. More recent scholarship, however, veers towards Leipzig some time after 1729, where he took time off from his duties as music director of the city’s Lutheran churches by writing for the part-amateur, part-professional Collegium Musicum, which gave Friday evening concerts to intimate gatherings at Zimmermann’s coffee house. And for another example, who it was written for. It seems likely, however, that Bach wrote it for himself: he was first and foremost a keyboard player, but he was also a more than proficient violinist, and was recalled by his son CPE Bach as having led orchestras from the violin with a particularly penetrating sound. Despite its murky origins, however, in many ways it’s a very modern concerto, not least in the way it separates soloist and orchestra, who each play distinctively different material thoughout. The assertive theme that kicks off the first movement, for example, never appears in the soloist’s own solo playing, and likewise, the orchestra never picks up on the soloist’s more melancholy, plaintive theme, which the player takes into increasingly far-flung harmonic territory as the movement progresses.
Despite its murky origins, however, in many ways it’s a very modern concerto, not least in the way it separates soloist and orchestra, who each play distinctively different material thoughout. Johann Sebastian Bach
Bach goes as far as setting up two contrasting ensembles in his more reflective second movement. Cellos, bass and continuo own its stately, somewhat
‘Mozart’s Fragment for string trio was probably written in 1790, or even in his last year, 1791, certainly after his amazing Divertimento, K563. It is
determined opening theme, but those instruments disappear entirely – leaving the violas to provide the bassline – when the soloist plays, only coming together for a few moments at the end of the movement. Bach’s finale, however, provides a dashing resolution to his earlier separations: it’s at once a sprightly jig and an extended contrapuntal workout, and amid its lavish variety of textures provides plenty of opportunities for the soloist to display their fiddle prowess.
fascinating to imagine what could have been, so I was eager to try when the Swiss Chamber Soloists commissioned the project as a link between chamber music and string orchestra. The premiere took place in Geneva on 18 September 2021.
Only the opening of Mozart’s G major String Trio survives, and even that starts to peter out after fewer than 100 bars. Today’s conductor and soloist, Thomas Zehetmair, has made his own completion
‘Each note by Mozart is played by a solo trio until the voices fade out, each in a different place at the beginning of the development section. The orchestra mirrors the disappearing melody and begins with a barely audible chorale. Atypically for that period, Mozart throws in rather short and playful themes in his existing exposition. The written 100 most joyous and elegant
and arrangement of the piece. He writes:
bars feel like invitations for the motifs
‘Being aware that nobody can write like Mozart, I hope that Mozart takes a quick look at this version from his higher dimension, smiles and says: “Yes, the piece could continue like this!”’ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
to interact, to be combined and twisted with each other. The ascetic form of the trio is pulverised by the resulting diversity, the intended “cadenza” (in the
disappointment in another composer’s abilities. He’d been to one of the few performances of elder German composer Conradin Kreutzer’s opera Melusina, in
sense of virtuoso playing with original themes) for strings includes its opposite, in a manner of speaking: the decadence of the full orchestra sound compared to the pure, “virtuous” form of the string trio. ‘Being aware that nobody can write like Mozart, I hope that Mozart takes a quick look at this version from his higher dimension, smiles and says: “Yes, the piece could continue like this!”’
Berlin in 1833, and he wasn’t impressed. He wrote to his sister Fanny that the opera’s overture ‘was encored, and I disliked it exceedingly, and the whole opera quite as much: but not [the singer] Mlle. Hähnel, who was very fascinating, especially in one scene when she appeared as a mermaid combing her hair; this inspired me with the wish to write an overture that the people might not encore, but that would cause them more solid pleasure.’
Some 40 years after Mozart’s mysteriously aborted String Trio, it was an awareness of his own powers of musical description that prompted the 24-year-old Felix Mendelssohn to write
The fishy subject matter of Mendelssohn’s Overture (and Kreutzer’s opera) had been around since at least the Middle Ages. The legend of Melusine is first recorded in a medieval French romance as far
his Fair Melusine Overture – that, and
back as 1387, and has clear parallels
Some 40 years after Mozart’s mysteriously aborted String Trio, it was an awareness of his own powers of musical description that prompted the 24-year-old Felix Mendelssohn to write his Fair Melusine Overture – that, and disappointment in another composer’s abilities. Felix Mendelssohn
with Hans Christian Andersen’s tale The Little Mermaid, which by coincidence the Danish author was writing around the same time that Mendelssohn was
works commissioned from the composer by the Philharmonic Society of London. And though Mendelssohn denied that he was explicitly attempting to tell the
composing his Overture. According to the legend, the waternymph Melusine marries the dashing knight Count Raymond of Poitiers, on the condition that he never enters her room on Saturdays, the one day of the week when she must reassume her original fishy form. Predictably intrigued by what she gets up to at the weekend, Raymond spies on her in her bath, with the result that she disappears forever from the sight of all humans, leaving nothing behind but the distant sound of wailing.
story of Melusine in his music, there are nonetheless clear references to the tale. It opens with a gently rippling figure that moves across the orchestra, clearly evoking Melusine’s watery home, and its second main theme – far louder, brusquer and more dramatic – can only refer to Count Raymond, perhaps even to his shocking discovery. After a central development section combining these two themes, they return again at the end, and Melusine’s watery music brings the Overture to a gentle, appropriately melancholy close.
Mendelssohn wrote his Overture in 1834, as a late birthday present for Fanny, and it was premiered in London
Perhaps at the very same time that Mozart was sketching his incomplete String Trio, Haydn was living the high life
in April of that year, one of a trio of
in London. Realising he’d grown rather
‘I felt very silly in my gown, and I had to drag it around the streets for three whole days. But I have much to thank this doctor’s degree in England; indeed, I might say everything; as a result of it, I gained acquaintance of the first men in the land and had entrance into the greatest houses.’ Franz Joseph Haydn
isolated amid the splendours of the Eszterháza Palace in Hungary, where he’d worked for almost 30 years of his life, he decided it was time to move on.
indeed, I might say everything; as a result of it, I gained acquaintance of the first men in the land and had entrance into the greatest houses.’
Following hugely popular premieres in Paris, he was invited by the Germanborn impresario Johann Peter Salomon to visit the English capital. He stayed for two seasons, both of them enormously successful, and conducted his Symphony No 92 at his first London concert, on 11 March 1791. It went down so well that it was repeated the following month, and on 7 July 1791 at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, where the muchfêted composer received an honorary doctorate from the University. Haydn clearly enjoyed the honour, later writing to a friend: ‘I felt very silly in my gown, and I had to drag it around the streets for three whole days. But I have much to
The Symphony had almost certainly already been premiered at one of Haydn’s much-acclaimed Paris concerts, but we’re not sure for certain. It would be misleading to imply it was in any sense a musical portrait of the city of Oxford, though its grandeur and its confidence made it an appropriate choice for Haydn’s invitation. It’s a particularly fine example of the elegance and wit of his later style, with an opening movement whose faster section works wonders with a simple downward scale; a warm, song-like slow movement; a minuet full of rhythmic tricksiness; and an appropriately playful, breathless finale.
thank this doctor’s degree in England;
© David Kettle
UPCOMING AUTUMN 2021 CONCERTS HIDDEN GEMS Peter Whelan Conductor/Fortepiano / Anna Dennis Soprano CPE Bach Symphony in F, Wq 183/3 Mozart Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio KV 418 / Nehmt meinen Dank, ihr holden Gönner KV 383 Haydn Symphony No 102 in B-flat major
Thu 28 Oct, 7.30pm | The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh Fri 29 Oct, 7.30pm | City Halls, Glasgow
S H O S TA KO V I C H 1 4 Mark Wigglesworth Conductor / Elizabeth Atherton Soprano / Peter Rose Bass Mozart Symphony in D Major, after Serenade K320 ‘Posthorn’ Shostakovich Symphony No 14
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D E AT H I N A N U T S H E L L Sir James MacMillan Conductor Ives The Unanswered Question Mahler Adagietto, from Symphony No 5 Wagner Siegfried Idyll Capperauld Death in a Nutshell (SCO Commission, World Premiere)
Thu 11 Nov, 7.30pm | The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh Fri 12 Nov, 7.30pm | City Halls, Glasgow
R I S E A N D F LY ONLINE NOW | 29 Sep – 29 Oct 2021 Rebecca Tong Conductor Colin Currie Percussion Rachel Leach Presenter
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