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Program Notes by Klay and Karen Woodworth Kirke Mechem Recognized as the “dean of American choral composers,” Kirke Mechem is enjoying a prolific career. Mechem has opera premieres scheduled for this year and next, and is composing an opera based on Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Educated at Stanford and Harvard, Mechem was composer-in-residence at the University of San Francisco and worked for a time in Vienna. His music is performed world-wide. ASCAP has registered recent performances of Mechem pieces in 42 countries. Mechem’s work has been acknowledged with a lifetime achievement award by the National Opera Association. The composer currently resides in San Francisco. In his notes about the lively concert overture The Jayhawk, Kirke Mechem draws upon a literary source close to home for a knowledge of his state’s storied mascot. “The Mythical Jayhawk” was written by the composer’s father, Kirke Field Mechem, when he was serving as Executive Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society. Here’s what the composer writes about the overture: The Jayhawk is a mythical bird which has come to be identified with Kansas and Kansans. Most of his legendary adventures are practical jokes, but he has also been depicted as a martial guardian of the range with miraculous qualities of transformation and disguise. He is said to have originated in the rock chalk of Kansas and to possess the phoenix’s power of regeneration through adversity; whether fire, dust storm, depression or tornado. The Jayhawk is the adopted symbol of the University of Kansas athletic teams, who at moments of dire peril are rallied by one of the best-known college yells, “Rock-Chalk, Jay-hawk, K-U!” This cheer forms the basis of the overture’s introduction. The Kansas state song, “Home on the Range,” also makes a brief appearance, although it is mockingly distorted by this most irreverent of birds. He might be called an ornithological Till Eulenspiegel; in fact, old-time Kansans of German stock will tell you that Eule means owl, and swear that Eulenspiegel himself was merely another of the diabolically clever disguises of the Jayhawk. With that in mind, it is very easy to hear The Jayhawk settle into the same musical tree as Stravinsky’s Firebird and Richard Strauss’s ode to the mischievous Till. Rising from a swirl of dust, the Jayhawk makes his presence known and goes about his merry business, including that brisk waltz across the state song. While the Western Meadowlark is the official Kansas state bird and (as noted) the state has an official song, this energetic music deserves recognition as a wonderful evocation of both this classic Plains character and the proud state that claims him. Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Concerto for two pianos in A-flat major Felix Mendelssohn’s career, although short, was certainly one of the most highly regarded of the nineteenth century. Raised in a wealthy Berlin banking family, Mendelssohn received the best general and musical education possible at the time. He was encouraged to pursue philosophy (including aesthetics) and a thorough study of literature. Musical studies led him to the works of the great Baroque composers that had all but disappeared from the concert repertoire. With his prodigious intellectual and musical gifts, Mendelssohn developed an individual style of composition that falls snugly into the gap between Classicism and Romanticism. While his musical tastes almost always pulled him back to the earlier formal and harmonic language of the Classicists, Mendelssohn was well-versed in contemporary literature and did not shrink from trying to depict narrative and emotion in music — traits we generally ascribe to the Romantics. This stylistic synthesis is heard in Mendelssohn’s earliest music, written for private performance and subsequent use as concert repertoire and not published during the composer’s lifetime. Through these pieces we hear the composer trying out the musical ideas he has studied and working toward his mature style. The Concerto for Two Pianos in A-flat major was the second piece of its kind for Mendelssohn and was completed in November of 1824. He had written a similar piece in E major the year before. Both concertos were presented to his sister, Fanny Mendelssohn, as birthday presents and were performed by Felix and Fanny at family musicales. These pieces look to the music being performed by the popular soloists of the day, but are disciplined by Mendelssohn’s love of Beethoven and Mozart. In the A-flat Concerto, for example, connoisseurs hear a mixture of Beethoven’s Third Concerto and the contemporary A-flat-major Concerto by John Field. Although both the E-major concerto and the A-flat Concerto are primarily display pieces for the soloists, Mendelssohn gave the A-flat concerto a little more weight. The first movement takes its form from the Classical “double-exposition” sonata with clear statements by solo voices and orchestra. Mendelssohn works through theme development so thoroughly that as the music approaches the recapitulation, there really seems to be no need for an expository cadenza. The tonal center drops a major third for the second movement. This Andante is in sonata form with a good deal of theme and variation development to highlight the composer’s melody. The finale of the A-flat Concerto is playful stagecraft. Mendelssohn looks back again and adopts the form of the sonata-rondo (as heard so often in Mozart’s concert works), while throwing the audience continuous surprises. The main theme is started by one pianist but answered by the second with a drop of a step. The simplicity of the theme and its little joke make it easy to mold into many guises. Mendelssohn blithely runs the gamut, presenting a range of episodes from lyricism to contrapuntal structure. As was the case with many of his early works, Mendelssohn did not choose to publish this concerto. In fact, there was only one other known public performance of the work. Mendelssohn played the Concerto with Carl Löwe in Stettin in 1827. As an adult, Mendelssohn acknowledged only the overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream and his Octet as worthy of distribution. As shrewd a businessman as he was an artist, Mendelssohn probably made the correct choice for his time. Luckily, we can still enjoy this music and the youthful energy it evokes. Sergei Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances, Opus 45 A brilliant pianist, conductor, and composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff did not spend much mental energy justifying his music. In a 1941 interview he stated: In my own compositions, no conscious effort has been made to be original, or Romantic, or Nationalistic, or anything else. I write down on paper the music I hear within me, as naturally as possible. . . . What I try to do, when writing down my music, is to say simply and directly that which is in my heart when I am composing. Born into an aristocratic family, Rachmaninoff began to study at the conservatory in St. Petersburg in 1882. After his parents separated he transferred to the Moscow Conservatory to continue piano study. Composing captured his interest around 1887. He graduated from the conservatory with the highest possible marks and the Great Gold Medal, a rarely conferred honor. After the failure of his first symphonic effort, Rachmaninoff’s professional career nearly came to a halt. As a composer Rachmaninoff suffered a three-year drought, due to deep depression, but he continued to perform and began to conduct operas. He got back on track by 1901, following intensive hypnotherapy, with the premier of his Second Piano Concerto. World War I and the Russian Revolution drove Rachmaninoff and his family from Russia. They eventually settled in the United States and Rachmaninoff decided to concentrate on performing. He signed one of the earliest recording contracts (during the 1919–20 season) with the Victor Talking Machine Company and toured the U.S. and Europe exhaustively, composing primarily between concert seasons. Rachmaninoff never returned to his homeland and his music was completely banned by the Soviets for several years. In February of 1943, Rachmaninoff became extremely ill following a performance in Knoxville, Tennessee, and returned to his home. He died of cancer just a few weeks later. Symphonic Dances was the final orchestral work completed by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The work was written in about a month on Long Island, New York. Rachmaninoff dedicated the piece to Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra, as he had just finished recording many of his works for piano and orchestra with the group. The Dances were performed for the first time on January 3, 1941. The Philadelphia audience’s reception of the work was disappointing for Rachmaninoff, especially as his last orchestral work, the Symphony No. 3 (completed in 1936), had also received mixed reviews. In hindsight, it is possible to apologize for audiences who were completely enraptured by the piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini when they failed to embrace the much more complicated composer reflected in the Third Symphony and Symphonic Dances. The outer movements of the Dances contrast strikingly with the second movement, and each movement contains a great deal of internal contrast as well. Rachmaninoff wrote a beautiful solo for saxophone in the second movement. He weaves pithy quotations throughout the work, including music from his failed First Symphony and ecclesiastical chants of Eastern and Western Christianity. Although he did not leave any record of seeing this piece as his last original effort, he did end the score with the notation “Alliluya” [sic]. In the Symphonic Dances Rachmaninoff is completely true to his view of the role of the composer. He was a twentieth-century composer who held unflinchingly to the Romantic dictum that one’s music was a reflection of one’s life. © 2007 Klayton Woodworth and Karen M. Woodworth |