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Steven Smith Mozart: Symphony No. 17 in G major, K.129 |
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Steven Smith is in his fifth season as Assistant Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra. The 2001-02 season also marks his fourth season as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and his third year as Music Director of the Santa Fe Symphony and Chorus. His responsibilities with The Cleveland Orchestra have included helping to plan and conduct educational and family concerts, assisting Music Director Christoph von Dohnányi in concert preparation, acting as a cover conductor and helping to oversee the production of broadcasts for the Cleveland Orchestra Radio Network. In addition, he appears as conductor for subscription series concerts, at the Blossom Festival, and for Christmas programs. Mr. Smith has been appointed visiting associate professor of conducting and music director of the Oberlin Orchestra and the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, effective July 1, 2002. Steven Smith's recent guest-conducting appearances include debuts with the symphony orchestras of Detroit, Houston, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and engagements with the orchestras of Akron, Kalamazoo, Kansas City, Memphis and Santa Fe. He has led Chicago's Grant Park Symphony, Cleveland's Ohio Chamber Orchestra, New York's Chautauqua Symphony, the Annapolis Symphony and the Colorado Symphony in Denver. Mr. Smith's recent debuts include appearances with the Hartford and Long Beach symphony orchestras, Summermusic at Harkness Festival in Connecticut, the Long Island Philharmonic and Mexico's Orquesta Sinfónica de Xalapa. During the 2000-01 season, he conducted the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra in special appearances by invitation at Carnegie Hall and Penn State University. From 1996 to 1998, Mr. Smith was associate conductor of the Kansas City Symphony. Concurrent with this appointment, he was the sole recipient of the Conductor Career Development Grant and was named Foundation Artist by the Geraldine C. and Emory M. Ford Foundation. Previous positions include music director of the San Juan Symphony, assistant conductor of the Colorado Springs Symphony and conductor of Epicycle: An Ensemble for New Music. Mr. Smith is also active as a composer. In 1991, The Cleveland Orchestra commissioned and gave the world premiere of Shake, Rattle & Roar, an interactive piece for orchestra and audience. The work was featured on National Public Radio and has since been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony and Columbus Symphony, among other orchestras. Additional compositions include La Chasse (performed by The Cleveland Orchestra in July 2001), A Journey and Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra. A native of Toledo, Ohio, Steven Smith earned master's degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music. He is the recipient of the Cleveland Institute of Music Alumni Association 1999 Alumni Achievement Award. |
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Franklin Cohen joined The Cleveland Orchestra as principal clarinet in the fall of 1976. Considered one of the outstanding clarinetists of his generation, he has appeared as soloist with the Orchestra in well over 100 concerts, including performances during its international tours. Among these have been numerous performances of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, a work that he recorded with The Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnányi's direction for Decca/London. He also is the soloist in Debussy's First Rhapsody conducted by Pierre Boulez on a Deutsche Grammophon recording that won two Grammy Awards in 1996. A native New Yorker, Mr. Cohen studied at the Juilliard School of Music and began his professional career as principal clarinetist of the American Symphony Orchestra, appointed by Leopold Stokowski. He subsequently held the same position with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Casals Festival Orchestra. Mr. Cohen first gained widespread acclaim in 1968 when, at the age of 22, he became the first - and, to date, only - clarinetist awarded first prize at the International Munich Competition. Since that time, he has pursued an active and varied musical career. He has been a soloist with other major American orchestras, as well as European orchestras. As recitalist and chamber music performer, he has participated in the Marlboro, Casals, Sarasota and Aspen music festivals and is a long-standing member of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. He has also performed with the Cavani, Emerson, Guarneri, Miami, Shostakovich and Tokyo string quartets and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Mr. Cohen has given master classes and seminars at many universities and conservatories throughout the world and, since 1976, has chaired the clarinet department at the Cleveland Institute of Music and at Kent/Blossom Music's professional training program. Many of his former students hold clarinet positions in major orchestras throughout North America and Europe. Franklin Cohen's most recent appearances as soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra were in November and December 2001. |
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flute In addition to his responsibilities with The Cleveland Orchestra, Mr.
Smith serves as head of the flute department of the Cleveland Institute
of Music and as a faculty member of Kent/Blossom Music's professional
training program. As a coach and teacher, he is asked to lead master classes
across the United States and abroad and has served on the faculties of
the Domaine Forget Summer Festival in Quebec, the National Orchestra Institute
in Maryland, and as a guest artist/coach for the New World Symphony in
Florida. He has performed with the Guarneri String Quartet and as a soloist
with the Chamber Orchestra of Albuquerque and the New Mexico Symphony
Orchestra. Joshua Smith's most recent appearance as a soloist with The Cleveland Orchestra was in July 2000. |
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born in Salzburg on January 27, 1756; died in Vienna on December 5, 1791.) "Incomparable Mozart." Ironically, one of the first people
to use this expression (if not the very first) was none other than Franz
Joseph Haydn, probably the only Mozart contemporary whose genius could
be compared to his. In the consciousness of many music-lovers today, however,
Mozart is indeed incomparable, his works standing as symbols of harmony,
beauty and perfection like the works of no other composer. Mozart was one of the most astonishing child prodigies in the history of music. He was only six when his father, composer and violinist Leopold Mozart took him and his older sister, a gifted pianist, on tour to show off the children's musical prowess. By the time he was in his teens, he was writing operas and instrumental works that were second to none. Then, as he matured into a young man, his emotional world deepened and the "incomparable" works began to flow from his pen. Many critics at the time (including, sometimes, his own father) felt that his newer music was too difficult and too demanding. Yet Mozart was uncompromising. According to the well-known anecdote, Emperor Joseph II once told Mozart that there were "too many notes" in the opera The Abduction from the Seraglio; the composer countered: "Just as many as necessary, Your Majesty!" |
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Symphony
No. 17 in G major, K.129 The present symphony was written in Salzburg in May 1772. Scored for
2 oboes, 2 horns and strings, it runs about 15 minutes in performance. Tonight's performance of Mozart's Symphony No.17 is the first by The Cleveland Orchestra.
The work that later received the number 129 in Ludwig von Köchel's
catalog and number 17 in the chronological listing of the symphonies,
was written between the second and third Italian trips. It belongs to
those highly productive years in which Mozart made the transition from
child prodigy to a seasoned professional, assimilating and personalizing
the musical language of the time. The opening Allegro makes ample use of the figure known as the
"Scotch snap" or "Lombard rhythm" (a very short note
falling on the accent, followed by a longer, unaccented one). The pattern
gives the movement a light-hearted, dance-like mood. Unlike later, longer
movements in sonata form (for instance in the Symphony No.40), the early
works are not concerned with contrasting different emotions; instead,
they tend to be unified in character, and so the happiness of the present
Allegro always remains unclouded. In the second-movement Andante, "Mozart spins a magical web
of commonplace melodic fragments," to quote the words of the eminent
Mozart scholar, Neal Zaslaw. The form of the movement is extremely simple:
essentially a short song played twice with an even shorter middle section
where the strings enter one after the other imitating the same motif in
a miniature fugato. The Finale, as Zaslaw notes, "begins with a hunting-horn flourish virtually identical to one Mozart was to use in 1773 played by horns as the trio of the minuet of the Divertimento, K.205, and again years later to begin his piano sonata K.576." It is even more dance-like than the first movement was; it is reminiscent of a gigue (or jig) - a favorite dance form of the time. —Peter Laki |
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Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622 Mozart completed his Clarinet Concerto on October 7, 1791, two months
before his death. The German music publisher Johann André, who
acquired most of Mozart's manuscripts after the composer's death, published
it in 1801 in what is now known not to be the work's original form. (The
original manuscript has since been lost.) The concerto was originally
written for a special instrument called the basset clarinet (see below);
the reconstructed original version has been frequently performed and recorded
in the last 25 years. This concerto runs about 30 minutes in performance. Mozart scored
it for solo basset clarinet, 2 flutes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, and strings.
In tonight's performance, Franklin Cohen is playing the concerto on the
regular clarinet. (He performed the basset clarinet version with the Orchestra
in 1987.) The Cleveland Orchestra performed the second and third movements of
Mozart's Clarinet Concerto at a Popular Concert during the 1922-23 season,
with Nikolai Sokoloff conducting; the soloist was principal clarinetist
Louis Green. The Orchestra first played the entire work in March 1956
under George Szell's direction, with principal clarinetist Robert Marcellus
as soloist. The Orchestra most recently performed the concerto in August
1996, with Franklin Cohen under Jahja Ling's direction. The Cleveland Orchestra recorded the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in 1961 with George Szell and Robert Marcellus, and again in 1992 with Christoph von Dohnányi and Franklin Cohen.
In those days, the clarinet was undergoing constant changes from the
early 18th-century instrument, which had only two keys, to the one with
five keys that became standard around 1760. The orchestra of Mannheim,
which Mozart visited in 1778, was one of the first to incorporate clarinets
on a regular basis, though several composers (including Vivaldi and Handel)
had occasionally used clarinets earlier. In one word, the clarinet was
still something of a novelty, and Mozart exclaimed in one of his letters
to his father after his trip to Mannheim: "Alas, if only we also
had clarinets [in Salzburg]." A decade later in Vienna, Mozart did have clarinets at his disposal.
He had become friends with the virtuoso Anton Stadler, whose brother,
Johann, was also a clarinet player. Anton Stadler had participated in
performances of Mozart's works since at least 1784, and later inspired
two of the composer's most magnificent late masterpieces, the Quintet
in A major for clarinet and string quartet (K.581) and the present concerto. We must know that the compass of the clarinet is divided into registers
that greatly differ in character and timbre. The low register, the so-called
"chalumeau," is one of the clarinet's most wonderful features,
and Stadler, together with Theodor Lotz, Royal Instrument Maker to the
Viennese court, experimented with its extension. Their experiments resulted
in a clarinet that could go a major third below the regular instrument
(written C instead of written E*). Stadler called this a "bass clarinet,"
but we today call it a "basset" (i.e. "little bass"),
to avoid confusion with the modern bass clarinet, which is an octave lower. It has long been known that both the quintet and the concerto were written
for this extended clarinet. The principal evidence comes from a review
of the concerto's first edition, published in 1802 in the Allgemeine
Musikalische Zeitung in Leipzig. In it, the anonymous reviewer showed
how the solo part had been changed to become accessible to players of
the regular clarinet; he pointed out that extended instruments were extrenely
hard to come by. In a prophetic statement that foreshadowed 20th-century
editorial methods, the reviewer concluded: "Thanks are due to the
editors for these transpositions and alterations, although they have not
improved the concerto. Perhaps it would have been better to publish it
in the original version and insert these transpositions and alterations
in smaller notes." Unfortunately, this advice cannot be followed as the original manuscript
of the concerto is lost. (Only a partial sketch survives, but it is in
G major, and scored for yet another clarinet-type instrument, the basset
horn.) Nor have any 18th-century basset clarinets survived; it may well
have been an instrument that no one but Stadler played even then. Therefore,
both the music and the instrument had to be reconstructed before Mozart's
original intentions could become clear. Mozart obviously wanted to provide Stadler with a piece that showcased
his virtuosity, and the famous low notes of his instrument in particular.
However, the piece eventually became much more than that; as Mozart's
last purely instrumental work, it occupies a very special place in his
output. Since we know that Mozart died two months after finishing this concerto,
we are inclined to call it a "late" work. A close look at the
compositions of the year 1791 reveals, however, that it is less a final
arrival than a new start, one cut short by what musicologist H.C. Robbins
Landon has called "the greatest tragedy in the history of music."
The Clarinet Concerto, written shortly after The Magic Flute, shares
with the opera a combination of simplicity and sophistication that was,
in this form at least, new in Mozart's music. The melodies are as graceful
and fresh as ever; yet there are far more grave and serious moments than
before. Such moments are characterized by unexpected digressions into
minor keys, imitative counterpoint, and -- this is where the low notes
of the clarinet become especially important -- a darker tone quality.
It is a style that had an enormous expressive potential. Despite the total
uselessness of such pursuits, one cannot help but wonder about the further
style changes Mozart's music might have undergone had he not contracted
his fatal illness in November 1791. What would have happened had Mozart
lived to see Beethoven's arrival in Vienna in 1792; how would their interaction
(competition?) have affected the style of each man, Viennese musical life,
and music history in general? Of course, there are no answers to these and many other tantalizing questions.
We are left with works like the Clarinet Concerto that embody what we
must consider Mozart's musical legacy. Let the usual formal analysis be
dispensed with this time. An investigation according to usual textbook
criteria would yield nothing extraordinary (first movement: classical
sonata form; second movement: regular ternary form; third movement: rondo
finale). What Mozart did within this ordinary framework is quite simply
beyond words. Mozart once referred to Stadler as "der Stodla," perhaps in imitation of his dialect. In another letter, he gave him the name Natschibinitschibi -- this was a game in which Mozart assigned names like this to a number of his friends, as well as himself (Punkitititi) and his wife (Schabla Pumfa). Stadler, a fellow Freemason, was apparently not always fair in his dealings with Mozart: we know of one incident in which he did not repay a substantial debt he owed the composer. But Mozart did not seem to bear a grudge. They may have been bowling partners (if the story about the "Kegelstatt" trio -- supposedly written while bowling -- is true; this trio, K.498, is for clarinet, viola, and piano). Mozart took Stadler along on his last trip to Prague, where the clarinetist played prominent solos in Mozart's opera La clemenza di Tito. The composer obviously liked "Stodla's" company, and he immortalized him by writing for him some of his greatest mysic. In so doing, incidentally, he also created some of the first masterpieces for the clarinet, the youngest member of the woodwind family.
—Peter Laki |
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Flute Concerto No. 2 in D major,
K.314 The present concerto was written, originally as the Oboe Concerto
in C major, in 1777, and adapted for flute in Mannheim early in 1778.
This concerto runs about 20 minutes in performance. Mozart scored
it for solo flute, 2 oboes, 2 horns, and strings. The Cleveland Orchestra first performed this concerto at Blossom in August 1977; Lorin Maazel conducted, and Jean-Pierre Rampal was the soloist. James Galway played the work in July 1981 under the direction of Sung Kwak. The oboe version was performed at Severance Hall, by John Mack under Christoph von Dohnányi's direction, in 1986 and again in 1991 - a collaboration that was also recorded on the London label. While at Mannheim, Mozart was commissioned by the Dutch amateur flutist
and music patron Ferdinand Dejean to write three flute concertos and some
flute quartets. Working under considerable pressure and less than ideal
conditions, Mozart finished only two concertos and three quartets by February
15, 1778, when De Jean left for Paris. For one of the concertos, he submitted
a transposition (from C major to D major) of an oboe concerto he had written
for oboist Giuseppe Ferlendis the previous summer. It was as a flute concerto
that the work was first published in the years following Mozart's death.
From references in Mozart's correspondence, specialists always knew that
Mozart had written an oboe concerto, but this work was thought to be lost,
until a set of parts surfaced in Salzburg in 1920, making clear that the
same work had existed in two versions, one for oboe and one for flute. The first movement, Allegro aperto ("Open Allegro"),
contains brisk, jaunty melodies. The Adagio, of a tender singing
quality with great dignity, includes much harmonic interest. A lighter,
almost mischievous mood returns in the Rondo, whose main theme
is almost identical to Blondchen's aria , "Welche Wonne, welche Lust"
("What Pleasure, What Joy"), written a few years later in 1782. Mozart - a keyboard player of genius and a highly accomplished violinist -- wrote a total of four solo concertos for woodwind instruments. The Bassoon Concerto (K.191) is an early gem of the set, written in 1774. The Flute Concerto in G (K.313) and the present work for either oboe or flute followed a few years later; finally, this group of works was crowned by the Clarinet Concerto, written in 1791, in what turned out to be the last year of Mozart's life. All four show Mozart's masterly knowledge of the instruments for which he wrote. —Tim Parkinson & Peter Laki |
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Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K.550 Mozart wrote his last three symphonies during the summer of 1788,
completing the one in E-flat on June 26, the G minor on July 25, and the
C major on August 10. They may have been performed during the remaining
three years of Mozart's life, though we have no specific record of such
a performance. The G-minor symphony, with a duration of 25 minutes, is scored for
flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, andf strings (with divided
violas). An earlier version was scored without clarinets and includes
somewhat different parts for the oboes. The Cleveland Orchestra first performed Symphony No.40 in November
1919. The most recent performances were given in January 2002, led by
Christoph von Dohnányi at Severance Hall. The work was last heard
at Blossom in July 2000, conducted by Matthias Bamert. The Cleveland Orchestra and Christoph von Dohnányi recorded the last six Mozart symphonies in 1990. George Szell had earlier recorded the G-minor symphony in 1955 (mono), and 1967 (stereo). George Szell's performance of the G-minor symphony from the Orchestra's 1970 tour to Japan is included in the recent 2-CD release Live in Tokyo 1970.
What is certain is that during the summer of 1788 Mozart started writing
heart-rending letters to his friend and fellow Freemason, Michael Puchberg,
imploring him for rather large sums of money. In one of these, he was
asking Puchberg for "a hundred gulden until next week, when my concerts
in the Casino are to begin." Since the letter was written at the
time Mozart was working on what would prove to be his last three symphonies,
there is reason to believe that they intended them for concerts "in
the Casino." We don't know exactly where "the Casino" was,
but Mozart had previously played some of his piano concertos there. The performances of Symphonies No. 39-41 may or may not have taken place
in the fall of 1788. Because there are no known records of performances,
it used to be believed that these symphonies were never heard in concert
during the composer's lifetime. Recently, experts have become more careful
and we no longer rule out a contemporary performance on the basis of missing
evidence. There were in fact several opportunities for Mozart to present
these symphonies both in Vienna and in Germany, where he journeyed in
1789 and again in 1790. The period of the last three symphonies was one
great hardships for Mozart, who was in dire financial straits at the time,
as his desperate letters to his friend and Masonic brother Michael Puchberg
attest. Mozart was probably hoping to put on a special subscription series
to introduce his new symphonies, but these plans don't seem to have ever
come to fruition, and we cannot be sure whether he ever heard his last
symphonies performed. In the 18th century, symphonies usually started with a forceful downbeat
whose function was somewhat similar to that of the rising curtain in the
theatre: "Ladies and gentlemen, please be silent, the piece has begun!"
The French even had a special name for this downbeat: premier coup
d'archet ("first bowstroke"). More than a simple custom,
this way of opening a work became one of the defining elements of symphonic
style. The opening of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor (K.550, 1788) is,
in its quiet way, nothing short of a revolution. Dispensing with the premier
coup d'archet, Mozart started with a lyrical melody. What is even
more unusual, however, is that this lyrical melody is preceded by almost
a full measure of accompanying eighth-notes in the divided violas. In
the 19th century, accompaniment figures without melody were not uncommon:
one might think of the openings of Schubert's Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel
or his String Quartet in A minor, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto or many
opera arias by Verdi. The example they all followed was Mozart's G-minor
symphony which may be seen as the symbolic origin of musical Romanticism. Many writers have felt this symphony -- and not only its first measure
-- to be Romantic in spirit. Often in his earlier works Mozart had used
(albeit with surpassing mastery) melodic material that belonged to a common
vocabulary of Classical music. Not so in the G-minor symphony. The themes
of this work are highly individualized and transcend conventions to a
much greater extent than anything Mozart had written before. The symphony
contains dissonances, modulations and chromatic progressions that were
extremely bold for their time, and revealed new worlds of expressivity
that had not previously been known to musicians. Individuality, bold innovations
and heightened expressivity -- all three concepts were to become central
to the Romantic aesthetics of music. At the same time, the symphony preserves a clarity of form and a balance
among its constituent elements that is entirely Classical. We could not
find better examples for sonata form than the first and the last movements;
Classical rules and symmetries are respected throughout. One of the most exciting parts in the first movement is the development
section, where the famous opening melody undergoes dramatic transformations
and its segments taken apart, a technique later adopted by Beethoven.
In the course of about 90 seconds (which is how long it takes to play
the development section), there is counterpoint, a great deal of contrast
in dynamics and orchestration, and key changes every four bars or so.
The section begins and ends with a short descending scale scored for woodwinds
only, making for smooth but quite noticeable transitions. The theme of the second-movement Andante is intoned by the string instruments
in successive entries (almost, though not quite, like in a fugue). At
the repeat of this theme, the woodwinds add a descending scale motif in
thirty-second notes separated by rests: a special masterstroke that was
quoted almost literally by Haydn in the "Winter" section of
his oratorio The Seasons. But Mozart develops the idea differently,
using it for another great buildup of tension in the middle of the movement,
before the recapitulation brings back the initial feelings of peace and
serenity. The third movement is one of the most metrically irregular minuets ever
written. Intricacies such as the hemiola (two 3/4 measures rearranged
in three 2/4 units) are combined with dissonant clashes in the harmony
and a pungent chromaticism in the melodic motion. The Trio, in which the
tonality changes from G minor to G major, is more relaxed, but the musical
articulation remains complex. The woodwind (with the exception of the
clarinets) and the two horns all enjoy some great soloistic opportunities
in the Trio. Unlike many symphonies written in minor keys, Mozart's Symphony No. 40 does not switch to the major mode for the finale but remains in the minor to the end. This movement has few equals in the Classical literature for sheer dramatic power and intensity. Its most stunning moment is, without a doubt, the beginning of the development, a striking unison passage that touches on all twelve tones of the chromatic scale and totally confounds our sense of tonality for a moment. It resolves into an exciting contrapuntal section that ends up as far from the home key of G minor as possible (C-sharp minor). The recapitulation (which introduces some subtle changes in the melody) ends with three strong G-minor chords that almost sound like cries of despair. —Peter Laki |
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