Waterfront Concert
1020 Naito Pkwy, Portland, Oregon
Carlos Kalmar, conductor
Gregory Vajda, conductor
Dancers from Oregon Ballet Theatre
Program Notes
Richard Wagner
(b. May 22, 1813, Leipzig; d. Feb.13, 1887, Venice)
Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1862)
The characters in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger are thinly disguised mouthpieces representing Wagner’s ideas about music. In particular, the character Beckmesser, an inflexible, narrow-minded clerk, represents the music critic Eduard Hanslick, for whom Wagner held great contempt. Wagner finished Die Meistersinger in 1867, and it was first performed in Munich on June 21, 1868. The Prelude to Act I was completed five years earlier, and Wagner conducted the premiere performance at the Leipzig Gewandhaus on Oct. 31, 1862.
The Prelude begins with a processional march and fanfare of the Meistersingers, a grand sweeping theme full of self-important pomp. Wagner follows this with the main love theme of the opera, and then returns to the Meistersingers’ music, albeit in a mocking variation which represents the apprentices poking fun at their masters.
Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
(b. Jan. 27, 1756, Salzburg; d. Dec. 5, 1791, Vienna)
Symphony No. 35 in D major, “Haffner,” K. 385,Allegro con spirito (1782)
In the summer of 1782, Leopold Mozart wrote to his son requesting some celebratory music for the occasion of the ennoblement of Sigmund Haffner, a Salzburg friend whom Wolfgang Amadè Mozart had known since his childhood. “I am up to my eyes in work,” Mozart replied. “And now you ask me to write a new symphony too! How on earth am I to do so? ... Well, I must just spend the night over it, for that is the only way; and for you, dearest father, I’ll make the sacrifice.” Mozart completed the symphony in three weeks.
A listener at a 1786 performance wrote of the Haffner Symphony: “Everything hung together from one beat to the next: tempo, execution, forte, piano, and crescendo exhibited a perfection to the nth degree … I consider Mozart’s symphony itself a masterpiece of harmony.”
The Allegro con spirito begins with a rhythmic unison theme that leaps up an octave, punctuated by delicate grace notes in the strings and unexpected pauses. Mozart broke with the convention of his time by omitting a contrasting second theme, so this unusual opening music, almost more a rhythm than a melody, dominates the entire first movement.
Jean Sibelius
(b.1865, Hämeenlinna, Finland; d. 1957, Järvenpää, Finland)
Finlandia (1899, rev. 1900)
By November 1899, the citizens of Finland had endured almost a century of heavy-handed rule by Russia, which included severe censorship of the press. That month, a group of artists in Finland’s capital, Helsinki, organized a series of “Press Celebrations,” which were actually political demonstrations on behalf of Finnish independence. Jean Sibelius wrote Finland Awakes for one of these demonstrations, held on Dec. 14, 1899. The following year, Sibelius reworked the score and changed its title to Finlandia for the Helsinki Philharmonic to perform on its first major tour of Europe. As scholar Phillip Huscher notes, “Despite the narrow political circumstances of its creation, Finlandia turned out to have universal appeal, and in very little time it made Sibelius the best-known living Finn in the world.”
Kenneth J. Alford
(Lieutenant Frederick Joseph Ricketts) (b. Feb. 21, 1881, London; d. May 15, 1945, Reigate, England)
Colonel Bogey March (1913)
Lieutenant F. J. Ricketts served as Bandmaster of the 2nd Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders during the early years of the 20th century. He composed a number of military marches, of which the Colonel Bogey March is easily the best known.Ricketts composed under the pseudonym Kenneth J. Alford, to conceal his non-army activities and income. The golfing allusion of the title refers to one of Ricketts’ golfing partners, who, rather than shouting the customary “Fore!” when teeing off, whistled the notes B-flat and G instead. Ricketts used this descending minor third interval to begin each line of melody in Colonel Bogey March.
The Colonel Bogey March has been adapted in popular culture in a number of versions, most notably the parody “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball” and as the infamous march from the 1957 David Lean film The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Arturo Márquez
(b. 1950, Alamos, Sonora, Mexico)
Danzón No. 2 (1994)
Arturo Márquez wrote the following notes for the premiere of his DanzónNo. 2, which took place on Mar. 5, 1994 in Mexico City:
“The idea of writing the Danzón 2 originated in 1993 during a trip to Malinalco with the painter Andrés Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martínez, both of whom [have] a special passion for the danzón ... I started to learn the danzón’s rhythms, its form, its melodic outline … I was fascinated and I started to understand that the apparent lightness of the danzón is only like a visiting card for a type of music full of sensuality and qualitative seriousness, a genre which old Mexican people continue to dance with a touch of nostalgia and a jubilant escape towards their own emotional world …
“Danzón 2 is a tribute to the environment that nourishes the genre. It endeavors to get as close as possible to the dance, to its nostalgic melodies, to its wild rhythms … it is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions towards truly popular music.”
Morton Gould
(b. Dec. 10, 1913, New York, NY; d. Feb. 21, 1996, Orlando, FL)
American Salute (1943)
American composer Morton Gould’s 1942 American Salute, which he composed in less than 24 hours, is a set of orchestra variations on the classic war song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” From its first performance on NBC radio on “Cresta Blanca Carnival,” on Nov. 11, 1942, American Salute has become a staple of patriotic music programs. “What amazes me now is that critics say it is a minor masterpiece,” Gould recalled in 1985, more than 40 years after writing the Salute. “To me, it was just a setting. I was doing a million of those things.”
George Gershwin
(b. Sept. 26, 1898, Brooklyn, NY; d. July 11, 1937, Hollywood, CA)
The Man I Love, Embraceable You, Who Cares?
“Who Cares?” was written for the 1931 musical Of Thee I Sing, a parody of national politics. It follows the presidential campaign of one John P. Wintergreen, who runs on the “love” platform. As the song’s verse declares, “Love’s the only thing that matters.”
Ginger Rogers first performed “Embraceable You”in the 1930 musical Girl Crazy. Decades later, Rogers spontaneously changed the lyrics during a 1983 rehearsal for the Tony Awards, as singer Michael Feinstein recalls: “She sang ‘Don’t be a naughty papa, come to baby, come to baby do.’ The producer shouted at her, ‘No, you’re singing the wrong words!’ She said, ‘Don’t tell me what’s correct; I introduced the song.’”
One of the Gershwin brothers’ most famous songs, “The Man I Love” was written for the 1924 musical Lady Be Good. The original version features slightly different lyrics and the title “The Girl I Love.” Countless performers, including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Lena Horne, Tony Bennett, Cher and Barbra Streisand, have recorded it. Ira Gershwin is said to have remarked, referring to Fitzgerald’s version, “I didn’t realize our songs were so good until Ella sang them.”
Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber
(b. Jan. 29, 1782, Caen, France; d. May 12, 1871, Paris)
Les diamants de la couronne (The Crown Diamonds) (1841)
One of Daniel Auber’s most popular operas, Les diamants de la couronne was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on Mar. 6, 1841, and continued to be produced for the next 50 years. In addition to its 339 performances at the Opéra-Comique, it was staged in a number of other cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Prague, Hamburg, Vienna, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Boston, New Orleans and San Francisco. Les diamants de la couronne is also one of Auber’s many successful collaborations with playwright Eugene Scribe, who supplied the libretto. The story centers on the deception of Catarina, a Portuguese princess forced to sell her crown jewels, who subsequently connives with a pack of thieves to conceal her underhanded transaction.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(b. May 7, 1840, Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia; d. Nov. 6, 1893, St. Petersburg)
The Year 1812, Overture solonelle, Op. 49 (1880)
The 1812 Overture is among Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s most famous compositions, but not one of his favorites. Tchaikovsky wrote the Overture for his friend Nikolai Rubenstein, director of the Moscow Conservatory, who wanted music to commemorate the consecration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, built to mark the Russian victory in 1812 over Napoleon, and the 25th anniversary celebration of Alexander II as Czar.
Rubenstein envisioned a grand outdoor aural spectacle for the audience; Tchaikovsky was subsequently inspired to score the work for cannons, a military band and church bells in addition to the orchestra, although the premiere of The Year 1812 (the formal title of the 1812 Overture) in Moscow on Aug. 20, 1882 was actually held in a concert hall, minus cannons and bells. Despite the lack of firepower, it was an immediate success and has since become a summer staple of orchestras and a perennial audience favorite. Throughout the 1812 Overture, Tchaikovsky interjects fragments of the French national anthem La Marseillaise to represent Napoleon.
Tchaikovsky also quotes the Russian national anthem, God Save the Czar, aRussian Orthodox Church hymn, God Save Thy People and fragments of a Russian folk song in the opening theme. According to Tchaikovsky, these musical quotations symbolize the heart and soul of the Russian people.
Regarding the 1812 Overture, Tchaikovsky complained to his patron Nadezhda von Meck, “The ‘Overture’ will be very loud and noisy, but I wrote it without any warm feelings of love and so it will probably be of no artistic worth.” While critics have argued over the years about the “artistic worth” of Tchaikovsky’s music, audiences have remained his staunchest supporters, and his music is consistently among the most requested and performed by symphony orchestras around the world.
The enduring popularity of the 1812 Overture, in particular, has never diminished, thanks in part to the advent of recording technology. In 1958, conductor Antal Doráti and the Minneapolis Symphony (now the Minnesota Orchestra) made the first high-fidelity recording of the 1812 Overture for the Mercury “Living Presence” label. This innovative recording includes separate tracks for the cannons and church bells, as well as a voice-over narration, which explained the new recording technique. The recording also features a 1775 bronze cannon used in the Napoleonic wars.
Staging this work presents unusual challenges because of the inclusion of cannons in the finale. The timing of the cannon bursts is crucial, as Tchaikovsky indicated in his score that they were to sound on specific beats. Determining the length of the fuse and lighting it at the precise moment to fire on cue requires an expert. The cannons featured in our concert are actually howitzers provided by the Oregon Army National Guard, 218th Field Artillery.
The Oregon Symphony recorded this work, along with Tchaikovsky’s Hamlet and The Tempest, under the direction of Laureate Music Director James DePreist on the Delos label in 1989.
© 2011 Elizabeth Schwartz
Program Notes by Elizabeth Schwartz
Elizabeth Schwartz is a freelance writer and musician based in the Portland area. She is the program annotator for the Oregon Symphony, the Cascade Festival of Music, and has also contributed to NPR’s Performance Today, (now heard on American Public Media). Ms. Schwartz holds a B.A. in music from the University of California and an M.M. from Boston University. She can be contacted at schwartzelizabeth@yahoo.com.