Rhapsodies of Rhythm
Thursday, August 10, 2006

Program 5

Purple Rhapsody for Viola and Orchestra
Joan Tower (born in 1938)

Composed in 2005.
Premiered on November 4, 2005 in Omaha, conducted by JoAnn Falletta with Paul Neubauer as soloist.

Joan Tower was born in New Rochelle, New York on September 6, 1938, and went to South America with her family at age nine. Her father was a mining engineer whose assignments necessitated frequent family moves to Bolivia, Chile and Peru, but he always found a piano and a teacher to nurture his daughter’s musical interests. Tower returned to the United States at the age of eighteen to attend Bennington College and Columbia University, where she earned a doctorate in composition. After finishing her professional training, she taught at Greenwich House, a settlement house in New York, while also composing and performing as a pianist. In 1969, she helped found the Da Capo Chamber Players, a highly acclaimed ensemble which won the 1973 Naumburg Award for Chamber Music; she continued her association as pianist and composer with the Da Capo Players for fifteen years. Since 1972, Tower has taught at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where she is now Asher Edelman Professor of Music. She is also active in working with performing groups and students in residencies throughout the country, and has served as Co-Artistic Director of the Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival; she has been Composer-in-Residence for the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York since 1999.

Joan Tower’s compositions have been performed by major orchestras, ensembles and soloists throughout America and abroad. A performance of Sequoia by the New York Philharmonic and conductor Zubin Mehta was broadcast from the United Nations on WNET-TV. She was named “Musician of the Month” by the September 1982 issue of High Fidelity/Musical America, and was the subject of a documentary program produced by WGBH-TV and broadcast nationally on PBS; the film won Honorable Mention at the 1983 American Film Festival. Her many other distinctions include awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Koussevitzky Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and Massachusetts State Arts Council, as well as the prestigious Grawemeyer Award from the University of Louisville in 1990, the first woman ever to receive that honor. She has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, named a recipient of the Delaware Symphony’s Alfred I. DuPont Award for Distinguished American Composers, and inducted into the Academy of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. In January 2005, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall featured a retrospective concert of her work. Joan Tower is the first composer chosen for the ambitious new “Made in America” commissioning program, a collaboration of the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet the Composer made possible by Ford Motor Company Fund, through which her composition Made in America was performed during the 2005-2006 season by smaller-budget orchestras in every state in the union.

The composer writes, “My Purple Rhapsody is dedicated with affection to the wonderful violist Paul Neubauer, who made it all possible. Paul and I had first worked together in 1995 on my clarinet quintet, Turning Points (commissioned by the Chamber Society of Lincoln Center), and then I wrote a short piece called Wild Purple for unaccompanied viola that he performed at my sixtieth birthday concert in New York. After that, he asked me to write a concerto for him, for which he found the funding (from the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation in the Library of Congress) and lined up seven orchestras as a consortium to perform it — Kansas City Symphony, Omaha Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Virginia Symphony, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, Peninsula Music Festival Orchestra and the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.

“The sound of the viola has always reminded me of the color purple — a deep kind of luscious purple. In fact, the first piece I wrote for Paul, in 1998, is called Wild Purple (where the ‘wild’ refers to the high energy and virtuosity of the work). In this concerto, which I titled Purple Rhapsody, I try to make the solo viola ‘sing’ — taking advantage on occasion (not always) of the instrument’s inherent melodic abilities. This is not an easy task, since the viola is one of the tougher instruments to pit against an orchestra. In fact, for my orchestration of this work, I left out several instruments (horns and oboes) to thin out the background in order to allow the viola to come forward (even in strong passages) with a little more ‘leverage.’ I am hoping that at the climaxes of some of these ‘rhapsodic’ and energetic lines, the orchestra does not overwhelm the solo instrument.”

Piano Concerto No. 3
Béla Bartók (1881-1945)

Composed in 1945.
Premiered on February 8, 1946 in Philadelphia, conducted by Eugene Ormandy with György Sándor as soloist.

There were a few signs during the last year of Bartók’s life that his fortunes were improving. Performances of his works, which had been woefully infrequent since his arrival in America in 1940, were occurring with more regularity, undoubtedly inspired by the fine success that his Concerto for Orchestra had enjoyed at its recent premiere under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers had provided him with much-needed rest cures in New York State and North Carolina, and was also seeing that he got adequate medical attention, something his meager income could not easily cover. His publisher had agreed to provide him with a small annual stipend above his royalty payments. Several commissions for new works arrived, including one for a viola concerto from William Primrose and another for a two-piano concerto from Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robinson. There was a glimmer of hope that the punishingly difficult years of economic hardship and artistic neglect might be coming to an end. Concerning his health, however, there were nothing but ominous portents.

Bartók, never a robust man, suffered from serious ailments all the while he was in the United States. Some of his problems were never diagnosed, but he was often anemic, and during the last half-year, his health failed steadily and rapidly. The ultimate cause of his death was leukemia, and that illness was taking a sorry toll during those last months. After the premiere of the Concerto for Orchestra in December 1944, he turned his attention to Primrose’s commission for the work for viola, and spent much of the time during the spring, when he was physically able, in its composition. To be as efficient with his time and strength as possible, he devised a sort of musical shorthand that could indicate, for example, a complete chord with a single slash.

In the early summer of 1945, he took time from the Viola Concerto to begin another concerto, one for piano. This work may have been occasioned by the commission from Bartlett and Robinson, though seemingly reliable sources differ on this point. What is known is that Bartók became enflamed with the notion of writing a solo concerto, a concerto that his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory, could use as a vehicle for her own concert performances. He viewed the work as almost a legacy that he could leave to his family in place of the money he never was able to earn. He labored feverishly on the Concerto during the summer, and by September 22nd, only four days before his death, he had finished the entire score except for the last seventeen measures. His thoughts for the close of the piece were encoded in the shorthand he had devised for the Viola Concerto, and Tibor Serly, his friend and disciple, deciphered and scored these remaining bars; Serly also completed the Viola Concerto from Bartók’s sketches.

The Third Piano Concerto, like the Concerto for Orchestra, conveys a different aura than many of Bartók’s earlier works. Subdued are the thorny harmonic idiom, the complex textures, the percussive phrasing of the first two Piano Concertos, the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and the String Quartets. In their place is an idiom more easily accessible — mellower in mood and more immediate in emotional expression. The style, however, is still quintessentially Bartókian, and the composer sacrificed none of the awesome control of form and materials that he displayed in previous compositions. John Weissmann, in his appreciation of the Concerto, wrote, “[This work has] a lightness of texture, transparency of treatment, and serenity of atmosphere, achieved with an ease of expression that is obviously the result of his comprehension of ultimate essentials.”

The Concerto is clear and compact in its structure. The opening movement, in sonata form, begins with a rustling of strings that introduces the first theme, a tune played in octaves by the soloist which displays the melodic leadings and jagged rhythms of Magyar folk song. An extended group of secondary ideas, all with smoother rhythms, stands in place of a true development section. The piano presents the recapitulation of the first theme, thickened harmonically, amid the resumed rustling of the strings. Some of the subsidiary ideas are repeated before the movement ends with a tiny tag, a summary statement by flute and piano that condenses the essential melodic and rhythmic germs of the preceding music.

The first portion of the second movement (Adagio religioso) recalls the technique and serenity of a Renaissance motet in its close imitative entries and chordal texture. Piano and strings alternate phrases in this music, the most beatific that Bartók ever wrote. The atmospheric central section of the movement is almost theme-less, consisting rather of whisperings in the strings and twitterings in the winds that Tibor Serly said were based on bird calls Bartók had noted down on his retreat at Asheville, North Carolina during 1944. The chorale returns in the woodwinds, accompanied by a restrained commentary from the soloist.

Following almost without interruption, the finale, with its lusty, irregular metric groupings, exudes the festive air of a vigorous peasant dance. The movement is a rondo whose fugal first episode is announced by taps on the solo timpani. Following an abbreviated repeat of the main theme, the timpani heralds another episode, this one more extended, but also fugal in texture. The coda utilizes the rondo theme to bring the Concerto to a brilliant, whirling conclusion. This work, with its rich endowment of the vital human spirit, embodies Bartók’s simple artistic credo: “I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.”

Symphony No. 6 in D major, Op. 60
Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904)

Composed in 1880.
Premiered on March 21, 1881 in Prague, conducted by Adolf Cech.

For the extraordinary man who described himself as “just an ordinary Czech citizen,” patience had its reward — Dvorák was nearing forty before he received any satisfying recognition for his music. In 1877 he submitted his set of Moravian Duets to a government commission in Vienna that was seeking to identify and encourage new composers throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The charming Duets scored a palpable hit. The conductor-pianist and commission member Hans von Bülow wrote to Dvorák, “Next to Brahms, [you] are the most God-gifted composer of the present day.” Brahms, also on the panel, adopted Dvorák as a protégé — he told his publisher, Fritz Simrock of Berlin, that he was to add the Czech composer to his roster, and commission from him some Slavonic Dances to be issued immediately. (Much of Simrock’s profit, as may be imagined, came from Brahms’ music.) The Dances and three Slavonic Rhapsodies for orchestra were completed and published in 1878, and proved to be among Simrock’s most popular and lucrative ventures. (Dvorák sold these works for a flat fee, and did not share in the considerable fortune generated by his own music.) “I can hardly tell you, esteemed Master,” Dvorák wrote to Brahms, “all that is in my heart. I can only say that I shall all of my life owe you the deepest gratitude for your good and noble intentions towards me, which are worthy of a truly great man and artist.” Dvorák’s renown, which was to carry him through, as he called it, “the great world of music,” dates from his meeting with Brahms and the international success of the evergreen Slavonic Dances.

On November 16, 1879, Dvorák was in Vienna for a performance by the Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Hans Richter of his Slavonic Rhapsody No. 3, “which was very well received,” he reported. “I was called before the audience. I was sitting beside Brahms at the organ and Richter pulled me forward. I had to come out. I must tell you that I won the sympathy of the whole orchestra at a stroke and that, of all the new pieces they had tried, and Richter told me that there had been sixty, my Rhapsody was liked the best. Richter actually embraced me on the spot and was very happy, as he said, to know me, and promised that the Rhapsody would be repeated at a special concert at the Opera House. I had to assure the Philharmonic that I would send them a symphony for the next season. The day after the concert, Richter gave a banquet at his house, to which he invited all the Czech members of the orchestra. It was a grand evening which I shall not easily forget for as long as I live.”

By 1880, Dvorák had already completed five symphonies — all unpublished — but he did not feel them representative of his best achievements, so he chose to write a new work for Vienna. He could not take up the score until the following August, but once begun he progressed rapidly on it: the sketch was completed in just three weeks and the orchestration in another three (on October 15, 1880), though the composer’s student and biographer Karel Hoffmeister noted that the music “had been slowly maturing in Dvorák’s mind.” Dvorák took the score at once to Vienna to play at the piano for Richter, who, the composer wrote to his friend Alois Goebl, “liked it very much indeed, so that after every movement he embraced me.” The premiere, by Richter and the Philharmonic, was set for December 26th.

Shortly before the scheduled premiere date, Richter informed Dvorák that the performance would have to be postponed because there was no time to rehearse and perform the music in the Philharmonic’s busy schedule. (The Philharmonic was, and is, a self-governing orchestra whose members are mainly employed as the ensemble of the Vienna Opera. Their heavy commitments allow them to give only a limited number of concerts every season.) The premiere was put off until March, Richter counseling that introducing such a grand and worthy new work during the frivolous carnival season of January and February was inappropriate. Pleading personal and family problems, however, Richter once again canceled the first performance, and Dvorák started to ask some questions of his Viennese friends. It seemed that there was sufficient anti-Czech feeling in those politically volatile days of the Dual Monarchy to cause local resentment against a young Czech composer who would have two important premieres in successive years. Dvorák, who had no taste for such quintessentially Viennese political machinations, gave the honor of the Symphony’s premiere to the Prague Philharmonic and conductor Adolf Cech, with whom he had played in the viola section of the orchestra of the National Provisional Theater in Prague earlier in his career. The work was first heard on March 25, 1881, in Prague. Despite his difficulties in getting the Symphony produced, Richter remained its ardent champion. Dvorák inscribed the score with a dedication to the conductor, and had Simrock send him one of the first copies. “On my return from London I find your splendid work awaiting me, whose dedication makes me truly proud,” Richter wrote to Dvorák in January 1882. “Words do not suffice to express my thanks; a performance worthy of this noble work must prove to you how highly I value it and the honor of the dedication.” Richter finally conducted the Symphony on May 15, 1882, in London.

Following soon after the appearance of the widely popular Slavonic Dances, Dvorák’s Sixth Symphony scored another immediate success. “No sooner was it published,” wrote Karel Hoffmeister, “than it made its way abroad to Leipzig, Rostock, Graz, Cologne, Frankfurt, New York [in 1883; Dvorák conducted it there in 1892, during the first year of his American sojourn] and Boston, finally attracting even the reserved public of England.” Though Dvorák had written five (then unpublished) symphonies before this one, the score was issued as “Symphony No. 1,” a situation arousing some surprise among audiences at the music’s maturity and accomplishment. “The Symphony showed itself to be a ripe work by an experienced composer whose artistic development had led him to his own individual form of expression,” wrote Frantisek Bartos. “With its maturity, individuality, sure touch and masterly construction of symphonic form, the composition proved itself to be the work of a master.”

The Symphony No. 6 splendidly combines elements of the symphonic tradition as transmitted by Brahms with what Otakar Sourek called Dvorák’s “process of idealization” of Czech folk music. This characteristic style of Dvorák, uniting two great streams of concert and vernacular music, richly illumines the Symphony’s opening movement. The influence of Brahms (particularly of his Second Symphony of 1878) is clear in the music’s sylvan sonorities, motivic development and careful control of the ebb and flow of the lines of tension, while the folk quality is heard in the tunefulness of the themes and the many harmonic plangencies. Music so rich in reference is bound to excite the imagination of certain commentators, and Otakar Sourek heard in this movement “the humor and pride, the optimism and passion of the Czech people come to life, and in it breathes the sweet fragrance and unspoiled beauty of Czech woods and meadows.” Following the first movement are a lovely Adagio (Sir Donald Tovey claimed to “know of few pieces that improve more on acquaintance”) and a fiery Furiant, filled with the same powerful shifting accents borrowed from Bohemian dance that enliven so many of the Slavonic Dances. The bracing last movement, according to Hans-Hubert Schönzeler, “is the most convincing finale Dvorák ever wrote.”

©2006 Dr. Richard E. Rodda