17

Marko Letonja conductor Stephen Hough piano

R STRAUSSSerenade in E flat, Op 7

Duration 10 mins

R STRAUSSLe bourgeois gentilhomme – Suite Overture to Act I Menuett – The Dancing Master The Fencing Master Entrance and Dance of the Tailors The Menuett of Lully Courante Entrance of Cléonte (after Lully) Prelude to Act II (Intermezzo) The Dinner

Duration 36 mins

INTERVAL

Duration 20 mins

BEETHOVENPiano Concerto No 5, Emperor Allegro Adagio un poco mosso – Rondo (Allegro)

Duration 38 mins

This concert will end at approximately 9.30pm.

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MASTER 10 & LAUNCESTON 5

FRIDAY 28 AUGUST 7.30PMFEDERATION CONCERT HALL

SATURDAY 29 AUGUST 7.30PMALBERT HALL

LAUNCESTON SEASON MAJOR MEDIA PARTNER

STEPHEN HOUGH

One of the most distinctive artists of his

generation, Stephen Hough combines a

distinguished career as a concert pianist

with those of composer and writer. Named

by The Economist as one of Twenty

Living Polymaths, he was the first classical

performer to be awarded a MacArthur

Fellowship. He was made a Commander of

the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the

New Year’s Honours 2014. Stephen Hough

recently recorded Schumann and Dvorák’s

piano concertos in live performances with the

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and

Andris Nelsons, while other recent highlights

include recitals in New York, Boston, London,

Madrid and Milan. He is a regular guest at

festivals such as Salzburg, Mostly Mozart,

Tanglewood, Edinburgh and the BBC Proms,

where he has made over twenty concerto

appearances. He won the UK’s Royal

Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award

in 2010. Stephen Hough’s catalogue of over

fifty CDs has garnered international awards

including the Diapason d’Or de l’Année,

several Grammy nominations and eight

Gramophone Awards including Record of the

Year and the Gold Disc. A London resident,

Stephen Hough is a Visiting Professor at the

Royal Academy of Music, the International

Chair of Piano Studies at the Royal Northern

College of Music and is on the faculty of

The Juilliard School.

MARKO LETONJA

Marko Letonja is Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg. Born in Slovenia, he studied at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana and the Vienna Academy of Music. He was Music Director of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra from 1991 to 2003 and Music Director and Chief Conductor of both the Symphony Orchestra and the Opera in Basel from 2003 to 2006. He was Principal Guest Conductor of Orchestra Victoria in 2008 and made his debut with the TSO the following year. He took up the post of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra at the start of 2012. Marko Letonja has worked with many orchestras in Europe including the Munich Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony and the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, Milan; and in many renowned opera houses, such as the Vienna State Opera, Berlin State Opera, La Scala, Milan, and the Semper Oper, Dresden. He has also conducted at the Arena di Verona. His engagements in Australia have included the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and productions for Opera Australia and the West Australian Opera. Future engagements include the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Mozarteum Orchestra, Salzburg, Berlin Radio Orchestra and a return appearance at the Vienna State Opera.

RICHARD STRAUSS

1918

Serenade for 13 wind instruments in E flat, Op 7

Late in life Richard Strauss would occasionally conduct his Op 7 Serenade, muttering that it wasn’t “too bad for a music student”. He was only 17 at the time he composed this work, but he had been a music student of one sort or another for well over a decade: piano lessons from age four, violin from age eight; experiments in composition from age six and formal lessons when he was 11. His father, Franz Strauss, was one of Germany’s most eminent French horn players. He was also deeply conservative in his musical tastes. As Richard later wrote, Franz’s “musical trinity was Mozart (above all), Haydn and Beethoven. To these were added Schubert, as a song-writer, Weber and, at some distance, Mendelssohn and Spohr.” In other words Franz was an unapologetic classicist.

Franz’s aesthetic influence is clear in the early Serenade Op 7, though the work is by no means faux Mozart. The scoring for winds is in accordance with the classical serenade: two flutes, oboes and clarinets, four horns, two bassoons, with the bass provided by contrabassoon or bass tuba (there is an optional double bass part in the last two bars!). Unlike the classical serenade – always a multi-movement work – this is in a single movement, though it might be likened to the Andante movements of some of Mozart’s. Like Mozart’s, Strauss’s sonata design doesn’t spend much time developing themes in the symphonic sense, but rather takes great pleasure in generating beautiful melodies.

The piece had great consequences for young Strauss. It was the first of his works which had its première outside of Munich, being launched by the Dresden Tonkünstlerverein in 1882. More importantly, the piece found its way into the repertoire of the Meiningen Orchestra, conducted by the legendary Hans von Bülow. The Meiningen Orchestra included some extremely fine players: horn-player

RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949)

Gustav Leinhos must have enjoyed playing a part written with the expertise that Franz had taught his son; the principal clarinettist was Richard Mühlfeld for whom Brahms wrote his late clarinet-based masterpieces. In addition, Bülow commissioned a new piece, the Suite Op 4 for the same combination, which he arranged for Strauss to conduct in the younger man’s podium debut. Bülow also brought Strauss to a deeper understanding of contemporary music, notably that of Brahms. The Serenade, then, was a pivotal work in many ways for the young Strauss.

And as we’ve seen, it was a work that Strauss kept in his own repertoire. But the composer often felt that he had failed to get the balance of instrumental sounds quite right. In 1943 he wrote more wind ensemble music, this time for 16 players, producing the First Sonatina for winds, which like many of the works of his final years, harks back to the Mozartian world of the Serenade. It was performed as part of Strauss’ 80th birthday celebrations by the Dresden Tonkünstlerverein, 62 years after the Op 7 Serenade did so much to launch his career.

Abridged from a note by Gordon Kerry © 2007

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Le bourgeois gentilhomme – Suite, Op 60

Overture to Act I

Menuett – The Dancing Master

The Fencing Master

Entrance and Dance of the Tailors

The Menuett of Lully

Courante

Entrance of Cléonte (after Lully)

Prelude to Act II (Intermezzo)

The Dinner

Richard Strauss’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme – Suite, which was first performed in 1920, consists of choice excerpts from two of Strauss’s theatrical works: Ariadne auf Naxos and Der Bürger als Edelmann. The former, which appeared in its first version in 1912, consists of an abridgement of Molière’s comédie-ballet Le bourgeois gentilhomme (in German, Der Bürger als Edelmann) and a one-act opera based on the Greek myth of Ariadne abandoned on the island of Naxos. That is to say, the one work comprises a spoken play (with incidental music) and an opera. For a number of reasons it was not particularly successful. Some years later Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal reworked Molière’s comédie-ballet as a stand-alone work, Der Bürger als Edelmann. It too was not entirely successful but Strauss was eager to ensure an afterlife for his well-crafted music and fashioned carefully selected excerpts from both works into Le bourgeois gentilhomme – Suite.

Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme is an exquisite satire on the aspirations and pretentions of social-climbing snobs. The middle-class gentleman of the title – M Jourdain – is a crass, newly-rich vulgarian. Desperate to give the appearance of a nobleman, he has himself coached in the speech, manners, taste and deportment of an aristocrat. Things go awry when his daughter, Lucile, falls in love with the middle-class Cléonte. Jourdain is appalled at the prospect of his daughter marrying beneath her station. After a series of

Piano Concerto No 5 in E flat, Op 73

Allegro

Adagio un poco mosso –

Rondo (Allegro)

In May 1809 Napoleon’s armies occupied Vienna for the second time and with considerable violence. Beethoven took shelter with his brother Caspar Carl and his wife Johanna and, to protect his failing hearing, spent the bombardment of 11 and 12 May with pillows over his ears in the cellar. Beethoven wrote to his publisher, “What a destructive, disorderly life I see and hear around me: nothing but drums, cannons and human misery in every form.”

Before, during and after the invasion and despite his misery, Beethoven managed to work. He composed the Op 70 piano trios and three piano sonatas including Op 81a, Das Lebewohl (or “Les Adieux”) which reflects Beethoven’s sorrow at seeing his young patron the Archduke Rudolf leaving Vienna, as did so many of the aristocracy during the invasion. He also composed the String Quartet Op 74, popularly known as the Harp Quartet, and completed the Fifth Piano Concerto (also dedicated to Rudolf). Curiously, most of these are in the key of E flat – the key of The Magic Flute and other music where Mozart sought to create a sense of solemnity, and one that Beethoven used at his most Promethean in works like the Eroica Symphony. These works don’t bear any obvious resemblance to one another: the transcendent serenity of the Harp Quartet seems miles away from the high style of the outer movements of the concerto. But all of these works break new ground in some way.

By this time Beethoven’s deafness made it impossible for him to perform with an orchestra, so the concerto’s first performance in Leipzig in 1811 was given by a young organist, Friedrich Schneider. At the Viennese première in 1812, Carl Czerny was soloist. Given the political circumstances, it is hardly surprising that

RICHARD STRAUSS LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827)

complications, love conquers all and Jourdain, oblivious to a deception that is being played upon him, believes that he has reached the top of the social ladder with a formal ennoblement ceremony.

Like Ariadne auf Naxos and Der Bürger als Edelmann, Le bourgeois gentilhomme – Suite is scored for small orchestra. That said, the orchestra includes a piano and a sizeable percussion section, and Strauss’s orchestration calls for a good number of prominent and demanding solo passages. Given that Le bourgeois gentilhomme is set in 17th-century France, the modest sized orchestra gives Strauss the opportunity to conjure up Baroque-like sounds when required. He even quotes the music of French Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) from time to time.

Strauss’s music is often thought to be outsized, bombastic and earth-shatteringly loud. But while some of his music fits this description, he turned a corner with Ariadne auf Naxos and Der Bürger als Edelmann writing in a more “neoclassical” style. Always fond of musical jokes, he indulges in a number of them in the “Dinner” scene in Le bourgeois gentilhomme, the final movement of the Suite. Jourdain’s banquet includes a vast quantity of dishes including saddle of mutton, roasted songbirds and Rhine salmon. This allows Strauss the opportunity to quote from his own music – the infamous “bleating sheep” episode from the tone poem Don Quixote and the twittering birds from Der Rosenkavalier – as well as Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Strauss once boasted that he could compose an entire menu if required, and the cutlery too! Le bourgeois gentilhomme gave him the opportunity to do just that.

Robert Gibson TSO © 2010

The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first performed this work with conductor Patrick Thomas in Hobart on 18 May 1968 and, most recently, with Sebastian Lang-Lessing in Hobart on 28 August 2010.

the concerto is, in Alfred Einstein’s word, the “apotheosis of the military concept” in Beethoven’s music. Biographer Maynard Solomon quotes Einstein as saying that the audience “expected a first movement in four-four time of a military character; and they reacted with unmixed pleasure when Beethoven not only fulfilled but far surpassed their expectations.”

In the Fifth Concerto, Beethoven solved the problem of how to exploit the soloist’s virtuosity without downgrading the role of the orchestra, while constructing the kind of musical argument and drama which was so crucial to the Classical style. This is achieved partly through masterstrokes like the very opening gesture: a single chord is sounded by the orchestra, to which the piano responds in such flamboyant style, creating a sense of uncertainty about how and when the orchestra will rejoin the music, and what form the actual thematic material will take.

A standard practice in much Classical music was to get louder and more agitated in the lead-up to a point of structural significance, but Beethoven made those moments even more dramatic. The overwhelming impression left by the first movement of the Fifth Concerto is of ceremonial grandeur and pomp – hence the nickname (not authorised by Beethoven) of Emperor. But the massive scale of the first movement is made possible by the frequent contrast of the “military”, with its characteristic march rhythms, and the reflective. Moreover, Beethoven prepares the movement’s climactic moments with what scholar William Kinderman calls “the withdrawal of the music into a mysterious stillness”. The piano’s opening flourishes, for instance, seem for a moment to be about to wander off into realms of improvisation before the energetic first theme is announced impatiently by the band. To prepare the moment of recapitulation, where the opening material returns, Beethoven again allows the music to become rarefied and serene: a passage of ever-quieter scales

A FORMER STUDENT OF BEETHOVEN’S, ARCHDUKE RUDOLF OF AUSTRIA (1788-1831) ENTERED THE

PRIESTHOOD AND ROSE TO THE LEVEL OF CARDINAL.

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and trills gives way to a pastoral dialogue between the winds and the bell-tones of the piano.

IN THE FIFTH CONCERTO, BEETHOVEN SOLVED THE PROBLEM OF HOW TO EXPLOIT THE SOLOIST’S VIRTUOSITY WITHOUT DOWNGRADING THE ROLE OF THE ORCHESTRA, WHILE CONSTRUCTING THE KIND OF MUSICAL ARGUMENT AND DRAMA WHICH WAS SO CRUCIAL TO THE CLASSICAL STYLE.

The short, central Adagio movement, rightly described as dreamlike by one writer, is in B major, which in terms of Classical tonal logic is a fair way away from the “home” key of E flat. And its mood couldn’t be further from the military episodes, despite its material being dominated by the scales and trills that featured in the first movement. It may have been a passage such as this that Australian poet Gwen Harwood was remembering when she wrote:

Pain breaks upon these notes in splintering trills; here, changed to song, wears the calm aspect of divinity.

A justly celebrated instance of “the withdrawal of the music into a mysterious stillness” occurs at the transition from the slow movement into the finale. The transition is almost imperceptible – Beethoven changes a note here or there to subtly change the direction of the music as it seems to fade, and the piano begins ruminating on a common chord which will ultimately flower as the final movement’s bounding theme, which again is contrasted with moments of deep calm. Whatever the misery in which Beethoven wrote this work, or its immediate political context, it turns out to be another ode to joy.

Gordon Kerry © 2003

The Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra first performed this work with conductor Clive Douglas and soloist Leone Stredwick in Hobart on 27 February 1954 and, most recently, with Eivind Aadland and Marc-Andre Hamelin in Hobart on 20 September 2013.

Many of Beethoven’s works carry nicknames, the great majority of which are straightforward. The “Waldstein” Sonata, “Archduke” Trio and “Rasumovsky” Quartets all bear the names of the persons to whom they are dedicated: Count Waldstein, Archduke Rudolf and Count Rasumovsky.

Sometimes the nicknames are an attempt to capture an essential feature of the work. The “Moonlight” Sonata, for example, was coined by the poet Heinrich Rellstab who, upon hearing the gently rolling triplets of the opening movement of Op 27 No 2, imagined a boat on moonlit waters. The plucked arpeggios in the first movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet Op 74 gave rise to the nickname “Harp” Quartet. We don’t know who came up with the nickname “Spring” for the Violin Sonata Op 24 – it certainly wasn’t the composer – but the nickname was firmly attached to the work by the middle of the 19th century and shows no sign of going away.

Strictly speaking, the descriptive titles attached to Beethoven’s Symphony No 3 and Symphony No 6, “Eroica” and “Pastoral”, are not nicknames as such but legitimate parts of the full title. The story behind the “Eroica” is well known: Beethoven had intended to call his Third Symphony “Bonaparte”, but when the First Consul declared himself Emperor of the French people, Beethoven tore up the dedication sheet and retitled the work “Heroic symphony, Composed to celebrate the memory of a great man”. Beethoven gave the various movements of the Sixth Symphony picturesque inscriptions such as “Scene by the Brook” and “Merry Gathering of Peasants”, so it is hardly surprising that he should name the entire work “Pastoral Symphony, or Recollections of Country Life”.

Which brings us to this work, the Piano Concerto No 5, popularly known as the “Emperor” Concerto. To whom does the nickname refer? Actually, it doesn’t refer

WHICH EMPEROR?

to anyone. “Emperor” was definitely not coined by Beethoven. It was probably dreamt up by the German-born English composer, pianist and music publisher Johann Baptist Cramer. An exact contemporary of Beethoven’s, Cramer most probably appended the word “Emperor” to Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 5 when he published the work in London in 1810.

Unlike the other nicknames cited above, “Emperor” has no currency outside the English-speaking world. (You will never come across it in a German concert program.) Indeed, Beethoven dedicated the concerto to Archduke Rudolf, he of the “Archduke” Trio.

So there is no emperor behind the “Emperor”. The designation was a marketing ploy which has endured for more than two centuries.

Robert Gibson © 2015

2524

THURSDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 6PMFEDERATION CONCERT HALL

Brett Kelly conductor Christopher Lawrence presenter Allison Farrow narrator

Max, the cutest mouse in the whole world, pays his first visit to Tasmania having already wowed audiences from Amsterdam to Washington and pretty much everywhere in-between. A delightful introduction to the instruments of the orchestra, Maximus Musicus visits the Orchestra features Ravel’s Bolero, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and other great works. Big-screen projections make the concert even more enjoyable. Suitable for children of all ages…and grown-up kids too!

GREAT FAMILY VALUE AT ONLY $5 FOR CHILDREN AGED 2-16. ADULT PRICE $29. CONCESSIONS AVAILABLE.

visits the Orchestra

Maximus