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PROGRAM NOTES by Klay and Karen Woodworth Richard Wagner Tannhäuser: Overture and Venusberg Music Richard Wagner, composer and librettist of the monumental four-opera work Der Ring des Nibelungen, led a life both turbulent and outrageous at times. He spent eleven years in exile due to political fallout from his involvement in revolutionary activities in 1848 while working in Dresden. His career gained a solid footing when his music was championed by composer Franz Liszt and he received the patronage of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Wagner built the opera house at Bayreuth as the ideal location for the performance of the Ring Cycle, which he saw as the pinnacle of his conception of a total art work—the ideal combination of music, poetry, visual arts, dance, and drama. The unsavory side of his personality is well-documented in his appallingly anti-Semitic essays. Yet his music somehow transcends his own personal failings to include some of the most beautiful orchestral and vocal music of all time. This is certainly the case with the music that opens Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser. The title character is a thirteenth-century knight from the region of Thuringia (in central modern Germany). The opera relates a struggle between redemptory chaste love and physical pleasure (a Wagnerian obsession) and also includes a song contest as in the comic opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Tannhäuser has won the favor of the pagan goddess of love, Venus, and at the beginning of the opera we find him living in physical bliss in her magic realm. The overture for the opera introduces many of the opera’s themes in a concise package. The overture is coupled with the Venusberg bacchanale (which immediately follows the overture in the opera) to make a very satisfying concert piece. At the forefront of the overture is Wagner’s “Pilgrim’s Chorus” moving from woodwinds to brass and back as the line of supplicants makes its way to Rome. Wagner weaves in brief sections of beautiful arias (both prayers) for soprano and tenor that will be heard later in the opera. The music deftly transitions to the rising of the curtain and the display of the goddess’s realm even though Venusberg is the exact opposite of the aesthetic represented by the pilgrims. Wagner gives us his “magic” music here, in a style that will be familiar to those who know Ring themes like the “Magic Fire.” (If you are not familiar with Wagner’s usage of leitmotives in his Ring cycle, two excellent sources for information are Wagner Nights, by Ernest Newman, and the English National Opera guides to the four operas that make up the cycle.) After lively dance music, the bacchanale concludes with slow, sensual music associated with the goddess of love. Pierre Jalbert Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra (2005) Pierre Jalbert began his musical studies with piano lessons at the age of five. During his childhood in Vermont, he gained fluency in the sounds of classical music, French and English folk songs, and Catholic liturgical music. He cites these influences as forming his “deep respect for music that communicates powerfully with an economy of means.” He continued his musical studies at Oberlin Conservatory for undergraduate work in piano and composition, and completed a Ph.D. in composition at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied with George Crumb. He began teaching at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music in 1996, where he is currently Associate Professor of Composition and Theory. Prestigious awards and commissions soon followed. In 2000–01, he won the Rome Prize, and in 2001 he received the BBC Masterprize. Jalbert has received commissions from the Houston Symphony, the California Symphony, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Oakland East Bay, Marin, and Santa Rosa Symphonies, and numerous chamber music ensembles. He has also served as composer in residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Chicago’s Music in the Loft Chamber Music Series, and the California Symphony. Jalbert cites natural phenomena and spiritual concerns as being central to his work. His official biography notes that his music is “tonally centered, incorporating modal, tonal, and sometimes quite dissonant harmonies while retaining a sense of harmonic motion and arrival. He is particularly noted for his mastery of instrumental color: in both chamber works and orchestral scores, he creates timbres that are vivid yet refined. His rhythmic shapes are cogent, often with an unmistakable sense of underlying pulsation. Driving rhythms often alternate with slow sections in which time seems to be suspended.” Jalbert’s Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra was commissioned by the ISGM New Music Commissioning Fund for Makoto Nakura in 2005. Nakura gave the premiere performance in Kobe, Japan on March 19, 2005 with the Ensemble Kobe. Jalbert uses the four contrasting movements of the concerto to bring out both the virtuoso aspect of the marimba, which he describes as “quick running passages where the performer’s hands seem to blur,” and the instrument’s ability to sing in long, lyrical lines. Jalbert describes the concerto as follows: “The first movement begins almost without tempo, very freely, as the orchestra echoes the marimba notes to create floating harmonies. The music gradually speeds up into the main section of the movement where the marimba moves in a rapid perpetual motion. The second movement is a scherzo where the marimba is accompanied by accented string pizzicati. Next is the slow movement where the marimba emerges out of the orchestral texture and ‘sings.’ The fourth movement concludes the work with a rhythmically driving finale and a short cadenza leading to the end.” Robert Schumann Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Op. 97 "Rhenish" As a critic and publisher Robert Schumann probably did more than anyone else to translate the Romantic aesthetic from literature to music. A voracious reader as a youngster, he studied at the Zwickau Lyceum for eight years and then studied law in Leipzig and Heidelberg. He eventually returned to Leipzig to study piano with Friedrich Wieck in 1830. After a hand injury ended Schumann’s plans to perform, he focused on composing music and writing about music. His articles helped to establish and shape the careers of many performers and composers. Schumann married Clara Wieck in September of 1840. The couple lived in Leipzig and Dresden before Robert became the municipal music director in Düsseldorf in 1850. The beginning of his time in Düsseldorf was very pleasant and productive for Schumann. Clara had urged him to try to branch out from the piano as much as possible and he did so spectacularly. During the 1850–51 season Schumann introduced his concert audience to the Requiem for Mignon and the overture to Die Braut von Messina, as well as the Third Symphony. He was making a living as a musician and was at one of the high points of his career. His positive emotions are certainly reflected in the Third Symphony. Robert Schumann's Third Symphony was actually his final work in symphonic form. It was written in 1850 and published in 1851. (The symphony we know today as the Fourth was written in 1841 but was pulled from circulation, revised, and re-released as the Fourth in 1853.) Schumann referred often to his 1850 composition as his “Rhenish Symphony,” but the piece was not published with that title because he omitted it from the final proof, just as he had the “Spring” title given to his Symphony No. 1. The Third Symphony is an exuberant work of Classical proportions, but with an extra movement, and is very much a piece in the German symphonic tradition stretching from Haydn and Mozart through Beethoven. The festive opening is marked Lebhaft (lively). The music is in E-flat major, the key often used by Beethoven to denote the heroic. The extended exposition is not repeated; rather, Schumann goes straight into the developmental material and then recapitulates. The second movement, marked Scherzo, is in reality closer in rhythmic scheme and tempo to the Austrian folk dance, the Ländler. This is followed by a slow movement, again with a folk-music quality. The folk dance of the second movement and the folk song of the third are often attributed to the character of the people of the Rhine region. The “extra” movement of the piece is the fourth. This music, as recorded in Schumann's notebooks, was to be an evocation of a “solemn ceremony” — the elevation of the archbishop of the cathedral in Cologne to the rank of cardinal, an event that occurred while Schumann was in the region. In this movement we can sense the feeling of solemn procession and the air of the Church in thematic material that harkens back to Johann Sebastian Bach. The solemnity of the fourth movement is followed by an outbreak of joy in the finale. The strings maintain a rolling figuration suggesting the great river, while Schumann effectively uses the brass instruments for fanfares and dotted-note rhythms that punctuate sections of the rondo. The earthy and exuberant “Rhenish” symphony gives us a wonderful experience of Robert Schumann at the height of his creative powers. © 2009 Klayton Woodworth and Karen M. Woodworth |