Wednesday March 10, 2010

Charley talks with Boulder Philharmonic music director Michael Butterman about Angela Cheng's appearance next week.
Colorado Music Festival Chamber Orchestra
Michael Christie, conductor; Angela Cheng, piano
Franz Josef Haydn: Symphony No. 6 in D major (Morning)
Wolfgang Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K.503 (6/27/04)
Also, Charley talks with The Playground's Conrad Kehn about their Samuel Barber program at the Arvada Center tomorrow.

Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809): Symphony No. 6 in D major
(Le Matin--Morning)
I. Adagio--Allegro
II. Adagio--Andante
III. Menuet e Trio
IV. Finale: Allegro

``I was no sorcerer on any instrument,'' Haydn once admitted, ``but I knew the possibilities and effects of each.'' When Prince Paul Esterhazy hired Haydn in 1761, he also hired a number of excellent solo players, among them the violinist Luigi Tommasini, for whom Haydn was to compose a number of violin concertos. Thus Haydn borrowed elements of the baroque concerto grosso for his symphonies of the time, allowing a great amount of solo space for the new virtuosi to exhibit their prowess.
It was the Prince's idea that the new assistant conductor should display his prowess by composing symphonies dealing with the different times of the day, so Haydn's Symphonies Nos. 6-8 bear the subtitles Morning, Noon and Night.
Haydn was never too specific about the programmatic character of the Symphony No. 6 (Morning), but it's fairly easy to hear the sunrise in the opening Adagio and the songs of birds in the flute and oboe of the ensuing Allegro. Some have suggested that the second movement is meant to depict a singing lesson. As it takes place in the early morning, the students are only half-awake. The teacher--represented by the solo violin--vainly tries to arouse them, finally bringing in the support of a colleague--the solo cello.
Remarking on the baroque flavor of the third movement, H.C. Robbins Landon says it ``could be part of the unwritten seventh Brandenburg Concerto.'' The Trio of the Minuet features a dialogue between bassoon and double bass. The last movement has solo passages for violin, cello, flute and horns.
The Symphony is scored for flute, 2 oboes, bassoon, 2 horns, strings and continuo.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Piano Concerto No. 25 in C major, K.505
I. Allegro maestoso
II. Andante
III. (Allegretto)

Despite the moderate success of The Marriage of Figaro in the spring of 1786, Mozart still had no position at the Viennese court. He planned to seek his fortune in England, taking his wife Constanze with him and leaving his father to babysit the two children in Salzburg.
Mozart's father was not amused. On November 18, 1786, unaware that his youngest grandson Johann Thomas Leopold had died three days before, he wrote to his daughter: ``Your brother actually suggested that I should take charge of his two children, because he was proposing to undertake a journey through Germany to England....Not at all a bad arrangement! They could go off and travel--they might even die--or remain in England--and I should have to run off after them with the children....If he cares to do so, he will find my excuse very clear and instructive.'' The trip to England was abandoned.
By December 4, 1786, Mozart finished another piano concerto (K.503). He may have used it the very next day, or at one of the three other subscription concerts that season at Johann Trattner's Casino in Vienna, although no evidence of this has survived. In 1798, Mozart's widow had the concerto published with a dedication to Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia.
Quite a few critics refer to K.503 as Mozart's ``Jupiter'' Concerto, because it is in the same key and spirit as the symphony by that name. ``It is apt to strike one as rather frigid on first acquaintance,'' writes Eric Blom, ``but a closer study of it reveals a concentration of workmanship and a grandeur which make it the counterpart of the `Jupiter' Symphony among the concertos.'' Arthur Hutchings describes the work as ``Mozart's `Emperor' Concerto.''
Alfred Einstein writes: ``No other work of Mozart's has such dimensions, and the dimensions correspond to the power of the symphonic construction and the drastic nature of the modulations. In no other concerto does the relation between the soloist and the orchestra vary so constantly and so unpredictably.''
The score calls for solo piano, flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets and strings.