Conductor
Bruno Ferrandis

featuring
Garrick Ohlsson, piano

SCHOENBERG: Transfigured Night              
WEBER: Konzertstück  
DE FALLA: Nights in the Gardens of Spain
DEBUSSY: Nocturnes

Discovery, February 21, 2009 - 2pm

February 21, 2009 - 8pm

February 22, 2009 - 3pm

February 23, 2009 - 8pm
Wells Fargo Center
$27 - $50

Voyage into the mysteries of night in this program anchored by the magisterial interpretive and technical prowess of world-renowned pianist Garrick Ohlsson, playing not one but two concertos. Travel from the exotic Spanish gardens of De Falla through Shoenberg’s radiant, chromatic “transfiguration” to Nocturnes, where members of the Bach Choir lend their voices as the mythic Sirens.

ARNOLD SCHOENBERG
Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) for String Orchestra, Opus 4

Arnold Schönberg was born in Vienna on September 13, 1874, and, having changed the spelling of his name to Schoenberg after coming to the United States in 1933, died in Brentwood Park, Los Angeles, California, on July 13, 1951. He composed his string sextet Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) in the last half of 1899; the completed score is dated December 1. In 1917 he arranged the work for string orchestra. The original version received its first performance at the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein on March 18, 1902, by the Rosé Quartet with an extra violist and cellist. The score calls for string orchestra divided into first and second violins, first and second violas, and first and second cellos, with double bass parts occasionally reinforcing the bass line. Duration is about 30 minutes.

The popularity of Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht certainly has to do with its very palpable links to the late Romantic era, but it is a remarkably forward-looking work, anticipating the composer that Schoenberg became. Like so many Schoenberg scores, it was composed at a furious pace, most of it in three weeks in September 1899, though the composer was not ready to sign and date his score until December 1.

The overt inspiration was a poem by the German writer Richard Dehmel (1863-1920), whose Weib und Welt (Woman and World) had aroused attention from government censors when published in 1896, owing to an explicit sexuality. Verklärte Nacht appeared in the first edition. It was a natural choice as an inspiration for musical setting, since, aside from its evocative depiction of two lovers walking together through the night, Dehmel’s poem is laid out like a piece of music. The last line, for example, is a trans-formed echo of the opening line, a device that Schoenberg brilliantly mirrors in his score.

The poem is laid out in five short sections. The first, third, and fifth are impersonal narration describing an unnamed couple walking along on a moonlit night. The natural surroundings are cold and bare. The second section is a speech by the woman; she confesses that she is pregnant with another man’s child. Before she met her companion, she had felt that motherhood would provide her with purpose. Now she has fallen in love with him and must con¬fess her fault. The man’s magnanimous response comprises the fourth section of the poem. The radiance of the natural world convinces him that the love they feel will draw them together and make the child theirs as well. The poem closes with another description of the moonlit night—now bright with hope.

It is surprising that Schoenberg chose to write a piece of program music on this scale for a chamber ensemble, especially one that follows a literary model so closely. The sextet medium was new to Schoenberg, though it had twice been employed by Brahms, whom Schoenberg greatly admired. At the same time, the musical style reflects Schoenberg’s absorption of Wagnerian chromatic harmony. (Indeed, the most notorious comment ever made about the score came from one of the program reviewers of the Vienna Musicians Union who was charged with deciding whether to recommend the work for perfor¬mance: it looked, he said, “as if the score of Tristan had been smeared while the ink was still wet.”)

Though reflecting the original poem closely, Verklärte Nacht transcends the usual run-of-the-mill program composition and provides a thoroughly satisfying musical shape in its own terms. The two sections representing the human emotions and interaction are full-scale sonata sections, the first in D minor, the second in D major. Moreover, the second is built out of musical gestures that affirm expressive ideas presented more tentatively in the first. This can be seen, from the literary point of view, as reflecting the anguish of the woman on the one hand and the magnanimous confidence of the man on the other. But it functions equally well from an abstract musical point of view, with the second sonata section truly com¬pleting and “transfiguring” the first.

Schoenberg is so prodigal in inventing gradual transformations of his themes that the listener will be able to discover new relationships even after many hearings of the score.

CARL MARIA VON WEBER
Konzertstück in F minor for Piano and Orchestra, J.282 (Opus 79)

Carl Maria von Weber was born in Eutin, near Lübeck, apparently on November 18, 1786, and died in London on June 5, 1826. He first sketched a planned concerto in F minor in 1815, but did not complete it until May 14, 1821— the very day when his opera Der Freischütz had its premiere. He gave the completed work the title Konzertstück in F minor; he was the soloist in the first performance, which took place in Berlin on June 25, 1821. In addition to the solo piano, the score calls for flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets in pairs, bass trombone, timpani, and strings. Duration is about 17 minutes.

Weber’s continuing reputation rests almost entirely on his operas. He was a man of the theater, having been born almost literally in a theatrical trunk. And he was also one of the great keyboard virtuosi of his day. The last of his three piano concertos, composed in 1821, just before the premiere of his opera Der Freischütz, was the most unusual—so atypical that Weber did not feel comfortable calling it simply a “concerto”; he invented the term “Konzertstück,” which means (freely) “something like a concerto.” Two things—aside from the transcendent virtuosity required of the performer—make it striking: rather than having separate movements, the work runs through continuously connected sections (which Liszt would also do with his concertos), and it tells a kind of story.

Weber played the newly-completed work for his pupil Julius Benedict on the morning of the Freischütz premiere and described the images that he intended the music to convey. The opening section depicts the lady on the balcony of her castle gazing far into the distance in the direction in which her lord had left long ago for the Crusades. Her imagination conjures up a vision of her husband lying wounded on the battlefield. She thinks of flying to his aid, but falls back unconscious. Suddenly in the distance she hears a march. As it approaches, she can discern the knights holding high the cross of the Crusaders. Suddenly he is there! She sinks into his arms. Love is triumphant, “happiness without end.”

Once Weber had finished the Konzertstück, he declined to publish the story or even to refer to it again. It had achieved its purpose when it sparked his imagination as if it were a little opera to which he invented music. Still he grafted his essential theatricality of approach onto the framework of a traditional piano concerto, thus generating a wide range of moods and the exercise of a brilliant virtuosity and showmanship.

MANUEL dE FALLA
Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain) for Piano and Orchestra

Manuel de Falla was born in Cadiz, Spain, on November 23, 1876, and died in Alta Gracia, Argentina, on November 14, 1946. He composed his symphonic impressions Noches en los jardines de España in the years 1911 1915. The score is dedicated to the Spanish pianist Ricardo Vinés. The work was performed at the Teatro Real in Madrid on April 9, 1916; the Orquesta Sinfonica was conducted by Enrique Fernandez Arbos, and José Cubiles was the pianist. In addition to the solo piano, the score calls for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, celesta, triangle, cymbals, harp, and strings. Duration is about 23 minutes.

Falla conceived his orchestral “nocturnes” originally for piano solo, but he decided to recast them for orchestra. He worked on them, continually polishing for years. The score, largely written in Paris, shows the composer’s experience of Debussy, but he has not simply imitated the impressionist style. Rather he has experienced it profoundly and recreated it in terms of his own art. The arrangement into three movements suggests the traditional piano concerto, but the music at once reveals itself to be an orchestral work with a prominent, elaborate piano part.

The composer himself wrote about the score:

If these “symphonic impressions” have achieved their object, the mere enumeration of their titles should be a sufficient guide to the hearer…The end for which it was written is no other than to evoke places, sensations, and sentiments. The themes employed are based (as in much of the composer’s earlier work) on the rhythms, modes, cadences, and ornamental figures which distinguish the popular music of Andalucia, though they are rarely used in their original forms; and the orchestration frequently employs, and employs in a conventional manner, certain effects peculiar to the popular instruments used in those parts of Spain. The music has no pretensions to being descriptive: it is merely expressive. But something more than the sounds of festivals and dances has inspired these “evocations in sound,” for melancholy and mystery have their part also.

Non-Spanish listeners may want a little assistance as to the meaning of the titles. En el Generalife (“In the Generalife”) refers to the garden on the hill of the Alhambra at Granada. Danza lejana (“Distant dance”) is more neutral in its overtones, but En los jardines de la Sierra de Cordoba (“In the gardens of the Sierra de Cordoba”) is a vigorous finale which may suggest a gypsy fiesta. Although the score is redolent of Debussy and Chopin, in diverse ways, it also draws clearly on the resources of Spanish music and, despite its lushness here and there, it points ahead to Falla’s own spare later style, when he composed much for a chamber orchestral texture.

CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Nocturnes for Orchestra

Achille-Claude Debussy was born at St. Germain-en-Laye, Department of Seine-et-Oise, France, on August 22, 1862, and died in Paris on March 25, 1918. His three Nocturnes went through an extended genesis; they were composed during the 1890s, reaching more or less their present form between 1897 and 1899. Nuages and Fêtes were first performed at the Concerts Lamoureux in Paris on December 9, 1900, Camille Chavillard conducting. Nuages is scored for two flutes, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, timpani, harp, and strings. Fêtes is scored for three flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets in F, three trombones and tuba, two harps, timpani, cymbals, snare drum, and strings. Sirènes calls for three flutes, oboe and English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, two harps, chorus of women’s voices, and strings. Druation is about 25 minutes.

By the time the first performance of the Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune in 1894 made Debussy instantly famous, he had already embarked on his next major orchestral work, the Nocturnes, which, with Pelléas et Mélisande, were to occupy his attention for the rest of the 1890s. He was evidently inspired by the poem Scènes au crépuscule (“Sunset scenes”) by Debussy’s friend Henri de Régnier, a close associate of Mallarmé. (One of the “scenes” involved the imagery of flutes and trumpets that might have inspired Fêtes.)

Debussy likened this music to “the study of gray”; this fits best with Nuages (“Clouds”), one of his most personal musical expressions. The subdued orchestral colors and dynamics hold the music within carefully prescribed limits. The spare opening gesture in clarinets and bassoons—alternating open fifths with thirds—grows and intensifies in the divided string parts, while the English horn solo interpolates a chromatic figure that outlines a diminished fifth. This English horn figure keeps reappearing, virtually without change, like a solid object around which the clouds float and swirl.

The clouds disperse for the second movement, Fêtes (“Festivals”). Debussy is supposed to have said that he was inspired by the merrymaking in the Bois de Boulogne, although the brilliant processions through Paris at the time of the Franco-Russian alliance, signed in 1896, probably played a part in the final conception of the music, with its fanfares heard softly in the distance, growing to splendid display, and then fading away as the music again dissolves into silence.

Sirènes (“Sirens”) may have been suggested by Swinburne’s poem “Nocturne,” which dealt with the effects that mermaids have on mortals. In any case, Debussy composed it while at the same time beginning work on La mer, so it is clear the visual, musical, and literary images of the sea were dominating his thoughts for an extensive period. The essential feature of the sea is that it is always in motion, yet never really changes. Debussy’s score brilliant captures this aspect of the image, totally avoiding traditional thematic development, yet creating a constantly moving rhythmic undulation of great subtlety animating orchestral sonorities of ever-changing color. The addition of a wordless women’s chorus adds a wonderfully specific tone to the image of the mythically alluring singers of the sea.

© Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)