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.

Monday October 19, 2009

Friends of Chamber Music
Alarm Will Sound
Alan Pierson, conductor
Derek Bermel: Three Rivers 10:38
Gavin Chuck: Seen 7:20
Edgard Varese (arr. Hause): Poem electronique 8:47 (1/21/09)
Also, Charley anticipates the Antero Winds performance at the Boulder Public Library tomorrow.
Astor Piazzolla: Milonga sin Palabras
Georges Bizet: Carmen Fantasy
Antero Winds (Formerly Arundo Winds) [Cobus Du Toit, flute; Sarah Mellander, oboe; Jerome Fleg, clarinet; Megan Garrison, horn; Kaori Uno, bassoon]
KVOD Performance Studio 103108 MS
And, Charley anticipates Hsing-ay Hsu's recital tomorrow at CU Boulder
Frédéric Chopin: Mazurka in B flat major, Op.24 No. 4 4:13
Frédéric Chopin: Waltz in A flat major, Op. 34 No. 1 (Grande Valse Brilliante) 5:09
Hsing-ay Hsu, piano
KVOD Performance Studio 110608 MS

Friday October 16, 2009

Charley anticipates pianist Olga Kern's appearance with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra this weekend and next, during the Orchestra's Rachmaninoff Festival.
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Polichinelle in F sharp minor, Op.3 No. 4
Olga Kern, piano
Kern demonstrates themes from Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op.43
KVOD Performance Studio NCA 091907 MS
Dan Drayer talks with pianist Olga Kern about her personal connection with Rachmaninoff.
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Prelude in C sharp minor & “Melody” from Fantasy Pieces, Op.3
Olga Kern, piano
Harmonia Mundi 907399 4-6 15:23
Also,Charley anticipates the Veronika String Quartet's opening program this Sunday in Colorado Springs.
Ludwig van Beethoven: "Allegro con brio" (1st movement) from String Quartet No.1 in F major, op. 18
Dmitri Shostakovich: "Allegretto" (1st movement) from String Quartet No.3 in F major, Op. 73
Veronika String Quartet
(Veronika Afanassieva and Karine Garibova, violins, Ekaterina Dobrotvorskaia, viola; Mary Artmann, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 10/1/09 MS
And, Charley anticipates violinist Linda Wang's appearance with the Greeley Philharmonic tomorrow.
Traditional Chinese: Fisherman’s Song 3:29
Ludwig van Beethoven: “Allegro assai” (1st movement) from Violin Sonata No. 8 in G major, Op.30 No. 3 4:24
Henryk Wieniawski: Variations on an Original Theme, Op.15
Linda Wang, violin; Alice Rybak, piano
KVOD Performance Studio NCA 6:36 021307 MS

Thursday October 15, 2009

Colorado Symphony Orchestra
James Gaffigan, conductor; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Serenade No. 13 in G major, K.525 (Eine kleine Nachtmusik)
Maurice Ravel: Piano Concerto in G major (5/15-17/09)
Also, Charley anticipates Olga Kern's appearance with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra this weekend and next.
Mily Balakirev: In the Garden & Islamey
Olga Kern, piano
Harmonia Mundi 14-15 4:43 + 9:12


Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Serenade No. 13 in G major, K.525 (Eine kleine Nachtmusik)
I. Allegro
II. Romance: Andante
III. Menuetto: Allegretto
IV. Rondo: Allegro

Mozart finished his last serenade (K.525) on August 10, 1787, while working on the second act of Don Giovanni. Apparently the work was not commissioned. The score bears no dedication, nor is there any record of a performance in Mozart's lifetime.
So why did he write it? Alfred Einstein has a theory: ``All the riddles presented by this work would be solved by the assumption that Mozart wrote it for himself, to satisfy an inner need, and that it served as a corrective counterpart to the Musical Joke....After Mozart had disturbed the cosmic system by the Musical Joke, he set it to rights again with the Kleine Nachtmusik.''
Mozart's own thematic catalogue clearly indicates that the piece had two minuets, but in the autograph manuscript the first minuet is missing, apparently ripped out by some unknown hand.
One of the best known works in all of classical music, K.525 is a ``singularly perfect worklet, thoroughly polished in a classical way,'' according to Eric Blom. For Einstein, ``this is supreme mastery in the smallest possible frame.''
The work is scored for strings.

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937): Piano Concerto in G major
I. Allegramente
II. Adagio assai
III. Presto

Ravel wrote only two piano concertos, but he worked on both at the same time, from 1929 to 1931. The so-called ``Left Hand'' Concerto had been commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I.
Having finished the ``Left Hand'' Concerto in August of 1930, Ravel faced the deadline for the G major Concerto (for both hands). ``The time is flying,'' he told a friend. ``I have just now completed correcting the orchestration for the Concerto for the Left Hand. I have only two and half months left to finish the other. It is terrifying to think about! I sleep no more than six hours, and usually less than that.''
Ravel had just returned to Paris from a concert tour of the United States and Canada. He was amazed at the ``magnificent cities and enchanting country,'' but hated the food. The G major Concerto was to be used during a planned second North American tour.
That tour never materialized. The Concerto was introduced in Paris on January 14, 1932. The composer's declining health prevented him from being the soloist. He did conduct, though, and Marguerite Long was the pianist. He dedicated the Concerto to her, remarking that the second movement's long opening melody had been written ``two bars at a time, with frequent recourse to Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.''
Ravel described the work as ``a concerto in the strict sense, written in the spirit of Mozart and Saint-Saëns. I believe that a concerto can be gay and brilliant and that there is no necessity for it to aim at profundity or big dramatic effects. It has been said that the concertos of some great classical composers were written not for but against the piano, and I think this criticism is justified. At the beginning, I thought of naming the G major a `divertissement;' but I reflected that this was not necessary, for the title `concerto' explains the music sufficiently....It includes elements borrowed from jazz, but only in moderation.''
The score calls for solo piano, piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, trumpet, trombone, harp, strings, timpani, bass drum, side drum, cymbals, gong, triangle, wood block and whip.

Wednesday October 14, 2009

Colorado Music Festival Orchestra
Michael Christie, conductor
Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op.36 34:01 (7/11/08)
Also, Charley anticipates the Intermezzo Chamber Players's appearance on the next Denver Eclectic Concert tomorrow.
Franz Schubert: String Trio in B flat major, D.471
Intermezzo Chamber Players (Stacy Lesartre, violin; Kelly Shanafelt, viola; Dianne Betkowski, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 061609 MS
And, Charley anticipates the Veronika String Quartet's opening program this Sunday in Pueblo and on October 18 in Colorado Springs.
Dmitri Shostakovich: "Allegretto" (1st movement) from String Quartet No.3 in F major, Op. 73
Veronika String Quartet
(Veronika Afanassieva and Karine Garibova, violins, Ekaterina Dobrotvorskaia, viola; Mary Artmann, cello)
KVOD Performance Studio 10/1/09 MS


Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Symphony No. 2 in D major,
Opus 36
I. Adagio molto; Allegro con brio
II. Larghetto
III. Scherzo: Allegro
IV. Allegro molto

Sketches for the Second Symphony date from as early as 1800. Most of the work was done during the summer and fall of 1802, about the time that Beethoven realized the “roaring” in his ears would lead to total deafness.
The first performance took place in Vienna on April 5, 1803. It was a typically mammoth all-Beethoven concert. Besides the Second Symphony, the program included the First Symphony, the Third Piano Concerto and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives.
Rehearsals began at eight that same morning. According to an eyewitness, “it was a terrible rehearsal, and at half past two everybody was exhausted and more or less dissatisfied. Prince Karl Lichnowsky (one of Beethoven’s patrons)…had sent for bread and butter, cold meat and wine, in large baskets. He pleasantly asked all to help themselves, and this was done with both hands, the result being that good nature was restored again.”
After the premiere, the Second Symphony was criticized for its “striving for the new and surprising.” A Leipzig performance a year later moved one reviewer to describe the work as “a gross enormity, an immense wounded snake, unwilling to die, but writhing in its last agonies and, though bleeding to death, furiously beats about with its tail in the finale.” But for Hector Berlioz, “in this symphony, everything is noble, energetic, proud.”
In his book on the Beethoven symphonies, George Grove wrote: “The Second Symphony is a great advance on the First….The advance is more in dimensions and style, and in the wonderful fire and force of the treatment, than in any really new ideas, such as its author afterwards introduced and are specially connected in our minds with the name of Beethoven….The first movement is distinctly of the old world, though carried out with a spirit, vigor, and effect, and occasionally with a caprice, which are nowhere surpassed, if indeed they are equaled, by Haydn and Mozart. Nor is there anything in the extraordinary grace, beauty, and finish of the Larghetto to alter this…nor in the Finale, grotesque and strong as much of it is: it is all still of the old world, till we come to the Coda, and that, indeed, is distinctly of the other order.”
Grove regards the Second Symphony as “the culminating point of the old pre-Revolution world, the world of Haydn and Mozart; it was the farthest point to which Beethoven could go before he burst into that wonderful new region into which no man had before penetrated, of which no man had even dreamed, but which is now one of our dearest possessions, and will always be known by his immortal name.”

Tuesday October 13, 2009

National Repertory Orchestra
Carl Topilow, conductor
Richard Strauss: A Hero's Life, Op.40 44:49
Also, Charley talks with Colorado Ballet artistic director Gil Boggs about their production of Don Quixote, which opens Friday.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949): Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), Opus 40
The Hero
The Hero's Adversaries
The Hero's Courship
The Hero's Battlefield
The Hero's Works of Peace
The Hero's Retreat from the World, and Fulfillment

``Beethoven's Eroica is so little liked by our conductors and, for that reason, now only rarely performed,'' wrote Strauss in 1898, ``that to fulfill a pressing need, I am composing a rather large tone poem entitled A Hero's Life, admittedly without a funeral march, but still in E flat, with lots of horns, which are always a yardstick of heroism.''
Strauss finished the work on December 27, 1898, and conducted the first performance on March 3, 1899 in Frankfurt. The audience and the critics assumed that the ``hero'' was Strauss himself. ``It is enough to know that there is a hero, fighting his enemies'' was all the composer would say.
Some amount of controversy has emerged regarding the intended program of A Hero's Life. The various sections of the work all have titles: ``The Hero,'' ``The Hero's Adversaries,'' ``The Hero's Helpmate,'' ``The Hero's Battlefield,'' ``The Hero's Works of Peace,'' and ``The Hero's Escape from the World and his Fulfillment.''
By ``adversaries,'' Strauss clearly meant his own critics. After the premiere, he wrote to his father that the critics ``spewed poison and gall, principally because they thought they could read from the analysis that the carpers and adversaries, who are thoroughly hatefully portrayed, were meant to be themselves, and the hero myself--the latter being only partly true.''
The ``helpmate'' is Pauline Strauss. The composer once said that A Hero's Life was a better introduction to his wife than any amount of handshaking. ``It's my wife I wanted to show,'' he told Romain Rolland. ``She is very complex, very feminine...never like herself, at every minute different from how she had been the moment before.''
In the section marked ``The Hero's Works of Peace,'' Strauss quotes from no fewer than nine of his own works, including Death and Transfiguration, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Till Eulenspiegel, Macbeth and Also Sprach Zarathustra.
Reaction to the first performance of the work was mixed. One wag noted: ``This is no hero's life, but a dog's life.'' Others found the piece to be ``smug self-satisfaction'' or ``a blatant blowing of his own horns (all eight of them).''
At least one reviewer liked the music: ``It assuredly represents the peak of Richard Strauss' creative work, and displays the good qualities of his music, rather than its more controversial aspects. As always, it shows a mature composition technique. The orchestration is brilliant, and from the purely musical side, there are passages of remarkable beauty.''
The score calls for piccolo, 3 flutes, 4 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 8 horns, 5 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, timpani, percussion, 2 harps and strings.

Monday October 12, 2009

Strings in the Mountains Music Festival
Frédéric Chopin: Introduction and Polonaise Brillante, Op.3
Alisa Weilerstein, cello; José Feghali, piano (7/1/06) 13:15
Georges Enesco: Rumanian Rhapsody No. 1
Todd Phillips, Catherine Cho, violins; Yizhak Schotten, viola; Alisa Weilerstein, cello; DaXun Zhang, double bass; José Feghali, piano (7/1/06) 9:50
Ludwig van Beethoven: “Tempo ordinario d’un menuetto” (2nd movement) & “Allegro molto” (3rd movement) from Serenade in D major, Op.25
Christina Jennings, flute; Jasmine Lin, violin; Yizhak Schotten, viola (7/22/06) 7:05
Johannes Brahms: “Andante, ma moderato” (2nd movement) from String Sextet No. 1 in B flat major, Op.18
Todd Phillips, Catherine Cho, violins; Yizhak Schotten, Martin Sher, violas; Robert deMaine, Thomas Heinrich, cellos (7/4/06) 9:55
Also, Charley anticipates the Intermezzo Chamber Players's appearance on the next Denver Eclectic Concert Thursday.
Intermezzo Chamber Players (Stacy Lesartre, violin; Kelly Shanafelt, viola; Dianne Betkowski, cello)
Franz Schubert: String Trio in B flat major, D.471
KVOD Performance Studio 061609 MS



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.''