Houston Summer Concerts - 2015 Schedule

Though often maligned for its sprawling, complicated libretto, Verdi’s La forza del destino contains much beautiful, lyrical music and is a key work in the composer’s progress toward the broad, mature style of his later operas. First composed in 1861-62 on commission from the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg, the opera was extensively revised for an 1869 production at Milan’s La Scala opera house.

The opera is based largely on a work by Spanish playwright Angel Saavedra. Its plot revolves around conflicts between love, vengeance and atonement involving the reclusive heroine, Leonora, her lover, Alvaro, who accidentally kills her father, and her brother, Carlo, who seeks to kill Alvaro.

The overture is from the 1869 version and includes many of the loveliest themes from the opera. It begins with a series of loud octave chords in the brass. They are followed by Leonora’s nervous “destiny” motive, a theme used at many points in the opera to depict her emotional turmoil as she seeks seclusion from her troubled love affair with Alvaro, her brother’s hatred for him, and the war-torn environment surrounding the central plot.

Symbolically, the “destiny” motive also dominates much of the overture, infiltrating many other themes. These include Alvaro’s fourth-act plea for forgiveness from Carlo, played as a plaintive woodwind trio, the famous second-act vocal melody, “Deh, non m’abbandonar,” which soars up first in the violins and woodwinds, returning later in the full orchestra, and a clarinet/harp version of Leonora’s short second-act aria concluding her duet with the monk, Padre Guardiano, who grants her refuge in a hermitage. A long, brassy climax brings the overture to a close.

Anthony DiLorenzo is most widely known for his vast number of works written for film, television and other digital/electronic media. He began trumpet lessons at age eight in his hometown of Stoughton, Massachusetts. In 1984-85, he started winning awards that led to solo performances with the New York Philharmonic and Boston Symphony, studies at the Tanglewood Institute, Boston University and the Curtis Institute. At various times, he held principal or second trumpet positions with eight American symphony or opera orchestras. In addition to numerous orchestral and chamber music works, DiLorenzo has composed musical scores for at least 80 films over a 12-year period.

DiLorenzo’s Horn Concerto is written in an accessible musical style whose D-major tonality is enriched by colorful harmonies reminiscent of the late Romantic era. It is set in three movements with a succession of appealing themes, especially during the first two movements. The concerto’s brilliant orchestration includes triple woodwinds, enhanced by piccolo, English horn, bass clarinet and contrabassoon, along with a large string section. To highlight the tone of the solo horn, the standard orchestral brass section is replaced by a colorful percussion ensemble including piano, celesta, harp and several instruments struck with mallets. These are added to the customary timpani, drums and cymbals.

After a short orchestral introduction, the horn soloist enters with a broad theme that extends upward in several scale passages; then, the horn repeats it in expanded form. Fragments of the theme are further discussed by the solo horn and the orchestra in several episodes, until the full orchestra restates the main theme shortly before the conclusion of the movement.

The slow movement is set as a lyrical song form, cast in the rounded binary structure common to many such pieces. After a brief introduction, the horn takes up the main theme, and then repeats it with a fuller orchestral accompaniment. A more animated spirit characterizes the music of the central section, until the strings return the opening theme, bringing the movement to a quiet close.

The finale is brilliant and fast-paced, with much challenging virtuoso music for the solo horn. The orchestra leads off with a hurried perpetual-motion episode, followed by a vigorous theme presented in two lengthy segments by the horn. Short interchanges between the glittering orchestral music and thematic fragments by the soloist progress to a major, partially improvised cadenza by the soloist, leading the concerto to a jubilant, orchestrally colorful conclusion.

Sergei Prokofiev's full-length ballet on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet represents an artistic crossroads at which many talents, trends and needs in the composer's life came together. Its composition in 1935 coincided with Prokofiev's return to his homeland after living as an expatriate in Western Europe and America for 20 years.

While his adoption of a simpler, more accessible neo-romantic style of composition was in conformity with Soviet artistic doctrines of socialist realism, scholar Harlow Robinson maintains that it was prompted by an inner need and his rejection of an artificial neo-classicism, largely nurtured during his years in France. The ballet's dramatic, narrative style and its numerous short scenes exhibited Prokofiev's recently honed skills as a composer of film scores, where similar conditions prevail.

Though Prokofiev completed the score rather rapidly during the spring and summer of 1935, getting it seen and heard onstage proved to be a significant problem. One after another, plans for a premiere by Leningrad's Kirov Ballet and Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet evaporated into thin air and the premiere finally took place in far off Brno, Czechoslovakia. The ballet was not seen in the Soviet Union until the Kirov company finally danced it in 1940.

Unlike the three familiar orchestral suites Prokofiev extracted from the full score, the 16 excerpts in this performance present a fuller, properly chronological account of the music that depicts the main characters and events in the ballet. The sequence of numbers focuses upon the plot’s main dramatic message: the love shared by Romeo and Juliet, set against, and destroyed by, clan warfare in Verona.

Following the orchestral introduction, the music takes up the Morning Dance that accompanies the dawn of street life in Verona and the quarrel that emerges when the warring Capulet and Montague families encounter each other, finally erupting into a fight that has to be stopped by the stern command of the Duke of Verona.

Sparkling scale passages in the violins characterize the playful scene between Juliet Capulet and her nurse, followed by a stately minuet. This music flows into the ball scene in which Romeo and his masked companions secretly crash the party. Following the martial Knights’ Dance, Romeo’s first sight of Juliet sparks the forbidden romance that blooms in passionate orchestral phrases during the famed Balcony Scene and the ensuing Love Scene between the pair.

From there, this performance of excerpts leaps to the crucial fight scene, where Romeo avenges the death of his friend, Mercutio, by slaying Tybalt, Juliet’s brother from the Capulet clan. The brilliant, nimble music Prokofiev composed for the swordplay between the combatants, followed by the convulsive depiction of Tybalt’s death, form climactic moments in the musical score.

The final segment begins with the tragic music mourning Tybalt’s death, followed by the sweet, sad interlude accompanying the secret tryst between the lovers before Romeo’s banishment from Verona. The last two excerpts portray his furtive return upon hearing of Juliet’s apparent death and the quiet, grief-ridden music that shrouds the Tomb
Scene following the mistaken information that results in their double-suicide.

©2015 Carl R. Cunningham

Individual Beethoven symphonies are remarkable for so many reasons that it is hard to single out the special importance of any one of them. Beethoven named the Eroica Symphony as his favorite, perhaps because it represented a breakthrough in establishing the large, monumental genre of symphony that prevailed throughout the 19th century. Wagner paid special homage to the Ninth Symphony, with its vocal-choral message of human brotherhood—a message that echoed all the way down to Leonard Bernstein’s historic performance of the symphony at the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. The Pastoral Symphony, with its descriptive portrayal of the joys of rural life, pointed the way to numerous descriptive symphonies by Berlioz, Liszt, Mahler, Strauss and a host of lesser composers.

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is important for several reasons, above all for its concentrated release of energy. Never, in any symphony, did the composer hammer away so incessantly at one single theme as the he did in the “short-short-short-long” rhythmic motto that dominates the work’s first movement. Musical analysts have often claimed (not without controversy) that he unified the entire symphony by echoing that rhythm in its later movements, particularly during its frowning third-movement Scherzo.

The Fifth Symphony also owes it concentrated power to the fact that it is one of Beethoven’s shorter symphonies. Though manuscript documents indicate he once considered expanding the three-part Scherzo and Trio to a five-part form (as he did with his Fourth, Seventh and Ninth symphonies), Beethoven left little fat in the tissue of this muscular symphonic score.

But he decisively enlarged the size of the symphonic orchestra. Notwithstanding at least one insignificant precedent, he is credited with vastly expanding its tonal resources by adding three trombones in the final movement. Finally, his dramatic gesture in physically joining the moody C minor Scherzo to the triumphant C major finale (at the exact moment those trombones begin to play) has doubtless brought a spine-tingling thrill to every listener who has ever heard the symphony.

For all these innovations, the Fifth Symphony owes some things to symphonic traditions that developed during the 18th century. Its rare use of a minor key harks back to the urgent “storm-and-stress” symphonies of the 1770s, of which Mozart’s explosive Symphony No. 25 in G minor is a prime example. And its concentration upon a single theme in the first movement recalls several single-theme symphonies of Haydn, where most or all of the themes in a movement derive from a single musical idea.

Born June 17, Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), Russia
Died April 6, 1971, New York City, USA

It was perhaps pure luck that brought impresario Serge Diaghilev to hear a concert that included two works by the fledgling St. Petersburg composer, Igor Stravinsky, in February 1909. Diaghilev's exposure to Stravinsky's music resulted in a historic commission to compose the musical score to choreographer Michel Fokine's new ballet, The Firebird. Diaghilev planned the ballet for his fifth season of Russian cultural exports to Paris during the spring and summer of 1910.

The ballet was based on the Russian fairytale of Ivan Tsarevich, a young prince who uses a magical feather given him by the Firebird to break the spell of the evil monster, Kaschei, thus freeing a group of captive princesses and marrying one of them. Though Stravinsky expressed doubts about his ability to complete so large a project, he was persuaded by Diaghilev and Fokine, and began work that fall, completing the score in the spring of 1910.

Stravinsky made his first visit to Paris for final rehearsals in May and won critical acclaim and sudden fame at the June 25 premiere in the Paris Opera. The full 45-minute ballet was scored for a huge orchestra and included 19 scenes. Stravinsky subsequently extracted three orchestral suites employing various numbers, scored for a smaller orchestra, in 1911, 1919 and 1945.

The 26-minute second suite, scored for a standard symphonic ensemble, has gained the most popularity. According to Stravinsky scholar Eric Walter White, its five numbers illustrate the composer's method of setting apart the ballet's magical characters, the Firebird and Kaschei, by writing their music in unsettling chromatic harmonies, while the human characters, Ivan Tsarevich and the princesses, are given readily recognizable tonal music.

The Round of the Princesses, the second number in the suite, is taken from an old Russian folksong, "In the Garden."  The piece acquired an independent life in 1946 when lyricist John Klenner turned it into a pop song, "Summer Moon." The ballet's shimmering, brassy finale is also derived from an old Russian folksong, "By the Gate."

The three suites, especially the Second Suite, have made excerpts from the score popular with audiences today, while the splendor and importance of the music are made fully evident by hearing the opulent original 1910 score. It reveals Stravinsky’s debt to two of his artistic mentors, Nicholai Rimsky-Korsakov for the brilliant moments in its orchestration, and Claude Debussy for the impressionistic subtleties that abound in the work. These delicate touches, which quietly underline moments in the stage action, enhance the inherent sense of fantasy in the ballet.

The music to Stravinsky’s Firebird has none of the raw brutality heard in his Rite of Spring and little of the piquant satire of Petrouchka, though these two ballets followed it within three years. Like its near-contemporary ballet, Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, it marked a glorious, shimmering climax in the era of musical Impressionism.

©2015, Carl R. Cunningham

The turn of the 20th century was a time of self-satisfaction in the British Empire. Feelings of power and wealth abounded and, following the death of Queen Victoria, Britons entered into the elegant Edwardian era that was to last until World War One.

The spirit of the times seems to have taken hold of Edward Elgar. Though outwardly depressed because of some mild criticisms following the premiere of his major oratorio, The Dream of Gerontius, and worried that he would never recoup the expense of producing his new overture in concert, the piece turned out to be one of his cheeriest works.

Cockaigne, which he subtitled In London Town, has the pace and spirit of a brisk morning walk. It is decorated with several brassy little episodes, said to celebrate the tradition of British marching bands, according to the preface by Edwin Evans in the score. The piece is a large sonata form, beginning with a set of short, cryptic themes descriptive of street life in London, followed by one longer theme, marked to be performed “nobly” and said to represent a self-confident London citizen. The shorter, street-life themes are reiterated before this first group of themes gives way to a sentimental secondary theme, apparently representing a pair of lovers.

A lengthy development refers to several of the themes. It also makes a sly imitation of a Salvation Army tune and pays a musical visit to one of London’s churches during a quiet interlude, according to Evans. A robust restatement of the street themes and lovers’ theme leads to a climactic coda, based on the citizen’s theme.

Being a pianist as well as a composer, Beethoven found the concerto an important medium of self-expression and self-promotion, just as it was to Mozart, Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff. Thus, Beethoven completed three piano concertos between 1795-1800, his first five years as a young musician trying to make his way in Viennese musical circles. (An earlier concerto from his juvenile years in Bonn exists only in a piano score.)

Initial sketches for the Third Concerto in C Minor date back to about 1796, but biographer Alexander Thayer calculated that Beethoven composed the body of the concerto during the summer of 1800. The premiere did not take place until April 5, 1803, at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. The concerto was included on one of those marathon concerts that Beethoven periodically scheduled for the performance of his works. The concert also included the premiere of Beethoven’s oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives, and the First and Second symphonies. Several shorter works were also planned, but had to be omitted owing to the length of the program.

The concerto opens with a long orchestral exposition, presenting an urgent triadic opening theme in C minor, followed by several subsidiary themes of similar character. A shift to the relative major key, E-flat, brings a second main theme that is more songlike. The music turns back to the minor key in preparation for the entry of the piano, which takes up all of the themes in a florid solo exposition. Interactions between soloist and orchestra, as well as thematic and dramatic intensity, are strong attributes of the development section. The recapitulation brings an elaborate figurative display from the pianist, capped by a tightly knit cadenza, which Beethoven composed for this concerto six years after the premiere.

The slow movement takes the concerto to the threshold of musical Romanticism. This highly poetic song form is set in the remote and colorful key of E major, and the music is enhanced by breathtaking themes and gorgeous pianistic filigree. In the robust finale, Beethoven typically combines rondo and sonata principles in a lengthy seven-part movement (ABA development ABA) that includes a fugal episode at the center and a fast, teasing coda, ending the concerto in a bright C major tonality.

Unaware that Claude Debussy had just completed an opera on Maurice Maeterlinck’s symbolist play, Arnold Schoenberg began setting it as a symphonic poem in 1902. The work was completed the following year, but it received an unsuccessful premiere under the composer’s baton in 1905. It was not until Oskar Fried took up the work in 1911 that it was finally acclaimed and the musical score was published.

Like Schoenberg’s celebrated Chamber Symphony of 1906 and an earlier string quartet, Pelleas and Melisande is essentially a four-movement symphony woven into an uninterrupted 50-minute time span. Following the example of Wagner’s music dramas and Strauss’s tone poems, short thematic ideas associated with each of the main characters are combined into an extraordinarily complex contrapuntal score. As these ideas develop and change character, suggesting scenes and events in Maeterlinck’s drama, the music progresses through an incomplete sonata movement, a scherzo, slow movement and finale.

The heavily orchestrated score calls for four, or more, instrumental parts for each of the woodwinds, trumpets and trombones, eight horns, a large percussion ensemble, two harps and a large string section. Dark, murky woodwind and low string colors (no violins, no brass) pervade the introduction where Golaud discovers the abandoned girl, Melisande, lost in the forest, leading her home and into a fateful marriage as the horns and low brass enter the musical scene. A bright, confident trumpet theme characterizes his younger brother, Pelleas, whose entry introduces a conflicting romantic attachment between him and Melisande.

The alternately playful and ominous Scherzo and its two Trio sections encompass several scenes in the play: the scene at the well, where Melisande tosses her wedding ring up in the air and it accidentally falls in the water below; the scene where Golaud spies upon Pelleas, as he watches Melisande combing her long hair at the ledge of the castle window. The movement comes to a climax in a frightening scene where Golaud leads Pelleas into dark forest caverns, before banishing him to a distant land.

Act Two of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde might be considered a prototype for the long, surging Adagio that forms a passionate farewell love scene between Pelleas and Melisande. It comes to a shocking percussive conclusion as Golaud suddenly enters, killing Pelleas and wounding the pregnant Melisande. The doleful finale recounts the repentant Golaud’s futile attempts to learn from the dying Melisande whether her newborn baby was fathered by him or Pelleas.

Stylistically, Pelleas and Melisande represents Schoenberg as a fully mature composer, standing on the threshold between tonality and atonality. Though it is composed in key signatures representing tonal principles used during the preceding three centuries, its persistent chromaticism nearly erases the foundations upon which those principles are based.

It also exhibits certain inherent musical traits found in Schoenberg’s works before as well as after he crossed that threshold. Schoenberg was a very complex composer, with numerous thematic ideas jousting for primacy at any given point in a musical score—a trait that calls for complete and unswerving attention from the listening mind. His music also expresses a very intense creative personality, filled with nervous energy that rarely relaxes into an easygoing attitude.

©2015, Carl R. Cunningham