Angela Hewitt Plays Mozart

Gregory Vajda, conductor
Angela Hewitt, piano

ANTON WEBERN
Passacaglia for Orchestra, Op. 1

Vital Stats

Composer: born Dec. 3, 1883, Vienna; died Sept. 15, 1945, Mittersill, Austria

Work composed: 1908

World premiere: Webern conducted the premiere on Nov. 4, 1908, at the Musikverein in Vienna.

Oregon Symphony premiere: At these concerts

Instrumentation: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, tam tam, triangle, harp and strings

Estimated duration
11 minutes

Anton Webern, Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg (known collectively as the Second Viennese School) revolutionized musical composition. Prior to the early 20th century, musical theory followed musical practice. In the 18th century, for example, composers wrote their music according to their creative impulses and the conventions of their time. Some years later, musical scholars would study the music and devise a theory of how it was composed, imposing rules unknown to the composer. When Schoenberg developed his 12-tone theory, in which all 12 tones in a chromatic musical scale had equal value, theory and theory-based music emerged simultaneously.

Despite his interest this avant-garde approach to composition, Webern did not consider himself a revolutionary. Instead, Webern saw himself as an inheritor of past musical traditions, traditions he revered. As a doctoral student he had immersed himself in the Renaissance music of Heinrich Isaac, a master of 16th century counterpoint. For Webern, Isaac’s music, and that of his Netherlands Renaissance colleagues, embodied an ideal of balance in which the music is a perfect blend of emotional content and structural substance without pretense or flourishes.

In his own music, Webern paid homage to the musical past, combining old forms with melodies and harmonies based on the hitherto unexplored world of atonality. To that end, Webern often utilized old genres, like the passacaglia, a series of variations over a continuously repeating bass line, popular during the Baroque period. (Although most of Webern’s music is based on 12-tone row theory, the Passacaglia retains elements of tonality, although they can be hard to discern in one hearing.)

In the preface to the score of his Passacaglia, Webern wrote, “[The Passacaglia is] a composition in which the point is not imagery, stimulus of atmosphere and coloristic effect, but rather purity of delineation, discipline of compositional technique and density of musical substance.” Webern’s Passacaglia has 23 variations following the introduction of the primary theme.

With his emphasis on formal structure, Webern’s music has at times been characterized as lacking an emotional core. However, this music pulses with feeling. In 1912, Webern told Berg that most of his music, beginning with the Passacaglia, “relates to the death of my mother.” We can hear Webern’s grief in spiky, angular variations and wild, heartbroken outcries, juxtaposed with tender, intimate expressions of his abiding love.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488

Vital Stats

Composer: born Jan. 27, 1756, Salzburg, Austria; died Dec. 5, 1791, Vienna

Work composed: Mozart may have begun composing this concerto in 1784. In the catalog of works he began keeping in 1784, Mozart wrote that he completed it on Mar. 2, 1786, in Vienna.

World premiere: Most likely in March 1786 at a Lenten concert in Vienna, although the exact date and other details of the premiere performance are undocumented. As with most of  his concertos, Mozart wrote this one for a subscription concert to generate income; whenever it premiered, Mozart would have conducted from the keyboard and performed the solo part.

Oregon Symphony premiere: Mar. 16, 1980, with James DePreist conducting; John Browning, piano soloist

Most recent Oregon Symphony performances: Feb. 26-28, 2000, with DePreist conducting; Horacio Gutiérrez, piano soloist

Instrumentation
Solo piano, flute, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns and strings

Estimated duration
26 minutes

Mozart wrote the majority of his piano concertos during the 1780s, and, as was his habit, he often worked on several compositions simultaneously. Such is the case with the Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, one of three piano concertos (along with the E flat, K. 482 and the C minor, K. 491) Mozart wrote at the same time he composed his opera The Marriage of Figaro.

On first inspection, there seems little similarity between K. 488, a lyrical, reflective work, and the exuberant silliness that embodies Figaro. A closer look, however, reveals some interesting parallels between concerto and opera. There are moments in Figaro, particularly the countess’ poignant aria, Porgi amor, in which she laments her loveless marriage, and in the finale, when the count begs forgiveness, that echo the emotional depth and tenderness of the concerto. Correspondingly, there are passages in the concerto, particularly in the second movement Adagio, that are clearly vocal (if not operatic) in both construction and conception.

When performing, Mozart improvised cadenzas for all his concertos, although many do not survive in written form; other composers, including Beethoven, composed and notated cadenzas for several Mozart piano concertos. K. 488 is unusual in that Mozart’s original cadenza not only survives but was notated directly into the score.

K. 488 stands out among Mozart’s piano concerto repertoire for other reasons. Although oboes were standard instruments in 18th century orchestras, Mozart uses clarinets in K. 488 instead. Mozart loved the sound of this relatively new instrument, and its dark round tone adds a pensive, melancholy quality to the orchestration, particularly the Adagio. Mozart departs from convention again in scoring the Adagio in a minor key. Mozart’s choice of a minor key, and the particular key itself, F-sharp minor, were rare departures from his usual practice and lend a poignancy to his music we do not often hear.

K. 488 was published in 1800, and throughout most of the 19th century, it was one of only a few of Mozart’s concertos to be performed. It became, and remains, one of Mozart’s most popular piano concertos – and indeed one of his most beloved works.

HECTOR BERLIOZ
Symphonie fantastique (Episode in the Life of an Artist), Op. 14

Vital Stats

Composer: born Dec. 11, 1803, La Côte-Saint-André, Isère, France; died Mar. 8, 1869, Paris

Work composed: Between January and April of 1830, although some of the material Berlioz included was written as early as 1819.

World premiere: François-Antoine Habeneck conducted the premiere in Paris on Dec. 5, 1830. Two years later, on Dec. 9, 1832, Habeneck, with Berlioz in the orchestra playing drums, conducted a substantially revised version, also in Paris.

Oregon Symphony premiere: Dec. 15, 1930, with Willem van Hoogstraten conducting

Most recent Oregon Symphony performances: Sept. 13-15, 2003, with Carlos Kalmar conducting

Instrumentation:2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (one doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, 4 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas (ophicleides), 2 sets of timpani, bass drum, cymbals, bells, snare drum, 2 harps and strings

Estimated duration:  49 minutes

Say what you want about Hector Berlioz: He was an arrogant, selfish, self-obsessed man, full of vitriol (try reading his music criticism sometime), and he drove poor Harriet Smithson, the inspiration for his Symphonie fantastique, who was so unfortunate as to marry him, to drink and despair. All true, to be sure, but none of Berlioz’ deficits as a human being take away from the fact that at age 27, he wrote, by general agreement, the most amazing first symphony any composer has yet produced.

This feat is all the more surprising when we realize that Berlioz completed his Symphonie fantastique just three years after Beethoven’s death. When heard in that context, it is possible to appreciate how truly original this music is. Berlioz was no doubt inspired by Beethoven’s own symphonic innovations, especially Beethoven’s use of a program in his Sixth (Pastoral) Symphony, but, typically, Berlioz pushed the programmatic elements further than any composer had previously done.

Berlioz’ inspiration for the Symphonie fantastique was born from his obsession with Smithson, an Irish actress he first saw in a production of Hamlet in 1827. Berlioz spoke almost no English, so it seems clear that his violent infatuation with Smithson was carnal rather than courtly. (Berlioz and Smithson did not actually meet for another five years, after the premiere of the revised version of the Symphonie fantastique.)

What made Berlioz’ program so innovative and shocking to his audiences was the extent to which the story was overtly autobiographical and literary. Along with Smithson, who was musically transformed into the idée fixe, or recurring theme, of the symphony, Berlioz drew on plots from literature, most notably Faust, in his exploration of the ruinous and glorious nature of love. What audiences, both then and now, often misunderstood was the quintessentially Romantic nature of Berlioz’ program. He was not interested in a literal depiction of events but rather the transformation of his emotional response to those events into music.

Berlioz insisted that his music could not be understood or appreciated without its accompanying program, which he provided to audiences at the first performances of the work. Its five movements, in roughest outline, proceed as follows: Part I: Dreams – Passions: Boy meets girl. Part II: A Ball: Boy obsesses about girl. Part III: A Scene In the Country: While strolling about the countryside listening to shepherds’ songs, boy convinces himself girl doesn’t return his love. Part IV: March to the Scaffold: In despair, boy takes a less-than-fatal dose of opium, enough to induce horrible visions and hallucinations, including a death march to the guillotine. Part V: Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath: Still hallucinating, the boy dreams his funeral is a witches’ Sabbath, and his beloved joins in the diabolical festivities.

Or, as Leonard Bernstein so eloquently put it, in one of his Young Peoples’ Concerts: “Berlioz tells it like it is. … You take a trip, you wind up screaming at your own funeral.”

© 2010 Elizabeth Schwartz

Hector Berlioz's Original Program Notes for Symphonie fantastique

Composer Hector Berlioz wrote these program notes for the 1830 premiere of his Symphonie fantastique:

Part One: Dreams – Passions

The author imagines that a young musician, afflicted with that moral disease that a well-known writer calls the vague des passions, sees for the first time a woman who embodies all the charms of the ideal being he has imagined in his dreams, and he falls desperately in love with her. Through an odd whim, whenever the beloved image appears before the mind's eye of the artist, it is linked with a musical thought whose character, passionate but at the same time noble and shy, he finds similar to the one he attributes to his beloved.

This melodic image and the model it reflects pursue him incessantly like a double idée fixe. That is the reason for the constant appearance, in every movement of the symphony, of the melody that begins the first Allegro. The passage from this state of melancholy reverie, interrupted by a few fits of groundless joy, to one of frenzied passion, with its gestures of fury, of jealousy, its return of tenderness, its tears, its religious consolations – this is the subject of the first movement.

Part Two: A Ball

The artist finds himself in the most varied situations – in the midst of the tumult of a party, in the peaceful contemplation of the beauties of nature; but everywhere, in town, in the country, the beloved image appears before him and disturbs his peace of mind.

Part Three: A Scene in the Country

Finding himself one evening in the country, he hears in the distance two shepherds piping a ranz des vaches in dialogue. This pastoral duet, the scenery, the quiet rustling of the trees gently brushed by the wind, the hopes he has recently found some reason to entertain – all concur in affording his heart an unaccustomed calm and in giving a more cheerful color to his ideas. He reflects upon his isolation; he hopes that his loneliness will soon be over. – But what if she were deceiving him! – This mingling of hope and fear, these ideas of happiness disturbed by black presentiments, form the subject of the Adagio. At the end, one of the shepherds again takes up the ranz des vaches; the other no longer replies. – Distant sound of thunder – loneliness – silence.

Part Four: March to the Scaffold

Convinced that his love is unappreciated, the artist poisons himself with opium. The dose of the narcotic, too weak to kill him, plunges him into a sleep accompanied by the most horrible visions. He dreams that he has killed his beloved, that he is condemned and led to the scaffold and that he is witnessing his own execution. The procession moves forward to the sounds of a march that is now somber and fierce, now brilliant and solemn, in which the muffled noise of heavy steps gives way without transition to the noisiest clamor. At the end of the march the first four measures of the idée fixe reappear, like a last thought of love interrupted by the fatal blow.

Part Five: Dream of a Witches' Sabbath

He sees himself at the sabbath, in the midst of a frightful troop of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every kind, come together for his funeral. Strange noises, groans, bursts of laughter, distant cries which other cries seem to answer. The beloved melody appears again, but it has lost its character of nobility and shyness; it is no more than a dance tune, mean, trivial, and grotesque: it is she, coming to join the sabbath. – A roar of joy at her arrival. – She takes part in the devilish orgy. – Funeral knell, burlesque parody of the Dies irae [a hymn sung in the funeral rites of the Catholic Church], sabbath round-dance. The sabbath round and the Dies irae are combined.

Program Notes by Elizabeth Schwartz

Elizabeth Schwartz is a Portland-based free-lance writer, researcher and musician. In addition annotating programs for the Oregon Symphony and other ensembles, she has also contributed to NPR’s Performance Today (now heard on American Public Media). Schwartz also co-hosts The Portland Yiddish Hour, heard at 10 a.m. Sundays on KBOO 90.7 FM. Email: schwartzelizabeth@yahoo.com.

Recommended Recordings by Michael Parsons

Webern: Passacaglia
Takuo Yuasa-Ulster Orchestra
Naxos 8554841 
OR
Pierre Boulez-Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
6-Deutsche Grammophon 457637

Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 23
Mitsuko Uchida-Piano
Jeffrey Tate-English Chamber Orchestra
Philips 420187  
OR
Clifford Curzon-Piano
Istvan Kertesz-London Symphony Orchestra
2-Decca Legends 468491

Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique
Sir Colin Davis-Concertgebouw Orchestra
Philips Originals 475755  
OR
Sir Thomas Beecham-ORTF National Orchestra
EMI Classics Great Recordings of the Century 67972

These selected recordings are available at Classical Millennium, located at 3144 E. Burnside in Portland.