Thursday March 4, 2010

Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Julian Kuerti, conductor; Michael Thornton, horn
Richard Strauss: Don Juan, Op.20
Wolfgang Mozart: Horn Concerto No. 4 in E flat major, K.495 (12/4-5/09)
Also, Charley anticipates Andre Watts's appearances with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra this weekend.
Franz Liszt: "Paganini" Etude No.4 in E major
Andre Watts, piano
EMI 47380 Track 4 2:01
And, David Rutherford talks with Tenly Williams and James Cline (Mountain Music Duo).
Johann Sebastian Bach: Gavotte from English Suite No.3, BWV 808, March & Musette from Anna Magdalena Notebook, BWV Anh.121 & 126
Mountain Music Duo (Tenly Williams, oboe; James Cline, guitar)
"Summer Play" CD Tracks 9 -11 4:39
Moreover, Charley talks with Boulder Bach Festival executive director Carole Whitney.
Johann Sebastian Bach: "Allegro" (1st movement) from Harpsichord Concerto in E major, BWV 1053
Jory Vinikour, harpsichord; Boulder Bach Festival Orchestra
NCA Track 4 8:12


Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Don Juan, Opus 20

``Enormous fun!'' exclaimed Strauss in a letter to his father after the first performance of Don Juan on November 11, 1889 in Weimar. ``Great success, the piece sounded magical, went excellently, and produced a storm of applause pretty unheard-of for Weimar.''
Don Juan was inspired by a verse play by Nicolaus Lenau, his last work before being confined to an insane asylum in 1844. For Lenau, Don Juan is ``no hot-blooded man eternally pursuing women,'' but rather ``it is the longing in him to find a woman who is to him incarnate womanhood, and to enjoy, in her, all the women on earth, whom he cannot as individuals possess. He cannot find her, although he reels from one to another.''
Accordingly, Strauss included various stanzas from Lenau at the top of the score. He finished the music during the summer of 1888. After a two-hour rehearsal, he reported to his father: ``I'm delighted to see that I've made further progress as an orchestrator, everything sounds splendid and comes over famously, even if it's terribly difficult. I was really sorry for the poor horn-players and trumpeters. The horns certainly blew as though they weren't afraid of death!....Afterward, a horn player who was sitting there sweating and quite out of breath gasped, `O God, what have we done wrong that you have sent us this stick to beat us! We won't get hid of HIM in a hurry.' We laughed until we cried.''
Though the audience reaction to Don Juan was positive, some critical reaction was not. Eduard Hanslick wrote: ``I have heard ladies and little Wagnerites speak of Strauss's Don Juan with enthusiasm. Others found the thing simply repellent. There is no tone picture, but a confusion of blinding color splashes, a stuttering tonal delirium.'' On the other hand, conductor Hans von Bülow was smitten. ``Your grandiose Don Juan has taken me captive,'' he wrote to Strauss.
For Bülow's Berlin performances, Strauss requested that the program book contain ``no thematic analysis but only the Lenau verses, exactly as printed facing the front page of the score.'' Strauss chose three excerpts from the Lenau play, two from the opening scene, in which the Don explains his compulsive quest. The third, from the final scene, is addressed to his friend Marcello:

The immeasurably wide magic circle
Of the multitudes of beautiful women,
I would penetrate it in the storm of delight,
To die of a kiss on the mouth of the last.
O friend, I would fly through every place
Where a beauty blooms, to kneel before each
And were it only for moments, to conquer.
I flee satiation and pleasure weariness,
I keep myself fresh in the service of beauty.
Scorning the one, I adore the whole sex.
The breath of a woman, today the scent of Spring
Oppresses me tomorrow as dungeon fetor.
As I wander, ever changing with my love
In the wide circle of beautiful women,
My love is different for each;
I will not build temples out of ruins.
Yes! passion is always the new.
It cannot be transferred from one to another,
It can only die here, rise again there.
And knowing itself, it knows no regret.
As every beauty in the world
It is only satisfied by love.
On and away to ever new conquests
As long as the fire of youth still pulses!
It was a fine storm which drove me,
It has now passed over, and stillness is left.
All wishes, all hopes are seemingly dead.
Perhaps a bolt from heights I scorned
Has fatally struck my powers of love
And suddenly the world is desolate for me,
And turned to night
And it has grown cold and dark on the hearth.

Don Juan is scored for piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bells, cymbals, triangle, harp and strings.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Horn Concerto No. 4 in E flat major, K.495
I. Allegro moderato
II. Romanza: Andante
III. Rondo: Allegro vivace

Mozart wrote four horn concertos for his friend Joseph Leutgeb, who played horn in the Salzburg orchestra. In 1760 Leutgeb married Barbara Plazzeriani, whose father owned a cheese and sausage shop in Vienna. He moved to Vienna in 1777, apparently to run the business. He also received some financial help from Mozart's father. He toured as a soloist in Vienna, Prague and Milan and was much admired for his singing tone and incredible accuracy.
Mozart's last horn concerto is dated June 26, 1786. On the manuscript he wrote ``A French horn concerto for Leutgeb.'' Leutgeb was constantly the butt of Mozart's jokes. The scores of the horn concertos are littered with insults. For the Fourth Concerto Mozart notated the solo part in red, green, black and blue inks in an effort to confuse the performer.
``Whether or not Leutgeb really was as simple as Mozart's inscriptions suggest,'' writes A. Hyatt King, ``the purely musical personality which comes out in this sequence of horn concertos is remarkable. The wonderful cantilena of the solo parts lingers gratefully in the memory, like the utterance of a dignified yet witty conversationalist, at ease among friends.''