PROGRAM NOTES

By Laurie Shulman

 

Serenade for Strings No.1 (1948)

George Antheil

Born 8 July 1900 in Trenton

Died 12 February 1959 in New York City

 

•  Antheil was fascinated by the industrial, mechanical, and musical sounds of the early 20th century

• His most famous works are Ballet Mécanique and Airplane Sonata

• With the Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr, he developed a radio guidance system

• A trip to Spain late in life influenced his final compositions

 

Anyone who writes an autobiography entitled Bad Boy of Music has an attitude. Antheil was a rule-breaker, and one of America’s first proponents of machine-age music. He gained notoriety first in Berlin, then in Paris in the early 1920s with experimental, anti-romantic music and a bold embrace of new ideas. No other American composer received such widespread attention in Europe in the 1920s. Antheil’s wide circle included Stravinsky and Picasso, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Erik Satie, and the violinist Olga Rudge, for whom he composed several sonatas.

 

Antheil returned to the U.S. permanently in 1933, based first in New York, where he worked on several ballet projects. He then tried his luck in Hollywood, seeking financial stability through the film industry. In the 1940s he became keenly interested in Shostakovich’s music and veered back toward a neo-romantic aesthetic in his own works.

 

The next ten years were the most productive of his career, yielding his Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Symphonies, a violin concerto, two orchestral serenades (including the one that opens this program), and a series of concert overtures based on American topics. Some of the overtures are pops-flavored (Hot-Time Dance and Accordion Dance) while others suggest landscape (Over the Plains and Autumn Song). At least two are distinctly patriotic: Water Music for Fourth of July Evening and McConkey’s Ferry.

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The Serenade No.1 is contemporary with Antheil’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. All three of those works attest to the re-emergence of tonality in his later music, which is comparatively free of the deliberate shock value in many of his early works. A sonata-form Allegro opens the Serenade, nominally in A minor. Its first theme group has a Russian accent, with melodies and quirky harmonies vaguely reminiscent of Shostakovich and Prokofiev. But the second theme group is folksy and distinctly American, recalling cowboy and other traditional tunes. Syncopations and repeated rhythmic phrases propel the music.

 

Antheil’s Andante molto is wholly original: not quite bitonal, but with different layers of activity superimposed on one another. Violins rock back and forth in an ostinato, while an occasional pizzicato figure recurs in the violas. Eventually a trio of soloists emerges: first cello, then viola, then violin. Their elegiac themes sometimes recall the Native American tunes we associate with Dvořák’s New World Symphony; elsewhere, cadenza-like passages for solo violin recall Baroque arpeggiation.

 

The concluding Vivo is a lighthearted romp in 6/8 meter, with hints of waltz and folk dance. Antheil uses more ostinato rhythmic patterns to underpin a series of witty – and sometimes circus-like – melodies. A brief presto passage in brisk 2/4 meter surprises us toward the end, before returning to the initial 6/8 pulse for a rousing close.

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The Serenade was published in 1950 with a dedication to the American music patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge.

 

Violin Concerto No. 5 in A, K.219, “Turkish”

Wolfgang Amadè Mozart

Born 27 January 1756 in Salzburg, Austria

Died 5 December 1791 in Vienna

 

• Mozart’s violin concerti are windows into his personal string playing style

• This concerto makes daring experiments in form, starting with the soloist’s entrance

• True Adagios are rare in Mozart; this slow movement is a gem

• Listen for the “Turkish” march episode in the finale, interrupting a courtly minuet

 

Imagine producing four musical masterpieces within the same year, while still a teenager. Mozart was only 19 in 1775, the year he composed four of his five violin concerti. The thought is humbling, for each concerto is beautifully crafted and a fount of melody. As a group, the violin concerti are the earliest of Mozart's compositions to have earned an incontrovertible place in the standard repertoire. They share rich texture, an abundance of attractive themes, and a refined elegance that have delighted listeners for nearly two and a half centuries.

 

All of the violin concerti were written for Mozart's own use; they were also played by Antonio Brunetti, the concertmaster of the Salzburg court orchestra. The A major concerto differs from the others in several respects. Its orchestration is somewhat more substantial than in the earlier concertos, and Mozart makes some daring formal experiments that set K.219 apart from its companions.

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Allegro aperto is the unusual tempo designation for the first movement. Aperto means "open" or "frank" in Italian, and indeed this is music of straightforward joy. A conventional orchestral exposition leads to an unconventional violin entrance: in Adagio tempo and a tranquil improvisatory style, as if to announce, "the soloist has arrived!"   When the Allegro aperto returns, the violinist delivers an altogether new theme against the orchestral tutti; the concerto has barely begun, and already we are losing count of the glorious melodies among its treasures.

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Mozart's slow movement is a leisurely romance, designed to show off elegance and pure tone. He sets it in the dominant key of E-major, a perfectly logical choice for a concerto in A major, but unusual here because Mozart rarely composed in E major. Therefore this is a noteworthy excursion, and one warranting special attention. E major is a delicious key for the violin, and Mozart takes full advantage of his possibilities after the opening statement with a second theme that is at once delicate and ornate. His sense of detail never abandons him, allowing for unusual expressivity in the development section.

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The true star of this concerto is the finale. Opening as a well-mannered minuet, it switches meter and key midway through, bursting into a rousing Gypsy fiddler's dance.  The music of this central section has an eastern coloring to it and earned the concerto its "Turkish" nickname. "Janissary music" surfaces in several of Mozart's other compositions, among them the Singspiel Zaïde (1779), the operas The Abduction from the Seraglio (1782) and The Magic Flute (1791), and the Rondo alla turca from the A major  piano sonata, K. 331 (1778). However unlikely it may be that actual Turkish music sounded like this, the outburst – more characteristic of Haydn than of Mozart – has tremendous dramatic effect, showing Mozart's skill and humor in this otherwise sedate concluding movement.

 

Mozart left no cadenzas for this concerto. Ms. Hristova plays her own original cadenzas.

 

K.219 is scored for two oboes, two horns, solo violin, and strings.

 

 

Symphony No.5 in B-flat major, D.485 

Franz Schubert

Born 31 January, 1797 in Liechtenthal, Vienna, Austria

Died 19 November, 1828 in Vienna

 

• Although he died at age 31, Schubert composed more than 1000 pieces

• His friends called him Schwammerl – “little mushroom” – because of his short stature

• Schubert’s Lieder [songs] are among the greatest ever written

• His gift for melody transferred to all his instrumental compositions, including symphonies

 

Schubert's early symphonies are far less well known than his later ones, the "Unfinished" in B minor and the "Great" C major Symphony. Some remarkable music rewards the curious listener who seeks out these youthful instrumental works. It is a truism to observe that Schubert could not have written the magnificent symphonic works of his maturity without having undergone the learning process inherent in the earlier pieces. Although Mozart and Haydn were his presumed symphonic models, the distinctive and individual signs of Schubert's own musical personality are already manifest.  

 

The Symphony No. 5 in B-flat is the best of the early symphonies, perhaps because of its modesty. It is a chamber symphony, lacking clarinets, trumpets, or timpani. (The scoring matches that of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K.550.)  Schubert's biographer John Reed describes it as:

 

[T]he sunniest and most lyrical of all the symphonies. . . . a work which bears in every bar the stamp of his own lyrical genius, while the spirit of Mozart seems to brood benignly over it.

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Schubert composed it in September 1816, completing the score on 3 October. A burst of productivity that had carried through from the previous year. During calendar 1816, Schubert composed more than 100 songs, two acts of an opera, another symphony, more than a dozen sacred and secular choral pieces, three violin sonatinas and several other chamber works –  all on top of his full time job as a schoolmaster. The completion of this symphony coincided with his decision to abandon the teaching position he detested in favor of the riskier career of a freelance composer. He left his family's house in order to move into Vienna, which remained his home for the rest of his life.

 

Like most of Schubert's early symphonies, this one remained unpublished until the 1880s, when the German house of Breitkopf & Härtel made a first attempt at a Schubert collected works edition. Only then did the Symphony No.5 enter the popular symphonic repertoire. Schubert did hear a performance shortly after he composed it; in fact, he likely played viola in that performance. By 1816 the Schubert family string quartet had expanded into a quasi-professional chamber orchestra that met at the home of its conductor, Otto Hatwig. The limited resources of that select group probably accounts for the intimate character of the music. 

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Schubert's music is cheerful and bouncy, particularly in the outer two movements. The sentimental Andante has some unusual modulations and imaginative scoring for woodwinds. But the most singular movement is unquestionably the Minuet, whose G minor tonality and unexpected severity make its Mozartean ancestry apparent. 

 

The score calls for one flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, and strings.

 

Program Notes by Laurie Shulman ©2024

First North American Serial Rights Only

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