Friday February 19, 2010

Newman Center Presents
Benjamin Hudson, violin; Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra
Johann Sebastian Bach: Violin Concerto in G minor, BWV 1056 10:42
Peter Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings in C major, Op.48 31:00
Wolfgang Mozart: “Andante” (3rd movement) from Cassation in G major, K.63 4:55 (3/21/07)


Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Serenade for Strings in C major, Opus 48
I. Piece in the Form of a Sonata: Andante non troppo; Allegro moderato
II. Waltz: Moderato, tempo di valse
III. Elegy: Larghetto elegiaco
IV. Finale: Andante; Allegro con spirito

``Whether because it's my latest child or because it really isn't bad,'' Tchaikovsky wrote to his publisher, ``I'm terribly in love with this serenade.'' The Serenade for Strings was written in just seven weeks during the fall of 1880, at the same time as the 1812 Overture. ``My muse has been benevolent of late,'' Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck. ``I have written two long works very rapidly: the festive overture and a Serenade in four movements for string orchestra. The overture will be very noisy. I wrote it without much warmth or enthusiasm; and therefore it has no great artistic value. The Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from an inward impulse; I felt it; and I venture to hope that this work is not without artistic qualities.''
The Serenade was introduced by Eduard Napravnik and the Russian Musical Society in St. Petersburg on October 30, 1881. When Tchaikovsky conducted the work in London, the Musical Times reported applause ``far beyond the limit of merely courteous approbation.''
Tchaikovsky again wrote to his patroness: ``I wish with all my heart that you could hear my Serenade properly performed. I think that the middle movements, as played by the strings, would win your sympathy....The first movement is my homage to Mozart: it is intended to be an imitation of his style, and I should be delighted if I thought I had in any way approached my model.''
Biographer John Warrack says ``the opening movement used the strong opening descending scale figure again at the end, and the Waltz, justly one of his most famous, and Elegy both base their tunes, so different in effect, on a rising scale. The Finale makes use of two Russian themes. The second of them is again built out of a descending scale, and Tchaikovsky subjects it to delightfully varied treatment on each of its repetitions....At the end, he brings back the descending scale theme of the very opening before blowing it away with a last statement of the second, boisterous Russian theme.''

Thursday February 18, 2010


Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Jeffrey Kahane, conductor
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68 (11/20-21/09)


Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68
I. Un poco sostenuto; Allegro
II. Andante sostenuto
III. Un poco allegretto e grazioso
IV. Adagio; Allegro non troppo, ma con brio

Unlike Haydn, who wrote his first symphony in his early twenties and kept going until he had amassed more than a hundred, Brahms waited until his early forties and stopped at four. Of course, symphonies had changed considerably in this interval of over a century. Brahms himself observed: ``A symphony is no laughing matter nowadays.''
Brahms had other reasons for procrastinating. When urged by Schumann and others to make the attempt, he insisted: ``I shall never write a symphony. You have no idea how the likes of us feel, when we hear the tramp of a giant like him behind us.'' The ``giant'' was Beethoven, whom even Haydn regarded as ``that Great Mogul.''
After hearing a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Brahms set out in earnest to write his First, finishing it, after a few false starts, in 1876. The first performance took place in Karlsruhe on November 4, 1876.
Conductor Hans von Bülow immediately pronounced the work ``Beethoven's Tenth.'' Indeed, there is some similarity between the theme of Brahms' last movement and the finale of Beethoven's Ninth. When someone pointed this out to Brahms, he replied: ``Any ass can see that.''
It was also von Bülow who made the familiar coupling of the three ``B's,'' when he said: ``I believe it is not without the intelligence of chance that Bach, Beethoven and Brahms are in alliteration.''
These kinds of remarks served only to embarrass Brahms and inflame his critics. Hugo Wolf reported: ``The art of composing without ideas has decidedly found in Brahms one of its worthiest representatives....He understands the trick of making something out of nothing.''
But it was the influential critic Eduard Hanslick who insured the First Symphony's success. After the Viennese performance, he wrote: ``The new symphony displays an energy of will, a logic of musical thought, a greatness of structural power and a mastery of technique such as is possessed by no other living composer.''
``The gloomy, painfully struggling first movement,'' writes biographer Karl Geiringer, ``is dominated by a sort of musical motto, which plays an important part in the Introduction, supplies the counterpoint to the main subject, and is the leading feature in the second subject and the development....The two middle movements, however, are lighter and shorter...(providing) the indispensable moments of relief in the dramatic action of the whole composition. For not only the first movement, but the beginning of the Finale, conjures up a vision of a gloomy Inferno. Everything in this last movement seems to be hastening towards a catastrophe, until suddenly a horn solo sounds a message of salvation. Then the broadly flowing, hymn-like Allegro proclaims its triumph over all fear and pain.''
The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.

Wednesday February 17, 2010

Charley and Steve Blatt talk about the "From the Performance Studio" CD.
Robert Schumann (arr. Franz Liszt): Widmung (Dedication), Op.25 No. 1
Jon Nakamatsu, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 4/24/09MS
Robert Schumann: Arabesque, Op.18
Christopher O'Riley, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 11/15/08 MS
Also, Colorado Music Festival Chamber Orchestra
Michael Christie, conductor
Wolfgang Mozart: Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K.550 (7/23/06) 31:18
And, John Newton (arr. Jack Schrader): Amazing Grace
Colorado Children’s Chorale
Deborah DiSantis, conductor; Tad Koriath, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 5/11/06 JP

Tuesday February 16, 2010

Charley and Steve Blatt talk about the "From the Performance Studio" CD.
Robert Schumann: “Aria” (2nd movement) from Piano Sonata No. 1 in F sharp minor, Op.11
Barry Douglas, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 3/19/09 MS
Also, Friends of Chamber Music
Marc Andre Hamelin, piano.
Frédéric Chopin: Barcarolle in F sharp major, op.60

Frédéric Chopin: Ballade No. 3 in A flat major, op.47 16:17

Marc Andre Hamelin: Etude no.7 (after Tchaikovsky)

Marc Andre Hamelin: Etude no.8, Erlkönig (after Goethe) 9:46

Leopold Godowsky: Symphonic Metamorphoses on Johann Strauss's Wine, Woman and Song 11:06
Marc Andre Hamelin: Diabolical Suggestion 1:20 (5/14/08)
And, Isaac Albéniz: “Rumores de la Caleta” from Recuerdos de viaje
Jason Vieaux, guitar
KVOD Performance Studio 10/5/07 MS

Monday February 15, 2010

Charley and Steve Blatt talk about the "From the Performance Studio" CD.
Traditional Chinese: Fisherman's Song
Linda Wang, violin; Alice Rybak, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 2/13/07 MS
Also, Strings in the Mountains Music Festival
Vivaldi: Concerto No. 3 in F major (“Autumn”) from The Four Seasons, Op.8
Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Strings in the Mountains Chamber Orchestra (8/14/04)
Chopin: Polonaise No. 6 in A flat major, Op.53 (Heroic)
Jon Nakamatsu, piano (8/17/04)
Gershwin-Singleton: Rhapsody in Blue
Ralph Votapek, piano; Kimberly Aseltine, clarinet; Alpen Brass; Paul Eachus, conductor (7/2/04)
And, Felix Mendelssohn: "Allegro vivace—Presto" (1st movement) from String Quartet in F minor, Op.80
Jupiter String Quartet (Nelson Lee, Meg Freivogel, violins; Liz Freivogel, viola; Daniel McDonough, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 12/6/07 MS

Friday February 12, 2010

Charley and Steve Blatt talk about the "From the Performance Studio" CD.
Johann Sebastian Bach: "Gigue" from Solo Cello Suite No.1 in G major, BWV 1007
Johannes Moser, cello
KVOD Performance Studio 3/29/07 MS
Also, Charley anticipates the Boulder Philharmonic's concert on Sunday.
Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Butterman, conductor; Kenrick Mervine, organ
Camille Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Op.78 (Organ) 37:26
Johann Sebastian Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (10/4/08)
And, Maurice Durufle: "Ubi Caritas" from Four Motets on Gregorian Themes
Lamont Chamber Choir Ensemble (Evans Choir)
Catherine Sailor, conductor
KVOD Performance Studio 4/28/09 MS


Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921): Symphony No. 3 in C minor, Opus 78 (Organ Symphony)
I. Adagio, Allegro moderato, Poco adagio
II. Allegro moderato; Presto; Maestoso

``With it, I have given all I could give,'' said Saint-Saëns of his Third Symphony. ``What I did I could not achieve again.''
Saint-Saëns had already sketched a few ideas for a new symphony when he visited Franz Liszt in Paris in April, 1886. By the time he reached London, Francesco Berger approached him with a commission from the London Philharmonic Society.
A few months later, Saint-Saëns wrote Berger that the symphony was ``well under way. It will be terrifying, I warn you....This imp of a symphony has gone up a half-tone; it didn't want to stay in B minor and is now in C minor. It will be a treat for me to conduct it. Will it be a treat, though, for the people who hear it? That is the question. It's you who asked for it. I wash my hands of the whole thing.''
Saint-Saëns conducted the London Philharmonic in the first performance of the Third Symphony on May 19, 1886. Sir Arthur Sullivan conducted the balance of the program, which included Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, with Saint-Saëns as soloist. When the Symphony was played in Paris, Charles Gounod remarked: ``Behold, the French Beethoven!''
For the London performance, the composer provided the following analysis: ``This symphony, divided into two parts, nevertheless includes practically the traditional four movements: the first, checked in its development, serves as an introduction to the Adagio, and the Scherzo is connected after the same manner with the Finale. The composer has thus sought to shun in a certain measure the interminable repetitions that are more and more disappearing from instrumental music.''
The Third Symphony is called the Organ Symphony for obvious reasons, but the organist's role in the work is more of a participant than soloist. Saint-Saëns once provided a clue to his intent in the Symphony: ``If the sound of the organ, an harmonious noise rather than exact music, produced little that is worth writing down on paper, then it belongs to the same category as those old stained-glass windows where you can hardly discern the shapes but which, nevertheless, have more charm than their modern counterparts.''
When Liszt died in Bayreuth just two months after the London première of the Third Symphony, Saint-Saëns dedicated the work to the great pianist.
Vincent d'Indy said the Third was ``full of indisputable talent and seems to constitute a wager against the traditional laws of tonal construction--a wager that the composer sustains with adroitness and eloquence. But in spite of this work's undeniable interest...the final impression remains one of doubt and sadness.''
Biographer James Harding points to the finale, ``in which every trick of the trade is used to pile up an exciting climax underlined by thunderous reverberations from the organ. The texture of the score is lightened from time time with runs and arpeggios written to be played at will on the piano by two performers or one. A very large orchestra is required for this monumental attempt at grandiose utterance by a man whose natural bent was for wit rather than passion. The emotion is strangulated. Like Tchaikovsky, he strives for tragedy and achieves pathos. It is as if Ravel had attempted, with sincerity, to write Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. And yet...and yet there are half lights, muted moments, when the pangs of genuine emotion stab through the glittering web that the magician of the orchestra is so deftly spinning.''
The Symphony is scored for piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contra-bassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, timpani, organ, piano and strings.

Thursday February 11, 2010


Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Jeffrey Kahane, conductor; Christine Brewer, soprano
Ludwig van Beethoven: The Creatures of Prometheus Overture, Opus 43
Richard Strauss: Four Last Songs (11/20-21/09)


Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Overture to the Ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, Opus 43

Sometime in 1800, Beethoven was commissioned to write the music for a new ``heroic-allegorical ballet'' titled The Creatures of Prometheus. Intended as a compliment to the Emperor Franz's second wife, Maria Theresia, the ballet was choreographed by Salvatore Vigano, the ballet master at the court theater in Vienna. When Beethoven finished the music, he wrote to his publishers: ``I have written a ballet, in which, however, the ballet master has not made the best of his part.''
Nevertheless, The Creatures of Prometheus was a moderate success at its first performance, a benefit for the prima ballerina, one Fräulein Casentini, on March 28, 1801 at the Court Theater. The work was given fourteen times that year; nine times the next.
One day, Beethoven ran into his former teacher, Franz Joseph Haydn, whose oratorio The Creation had been a sensation only three years earlier. Haydn: ``Well, I heard your ballet yesterday and it pleased me very much!'' Beethoven: ``O, dear Papa, you are very kind; but it is far from being a Creation. Haydn: ``That is true; it is not yet a Creation and I can scarcely believe that it will ever become one.'' Whereupon both men, somewhat embarrassed, went their separate ways.
The program at the first performance summarized the action of the ballet: ``The basis of this allegorical ballet is the fable of Prometheus. The Greek philosophers, by whom he was known, allude to him as a lofty soul who drove the people of his time from ignorance, refined them by means of science and the arts, and gave them manners, customs, and morals. As a result of that conception, two statues which have been brought to life are introduced into this ballet, and these, through the power of harmony, are made sensitive to the passions of human existence. Prometheus leads them to Parnassus, in order that Apollo, the god of the arts, may enlighten them. Apollo gives then as teachers Amphion, Arion, and Orpheus to instruct them in music, Melpomene to teach them tragedy; Thalia, comedy, Terpsichore and Pan, the shepherd's dance, and Bacchus, the heroic dance, of which he was the originator.''
The Overture contains several themes from the ballet proper. A slow introduction representing ``the solemn appearance of Prometheus'' is followed by a fast section depicting ``human creatures led to joy.'' The stormy climaxes towards the end suggest the flight of Prometheus from ``the mighty wrath of Heaven.''
The Overture is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.


Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Four Last Songs (Vier letzte Lieder)
I. Frühling (Spring)
II. September
III. Beim Schlafengehen (Falling Asleep)
IV. Im Abendrot (In the Sunset)

In 1948, a year before his death, Strauss and his wife Pauline moved to the Palace Hotel in Montreux. There he composed his last work, Four Last Songs. Two years earlier he had read Joseph von Eichendorff's poem Im Abendrot (In the Sunset), about an old couple regarding the sunset and asking ``Is that perhaps death?'' By May 6, 1948 he finished an orchestral song setting of the poem, in which he quoted from his own Death and Transfiguration of 1889.
Meanwhile an admirer sent him a volume of poems by Hermann Hesse. Strauss planned to set four of the poems, and add them to the Eichendorff setting to form a cycle of five. He finished only three of the Hesse settings, the last one, September, on September 20. He died a year later.
Strauss's publisher Ernest Roth gave the works the collective title of Four Last Songs. The first performance was given at the Royal Albert Hall in London on May 22, 1950. Kirsten Flagstad, who had been selected by Strauss before his death, was the soloist with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler.
``In trying to understand the poignant feelings they arouse the word nostalgia comes to mind,'' writes biographer Norman Del Mar, ``but this is too superficial to cover music of the calibre of these songs, although their beauty undoubtedly contains a nostalgic element, as well as sadness. Yet the tiredness of great age in the presence of impending and welcome death is not really sad but something far deeper. It is the prerogative of great art that it arouses nameless emotions which can tear us apart. With his last utterances, as at intervals during his long life, Strauss showed himself such a genius of the highest rank.''
The score calls for soprano, piccolo, 4 flutes, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, harp, celestra and strings.

Texts of Four Last Songs

I.Frühling (Hesse)
In dämmrigen Grüften
Träumte ich lang
Von deinen Bäumen und blauen Lüften
Von deinem Duft und Vogelsang.

Nun liegst du erschlossen
In Gleiss und Zier,
Von Licht übergossen
Wie ein Wunder vor mir.

Du kennst mich wieder,
Du lockest mich zart,
Es zittert durch all meine Glieder
Deine selige Gegenwart.

(Spring)
(In shadowy grottoes,
I dreamt long
Of your trees and blue skies,
Of your fragrance and birdsong.

Now you lie opened up
In glitter and ornament,
Bathed in light
Like a wonder before me.

You also recognize me
You sweetly tempt me,
Your blessed presence
Trembles through all my limbs.)

II. September (Hesse)
Der Garten trauert,
Kühl sinkt in die Blumen der Regen.
Der Sommer schauert
Still seinem Ende entgegen.

Golden tropft Blatt um Blatt
Nieder vom hohen Akazienbaum.
Sommer lächelt erstaunt und matt
In den sterbenden Gartentraum.

Lange noch bei den Rosen
Bleibt er stehen, sehnt sich nach Ruh.
Langsam tut er die grossen
Müdgewordenen Augen zu.

(September)
(The garden mourns,
Rain sinks cool into the flowers.
Summer trembles quietly,
Faced with its end.

Leaf after leaf drops, golden
Down from the high acacia.
Summer smiles astonished and faintly
Into the dying garden-dream.

Long yet by the roses
It remains standing, longing for rest.
Slowly the big
Tired eyes are closed.)

III. Beim Schlafengehen (Hesse)

Nun der Tag mich müd gemacht,
Soll mein sehnliches Verlangen
Freundlich die gestirnte Nacht
Wie ein müdes Kind empfangen.

Hände lasst von allem Tun,
Stirn vergiss du alles Denken.
Alle meine Sinne nun
Wollen sich in Schlummer senken.

Und die Seele unbewacht
Will in freien Flügen schweben,
Um im Zauberkreis der Nacht
Tief und tausendfach zu leben.

(Falling Asleep)
(Now the day has made me tired,
Let the starry night
Receive my ardent demand,
As if I were a tired child.

Hands, leave off from every action,
Brow, forget all thinking.
All my senses now
Wish to sink into slumber.

And the soul, unfettered,
Wants to soar in free flight
In the magic circle of night,
Deeply and a thousandfold to live.)

IV. Im Abendrot (Eichendorff)
Wir sind durch Not und Freude
Gegangen Hand in Hand;
Vom Wandern ruhn wir beide
Nun überm stillen Land.

Rings sich die Täler neigen.
Es dunkelt schon die Luft,
Zwei Lerchen nur noch steigen
Nachtträumend in den Duft.

Tritt her, und lass sie schwirren,
Bald ist es Schlafenszeit,
Dass wir uns nicht verirren
In dieser Einsamkeit.

O weiter, stiller Friede
So tief im Abendrot
Wie sind wir wandermüde--
Ist dies etwa der Tod?

(In the Sunset)
(We have, in need and joy,
Gone hand in hand;
From wandering let us rest
Now in this silent land.

The valleys press around us,
Soon the air will darken,
Two larks rise,
Dreaming in the fragrance.

Come here, and let them whirr,
Soon it will be time to sleep,
So that we do not lose ourselves
In this loneliness.

O wide, still peace
So deep in the sunset
How tired we are of wandering--
Is this perhaps death?)