60 Anniversary Gala Concert Programme Notes

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

Mozart achieved an exalted level of perfection unmatched by any other composer, conveying the most profound emotions via the simplest of means. Born the son of a violin pedagogue, he was one of the prime movers in helping to establish an elegant new Classical style in music. He began life as a touring keyboard-composer prodigy, amazing onlookers with his prodigious feats of virtuosity, memory and extemporisation. Following several years based in his hometown of Salzburg, he moved to Vienna where his creative genius burned with a blinding incandescence. He died tragically young, leaving behind him a priceless series of exquisite masterpieces.

Symphony No. 25 in G minor K183
1 Allegro con brio
2 Andante
3 Menuetto -Trio
4 Allegro

Mozart’s comparative neglect during his own lifetime appears baffling today. After all, great composers were hardly thick on the ground at the tail-end of the eighteenth century. Indeed, the majority of them seem mere hacks in comparison with his limitless facility. ‘This boy will cause us all to be forgotten’ moaned one rival, Johann Hasse, while others did everything in their power to prevent Mozart’s music from being performed at all. Meanwhile, audiences simply couldn’t keep pace with him. Even as late as 1853, over half-a-century after Mozart’s death, Smetana reported from Prague that ‘Mozart is their idol, though he is not really understood.’

Incredibly Mozart was just eight years old when he composed his enchanting First Symphony in London towards the end of 1764. Between then and 1773 he produced a further 24 numbered symphonies, climaxing in the work that put him on the symphonic map once and for all, which we hear played tonight: No.25 in G minor, K183. For a 17-year-old to be writing music of such searing intensity and physical power – the orchestra is bolstered by two pairs of horns in place of the usual one – came as something of a shock to Salzburg audiences used to bubbly orchestral high spirits and scintillating ‘special effects’. It is this work that effectively established Mozart not just as a fine composer, but a great one. Little wonder that the opening movement’s galvanising syncopated rhythms and the main theme’s venomous thrust made an unforgettable impact on the soundtrack to Milos Forman’s hit biopic, Amadeus.


Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847)

Mendelssohn was the most profoundly gifted of all composer prodigies. By his mid-teens, he was already producing masterpieces of supreme originality, most notably his trailblazing String Octet and Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was also a double-prodigy pianist and violinist, an inspired poet, fluent multi-linguist, respected philosopher, and skilled watercolourist. In fact, Mendelssohn excelled at virtually anything which could hold his attention for long enough, although it was music which above all fired his imagination. No wonder he was widely considered at the time to be Mozart’s ‘second-coming’.

Violin Concerto in E minor Op.64 (1844, rev.1845)
1 Allegro molto appassionato (original cadenza by Joshua Bell) –
2 Andante –
3 Allegretto non troppo – Allegro molto vivace

It was during July 1838 that Mendelssohn informed Ferdinand David, his friend and mentor in all things violinistic, ‘I should like to write a violin concerto for you this winter. The beginning of one in E minor runs constantly through my head, giving me no peace.’ Things were a little slow to get started, however, and a year later he was clearly struggling: ‘The task is not an easy one. You ask that it should be brilliant, but how can anyone like me do this?’

Mendelssohn had appointed David leader of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1836, and such was his devotion in tailoring the concerto to David’s exact requirements that it took him a further five years to complete. Even after the score had been submitted for publication in December 1844, he was still making last minute revisions and corrections. This most mellifluous of all the great violin concertos was therefore not the product of a blinding flash of inspiration but – unusually for Mendelssohn – several years of painstaking editing and refinement.

The first masterstroke occurs at the very beginning when the soloist immediately announces himself with the soaring main theme without the usual orchestral preamble – the effect is as if one has joined a piece which has already been going on for some time. Soloist-and-orchestra exchanges are dovetailed with sleight-of-hand wizardry, none more so than the celestial second theme, magically announced by flutes and clarinets and ingeniously accompanied by a sustained pedal G (the lowest string) from the solo violin. The cadenza, composed especially by tonight’s soloist Joshua Bell, not only appears earlier in the movement than is customary, but also flows almost imperceptibly into an inspired passage where the soloist’s rapid string-crossing becomes an accompaniment to the orchestra’s re-announcement of the opening theme.

Another heart-stopping moment occurs when the first movement’s searing final tutti doesn’t close the music off in the traditional manner but quite suddenly and unexpectedly subsides into a sustained B natural from the solo bassoon, the start of a sublime link into the ‘song without words’ slow movement. This is then ingeniously transformed to form an Allegretto non troppo bridge into the whistle-stop Allegro molto vivace, whose infectious, dancing gestures make his indelible scherzo style sound like the most natural thing in the world for a concerto finale.


Sally Beamish

HOVER
in memory of Sir Neville Marriner

As a viola player, I played with the Academy of St Martins in the 1980s, and my mother, violinist Ursula Snow, played with them in the 70s. Neville Marriner was very supportive of my work, and invited me to write for the orchestra before I was established at all as a composer. This is my fourth major commission for the orchestra. It is very exciting and stimulating to write for musicians whose playing I know well, and who are all soloists in their own right. Above all, the work is dedicated to Neville’s memory. We discussed the piece, and my residency, not long before he died.

The piece was initially inspired by Gerald Manley Hopkins’ poem The Windhover, which depicts a falcon wheeling and gliding in the morning air.

The idea of ‘hovering’ chimed in with my imminent move from Scotland to England, after living in Scotland for nearly half my life. The sense of being suspended and rootless affected my writing after the decision to move, and I wrote a series of chamber pieces for different ensembles, as ‘farewells’ to Scotland. One of these contains a lullaby for viola, which reflects the apprehension of leaving my Scottish family behind and returning to my own country. This lullaby forms the centre of Hover – again on solo viola.

Hover portrays anticipation and exhilaration as well as melancholy, and is also a response to the beauty and destructiveness of nature.

The piece opens on solo oboe, as if coming from a distance. The two oboes then interlace; hovering above a static string texture.

The mood settles into a stillness, out of which emerges the Celtic-inspired lullaby, introduced by solo viola, which then duets with oboe.

The fiery images which predominate in the second part of the poem are depicted by horn flourishes, which stir the music into an unsettled passion.

A brief calm follows, which is subverted by downward swooping – almost violent – string passages.

The threatening mood is resolved by a return of the lullaby, combined with the opening hovering theme. A coda marked ‘misterioso’ concludes the piece, with joyous horn interjections.

It was commissioned by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and first performed on 21st February 2019, in Sarasota, USA.

Sally Beamish 2018

The Windhover
To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins


Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)

Beethoven was the single most influential figure in the history of Western music. Starting out with Mozart and Haydn as his spiritual mentors, he wrestled off the shackles of late-eighteenth century Classicism, forging uncompromising musical landscapes with a visionary intensity that left most musicians quavering in his wake. Even his most enlightened supporters often had little idea what he was up to as he pulverised the relatively primitive instruments of his time into submission. Yet not even the cruel onslaught of deafness could silence his noble creative spirit as he redefined the symphony’s expressive parameters, changing the face of music forever

 Symphony No.5 in C minor Op.67
1  Allegro con brio
2  Andante con moto
3  Allegro vivace –
4  Allegro

The seeds of the Fifth Symphony – a profoundly radical score that opens with an arresting motif described by Beethoven as symbolising ‘fate knocking at the door’ – were sown in 1802. Under doctor’s orders, to rest his failing hearing in the beautiful countryside surrounding Vienna, his desperate state of mind can be gathered from the unbearably poignant Heiligenstadt Testament – ‘I was misunderstood and rudely repulsed,’ he despaired, ‘because I was unable to say to people “Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf”.’ As a direct result, Beethoven’s music became both weightier in expression and correspondingly larger in scale – it was theEroica’ Third Symphony (1803) which initiated this ‘middle’ period in Beethoven’s creative life.

The Fifth Symphony’s opening movement reverses the expansive procedures typical of middle-period Beethoven. The opening rhythmic figure obsessively propels the music along, with melodic contrast and key changes (modulation) kept to a bare minimum. The vice-like grip of this groundbreaking movement is offset by the calm resignation of the following Andante, whose martialistic undercurrents are unleashed to startling effect in the blazing finale.

The eerie meanderings of the Scherzo and earthy jocularity of its companion Trio section make strange yet oddly compelling bedfellows until, following a mysteriously hushed bridge passage crowned by a massive crescendo, the finale explodes onto the scene in a glorious blaze of affirmation, complete with additional trombones and piccolo. Little did Beethoven know it, but this epoch-making symphony’s theme of a joyous victory achieved out of adversity was to provide an emotional blueprint for countless other works over the following two centuries.

 

Programme notes on Mozart, Mendelssohn and Beethoven written by Julian Haylock.