Tuesday October 20, 2009

Colorado College Summer Music Festival
Festival Orchestra 
Scott Yoo, conductor
Mark Fewer, violin
Felix Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, op. 21 (7/5/05)

Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, op. 19
(7/5/05)
Also, Charley talks with Colorado Ballet artistic director Gil Boggs about their production of Don Quixote, which closes Sunday.
Ludwig Minkus: Grand Pas de Deux from Act III of Don Quixote
Cincinnati Pops Orchestra/ Erich Kunzel
Telarc 80625 Track 5 6:30
And, Charley anticipates Masakazu Ito's benefit for the Boulder Guitar Society Thursday.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: "Allegro, vivo e schietto" (1st movement) from Guitar Quintet, Op.143
Colorado Chamber Players (Masakazu Ito, guitar; Jerilyn Jorgensen, Paul Primus, violins; Barbara Hamilton-Primus, viola; Katharine Knight, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 9/30/09 MS
Moreover, Charley anticipates The King's Singers appearance on the Augustana Arts series Saturday.
William Byrd: O Lord, Make Thy Servant Elizabeth, Our Queen
King's Singers
RCA 68004 Track 18 3:41


Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, Opus 21

The Mendelssohn family loved their Shakespeare. ``From our youth on we were entwined in A Midsummer Night's Dream,'' said Fanny Mendelssohn, ``and Felix particularly made it his own. He identified with all of the characters. He re-created them, so to speak, every one of those whom Shakespeare produced in the immensity of his genius.''
In July, 1826, at the age of seventeen, Felix wrote to his sister: ``I have grown accustomed to composing in our garden.... Today or tomorrow I am going to start dreaming there A Midsummer Night's Dream.'' By August 6, he had finished the Overture to Shakespeare's play. Its original piano duet version was introduced by brother and sister at a private party in Berlin in November. The orchestral version was first performed on April 29, 1827 in Stettin, with Karl Loewe conducting.
The Overture is an amazing achievement, especially for a teenager. Seventeen years later, Frederick Wilhelm IV, recently crowned regent of Prussia, commissioned incidental music for a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Potsdam. To his youthful Overture, Mendelssohn added thirteen more numbers, including the famous Wedding March, and in that form, the music was introduced on October 14, 1843.
Mendelssohn was asked by his publishers to describe the Overture. ``It is impossible for me to outline...the sequence of ideas that gave rise to the composition,'' he replied. ``It follows the play closely, however, so that it may perhaps be very proper to indicate the outstanding situations of the drama in order that the audience may have Shakespeare in mind or form an idea of the piece. I think it should be enough to point out that the fairy rulers, Oberon and Titania, appear throughout the play with all their people....At the end, after everything has been settled satisfactorily and the principal players have joyfully left the stage, the elves follow them, bless the house and disappear with the dawn. So the play ends.''
Biographer Philip Radcliffe writes: ``This is the work of a thoroughly mature composer working at the height of his inspiration....After the magically effective opening chords there is the fairy-like theme...followed by another of far more ceremonious character...vividly suggestive of Theseus's court. Later comes the gently sentimental theme for the lovers, leading to the very lively portrayal of the rustics, with even a suggestion of Bottom's `translation.' All these form the material for an admirably balanced movement in sonata form, with a long and imaginative development, and a coda of great beauty in which the fairies have the last word and even spread their spell over Theseus's palace.''
The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 3 trumpets, tuba, 3 trombones, timpani, triangle, cymbals and strings.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major,
Opus 19
I. Andantino
II. Scherzo: Vivacissimo
III. Moderato; Allegro moderato

Early in 1915 Prokofiev sketched an opening melody for a one-movement violin concertino. ``I often regretted,'' he later recalled, ``that other work prevented me from returning to the pensive opening'' of the piece.
His chance came two years later, when he spent the summer at a country house near Petrograd reading Kant and Schopenhauer and turning his early sketch into a full three-movement violin concerto. A pianist, Prokofiev sought advice in writing for the violin from the Polish violinist Paul Kochanski, who was scheduled to play the premiere the following November. But World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution intervened, and the planned performance was postponed.
Indeed, the first performance didn't take place until October 18, 1923 in Paris. By then Prokofiev had left Russia, toured the United States and made his way to Paris, where Serge Koussevitzky offered to conduct the work. Several soloists, including Bronislaw Huberman, had refused to play it, so the concertmaster Marcel Darrieux was engaged. He ``did quite well with it,'' according to the composer.
Modernists criticized the work for not being complex enough. Georges Auric accused it of ``Mendelssohnism.'' A year later Joseph Szigeti took up the Concerto, playing it all over Europe, and its entry into the standard repertory was assured.
Biographer Israel Nestyev writes of the ``unusual sequence'' of the Concerto's three movements, ``the first and third are predominantly tender and melodic, while the second...is a fast, grotesque, and mocking scherzo....Unexpectedly for Prokofiev's music, a tenderly melodious, lyrical theme predominates in the first movement (and is restated in the finale). It is almost impossible to find in any of Prokofiev's early works a melody so simple and clear, so soulful and warm.''
In the second movement, says Nestyev, ``the whole gamut of scherzo-like moods and images'' is presented. ```Perpetuum mobile' and sparkling, sometimes mischievous humour predominate....In the third movement serene lyricism once again prevails....Just as in the beginning, the violin sings in a full voice of the beautiful and lofty feelings of man.''
The score calls for solo violin, piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, tuba, timpani, side drum, tambourine, harp and strings.