Painting of road through hills

2008-2009 Concerts

Angie ZhangBack to the Future

Sunday, March 15, 2009 at 7 p.m.
Washington Center for the Performing Arts

Conductor
Huw Edwards

Guest Artist
Angie Zhang

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Back to the Future
Ralph Vaughan Williams
(1872-1958)		 Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756-1791)		 Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major, K. 271
I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Allegro - andante cantabile - Tempo I

Ms. Zhang

INTERMISSION
Felix Mendelssohn
(1809-1847)
 Symphony No. 5 in D major, Op. 107
"Reformation"
I. Andante - allegro con fuoco
II. Allegro vivace
III. Andante
IV. Andante (Choral: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott) - Allegro vivace

 

Program Notes

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

The ravishingly beautiful Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, for double-string orchestra, was first performed in Gloucester Cathedral at the Three Choirs Festival--in 1910. This work, Vaughan Williams' first major piece for large ensemble, created a huge sensation in Europe and did much to put British music back on the map at the start of the 20th-century. Although not the first work which looks back to England's "Golden Age of Music", the Tallis Fantasia is the most striking: it is constructed from a chant tune--the "Third Mode Melody"--which Thomas Tallis (1505-1585) wrote in 1567 for Archbishop Parker's Psalter.  Vaughan Williams discovered this melody while editing the English Hymnal in 1906. (The composer harmonized it and used it for Addison's hymn "When, rising from the bed of death.") It was revised in 1913 and again in 1919 shortly before its publication, which had been delayed by the Great War.

Tallis' tune possesses some rhythmic irregularities which triggered Vaughan Williams' curiosity for potential variation treatment; along with being cast in the Phrygian mode (with flattened second, third, sixth and seventh degrees of the scale) the tune is quite haunting as it develops like an act of meditation. Vaughan Williams added some important antiphonal effects by using a small second orchestra from within the large string body, to give the impression of answering choirs from across the nave. Further contrasting voice-combinations are infused into the seamless tapestry, including solo violin and viola, as well as a string quartet comprised from the section principals.

There are four sections to the Tallis Fantasia. The first presents the Theme, beginning with soft fragments before it blossoms fortissimo in the full orchestra.  The orchestras are divided in the second section. A solo viola initiates the third and longest section, which includes the string quartet, and forms the intense development and emotional climax of the work. The final section acts as a recapitulation with further homage to the Theme from tremolo strings and ethereal solo violin. By looking back Vaughan Williams created something very special and new in this work. As Christopher Palmer comments: "The result is in no sense a pastiche, rather it is living, breathing musical tissue, a supreme commentary by one great composer on another. It is a work of marked contrasts: rhetorically aloof and lyrically intimate, passionate and austere, music of the spirit and the flesh--and, as in a great cathedral, deepest shadow lurks in a recess while dazzling radiance streams from a stained-glass window."

Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major, K. 271
Wolfgang Amade Mozart (1756-1791)

Many composers have struggled a lifetime to reach their ninth symphony; even fewer make it to a ninth piano concerto.  It is amazing to think, therefore, that in Mozart's case his Piano Concerto No. 9 is neither a late or last work, but was written in 1777 when the composer was still enjoying his twenty-first year!  Mozart was to add another 18 in his series of brilliant and mercurial piano concertos but the Concerto No. 9 in E-flat major is a true landmark work in his celebrated canon, and was a favorite of his to perform.

As Robert Markow comments "right from the outset we know we are in for something special. Orchestra and soloist share the first subject, a novel gesture." It was customary for the orchestra to play a protracted exposition before the soloist made an entry but this daring difference here must have startled contemporary audiences. It is as if the soloist wants to interrupt and finish the orchestra's sentences. (It is surprising that Mozart never returned to this device again in his subsequent piano concertos but Beethoven must have known this work when he composed his G major Concerto in 1806, which opens with the piano playing alone.) The first movement follows a pattern of orchestra plays, piano responds but Mozart--a master of theatrical timing--reverses the roles at the beginning of the recapitulation. Another daring break from convention is the way Mozart keeps the pianist active after the cadenza, before the movement's robust conclusion.

For the first time in a Mozart piano concerto, the second movement is set in a minor key. This wonderful C minor Andantino is the first of Mozart's truly "tragic" slow movements, and it foreshadows some of the slow movements in his late piano concertos, as well as the marvelous middle movement to the Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, in the same key. Overtones of opera can be detected amid the pathos of this music and the violins are muted throughout--another "first" for a Mozart concerto--which adds a new sonority to this reflective movement.

The pianist does not wait for any introduction at the start of the Rondeau finale and bursts forth on a long, high-spirited theme. In a Concerto full of daring surprises, Mozart saves the biggest one for last: in the middle of this combustive movement everything stops for an expansive minuet (almost a movement in itself), which is in complete contrast--tempo, meter, key, dynamic, mood and texture--to what had gone before. As Phillip Radcliffe comments, "Right to the end of the Concerto Mozart keeps us guessing what will come next. One might expect a grand peroration, but no, Mozart lets the soloist idly continue to spin out the main Rondeau theme, as if in a daze." The gamesome quality of the music is maintained to the very end of this remarkable Concerto with the orchestra eventually putting a stop to the pianist's boundless energy.

Symphony No. 5 in D major, Op. 107 (Reformation)
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)  

Although Mendelssohn came from a famous Jewish family he received a Christian baptism and upbringing.  Like Bach before him--a composer he did much to champion--Mendelssohn was a devout Lutheran. 1830 marked the tercentenary of the "Augsburg Confession" (the epoch-making statement of faith formulated by Malanchton, published during the Diet summoned by Charles V in Bavaria, which became the origin of the Protestant Church).  Mendelssohn was understandably inspired by this pious and important occasion to compose a celebratory symphony. Although it became the fifth and final Symphony in order of publication (op. 107), the Reformation is actually Mendelssohn's second in chronological sequence. The Reformation Symphony was not written to order but was composed in 1829-30 when Mendelssohn returned to Germany from his musically fruitful travels around Great Britain.  For political and religious reasons, the celebrations did not take place in 1830 and the Symphony had to wait until 1832 for its first performance. The work did not draw much blood at the premiere; not only because it was divorced by two years from the circumstances it was celebrating but it was viewed as being "backward and lackluster" when compared to Mendelssohn's other symphonic works from this period.

The Reformation Symphony opens with a solemn introduction appropriate to the religious celebrations that provided the work's catalyst. The winds and brass join the string textures with a transcendental reverence, like a Cathedral choir heard from on high. They initiate a more agitated motif which will play an important role in the course of the first movement’s development section.  At the end of the introduction the strings play the Catholic "Dresden Amen" (which Wagner was to use and idealize as the "Grail Motif" in his ultimate work, Parsifal). The Allegro con fuoco reverts to the Stygian darkness of the opening, the music becoming more turbulent as blocks of competing sonorities are pitted against each other. A Sturm und Drang shadow hangs over the busy string scales, around which fragments of earlier cells are traced by the winds.  At the end of the development, the "Dresden Amen" makes a sudden and stunning appearance. The pianissimo start to the recapitulation is also striking and Mendelssohn was obviously indebted to Beethoven (the Ninth Symphony) for the style and foreboding mood of the coda. Despite its ample sinew and many passing details, it has to be admitted that this movement lacks the imaginative fertility so commonly associated with Mendelssohn.

A Scherzo (in B-flat major) is placed second, a delightful movement that reportedly suggests the gaiety and joy of the Protestant people. The deft, filigree writing and passages of corporate mirth recalls Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer's Night Dream. The G major trio section is even more rustic--the oboe duet and teasing cross-rhythms sound like a Bavarian dance, in keeping with the Symphony's Augsbergian roots. The Andante is very brief indeed, a "song without words" in G minor that allows some romantic reflection after the energy and rhythmic drive of the first two movements.

The two middle movements are really interludes; the end of the Andante turns to G major and links directly to the finale, which opens with the flute intoning Luther's chorale Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott ("A mighty fortress is our God"). The wind instruments join and build into a hearty chorus for a fortissimo statement of the chorale. Bach wrote many harmonizations of Luther's famous chorale and, it should be remembered that at this time, Mendelssohn was reviving Bach's works--with a proselytical zeal--including the St. Matthew Passion, which he conducted and rescued from obscurity in 1829.

After a curious 6/8 time transition in the strings, the Ein' feste Burg theme is passed among the winds. The music surges and accelerates into D major for the finale proper, another sonata-form structure which balances the first movement in style and length. Luther's hymn is soon developed into a fugal texture, which is interspersed with a lighter second theme in a dotted-rhythm. Elements of both themes are combined, softly at first and then more forcefully when the Ein' feste Burg chorale is broadened in the winds over the articulate strings (a passage which Schumann must have had in his inner ear when he penned the final movement of his own Second Symphony).  The work ends with Luther's chorale in full cry--the orchestra epitomizing the defiant exultation of the Protestant congregations in gracious celebration.

Program Comments Copyright 2008 by Huw Edwards

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