Thursday, March 25, 2010

Friday April 9, 2010

Charley talks to Longmont Symphony music director Robert Olson about their season finale tomorrow.
Giacomo Puccini: “Nessun dorma” from Act III of Turandot 3:24
Longmont Symphony Orchestra
Robert Olson, conductor; Paul Hartfield, tenor (Recorded 3/3/07)
Also, Longmont Symphony Orchestra
Robert Olson, conductor
Georges Enesco: Rumanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A major, Opus 11 12:49 (Recorded 10/6/07)
Paul Hindemith: Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber 21:34 (Recorded 3/3/07)
And, Charley talks with Resonance Women's Chorus conductor Sue Coffee about their upcoming concerts.
Joan Szymko: Always Coming Home
Resonance Women's Chorus/ Sue Coffee
Resonance 108 Track 3 5:21
In Addition, Charley anticipates Michelle Stanley's recital with Charles Lawson and Gary Moody at CSU on Monday.
Cherise D. Leiter: "Dawn Fantasy" (1st movement) from The Life in a Day
Michelle Stanley, flute & alto flute; Jeff LaQuatra, guitar; Yoriko Morita, cello
Centaur 2881 Track 9 5:32



Georges Enesco (1881-1955): Rumanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A major, Opus 11

Enesco once described himself as ``a savage, whom nothing could fully discipline, a staunch adept of independence, who accepted no constraint and did not recognize any school.'' He studied first at the Vienna Conservatory, and later at the Paris Conservatory. His teachers included Massenet and Fauré, and his own pupils included Dinu Lipatti and Yehudi Menuhin. Menuhin called him ``the one man to whom I owe everything.''
Despite his internationalism, he maintained ties with his native Rumania, serving as court violinist to the Queen of Rumania, conductor of the Bucharest Philharmonic and founder of the Enesco Prize for composition. He said Rumanian folk music ``is influenced not by the neighboring Slavs, but by the Indian and Egyptian folk songs introduced by the members of these remote races, now classed as gypsies, brought to Rumania as servants of the Roman conquerors. The deeply Oriental character of our own folk music derives from these sources and possesses a flavor as singular as it is beautiful.''
The two Rumanian Rhapsodies appeared in 1901. Both were introduced at a Pablo Casals concert in Paris on Feb 7, 1908 with Enesco conducting. A drinking song (I Have a Coin and I Want a Drink) and four other national melodies appear in No. 1, which S.W. Bennett describes as ``all jollity, from its opening `call' by clarinets and oboe through its chain of rousing dance motifs, and without ever losing its earthly folk quality, it achieves near the end a Dionysiac rapture.''

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963): Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber
I. Allegro
II. Turandot Scherzo: Moderato
III. Andantino
IV. March-Finale

In 1940, Hindemith settled permanently in the United States--``this land of limited impossibilities'' he called it. One of his earliest projects here was a collaboration with Léonide Massine on a ballet based on Carl Maria von Weber's music.
Composer and choreographer met in April in Buffalo, New York, where Massine's company danced to the Bacchanale from Wagner's Tannhäuser. According to its creator, the piece consisted of ``a series of weird hallucinatory images.'' The set, by Salvador Dali, included a black swan and an enormous black umbrella decorated with a skull. Hindemith found the entire enterprise ``quite simply stupid.''
By the end of the month, Hindemith reported to his publisher: ``I have broken off relations with Massine, for artistic reasons.'' Massine had objected to the music on Weber themes for being ``too personal.'' When Massine announced his intention to use Dali in the new ballet, Hindemith had had enough.
However, the music was not wasted. During August of 1943, he completed the score, calling it ``Symphonic Metamorphosis.'' It was first performed at Carnegie Hall on January 20, 1944 by Artur Rodzinski and the New York Philharmonic.
The Weber themes that Hindemith used are mostly found in a volume of four-hand piano music. The opening movement is based on an Allegro in A minor, No. 4 of Eight Pieces for Piano Four Hands, Opus 60. The second movement derives from a Chinese melody found in Rousseau's Dictionary of Music. Weber had employed it in his incidental music to Schiller's adaptation of Gozzi's play Turandot. The third movement comes from an Andantino in C minor, one of Weber's Six Pieces for Piano Four Hands, Opus 10. The Finale is based on the March in G minor, the seventh of the Eight Pieces, Opus 60.
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombonews, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings.
Copyright 2010, Charley Samson

Thursday April 8, 2010

Charley talks to cellist Ralph Kirshbaum and principal guest conductor Douglas Boyd about their Colorado Symphony concerts this weekend.
Johann Sebastian Bach: "Gigue" (6th movement) from Solo Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007
Ralph Kirshbaum, cello
Virgin 45086 CD1 Track 6 2:05
Also, Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Jeffrey Kahane, conductor
Hector Berlioz: “Love Scene” from Romeo and Juliet Op.17
Peter Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture (1/15-17/10)
And, Charley talks with flutist Cobus Du Toit about the Antero Winds concert in Westcliffe Sunday.
David Maslanka: 3rd movement ("Very Fast") from Wind Quintet No.3
Antero Winds (Cobus Du Toit, flute; Sarah Mellander Bierhaus, oboe; Jerome Fleg, clarinet; Megan Garrison, horn; Kaori Uno, bassoon)
KVOD Performance Studio (Recorded 3/7/10 by Martin Skavish)



Program Notes by Charley Samson, copyright 2010.

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): Dramatic Symphony, Romeo and Juliet, Opus 17
I. Love Scene

``If you ask which of my works I prefer,'' Berlioz once said, ``my answer is that of most artists: the love scene in Romeo and Juliet.''
As early as 1827, Berlioz had seen the Irish actress Harriet Smithson in Charles Kemble's Shakespeare productions in Paris. ``This sudden and unexpected revelation of Shakespeare overwhelmed me,'' he wrote. ``The lightning-flash of his genius revealed the whole heaven of art to me, illuminating its remotest depths in a single flash.''
Then, in December, 1838, the violinist Niccolo Paganini--perhaps acting as intermediary for the publisher Armand Bertin--sent Berlioz 20,000 francs, with a note: ``Since the death of Beethoven, none but Berlioz has been able to make him live again.''
Berlioz was stunned. ``Paganini had given me money that I might write music,'' he said, ``and write it I did. I hit upon the idea of a symphony with choruses, vocal solos, and choral recitatives, on the sublime and ever-novel theme of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I worked for seven months at my symphony, not leaving off for more than three or four days out of every thirty on any pretense whatsoever.'' The work was finished on September 8, 1839.
The first performance of Romeo and Juliet took place at the Paris Conservatory on November 24, 1839. Berlioz conducted an orchestra of 160 members and a chorus of 98. Richard Wagner was in the audience, and later recalled, ``This was a wholly new world for me...the grandeur and masterly execution of the orchestral part almost overwhelmed me....I was simply all ears for things of which till then I never dreamt, and which I felt I must realize....At that time, I felt almost like a little schoolboy by the side of Berlioz.''
The scenes involving Romeo and Juliet are entrusted to the orchestra alone. In his preface to the score, Berlioz explained: ``This is a symphony and not an opera. In addition, since duets of this kind have been treated vocally a thousand times and by the greatest masters, it was both prudent and interesting to try another means of expression. It is also because the very sublimity of this love made it so dangerous for the musician to depict, that I needed more latitude for my imagination than the definite meanings of a text would have allowed, and therefore I had recourse to the language of instruments which, in this case, is richer, more varied, less precise and, in its very vagueness, incomparably more powerful.''
One of Berlioz's biographers wrote of the Love Scene, ``Over the whole of the music, with its soft enchanting melodies, there lies a delicate bloom. It is music of a love untouched by eroticism; it wounds the heart as any contemplation of the pure and undefiled always must.''
The work is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, ophicleide (tuba), timpani, ``at least 15 first violins, at least 15 second violins, at least 10 violas, at least 11 cellos, and at least 7 double basses.''

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893): Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture

``I shall be thinking of something new and big to write,'' Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck. ``I want to find an operatic subject that will be deep and exciting. What would you say to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? The richness of that tragedy is fathomless.''
It was composer Mily Balakirev who suggested that Tchaikovsky write not an opera but a symphonic overture on the subject. ``Arm yourself with galoshes and a walking-stick,'' he advised, ``and set out for a walk along the boulevards, starting with the Nikitsky: let yourself be steeped in your plan, and I am sure that by the time you reach the Sretensky Boulevard some theme or episode will have come to you.''
The Overture occupied Tchaikovsky for most of October and November of 1869. He sent the main themes off to Balakirev, who complained that the music depicting Friar Laurence resembled ``the character of Haydn's quartet themes, the genius of petty bourgeois music, awakening a strong thirst for beer.'' What was wanted, in Balakirev's opinion, was something ``on the line of Liszt's chorales.''
Balakirev also commented on the love theme: ``I often play it, and would like to hug you for it. It has the sweetness of love, its tenderness, its longing....I have only one thing to say against this theme: It does not sufficiently express a mystic, inward, spiritual love, but rather a fantastic passionate glow that has hardly any nuance of Italian sentiment. Romeo and Juliet were not Persian lovers, but Europeans.'' Overall, he liked the piece: ``It is the first of your compositions that contains so many beautiful things one does not hesitate to pronounce it good as a whole.'' When Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov saw the full score in January, Tchaikovsky recalled, ``my Overture pleased them very much and it also pleases me.''
It was a different story when Nikolai Rubinstein conducted the first performance of Romeo and Juliet at a concert of the Russian Musical Society in Moscow on March 16, 1870. ``It had no success at all,'' Tchaikovsky complained. ``I longed for sympathy and recognition, but the Overture was wholly ignored. After the concert, a crowd of us supped at Gurin's Restaurant, and nobody spoke so much as a word to me about it!''
Tchaikovsky made the first revision of the score in 1870. When the work was introduced in St. Petersburg in 1872, Cesar Cui wrote: ``The composition is a most talented one. Its special merit lies in the excellence of its themes.'' Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky made another revision of the music in 1880.
``The characterization of the music is very good,'' writes biographer Edwin Evans, ``in fact the entire work is based upon characterization rather than action. Apart from the opening theme which typifies Friar Laurence, the work has two principal contrasted movements, the one representing the feud of the Montagues and the Capulets, and naturally all fire and animation, and the other the love-stricken pair, all sweetness and romance. It closes in a manner suggesting a reference to the final tragic scene.''
The score calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, English horn, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, harp and strings.

Wednesday April 7, 2010

Colorado Music Festival Orchestra
Michael Christie, conductor; Margaret Lattimore, mezzo-soprano; Seryung Choi, soprano; CMF Chorus/ Timothy Krueger
Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor (Resurrection) (Recorded 8/3/07 by Michael Quam)
Also, Ryan Warner talks with Boulder Philharmonic concertmaster Gregory Walker about playing his father's Violin Concerto.
George Walker: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
Gregory Walker, violin; Sinfonia Varsovia/ Ian Hobson
Troy 1178 1-3 20:33
And, Charley anticipates the Boulder Philharmonic Chamber Players concert at the Arvada Center tomorrow.
Astor Piazzolla (arr. José Bragato): Oblivion, La Muerte del Angel
Boulder Philharmonic Chamber Players (Michael Butterman, piano; Jennifer Carsillo, violin; Charles Lee, cello; Janet Braccio, page-turner on Oblivion)
KVOD Performance Studio: recorded 9/24/09 by Martin Skavish.


Program Notes by Charley Samson, copyright 2010.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911): Symphony No. 2 in C minor (Resurrection)
I. Allegro Maestoso. Mit durchaus ernstem feierlichem Ausdruck
II. Andante moderato. Sehr gemächlich
III. Scherzo: In ruhig fliessender Bewegung
IV. Urlicht (Primal Light): Sehr feierlich aber schlicht; Choral-mässig
V. Im Tempo des Scherzos. Wild herausfahrend.

``It is really inadequate for me to call it a symphony,'' Mahler said of his Second, ``for in no respect does it retain the traditional form. But to write a symphony means to me to construct a world with all the tools of the available techniques: the ever-new and ever-changing content determines its own form.''
Mahler had been struggling with the work since 1888. The opening movement was once a tone poem titled Totenfeier (Funeral Rite). The second and third movements were ready by 1893. The fourth movement was a setting of Urlicht (Primal Light) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), an anthology of poems in German folk style that inspired him for some twenty years. He knew he wanted some kind of choral finale, along the lines of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, but couldn't decide on a text.
Then on March 28, 1894 there was a memorial service for Mahler's benefactor Hans von Bülow. ``The mood in which I sat there and thought of the departed one,'' he later recalled, ``was fully in the spirit of the work which then constantly occupied my mind. Then the chorus near the organ intoned the Klopstock chorale, Aufersteh'n! (Resurrection). It struck me like a thunderbolt and everything stood clear and vivid before my soul.'' The Klopstock ode would be the basis of the Second Symphony's finale, though Mahler could not refrain from deleting some lines and adding others of his own invention.
Richard Strauss conducted a performance of the first three movements on March 4, 1895 in Berlin. The first complete performance took place on December 13, 1895, with Mahler conducting the Berlin Philharmonic and Singakademie. Bruno Walter was there and reported ``the effect of an elemental event. I shall never forget my deep emotion and the ecstasy of the audience as well as the performers.''
Mahler at various times made elaborate programs for the Second Symphony, only to abandon them later. Nevertheless, he regarded the opening movement--once titled Funeral Rite--as an outgrowth of the First Symphony. ``It is the hero of my First Symphony whom I bear to the grave,'' he said. ``It poses the great question: To what purpose have you lived? To what purpose have you suffered? Has it all been only a huge, frightful joke? We must all somehow answer these questions, if we are to continue living, yes, if we are to go on to die. Anyone who has heard this question must answer, and this answer I give in the last movement.'' Reminiscences of Beethoven's Ninth dominate the movement, from the introduction's string tremolos to the anticipations of the choral finale in the concluding coda.
Mahler regarded the second and third movements as interludes, or memories of the departed from the first movement. The second movement features a delicate waltz melody as the recurring refrain in a free rondo. ``Suddenly,'' Mahler said, ``the picture of a happy hour long, long past, arises in your mind like a ray of sun undimmed by anything--and you can almost forget what has just happened.''
The third movement is an orchestral treatment of the Wunderhorn song about St. Anthony preaching to the fishes, who listen attentively then return to their old carnal ways. The humor of the beginning becomes grotesque as the music progresses. Mahler said he was after ``the ceaseless motion, the restless, senseless bustle of daily activity (which) may strike you with horror, as if you were watching a whirling crowd of dancers in a brightly lighted ballroom--watching them from the darkness outside and from such a great distance that you cannot hear the music. Then life can seem meaningless, a gruesome, ghostly spectacle, from which you may recoil with a cry of disgust!''
The fourth movement, with its alto solo singing Urlicht from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, functions as a slow introduction to the finale. It is the perfect foil to the upheavals that follow.
After the initial outburst of the full orchestra, the finale dies down to silence, interrupted by horn fanfares. For Mahler, this was ``the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness'' (Isaiah, XL, 3). One of his programs mentions ``the Last Judgment is at hand and the horror of the day of days has broken forth. The earth quakes, the graves burst open, and the dead arise and stream on in endless procession. The great and the little ones of the earth--kings and beggars, righteous and godless--all press on; the cry for mercy and forgiveness strikes fearfully on our ears. The wailing rises higher--our senses desert us; consciousness dies at the approach of the eternal spirit. The Great Summons is heard--the trumpets of the apocalypse ring out; in the eerie silence that follows, we can just catch the distant, barely audible song of the nightingale, a last tremulous echo of earthly life! A chorus of saints and heavenly beings softly break forth: `Thou shalt arise, surely thou shalt arise.' Then appears the glory of God! A wondrous, soft light penetrates us to the heart--all is holy calm! And behold--it is no judgment. There are no sinners, no just. None is great, none is small. There is no punishment and no reward. An overwhelming love lightens our being. We know and are.''
The chorus intones the Klopstock Ode, with references to the opening movement. The movement ends with the rising ``Resurrection'' motive, first in the basses, then passing through the other sections of chorus and orchestra.

IV. Urlicht (Primal Light)
O Röschen rot!
Der Mensch liegt in grösster Not,
Der Mensch liegt in grösster Pein
Ja lieber möcht ich im Himmel sein.
Da kam ich auf einen breiten Weg,
Da kam ein Englein und wollt' mich abweisen.
Ach nein? Ich liess mich nicht abweisen.
Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott!
Der liebe Gott wird mir ein Lichtchen geben,
Wird leuchten mir in das ewig selig' Leben!

(O Rosebud red!
Man lies in greatest need,
Man lies in greatest pain.
I'd rather wished I were in heaven.
Then I came upon a broad road;
There came a little angel who wanted me to turn back.
Ah no, I would not be turned back.
I am of God and wish to return to God!
The dear God will give me a light,
Will light my way into eternal blissful life!)


V. Aufersteh'n (Resurrection)

Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n wirst du
Mein Staub, nach kurzer Ruh!
Unsterblich Leben
Wird, der dich rief, dir geben?

(Thou shalt arise, yea, arise
My dust, from brief repose!
Immortal life,
Shall He, who called thee, give thee?)

Wieder aufzublüh'n, wirst du gesät!
Der Herr der Ernte geht
Und sammelt Garben
Uns ein, die starben.

(Again to blossom thou art sown!
The Lord of the Harvest goes forth
Collecting sheaves,
We who have died.)

O glaube, mein Herz, es geht dir nichts verloren.
Dein ist, ja dein, was du gesehnt
Dein, was du geliebt, was du gestritten!
O glaube: du warst nicht umsonst geboren
Has nicht umsonst geliebt, gelitten.

(Have faith, my heart, for naught is lost to thee.
Thine, yes, thine is all you yearned for
Thine what you loved and what you fought for
Believe: thou wast not born in vain
Thou didst not live nor suffer in vain.)

Was enstanden ist, das muss vergehen
Was vergangen, auferstehen!
Hör auf zu beben!
Bereite dich zu leben!

(All that arose must perish
All that perished, rise again!
Cease thy trembling!
Prepare thyself to live!)

O Schmerz, du Alldurchdringer
Dir bin ich entrungen!
O Tod, du Allbezwinger,
Nun bist du bezwungen!

(O Pain all-pervading
I have escaped thee!
O Death, thou all-subduer,
Thou art now subdued!)

Mit Flügeln die ich mir errungen
In Liebesstreben
Werd' ich entschweben zum Licht,
Zu dem kein Aug' gedrungen.

(With wings which I have won
In ardent love's endeavor
I shall soar to light
Never pierced by eyes.)

Sterben werd' ich um zu leben!
Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n wirst du,
Mein Herz in einem Nu
Was du geschlagen
Zu gott wird es dich tragen.

(I shall die in order to live again.
Thou shall arise, yea, arise,
My heart heart in an instant!
What you have conquered
To God it will carry you.)

The score calls for solo soprano, solo alto, 4 flutes, 4 piccolos, 4 oboes, 2 English horns, 5 clarinets, bass clarinet, 4 bassoons, 2 contrabassoons, 10 horns, 8 trumpets, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 harps, organ, strings and chorus.
Copyright 2010, Charley Samson

Tuesday April 6, 2010


Friends of Chamber Music

Julia Fischer, violin; Milana Chernyavska, piano

Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Sonata No.8 in G major, Op.30 No.3

Bohuslav Martinů: Violin Sonata No.3, H 303
Peter Tchaikovsky: Melody in E flat major, Op.42 No.3 from
Souvenir of a Beloved Place (5/6/09)
Also, Charley anticipates Katie Mahan's appearance with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic this weekend.
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Etudes-Tableaux in C major, Op.33 No.2 & in D minor, Op.33, No.4
Katie Mahan, piano


Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Violin Sonata No. 8 in G major,
Opus 30 No. 3
Allegro assai
Tempo di Minuetto
Allegro vivace

By 1802 Beethoven was fully aware of his hearing loss and began consulting physicians. Dr. Vering had promised ``an improvement if no complete cure,'' but delivered neither. Dr. Schmidt recommended moving to someplace quiet. Accordingly, in the autumn Beethoven took lodgings in rural Heiligenstadt.
There he wrote a remarkable letter, now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, whose tone is part will, part suicide note, and part hymn to his determination to compose in spite of his malady. ``I almost reached the point of putting an end to my life--only art it was that held me back, ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt called upon to produce, and so I endured this wretched existence.''
During this time Beethoven wrote his Second Symphony, three piano sonatas (Op.31) and three violin sonatas (Op.30). The latter were published the next year with a dedication to Tsar Alexander I of Russia. The third of the set is sometimes called ``the little G major'' sonata, to distinguish it from the Opus 96 Violin Sonata in the same key.
``The first and last movements are gay and brilliantly effective,'' writes John N. Burke, ``the middle one, by contrast, delicate and thinly scored.'' The opening fugure in the first movement, he says, ``appearing in many guises, roaring in the bass, or whispering in the treble, is characteristic of points of excitement, such as flashing scales, or the passage of driving trills which opens the development.'' Burke calls the Minuet ``a movement of transparent simplicity,'' and the last movement ``headlong and sparkling, giving the violinist plentiful opportunity to show his sleight of hand.''
Copyright 2010, Charley Samson

Monday April 5, 2010

Strings in the Mountains Music Festival
Tylman Susato: Renaissance Dances
Alpen Brass (7/2/04)
Ludwig van Beethoven: Horn Sonata in F major, Op.17
William VerMeulen, horn; Katherine Collier, piano (7/14/04)
Josef Suk: Piano Quartet in A minor, Op.1
Cary Lewis, piano; Solomiya Ivakhiv, violin; Yizhak Schotten, viola; Amit Peled, cello (7/10/04)
Also, Charley talks with Resonance Women's Chorus conductor Sue Coffee about their upcoming concerts.
Charles Baker: All the Rivers
Resonance Women's Chorus/ Sue Coffee
Resonance 108 Track 1 2:24

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Saturday April 3, 2010

Charley talks with violinist Karen Gomyo about her appearance with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra tonight.
Johann Sebastian Bach: "Preludio" (1st movement) from Solo Violin Partita No.3 in E major, BWV 1006 3:36
Astor Piazzolla: Tango Etude No.3 3:21
Karen Gomyo, violin
KVOD Performance Studio 3/31/10 MS
Also, Richard Toensing: Responsoria, Book III
Choir of the Church of Saint Luke in the Fields/ David Shuler
North/South 1022 CD3 40:50

Friday April 2, 2010

Richard Toensing: Responsoria, Book II
Choir of the Church of Saint Luke in the Fields/ David Shuler
North/South 1022 CD2 50:42
Also, Charley talks with violinist Karen Gomyo about her appearances with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra this weekend.

Thursday April 1, 2010

Charley talks with violinist Karen Gomyo about her appearances with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra tomorrow and Saturday.
Johann Sebastian Bach: "Preludio" (1st movement) from Solo Violin Partita No.3 in E major, BWV 1006 3:36
Astor Piazzolla: Tango Etude No.3 3:21
Karen Gomyo, violin
KVOD Performance Studio: recorded 3/31/10 by Martin Skavish.
Also, Richard Toensing: Responsoria, Book I
Choir of the Church of Saint Luke in the Fields/ David Shuler
North/South 1022 CD1 36:11
And, Charley notes the Curious Theatre's production of Michael Holliger's backstage drama, "Opus."
Ludwig van Beethoven: "Allegro molto vivace" (2nd movement) & "Allegro moderato" (3rd movement) from String Quartet No.14 in C sharp minor, Op.131
Takács Quartet
Decca 2875 CD1 6-7 3:39

Wednesday March 31, 2010

Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Jeffrey Kahane, conductor; Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano
Hector Berlioz: Beatrice and Benedict Overture
Peter Lieberson: Neruda Songs (1/15-17/10)
Also, Charley anticipates the recital Saturday by violist Matthew Dane and guitarist Jonathan Leathwood at the Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts.

Franz Schubert: "Allegro moderato" (1st movement) from Arpeggione Sonata in A minor, D.821

Matthew Dane, viola; Jonathan Leathwood, guitar 11:50
KVOD Performance Studio 3/24/10 MS


Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): Overture to Beatrice and Benedict

Berlioz first got the idea of setting Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing while on vacation in Italy in 1833. He didn't do much with the idea until 1860, when the Baden-Baden summer music festival commissioned an opera. Suffering from chronic intestinal neuralgia, Berlioz set to work in earnest, titling the piece Beatrice and Benedict, after the principal characters in the play. ``I have been working so hard,'' he told his son, ``that the distraction of actually composing helps to keep me well. I can barely keep up with the music of my little opera, so fast do the pieces come to me; each one hurries after the next; sometimes I start one before the other is finished.''
By February, 1862, the opera was finished. Berlioz conducted the first performance on August 9 of that year in Baden-Baden. During rehearsals he described the work as ``a caprice written with the point of a needle, and it requires an extremely delicate performance.''
The Overture was composed last, and incorporates several themes from the opera proper, notably the Duettino from the last act and Beatrice's musing song as Benedict goes off to war. Biographer Jacques Barzun says the Overture ``establishes the recurring contrast between lively coquetry and gentle melancholy--the melancholy of humor. The instrumentation is filigree work, tonal pointillism which acts upon us like champagne and prepares us for a drama that occurs in fantasy.''
The score calls for piccolo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, cornet, 3 trombone, timpani and strings.

Tuesday March 30, 2010

Friends of Chamber Music
Miró String Quartet; Shai Wosner, piano
Johannes Brahms: Piano Quintet in F minor, Op.34 (2/18/09)
Also, Charley anticipates the recital by the Mendelssohn Trio (Theodor Lichtmann, piano; Barbara Thiem, cello; Ron FranÇois, violin) Friday at DU's Lamont School of Music.
Felix Draeseke: Barcarole in A minor, Op.11
Barbara Thiem, cello; Wolfgang Müller-Steinbach, piano
AK/Coburg 2 Track 10 7:32
And, Charley talks with Denver Young Artists Orchestra alumna Emily Levin.
Franz Liszt (arr. Henriette Renie): The Nightingale
Emily Levin, harp
KVOD Performance Studio 3/17/10 MS

Monday March 29, 2010

Charley talks with Boulder Chamber Orchestra music director Bahman Saless about Lindsay Deutsch's appearance this weekend.

Boulder Chamber Orchestra

Bahman Saless, conductor; Lindsay Deutsch, violin 

Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto No. 2 in G minor (Summer) from The Four Seasons, Op.8

Astor Piazzolla: "Spring," "Winter" & "Autumn" from Four Seasons in Buenos Aires (arr. Leonid Desyatnikov) 1/27/08
Also, Charley anticipates Margaret McDonald's "Double Duty: The life of a collaborative pianist" recital tomorrow at CU Boulder.
Franz Schubert: "Andante" (2nd movement) & "Scherzo: Allegro vivace" (3rd movement) from Grand Duo in C major, D.812
Margaret McDonald, David Korevaar, piano
CU Boulder Faculty Recital (11/2/06)


Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741): The Four Seasons, Opus 8
Concerto No. 1 in E major (Spring)
I. Allegro
II. Largo
III. Allegro

The Four Seasons is the collective title for the first four concertos of a larger collection of twelve concertos titled The Test of Harmony and Invention (Il Cimento dell'Armonia e dell'Inventione), published in Amsterdam in 1725. Vivaldi dedicated the entire set to the Bohemian Count Wenzeslaus von Morzin, a cousin of another Count von Morzin who would be employing Haydn thirty years later.
With an effusion typical of the eighteenth century, Vivaldi wrote: ``I have decided to have this volume printed in order to lay it most humbly at Your Highness's feet. I beg of you not to be surprised if among these few and feeble concertos Your Highness should find the Four Seasons, which, with your noble bounty, Your Highness has for so long regarded with indulgence.''
Vivaldi went to extraordinary lengths to insure the perception of The Four Seasons as program music. Not only did he label each concerto as a specific season, but he also provided sonnets describing the events depicted in each. Further, he titled specific events in the score itself.
Accordingly, the following handy chart, distilled from Vivaldi's own pronouncements, indicates the program of each movement of each concerto:
Concerto No. 1 (Spring)
I.: ``Song of the Birds,'' ``The Brooks Flow,'' ``Thunderclaps,'' and the return of the birds.
II.: ``The Sleeping Goatherd,'' ``Murmuring of Boughs and Grasses'' and ``The Barking Dog.''
III.: ``Pastoral Dance'' of the nymphs and shepherds.

Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992): Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (Four Seasons in Buenos Aires) [arr. Leonid Desyatnikov]
I. Primavera Porteña (Spring): Juguetón
III. Otono Porteña (Autumn): Lentón
IV. Invierno Porteña (Winter): Lento y dramático

Born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Piazzolla is known as “the king of the tango” for rescuing a dance tradition many considered moribund after the death of Carlos Gardel in 1935. Piazzolla invented a “nuevo tango” (new tango) with expanded harmonic language from American jazz and European concert music. Traditionalists were outraged (there were even death threats), but eventually Piazzolla’s role as the saviour of a great tradition was conceded even by his critics.
Piazzolla’s family moved to New York when Astor was a child. When the legendary Gardel came to the United States in the 1930s, he hired Piazzolla, then barely a teenager. When Piazzolla returned to Argentina in 1937, Anibal Troilo hired him to write arrangements and play the bandoneón, a hybrid instrument related to the concertina and the accordion. He studied with Alberto Ginastera in Argentina and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Both encouraged his composition of concert works, but advised him not to forsake the tango. He didn’t, producing a body of works not only for the traditional tango ensemble (orquesta típica) of violin, guitar, piano, bass and bandoneón, but also for solo and duo guitars, string quartet, big band and symphony orchestra.
In 1965 Piazzolla began The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, a kind of homage to both the tango and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. He finished it five years later. Originally written for his quintet, the work has seen numerous arrangements, including the present version for violin and string orchestra by Leonid Desyatnikov.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Friday March 26, 2010

Colorado College Summer Music Festival
Camille Saint Saëns: Violin Sonata No.1 in D minor, Op. 75
Scott Yoo, violin; Susan Grace, piano 21:54 6/29/08)
Jeffrey Rathbun: Episodes for Chamber Ensemble

Mark Fewer and Stefan Hersh, violins; Virginia Barron, viola; Bion Tsang, cello; Elizabeth Mann, flute; Jeffrey Rathbun, oboe; Bil Jackson, clarinet; Michael Kroth, bassoon; Stewart Rose, horn; Susan Grace, piano; Courtney Hershey Bress, harp (6/25/08) 14:39
Also, Charley talks with Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra conductor Cynthia Katsarelis and violinist Edward Dusinberre about their concert tomorrow.
Johannes Brahms: "Andante tranquillo" (2nd movement) from Violin Sonata No.2 in A major, Op.100
CU Boulder Faculty Recital (11/2/06)
And, Charley talks with ice sculptor Tim Linhart about the concert of ice instruments at the Crystal Grotto at Beaver Creak Sunday.
Johann Sebastian Bach: Prelude from Cello Suite No.1 in G major, BWV 1007
NCA 1:40

Thursday March 25, 2010

Charley talks with Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra conductor Cynthia Katsarelis and violinist Edward Dusinberre about their concert Saturday.
Johannes Brahms: "Allegretto grazioso" (3rd movement) from Violin Sonata No.2 in A major, Op.100
CU Boulder Faculty Recital (11/2/06)
Also, Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Edward Gardner, conductor

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 in A major, Opus 92 (1/8-9/10))
And, Charley anticipates Julia Tobiska's recital with Brendan Daly and Ruth Ann McDonald tomorrow.
Gioachino Rossini: Duet, "Dunque io son" from Act II of The Barber of Seville
Ted Federle, baritone; Julia Tobiska, mezzo-soprano; Steven Aguiló-Arbues, pianist
Opera Colorado Outreach Ensemble
KVOD Performance Studio 1/19/10 MS


Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 7 in A major, Opus 92
I. Poco sostenuto; Vivace
II. Allegretto
III. Presto; Assai meno presto
IV. Allegro con brio

Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was completed in the late spring or early summer of 1812. It wasn't performed publicly until December 8, 1813 at a concert in Vienna to benefit wounded Austrian and Bavarian soldiers. Also on the program was Beethoven's Wellington's Victory.
Beethoven himself conducted. The composer Ludwig Spohr described the scene: ``The execution was quite masterly, despite the uncertain and often ridiculous conducting of Beethoven....It is a sad misfortune for anyone to be deaf; how then should a musician endure it without despair? Beethoven's almost continual melancholy was no longer a riddle to me.''
A review of the concert reported that the Symphony ``deserved the loud applause and the exceptionally good performance it received....This symphony...is the richest melodically and the most pleasing and comprehensible of all Beethoven symphonies.'' Beethoven regarded the Seventh as ``among my best works.''
Not everyone shared Beethoven's opinion. After a performance in Leipzig, Clara Schumann's father suggested that the music could only have been written by someone who was very, very drunk. When the Seventh was played before the Congress of Vienna in 1814, Carl Maria von Weber remarked that Beethoven was ``now quite ripe for the madhouse.'' Twelve years later, Weber conducted the London Philharmonic's performance of the Beethoven Seventh. Apparently Weber had changed his mind about the piece.
It was Wagner who dubbed the Seventh ``the apotheosis of the dance, the dance in its highest condition, the happiest realization of the movements of the body in ideal form.'' He wrote: ``If anyone plays the Seventh, tables and benches, cans and cups, the grandmother, the blind and the lame, aye, the children in the cradle, fall to dancing!'' Wagner once demonstrated his theory by dancing to the Seventh Symphony, accompanied by Franz Liszt at the piano.
``It would require more than a technical yardstick to measure the true proportion of this Symphony--the sense of immensity which it conveys,'' writes John N. Burk. ``Beethoven seems to have built up this impression by willfully driving a single rhythmic figure through each movement, until the music attains (particularly in the body of the first movement, and in the Finale) a swift propulsion, an effect of cumulative growth which is akin to extraordinary size.''
After a long introduction, the opening movement launches into a persistent rhythmic propulsion that Ernest Walker found virtually unparalleled elsewhere. The second movement, according to Marion M. Scott, is ``marvelous...full of melancholy beauty.'' Beethoven's biographer Alexander Thayer says the trio of the third movement is based on an Austrian pilgrims' hymn. In the Finale, George Grove discovered ``a vein of rough, hard, personal boisterousness, the same feeling which inspired the strange jests, puns and nicknames which abound in his letters.''
There is a story about Beethoven wandering around the park after the 1814 performance of the Seventh. He stopped to buy cherries from two young maids, who said: ``There is no charge to you. We were at the concert and heard your beautiful music!''
The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.

Wednesday March 24, 2010

Charley anticipates the Veronika String Quartet's appearance at the Steam Plant Theater in Salida this Sunday.
Franz Schubert: Quartettsatz in C minor, D.703
Veronika String Quartet (Veronika Afanassieva, Karine Garibova, violins, Ekaterina Dobrotvorskaia, viola; Mary Artmann, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 102308 MS
Also, Colorado Music Festival Chamber Orchestra
Michael Christie, conductor
Schubert: Symphony No. 6 in C major, D. 589 (Little) 37:30 (7/22/07)
And, Charley anticipates David Korevaar's appearance with the Littleton Symphony this Friday.
Frédéric Chopin: Etude in B minor, Op.25 No. 10 & Etude in A minor, Op.25 No. 11 (Winter Wind)
David Korevaar, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 062408 MS


Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Symphony No. 6 in C major, D.589 (Little)
I. Adagio; Allegro vivace
II. Andante
III. Scherzo: Presto
IV. Allegro moderato

The Sixth Symphony is called the ``Little'' C major Symphony to distinguish it from Schubert's ``Great'' C major Symphony (No. 9, D.944). The earlier work was finished in February of 1818 and probably performed shortly thereafter by an amateur orchestra that met twice a week at Otto Hatwig's house in Vienna. According to Schubert's friend Leopold Sonnleithner, the orchestra's members included ``merchants, tradesmen or minor officials.'' They had practised enough to handle most Mozart and Haydn symphonies, as well as the first two symphonies of Beethoven. One Josef Prohaska was conductor; Schubert played viola.
When Schubert offered his Great C major Symphony to the Society of the Friends of Music in 1828, the Society's orchestra ``provisionally put it aside because of its length and difficulty'' after only one rehearsal. Schubert suggested that they play his earlier C major Symphony instead.
When Schubert died later that same year, a memorial concert was planned by these same Friends of Music. Again the Great C major Symphony was rejected in favor of the Little C major Symphony. Alluding to the earlier work's debt to Beethoven, one critic wrote that it ``certainly justified expectations, for although it is written almost throughout in the manner of a master highly esteemed by the young composer, yet that master himself would have had no cause to be ashamed to rank it among his own works.''
Indeed, most commentators have detected Beethoven's influence in this symphony, especially in the third movement. Alfred Einstein says that the beginning of the movement is ``suggestive of Beethoven,'' and that the first movement ``breathes an atmosphere of almost completely unruffled cheerfulness in the interplay of its themes.'' He calls the second movement ``delicately constructed...playful.'' Einstein continues: ``The Finale is playful and `sociable,' with a graceful main theme, which Schubert loses sight of for a long time in the spirit of a Rondo. The movement is...full of the most carefree Schubertian fancies.''

Tuesday March 23, 2010


Friends of Chamber Music

Julia Fischer, violin; Milana Chernyavska, piano

Wolfgang Mozart: Violin Sonata in C major, K.296

Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Sonata No.1 in F minor, Op.80 (5/6/09)
Also, Charley talks with Niwot Timberline Symphony conductor Devon Patrick Hughes and pianist Stephen Fiess about their concert Friday.
Frédéric Chopin: Etude in A flat major, Op.25 No.1 (Aeolian Harp)
Stephen Fiess: "Calm at Sea" from Lorelei Suite. Op.2
Stephen Fiess, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 3/16/10 MS

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Violin Sonata in C major, K.296
I. Allegro vivace
II. Andante sostenuto
III. Rondo: Allegro

Mozart wrote K.296 in Mannheim for his fifteen-year-old pupil, Theresa Pierron Serrarius. As he complained of his “leisurely” attempts to finish the flute pieces commissioned by the Dutchman De Jean, he wrote to his father: “Hence as diversion I compose something else, such as duets for clavier and violin.” He finished the sonata on March 3, 1778.
Two years later the C major Sonata and the Violin Sonatas, K.376-380 were published in Vienna as Opus 2, with a dedication to Josepha von Aurnhammer, another of Mozart’s pupils. This group of sonatas was reviewed in Cramer’s Musical Magazine: “These sonatas are the only ones of this kind. Rich in new ideas and in evidence of the great musical genius of their author. Very brilliant and suited to the instrument. At the same time the accompaniment of the violin is so artfully combined with the clavier part that both instruments are kept constantly on the alert; so that these sonatas require just as skillful a player on the violin as on the clavier.”
In The Compleat Mozart, Marius Flothuis writes of K.296: “The first movement opens with vigor and élan, very much in keeping with its bright C-major tonality, and retains that mood throughout. The Andante is tender and dreamlike.” The second movement resembles an aria by Johann Christian Bach, which cannot be accurately dated and therefore we don’t know who borrowed the theme from whom. Mozart and the “London” Bach had known each other since Mozart’s child prodigy days. The end of the third movement recalls the finale of the Flute-Harp Concerto (K.299), which Mozart finished a month later in Paris.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953): Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Opus 80
I. Andante assai
II. Allegro brusco
III. Andante
IV. Allegrissimo

During the summer in 1938, while listening to Handel's music, Prokofiev sketched his F minor Violin Sonata. He didn't finish it until the summer of 1946, some two years after the D major Sonata, Op.94. Nevertheless, the F minor was designated ``No. 1,'' as it was begun first.
Prokofiev played through the completed work for David Oistrakh, who recalled: ``It seemed to me that on this occasion he played somehow with great restraint, even timidly. Even so, the music itself made an enormous impression--one had the feeling of being present at a very great and significant event. Nothing written for the violin in many decades--anywhere in the world--could equal this piece in beauty and depth. I can make that statement without the slightest exaggeration.''
The work is dedicated to Oistrakh, who gave the first performance on October 23, 1946 in the Small Hall of the Moscow Conservatory with pianist Lev Oborin. Nikolai Miaskovsky noted in his diary: ``Heard Prokofiev's new violin sonata in its entirety-a work of genius (Oistrakh's playing was inspired).'' The Sonata was hailed by Pravda, which noted the ``Russian national spirit'' and ``stern, epic grandeur'' in the work. The next year it was awarded the Stalin Prize.
``In mood it is more serious than the Second,'' Prokofiev said of the First Sonata. ``The first movement...is severe in character and is a kind of extended introduction to the second movement, a sonata allegro, which is vigorous and turbulent, but has a broad second theme. The third movement is slow, gentle, and tender. The finale is fast and written in complicated rhythm.''

Monday March 22, 2010

National Repertory Orchestra
JoAnn Falletta, conductor
Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op.68 41:05 (6/27/07)
Also, Charley anticipates Katie Mahan's appearance with the Denver Philharmonic this Friday.
Franz Schubert: Impromptu No.2 in E flat major, Op.90 & Impromptu No.3 in G flat major, Op.90
Katie Mahan, piano
katiemahan@comcast. net
And, Charley talks with Niwot Timberline Symphony conductor Devon Patrick Hughes about their concert Friday.

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.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Friday March 19, 2010

Charley talks with Barbara Hamilton Primus and Paul Primus about the Colorado Chamber Players Bach concerts this weekend.
Johann Sebastian Bach: Contrapuncti 1 & 11 from The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080 7:34
Colorao Chamber Players (Paul Primus and David Waldman, violins; Barbara Hamilton Primus, viola; Judith McIntyre, cello)
Johann Sebastian Bach (arr.Dmitry Sitkovetsky): Aria and Variations 8, 11 & 25 from Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 10:15
Colorao Chamber Players (Paul Primus, violin; Barbara Hamilton Primus, viola; Judith McIntyre, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 3/17/10 MS
Also, Colorado College Summer Music Festival
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Romance in A Major, Waltz in A Major

Anne Epperson, John Novacek, Susan Grace (6/29/08) 4:59 + 2:20
Jacob Druckman: Valentine

Susan Cahill, bass (6/25/08) 10:14
Dmitri Shostakovich: 5 Pieces for Two Violins & Piano

Mark Fewer and Jonathan Crow, violins; John Novacek, piano 6/29/08) 11:34
And, Charley anticipates the St. Martin's Chamber Choir concerts with the Colorado Chorale this weekend.
Wolfgang Mozart: Motet, "God Is Our Refuge," K.20
St. Martin's Chamber Choir/ Timothy Krueger
Cygnus 12 Track 1 1:01
In Addition, Charley anticipates Anne Guzzo's new composition on the Telling Stories'"Sounds of Silence" program tomorrow.
Anne Guzzo: "Contemplation from Two Pieces for Clarinet
Anne Guzzo, clarinet
KVOD Performance Studio 9/29/09 MS

Thursday March 18, 2010


Colorado Symphony Orchestra
Edward Gardner, conductor; Leila Josefowicz, violin
Modest Moussorgsky: Night on Bald Mountain

Sergei Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 in D major, Opus 19 (1/8-9/10)
Also, Charley talks with Barbara Hamilton Primus and Paul Primus about the Colorado Chamber Players Bach concerts this weekend.
Johann Sebastian Bach: Contrapuncti 1 & 11 from The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080 7:34
Colorao Chamber Players (Paul Primus and David Waldman, violins; Barbara Hamilton Primus, viola; Judith McIntyre, cello)
Johann Sebastian Bach (arr.Dmitry Sitkovetsky): Aria and Variations 8, 11 & 25 from Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 10:15
Colorao Chamber Players (Paul Primus, violin; Barbara Hamilton Primus, viola; Judith McIntyre, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 3/17/10 MS


Modest Moussorgsky (1839-1881): Night on Bald Mountain

Notorious for leaving works unfinished, Moussorgsky was also loathe to abandon good material. The music now known as Night on Bald Mountain popped up in various guises for over twenty years and only emerged fully after the composer's death.
On Christmas Day, 1858 Moussorgsky announced plans to make an opera of Gogol's St. John's Eve. Less than two years later, he spoke of a commission for incidental music to a play called The Witches by his old army buddy Baron Georgy Mengden. The music for both these projects, if he ever wrote any of it at all, is lost. Parts of the Bald Mountain music appeared in his unfinished opera Salammbô of 1864.
Something concrete finally surfaced on June 23, 1867 (St. John's Eve), when Moussorgsky completed an orchestral fantasy titled St. John's Night on Bare Mountain. ``I wrote it quickly,'' he said, ``straight away in full score without preliminary drafts, in twelve days. It seethed within me, and I worked day and night, hardly knowing what was happening within me. And now I see in my sinful prank an independent Russian product, free from German profundity and routine.''
Based on the legend of the witches' sabbath on St. John's Eve at Mt. Triglav near Kiev, the music, said Moussorgsky, is ``a very graphic depiction of a Witches' Sabbath provided by the testimony of a woman on trial, who was accused of being a witch and had confessed love pranks with Satan himself to the court. The poor lunatic was burnt. All this occurred in the Sixteenth Century. From this description I stored up the construction of the Sabbath.''
Accordingly, Moussorgsky prefaced the score with the program: ``Subterranean din of unearthly voices. Appearance of the Spirits of Darkness, followed by that of the god Tchernobog. Glorification of the Black God, the Black Mass. Witches' Revels. At the height of the orgies, there is heard from afar the bell of a little church in the village. The spirits of Darkness disperse. Daybreak.''
St. John's Night on Bare Mountain was never performed during Moussorgsky's lifetime. In 1871 he added a chorus to form ``The Sacrifice of the Black Goat on the Bald Mountain,'' a portion of the opera-ballet Mlada, a collaboration with Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin. It, too, was never performed.
In 1877 the same music was reworked as an intermezzo titled ``Dream Vision of the Peasant Lad'' from the comic opera Sorochintsy Fair. It was this version that Rimsky-Korsakov arranged and titled Night on Bald Mountain for a St. Petersburg performance on October 27, 1886. Moussorgsky's original 1867 version wasn't published until 1968.
It was also Rimsky-Korsakov who compounded the confusion by insisting that the Bald Mountain music originated as a piece for piano and orchestra, along the lines of Liszt's Totentanz. As Moussorgsky's biographer, M.D. Calvocoressi, puts it, ``there is good reason to believe that it never existed outside Rimsky-Korsakov's notoriously faulty memory.''
There was yet another version of the Bald Mountain music. In 1878, on a concert tour of the Ukraine, Crimea and towns along the Don and the Volga, Moussorgsky played piano transcriptions of his orchestral music, including ``a musical picture from a new comic opera, Sorochintsy Fair.'' It was the very same Bald Mountain music.
Rimsky Korsakov's orchestration of the work calls for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, a bell in D, cymbals, bass drum, tam-tam, harp 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.

Wednesday March 17, 2010

Colorado Music Festival Chamber Orchestra
Michael Christie, conductor
Antonín Dvořák: String Serenade in E major, Op.22 30:26
Zoltán Kodály: Dances of Galánta 17:00 (7/20/08)
Also, Charley anticipates the Colorado Music Festival winter series this weekend.
Wolfgang Mozart: " Allegro" (4th movement) from String Quintet in C minor, K.406
Colorado Music Festival Chamber Players (Jessica Guideri, Dominique Corbeil, violins; Matthew Dane, Ethan Hecht, violas; Judith Glyde, cello) (2/24/08) 24:20

Antonin Dvorák (1841-1904): Serenade for Strings in E major, Opus 22
I. Moderato
II. Tempo di Valse
III. Scherzo: Vivace
IV. Larghetto
V. Finale: Allegro vivace

Dvorák's Serenade for Strings was composed in just twelve days, between May 3 and 14, 1875. A planned performance by Hans Richter and the Vienna Philharmonic the following fall never materialized. The first performance took place in Prague on December 10, 1876. Adolf Cech conducted the combined string sections of the Czech and German Theater Orchestras. A Viennese performance had to wait until 1884.
Biographer John Clapham writes: ``Both the light-hearted Scherzo and the Finale start canonically, and the Trio of the Waltz and the Larghetto are both enriched when their melodic themes are repeated canonically. The first movement is simple and child-like, but the subdivision of violas and cellos gives it richness and the expressive interjections of the violins during the main theme are telling. The Waltz and Trio have decided charm, and are linked together by a rhythmic motif....When the melody of the beautiful Larghetto is compared with the Trio theme in the second movement they are found to be two versions of the same basic musical thought.''

Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967): Dances of Galánta

For seven years, Kodály's father was railway station master at Galánta, a small town on the main line between Budapest and Vienna. During the summer of 1933, his son memorialized the town in his Dances of Galánta. Zoltán wrote the piece for the eightieth anniversary of the Philharmonic Society of Budapest, which gave the first performance on October 23, 1934 under Ernö Dohnányi's direction.
Kodály based his material on several sources. There were his memories of ``the most beautiful seven years of my childhood'' and the gypsy bands he heard in Galánta. Also, he consulted a collection of Hungarian dances published in Vienna around 1800, which included a number of pieces ``after several gypsies from Galánta,'' including the old Magyar recruiting dances, the verbunkos music.
In the spring of 1935 the Galánta and Marosszék dances were combined to form a ballet, titled A Rebel's Tale, first produced at the Budapest Opera. Despite adverse reviews--``plot and music are at cross purposes''--the ballet made the rounds of various German theaters in the late 1930s.
The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, percussion and strings.

Tuesday March 16, 2010

Friends of Chamber Music
Emerson String Quartet
Franz Schubert: String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D. 810 (Death and the Maiden) 38:33
Johann Sebastian Bach (arr.Mozart): Fugue in E major BWV 854 from The Well
 Tempered Clavier, Book I 3:28 (10/22/08)
Also, Charley anticipates Arnaldo Cohen's piano recital for the Friends of Chamber Music tomorrow.
And, Charley talks with Margaret Higginson and John Lindsey, both contestants in the Denver Lyric Opera Guild's annual competition.
Giacomo Puccini: "Un bel di" from Act II of Madama Butterfly
Margaret Higginson, soprano; Hyun Kim, piano 4:13
Giacomo Puccini: "Addio fiorito asil" from Act III of Madama Butterfly
John Lindsey, tenor; Hyun Kim, piano 1:53
KVOD Performance Studio 3/2/10 MS

Monday March 15, 2010

Charley talks with Boulder Philharmonic music director Michael Butterman about Angela Cheng's appearance Wednesday.
Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra

Michael Butterman, conductor; Bonnie Draina, soprano; Adriana Zabala, mezzo soprano
Wolfgang Mozart: La clemenza di Tito Overture, K.621 5:09
Wolfgang Mozart: Duet, "Ah perdona al primo affetto" from La Clemenza di Tito, K.621 3:24 (Draina, Zabala)
Wolfgang Mozart: Aria, "Non so piu" from Act I of The Marriage of Figaro, K.492 3:12 (Zabala)
Wolfgang Mozart: Aria, ``Voi, che sapete'' from Act II of The Marriage of Figaro, K.492 3:27 (Zabala)
Wolfgang Mozart: Symphony No. 35 in D major, K.385 (Haffner) 20:17 (11/1/08)
Also, Charley talks with Colorado Ballet's artistic director Gil Boggs about their triple-bill opening Friday. Charley also anticipates pianist Alejandro Cremaschi's recital tomorrow at CU Boulder.
Alberto Ginastera: Three Pieces
Alejandro Cremaschi, piano
University of Colorado at Boulder Faculty Recital
In addition, Charley talks with Kathy Brantigan about the Denver Brass Bagpipe concerts this weekend.


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Overture to La Clemenza di Tito, K.621

During the summer of 1791, even as he worked furiously on The Magic Flute and the Requiem, Mozart received a new commission. Domenico Guardasoni, acting on instructions from a band of Bohemian noblemen, asked Mozart to write a serious opera for the celebration of Leopold II's coronation as King of Bohemia. The fee was twice the normal rate; Mozart was in no position to refuse.
The libretto for La Clemenza di Tito, by Metastasio as revised by Caterino Mazzola, concerns love and intrigue in Rome around 80 A.D. Mozart wrote the opera in 18 days, partly in Vienna that summer, partly in carriages and inns on the way to Prague and partly in Prague, just before the first performance on September 6, 1791.
In his book on Mozart's operas, Charles Osborne writes: ``Composed at the last moment, the Overture nevertheless does not make use of any themes from the opera: instead it establishes a mood which, though formal, is also festive. Its contrapuntal development section links it in mood with The Magic Flute Overture which must have been composed only a week or two later.''
The Overture is scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, as well as timpani and strings.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Aria, ``Voi, che sapete'' from Act II of The Marriage of Figaro, K.492

Mozart began The Marriage of Figaro sometime during October of 1785. The librettist was Lorenzo da Ponte, who would later provide the texts for Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte. They chose the sequel to The Barber of Seville of Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro, or the Madcap Day.
The first performance of The Marriage of Figaro began at seven on the evening of May 1, 1786 at the Court Theater in Vienna. Count Zinzendorf's appraisal that the ``the opera bored me'' was a minority view. The opera was a huge success.
In the second act, Figaro, the Count's valet, is conspiring with the Countess and her maid Susanna, Figaro's betrothed, to humiliate the Count for his womanizing. Part of the plan involves dressing the young page Cherubino as Susanna for a tryst with the Count. As the ladies prepare his costume, they demand that he sing his little song of love, with Susanna accompanying on guitar.

Voi, che sapete che cosa è amor,
donne vedete, s'io l'ho nel cor.
Quello ch'io provo, vi ridirò,
e per me nuovo, capir nol so.
Sento un affetto pien di desir,
ch'ora è diletto, ch'ora è martir.
Gelo, e poi sento l'alma avvampar,
e in un momento torno a gelar.
Ricerco un bene fuori di me,
non so ch'il tiene, non so cos'è.
Sospiro e gemo senza voler,
palpito e tremo senza saper;
non trovo pace notte, né dì,
ma pur mi piace languir così.

(You who know what love is,
ladies, see whether it's in my heart.
What I experience I'll describe for you;
it's new to me, I don't understand it.
I feel an emotion full of desire,
that is now pleasure, and now suffering.
I freeze, then I feel my soul burning up,
and in a moment I'm freezing again.
I seek a blessing outside myself,
from whom I know not or what it is.
I sigh and moan without meaning to,
palpitate and tremble without knowing it.
I find no peace night or day,
and yet I enjoy languishing so.)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Symphony No. 35 in D major, K.385 (Haffner)
I. Allegro con spirito
II. Andante
III. Menuetto
IV. Presto

During the summer of 1782, while hard at work on The Abduction from the Seraglio, Mozart received an urgent request from his father to provide some music for the festivities surrounding Siegmund Haffner's elevation to the nobility. The Haffners were old Salzburg friends of the Mozarts. Six years before Wolfgang had written the Haffner Serenade for the wedding of Siegmund's sister Elisabeth.
On July 20, 1782, Mozart wrote to his father: ``Well, I am up to the eyes in work....And now you ask me to write a new symphony? How on earth can I do so?....Well, I must just spend the night over it, for that is the only way; and to you, dearest father, I sacrifice it. You may rely on having something from me by every post. I shall work as fast as possible and, as far as haste permits, I shall turn out good work.''
By the end of July Mozart reported: ``You see that my intentions are good--only what one cannot do one cannot! I am really unable to scribble off inferior stuff.''
The completed work was actually a six-movement serenade, consisting of the four movements of the Haffner Symphony, plus the March, K.408 No. 2 and a second minuet which has since been lost. This was the version performed for the Haffner wedding in Salzburg in 1782.
On March 23, 1783, the Haffner music was performed as a four-movement symphony at a concert in Vienna attended by the Emperor. In the interim between the two performances, Mozart seems to have suffered a memory lapse. ``My new Haffner Symphony,'' he wrote to his father, ``has positively amazed me, for I had forgotten every single note of it. It must surely produce a good effect.''
And it did. After the concert, Mozart again wrote to his father: ``I need not tell you very much about the success of my concert, for no doubt you have already heard of it. Suffice it to say that the theater could not have been more crowded and that every box was full. But what pleased me most of all was that His Majesty the Emperor was present and, goodness!--how delighted he was and how he applauded me!''
Because of its origins as a serenade, Alfred Einstein regards K.385 as ``a somewhat amphibious work. Not that the first movement, with all its pomp of trumpets and drums, lacks seriousness. The lordly principal motive, which is first stated in unison, is made the basis of rich contrapuntal weaving and contrast.'' Describing the second movement as ``graceful and innocent,'' Einstein points to the Minuet as the ``outstanding movement,'' which expresses ``strength, festivity, and masculinity in the main section, and the most delicate grace in the Trio.'' The last movement is a masterly synthesis of sonata and rondo forms. Mozart advised that the first movement should be ``played with great fire'' and the last, ``as fast as possible.''
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.