Conductor
Bruno Ferrandis

featuring
Joseph Edelberg, violin

WAGNER: Forest Murmurs from Siegfried
BACH: Violin Concerto in E major
TSONTAKIS: Clair de Lune
MENDELSSOHN: Symphony No. 4, Italian

January 26, 27, 28, 2008
Wells Fargo Center
$27 - $50

The program opens with a melody of undulating leaves and gentle bird-songs—an orchestral interlude from Wagner’s opera Siegfried, part of his gigantic Ring cycle. Concertmaster Joseph Edelberg shines in a Bach concerto that pushes the limits of what’s possible for the violin. We also present the west coast premiere of a new work with an old name, Clair de Lune by George Tsontakis. This American composer has recently received two of compositions richest prizes: the Charles Ives Living and the Grawemeyer Award. And our mid-winter concert concludes brightly with Mendelssohn’s 4th Symphony, a work inspired by the dance rhythms, color and atmosphere of Italy.

Bruno Ferrandis underwritten by Margaret and Harry Wetzel.

Guest artist Joseph Edelberg underwritten by E. Nakamichi Foundation.

PRESENTED BY THE LAW OFFICES OF

RICHARD WAGNER: Forest Murmurs, from Siegfried

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Saxony, on May 22, 1813, and died in Venice, Italy, on February 13, 1883. His work on Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Nibelung's Ring), of which Siegfried is the third part, began as far back as 1848. The composition of Siegfried occupied him, with lengthy interruptions, between September 1856 and June 14, 1869. The first performance took place as part of the first complete cycle of the Ring operas at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on August 16, 1876. The score calls for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), pairs of oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three tromobones, timpani, glockenspiel, triangle, and strings. Duration is about 9 minutes.

Wagner spent more than a quarter century bringing to completion the mighty four-part series of operas that tells the story of the Nibelung’s ring, which he had freely adapted from old Norse and Germanic myths. Although the Ring ostensibly deals with gods, giants, dwarves, dragons, magic helmets and an all-controlling ring of power, its philosophical and ethical basis grows directly out of contemporary European social problems, particularly those generated by the unfettered capitalism of the industrial revolution in the theme that the unchecked pursuit of wealth was a destructive, dominating force in human relations.

Siegfried, an orphan and the greatest hero in this mythic world, has been directed by the dwarf Mime to a cavern in the middle of the forest. Here the dragon Fafner guards the all-powerful Ring. Siegfried knows nothing of this—nor that the dwarf plans to poison him after he kills the dragon, to take the Ring and enjoy its power.

Siegfried has a quiet moment amidst rustling leaves to think about the mother who (he has just learned) died in giving birth to him. He tries to imitate the song of a wood bird by cutting a reed to make an instrument, but without success. Finally he decides to “sing” to the bird with his hunting horn. Fafner awakens, Siegfried kills him. During the fight, a drop of the dragon’s blood falls on his hand and burns. Instinctively, Siegfried puts it into his mouth. When he does so, he finds that the magical power of the dragon’s blood gives him the ability to understand the bird’s song. The bird tells him to take the ring and a magical helmet from the dragon’s cave.

The blood also lets Siegfried perceive that Mime’s words are lies intended to lull him to his own murder. He kills the dwarf and follows the bird, who tells him of a bride waiting for him on a mountain top surrounded by fire.

The passage known as the Forest Murmurs is drawn from this scene. A certain Herman Zump took two passages from the act—the quiet reflection that preceded the fight with the dragon, and the lively music of Siegfried’s departure following the bird—to create a self-contained orchestral passage. Wagner the magician never fails to exercise his powers of artistic sorcery when he gets the chance.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: Concerto No. 2 in E major for Violin and Orchestra, BWV 1042

Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Saxony, on March 21, 1685, and died in Leipzig on July 28, 1750. He almost certainly composed in Violin Concerto in E during the years he spent in Cöthen, 1717-1722, probably for the leader of the orchestra, Joseph Spiess, though we have no information about performances in his time. In addition to the solo violin, the score calls for strings and continuo. Duration is about 19 minutes.

All of Bach’s violin concertos reflect the Italian tradition in general and the concertos of Vivaldi in particular. Bach had made an extensive study of Vivaldi’s concerto style, converting a number of Vivaldi’s violin concertos into keyboard concertos for his own use, learning “the direction of the ideas, their relationship to one another, the sequences of modulations, and many other particulars besides.” (The quotation is from the biography by Forkel, who knew Bach.)

Bach always enriched his concertos with a detailed contrapuntal structure in the best German manner and created his episodes out of the ritornello material, rather than introducing sharply contrasting ideas out of nowhere. Thus he took the best of what he found in Italian music and combined it with the best that he knew of German technique to create a concerto that superbly balances structure and expression, that allows the orchestra to participate to an unusual degree, yet still highlights the soloists as the prime movers in their story.

The first movement of the E-major concerto draws its formal structure from the opera aria; it is laid out, in design and harmonic plan, precisely like a Da Capo aria. The middle movement is ravishingly beautiful, with the soloist unfolding a graceful melody over the quasi-ostinato rhythmic regularity of the bass line. And the final rondo is “modern” in its dance-like symmetry.

GEORGE TSONTAKIS: Clair de Lune

George Tsontakis was born in Astoria, Queens, New York, on October 24, 1951. He composed Clair de Lune on a commission from the Barlow Endowments for Music Composition at Brigham Young University; the work was premiered on March 2nd and 3rd, 2007, with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra at Ordway Theater in Minnesota. The score calls for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes (second doubling English horn), two clarinets (second doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, percussion, harp, piano, and strings. Duration is about 18 minutes.

George Tsontakis has been for some years one of the leading figures of the “new romanticism.” He studied with Roger Sessions at Juilliard, then continued studies in Italy. He returned in 1981, when he was thirty, and almost immediately making his mark with a series of pieces that have attracted attention and won many awards. His String Quartet No. 4, subtitled “Beneath Thy Tenderness of Heart,” won the first prize in the Friedheim Kennedy Center competition in 1989. He has been a composer-in-residence at the Aspen Music Festival since 1976 and was named director of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble in 1991.

In 2005, he won the Grawemeyer Award, widely recognized as the most prestigious composition prize internationally, for his Violin Concerto No. 2. Since then he has composed a Naumburg-commissioned song cycle for soprano Sari Gruber and tonight’s work, an homage to the music and culture of France. Recently he has won the world’s richest prize for a composer, the Charles Ives Living, given by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The three-year term of the Ives Living, during which the winner is required to devote himself entirely to composition, will span 2007 to 2010.

Clair de lune (“Moonlight”) is, of course, already a well known title in the world of music, having served both for a famous song by Fauré and one of the most famous piano pieces by Claude Debussy. Both of these works were inspired by a Verlaine poem.

As the composer wrote for the premiere in St. Paul:

While Debussy’s title for his endearing piano piece might have been an inspiration, … his Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun might have been more of a compositional influence. Scored for a similar-sized chamber orchestra, its richness… serves to draw the listener close… At the same time, the smaller chamber orchestra lends the composer an opportunity for both aquatic and mercurial music in an intricate balance, and to offer the listener a detailed and intricate weaving of musical ideas.

Felix Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 4 in A major, Opus 90, Italian

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg on February 3, 1809, and died in Leipzig on November 4, 1847. He began composing the Italian Symphony while in Rome in the late winter and spring of 1831. Although the “official” date of completion is March 13, 1833, Mendelssohn intended to rework it again before allowing it out of his hands permanently. Its first performance took place in London at the concerts of the Philharmonic Society on May 13, 1833, but Mendelssohn felt the need of revisions afterward; as a result it was not published in his lifetime. The symphony is scored for flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets in pairs, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 27 minutes.

As a young man from a well‑off middle‑class German family, Felix Mendelssohn undertook the Grand Tour to the centers of Classical culture in Italy including long stops in Rome. His vivid travel impressions have been preserved in a voluminous correspondence, illustrated with his own drawings, recounting his immediate response to fresh new experiences and the way these sparked creative ideas in him.

From Rome on December 20, 1830, Felix wrote to his family that two symphonies were “haunting my brain”—we now know them as the Scottish and Italian symphonies, reactions to his recent travels. By mid-January 1831 he wrote that the symphonies were taking shape in his mind and by late February, Mendelssohn wrote (quite accurately) that the Italian symphony would be “the most sportive piece I have yet composed, especially the last movement.”

The richly assured orchestration makes its mark in the opening measures with a background of repeated chords in the woodwinds over which the violins sing their enthusiastic, soaring theme. The unique sound of the first measure alone is enough to identify this score out of the entire symphonic repertory. The racing activity never stops or slows, even when the strings become the lightest staccato whisper to bring in the clarinets and bassoons with the secondary theme. Much of the development is based on another new idea treated imitatively in the strings with punctuation from the woodwinds until the latter assert the importance of the main theme on top of everything. The new theme is recapitulated in place of the romantic moment for the clarinet from the exposition, and the coda works all of the preceding ideas in with the concluding material from the first ending in a wonderfully imaginative web.

The second movement seems to evoke a religious procession, beginning with a “wailing” gesture that introduces a measured and rather somber marching theme in D minor.
The third movement is the embodiment of grace, with a light but poetic touch in the horn calls deftly answered by violin and flute scales in the Trio.

The final saltarello (a lively leaping dance) is a whirlwind of rushing activity, from the orchestral trills and punctuating chords of the first measure through the unison statement of the basic rhythm to the end. The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that Mendelssohn begins in the minor mode and, contrary to all expectation, refuses to yield, even in the very last measures, to a conclusion in the major. But the energy and the brilliant orchestration of the whole, the unflagging verve and ceaseless activity, bring on a conclusion that, for all its surprises, is as fully gratifying as any that Mendelssohn ever wrote.

© Steven Ledbetter  (www.stevenledbetter.com)