PROGRAM NOTES
Eclipse was curated by Crier Caitlin Lynch
FRANZ SCHREKER: Intermezzo & Scherzo
Franz Schreker was as a violinist and composer, educated at the Vienna Conservatory, whose promise was validated early on when the first performance of his music took place in London while he was still a teenager. Ultimately, Schreker dreamed of a career in opera, but opportunities in the field eluded him initially. In the meantime, he pivoted to choirs, founding and leading the Philharmonic Chorus, a group that became involved in some of the landmark moments in early modernism, like the premiere of Arnold Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder.
When his opera career did blossom, it happened literally overnight after the premiere of his opera, Der ferne Klang (The Distant Sound) in 1912. Directly after this success, Schreker was offered a position at the Music Academy in Vienna where he was recognized for instituting positive changes that transformed the school into a top-notch institution. Now famous, he continued to find success with his compositions, touring and conducting performances of his operas along with his wife, Maria, who was a soprano. Open to experimenting with technology, Schreker also became involved in a variety of projects, including writing works that considered the practical logistics of how microphones picked up sound for radio broadcast.
Schreker’s Scherzo and Intermezzo, written in 1899 and 1900 respectively, were early works written toward the end of composer’s time as a student at the Conservatory, with the latter winning top prize when entered in a competition. The Scherzo opens with bounding urgency in its main theme that declaims over a swell of triplets in the accompaniment. This “A” section material, which bookends the piece is contrasted sharply with the sweetly lush and lyrical Trio of the middle “B” section. A very different personality pervades the Intermezzo, which lingers in the high registers, shimmers hauntingly. While it slowly builds with intensity, the glassy finish is maintained until broken to reveal a more dance-like mood, though still tinged with melancholy. Like the Scherzo, the work returns to its opening theme, glimmering as it fades away.
STEWART GOODYEAR: Eclipse for Piano & String Orchestra (U.S. premiere)
“I have always been inspired by the fact that one cannot look directly into a solar eclipse, or the sun for that matter, if one wants to keep his vision. I am also inspired by the way the word 'eclipse' is used to describe different examples of temporary obscuring, whether it be sorrow eclipsing joy or the mind eclipsing the heart. The poem for piano and string orchestra draws on both those inspirations.
The architecture of this piece is a sonata form eclipsed by a ternary form. The piece begins with an enigmatic theme that struggles between melancholy and ecstasy, major and minor, tonality and atonality. Broad choral strokes with simple and direct harmonies from the strings vie with the potent and searching harmonies of the piano solo. In the faster B section that is in sonata form, different rhythms within the 12/8 time signature compete. There is a brief respite and the strings play a soaring theme that is repeated by the piano solo. With the return of the A section, there is a piano cadenza, the strings enter unobtrusively, and the piece ends with a quiet, seemingly resolved major chord. The last pizz of the cellos and basses suggest otherwise. The listener is free to philosophize as to what has been eclipsed”. - Stewart Goodyear
FELIX MENDELSSOHN: Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra in A minor, MWV O 2
Felix Mendelssohn had a remarkable life, and a brilliant artistic mind. He presented his first concert as a nine-year- old and wrote his first symphony when he was fifteen. He traveled widely and met some of the most influential minds of his era. Tragically, he was only thirty-eight when he died of a stroke (the same cause of death that took his sister, and other members of his family), but had already written hundreds of pieces in his short lifetime.
From birth, Mendelssohn and his siblings were encouraged in intellectual and artistic pursuits. Their paternal grandfather was the esteemed Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and their great aunt was Sarah Levy, a talented musician who became closely associated with two of J.S. Bach’s sons, W.F. Bach, her harpsichord teacher, and C.P.E. Bach, for whom she was a patron. It was her manuscript copy of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion Mendelssohn would use when conducting the revival performance of the work in 1829. Mendelssohn’s childhood studies were rooted in specific styles. His composition instructor Carl Friedrich Zelter emphasized the Baroque and Classical—Bach, Mozart and Haydn—during lessons. Though Mendelssohn absorbed a lot from those traditions, he displayed a strong personal interest in the contemporary “romantic” styles that Zelter was not teaching him, like the stormy romanticism of late era Beethoven. The result of these influences on Mendelssohn’s sound can be described as a blend of classical symmetrical structure infused with romantic passion: a kind of controlled emotional turbulence.
A remarkable music prodigy, both as a performer and composer, Mendelssohn produced some of the most enchanting juvenilia known of, on par with that of his predecessor, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Unbelievably, Mendelssohn was just 13 years old when he wrote the Piano Concerto in A minor. It opens with a stormy and dramatic first movement that demands virtuoso command of the keyboard. Later in his career, Mendelssohn would write collections of “songs without words,” so named for their melody-forward settings that lacked texts. In the second, slow, movement of the piano concerto, we hear a preview of that tuneful mastery, as well as the stunning ability to pivot between moods on a dime. Lively recollections of the opening movement intrude, but the shift back to graceful lyricism is somehow imperceptible. An ebullient yet somewhat temperamental third movement completes the concerto.
TERESA CARREÑO: Serenade for Strings in E-flat Major
Known as the “Valkyrie of the Piano” for her powerful performances, Teresa Carreño’s international career began in her early childhood. She was born into a musical family; both her grandfather and father were accomplished musicians. In 1862, due to political unrest that impacted her father’s position in the Venezuelan government, the family was forced to relocate to New York City. Though disruptive, the move had a bright side—the city provided opportunities for nurturing Carreño’s young talent. Louis Moreau Gottschalk became her mentor, and she quickly made her concert debut. Another highlight was performing for President Lincoln in the White House (ultimately, she would perform for two presidents during her lifetime, the other being Woodrow Wilson). Within a few years the family decided to relocate again, this time to Europe where Carreño could continue to mature as a musician, and where more performance opportunities could be cultivated. A review of a concert she gave in Paris at age twelve describes her as “A little wonder, a real prodigy...plays the piano in a manner that would surprise Liszt himself. It is incredible.” (It is said that Liszt did offer her piano lessons while she was on tour, but she declined.)
Her star continued to climb into adulthood. As a performer, she worked with the likes of Gustav Mahler and Theodor Thomas, and countless others. At one point she decided to take up singing, turning to Gioachino Rossini for instruction. Her tours around the world included stops in Europe, Australia, Africa, and the Americas. She maintained a teaching studio (which included Edward MacDowell) and composed around 80 works. The Serenade for Strings is her primary work for large ensemble and was written around 1895 while she was spending a summer in the Tyrol region of Austria. Written in four movements, the Serenade’s moods move from effervescent to lyrical expansiveness, to splendid pomp.
Kathryn J. Allwine Bacasmot is a pianist/harpsichordist, musicologist, music and cultural critic, and freelance writer. A graduate of New England Conservatory, she writes program annotations for ensembles nationwide.
