A Tribute to Blanche Honegger Moyse
Legacy & Inspiration
with Guest Conductor Lisa Jablow
and violinist Kathy Andrew

Mendelssohn ~ Bach ~ Beethoven

Friday, May 14 at 7:30 pm,
Bellows Falls Opera House

Saturday, May 15, 7:30 pm,
Putney School, Putney, VT

The Hebrides, otherwise known as Fingal’s Cave, was written in 1830, a product of the Scotland leg of Felix Mendelssohn’s youthful Grand Tour.  It is a concert overture, a genre new to the 19th century, that grew out of the practice of performing opera overtures in the concert hall independent of the operas they were intended to introduce.  Unlike the opera overture, the concert overture was meant to stand alone and, in keeping with the Zeitgeist of the time, was a programmatic work.  It either told a story, depicted a scene of some sort or referenced an idea or event, such as a thunderstorm or a battle.  Mendelssohn was also an extremely talented and prolific visual artist and, even before his actual venture out to the island housing the cave for which the overture is named, he began to set down ideas for what would eventually become one of the most inspired sound paintings in the orchestral repertoire.  As a Classical-Romantic composer, Mendelssohn “painted” with a 19th-century harmonic color palette, yet he most often worked within the parameters of 18th-century formal structure.  The listener is scarcely aware of the sonata form that houses the musical depictions of ocean swells and crashing surf and spray that thunder and echo around and inside the cathedral-like cave.  Since there is no written program to accompany the piece, each listener is free to make specific associations with the musical events as they unfold; but there is no doubt of the overall effect Mendelssohn intended to create.  We hear it so clearly we can see it.

The Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 belongs to a set of six instrumental works sent by J.S. Bach in 1721 to the Margrave of Brandenburg in what can only be interpreted as a job application.  The dedication accompanying the manuscripts bore the customary “purple prose” expected in those situations and even makes reference to Bach’s wish to be employed by the Margrave.  It begs the question of why he would have been making such a request.  Bach was at the time the court Kapellmeister of the music-loving Prince Leopold in the town of Cöthen where, apparently, he had been quite happy.  Nonetheless, he compiled the six concerti, re-working previous material for a number of the movements.  All six feature different instrumentation and all are based on the concerto grosso model of the early 18th-century: that of a refrain played by the full ensemble alternating with diverse sections featuring one or more solo players.  This basic format was established by Corelli and perfected by Vivaldi, but there is no question that Bach took it to greater heights.  The third Brandenburg concerto is scored for an ensemble of strings (violin, viola, cello, bass.)  The first movement preserves a homogeneous sonority in which all instruments are continuously playing; but, by repeatedly juxtaposing different combinations of instruments, Bach creates the illusion of ripieno-concertino contrast.  Furthermore, virtually all of the musical material is germinated from the opening 8 bars.  The third movement is a rollicking stylized dance in binary form.  Between these outer movements lies one of the great musical puzzles: two chords.   They are typical of a passage that links the end of a slower second movement to a faster third movement, but no slower movement precedes them.  Many different embellishments have been added to these chords over the years including tonight’s version, which interpolates a passage from one of Bach’s violin sonatas.  After Bach’s death his music fell into obscurity for many decades.  It was Felix Mendelssohn who helped to re-awaken interest in the music of J.S. Bach, thanks to a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829 under his direction. ~ Lisa Jablow

The year 1803 was a turning point for Beethoven.  His severe depression, documented in the famous Heiligenstadt Testament of 1802,  in which he wrote passionately about his deteriorating hearing and  its impact on his very existence, lifted in the following year.  Having come grudgingly to terms with his growing deafness, he also  entered a new period of composition, known as his "Middle" or  "Heroic" period, marked by his Symphony No. 3, the "Eroica."  According to Carl Czerny, Beethoven said, "I am not satisfied with  the work I have done so far. From now on I intend to take a new  way.”   The next five years were a busy and fertile time for him,  yielding a number of his most famous works, including the "Waldstein" and "Appassionata" piano sonatas, the 4th Piano Concerto (1805-6), the two Violin Romances, the Triple Concerto, the  Rassumovsky Quartets, the first version of his opera Fidelio (1805),  and his fourth and fifth symphonies, both completed in 1806, the  year he composed the Violin Concerto.

The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, was premiered on December  23, 1806 in the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. Beethoven wrote the  concerto for his colleague Franz Clement, a leading violinist of the  day. The premiere was not a success, and the concerto was little  performed in the following decades. Not until 1844 was the work  revived with performances by the then 12-year-old violinist Joseph  Joachim, with an orchestra conducted by Felix Mendelssohn. Thanks to  Joachim it became and has remained one of the most important works  of the violin concerto repertoire, exhibiting rich humanity and  incredible depth and warmth from the outwardly blustery composer.

Though the writing is thoroughly idiomatic for the instrument in Beethoven's Violin Concerto, violinists in the first half of the nineteenth century may have been put off by the work's unprecedented proportions as well as the seriousness of its content. The length of Beethoven's first movement alone exceeds that of nearly every  earlier complete concerto for the violin, and its character is  strikingly different from that of its predecessors. This was clearly  not meant as a mere showpiece for the soloist, but a work that  placed the whole idea of the concerto genre in a new light. No one  even tried to compose another violin concerto of similar character  and proportions until Brahms produced his, more than 70 years later. ~ Kathy Andrew

African American Spirituals Meet the Orchestra
with Guest Conductor Hugh Keelan
to benefit the BMC Music in the Schools
Antonin Dvorak ~ Symphony No. 9, "From The New World"
Burleigh-Keelan ~ Spirituals
with soloists Samirah Evans & Moonlight Davis
Saint-Säens Violin Concerto No. 3
Elena Yasinski, 2010 Concerto Competition Winner, violin
Sunday, March 28, 3 pm, Latchis Theatre, Brattleboro, VT

Click here to see some wonderful photographs from this concert.

Zon Eastes David Kidwell Dennis Båthory-Kitsz Gwyneth Walker Robert McGinness