Wednesday January 27, 2010

Colorado Music Festival
Colorado Music Festival Chamber Orchestra
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor; Olav van Hezewijk, oboe
Johann Sebastian Bach: Oboe Concerto in F major, BWV 1053 20:53
Wolfgang Mozart: Symphony No. 31 in D major, K.297 (Paris) 17:29 (7/15/07)
Also, Charley talks with violinist Jerilyn Jorgensen about her recitals with pianist Cullan Bryant this weekend.
Benjamin Britten: "Perpetual Motion" (2nd movement) & "Waltz" (4th movement) from Suite, Op.6
Jerilyn Jorgensen, violin; Cullan Bryant, piano
CPR Performance Studio 11/13/09 MS
And, Charley anticipates the Colorado Chamber Players' collaboration with St. John's Cathedral Sunday.
D'Arcy Reynolds: "The Camel Yard" (opening section) from Cloven Dreams (2:34)
Gordon Jacob: "Gavotte" (2nd movement) from Four Fancies
Colorado Chamber Players (Paul Nagem, Flute; Paul Primus, Violin; Barbara Hamilton-Primus, Viola; Judith McIntyre, Cello)
CPR Performance Studio 1/16/09 MS


Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750): Oboe Concerto in F major,
BWV 1053
I. [Allegro]
II. Siciliano
III. Allegro

After working for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, Bach was appointed cantor of the St. Thomas School in Leipzig. He moved family and furniture in May of 1723. His job description included duties as civic director of music, and this meant numerous odious encounters with the Town Council. He complained of ``superiors who are strange people, with little regard for music.''
Some relief from his official duties came in 1729, when he was asked to direct the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, a group founded 25 years earlier by Telemann. During the winter, they performed every Friday night at Gottfried Zimmermann's coffeehouse. In the warmer months, they moved outdoors in the garden for concerts every Wednesday afternoon.
For these concerts, Bach resurrected a number of violin and oboe concertos that he had written in Cöthen and transcribed them for keyboard and strings. The F major Concerto is a reconstruction of a lost work whose component parts have survived. As best scholars can figure, the oboe concerto came first, then material from it was used in later cantata movements, a keyboard concerto and even a work for organ and voice that Bach wrote as a proficiency test for his eldest sons, Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Phillip Emmanuel.
In three cantata movements from 1726 the solo line is allocated to the organ. The first two movements of the oboe concerto appear in the Cantata No. 169 (Gott soll allein mein Herze haben) and the last movement in the Cantata No. 49 (Ich geh und suche mit Verlangen). The keyboard concerto in E major (BWV 1053) comes from the same sources, if not from the oboe concerto version itself.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Symphony No. 31 in D major, K.297 (300a) [Paris]
I. Allegro assai
II. Andante
III. Allegro

Mozart had not composed a symphony in four years when, in June of 1778, Joseph Legros, the director of the Paris Concerts Spirituels, commissioned one. Mozart and his mother had arrived in Paris from Mannheim only three months earlier.
Mozart's Paris Symphony was introduced on June 18, 1778. The rehearsals were a trial. ``Never in my life have I heard a worse performance,'' he wrote to his father. ``You have no idea how they twice bumbled and scraped through it.'' At the actual concert, ``the audience was quite carried away--and there was a tremendous burst of applause. I was so happy that as soon as the symphony was over, I went off the the Palais Royal, where I had a large ice.''
Legros said that ``this was the best symphony ever written'' for the Concerts Spirituels. He then asked for a new second movement, as he found the first version too long. Mozart duly supplied a new second movement for the second performance in August. ``Each is right in its way,'' he said, ``for they have different characters; however, I like the second still better.''
Commentators disagree on what influences are at work in the symphony. Alfred Einstein says that it is ``characteristic of the Mannheim-Paris style. In the first movement it even parodies that style to a slight degree.'' It begins with a precise unison attack by the strings, an effect much boasted by the Parisian orchestra. ``What a fuss the oxen here make of this trick!'' said Mozart. ``The devil take me if I can see any difference! They all begin together, just as they do in other places.''
The opening movement also features ``pompous runs in the strings characteristic of the French overture,'' writes Einstein, and ``impressive unison passages for the strings against sustained tones in the winds. But that is where the parody, or the connivance to please the French taste, ends. Mozart's ambition was far too great, and there was too much dependent on the success of the work, for him not to take it seriously. The fact that the last of the three movements was the most successful does honor to the taste of the Parisians. The second theme of this movement is a fugato, supplying the natural material for development; it does not return in the recapitulation--one of the strokes of genius in this masterful movement, which hovers continually between brilliant tumult and graceful seriousness.''
Jens Peter Larsen calls the work ``the first fully mature symphony in the Viennese classical style.'' But H.C. Robbins Landon writes: ``It is not really a Viennese classical symphony at all, but rather a conscious attempt to write an orchestral work in the grand Mannheim style.''
The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.