Fall 2020 has been a time of challenge for the Marshall University Symphony Orchestra, as for all of us. Because of the pandemic and the need to social-distance, we downsized to chamber orchestra size, and learned new types of repertoire and new ways of working as an ensemble. All orchestra members brought their own folding music stands to each rehearsal, we moved back and forth between two rehearsal rooms for air exchange, and everyone practiced distancing and masking.
Art work by the orchestra's principal violist, Lucia Soltis.
German Baroque composer Georg Philip Telemann was known for many charming programmatic works, including his Alster Overture/Suite, depicting life around the Alster River and Alster Lake of his native Hamburg. The third movement, titled “Alster Echo,” uses backstage horns to create an echo effect.
Tomaso Albinoni was a Venetian violinist who sometimes described himself as a amateur, probably because he was able to support himself and his opera singer wife through the family playing card business. He was the first Italian composer to publish concerti for the oboe; the Op. 7 Concerti a Cinque, published in Amsterdam in 1715, consisted of four concerti for solo violin, four for solo oboe, and four for two oboes. Concerto in D Major, Op. 7 No. 8 consists of three movements, the first and third of which feature two oboes.
In 1893 Jean Sibelius won second prize in a local contest with a work for male chorus, based on Finnish poetry, titled Rakastava (The Lover). The following year he revised it for chorus and orchestra, and a few years later for unaccompanied mixed chorus. It must have been a favorite with him because in 1911 he revisited the work yet again and recomposed it for string orchestra, timpani, and triangle, in which version you will hear two movements tonight. The first movement is a musical portrait of the Beloved, the second is titled “The Way of the Lover.”
Leopold Mozart is known primarily as the father of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and also as the author of an important 18th century treatise on violin playing. He was, however, an accomplished and prolific composer, albeit primarily of light works. The Sinfonia Burlesca is a typical Leopold Mozart composition. The word “burlesca” in Italian references a joke, ridicule, or parody. The third and fourth movements of the Sinfonia are based on the stories of Il Signor Pantalone (Mr. Pants) and Harlequino, two popular characters in the Italian Commedia dell’Arte - professional comic theatre of the 16th through 18th centuries. The first movement, presented tonight, is a charming piece scored for two viola parts, two cello parts, and a bass part.
Mélanie Bonis was born into a strict French Catholic family. Her parents did not approve of girls studying music but were persuaded to allow her to take music lessons and eventually to attend the Conservatoire in Paris, where she studied composition with César Franck and took a first prize in harmony. While there she began a relationship with a singer and poet named Hettich. Furious, her parents forced her to leave the Conservatoire and to marry a widower with five children, 25 years her senior, who hated music. She bore him three more children and led a bourgeois and unhappy life. Eventually she renewed the relationship with Hettich and bore him a daughter in secret. She suffered from depression, but nonetheless produced over 300 compositions, under a gender-vague pseudonym, Mel Bonis. The Bourée is her own orchestral transcription of one of her piano pieces, slightly rearranged for our chamber orchestra. She dedicated the work to her son Pierre.
Concerto in F Major, RV 571 is one of Vivaldi’s “Dresden Concerti,” so called because the manuscripts were found in a library in Dresden. The Dresden court of Augustus the Strong, elector of Saxony, must have been a wondrous place for music lovers in the first half of the 18th century. The Dresden Hofkapelle (court chapel orchestra) hired distinguished musicians such as composer Johann David Heinichen and his student, violinist/composer Johann Georg Pisendel, and was one of the first court orchestras to have on its payroll a pair of horn players. Vivaldi and Pisendel, who was concertmaster of the court orchestra, were lifelong friends, and Pisendel amassed a collection of Vivaldi’s concerti for use by his orchestra.
The Vivaldi work exists in two manuscripts, one of which contains alterations made by Pisendel to the solo violin part. The concerto is a concerto grosso, featuring a group of soloists: two oboes, two horns (one being replaced tonight by a flute), solo violin and solo cello.
We end our program with two D major movements from Divertimenti (“diversions”) written by a young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Salzburg. The first, the final movement from his Divertimento K. 205, was written by a 17 year old Mozart, probably for the wife of a court official. Mozart wrote the second, the Divertimento K. 251, at the ripe age of 20, perhaps for the celebration of his sister’s nameday. Both are light-hearted celebratory works.
Credits:
Created with an image by Ri_Ya - "cello trio the meaning of life"