GrantParkMusicFestival
Seventy-fifth Season
Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus
Carlos Kalmar, Principal Conductor
Christopher Bell, Chorus Director
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Nineteenth Program: Mendelssohn & Haydn
Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 6:30 p.m.
Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Grant Park orchestra
Carlos Kalmar, Conductor
Ingrid Fliter, Piano
MENDELSSOHN
Overture to Victor Hugo’s Drama Ruy Blas, Op. 95
SCHUMANN
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
Allegro affettuoso
Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso —
Allegro vivace
Ingrid Fliter
HAYDN
Symphony No. 103 in E-flat major, “Drumroll”
Adagio — Allegro con spirito
Andante più tosto Allegretto
Menuetto
Finale: Allegro con spirito
This concert is generously sponsored by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Program Notes D35
GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
CARLOS KALMAR’s biography can be found on page 8.
2006 Gilmore Artist Award recipient Ingrid Fliter, was born
in Buenos Aires in 1973. Ingrid Fliter began her piano studies in
Argentina with Elizabeth Westerkamp. In 1992 she moved to Europe
where she continued her studies with Carlo Bruno, Franco Scala and
Boris Petrushansky. Ms. Fliter is a winner and prize recipient of several
Argentine competitions, the Cantu International Competition, Ferruccio
Busoni Competition in Italy, and a silver medalist of the Frederic Chopin
Competition in Warsaw in 2000. Since 2006, Ingrid Fliter has made
appearances with the Atlanta Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the
San Francisco, St. Louis, National, Cincinnati, Toronto, Detroit, Dallas,
Colorado and Oregon Symphonies, the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa, and at the
Mostly Mozart, Grant Park, Aspen and Blossom festivals. She has recently performed in New
York at Zankel Hall, at Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Fort Worth for
the Van Cliburn Foundation, and in Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit, Vancouver, Santa Barbara
and Kansas City. Ms. Fliter has performed with orchestras and in recital in Amsterdam, Tokyo,
Frankfurt, Salzburg, Cologne, St. Petersburg and Berlin, and has participated in festivals such as
La Roque D’Antheron, Prague Autumn and The World Pianist Series in Tokyo. An exclusive
EMI recording artist, Ms. Fliter’s first CD, an all-Chopin disc, was released in April 2008. Live
recordings of Ms. Fliter performing works by Beethoven and Chopin at the Concertgebouw in
Amsterdam as well as a DVD of a recital at the Miami International Piano Festival are available
on the VAI Audio label.
Overture to Victor Hugo’s Drama Ruy Blas, Op. 95
(1839)
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Mendelssohn’s Overture to Ruy Blas is scored for pairs of woodwinds, four horns, two
trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. The performance time is seven minutes.
The Grant Park Orchestra first performed the Overture on August 8, 1935, with
Ebba Sundstrom conducting.
By 1839, four years after he had been appointed director of the Gewandhaus concerts, Felix Mendelssohn had established himself as Leipzig’s leading musician. To
lend some star quality to their benefit performance in March of Victor Hugo’s 1838 drama, Ruy
Blas, the directors of the local Theatrical Pension Fund asked Mendelssohn if he would be so kind
as to provide them (gratis, of course) some incidental music, perhaps an overture and a “romance.”
Mendelssohn read through Hugo’s melodrama of passion, intrigue, subterfuge and tragedy in a
poor German translation, pronounced it “detestable” and “beneath contempt,” and decided to
write for the directors only the “romance” in the form of a little piece for chorus. They sent him a
letter of appreciation, mentioning that they should have given a man with such a very busy schedule
as his more time to complete an overture. Mendelssohn was a bit rankled by the implication that he
had sacrificed some of his youthful compositional celerity for the experience of maturity. “This put
me on my mettle,” he wrote. “I reflected on the matter the same evening, and began my score [for
the Overture]. On Wednesday there was a concert rehearsal, which occupied the whole forenoon.
Thursday, the concert itself, and yet the Overture was in the hands of the copyist early on Friday;
it was rehearsed three times on Monday in the concert room, tried over once in the theater, and
given that evening as an introduction to the odious play.” This fine piece, therefore, was composed
in less than three days.
D36 Program Notes
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
GRANT PARK MUSIC FESTIVAL
The plot of Ruy Blas, set at the 18th-century court of Charles III of Spain, was summarized by
Edward Downes: “A Spanish grandee tries to disgrace the Queen of Spain by involving her in a
love affair with his valet, Ruy Blas. Disguised as a Spanish nobleman, Ruy Blas does in fact become
her lover and prime minister as well. But when his master tries to blackmail the Queen into abdicating, Ruy Blas kills his master, takes poison himself, confesses his guilt to the Queen and dies with
her forgiveness.” Though Sir Donald Tovey allowed that such stage machinations would make a
swell opera, Mendelssohn apparently paid little attention to limning this pageant of thud and blunder in his Overture — he said that he preferred to think of this piece not as the Overture to Ruy
Blas but rather as the Overture to the Theatrical Pension Fund Benefit. At any rate, he created a fine
example of the concert overture, varied in its moods, close-knit in its structure, ingratiating in its
melodic and harmonic felicities, and inventive in its sonorities. “There are sweep and spontaneity in
the melodic flow, an urgency in the march of simple harmonies, a freshness and brilliance in the orchestration,” wrote Downes, “which have made this one of Mendelssohn’s most popular works.”
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 (1841, 1845)
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Schumann’s Piano Concerto is scored for pairs of woodwinds, two horns, two trumpets,
timpani, strings and solo piano. The performance time is 31 minutes. The Grant Park
Orchestra first performed the Concerto on September 1, 1942 with Richard Czerwonky
conducting; Rudolph Reuter was the soloist.
Schumann’s Piano Concerto occupied a special place in his loving relationship with his wife, Clara. In 1837, three years before their marriage,
Schumann wrote to her of a plan for a concerted work for piano and orchestra that would be
“a compromise between a symphony, a concerto and a huge sonata.” It was a bold vision for
Schumann who had, with one discarded exception, written nothing for orchestra. In 1841, the second year of their marriage, he returned to his original conception, and produced a Fantasia in one
movement for piano with orchestral accompaniment. That memorable year also saw the composition of his Symphony No. 1 and the first version of the Fourth Symphony, a burst of activity that
had been encouraged by Clara, who wanted her husband to realize his potential in forms larger than
the solo piano works and songs to which he had previously devoted himself. The Fantasia seemed
to satisfy the desires of both husband and wife. Clara ran through the work at a rehearsal of the
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra on August 13, 1841, and Robert thought highly enough of the
piece to try to have it published. His attempts to secure a publisher for the new score met with one
rejection after another, however, and, with great disappointment, he laid the piece aside.
In 1844, Robert had a difficult bout with the recurring emotional disorder that plagued him
throughout his life. After his recovery, he felt a new invigoration, and resumed composition with
restless enthusiasm. In May 1845, the Fantasia came down from the shelf with Schumann’s determination to breathe new life into it. He retained the original Fantasia movement, and added to it an
Intermezzo and Finale to create the three-movement Piano Concerto, which was to become one of
the most popular of all such works in the keyboard repertory.
Schumann’s Piano Concerto is memorable not only for the beauty of its melodies and the felicity of its harmony, but also for the careful integration of its structure. Were the manner in which the
work was composed unknown, there would be no way to tell that several years separate the creation
of the first from the second and third movements. The Concerto’s sense of unity arises principally
from the transformations of the opening theme heard throughout the work. This opening motive,
a lovely melody presented by the woodwinds after the fiery prefatory chords of the piano, pervades
the first movement, serving not only as its second theme but also appearing in many variants in
the development section. Even the coda, placed after a stirring cadenza, uses a double-time marching version of the main theme. The second movement is a three-part form with a soaring melody
for cellos in its middle section. The movement’s initial motive, a gentle dialogue between piano
and strings, is another derivative of the first movement’s opening theme. The principal theme of
the sonata-form finale is yet another rendering of the Concerto’s initial melody, this one a heroic
Program Notes D37
manifestation in triple meter; the second theme employs extensive rhythmic syncopations. After a
striding central section, the recapitulation begins in the dominant key so that the movement finally
settles into the expected tonic major key only with the syncopated second theme.
Symphony No. 103 in E-flat major, “Drumroll” (1795)
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Haydn’s Symphony No. 103 is scored for pairs of woodwinds, two horns, two trumpets,
timpani and strings. The performance time is 27 minutes. This is the first performance
of the “Drumroll” Symphony by the Grant Park Orchestra.
In 1786, the German violinist and impresario Johann Peter Salomon
initiated a series of concerts in London. He was always searching for
new attractions to present, and when word reached him that the death of
Prince Nicolaus Esterházy had released Joseph Haydn from his long employment with that noble
family, he set off for Vienna immediately to entice the distinguished composer to Britain. He was
successful, and Haydn made his first visit to London from January 1791 to June 1792, composing
there six symphonies for Salomon’s concerts and leading their premieres. The venture was a triumph. Haydn went home to Vienna, but it was not difficult for Salomon to convince him to return
to London. His second visit began in February 1794 and again lasted for a year and a half, and its
success matched that of the first.
Haydn wrote three symphonies (Nos. 99-101) for Salomon’s concerts of spring 1794. He spent
the summer months touring through the British countryside, and returned to London in the early
autumn to make preparations for the next season. Salomon, however, was having difficulties arranging for the performers necessary to ensure the high quality of his concerts because the Reign
of Terror then sweeping France made travel and financial dealings risky, and he was forced to
cancel his performances. However, the rival “Opera Concerts” was not about to let pass the opportunity of displaying England’s most distinguished musical visitor, so the Italian violinist and
composer Giovan Battista Viotti, director of the operation, arranged for Haydn to compose and
direct three symphonies for his programs. The second of these, the penultimate one in the series
of 106 with which Haydn brought the genre to its formal and expressive maturity [two symphonies
are missing from the standard numbering, done a century ago], was the Symphony No. 103 in E-flat
major, the “Drumroll.”
Following the distinctive opening gesture that earned the E-flat Symphony its sobriquet, a somber introduction seems to promise something dramatic, perhaps even tragic. What follows in the
sonata-form main part of the movement, however, is a delightful and witty essay built largely upon
the chipper tune first entrusted to the violins. The music is worked into a climax that includes an
up-tempo reference to the introduction’s motive before a lilting waltz-like melody is brought in for
thematic contrast. The development section, which draws upon both the main and introduction
themes, suggests the encroaching Romantic sensibility in its daring harmony and depth of expression. The recapitulation of the earlier thematic materials appears to be running its expected course
when it suddenly pauses on an unresolved harmony to allow for a reminiscence of the somber
music of the introduction. According to the need for formal closure and the taste of Haydn’s era,
however, this Allegro could not end with such music, so the quick tempo and the chipper theme
return to round out the movement.
The Andante is a dual set of variations on two Hungarian folksongs, one minor, the other major.
The variations, one of which is an elaborate solo originally written for Viotti, principal violinist (and
impresario) of the Opera Concerts, alternate between the contrasting themes and keys until they
are concluded by a harmonically adventurous coda. The Menuetto is one of Haydn’s broad country
versions of the old dance, here enfolding a central trio that features the clarinet, an instrument still
new to the orchestral ensemble in 1795. The finale’s theme, a lively, four-measure phrase presented
by the violins after an opening hunting call from the horns, is constantly in evidence until the joyous
closing measures of the Symphony.
©2009 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
Program Notes D39