Concert 19 May 2001

PROGRAMME NOTES

by Michael Bell

Richard WAGNER - “Rienzi” Overture

Over the years Richard Wagner has attracted wildly differing reactions. Debussy made fun of him, Busoni was hostile towards him, Stravinsky contemptuous. Totally self-centred, like many men of short stature, Wagner had a frighteningly powerful personality, and behaved as one who knew he was a supreme genius - selfish, arrogant and full of prejudice. Understandably, he was Hitler’s favourite composer. What is clear is that Wagner stands at the end of a long, symphonic and dramatic tradition. “The Ring” is the last successful attempt to create a large work on the grandest scale.

In his mid-twenties “Rienzi” was an attempt by Wagner to copy the Grand Opera style, as practised by Meyerbeer and others at the Paris Opera. He had already put a tremendous effort into writing two comparatively conventional operas which were not very successful and had left him impoverished: “I can’t live on a miserable organist’s pittance like Bach”.

Wagner based his libretto on “Rienzi, The Last of the Tribunes”, a novel written by Bulwer Lytton in 1835. The story is concerned with Rienzi, the people’s Tribune and a Papal Notary, who filled with pride of birth and country, succeeds in releasing his native city from the hands of the nobles. Later popular opinion changes and even the Church turns against him. In the end the populace burns the Capitol, in which Rienzi and a few of his followers have made a last stand.

In spite of cuts the first performance in Dresden in 1842 lasted for six hours. The brilliant overture quotes five themes later heard in the opera:

1. The slow introduction which has three long sustained notes on the trumpet, is later used as a signal for the people to rise against the nobles.

2. A broad melody which is Rienzi’s prayer in Act V.

3. A theme heard first in the finale to Act 1 which is associated with the people.

4. The battle hymn. 5. A march from the finale to Act 2.

Edward GERMAN - “Henry VIII” Incidental Music: Three Dances

“There is only one man to follow me who has genius, and that is Edward German”. Thus did Sir Arthur Sullivan, in the last years of his life, acknowledge the stature of the modest but highly talented composer.

German Edward Jones was born in the old Shropshire market town of Whitchurch on February 17th 1862. Whilst a student at the Royal Academy of Music in London he changed his name to Edward German which seemed like a good idea at the time but was less appropriate when war broke out in 1914.

In 1888 he was appointed Musical Director of the Globe Theatre in London. His gift for charming melody and light orchestration, combined with his theatrical interests and experience, soon made him one of the leading London providers of ‘incidental music’ and when Henry Irving intended to mount a production of “Henry VIII” at the Lyceum Theatre he asked Edward German to compose the score. When the production finally opened at the Lyceum Theatre in London on January 5th 1892, German’s music, designed to reflect the spirit of the play and its era, was lavishly praised. The set of Three Dances were responsible for spreading the name of Edward German far and wide. They became especially popular, by all accounts, in Italy of all places!

1. A Morris Dance (in A minor) gets proceedings under way. The simple rhythm laid down by the drum at the very outset is never absent and provides a firm foundation, rather like a village tabor, for the charming unhurried melody.

2. In Act 1, Scene 4, the King, disguised as a shepherd, dances with his wife’s Maid of Honour, Anne Boleyn. “The fairest hand I ever touch’d! O beauty! Till now I never knew thee", he tells her as monarch, maid and courtiers tread a dainty step to the strains of the Shepherds’ Dance. This charming movement was a particular favourite of Sir Edward Elgar, who revealed that he could never listen to it without a lump coming into his throat.

3. And finally, there is the Torch Dance, performed by mummers. One writer explained that “it describes a frenzied and tragic scene at the Court of France in 1393, when a flake of fire falling on one of the maskers, sent the dancers flying up and down the hall in the wildest saraband ever danced”. German simply observed that he had attempted to portray the flickering of flames in the music.

MOZART Sinfonia Concertante in E flat for violin, viola & orchestra

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg in 1756 and, like his father Leopold, he became a musician in the service of the ruling Archbishop.

In 1777 the young Mozart was allowed to resign from the Archbishop’s service, in order to travel to Mannheim and to Paris. The object of the journey, on which he was accompanied by his mother who fell ill and died during their stay in Paris, was to seek a better appointment.

In January 1779 Mozart returned home, reluctantly accepting the appointment of court organist in Salzburg. It was now that he completed his Sinfonia Concertante in E flat for violin and viola, K 364, scoring it for the usual Salzburg orchestra, with pairs of oboes and horns, together with strings. This double concerto is a mature and deeply serious composition.

I. The first movement opens solemnly, the orchestral exposition leading to the entry of the two soloists together, followed by a movement in which generally one player answers the other in antiphonal duet. A composed cadenza for violin and viola leads to the conclusion of the movement.

II. After a simpler statement of the principal theme of the slow movement, the solo violin enters, echoed by the viola, the two solo instruments sometimes joining together and sometimes responding to each other in close imitation.

III. In the final movement the solo violin follows the orchestra with its own lively melody, imitated by the viola, a procedure continued in other strands of melody in music of delightful invention.

Perhaps the best words to describe this music are Mozart’s own. Although written to his father to describe an earlier work, they are certainly applicable to this particular piece: “This concerto is a happy medium between what is too easy and too difficult; it is very brilliant, pleasing to the ear without being vapid. There are passages here and there from which connoisseurs alone can derive satisfaction; but these passages are written in such a way that the less learned cannot fail to be pleased without knowing why”.

Antonin DVORAK - Symphony No. 8 in G, Op. 88

Dvorak was born near Prague in 1841 and died in that city in 1904, aged sixty-two. His interest in music was aroused by his father’s zither-playing and by what he heard in his village from travelling bands. He took to singing and to playing the violin, and later took some lessons on piano and organ. In 1857, when he was sixteen, he became a pupil of the Prague Organ School. It was a time of poverty. He lacked money to buy books and music, to hire a piano, or to attend concerts: “As for Mozart and Beethoven, I only just knew that they existed!”

In 1872 Dvorak obtained a good position as church organist, gave up orchestral playing, and married. He bought a cottage deep in the country at Vysoka, which took him away from the pressures of city life and proved extremely beneficial to his creativity. Surrounded by his six children, he was able to breed his beloved pigeons and by 1889, when Dvorak began work on his Eighth Symphony, he was able to look back with some satisfaction on ten years of solid achievement.

His music was being warmly received in many parts of Europe, in the North American continent, and even as far afield as Australia. In addition, he had forged an exceptionally durable relationship with the English musical public.

The Eighth Symphony shows Dvorak in a particularly experimental mood, striking out on unorthodox lines in the first and last movements.

I. The symphony opens with a solemn march-like melody in G minor, for cellos and wind which is followed by a cheerful G major flute theme But Dvorak departs from tradition by repeating the G minor melody before the development, and again, very richly scored, before the recapitulation.

II. The pensive mood of the Second Movement (Adagio) is relieved by the strains of a village band, playing a cheerful C major melody for flute and oboe.

III. In place of a scherzo, the Third Movement is in the form of a gracious G minor waltz, with a contrasting G major trio section.

IV. In the finale, an initial summons to attention by the trumpets is followed by a set of variations on a gentle lilting theme announced by the cellos. The variations are interrupted halfway through by an episode in C minor, which is indirectly linked with the trumpet-call which reappears triumphantly in the exciting closing section. The premiere of the new work which took place in Prague on 2nd February 1890, was conducted by Dvorak himself, who subsequently introduced his symphony to London Frankfurt and Cambridge, where he received an honorary doctorate.