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Haydn and Mozart
may 4, 5
Minnesota Orchestra
Juraj Valčuha, conductor
Michael Gast, horn
Thursday, May 4, 2017, 11 am
Friday, May 5, 2017, 8 pm
Orchestra Hall
Orchestra Hall
With these concerts we gratefully recognize
Martin R. Lueck and Mallory K. Mullins for their generous contribution to
the Minnesota Orchestra’s Investing in Inspiration campaign.
Franz Joseph Haydn
Symphony No. 85 in B-flat major, La Reine
Adagio – Vivace
Romanze: Allegretto
Menuetto: Allegretto
Presto
ca. 21’
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Concerto No. 3 in E-flat major for Horn and Orchestra, K. 447
Allegro
Romanza: Larghetto
Allegro
Michael Gast, horn
ca. 16’
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ca. 20’
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Benjamin Britten
Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Opus 33a
Dawn: Lento e tranquillo
Sunday morning: Allegro spiritoso
Moonlight: Andante comodo e rubato
Storm: Presto con fuoco
ca. 16’
Maurice Ravel
La Valse
ca. 13’
OH+
(Orchestra Hall Plus)
Concert Preview with Phillip Gainsley and Michael Gast
Thursday, May 4, 10:15 am, Auditorium
Friday, May 5, 7:15 pm, Target Atrium
Minnesota Orchestra concerts are broadcast live on Friday evenings on stations of Classical Minnesota Public Radio,
including KSJN 99.5 FM in the Twin Cities.
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Artists
Europe and Asia, as well as major
American orchestras from coast to coast.
During the 2016-17 season, he debuted
with the Chicago Symphony and
Cleveland Orchestra and made return
appearances with the major orchestras of
San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Washington,
D.C., and Montreal. More:
jurajvalcuha.com.
Juraj Valčuha, conductor
Juraj Valčuha, who debuted with the
Minnesota Orchestra in October 2015,
is the newly-appointed music director of
the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Italy.
Prior to assuming this post, he was the
chief conductor of the RAI National
Symphony Orchestra in Turin, Italy, with
which he toured to music centers
including the Vienna Musikverein and
Berlin’s Philharmonie. He has conducted
the Berlin Philharmonic, Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra, Dresden
Staatskapelle, Vienna Philharmonic,
Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra,
Orchestre National de France, Orchestre
de Paris, Philharmonia Orchestra of
London, Santa Cecilia Orchestra of
Rome, and other orchestras across
in performances of Schumann’s
Konzertstück for Four Horns, using Gast’s
own adaptation of Schumann’s original
horn parts. At Sommerfest 2009 he
performed Mozart’s Fourth Horn
Concerto under the direction of Andrew
Litton. He played Strauss’ Second Horn
Concerto on the Orchestra’s spring 2011
Minnesota State Tour and reprised the
work at the 2011 Guarantors’ Concert.
Gast has served as principal horn in the
orchestras of the Grand Teton Music
Festival, Santa Fe Opera and Festival
L’Aquila Opera, among other ensembles,
and has served as acting associate
principal horn of the New York
Philharmonic as well as guest principal
with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
More: minnesotaorchestra.org.
Michael Gast, horn
Michael Gast joined the Minnesota
Orchestra in 1990 and was appointed
principal horn in 2004. He has appeared
here as soloist in concertos and other
major works by Bach, Britten, Mozart,
Schumann and Strauss. In 2007, he and
three Orchestra colleagues were featured
one-minute notes
Haydn: Symphony No. 85, La Reine
La Reine (The Queen), brimful of grand gestures and exhilarating melodies, was written for the huge orchestra of the Loge Olympique in
Paris, with flourishes worthy of the brilliant, lace-bedecked musicians.
Mozart: Horn Concerto No. 3
This most poetic of Mozart’s four horn concertos offers delights to the listener and challenges to the soloist, with highlights including a
succession of magic modulations in the opening movement and an artful hunt-music finale.
Britten: Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes
Britten’s suite offers glimpses of his masterful opera set in a fishing village on the Suffolk coast, complete with sounds of sea birds,
the surf—and church bells, reflecting a deadly conflict between villagers and an outcast.
Ravel: La Valse
Ravel’s homage to the Viennese waltz depicts both intimacy and opulence, twirling toward a frenzied conclusion.
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Program Notes
Franz Joseph Haydn
Born: March 31, 1732,
Rohrau, Austria
Died: May 31, 1809,
Vienna, Austria
Symphony No. 85 in B-flat
major, La Reine
Composed: ca. 1785-86
aydn served as kapellmeister to the Esterházy court for
three decades (1761 to 1790), a period spent in what he
himself described as “isolation”—the Esterházys maintained
palaces in small villages on the edge of the Hungarian plain. In
Eisenstadt and Eszterházy Haydn had an excellent orchestra and
a discriminating royal audience, but as the years went by he
became interested in wider fame, and in 1779 Prince Nikolaus
gave him the freedom to accept commissions from other sources.
One of the first of these came from Paris, where the Loge
Olympique, a Masonic order, sponsored a series of public concerts
in the Tuileries. The young Count d’Ogny, one of the leaders of
the lodge, had long been an admirer of Haydn’s music, and in
1784 he commissioned six symphonies from the composer, who
had just turned 52. These works inevitably became known as the
Paris Symphonies (Nos. 82 to 87).
h
The commission brought Haydn new fame, significant income
(he was paid the handsome sum of 25 Louis d’or per symphony)
and expanded artistic opportunities. The orchestra of the Loge
Olympique was huge: it might have as many as 70 players,
including 40 violins, while Haydn’s Esterházy orchestra had at
most about 25 players. The Parisian orchestras were also famed
for the brilliance of their playing. Haydn was aware of the
Parisian sense of spectacle—the orchestra of the Loge Olympique
wore sky-blue coats, lace and swords while they played—and he
knew that he would be writing for a large audience rather than
for a small, refined court. Thus he wrote grand symphonies, full
of energy and appealing melodies, and it is no surprise that
Haydn’s Paris Symphonies remain, more than two centuries after
their composition, among his most popular.
the Queen’s favorite
Three of the Paris Symphonies have nicknames—No. 82, The Bear;
No. 83, The Hen; and No. 85, The Queen. The first two arose from
the music itself: audiences made out growling sounds in the finale
of The Bear and clucking noises in the first movement of The Hen.
But the third came from farther afield. Symphony No. 85 was
reportedly the favorite of Queen Marie Antoinette, who attended
the concerts in the Tuileries. When it was published by Imbault in
may 4, 5
1788, its title page bore the subtitle “La Reine de France,” and it
has been known as La Reine ever since. Marie Antoinette heard
this symphony in 1787, near the end of her increasingly troubled
reign; within two years she would lose her throne and her
freedom (and later her head).
Still, when Haydn wrote this music, it was simply the Symphony
in B-flat major. Scored for what might seem relatively modest
forces, this is nevertheless powerful music that rings out with a
grand sonority well suited to the large orchestras of Paris. And it
is fast: two briskly-paced outer movements, marked Vivace and
Presto, frame inner movements both marked Allegretto, allowing
this symphony no true slow movement.
the music: surprises along the way
adagio–vivace. The Symphony No. 85 gets off to an imposing start
with a grand introduction, full of runs and dotted rhythms. It is
also loud (the dynamic is fortissimo), which makes the beginning
of the Vivace all the more effective, as the music turns fast and
soft at the same instant. In this nicely integrated movement,
Haydn spins all of his material out of this same Vivace tune and
recalls the runs from the introduction. Along the way this theme
makes a striking plunge into F minor, and the music suddenly
turns fierce in a passage curiously reminiscent of Haydn’s
Farewell Symphony, composed l5 years earlier. The storm
passes quickly, however, and the movement powers to an
exhilarating close.
romanze: allegretto; menuetto: allegretto. Haydn nods to his French
hosts (sponsors, performers and audience) in the second
movement, which is a set of variations on the French song La
gentille et jeune Lisette (Lovely Young Lisette). Haydn titles this
movement Romanze, underlining the intimate character of the
little tune, and then offers four sprightly variations in which the
tune always remains clear. The Menuetto has a sonorous sweep,
nicely setting off the poised trio section.
presto. The finale leaps to life with an infectious eight-measure
phrase that instantly has us tapping our feet, comfortable in the
knowledge that this will be a rondo. But Haydn is Haydn, and
there are surprises along the way. Suddenly the little tune grows
complex and begins to develop, and then, just as suddenly, Haydn
makes a polished return to the rondo and rounds matters off with
a ringing cadence.
This music just plain sounds good. One wonders what that 1787
performance—given before Marie Antoinette by an orchestra
dressed in sky-blue coats—must have sounded like.
Instrumentation: flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns and strings
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Program Notes
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Born: January 17, 1756,
Salzburg, Austria
Died: December 5, 1791,
Vienna, Austria
Concerto No. 3 in E-flat
major for Horn and
Orchestra, K. 447
Composed: ca. 1787-88
he music in Mozart’s concertos often has the quality of
transposed opera and, like most of Mozart’s operatic roles
and concert arias, these works are, to borrow from dance
parlance, “made on” particular performers. The voice and
personality behind Mozart’s four horn concertos are those of
Joseph Leutgeb.
t
Leutgeb was a virtuoso who had been principal horn in Salzburg
during Mozart’s young years. By 1770, he was doing considerable
solo work, enjoying exceptional success in Paris. In 1773, he
joined Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart on part of their Italian tour.
In 1777, he moved to Vienna where, in addition to keeping up his
musical activities, he ran a cheese store. He retired from playing
about 1792 and died in 1811. A certain bratty vein of Mozart’s
humor emerges in the manuscripts destined for Leutgeb, which
contain such remarks as “a sheep could trill like that,” and in one
of which he sets a trap for the soloist by marking his part Adagio
where the orchestra has Allegro—but Leutgeb remained an
unswervingly loyal friend.
More to the point, Leutgeb was an artist. Playing the horn is not
easy now; in Mozart’s and Leutgeb’s day it was even riskier.
Valves came in around 1820, but until then, players had available
only those 16 pitches that were part of the natural overtone series
(nine of them bunched together in the highest of the instrument’s
three octaves, and not perfectly in tune), plus some other notes
that could be produced by inserting the hand into the bell onefourth, half, or three-quarters of the way. The trouble was this
hand-stopping altered the tone, making it in various degrees
nasal, muffled or snarly. That meant that to play a continuous
melody required unremitting vigilance and uncanny finesse,
It is no wonder that Mozart’s concertos for horn are much shorter
than those for other instruments.
delights and challenges
Mozart’s horn concertos offer many delights to the listener as well
as challenges to the soloist. The Third Concerto is the most poetic
of the four as well as the one whose sound is the most special, for
here alone Mozart departs from the oboe-horn combination of the
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other works to give us instead the velvety background of clarinets
and bassoons.
allegro. For so compressed a work, an astonishing variety of
musical characters passes before us. In his boldest flight of poetry,
not to mention his utter faith in Leutgeb’s artistry, Mozart begins
his development in the dreamily remote key of D-flat major,
making his way back to the home key by way of a succession of
magic modulations we would find remarkable if we came across
it in one of his most inventive piano concertos.
romanza: larghetto; allegro. The middle movement, which Mozart
labels Romanza, is in A-flat major, a key he ventures into rarely
and one that always sets him to music. The serene melody of the
Romanza stages an unexpected reappearance when it turns
up—in quick tempo—as one of the episodes in the artful
hunt-music finale (a device Mahler would charmingly imitate in
his Fifth Symphony).
The date of this concerto’s composition is not known. It used to
be given as 1783, but studies of both Mozart’s handwriting in the
manuscript and of the paper itself have led scholars to conclude
that 1787 or 1788 would be more accurate. Nothing is known
about the first performance, nor did Mozart leave any cadenzas.
Instrumentation: solo horn with orchestra comprising
2 clarinets, 2 bassoons and strings
Program note excerpted from the late Michael Steinberg’s
The Concerto: A Listener’s Guide (Oxford University Press, 1998),
used with permission.
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Program Notes
Benjamin Britten
Born: November 22, 1913,
Lowestoft, England
Died: December 4, 1976,
Aldeburgh, England
Four Sea Interludes from
Peter Grimes, Opus 33a
Premiered: June 14, 1945
eter Grimes, one of the great operas of the 20th century,
depends for much of its force on Britten’s superb evocation
of the harsh and violent Suffolk coast. But surprisingly enough,
the opera got its start in Southern California.
p
Britten had left England for Long Island in 1939, believing that
his homeland was blocked to him as an artist and intending to
make a new life in America. After bouts of ill health he wished for
a warmer climate, and he accepted an invitation to spend the
summer of 1941 in Escondido, just north of San Diego. Britten
and Peter Pears drove an ancient car across the country, reaching
their destination that spring.
from poem to opera
Early that summer, Pears bought a volume of the poetry of
George Crabbe, with which the two young men now found
themselves enthralled. Crabbe (1754-1832), from Britten’s own
Suffolk, had a bleak vision of mankind and of Suffolk life. To a
friend in Long Island, Britten wrote: “We’ve just re-discovered the
poetry of George Crabbe (all about Suffolk!) & are very excited—
maybe an opera one day—!”
Britten was particularly taken with Crabbe’s The Borough (1810),
which tells of a deadly collision between a Suffolk fishing village—
which represents convention, religion, law and smugness—and
Peter Grimes, an outcast, violent, perhaps demented, yet longing
for acceptance by the community he despises. And when Serge
koussevitzky commissioned an opera from Britten the following
winter, he chose this as his subject. The composer returned to
England in April 1942, fired by a new passion for his native
Suffolk. He composed Peter Grimes in 1944-45, and its premiere
in June 1945 was a triumph.
may 4, 5
the music: portraits of the sea
dawn. The first interlude comes at the conclusion of the opera’s
opening Prologue, during which the Borough questions Grimes
about the death of his previous apprentice. Here is gray daybreak
on the bleak Suffolk coast, evoked by the high, clear, pure sound
of unison flutes and violins. This is haunting, evocative music,
full of the cries of sea birds, the hiss of surf across rocky beaches,
and—menacing in the deep brass—the swell of the sea itself.
sunday morning. The second interlude, the prelude to Act II, opens
with the sound of church bells pealing madly in the horns and
woodwinds. The strings have the theme that one character, Ellen
Orford, sings in praise of the sunny sea: “Glitter of waves /
And glitter of sunlight / Bid us rejoice / And lift our hearts high.”
moonlight. A portrait of the tranquil sea, broken by splashes of
sound from flute, xylophone and harp, serves as the prelude to
the opera’s third act.
storm. The concluding selection depicts a storm that strikes the
coasts; it forms the interlude between Scenes 1 and 2 of Act I.
The violence of the opening gives way to a more subdued central
section before the storm breaks out again and drives the music to
its powerful close. Britten noted: “…My life as a child was colored
by the fierce storms that sometimes drove ships on our coast and
ate away whole stretches of neighboring cliffs. In writing Peter
Grimes, I wanted to express my awareness of the perpetual struggle
of men and women whose livelihood depends on the sea.”
Instrumentation: 2 flutes (both doubling piccolo), 2 oboes,
2 clarinets (1 doubling E-flat clarinet), 2 bassoons,
contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, piccolo trumpet,
3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals,
tambourine, tamtam, xylophone, chimes in B-flat and E-flat,
harp and strings
The opera is in three acts, and as preludes to the acts or as
interludes between scenes Britten composed six orchestral
interludes, brief mood-pieces designed to set a scene, establish a
mood or hint at character. Even before the opera had been
produced, Britten assembled an orchestral suite made up of four
of these, which he called Sea Interludes, and led the London
Philharmonic Orchestra in its premiere on June 14, 1945.
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Program Notes
Maurice Ravel
Born: March 7, 1875,
Basses-Pyrénées, France
Died: December 28, 1937,
Paris, France
La Valse
Premiered: December 12, 1920
avel, like many French composers, was profoundly wary of
German music. Yet there was one German form for which he
felt undiluted affection: the waltz. As a young piano student in
Paris, Ravel fell under the spell of Schubert’s waltzes for piano,
and in 1911 he composed his own Noble and Sentimental Waltzes,
a set of charming waltzes modeled on the Schubert dances he
loved so much. Earlier, in 1906, he had planned a great orchestral
waltz with the working title Wien (Vienna), but the piece was
delayed and Ravel did not return to it until the fall of 1919. This
was the year after the conclusion of World War I, and the French
vision of the Germanic world was now quite different than it had
been when he originally conceived the piece.
r
Nevertheless, Ravel still felt the appeal of the project, and by
December he was madly at work. The orchestration was
completed the following March, and the first performance took
place in Paris on December 12, 1920. By this time, perhaps wary
of wartime associations, Ravel had renamed the piece La Valse.
an opulent—and troubling—score
Ravel described exactly his original conception for the work:
“Whirling clouds give glimpses, through rifts, of couples waltzing.
The clouds scatter little by little. One sees an immense hall
peopled with a twirling crowd. The scene is gradually
illuminated. The light of chandeliers bursts forth fortissimo.
An Imperial Court, about 1855.”
The music also gives us this scene. Out of the murky, misty
beginning come bits of waltz rhythms; gradually these join
together and plunge into an animated dance. This is dazzling
writing for orchestra, some of which results from the music’s
rhythmic energy, some from Ravel’s keen ear for instrumental color.
If La Valse concluded with all this elegant vitality, our sense of the
music might be clear, but instead it drives to an ending full of
frenzied violence. We come away not so much exhilarated as
shaken. Ravel made a telling comment about this conclusion:
“I had intended this work to be a kind of apotheosis of the
Viennese waltz, with which was associated in my imagination an
impression of a fantastic and fatal sort of dervish’s dance.”
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Is this music a celebration of the waltz—or an exploration of the
darker spirit behind the culture that created it? Many have opted
for the latter explanation, hearing in La Valse not a Rosenkavalierlike evocation of a more graceful era, but the snarling menace
behind that elegance.
Ravel himself was evasive about the ending. Aware of its
implications, he explained in a letter to a friend: “Some people
have seen in this piece the expression of a tragic affair; some
have said that it represented the end of the Second Empire,
others that it was postwar Vienna. They are wrong. Certainly,
La Valse is tragic, but in the Greek sense: it is a fatal spinning
around, the expression of vertigo and the voluptuousness of the
dance to the point of paroxysm.”
Instrumentation: 3 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 3 oboes
(1 doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons,
contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani,
snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, antique cymbals, castanets,
tambourine, tamtam, triangle, bells, 2 harps and strings
Program notes on the Haydn, Britten and Ravel works by
Eric Bromberger.
c da
The Minnesota Orchestra first performed Haydn’s Symphony
No. 85, La Reine, on February 25, 1951, at Northrop Memorial
Auditorium, with Antal Dorati conducting. The Orchestra has
visited Paris, where Haydn wrote this symphony, just once—in
February 1998. During its 114-year history, the Orchestra has
given partial or complete performances of 40 of Haydn’s 106
symphonies.
The Orchestra’s first documented performance of Mozart’s
Third Horn Concerto came on October 10, 1974, at Roosevelt
High School in Minneapolis, with Henry Charles Smith
conducting and Bruce Rardin as soloist. Later that month the
Orchestra performed the first concerts at its brand-new
home—Orchestra Hall.
Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes was initially
performed by the Orchestra on November 25, 1949, at
Northrop Memorial Auditorium, under Antal Dorati’s baton.
The interludes are taken from Britten’s opera Peter Grimes,
which the Orchestra has never performed in full.
The Orchestra introduced Ravel’s La Valse to its repertoire on
February 24, 1927, at the St. Paul Auditorium Theater, with
Henri Verbrugghen conducting. It was one of the first pieces
ever recorded at Orchestra Hall, at sessions in October 1974.