Musical Director's notes and sound files for the Summer Term

 

Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga: Symphony in D

Arriaga (1806-1826) received the nickname of "The Spanish Mozart" after his early death because, like his namesake, he was a child prodigy at both the keyboard and in composition. He was born on what would have been Mozart's 50th birthday (had he not died at age 34), and his first two names, Juan Crisóstomo, were matched to Mozart's first two (often forgotten) names, Johann Chrysostom.

His first music teachers were his older brother and his father. At age 15 he was sent by his father to Paris to study music at the Paris Conservatoire. His studies included violin under Pierre Baillot, counterpoint with Luigi Cherubini, and harmony under François-Joseph Fétis. Cherubini, director of the Conservatoire, praised him for a Stabat Mater he had composed, calling him "music itself." Arriaga won prizes for counterpoint in 1823 and for fugue in 1824.

At the Conservatoire he served as Fétis' assistant from 1824, and was an active composer. Some of his music is lost, including an eight-voice fugue and most of his 1819 opera, Los Esclavos Felices (The Happy Slaves) although its revised version survives. His meteoric rise seemed to contribute to his death at age 19: a letter to his father and a report by Fétis point to a lung infection and exhaustion as the causes of his demise.

Forty years after his death Emiliano de Arriaga started to assemble his ancestor's papers and he began to promote Juan's work. As a composer from the Basque country he became an important symbol in the Basque nationalism movement, and his nickname was changed to "The Basque Mozart." He only wrote one symphony, completed in 1825, and in both its structure and its orchestration it's a unique work. Much of it would be termed neo-classical in its formal and stylistic details, and, at the same time, it has romantic qualities. The slow introduction seems to be preparing for a movement in D major, but it's written in D minor. The next movements are in A major and D major while the last movement just fails to confirm its D minor key. Given Arriaga's age, we can probably best understand this work as a conglomeration of the stylistic trends that were active in the Paris Conservatoire at the time – including the very French scoring for the wind instruments, described as "generous and differentiated."

 

Frederick Delius: Two Pieces for Small Orchestra

These two delicate miniature tone-poems by Frederick Delius (1862-1934) were probably composed at the behest of Philip Heseltine (Peter Warlock), although they are dedicated to Balfour Gardiner. On hearing the first cuckoo in spring was composed in 1912, Summer night on the river in the previous year. The first performances were given in Leipzig by the Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Arthur Nikisch. Delius wrote to his wife: "The public seemed to like the first piece [Cuckoo] best, although I prefer the second". This has remained the public's attitude. Willem Mengelberg conducted the first London performances on 20 January 1914.

The public probably likes On hearing the first cuckoo in spring better because it is harmonically more conservative than its companion piece. It has two main themes, one of which (introduced by the flute in the 18th bar) is a folk-melody also used by Delius's friend Grieg as No 14, In Ola Valley, in his 19 Norwegian Folk-Tunes, Op 66, for piano (1896). Textures are mainly homophonic, with chords of the seventh, translucent strings and delightful woodwind solos. The cuckoo's first call is fairly discreet but becomes more insistent. Summer night on the river is in some respects Delius's most advanced orchestral work and might even have been inspired by Debussy, of whose Prélude à l'après-midi d’un faune Delius had recently received a piano-roll. The chromatic harmony evokes perfectly the calm and peace implied by the title, and it is possible to visualise the moonlight glinting on the water and hear the nocturnal insects. A central section has a long cello solo which epitomises Delius's special magic. The river is no doubt the Loing at his French home in Grez.

Antonin Dvorak: Slavonic Dances Op. 46

Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, Op. 46, were originally scored for piano duet and intended principally for domestic performance. This set of eight folk dances was written in 1878 at the request of publisher Fritz Simrock. Simrock was Johannes Brahms' publisher – Brahms and Dvorak became good friends early in the younger composer's career – and nearly a year before he had helped launch Dvorak by accepting the virtually unknown composer's Moravian Duets. Soon after completing the original piano duet version, Dvorak arranged the dances for full orchestra, and it was in this form that the Slavonic Dances introduced Dvorak to the European concert scene; after their 1878 Dresden premiere, the composer's stature increased dramatically. (It may be noted that Dvorak, still in relative obscurity, received just 300 marks from Simrock for the work.)

The piano version is simple enough for student performance, but shows a brilliance in condensing Dvorak's varied colouristic and rhythmic skills into a more limited format. The orchestral version eschews such economy of scale, and makes up for it with a large dose of vibrant instrumentation and rhythmic verve. Although labelled under the catch-all description of "Slavonic" dances, seven of the eight are Bohemian in origin, with only the second dance being native to Serbia. (The second set of dances, Op. 72, dating from 1886, were more international in flavour, with music from Poland, Slovakia and the Ukraine.) The overall idiom is vigorous, witty, and highly rhythmic. While the majority of the pieces resemble, at least in overall structure, traditional dances of symphonic form, there are departures. The fourth dance, for example, is a Souzedska, or Neighbours' Dance, a strongly accented version of a minuet. Dvorak's characteristic folk melodies and colourful harmonies can be heard throughout, marking the dances as lively, vigorous and varied examples of the composer's style.

Felix Mendelssohn: The Hebrides Overture op. 26

In 1829 Mendelssohn and his friend, the poet Carl Klingemann, visited Scotland, the tour including a visit to Fingal's Cave on the Island of Staffa in the Hebrides. Klingemann later described the cavern: "Its many pillars made it look like the inside of an immense organ, black and resounding, absolutely without purpose, and quite alone, the wide grey sea within and without." Inspired by the sight, Mendelssohn returned to his inn and wrote a letter to his sister Fanny in which he enclosed twenty bars of a theme that would become the opening for his overture. He told her, "In order for you to understand how extraordinarily the Hebrides affected me, the following came to my mind there." The overture was revised several times and eventually published in 1835 under the title Fingal's Cave, although it is more commonly known as The Hebrides Overture.

Low strings open the piece with the theme Mendelssohn had sent to his sister, a restless one-measure motif that repeats for 46 bars over continually changing harmonies and dynamics that rise and fall like the swelling sea. A brass fanfare announces the arrival of the second theme in D major, stated by cellos and bassoons. The critic Donald Tovey called this "quite the greatest melody that Mendelssohn ever wrote." The violins take up the theme, the development leading to a turbulent climax that ends in another fanfare and a call-and-response series between brass and woodwinds. The recapitulation of the opening theme becomes increasingly more agitated, resulting in virtuosic work for the entire string section. A calmly beautiful clarinet duet provides a brief respite; then the extended coda returns us to the storm that subsides only in the final bars, with a soft repetition of the opening figure by clarinets and a quiet, rising statement by the flute.