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Madison Symphony Orchestra Program Notes
Overture Concert Organ
Series No.3
96th Season
March 15, 2022
Michael Allsen
Our third Organ Series concert features the
dynamic Isabelle
Demers in a program of six works. She begins with a
transcription of
Mendelssohn’s grand fugal overture to the oratorio St. Paul, and a well-known work by British
composer Henry Walford
Davies. The first half concludes with a new (2019) organ work by
French-Canadian
composer Rachel Laurin. After intermission, Demers plays a
transcription of the
fiery Sinfonia to
Bach’s Cantata 146,
and a set of showpieces for
pedals by Charles-Valentin Alkan. The finale is a set of
excerpts from
Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka,
transcribed
by Demers.
Felix Mendelssohn
(1809-1847)
Overture to “St. Paul” (arr. W. T. Best)
In 1829, Mendelssohn conducted Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at a concert of the Berlin
Singakademie. The
old cliché about Bach being “forgotten” in 1829 is not really
true, but he was
certainly not as famous as his contemporary, Handel, and his
sacred vocal works
were rarely performed. The St. Matthew
Passion had not in fact been performed since Bach’s death
in 1750. It is
clear, however, that Mendelssohn’s revival of the Passion and of Bach’s sacred cantatas helped to
spark a renewed
interest in Bach’s music that continues today. His interest in
Bach, and in the
oratorios of Handel, also had a profound impact on Mendelssohn
the composer.
When he completed his own first oratorio, St.
Paul, in 1836, it was full of homages to Bach, including
his use of
Lutheran chorales to mark major divisions in the story. Though
it was
commissioned in 1832, Mendelssohn did not begin work on St. Paul until 1834, finally completing it a year
and a half later.
The oratorio had a successful German premiere in Düsseldorf on
May 22, 1836,
and it was heard in English translation in London in 1837. It
remained popular
in Germany, England, and America throughout the late 19th and
early 20th
centuries. Its libretto, largely by Lutheran pastor and
Mendelssohn family
friend Julius Schubring, begins with the martyrdom of St.
Stephen. It then
dramatizes the major events of the saint’s life: the conversion
of Saul
(thereafter known as Paul), his missions, and his martyrdom in
Rome.
Though it is overshadowed today by his second
oratorio, Elijah
(1846), St. Paul is a fine dramatic work. It begins with a
striking
overture, heard here in a transcription by the 19th-century
English organist
William Thomas Best The main theme of the overture is one of the
most familiar
Lutheran hymn-tunes, Wachet
auf (Sleepers Wake),
written by Philipp
Nicolai in about 1599. This chorale reappears later in the
oratorio, most
notably at one of the great moments of the drama: Saul’s sudden
blindness and
the miraculous restoration of his sight. In the overture, the
melody appears as
a kind of prelude, before Mendelssohn launches into a stern,
minor-key fugue.
(Best was a master of pedal technique, and his arrangement of
the fugue
includes some flashy writing for the feet.) Fragments of the
chorale are worked
into the texture, emerging more clearly near the end, after a
triumphant shift
to A Major.
Henry Walford Davies
(1869-1941)
Solemn Melody (arr. John T. West)
British organist and composer Henry Walford
Davies studied
at the Royal College of Music, before embarking on a long and
successful
career. In 1898 he begin a 25-year tenure as organist and choir
director at
London’s Temple Church, where he gained a national reputation as
a soloist and
teacher. After a few years of university teaching, Davies took
up a position in
1927 at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor—the home church of the
British royal
family. (Davies had been knighted in 1922.) At the same time, he
also became
well-known for his musical radio broadcasts on the BBC. In 1936,
Davies
succeeded Edward Elgar as Master of the King’s Music, the
highest musical
appointment granted by British royalty: roughly equivalent in
status to the
Poet Laureate. His most famous work, Solemn
Melody, was composed in 1908 as a work for organ and
string orchestra, but
it is heard most frequently in arrangements for solo organ. The
version heard
here was published in 2004 by the American organist John West.
Its main theme
is a broad, dignified, and distinctly “English-sounding” melody,
heard once
unadorned, and then in a grand, fully-harmonized variation.
Rachel Laurin (b. 1960)
Sonata No.1 for
Organ, Op.91
Like
Isabelle Demers, Rachel Laurin was born in Québec. After studies at the
Conservatoire de musique
du Québec à Montréal, she took a position as organist at the Oratoire Saint-Joseph du
Mont-Royal, Montreál—the
famous basilica that stands at the highest point in the
city—and later became
an improvisation instructor at the Conservatoire. Laurin maintains a
busy, international career
as a soloist, and is a prolific composer:
she has written hundreds of works for organ and other solo
instruments, voice,
choir, and orchestra. Her Sonata No.1
was commissioned by Robert Holmes from
Vancouver, British Columbia in
memory of his wife Maureen who died in 2017. It was completed in 2019, and
Laurin played its premiere
in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on July 11, 2019, at a festival of
the Royal Canadian
College of Organists.
Laurin
provides the following description of the Sonata
No.1: “The three movements
describe the states of mind that one lives through after
having been informed
of a grave illness. The first movement, Allegro
agitato, expresses fear, revulsion, hope and confusion.
The second [Berceuse
mariale (Marian Lullaby)], offers some respite which
leads to the sense of serenity,
acceptance, and abandon of a child in its mother’s arms.
Finally, the Carillon-Toccata is a celebration of
life, both as lived here and to come, including an expression
of the exuberance felt by one's soul, liberated from the
suffering body.
“Robert Holmes had suggested
that the Ave Maria
associated with
the village of Lourdes (France) be included in the Berceuse, hence the Mariale
(Marian) in the
title of the
movement. He had also requested that the Gregorian hymn Salve Regina appear in a brilliant toccata to
close the Sonata.
This was indeed done but, in
addition and as a surprise for Mr. Holmes, the composer also
introduced the
principal motive from Louis Vierne’s Carillon
de Longpont when she found out that this work had been
played as the
recessional piece at the couple’s wedding.”
Johann
Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Sinfonia from
Cantata No.146
(arr. Marcel Dupré)
Bach did not invent the Lutheran church
cantata, a
multi-movement setting of sacred texts, but his cantatas are the
finest
examples of the form. Though he composed cantatas throughout his
career, the
great bulk of them were written during his first few years in
Leipzig, where he
arrived in 1723 to take the position of Kantor at the
Thomaskirche—the head
church musician in the city. Among many other duties, Bach was
expected to
produce a cantata every week. The cantata was viewed as an
important addition
to both the selected Bible verse and the hymn of the day, and
Bach’s texts are
often drawn from these sources, as well as sacred librettos
assembled by
Lutheran pastors and Bach himself. In his first years at the
Thomaskirche, Bach
composed no less than five
annual
cycles of cantatas, mostly newly-composed: each cycle including
some 60 works,
one appropriate to each Sunday of the Church Year, and special
cantatas for
Christmas, and the main feasts of Advent and Lent. Of these 300
works, nearly
200 survive.
This vast body of music is represented here
by the Sinfonia from
the cantata Wir
müssen durch viel Trübsal, BWV 146 (We
must pass through great sadness). Bach composed this
work in either 1726 or
1728, for the third Sunday after Easter. It begins with a
sizeable Sinfonia
scored for flute, two oboes
d’amore, tenor oboe, organ, strings, and basso continuo. Bach
frequently
recycled his own music, and this Sinfonia
shares most of its music with the first movement of his
slightly later
harpsichord concerto in D minor, BWV 1052. (Both of these
works were turn based
upon a now-lost violin concerto by Bach.) The Sinfonia is heard here in an arrangement for
solo organ published
in 1941 by the eminent French organist Marcel Dupré
(1886-1971). Dupré was
particularly devoted to Bach, and published a complete edition
of Bach’s solo
organ works that is still widely used today. He also published
several
arrangements like this one. The Sinfonia
begins with a fierce ritornello:
a
phrase that reoccurs throughout the piece as a kind of musical
touchstone
interspersed with virtuoso passages for the organ. The
ferocious forward
movement of this piece relaxes only once near the middle for a
brief cadenza. It
ends with a final statement of the ritornello.
Charles-Valentin
Alkan (1813-1888)
Excerpts
from Twelve Etudes for
the Feet
The son of a music teacher in the Jewish
quarter of Paris, Charles-Valentin
Alkan was certainly among Paris’s most phenomenally talented—and
enigmatic—musicians in the 19th century. An amazing prodigy as a
child, Alkan
made his public debut on violin at age 7, and, after enrolling
at the Paris
Conservatoire, won its prestigious first prize in piano at age
10. He also won
the Conservatoire’s first prize in organ at age 21. As a young
man, Alkan was
widely known as a piano virtuoso, and recognized as the peer of
Liszt and
Chopin. When he was about 35, however, Alkan became a recluse,
emerging from
his apartment in Paris occasionally—sometimes at intervals of
several years—to
perform at small private recitals. He continued to compose, and
became
fascinated with the pedal piano: a now largely-forgotten
instrument that added
a pedalboard and additional bass strings to a standard piano. He
wrote many
works for this instrument, including the etudes heard here.
Though Alkan did
perform more regularly in the 1870s, he otherwise remained a
kind of hermit,
devoting increasing amounts of his time to studying and
translating the Hebrew
Talmud.
Anyone who as ever
taken a lesson on
an instrument knows what an etude is: a piece that is used to
work on a
specific aspect of playing or a particular technical skill.
These are usually
fairly pedestrian pieces, never intended to be heard outside of
the studio. But
Alkan’s piano etudes are fully-realized works of considerable
virtuosity. His Three
Grand Etudes (1838), Twelve Etudes in Major Keys
(1848), and Twelve Etudes
in Major Keys (1857),
remained some of his best-known works, and are regularly
performed as concert
pieces. His last set of etudes was published in about 1869. Its
full title
translates as Twelve
Etudes for Organ or
Pedal Piano for the Feet Alone. These are adventurous and
experimental
works composed at a time when most writing for pedals was fairly
cautious. The Etudes
are certainly useful in teaching:
Marcel Dupré called them “the complete and indispensable
foundation of pedal
technique.” But they are also performed, as they are here, as
concert works. Etude No.7
(Allegro) is a true virtuoso showpiece: aggressive
chromatic lines,
eventually played in thirds, alternating with three- and
four-voice chords.
There is a more gentle contrasting section in flowing triplets,
a melody in the
right foot supported by a countermelody in the left. The closing
section
combines the two ideas. Etude
No.6 (Adagio) is
more lyrical, with a melancholy
and songlike main theme. There is a more passionate middle
section before the
main idea returns, now elaborately decorated. The etude ends
with a short
cadenza, and a final, haunting reference to the main theme. The
capstone of the
set, Etude No.12 (Tempo giusto), is a chaconne, based upon a two-measure idea heard at
the beginning. This
pattern is played 40 times, as the basis for increasingly flashy
variations
that explore a host of textures and techniques, before ending in
a grand upward
flourish that covers the entire pedalboard.
Igor Stravinsky
(1882-1971)
Three
Movements from Petrushka
(arr. Isabelle Demers)
In 1911, the Parisian public expected great
things of young
Igor Stravinsky. There was an ongoing craze for Russian music
and ballet, fueled
by the shrewd impresario Serge Diaghilev, who had brought
Stravinsky to Paris
two years earlier. Stravinsky’s Firebird
(1909)—his first ballet score for Diaghilev’s dance company, the
Ballets
Russe—had been an enormous success, and by 1911, he was already
well into work
on the revolutionary score for Rite of
Spring. According to his autobiography, his second work
for the Ballet
Russe, Petrushka,
began as a sort of
compositional “coffee break” between Firebird
and Rite of Spring. Petrushka was a hit in
Paris, when it
premiered on June, 11, 1911, and again a year later in England.
Diaghilev took
the Ballets Russe on an extensive tour of the United States in
1916. This was
the first exposure to Stravinsky’s music for audiences in New
York City,
Chicago, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, and many other American cities.
Though some
audience members (and many critics) were bewildered by this
“ultramodern”
score, Petrushka was
generally
well-received on this side of the Atlantic. (It’s a sad
commentary on our
country at this time to note that its music was actually much
less
controversial in America that the fact that a black character,
the Moor, won
out over the white Petrushka!)
Stravinsky’s title character, Petrushka, is
one of the stock
characters of the puppet shows that were a feature of fairs in
Russia, who
takes takes on a tragic role. The scenario that Stravinsky and
Diaghilev
created is set at a Shrove-tide fair (Mardi Gras or Carnival in
our part of the
world) in St. Petersburg. The puppets—Petrushka, the Ballerina,
and the
Blackamoor—suddenly come to life. The ballet, which was partly
done in
pantomime, is a tragic love triangle between these three
characters, in which
Petrushka is killed by the Moor. At the close of the ballet, the
Showman reassures
everyone at the fair that Petrushka is merely a puppet, but when
he is alone,
Petrushka’s ghost appears to make fun of him. The ballet ends as
the Showman
flees in terror.
Isabelle Demers plays three of her
transcriptions from
Stravinsky’s score, beginning with the Russian
Dance. This is the opening appearance of the three three
puppets, who dance
a wild Russian trepak
for the
fairgoers. Petrushka’s
Room shows
this miserable puppet in his miserable cell, cursing and mooning
over the
Ballerina, who eventually pays him a visit, and dances briefly
with him, before
leaving him alone. The
Shrove-tide Fair
is the ballet’s opening scene. It shows the whirl of activity at
the fair, as
people gather around to see the Showman bring his puppets to
life with a flute.
Stravinsky’s music for this scene is based upon at least one,
and possibly
several Russian folk tunes.
________
program
notes ©2022 by J.
Michael Allsen