The McLean Orchestra
Program Notes 2006-2007

September 9, 2006

Gustav Maher, 1860-1911
Songs of a Wayfarer. Gustav Mahler composed the song cycle Songs of a Wayfarer, or in the original German, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in 1883. It is among Mahler’s earliest compositions, written shortly after he had been appointed Music Director at the state theatre in Kassel at age 23. While at Kassel, he was attracted to Johanna Richter, a soprano with the state theatre’s opera company, and wrote six poems dedicated to her. The song cycle uses four of those poems as its texts. The songs tell of a love lost and is surmised that their mood reflects Mahler’s unsuccessful affair with the soprano. Musicologists contend that the common English version of the title is misleading. Rather, they suggest the German title should be translated as “Songs of a Journeyman,” further implying the subject is autobiographical, the young journeyman musician, Mahler himself. Mahler would revisit the music and use themes from the set in writing his First Symphony of 1884.

Antonín Dvorák, 1841-1904
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, op. 95 “From the New World.” In 1891 Dvorák accepted a position as director of National Conservatory in New York City. He was to reside in the United States for three years, from 1892 to 1895. A few years before his American residency, he had composed his Eighth Symphony in a style that drew upon both folk music and natural sounds to give an aural portrait of his native Bohemia. The president of the National Conservatory, Jeanette Thurber, hoped Dvorak’s appointment would enable him to foster the development of an American national musical style along lines similar to the distinctive Czech style he evoked in the Eighth Symphony and the Carnival Overture. Upon his arrival in New York, Dvorák did indeed set about to learn about American musical forms, especially African-American spirituals and Native American music. He was able to hear performances of some styles of music, particularly spirituals, or relied on contemporary scholarly research and interpretation of forms such as Native American music when he could not hear them. He was successfully able to work themes from these sources into the Ninth Symphony, though echoes of his Czech musical roots are also heard.

December 9, 2006

Leroy Anderson, 1908-1975
A Trumpeter’s Lullaby. Leroy Anderson was long associated with Arthur Fielder and the Boston Pops Orchestra. John Williams characterized him as "one of the great American masters of light orchestral music.” He composed more than fifty pieces for the Boston Pops from 1938 to the 1970s that continue to delight audiences. Anderson is especially known for his ability to fuse classical forms with popular sounds and to use standard orchestra instruments to create amusing sound effects in pieces such as Syncopated Clock and Sleigh Ride. In A Trumpeter’s Lullaby he gives the solo trumpet a soft sounding melody, in contrast to the robust sound usually expected in a piece for brass.

George Frideric Handel, 1685-1759
Excerpts from Messiah. Handel’s oratorio Messiah premiered in Dublin, Ireland, in April 1742 and was heard in London the following year. The work was conceived as a piece appropriate for performance during Lent or the Easter season, particularly during Holy Week. (In 18th Century England, staged theatrical performances could not take place in the week prior to Easter, but musical concerts were permitted.) Still, presenting a concert work based on Biblical texts was considered a daring idea at the time, and this may have contributed to Handel's premiering Messiah away from his London base. However, the oratorio quickly become a popular piece for the Advent season preceding Christmas and has remained so. The oratorio relates the story of the foretelling and coming of the Messiah through selections taken from the Old and New Testament and employs vocal solos, recitatives, and choruses similar to those Handel had used in his series of Italian operas for London. Following the success of Messiah, Handel composed several additional oratorios on Biblical subjects, but Messiah remained the only one to have a New Testament theme.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1840-1893
Selections from The Nutcracker. The music of The Nutcracker, both as a full length Christmas ballet and through excerpts in the Nutcracker Suite, is among the most familiar of all of Tchaikovsky’s compositions and the most well known of all ballet scores. Tchaikovsky based the scenario for Nutcracker on a fantasy tale by E.T.A. Hoffman that was popular in Russia at the time. The ballet premiered in 1892, but did not achieve popularity as a holiday tradition until a revival production in the 1930s followed by George Balanchine’s staging in 1954. The familiar scenario of the ballet tells the story of Clara and the Nutcracker given to her by the mysterious Drosselmeyer on Christmas Eve. Late at night, the Nutcracker comes magically to life to save Clara from the Mouse King and his minions. In the second act, Clara and the Nutcracker, now transformed into a prince, journey to the Land of Sweets. There, they are entertained by members of the Sugar Plum Fairy’s court in a famous set of divertissements and dances. These include the three sweets Chocolate (Spanish dance), Coffee (Arabian dance) and Tea (Chinese dance), the Trepak (Russian dance), Mirlitons (flutes), the Waltz of the Flowers, and finally the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

January 27, 2007

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1840-1893
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, op. 23. Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto was composed for the Russian piano virtuoso Nikolai Rubenstein. But, when Tchaikovsky presented the score to him, Rubenstein expressed great criticism and disappointment. Tchaikovsky decided to keep the score as it was and presented it instead to the conductor and pianist Hans Von Bülow. Von Bülow was as enthusiastic about the new concerto as Rubenstein had been critical. As a result, the concerto it received premiere in October 1875, not in Russia, but in Boston, on Von Bülow's American concert tour. The concerto is written in a very symphonic form, immediately announced by the opening horn passage. Through it, Tchaikovsky found a new direction for the concerto form, with the soloist often accompanying the orchestra as a partner in addition to performing demanding solo work.

Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827
Symphony No. 8 in F major, op. 93. In his Eighth symphony, Beethoven glanced back toward the Classical period of Haydn and Mozart. Following Classical symphonic forms, the first movement is a fast Allegro, the second a slower Allegretto, the third a Minuet (rather than Beethoven’s usual Scherzo), and the fourth is a concluding Allegro. In the second movement, Beethoven parodies the metronome, only recently invented by a friend. The symphony was composed in 1812, between the larger Seventh symphony and the final Ninth, in which Beethoven broke with convention and included a choral movement. The Eighth is considered one of Beethoven’s most cheerful pieces.

June 9, 2007

Béla Bartók, 1881-1945
Romanian Folk Dances. Béla Bartók took a serious interest, along with fellow composer Zoltán Kodály, in studying the folk music of his native Hungary and neighboring Romania and Transylvania He published scholarly collections of the music he encountered and his compositions from about 1908 through the period of World War I were greatly influenced by this research in ethnomusicology. Prominent among these works is Romanian Folk Dances, composed in 1915 as a set of six pieces for piano and based on actual dances from different regions of Romania. The brief individual dances are named Stick Dance, Sash Dance, Dance in Place, Hornpipe Dance, Romanian Polka, and Quick Dance. The composer later arranged the set for violin and string orchestra.

Pablo de Sarasate, 1844-1908
Ziguenerweisen. Pablo de Sarasate was a Spanish violin virtuoso. He made his public performance debut at age eight and later made concert tours throughout Europe and to North and South America. Several famous violin pieces were written for him including Lalo’s Symphonie espagnol. Sarasate himself wrote a number of showpieces for violin that have remained popular with violinists to this day. His Ziguenerweisen, or Gypsy Airs, from 1878 is a synthesis of popular Hungarian gypsy melodies.

Johannes Brahms, 1833-1897
Symphony No. 3 in F major, op. 90. Brahms composed all four of his symphonies between 1876 and 1885, a relatively sort span of time in his career. It was, however, a period of great mid-career symphonic composition that also saw the violin, cello, and second piano concertos, as well as the Academic Festival Overture, and the Tragic Overture. The Third Symphony, composed in 1883 while Brahms vacationed in Wiesbaden and premiered later that year, is the shortest and most compact of the four. Yet, it presents complexities that belie its length. After conducting the premiere, Hans Richter considered it Brahms’ answer to Beethoven’s Eroica. Whether it is as groundbreaking as the Eroica may be argued, but has been considered as Brahms’ most personal statement in the symphonic form.