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Concert @ Dean College
February 22, 2003 @ 1 pm |
Kalistos Chamber Orchestra will present a Free program on the campus of Dean College. The program will
include the following pieces:
Jeffery Cotton Elegy
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Eine Kleine Nacht Musik
Gabriela Frank Leyendas : An Andean Walkabout mvts 4 and 6
P.I. Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence
Kalistos Chamber Orchestra,
1 p.m., Performing Arts Center, on the campus of Dean College
- The concert is open to the public, free of charge.
For directions click here.
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Our Next Concert
Saturday, 22th February |
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This concert was on
Saturday, February 22, 2003, 1 pm
on the campus of Dean College
for directions please click on the address
Performing Arts Center
for more info call
800-896-7340 or email info@kalistos.org
The
concert is free and open to the Public. This concert is possible
via a generous grant from the Music department at Dean College.
Program notes
Jeffery Cotton's Elegy
click for composer's notes on his website
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Eine Kleine Nacht Musik
"According to my deep conviction, Mozart is
the highest, the culminating point that beauty has attained in the
sphere of music," Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky told his diary on September
20, 1887. "No one has made me weep, has made me tremble with rapture,
from the consciousness of my nearness to that something which we call
the ideal, as he has done.... The music of Don Giovanni ... awoke [in
me] a spiritual ecstasy. By its help, I penetrated into that world of
artistic beauty where only great genius abides. It is due to Mozart
that I devoted my life to music. He gave the first impulse to my
efforts, and made me love music above all else in the world." Other
musicians have offered equally unstinting praise of Salzburg's most
illustrious son. When Johann Adolf Hasse, one of the most respected
opera composers of the mid-18th century, heard the fifteen-year-old
Mozart play some of his own compositions, he predicted, "This boy will
cause us all to be forgotten." The music of Mozart was both inspiration
and model for the young Franz Schubert, who wrote in his journal, "O
Mozart, immortal Mozart, what countless images of a brighter and better
world thou hast stamped upon our souls!" Schubert also insisted that
"you could hear the angels sing" in the G minor Symphony (No. 40, K.
550). At a performance of Mozart's C minor Piano Concerto (K. 491),
Ludwig van Beethoven whispered to his companion, the noted German
pianist and pedagogue Johann Cramer, "Cramer, Cramer! We shall never be
able to do anything like that!" Rossini called him "the only composer,"
and the eminent 20th-century pianist Lili Kraus stated, "There is no
feeling, human or cosmic, no depth, no height the human spirit can
reach that is not contained in Mozart's music." The words of Franz
Joseph Haydn, spoken to Papa Leopold Mozart in 1785, still ring true:
"I tell you before God and as an honest man, that your son is the
greatest composer I know, either personally or by repute."
How to explain the phenomenon of Mozart? In his brilliant play/movie
Amadeus, author Peter Shaffer, after spending two years in reading and
research in an attempt to understand the life, works and personality of
the composer, summed up his findings in a single line spoken by the
character of Antonio Salieri, the court composer to Emperor Joseph II
who had built a distinguished career for himself in Vienna while,
according to the dramatist, closely guarding his belief that he was
just a poseur, his music technically proficient but emotionally
shallow. "Music is the heart of God," says Shaffer/Salieri, "and Mozart
is His voice." As has everyone else, the playwright came up against a
solid wall of bafflement in trying to fathom this particular genius,
which has never known an equal in the entire history of music, or,
perhaps, in any other field of artistic creation. The perfection of
form coupled with the depth and purity of feeling heard in Mozart's
compositions cannot be explained by any exercise of mere human logic.
It surpasses our limited purview, and, lacking any other inkling of
comprehension, one is forced to admit that Mozart's inspiration might,
indeed, have been "divine." George Bernard Shaw presaged the sentiments
of Shaffer when he suggested that Sarastro's arias in The Magic Flute
were the only music fit to issue from the mouth of God.
Though the essential nature of Mozart's innate genius will never fully
yield to our probing, the manner of its nurture and development was
essential to its efflorescence. The boy was carefully instructed in
music from infancy by his father, Leopold, one of the outstanding
violin pedagogues of the day and himself a composer of no small
stature. By the age of three, little Wolfgang could pick out tunes at
the keyboard. A year later, he was absorbing short pieces as quickly as
Leopold could teach them, and at five he began to compose. In 1762,
Leopold took Wolfgang to Munich on the first of many tours that
introduced his phenomenal child to the aristocracy and music lovers of
Europe, and much of the rest of Mozart's life was spend on the road: he
made some twenty major trips during the remaining thirty years of his
life.
Wherever Mozart traveled, he learned - absorbing the local styles,
discussing the latest advances in the art, seeking out companionship
with the best musicians, listening to all the music that came his way.
He was, far more than his friend and colleague Joseph Haydn, an
international composer, one who created in his works an unprecedented
synthesis of Italian melody, French suavity, German instrumental
technique and Austrian sentiment. It is reasonable to posit that Mozart
would have been much less a master if he had not had such a wide
experience of the musical world during his early years. He heard Haydn
symphonies in Vienna, Gluck music dramas in Paris, Christian Bach
concertos in London, Italian operas in Milan, keyboard sonatas in
Munich and country dances everywhere. He could write in any of these
styles, but, more importantly, he borrowed and transformed and
synthesized elements of their techniques to create an art far greater
than simply the sum of its geographically diverse parts. Mozart's music
is at once the most universal and yet the most personally expressive of
his time, simultaneously codifying the techniques of his contemporaries
and looking forward to the idioms of the next century. It is exactly
this Janus-faced quality in his mature works that caused the British
conductor Sir Thomas Beecham to state, "He emancipated music from the
bonds of a formal age, while remaining the true voice of the 18th
century."
As a teenager and young adult in Salzburg, Mozart was employed, as had
been his father for many years, in the musical establishment of the
local Archbishop as a violinist and composer. The work was steady and
not without rewards, but the young genius, who had experienced at first
hand the exhilarating musical life of Europe's capitals, grew
frustrated with the provincial attitude and the lack of professional
opportunity during what he called his "Salzburg Captivity." In 1781, he
left his hometown to make a career as a free-lance composer and pianist
in Vienna. Mozart's chief ambition in Vienna was to gain an appointment
at the Habsburg court as an opera composer, a post then held by Antonio
Salieri, but while becoming established in the city he supported
himself with commissions for new works, teaching fees, appearances as a
keyboard virtuoso and income from producing concerts. He did well for
the first five years, and even felt secure enough to undertake a
marriage to Constanze Weber in August 1782. Music poured from him
incessantly - concertos, chamber works, symphonies, operas. With every
passing year, the skill and expression of his compositions was
enriched, but after about 1786 the fickle Viennese public became
reluctant to accept the new "Romantic" quality of his music, and his
local support eroded. His debts mounted, his health and that of
Constanze, almost constantly pregnant during the nine years of their
marriage, began to deteriorate, and relations with his father became
strained. Though he received a minor post at court as a composer of
dances for the imperial balls, he waited in vain for the opera
appointment that he so cherished. Yet amid all the difficulties of his
life, he continued, with the generous help of a few supporters, to
create one sublime masterpiece after another - Don Giovanni, Figaro,
the three last symphonies, The Magic Flute, the string quintets.
Finally, in the summer of 1791, his constitution broke. Frequent
illness, overwork and thoughts of his own death, inspired by the
Requiem he had been commissioned to write by a mysterious stranger,
sapped his strength. On December 5, 1791, he died; he was 35.
More than two hundred years after Mozart penned his last notes, his
music continues to enchant and revitalize all who pay it heed. Indeed,
it seems that the principal qualities of his creative treasure - order
and reason and sensitivity - are more elusive and more easily crushed
with every passing generation. The most effective sources of renewal
for these virtues are the manifestations of love - family, friends,
religion - and art. More than perhaps any artist in Western history,
Mozart, in his incomparable, inexplicable genius, provided a legacy to
nurture these values, to refresh our humanity, and to renew our sense
of what the late Joseph Campbell called "the rapture of being alive."
Leopold Mozart once referred to his son as "the miracle that God
allowed to be born in Salzburg." The miracle is still ours to share.
Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1787) is at once one of the most familiar yet
one of the most mysterious of Mozart's works. It was the first piece of
the serenade type that he had written since the magnificent C minor
Wind Octet (K. 388) of 1782, and it seems unlikely that, at a time when
he was increasingly mired in debt, he would have returned to the genre
without some promise of payment. The simple, transparent style of Eine
kleine Nachtmusik, reminiscent of the music of Mozart's Salzburg years
and so different from the rich expression of all his later music except
for the dances he wrote for the Habsburg court balls, suggests that it
was designed for amateur performance, perhaps at the request of some
aristocratic Viennese player of limited musical ability. Eine kleine
Nachtmusik is an enigma, a wonderful, isolated chronological and
stylistic aberration of Mozart's mature years that raises to perfection
the simple musical gestures of his boyhood.
(c)2002 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
Gabriela Lena Frank
Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout [1999/2002] mvts 4 & 6
(excerpts originally for string quartet, arranged for string orchestra)
Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout draws inspiration from the idea of
mestizaje as envisioned by the Peruvian writer José María
Arguedas, whereby cultures coexist without the subjugation of one by
the other. As such, this piece mixes elements from the western
classical and Andean folk music traditions. "Toyos" depicts one
of the most recognizable instruments of the Andes, the panpipe.
The largest kind is the breathy toyo which requires great stamina
and lung power, and is typically played in parallel fourths.
"Tarqueada" is a forceful and fast number featuring the tarka, a heavy
wooden duct flute that is blown harshly in order to split the
tone. Tarka ensembles typically play in casually tuned 4ths,
5ths, and octaves. "Himno de Zampoñas" features a
particular type of panpipe ensemble that divides up melodies through a
technique known as hocketing. The characteristic sound of the
zampoña panpipe is that of a fundamental tone blown flatly so
that overtones ring out on top. "Chasqui" depicts a legendary figure
from the Inca times the chasqui runner, who sprinted great distances to
deliver messages between towns separated from one another by the Andean
peaks. The chasqui needed to travel light. Hence, I take
artistic license to imagine his choice of instruments to be the
charango, a high-pitched cousin of the guitar, and the lightweight
bamboo quena flute, both of which are featured in this movement. "Canto
de Velorio" portrays another well-known Andean personality, a
professional crying woman known as velorio. Hired to render
funeral rituals even sadder, the velorio is accompanied here by a
second velorio and an additional chorus of mourning women (coro de
mujeres). The chant Dies Irae is quoted as a reflection of the
velorio's penchant for blending verses from Quechua Indian folklore and
western religious rites. "Coqueteos" is a flirtatious love
song sung by gallant men known as romanceros. As such, it is
direct in its harmonic expression, bold, and festive. The
romanceros sang in harmony with one another against a backdrop of
guitars which I think of as a vendaval de guitarras ("storm of
guitars").
-Program notes by Gabriela Lena Frank
P.I. Tchaikovsky Souvenir de Florence Op. 70
It is interesting how some things experienced in childhood affect our
perception for many years to come. Of the few things that I remember
from my years at elementary school one stands out, perhaps because it
proves its validity time after time. Our teacher showed us a
reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and said: "Now you all
can move around the classroom, but keep looking at her, and you'll
notice that Mona Lisa's eyes follow you wherever you go." After we had
a jolly time enjoying this never-before-allowed freedom of movement
during a lesson and indeed amusing ourselves with Mona Lisa's ability
to "watch" us (Communist Party leaders, looking at us from the
portraits on the walls, could not do that), order in the classroom was
re-established, and the teacher asked us to give our own reasons and
explanations for Mona Lisa's smile. Another round of jolly moments, as
our interpretations were all so different. She summarized the subject
with something like this: "One piece of great art makes all people feel
the same, another piece of great art makes people feel a variety of
emotions, but one thing is constant: great art always makes people
feel."
If not for this lesson, perhaps today I would indulge myself in poking
fun at some musicologists for describing Souvenir de Florence as, for
instance "suffused with an atmosphere not often associated with this
composer, of a calm geniality". Calm geniality? Well, perhaps indeed
for some. (An old joke: Texas man, looking at Niagara Falls: "Our
plumber could fix this leak in a couple of hours."). For me, this is
one of the most turbulently passionate works in all music literature!
Written in the winter of 1890, shortly after returning from Italy where
Tchaikovsky had been working on his opera "The Queen of Spades", it was
perhaps indeed intended to be a light detour from the dark drama of the
opera. It did go this way, however. Tchaikovsky had complained to his
brother, Modest, that he felt under great strain working on it. Yet he
was very pleased with the results - until he heard it performed.
Greatly dissatisfied, he completely rewrote two movements - it was at
this time that the title "Souvenir de Florence" was added. Unlike
"Capriccio Italien", composed some ten years earlier and full of
Italian quotations, this work is decidedly Russian, with only the
gorgeous bel-canto in the second movement suggesting a possible link to
the title. Italy was a place where Tchaikovsky spent some of the
happiest moments of his life which, perhaps, could be a key to the
naming of the piece. The first performance of the revised version took
place in 1892, led by the great Russian violinist and pedagogue Leopold
Auer (teacher of Heifetz, Milstein and Zimbalist, among others), and
had great success.
Tchaikovsky saw a great challenge in writing this work - a sextet for
two violins, two violas and two cellos - in such a way as to give
prominence to each voice. He succeeded magnificently. Performances of
this work in string orchestra version are very common nowadays, and,
strangely enough, multiplication of performing forces does not
complicate, but rather helps in achieving the proper balance and
allowing every voice to be heard. (There is actually a simple, albeit
very technical, explanation of this phenomenon.)
-program notes by Misha Rachlevsky
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