Program 2

Johannesburg Festival Overture
Sir William Walton (1902-1983)

Composed in 1956.
Premiered on September 25, 1956 in Johannesburg, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Sir William Walton (he was knighted in 1951) was the son of two musicians: his mother was a singing teacher and his father, the local church choirmaster. Reports have it (though, unfortunately, without corroborating details) that he was singing Handel anthems before he could speak. Piano and violin lessons followed. He was packed off to the Choir School at Christ Church, Oxford, when he was ten because his father knew the educational opportunities to be better there than in provincial Oldham, the family’s hometown. At sixteen, Walton entered Christ Church College, but became so absorbed in his musical studies that he failed all his other subjects, and left before he had completed his degree. Perhaps the most important thing he took with him from Oxford was his friendship with the Sitwell family — Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell. The Sitwells were a family of station, wealth and immense culture, and they recognized an outstanding talent in the young Walton. He moved into their home in London after leaving Oxford, and there received encouragement, advice and inspiration. Dame Edith wrote a series of witty, often satirical poems for Walton to set to music, and the result was Façade. This work, which the composer described as “An Entertainment” for reciter and chamber ensemble, caused enough of a stir when it was first heard in 1922 (Walton was 20) to bring him to the attention of the musical world. The Portsmouth Point Overture and the Viola Concerto followed within two years, and the oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast of 1931 lifted the young composer to international fame. Since he largely eschewed teaching and conducting (except for concerts of his own music), the story of his life thereafter is the story of his compositions. His First Symphony was introduced in 1935, and a violin concerto for Heifetz five years later. Despite the difficulties of the War years, he completed a number of significant works during that time, notably the ballets The Wise Virgins and The Quest, a piece for the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (the Scapino Overture), and scores for the films Major Barbara, Henry V and Hamlet. During a conference in Buenos Aires in 1948, he met Susana Gil, and they were married the following January, despite the 24 years difference in their ages. The couple made their home in an old monastery on the Isle of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, where Walton lived until his death in 1983, composing at his wonted slow pace and leaving that halcyon environment only for occasional tours to oversee the production of his works.

The Johannesburg Festival Overture, composed on commission for the celebrations surrounding the seventieth anniversary of the founding of that city, was written between February and May 31, 1956, just after Walton had returned to Ischia from the Italian premiere of Troilus and Cressida in Milan. The Overture was premiered by Sir Malcolm Sargent and the South African Broadcasting Corporation Symphony Orchestra on September 25th, and introduced to England by Efram Kurtz and the Liverpool Philharmonic in November. While composing the Overture, Walton listened to a number of recordings from the African Music Society, and incorporated several native motifs into the finished work, most notably the important percussion flourishes heard near the middle of the piece. The work is laid out in a sort of modern rondo structure, with the returns of the bold, arching main theme separating episodes which accumulate four other fine melodies as the music unfolds. Frank Howes compared the Johannesburg Festival Overture with Walton’s two earlier works in the form: “It has a sleek elegance, a nonchalance of manner (really quite deceptive, for every effect is calculated with the composer’s customary care) in place of the youth of Portsmouth Point and the exuberant humor of Scapino.”


Symphony No. 4 in A minor, Op. 63
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

Composed in 1910-1911.
Premiered on April 3, 1911 in Helsinki, conducted by the composer.

Soon after the premiere of his Second Symphony in March 1902, Sibelius began to be bothered by painful symptoms in his throat and ears. He treated the complaints on and off for years, but they became so severe during a concert tour of England in the spring of 1908 that he cancelled the rest of his engagements in that country and returned home immediately to Finland, where a benign tumor was diagnosed in his throat. Several surgeries were required, but the cancer was eventually removed and his health restored. The composer’s encounter with his own mortality, however, forced a probing evaluation of his life and his creative spirit, and it was in the Fourth Symphony that his thoughts coalesced in what may well be his most powerful and introspective music. “A symphony is not just a composition in the ordinary sense of the word,” he wrote in his diary in November 1910, “it is more of an inner confession at a given stage of one’s life.”

The inspiration for the Fourth Symphony, or, perhaps more accurately, the revelatory moment of focus and understanding that it sought to transmute into purely musical terms, occurred during a trip that Sibelius made in September and October 1909 to Koli Mountain in northeastern Finland with his brother-in-law, the painter Eero Järnefelt. (The published score was dedicated to Järnefelt.) The composer’s biographer Karl Ekman described the scene: “Wherever one turns one’s gaze, it is met by inspiring impressions: the autumnal Lake Pielisjärvi, with its bluish grey waves, their tumultuous dance occasionally enlivened by a flash of sun; the bare white rocks; the broken landscape around the mountain; the view of the Russian border over an endless sea of forest.” The trip also stirred memories of Sibelius’ honeymoon stay in the area seventeen years before, and the whole experience caused him, as Professor Erik Tawaststjerna wrote, “to see his life in perspective.” Sibelius returned to his home at Järvenpää, twenty miles north of Helsinki, and confided to his diary: “Koli. One of my life’s greatest experiences. Many plans. ‘La montagne’ [“The mountain”].” He began sketching the Symphony immediately, and played some preliminary ideas for it to his friend and benefactor Axel Carpelan before Christmas. “I have thought a very great deal about the Symphony,” Carpelan responded. “What you played for me from ‘The Mountain’ was the most impressive thing I have yet heard from your pen. I long to hear the Symphony in its glowing orchestral garb.” Encouraged by Carpelan’s praise, Sibelius worked eagerly on the new piece during the first months of 1910, but then had to put it aside for concert tours and other compositional projects until the fall. From that time until it was completed in April 1911, the Symphony dominated the composer’s thoughts and correspondence, seemingly serving as a sort of personal catharsis for him. His English friend and biographer, Rosa Newmarch, wrote, “I think that by this time, the physical and spiritual crises through which Sibelius had passed during the previous years were rolling away from him like a spent thunderstorm, and that he saw his path unfolding before him more surely and more serenely than ever before.” The Fourth Symphony, austere, brooding, unsettled, groping toward the light, represented the playing out of the opposing forces of hope and mortality in Sibelius’ life to achieve not so much of a sense of optimism as of mature acceptance, the same quality that gives the late music of Gustav Mahler its searing impact. “The most potent kind of optimism,” wrote Harold Truscott, “is founded on the fullest realization of the frailty of humanity, coupled with belief in humanity’s power to overcome its own most powerful faults. Sibelius expressed this in what is, for me, the greatest thing he ever did — the Fourth Symphony.”

As might be expected of such a personal work, the A minor Symphony is couched in an idiom exactly appropriate to its content, a style totally unconcerned with facile entertainment — “there is nothing, absolutely nothing of the circus in it,” Sibelius told Mrs. Newmarch. The composer presented the new Symphony as a completely abstract creation, repudiating its earlier associations with his trip to Koli Mountain when they appeared in print at the time of the premiere, and offering no other literary or musical information about the composition. The work, the most rigorously ascetic and stylistically advanced in all of Sibelius’ output, bewildered the audience at its first performance, given under the composer’s direction in Helsinki on April 3, 1911, and met with misunderstanding or outright hostility when it was introduced to Gothenburg, London and Boston. Walter Damrosch prefaced his performance in New York by saying that he was presenting the piece out of a sense of duty to its distinguished composer rather than as an expression of his own opinion regarding its merits. The Symphony, however, also had its early supporters — Toscanini abjured audience reaction and played the work twice on the same concert — and has since come to regarded by those who have studied Sibelius’ work most carefully as his greatest achievement, though the music continues to present a thorny prospect upon initial acquaintance. (The critic Elmer Diktonius dubbed this the “Barkbrod” Symphony, recalling the times when poverty compelled Finnish peasants to eke out their flour for baked bread with the addition of ground tree bark.) There is perhaps no piece in the entire orchestral repertory that better repays careful listening than Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony — like the great verities of life, which this music allows us to touch more closely, it can be fully revealed only with time and familiarity.

The Fourth Symphony, like the most sublime creations of Beethoven’s last years, proceeds more through the unfolding of musical processes than by the recreation of traditional formal types. The first movement, for example, invokes the dynamic and dramatic qualities of sonata form without clearly following its expected patterns. The stern opening gesture in the low strings and bassoons (which should sound “as harsh as fate,” according to the composer) presents one of the fundamental moods of the movement and the Symphony — stark melancholy bordering on abjection — which here serves the function of a principal theme. A mournful song in the solo cello prolongs the initial emotion. A passage containing brass chords that erupt into angry snarls and calming rustic calls from the horns leads to an episode of sweeter sonorities and more halcyon character, comparable to a traditional second theme area. The center of this highly concentrated movement is occupied with an austere unison line of wayward direction followed by tremulous string figurations upon which ride long-held notes capped with a single sharp punctuation, which can be traced to the brass chords heard in the bridge passage. This music suddenly breaks off, and is followed by the original brass chords and horn calls and the sweet “second-theme” sonorities. A tiny ghost of the movement’s opening gesture (“main theme”) floats upward through the strings before it disappears into silence.

The second movement occupies the place of the customary scherzo, and borrows some elements of that genre’s form and style. The movement begins in a bright mood with an oboe theme that betrays a certain modal inflection perhaps influenced by folk music. This melody and a complementary one in a rather stilted duple meter converse for a few pages before a chirruping flute duet in slower tempo draws another expressive element into the music. The scherzo tries to re-establish itself, but its melodic intervals turn sour and its character becomes threatening, and the movement fails to reclaim its opening cheerful mood.

The introspective Largo grows from two fundamental thematic elements, each presented at first in fragmented form before achieving a lyricism that then quickly dissipates without achieving fulfillment. The first idea, a short, gently rising motive presented by the winds, soars on a brief flight high in the solo flute before breaking off abruptly. Further attempts to sustain the theme meet with only partial success. The second principal element is a widely arched motive rising from the depths of the cellos’ low register. Though it is repeated several times by the strings, the theme fails to escape from its melancholy moorings, and this deeply expressive movement ends, wrote Charles O’Connell, “in a kind of hypnotized weariness, wan and without color, given life and motion only by the ominous and inconclusive plucked notes from the basses.” This movement was the music that Sibelius requested be played at his funeral.

The finale, like the first movement, bears a tenuous relation to sonata form in its juxtaposition of opposing emotional states. The movement opens with the most optimistic and outgoing phrases of the entire Symphony, music which achieves an excited bustle enhanced by the silvery peals of the glockenspiel. The contrasting music is sad, almost morose, and is often suspended above a monotonous, world-weary accompaniment in the lower instruments. Once again, the heroic music of the beginning asserts itself, but is unable to sustain its vigor and gives way to the melancholy strains. Exhausted, the Symphony ends.


Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
William Walton

Composed in 1938-1939.
Premiered on December 7, 1939 in Cleveland, conducted by Artur Rodzinski with Jascha Heifetz as soloist.

It was with the First Symphony, completed in 1935 after almost three years of painstaking labor, that William Walton came to his artistic maturity. Though he had gained a wide notoriety with his Façade (1922), Viola Concerto (1929) and the oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast (1931), it was beginning with the Symphony No. 1 that, according to the British critic Colin Mason, “the impulse is no longer the desire to express for others, but the necessity to express for himself.” The growing evidence of Walton’s mastery was not missed by the greatest violinist of the day, Jascha Heifetz, who commissioned the composer to write a concerto for his instrument. Walton began the work in the fall of 1938, and journeyed to America the following May to confer about the details of the violin writing with the soloist; the score was finished in June. Walton was scheduled to return to the United States for the Concerto’s premiere by Heifetz and the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodzinski in December, but he was prevented from making the trip by the outbreak of war. The British premiere of the work, on November 1, 1941 at the Albert Hall, London, was the first time that Walton heard any of the music. Heifetz had made a recording of the piece with Eugene Goossens and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, but that document was lost at sea on the way to England, as was Heifetz’s own, carefully marked set of parts. (Fortunately, photocopies of the originals made in New York arrived safely in time for the performance.) By the time of the London performance, Walton had already enlisted in the British Armed Forces, and was assigned to the Ambulance Corps in London, but he was also allowed much time to compose, producing the “comedy overture” Scapino for the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Symphony, the ballets The Quest and The Wise Virgins, and scores for the films Major Barbara, Henry V and Hamlet during the War years.

In his Violin Concerto, Walton combined the rich harmony, exuberant rhythms and brilliant orchestration of the First Symphony with dazzling virtuosity and “a strong feeling for lyricism” (the composer’s words). The work is disposed in three movements, of which the first, as in his Viola and Cello Concertos, is the slowest and most introspective. The main theme consists of three motives: an accompanimental figure of open intervals given immediately by the clarinet; the principal song of the soloist, distinguished by its opening octave leap; and a smooth counter-melody in the bassoons and cellos. The complementary theme, a long, arched-shaped strain, appears in the flutes, violins and violas above a background of harp arpeggios and rustling clarinet figures. The extensive working-out of the motives that occupies the center of the movement leads to a condensed recapitulation of the main theme to close the movement.

The second movement, labeled “alla napolitana” (“in the Neapolitan manner,” perhaps influenced by the traditional dance, the tarantella — Walton loved Italy and lived on the Isle of Ischia in the Bay of Naples from 1948 until his death), is in the traditional three-part (A–B–A) scherzo form. The outer sections, which call for significant feats of virtuosity from the soloist, surround a Trio (subtitled “Canzonetta”) whose folk-like melody is initiated by the solo horn. The Finale opens with a staccato theme begun by the low strings and soon appropriated by the soloist. Contrast is provided by a long, lyrical inspiration entrusted to the solo violin which Alan Frank thought “may be the most haunting piece of melodic invention in all Walton’s work.” A development section and a full recapitulation of the themes in heightened settings are followed by a coda containing returns of the opening movement’s main theme (in sonorous double-stops) and the tarantella motive of the scherzo. The closing pages are a sort of modern quick march decorated with scintillating figuration from the soloist.


Finlandia, Op. 26, No. 7
Jean Sibelius

Composed in 1899; revised in 1900.
Premiered on November 4, 1899 in Helsinki, conducted by the composer.

In 1809, after more than five centuries of Swedish rule, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire. The country existed for most of the 19th century under the surprisingly benign rule of the Alexanders, but when Nicholas II ascended the Russian throne in 1894, Finland was increasingly subjected to a harsher governance. Nikolai Ivanovich Bobrikov, who had earned a reputation for ruthlessness during his administration of the Baltics, arrived in Helsinki in 1898 as the Tsar’s chief representative. A few months later, Bobrikov issued the so-called “February Manifesto,” which greatly curtailed the rights of the Finns by restricting their freedom of speech and assembly, conscripting them into the Tsar’s army, forcing them to learn Russian as a second language, replacing them in the civil service with Russian appointees, and stifling the press. During the following months, the Finns responded to these outrages by staging “Press Celebrations,” ostensibly benefit events to aid the pension fund of the country’s hard-hit newspapers, but really thinly veiled displays of patriotic ferment.

For the “Press Celebration” of November 4, 1899, a series of elaborate tableaux vivants depicting episodes and heroes from Finnish history was planned for the Swedish Theater in Helsinki. Jean Sibelius, a young composer recently returned from study in Germany and Vienna and already established as one of the country’s leading musicians, was enlisted to supply the music: an opening prelude followed by an introduction and incidental music for each of the six tableaux. According to one press report, in the closing tableau (titled “Finland Awakes”), “The Grand Duchy faces a bright future under the enlightened rule of Tsar Alexander II during the 19th century.” The opening lines of the scene’s text, however, speak not of halcyon colonialism but of incipient revolution: “The powers of darkness menacing Finland have not succeeded in their terrible threat. Finland awakes ...” The orchestral movement that Sibelius provided as preface for this tableau, which he called “Suomi” (the Finns’ name for their country), matched its subject in patriotic fervor. The piece was presented with great success a few weeks later by the conductor and life-long champion of Sibelius’ music, Robert Kajanus, at a Helsinki Philharmonic concert, and played in a revised version with the now-familiar title Finlandia by those performers at the Paris International Exposition in 1900. Bobrikov sought to suppress Finnish performances of the work under its potentially inflammatory title, so Finlandia, when heard at all in its home country during the following years, was given under such innocuous names as “Impromptu” and “Finale.” (A piano reduction issued in Helsinki in 1900 with the title Finlandia had only a limited circulation.) Concert promoters in other European countries, seeking to avoid embroilment in northern political disputes, billed the piece as Vaterland (Germany) or La Patrie (France). Finlandia was the music that solidified Sibelius’ international reputation (Toscanini performed it at La Scala, Milan in 1904; the American premiere occurred in New York the following year), and it became a focus for world-wide sympathy with the plight of the Finns. In 1905, a year after Bobrikov had been assassinated, Caesar-like, in the halls of the Finnish Senate, Nicholas II granted sweeping concessions to the Finns (the country became independent of Russia as a result of the First World War), and Finlandia could at last be heard freely in its homeland.

The hymnal theme of Finlandia, one of the most famous melodies in music, has a directness and simplicity that suggest folksong, yet Sibelius insisted, “I have never used a theme that was not of my own invention. Thus the thematic material of Finlandia is entirely my own.” (In his biography of the composer, however, Harold E. Johnson stated that the opening measures are nearly identical with those of a then-popular composition for male chorus titled Arise, Finland! written by Emil Genetz in 1881.) As a preface to this inspirational melody, Sibelius provided a portentous introduction of sullen brass chords, which are subsequently appropriated by the full orchestra, and a vivacious passage of soaring optimism. A broad statement of the hymn’s opening phrases serves as a grand coda for this timeless document of musical nationalism.