GFCO, Gauvin, Sims & Kalish April 29, 2014

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1 GFCO, Gauvin, Sims & Kalish April 29, 2014 The Unanswered Question Charles Ives Charles Ives was one of the few artists with the luxury of exercising his full creative energies unimpeded by a need to eke out a living from his art. He was the son a Connecticut bandleader who had started his career as the youngest bandleader in the Union Army but who wanted his son to be a concert pianist. From his father, Charles developed an appreciation for musical games, such as singing in one key and playing in another, or playing the same piece in two keys simultaneously. Perhaps it was this penchant for duality that led him to embark on a double life. He had an enormously successful career in business, applying his creativity and idealism to develop important new concepts for the life insurance industry, while at the same time experimenting and composing in his idiosyncratic musical style. Ives composed The Unanswered Question in It was the first of Two Contemplations (the other being Central Park in the Dark) that employ the techniques of polytonality and polyrhythm. Ives claimed to have become fascinated with simultaneous contrasting rhythms and tonalities from having heard two or more bands playing different tunes within earshot of each other at parades. The work employs three distinct, musically unrelated performing ensembles: a string orchestra playing a series of long, whispering chords in traditional harmony; a solo trumpet repeating six times the same five-note atonal motive in a totally foreign key; and a quartet of flutes, providing increasingly frenzied responses to the trumpet with yet another atonal series of notes. In a later revision of the work, Ives provided a brief program for the piece, which may or may not have been in his mind at the time of its original composition. The strings are the silences of the Druids, who know, see, and hear nothing. Over this background the trumpet poses the perennial question of existence; and the winds are the fighting answerers, who flounder around, even frantically restating the question as if to clarify it. But in their distortion of the motive, showing that they never understood it in the first place. As if he were trying to further demonstrate the lack of communication between the three ensembles and hence the lack of resolution to the question Ives even leaves the coordination of the final moments of the piece to each individual group of performers and their conductor (if they have one). From Il rè pastore (The Shepherd King), K. 208 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Aer tranquillo e di sereni L'amerò, sarò costante Mozart composed Il rè pastore in 1775 as part of the celebration of the visit to Salzburg of Archduke Maximilian, Empress Maria Theresa s youngest son. Its libretto was written by Pietro Metastasio, the foremost playwright of the eighteenth century whose libretti were set repeatedly by opera composers throughout the century in the traditional and rigid style of opera seria Il ré pastore was set at least 25 times.

2 Opera seria did not automatically imply a tragic ending. Rather the operas concerned the affairs of royalty and highborn characters. Most of the plots were adapted from Greek and Roman history; and while they entailed numerous complications and near disasters, they frequently ended happily as the result of the magnanimity of a benevolent or penitent ruler. Il rè pastore exemplified a flattering model for the Hapsburg emperors and their princely siblings. The improbable but partially historical plot concerns Alexander the Great s conquest of Sidon (in contemporary Lebanon) and his desire to restore its rightful ruler, Abdalonimus, who had taken the disguise of the shepherd Aminta. Several of Mozart s operas are also composed according to the opera seria formula, which consisted of multiple scenes, each of which included a recitative that furthered the plot and a da capo aria in which the character in question responded emotionally to the situation. In addition to his most famous operas, Mozart s opere serie include Lucio Silla, Idomeneo, and his penultimate opera La clemenza di Tito. In Aer tranquillo e di sereni (Calm air and tranquil days), Aminta sings of his happiness as a shepherd, but indicates that if fate decrees, the gods will change his mind. Mozart wrote the role for the castrato Tommaso Consoli, a greatly admired soprano. It is a classic da capo aria in which the repeat would have been elaborately ornamented to show off the technical mastery and artistry of the singer, often at the expense of the music. Most composers hated the convention and railed against it until by the beginning of the nineteenth century, partially with Mozart s later operas as inspiration, the cult of the opera seria and the castrati was put to rest. Subsequently, Mozart used this aria as part of a vocal training program for Aloisia Weber, a brilliant young soprano with whom he had fallen in love while lodging with her family during a sojourn in Vienna. Leopold Mozart, in one of music history s most egregious examples of emotional blackmail, put the kybosh on the romance; Wolfgang later ended up with Aloisia s sister Constanze, also an aspiring singer whom Leopold disapproved of, as a consolation prize. L'amerò, sarò costante is from Act 2. Aminta declares his everlasting love and fidelity for Elisa; she gives him happiness and peace of mind and is his most precious object. Serenade No. 3 for Piano and Chamber Orchestra George Perle Composer and musicologist George Perle was a prominent expounder of the twentieth century s most important post-romantic expansion of Western tonality: the serialism of the Second Viennese School. His first published article (1941) was a fundamental critique of Schoenberg's "twelve-tone method," which he saw as the first step toward a new tonality rather than as a special technique of atonal composition. He wrote a comprehensive twovolume study of Alban Berg s compositions, especially his operas, as well as a theoretical study, Serial Composition and Atonality, of the techniques of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. While most of his compositions are serial, they usually have a lyrical underpinning, recalling the description of Perle s idol, Alban Berg, as the Puccini of the twelve-tone system. His short piano pieces, such as the Sonatina and Lyric Intermezzo, are usually romantic in mood and belie the austerity of so many serial compositions. For 24 years Perle was on the faculty

3 of Queens College of the City of New York, retiring in From 1989 to 1991 he was composer-in-residence for the San Francisco Symphony. Perle composed the Serenade No. 3 in It is in five movements for 11 players. The Serenade harks back to Classical works of the same title, its chamber instrumentation (one player per part) and two scherzo-type movements rendering it less weighty than a work for full orchestra. It, nevertheless, has a more formal architecture than its Classical model; an arch with a central slow movement surrounded by two witty scherzos, bracketed in turn by a sonata-form and a rondo. Perle echoes the opening theme at the end of the piece. Perle wrote the theme for the central movement, a chorale and variations, right before attending a memorial service for the great choreographer George Balanchine, subsequently developing it into the elegiac heart of the Serenade. The piano operates as the focal instrument but not the soloist within the chamber orchestra. Perle is particularly sensitive to instrumental texture, creating mini-episodes for small ensembles within the 11-member group. For example, the second movement opens with a riff for piano and woodblock; in the fourth movement, a perpetuum mobile, the piano plays an ostinato of chromatic scales as snatches of accompanying figures are handed off from one instrument to another; each of the episodes in the rondo finale features a different combination of instruments. Recitative and Aria: Ch io mi scordi di te?, Non temer, amato bene K. 505 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (You ask that I forgive You?...Fear nothing, my Beloved) In early 1786 Mozart revised his opera Idomineo, composing new arias, including one to the text of this aria. The text was probably by Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart s librettist for his operas, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi fan tutte. With all due respect, the poetry for operatic arias was a pretty formulaic affair, and the Mozart/da Ponte team had made its revolutionary contribution that significantly changed the genre. Earlier in the century, arias were almost exclusively of the da capo (ABA) variety, in which the singer expostulates on an initial idea (A), qualifies it or momentarily changes his/her mind (B), and returns to the original idea (mightily embellished). Mozart and Da Ponte were working with a new model that would hold for much of the nineteenth century: now, the singer s emotions go through a definitive change, set to new and appropriate music, often moving the drama forward. Mozart set the text once again in December 1786 for the English soprano Anna Selina (Nancy) Storace, his first Susanna, noting in his catalogue: For Miss Storace and myself. It was premiered at a farewell concert for Storace, with Mozart at the piano, a fitting tribute to an esteemed colleague. The recitative Ch io mi scordi di te sets up a basic dramatic problem (impossible love) with conventional protestations of affection, suicidal ideation and railing against fate. The aria Non temer, amato bene runs through a gamut of feelings, perfect for a singer in concert to display both vocal and dramatic artistry.

4 According to the contemporaneous English music historian and journalist, Charles Burney, Ms. Storace was not a great singer, having a certain crack and roughness but she was a lively and intelligent actress. Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat major, K. 365 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Although the actual date of composition of this concerto is uncertain, this is one of the first known to have been completely composed by Mozart. His first piano concertos were transcriptions and arrangements of works by other composers, including C.P.E. Bach, J.C. Bach and others. This work is also Mozart s only concerto for two pianos and is clearly reminiscent of his childhood and adolescence when he and his sister Maria Anna ( Nannerl ) were carted all over Europe as performing prodigies. Although the siblings prodigy days were long over, they continued to perform together; they probably performed the E-flat concerto in 1780 at court for one of Mozart s final concerts in Salzburg, along with the Sonata for Piano Four Hands, K 381. A two-piano transcription of the Concerto No. 7 for Three Pianos also dates from this period, as does a group of piano sonatas for piano fourhands (a medium invented by the brother-sister team and subsequently much favored by unrelated young players of the opposite sex). That same year Mozart left his hometown forever to pursue his dream, first going to Munich, where he had been commissioned to compose the opera Idomeneo, and then on to Vienna where he lived for the rest of his life as music history s first true freelance composer. In the Concerto for Two Pianos, the tasks are evenly divided. The soloists mostly play in dialogue, echoing or answering each other. In contrast to compositions for piano four hands, where per force one of the players takes the lower range and the other the higher, both soloists here cover the entire range of the piano, which at the time was limited to five and a half octaves. The Concerto anticipates the structure typical of the composer s later great piano concertos. The first movement, Allegro, is in classic sonata form; the fanfare-like opening theme plus all the exposition material introduced by the orchestra is then repeated and expanded by the pianos. Because this is a work for two solo instruments, Mozart sometimes has the first soloist present a motive with the second soloist repeating it in slightly varied form, at other times, one piano will begin a phrase, to have it completed by the second. Neither instrument is dominant. The Andante again prefigures the later concerti opening with a deceptively simple theme. But Mozart goes on to pile one beautiful melody onto another to create a poignant statement whose intensity is enhanced by the orchestra s two oboes. The ethereal spell is broken by the sprightly Rondeau: Allegro. The rondo theme is interspersed with episodes in which the two pianos chase each other all over the movement. Originally scored for two oboes, two bassoons, two horns and strings, Mozart added two clarinets, two trumpets and timpani to the outer movements for two private performances in Vienna in November 1781 with his pupil and patron Josepha Barbara von Auernhammer as second pianist. That version, however, is lost.

5 Program notes by: Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn