JS BACH (Arr Joachim Raff)

Chaconne in D minor, BWV1004 (13’)*

 

Guitar Concerto No. 1 in D major, Opus 99 (20’)*

 Robert Belinić, guitar

 

Danzon No. 2 (11’)*

 

INTERMISSION

 

Tajemstvi / The Secret: Overture (7’)*

 

Píseň bohatýrská / A Hero’s Song, Opus 111 (22’)*

*Indicates approximate performance duration.
Program subject to change.

Chaconne in D minor, BWV 1004 (arr. Raff)

Johann Sebastian Bach (b. Eisenach, Saxony, 1685 / d. Leipzig, 1750)

 

To quote a textbook definition (The Oxford Companion to Music), a chaconne is, “A form of continuous variation…the term was sometimes used to denote an instrumental piece of a particularly austere character using ground-bass variations.” In the case of the chaconne Bach composed as the mammoth final movement to his Partita for Solo Violin in D minor, BWV 1004, the form was revealed as a transcendental, powerful, and expressive work – and among the most demanding pieces ever written for solo violin.

 

The work is considered a summit of baroque composition, and it has been treated to several transcriptions – perhaps none so famous as the virtuosic arrangement for solo piano by Ferruccio Busoni. The orchestration we will hear tonight is by the German-Swiss composer and pianist Joachim Raff (1822-1882). Though today he is not well known, Raff was an influential composer in his day. He was a friend of Hans von Bülow, and it is thought Raff was a major influence on Bülow’s protégé, Richard Strauss.

 

 

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (b. Florence, 1895 / d. Los Angeles, 1968)

 

First performance: November 28, 1939 in Montevideo, Uruguay

Last ESO performance: April 1989

 

Like other, better-known composers (such as Korngold, Waxman, and Rózsa), Tuscan-born composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco fled the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe in the years before World War Two, and wound up in America, where he established himself in Hollywood as an important composer. He worked on over 200 film scores – nearly all of which do not include his name in the credits. But he was also active as a teacher, instructing future film scorers such as André Previn, Henry Mancini, and John Williams.

 

He was also one of the 20th century’s most important composers of guitar music. He wrote over a hundred works for guitar, including two concertos, and one concerto for two guitars. His Guitar Concerto No. 1 was written during the turbulent year 1939, the year his music was officially banned in Fascist Italy, and the year he emigrated to the United States. It was Spanish guitar virtuoso Andrés Segovia who championed Castelnuovo’s music, helping it gain an international foothold, and it was to him that the composer dedicated the concerto. The two had met in 1932 at a contemporary music festival, and Castelnuovo would compose and dedicate many works for and to Segovia.

 

Castelnuovo himself disliked being labeled neo-classical. “I have never believed in modernism, or in neoclassicism, or any other isms,” he once wrote. “I believe that music is a form of language capable of progress and renewal (and I myself believe that I have a feeling for the contemporary and, therefore, am sufficiently modern).” Nevertheless, his concerto certainly does bear the clean lines and clarity of other neo-classical works of the time. One of the great compliments often paid to this concerto is to the remarkable blend of orchestra and guitar, in which the orchestral textures never seem to mask the delicate solo instrument. The opening movement is a clever and engaging dialog between the guitar and selected elements among the larger orchestra. The movement is based on two main ideas – an insouciant, dance-like subject, and a more lyrical contrasting one. The cadenza near the movement’s end treats some of the main material to some exotic harmonic shadings, leading to an almost cheeky ending.

 

Graham Wade, formerly Head of Strings and Professor of Guitar at the City of Leeds College of Music and Tutor in Guitar to the Universities of Leeds and York, wrote a biography of, among others, Andrés Segovia, and saw him perform Castelnuovo’s concerto. “He begins the slow movement alone with a tune of Neapolitan flavour,” Wade recalls, “and plays so beautifully that I resented the intrusion of the orchestra.” Indeed, the guitar’s opening measures are lovely and winsome, eventually “intruded” upon by a flute, and transparent strings, then a horn. The orchestra actually takes the melodic lead, until the guitar is given an extended solo in the middle of the movement. There is a haunting give and take following this, and a rich, romantic ending.

 

The final movement is a dotted-rhythm dance, with a strong folk-like flavour to it. While there is give and take here once again, there is also more integration of guitar with orchestra in this movement – and some very demanding virtuoso passages for the soloist as well. The central section of this A-B-A movement has a more exotic, lush feel to it – a worthy contrast to the outer material, which is re-introduced following another, even longer cadenza, “tailor-made for Segovia to impress the audience with the guitar’s innate lyricism,” continues professor Wade. The guitar is given a final flourish in which to finish off this charming, important concerto.

 

 

Arturo Márquez (b. Alamos Sonora, Mexico, 1950)

 

First performance: March 5, 1994 in Mexico City

Last ESO performance: Symphony Under the Sky 2011

 

The name of Arturo Márquez is not known widely outside his native Mexico, but there he is held in high regard. In fact, this evening’s work, Danzón No. 2, is regarded by some as Mexico’s second national anthem. The dance begins quietly, on a clarinet accompanied by percussive sticks and piano. Other woodwind instruments eventually join in, and the sound expands broadly from there. A second section, one of urgency and drive, turns into a vivacious orchestral dance with strong brass accents. There is a more tender middle section recalling the opening, though featuring the strings much more prominently. After a brief pause, the passionate pace picks up once again, with a vibrant trumpet solo ushering in a rousing finish. 

 

 

Bedrich Smetana (Litomyšl, 1824 / d. Prague, 1884)

 

First performance of the opera: September 18, 1878 in Prague

This is the ESO premiere of any of the music from the opera

 

Antonín Dvořák (see below) is the most famous and often-performed Bohemian composer, but Bedrich Smetana, born 17 years earlier, was the pioneer who first popularized Czech music and rhythms to audiences beyond his nation’s borders. And while Smetana is most famous for his collection of orchestral tone poems known as Má Vlast (“My Country”), during his life, it was his operas that took Czech folksongs and stories to the rest of Europe and beyond.

 

Tajemství (“The Secret”) premiered in Prague in 1878. It is a comic opera concerning a long-standing misunderstanding between Roza, her one-time suitor Kalina, and Roza’s father Malina. While not well-known outside the Czech Republic these days (it did not receive a performance in North America until 1989), it has some of Smetana’s most engaging melodies, many of which are on display in the delightful overture, which, nevertheless, begins with high drama. It doesn’t last, of course, and the easy charm that underscores the story imbues the overture with life and verve. There is a fugal section about halfway through, introducing a bit of faux-gravitas to the goings-on, leading straight in to the grand climax.

 

 

Piseň bohatýrská, Op.111 (“A Hero’s Song”)

Antonín Dvořák (Nelahozeves, 1841 / d. Prague, 1904)

 

First performance: December 4, 1898 in Vienna

 

We’re not sure who the “hero” is in Dvořák’s symphonic tone poem Piseň bohatýrská (“A Hero’s Life”), because its composer never said. Unlike the four tone poems written in 1896, all based on the poetry of Dvořák’s countryman Karel Erben, there is no specific story attached to this work. It was composed in 1897, and first presented in Vienna, with Gustav Mahler conducting. An unassuming and modest man, it stretches credulity to imagine that Dvořák imagined himself in the work’s title role.

 

The hero of the piece is introduced grandly, with a strong and rhythmic pronouncement. A more subdued section immediately follows; the stage is being set, there is both drama and grandeur. Episodes from the hero’s life pass by in a panoramic parade. A Poco adagio, also marked lacrimoso (“sadly”) follows in a minor key, taking material from the opening section and turning it into an episode of trial for the hero. Violins intrude on the horns, bringing the music back to the major, and a more upbeat Allegretto grazioso. Here, the mood is one of serenity and contentment, punctuated by a brass fanfare. Another slower section, with woodwinds and violins over long-held dark notes in the lower strings, is reminiscent of Mahler’s First Symphony opening, but builds grandly to another spirited and, aptly enough, heroic section. This new section, in Allegro con fuoco, ebbs away quickly, and a more romantic interlude follows. Dvořák seamlessly builds the music gradually, rising out of this Allegretto to a gradual, but inexorable increase in both intensity and pacing. The nobility of the imagined hero never abates, but it is clear that there are obstacles in his path. The last part of the work, now Molto vivace, takes the music from a simmer to a full and bracing boil of excitement, energy, and triumph, concluding the work in radiant victory.

 

Program notes © 2012 by D.T. Baker

 

Charles Olivieri-Munroe grew up in Toronto, where he studied the piano with Boris Berlin at the Royal Conservatory of Music and at the University of Toronto. Following his graduation in 1992, he won three Ontario scholarships to study conducting with Otakar Trhlik at the Janaček Academy of Music in Brno, Czech Republic. He was also a student of Jiří Bělohlávek, and spent two summers at L’Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. In 1997, Mr. Olivieri-Munroe was a recipient of the $20,000 career grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. His international career was launched by a series of triumphs in international competitions, culminating with him winning First Prize in the 2000 Prague Spring International Music Festival Conducting Competition. Today, Charles Olivieri-Munroe is a key personality with the major musical institutions in Prague. He launches the 2010/11 season with several debut performances in Japan, in France at l’Orchestre National des Pays de La Loire, the Moscow Philharmonic, the Santiago Symphony in Chile, and the Odense Symphony Orchestra in Denmark.

 

Mr. Olivieri-Munroe last appeared with the ESO in October 2006.

 

Mr. Belinić won the Young Concert Artists European Auditions in Leipzig, Germany, and was the first guitarist ever to win the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York in 2002. He made his debut in New York sponsored by the Claire Tow Debut Prize, and his Washington, D.C. debut at the Kennedy Center sponsored by the Alexander Kasza-Kasser Prize. He was awarded YCA’s Fergus New Artist Prize and the Beracasa Foundation Prize for an appearance at the Montpellier Radio-France Festival. Born in 1981 in Zagreb, Croatia, Mr. Belinić grew up in the nearby town of Popovača.  When he was eight years old, Mr. Belinić became a national celebrity as the child star of "Tale from Croatia," the first film released in newly-independent Croatia.  He began his study of classical guitar at the age of eleven, continuing his studies with Ante Čagalj in Zagreb.  Mr. Belinić was the recipient of the 2002 Ivo Vuljević Award for outstanding young Croatian musicians, and was a prize winner of the 2006 Parkening International Guitar Competition in California. He earned a Master’s Degree from the Leopold Mozart Hochschule für Musik in Augsburg, Germany.

 

This is Mr. Belinić’s debut with the ESO.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco's First Guitar Concerto (1st Movement):