Mayor's Concert Programme.pdf - Milton Keynes City Orchestra

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95003 May 2011 programme text.qxd:Layout 2 11/5/11 08:24 Page 6Piano concerto, Op. 16 A minorEdvard Grieg (1843 – 1907)Whilst Norway, like Denmark and Sweden, had been receptive to foreign musical influences through much of theBaroque and Classical periods, it failed (largely due to its peripheral position in relation to the mainstream of Europeanmusic activity) to create any local tradition in which its own composers could have been trained. Hence, Grieg, theforemost Norwegian composer of the nineteenth-century studied at the Leipzig Conservatoire under Carl Reinecke.Written in Denmark in the summer of 1868 and first performed in Copenhagen, this concerto was dedicated to thepianist Edmund Neupert. It appeared a year before Grieg had come into close contact with Norwegian folk-music andtherefore, although it draws on some of the rhythmic patterns of peasant dances, it contains no actual folk tunes.The first movement opens with a flourish by the soloist and leads to a tune introduced by the woodwind, with thestrings supplying punctuation. This theme is expanded by the piano before the cellos and bassoons introduce thesecond subject. Again the piano takes up the theme and makes a swift crescendo toward an entry of the fullorchestra. A rousing development leads into the cadenza which in turn heralds the short coda based on a perkytheme and ending the first movement.The strings play one of Grieg’s most attractive melodies with bassoons and horns adding to the charm of the scoring.The piano adds a rippling theme of its own and at length the soloist and orchestra combine in a repetition of the tune.A magical close of the second movement links into the finale. ©IGS 2011Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin BrittenArvo Pärt (born 1935)Avro Pärt was born in Estonia. His early pieces were written in the style of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, but a majorinfluence on his composition has been an intensive study of medieval polyphony and Gregorian chant, giving his laterwork a simple, mediative, at times almost static quality.The Cantus, for string orchestra, is constructed of the simplest of musical materials, a descending A minor scale.Beginning on the highest A of the first violins, it cascades gradually through the entire string section, like a waterfallin slow motion, until it ends on the lowest A of the double basses. The piece is in the form of a canon, but of a specialtype; Pärt borrows a device from medieval music known as a “mensuration canon”. The theme of the first violins isrepeated in canon by the other strings, but as each successive string group enters, it plays the theme twice as slowlyas the first violins.Throughout the Cantus there is the regular tolling of a bell, also pitched in A.Adapted from a programme note by the late Maurice Dunmore6Great Music LIVE.
95003 May 2011 programme text.qxd:Layout 2 11/5/11 08:24 Page 7Symphony No. 5 in C minor Op.67Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)Allegro con brio : Andante con moto : Scherzo (Allegro) : AllegroBeethoven’s ‘Fifth’ is one of the landmarks in music’s history. Written in the early years of the nineteenth century, itbecame a prototype of the Romantic symphony. The Fifth was not even Beethoven’s favourite symphony (he preferredthe Eroica). Neither did it immediately become the world’s most famous symphony. During his lifetime the Eroica wasperformed more often and the second movement of the Seventh (movements were often heard separately) wasdeemed “the crown of instrumental music.” But over the course of the 19th century, the Fifth gradually came toepitomize Beethoven’s life and musical style.Beethoven’s one informative comment relates to the first four notes only – ‘Thus does Fate knock at the door’; andit has set critics talking ever since. In the autumn of 1801, at age 30, Beethoven revealed for the first time the secretof his increasing hearing loss and stated in a letter that he would “seize Fate by the throat; it shall not bend or crushme completely.” It has not been difficult to relate such statements directly to his music. The struggle with “Fate” whenit “knocks at the door,” as he allegedly told his assistant Anton Schindler happens at the beginning of the Fifth, helpedendorse the favoured label for the entire middle period of his career: Heroic. The Fifth Symphony, perhaps more thanany of his other symphonies, more than those with explicit extra-musical indications like the Eroica, Pastoral, or Ninth,seems to present a large-scale narrative. According to this view, a heroic life struggle is represented in the progressionof emotions, from the famous opening in C minor to the triumphant C-major coda of the last movement some 40minutes later.Beethoven began writing the Symphony in the spring of 1804, during the most productive period of his career. It tookhim nearly four years to complete. The sketches reveal the opening theme developed in every possible direction asa preliminary to laying out the symphony as a whole. One reason for the great fame and popularity of this Symphonyis that it distills so much of Beethoven’s musical style. One feature is its “organicism,” the fact that all four movementsseem to grow from seeds sown in the opening bars. After the most familiar of openings (Allegro con brio), the piecemodulates to the relative major key and the horns announce the second theme with a fanfare using the “fate rhythm.”The softer, lyrical second theme, first presented by the violins, is inconspicuously accompanied in the lower stringsby the rhythm. The movement features Beethoven’s characteristic building of intensity, suspense, a thrilling coda, andalso mysteries.The slow movement is unique and makes sense only in the context of the other three movements. Although it tookBeethoven months to work out its final form it has a quality of improvisation in stark contrast to the fierceconcentration of thought in the first movement. The theme begins as a regular sentence. A new melody then beginscasually in the home key but bursts unexpectedly into C major with trumpets and drums. Here the relevance of themovement becomes clear – the whole symphony is concerned with the establishment of C major (the unifying factorof the whole work).Beethoven combines the third and fourth movements, which are played without pause. The Allegro scherzo beginswith a soft ascending arpeggiated string theme that contrasts with a loud assertive horn motive (again using the faterhythm). The tension builds with a long pedal point—the insistent repetition of the same note C in the timpani—thatswells in an enormous crescendo directly into the fourth movement, where three trombones, contrabassoon, and apiccolo join in for the first time in the piece. This finale, like the first movement, uses the fate rhythm in the secondtheme. The coda to the Symphony may strike listeners today as almost too triumphantly affirmative as the music getsfaster, louder, and ever more insistent. ©IGS 2011Great Music LIVE.7
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