2009-2010 Concert Season
UPCOMING CONCERT EVENTS
Sunday, May 2, 2010
7:30 pm
Garnet Valley High School
Glen Mills, PA
Verdi, La forza del destino: Overture
Ravel, Pavane pour une infante défunte
Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue
Schumann, Symphony No. 4
Free Admission
Sunday, May 16, 2010
2:30 p.m.
West Chester University's
Swope Music Building
Madeleine Wing Adler Theatre
West Chester, PA
Repeat of May 2nd program
Free Admission
PROGRAM NOTES
By Jennifer Campbell, Marilyn Lutz and Sharon Sweeney
Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)
Carnival, concert overture, op. 92 (1891)
Composed in 1891, the Carnival Overture was initially the middle movement of a triptych of overtures for orchestra. (In Nature’s Realm was the first, and the third was Othello.) Opening quite exuberantly, the work indeed sparks an enthusiastic flurry of activity within the music. Dvořák said that in the opening of this piece he intended to portray “a lonely, contemplative wanderer reaching at twilight a city where a festival is in full swing.” About two minutes into the piece, the violins enter with a lush song-like theme. After a stirring transitional section, the flute plays a hauntingly sweet melodic line, accompanied by English horn. According to Dvořák, this flute-English horn duet depicts “a pair of straying lovers.” The beautiful mood change in this section provides a warm contrast to the excitement of the opening and closing sections. Following a brief but tender violin solo, the percussion enters lightly. Soon after, the vivacity and festive excitement returns, and the piece finally ends in a truly joyous coda.
Throughout his compositions, Dvořák’s humble roots in his native Czechoslovakia are apparent. The Carnival Overture illuminates many of the festive qualities of his homeland’s culture and lifestyle. Dvořák himself was particularly fond of this overture cycle. Even after he had already written his more famous masterpiece, Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”), Dvořák wrote to his publisher Fritz Simrock that he thought these overtures were “my best orchestral works.”
—Jennifer Campbell
(Some material for this note was derived from Dr. Richard E. Rodda at www.musicfestival.com, and from Peter Laki at www.kennedy-center.org.)
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Danse Macabre (1874)
Danse Macabre is one of Camille Saint-Saëns’ most popular pieces. Saint-Saëns was mentored by Franz Liszt, who is credited with the creation of the symphonic poem, an orchestral rendering of a narrative. Saint-Saëns crafted four symphonic poems; Danse Macabre is his third. The piece was originally designed for voice and piano. Saint-Saëns recrafted that original as an orchestral piece in 1874.
The source of Danse Macabre is a poem by Henri Cazalis that celebrates the French superstition of the rising of the dead. According to the legend, each Halloween, Death appears and plays his violin while the bones of the dead dance around him. The dancers and the song become more frantic until, at dawn, they disperse until called again. One translation of the Cazalis poem reads:
At midnight, Death plays a dance tune on his violin.
The winter wind blows and the night is gloomy.
Mysterious moans come from the trees.
White skeletons fly through the shadows, leaping in their huge shrouds.
Each one gives a tremor and their bones rattle as they dance.
But hush!
Suddenly they stop dancing and run away.
The rooster has crowed.
The piece opens with horns and pizzicato strings signaling midnight; the violin readies his instrument. The unique violin solo lowers the E string by a half step to create an augmented tritone, the interval traditionally known as “the devil’s interval.” The swelling waltz that follows is eventually broken by the darker melody of the Dies Irae (“Day of Wrath”) from the Gregorian chant mass for the dead. The two melodies join as the oboe – the breaking dawn – signals the escape of the ghostly dancers and the close of the piece.
—Sharon Sweeney
(Sources: Richard Freed’s composition notes available at Kennedy-center.org; Arts Edge education resource center at Kennedy-center.org; the All Music Guide at classicalarchives.com; the Baltimore Symphony at www.bsomusic.org)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Symphony No. 5 in E minor, op. 64 (1888)
The Symphony No. 5 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was composed between May and August in 1888. It was first performed in St Petersburg on November 6 of that year with Tchaikovsky conducting.
Tchaikovsky had undertaken his first foreign concert tour early in1888, during which he chanced to meet one Theodor Avé-Lallement, an elderly music teacher who frankly advised Tchaikovsky to move to Germany where he could improve his music by following more closely the classical traditions so well established in that nation. Tchaikovsky noted that the two of them “parted great friends,” despite the heavy dose of unsolicited constructive criticism he received. In response, though, and perhaps not without some irony, Tchaikovsky dedicated his Fifth Symphony to Avé-Lallement, who unfortunately was unable to attend the German premiere, during which he would have heard a work that was a model of German-Austrian symphonic form, written by a Russian, in Russia – a work which was stylistically pure Tchaikovsky.
Tchaikovsky sketched out a program for the first movement of this symphony, with the introduction representing “Total submission before Fate – or, what is the same thing, the inscrutable design of Providence,” and the hope that, despite any personal shortcomings, all might be overcome by embracing faith in the end. The “hope” motif, which is introduced in the opening measures by the clarinet, appears to be a direct quotation from Glinka’s “A Life for the Tsar,” in a setting of the text “Do not turn to sorrow.” This is immediately followed by six descending quarter notes, which may represent “fate,” reminiscent of a motif he used for that subject in his opera Eugene Onegin.
The second movement presents the listener with one of Tchaikovsky’s most beloved melodies, played by the solo horn. This is delicately scored, with beautiful solo lines in the clarinet and oboe weaving in and around the horn melody. Listen for the return of the hope/fate theme, strongly presented by the upper woodwinds and trumpets before a return to the initial theme of this movement, this time sung by the violins and bassoon.
Movement three begins with a minor key waltz, the first six pitches of which are exactly the same as those used in the fate motif. It features playful staccato runs in the strings, as the melody is passed around the orchestra. The movement closes with the clarinet and bassoon reprising the hope/fate theme quietly underneath the pianissimo strings.
The final movement begins with a restatement of the hope/fate theme, this time fully harmonized and in the major mode. The opening Andante maestoso section is followed by a furiously paced Allegro vivace which climaxes in a triumphant final presentation of the hope/fate theme – a truly grand finale.
—Marilyn Lutz
(Some material for this note was taken from the book Tchaikovsky, The Man and His Music by David Brown and a website featuring Phillip Huscher’s program notes for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.)
PAST CONCERTS
FALL 2009 CONCERTS
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Strath Haven High School
Wallingford, PA
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Neumann University's Meagher Theatre
Aston, PA
Dvořák, Carnival Overture
Saint-Saëns, Danse Macabre
Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5
SPRING 2009 CONCERTS
Sunday, May 17, 2009
West Chester University's Swope Music Building
Madeleine Wing Adler Theatre
West Chester, PA
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Upper Darby Performing Arts Center
Drexel Hill, PA
Jennifer Higdon, blue cathedral.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade.
FALL 2008 CONCERTS
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Neumann College’s Meagher Theatre
Aston, PA
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Radnor High School
Radnor, PA
Brahms, Academic Festival Overture.
Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet, Suite No. 3.
Dvořák, Symphony No. 8.
DELAWARE VALLEY YOUNG MUSICIANS’ ORCHESTRA
For information about DVYMO concerts, please click here.