October 23rd: 7.30pm - Programme notes

Prelude: Die Meistersinger 
Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

Rather like Beethoven, whose symphonies do not necessarily progress the genre in chronological order but often look over their respective shoulders before so doing (take the 4th sandwiched between the world-shattering Eroica and the 5th or the 8th which precedes the mould-breaking 9th), likewise in the field of opera (or music drama as he later called them) Wagner behaves similarly when he wrote Die Meistersinger in 1868, after turning the rules of harmony on their head with the chromaticism of Tristan und Isolde (1865) and before presenting the world with Das Rheingold in 1869, the introduction to his monumental Ring tetralogy.

Despite this, Die Meistersinger, a lengthy three-act work set in 16th century Nuremberg, has much of the formulaic elements of opera (against which Wagner always railed) such as arias, ensembles, choruses, dances, as well as a Prelude which sets the scene with quotes which will recur throughout the opera.

Contrary to convention (overtures were usually dashed off at the last minute using motifs from the by-now completed opera), Wagner wrote it six years before the premiere (he conducted it for the first time at Leipzig on 1 November 1862).

In it he saw ‘the clear outlines of the themes of the whole drama’. We hear the pomp and ceremony associated with the ceremonials of the guilds, the burgeoning love between the star-crossed lovers Walther and Eva, the mischievous behaviour of the apprentices, and the prize-winning song at the contest for Eva’s hand.

A single stroke on the triangle signals the moment when Wagner unites the principal themes in a texture at once rich and lucid, or as he rather dryly characterised it, ‘applied Bach’.

Symphonic poem: Tapiola Op.112
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

It is an extraordinary fact that after this symphonic poem and the incidental music to the Tempest (both written in 1926), Sibelius wrote not another note yet lived for a further three decades.

Hitherto (starting with Kullervo in 1892) his output consisted of seven symphonies, numerous tone poems, many songs, a violin concerto, piano and chamber works and a host of incidental music. Only Rossini behaved in similar fashion, though he stopped at 37 in 1829 but at least produced a few musical trinkets (‘sins of my old age’ he called them) before his death almost 40 years later. As far as Sibelius is concerned, Tapiola makes a gloomy swansong; it is prefaced in the score by these four lines:

Widespread they stand, the Northland’s dusky forests
Ancient, mysterious, brooding savage dreams;
Within them dwells the Forest’s mighty God,
And wood-sprites in the gloom weave magic secrets.

As so often, Sibelius plunders Finland’s heritage of myths and legends. Tapio is the god of the Finnish forests, Tapiola his kingdom, and this work is a magnificent evocation of the endless northern woodlands and tundra.

Based virtually entirely on a single theme, Tapiola is a masterpiece in tone colour, vivid depiction and quicksilver mood-changes, ending with the vast wastes of the country’s tundra in one of the most magical resolutions on to B major you’ll ever hear.

Clarinet concerto No.2 in Eb Op.74 
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)

Allegro : Andante : Alla Polacca

Brahms wrote his clarinet music for Richard Mühlfeld, while Weber did so for Heinrich Bärmann (1784-1847) a half century earlier (seven works between 1811 and 1816).

Weber went on to spearhead German Romantic opera in the 1820s, an achievement on which his enduring fame rests. In other fields he enjoyed modest success, for example his two symphonies are lightweight curiosities, his piano concertos were written for Weber to promote himself as both a concert pianist and a composer, but he was clearly inspired by Bärmann to produce music of better quality, not forgetting of course that it was Mozart who had already put the genre of the clarinet concerto on the map with his last orchestral work (1791) written for Anton Stadler.

Weber wrote a concertino for clarinet in 1811 followed by two concertos, all of which were so successful that he was bombarded by requests from his solo orchestral players in Munich for concertos.

The second concerto, given in Munich on November 25, 1811, was received ‘with frantic applause due to Bärmann's divine playing’. Weber’s writing explores the dramatic contrasts between the instrument’s brilliant high notes and the dark, rich sonority of the lower range, while Bärmann clearly had no problem playing scales and shifting from the very highest to very lowest notes, exemplified by the opening flourish which plunges three full octaves, then rebounds nearly the same distance.

The Romanze is an aria despite more of those wide leaps, which are beyond a singer’s capabilities, but what is vocal is a concluding recitativo. The Rondo finale is a syncopated Polonaise with a coda to ‘burn the fingers of most clarinettists’, as Weber’s biographer John Warrack puts it.

Overture: Turandot
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)

During the three years 1807-1810 which Weber spent in Stuttgart, he wrote an overture and incidental music for a production (in September 1809) of Schiller’s five-act drama Turandot translated from Gozzi’s play.

So influential were the works of Gozzi upon Goethe, Schiller, and E T A Hoffman that he was revered by them as the Father of Romanticism, and ironically it was Schiller’s translation which was re-translated back into Italian for Puccini’s opera a century or more later.

Weber’s music is a revised version of his Overtura Chinesa written in 1804, and after a quiet opening tattoo on the side drum, we do indeed hear exotic Chinese elements from a solo piccolo. In Weber’s own words, ‘Drums and pipes introduce the strange, bizarre melody, which is taken up by the orchestra and presented in various forms’.

Symphonic Metamorphosis on themes by Weber 
 Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)

Allegro: Turandot, Scherzo : Andantino : March

The reason for including Weber’s rarely played overture to Turandot, which is clearly not in the same league as the later Oberon, Euryanthe or Der Freischütz, is to connect it to Hindemith’s work, because that opening piccolo melody features throughout the second movement here.

For the other three movements Hindemith selected pieces Weber wrote for piano duet. The Symphonic Metamorphosis on themes by Weber was originally destined for a Massine ballet, but choreographer and composer fell out, and the music was salvaged for a four-movement quasi-symphony.

It was first performed on 20 January 1944 by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski. Hindemith had fled to America from the Nazis (his wife was half-Jewish and his music considered degenerate). There he joined the music faculty at Yale University, but he was also a fine violist and conductor.

The opening movement has a martial swagger, the second plays with Weber’s Turandot theme in orchestral blocks, strings, wind, brass and percussion like a Concerto for Orchestra (Bartok’s would appear at the end of 1944) or Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.

The final fugal treatment (three unison trombones jazzing up Weber’s theme) reveals his mastery of counterpoint, and it was not for nothing that he was known as ‘the 20th century Bach’.

The gentle, lyrical slow movement has an extended solo for flute to match any birdsong, while the finale is another March, transformed from its original funereal context by attractive themes and an exciting conclusion.

Christopher Fifield