Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
Anne Manson, Music Director
Karl Stobbe, Concertmaster
Westminster United Church
7 April 2010

Chamber Night

 

Charles-François Gounod (1818-1893)
Petite Symphonie

1. Adagio — allegretto
2. Andante cantabile
3. Scherzo: allegro moderato
4. Finale: allegretto

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Brandenburg concerto, no. 6 in b flat major (bwv 1051)

1. (Allegro)
2. Adagio ma non tanto
3. Allegro

Intermission

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)
Concert no. 6, from ‘Pièces de clavecin en concerts’

1. La poule (The Hen)
2. Menuets 1 and 2
3. L’enharmonique
4. L’egiptienne (The Egyptian Woman)

Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)
Serenade in d minor, op. 44

1. Moderato, quasi Marcia
2. Minuetto: tempo di minuetto
3. Andante con moto
4. Finale: allegro molto

Concert sponsor / Angela & Robart Ross
Season sponsor / The Great-West Life Assurance Company
Print media sponsor / Winnipeg Free Press
Radio media sponsors / CBC Radio 2 98.3, CBC Radio One 990,
Espace musique 89,9 and Golden West Radio

 

Petite symphonie
Charles-François Gounod

In Gounod’s day, the highest ambition of French composers was to win success in opera and ballet. Purely instrumental music came a distant second. Frustrated by this imbalance, some composers set out to expand the repertoire of music that didn’t include voices. In 1870, Camille Saint-Saëns and others established the Société national de musique, which encouraged the creation of instrumental works and staged concerts devoted to them. In 1879, the celebrated flute virtuoso and teacher Paul Taffanel organized another ensemble that specialized in music for wind instruments alone. Originally known as La Trompette, it later settled on the name Société de musique de chambre pour instruments à vent (Society for Chamber Music for Wind Instruments).

In 1885, Taffanel asked his friend Gounod, by then a highly successful composer of opera and oratorio, to write a piece for his ensemble to play. The 67-year-old composer responded with this charming, elegant and decidedly youthful-sounding ‘Little Symphony.’ His third work in this form, it followed the two symphonies for full orchestra by 30 years. It was premiered in Paris on 30 April 1885.

He scored it for nine instruments: a flute plus pairs of oboes, clarinets, horns and bassoons. He distributed the material democratically among the instruments, but Taffanel’s being a flutist probably explains why Gounod featured that instrument slightly more prominently than the others.

The symphony is filled with attractive melody, much of it unsurprisingly operatic in style. The quickest tempo marking is Allegro moderato, indicating music of relaxed graciousness and impeccable manners. Gounod cast it in the four-movement classical symphonic style of Haydn and Mozart. Following that same manner, the first movement begins with a warm-hearted introduction in slow tempo. It segues into a cheerful movement proper. Gounod gave the flute its biggest opportunity to shine when it introduces the sweet, aria-like principal theme of the slow second movement. The horns take the spotlight in the exuberant, hunting-style scherzo. The symphony concludes with a witty and amiable finale.

Brandenburg concerto, no. 6 in B flat major (BWV 1051)
Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach arrived in the German town of Anhalt-Cöthen in 1717, to take up the position of Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold. This enlightened young monarch not only enjoyed hearing music but was himself a gifted amateur performer on the violin, bass viol and harpsichord. He loved instrumental music more than any other kind, and Bach was only too happy to provide him with many outstanding examples, including his first major outpouring of concertos. The ink would hardly have dried on the manuscript paper before the prince’s ensemble of 17 players would give the premieres.

In 1719, Prince Leopold sent Bach to Berlin, to bring back a harpsichord he had purchased there. During Bach’s visit, he made the acquaintance of Christian Ludwig, Margrave (or ruler) of Brandenburg, a town in Prussia. That gentleman asked Bach to send him some examples of his music.

After two years’ delay, Bach finally replied to this request. He did so by assembling a set of six concertos for various instruments. Their origins have yet to be established conclusively, but it’s likely that he had composed some of them for Prince Leopold’s ensemble. After revising and polishing them, Bach sent them off to Brandenburg, a lavish dedication attached. That inscription — which demonstrates that lengthy, flowery thank-yous to wealthy patrons are nothing new — earned them the nickname Brandenburg Concertos. It reads, in part,

As I had the pleasure a couple of years ago of being heard by Your Royal Highness, in accordance with your commands, and of observing that you took some delight in the small musical talent that Heaven has granted me, and as, when I took my leave of Your Royal Highness, you did the honour of requesting that I send you some of my compositions, I have therefore followed your most gracious commands and taken the liberty of discharging my humble obligation to Your Royal Highness with the present concertos which I have adapted to several instruments, begging you most humbly not to judge their imperfections by the standards of that refined and delicate taste in music that everyone knows you to possess, but rather to accept, with benign consideration, the profound respect and most humble devotion that I attempt to show by this means …

The Margrave showed little interest in the concertos, alas. They passed, probably unplayed, into a library in Berlin following his death. They were published for the first time in 1850, in an edition marking the centenary of Bach’s birth. It took the recording industry to make them popular, beginning in the 1930s with performances by huge modern symphony orchestras. More recent discs and concert performances have given people the chance to hear the Brandenburg concertos in something like the bright, transparent form that Bach envisioned for them.

Each concerto has a different set of featured instruments. The unusual scoring of the sixth concerto has made it one of the least performed of the set. The line-up of soloists is made up exclusively of lower-pitched string instruments, and the larger, accompanying string body omits violins. The resulting sound is soft and warm, a feeling reinforced by the relaxed and genial nature of the music itself. Flashy, no; beautiful, yes. A pair of violas shares the greatest part of the solo writing, though Bach gives his other featured players their moments in the spotlight, too. The concerto consists of a bracing, busily textured first movement, a slow section in fugal style, and a merry, gigue-like finale.

Concert no. 6, from ‘Pièces de clavecin en concerts’
Jean-Philippe Rameau

Rameau began to make his mark as a composer by publishing several volumes of harpsichord pieces, but it was his influential work as a musical theorist that first placed him in the public spotlight. He eventually realized his, and every other French Baroque composer’s greatest ambition, when Hippolyte et Aricie, his first work for the theatre, premiered in 1733. It made an immense impression, pro and con alike. It gave rise to a long-running feud between his conservative opponents and his progressive supporters. Rameau triumphed in the end, as the public gradually came to appreciate the sophistication of his style, and to accept the possibility that a respected theorist could also be a composer of genuine talent. For the remainder of his life, he divided his time between writing operas and ballets, some 30 in all, and expounding his ideas on music.

His suites of harpsichord pieces consist of numerous brief compositions. As time went on, the pieces shed their initial brevity and simplicity and came to include more expansive, imaginative and daring works. Many of the latter pieces bear fanciful titles, inspired by ancient myths, far-away places, people he knew and the styles of other composers.

In 1741, Rameau published his only piece of chamber music, a set of five suites he called Pièces de clavecin en concerts (Harpsichord Pieces in Concert). They expand the inherent colours of his previously existing harpsichord solos by adding extra instruments. A further set of six suites appeared in 1768, after his death. In these anonymous transcriptions, the music is scored for three violins, a viola and two cellos.

All the pieces in Concert No. 6 originated in the Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin that Rameau published c. 1729-30. First comes his most famous work, a lively portrait of a clucking hen. It’s followed by a pair of gracious minuets; a fascinating, enigmatic piece called L’enharmonique (alluding to a compositional technique that it demonstrates); and finally the vivacious and exotic L’egiptienne (The Egyptian Woman).

Serenade in D minor, op. 44
Antonín Dvorák

Dvorák shared with Mozart an ease and naturalness of invention that allowed them to compose quickly and with little apparent effort. Both of them also enjoyed composing light music, and they made no apologies about it. Their efforts in this direction show no falling-off in their lofty creative standards. Dvorák’s lighter creations — dances, suites, bagatelles, rhapsodies and serenades — are delightful, unpretentious works.

His original intention was to compose three serenades, but he only completed two: one for strings, the other for a mixed ensemble of winds and strings. Dvorák composed the mixed ensemble Serenade in D minor between January 4 and 18, 1878. He scored it for pairs of oboes, clarinets and bassoons (plus contrabassoon), three horns, a cello and a double bass. His conducting the premiere in Prague on November 17 marked his debut on the podium.

Reviewing an early performance in Budapest, the critic of the newspaper Pester Lloyd wrote, “Only a master writes like this; only a poet by God’s grace has such inspiration.” It moved Dvorák’s friend and mentor, Johannes Brahms, to proclaim that “a more lovely, refreshing impression of rich and charming creative talent you can’t easily find.”

As in a typical Mozart serenade, it opens with a march. This one projects a certain stateliness of bearing, but the tone is no more than mock-serious. Although Dvorák called the following movement a minuet, it is much closer to a sousedská (Neighbours’ Dance), a gracious Bohemian waltz. He introduced another of his country’s folk dances, the vivacious, cross-rhythmed furiant, as the central trio section. Next comes a long-breathed romance, sweet-natured yet rising regularly to moments of passionate expression. A lively finale closes the serenade, but not without a final bend of the knee to classical tradition via a brief re-appearance of the opening march.

 

 

Anne Manson / Music Director and Conductor

MCO's 2010/11 season is sponsored by The Great-West Life Assurance Company.
Support has been received from Media sponsors The Winnipeg Free Press, CBC Radio One 990,
CBC Radio 2 98.3, Espace musique 89,9 and Golden West Radio. Heartstrings gala sponsor:
Mann Financial Assurance Limited. Sponsor of open dress rehearsals: Canadian Bridge Federation.
Arts Accessibility Program: Sun Life Financial.

© 2010 Manitoba Chamber Orchestra