CONCERT PROGRAM March 1-2, 2013 Sir Andrew Davis, conductor Tasmin Little, violin DELIUS/ The Walk to the Paradise Garden: Intermezzo from arr. Beecham A Village Romeo and Juliet (1899-1901) (1862-1934)/ (1879-1961) ELGAR Violin Concerto in B minor, op. 61 (1905, 1909-10) (1857-1934) Allegro Andante Allegro molto Tasmin Little, violin INTERMISSION BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, op. 60 (1806) (1770-1827) Adagio; Allegro vivace Adagio Allegro vivace Allegro ma non troppo 23 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Sir Andrew Davis is presented by the Whitaker Foundation. Tasmin Little is the Mr. and Mrs. Whitney R. Harris Guest Artist. The concert of Friday, March 1, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. James R. von der Heydt. The concert of Saturday, March 2, is underwritten in part by a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. Alyn V. Essman. These concerts are presented by the Thomas A. Kooyumjian Family Foundation. Pre-Concert Conversations are presented by Washington University Physicians. These concerts are part of the Wells Fargo Advisors Series. Large print program notes are available through the generosity of Mosby Building Arts and are located at the Customer Service table in the foyer. 24 THE FOOD OF LOVE BY PA U L SC H I AVO TIMELINKS 1806 BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, op. 60 Napoleon enters Berlin 1899-1901 DELIUS/ arr. Beecham The Walk to the Paradise Garden: Intermezzo from A Village Romeo and Juliet Boer War begins, Dutch and British battle for control of South Africa 1909-10 ELGAR Violin Concerto in B minor, op. 61 Shackleton Expedition nearly reaches South Pole Music, Shakespeare proposed, is “the food of love.” Certainly music and romantic feelings have been closely connected for centuries. In the Middle Ages, troubadours sang long ballads about love and lovers, and hopeful suitors have serenaded the objects of their affections since perhaps even before then. Love has been the subject of countless operas, but even instrumental compositions can convey, and frequently have, the subjective qualities of romantic ardor. The two pieces that form the first half of our concert do just that, one overtly, the other secretly. The Walk to the Paradise Garden, from Frederick Delius’s opera A Village Romeo and Juliet, is a musical evocation of the rapture of innocent young love. Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto is more robustly expressive, but also less explicit. Was it written as a secret love letter? That certainly is possible. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4, which we hear after intermission, is not ostensibly a work about love, though much of it is lovely; it does not intimate romance, though several sections of the work foretell the coming of Romanticism in music. But this composition doesn’t need to be “about” anything we can name, nor tell us anything specific. Its discourse is eloquent in the abstract language of music, and that is more than enough. 25 FREDERICK DELIUS The Walk to the Paradise Garden: Intermezzo from A Village Romeo and Juliet Born January 29, 1862, Bradford, England Died June 10, 1934, Grez-sur-Loing, France First performance February 21, 1907, at the Berlin Komische Oper, conducted by Fritz Cassirer STL Symphony Premiere November 12, 1942, Vladimir Golschmann conducting Most Recent STL Symphony Performance October 3, 2008, David Robertson conducting Scoring 2 flutes oboe English horn 2 clarinets 2 bassoons 4 horns 2 trumpets 3 trombones timpani harp strings Performance Time approximately 8 minutes COSMOPOLITAN COMPOSER Born in England to German emigrant parents, Frederick Delius was raised in Yorkshire but spent parts of his youth in Paris, Florida, and Norway before moving to Leipzig in order to study at the conservatory there. Eventually, he settled in France, where he spent most of his adult life. Delius’s music reflects his cosmopolitan background. His delicate orchestration suggests his French contemporaries. Wagner, Grieg, and Debussy influenced his harmonic shadings. His most memorable work often conveys a sense of quiet rapture rather than the imperial pomp or Romantic effusion of his compatriot Elgar. He was, then, not so much an English composer as an international one. TRAGIC YOUNG LOVE Delius wrote six operas over the course of his career. The finest is A Village Romeo and Juliet, which tells of a young couple in rural Switzerland. They have grown up near to each other, and their childhood friendship has ripened into love. But a bitter feud has divided their fathers. With any hope of an open union between them impossible, the young pair sets out for an old riverside inn called the Paradise Garden. There they come to understand that their ardor cannot exist in a corrupt world, and they choose to drown together in the river, their love-death uniting them forever. Composed between 1899 and 1901, A Village Romeo and Juliet waited until early 1907 for its first performance. At this time the composer realized the necessity of an entr’acte to cover a scene change just before the end of the opera. He met that need by writing a short tone poem, The Walk to the Paradise Garden. It pictures the young lovers alone together, intoxicated with love, walking toward the river and their destiny. Their passion is a gentle one, the music tells us, and the softly radiant sensuality they feel is entirely in harmony with the beautiful countryside they walk through. 26 EDWARD ELGAR Violin Concerto in B minor, op. 61 A MYSTERIOUS DEDICATION Edward Elgar began writing his Violin Concerto in the spring of 1909, but the piece took shape slowly. Only in August of the following year did it reach completion. The composer prefaced the completed score with an enigmatic motto in Spanish. Translated, it reads: “Here is enshrined the soul of…..” Those five dots posed a mystery, and not for the first time in one of Elgar’s orchestral works. The composer had already admitted the existence of a secret theme and “dark saying” in his famous Enigma Variations, provoking reams of speculation about what these might be. With the Violin Concerto, though, there is more evidence as to Elgar’s cryptic meaning, and it points convincingly to one Alice Stuart-Wortley as the unnamed soul invoked in the preface. The daughter of painter John Everett Millais and wife of a music-loving member of Parliament, Mrs. Stuart-Wortley met Elgar in 1902. Over the next seven years she and her husband occasionally visited and corresponded with the Elgars. By 1909, their letters had become frequent and warm in tone. Their visits also grew more frequent. This was just when Elgar was beginning concentrated work on the Violin Concerto, which now developed in tandem with his friendship with Alice Stuart-Wortley. Indeed, she seems to have played a crucial role in inspiring the work. WINDFLOWER Evidence for this inspiration lies in Elgar’s letters to Alice, which repeatedly discussed the concerto, solicited her opinions about it and urged her to visit and hear new passages as he completed them. Moreover, the composer took to calling Alice “Windflower” and began referring to several of the concerto’s melodies by that term. In April 1910, for example, in a letter addressed to “My dear Windflower,” he wrote her: “I have been working hard at the Windflower themes, but all stands still until you come & approve!” But if it is Alice Stuart-Wortley’s soul that the Violin Concerto enshrines, just what were Elgar’s feelings for her? Here the clues are less certain. Upon completing the score, the 27 Born June 2, 1857, Lower Broadheath, near Worcester, England Died February 23, 1934, Worcester, England First Performance November 10, 1910, in London, Fritz Kreisler was the soloist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the composer STL Symphony Premiere November 27, 1992, Pinchas Zuckerman was soloist, with Leonard Slatkin conducting Most Recent STL Symphony Performance January 14, 2006, Gil Shaham was soloist, with David Zinman conducting Scoring solo violin 2 flutes 2 oboes 2 clarinets 2 bassoons contrabassoon 4 horns 2 trumpets 3 trombones tuba timpani strings Performance Time approximately 48 minutes composer wrote to a friend that “The Concerto is full of romantic feeling,” but declined to elaborate. It is striking that the melodies Elgar designated as “Windflower themes” are among the most ardent ideas in the work. That Alice and Elgar were romantically involved must therefore be counted as a possibility, one that the unexplained disappearance of many of their letters makes no less likely. Still, nothing proves such a liaison, and both parties were devoted to their respective spouses. Ultimately, this matter, like so much else about Elgar, remains unsettled, the truth perhaps encoded safely in the music of the Violin Concerto. Adhering to traditional concerto design, Elgar begins the work with an orchestral exposition. This passage begins straightway with the melody that forms the principal subject of the first movement. Soon a timpani roll supports the statement of the first “Windflower theme.” Elgar only hints at a serene third subject during this orchestral introduction, leaving its full presentation to the solo instrument, which soon takes the lead in expanding these various thematic ideas. The central Andante opens calmly, but the music grows increasingly impassioned, climaxing in a passage bearing one of Elgar’s favored character indications: “Nobilmente.” The composer closes the movement by returning to the mood and material of its opening measures, at one point combining the two principal melodies of the Andante in counterpoint. Years later, he confided to a friend: “This is where two souls merge and melt into one another.” From a formal standpoint, the finale is unusual. It begins as a spirited romp through a series of thematic ideas. The central portion of the movement brings an unusual cadenza soliloquy—unusual because the featured instrument receives accompaniment from the orchestra, and because this passage uses themes from the opening movement. Elsewhere, the orchestra recalls the Andante also, making this a thoroughly retrospective finale. 28 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major STANDING BETWEEN GIANTS Were Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony the work of any other composer active during the first decade of the 19th century, it would establish its author as one of the major musical figures of his day. As it is, this work stands between two of its creator’s most dramatic and popular compositions, his Third and Fifth symphonies, and rather in their shadow. Robert Schumann’s metaphoric description of this work as “a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants” leaves much to be desired as characterization, but it does suggest the enduring perception that the Fourth represents something of a lesser achievement among Beethoven’s middle-period symphonies. It is unfortunate that the towering stature of its neighbors should obscure the virtues of this symphony, which Beethoven composed in 1806. It is a finely crafted and beautiful work that fills the formal outline of the Classical symphony with music often quite Romantic in character. Nowhere is this Romantic element more evident than in the opening Adagio, a somber fantasy that ventures to say more than we would expect from an introduction to a symphonic first movement. Through forty spellbinding measures it explores dark and mysterious tonal regions, then suddenly breaks forth with two loud chords and a motif of insistently rising scales into the brilliant light of the Allegro. Beethoven launches directly into the principal theme of this, the main body of the first movement, with the full weight of his orchestral forces. The second subject, by contrast, is given out in a succession of woodwind solos. A slender melody announced by the clarinet and echoed by the bassoon completes the exposition of the movement’s themes. Following the obligatory development passage, in which a lovely countermelody plays against the first subject, a concise recounting of the movement’s several themes closes this initial portion of the work. The ensuing Adagio is among the loveliest movements Beethoven ever wrote. Typically, it juxtaposes two principal melodies. The first 29 Born December 16, 1770, Bonn Died March 26, 1827, Vienna First Performance March 1807, in Vienna with Beethoven conducting, although the time and place of the first performance of this symphony is uncertain STL Symphony Premiere November 21, 1924, Rudolf Ganz conducting Most Recent STL Symphony Performance October 23, 2010, Nicholas McGegan conducting Scoring flute 2 oboes 2 clarinets 2 bassoons 2 horns 2 trumpets timpani strings Performance Time approximately 34 minutes appears in the violins over a gently rocking accompaniment in the strings; the second is introduced by the clarinet. Beethoven weaves the extensions, variations, and recollections of these ideas into an exquisite dreamlike fantasy. The third movement is a scherzo in all but name, with a contrasting episode, or “Trio,” heard twice, with Beethoven juxtaposing the wind and string choirs to fine effect. The concluding measures offer a surprise from the horns. The finale gives us many of Beethoven’s most characteristic gestures: sudden dynamic contrasts, abrupt offbeat accents, contrapuntal echoes of thematic fragments. The movement races along in moto perpetuo figuration to its coda, where the composer, in high humor, draws the principal theme out in slow motion before dashing to the final measure. Program notes © 2013 by Paul Schiavo 30 SIR ANDREW DAVIS WHITAKER GUEST ARTIST The English conductor Sir Andrew Davis is Music Director and Principal Conductor of Lyric Opera of Chicago, a position he has held since 2000. Davis’s contract with Lyric Opera of Chicago was recently extended through the 2020-21 season. He conducts Strauss’s Elektra, Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, Massenet’s Werther, and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg during Lyric’s 2012-13 season. In the 2011-12 season Davis led performances of Boris Godunov, Ariadne auf Naxos, and The Magic Flute at Lyric Opera, as well as a subscriber appreciation concert featuring soprano Renée Fleming (Lyric’s creative consultant) and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The season also brought Sir Andrew to the Metropolitan Opera, Melbourne, London, Bamberg, Edinburgh, and Toronto. Davis was recently named Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, a position he began in January 2013. He is Conductor Laureate of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (having previously served as Principal Conductor), Conductor Laureate of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (having previously had the longest tenure as Chief Conductor since BBCSO founder Sir Adrian Boult) and former Music Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera. In 1992 Davis was bestowed with the title of Commander of the British Empire for his services to British music, and in 1999 he was made a Knight Bachelor in the New Year Honours List. In 1991, he received the Royal Philharmonic Society/Charles Heidsieck Music Award. A native of Hertfordshire, Davis studied at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was an organ scholar before taking up the baton. He lives in Chicago with his wife Gianna Rolandi, director of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago. 31 Sir Andrew Davis most recently conducted the St. Louis Symphony in November 2009. TASMIN LITTLE Paul Mitchell MR. AND MRS. WHITNEY R. HARRIS GUEST ARTIST Tasmin Little makes her St. Louis Symphony debut with these concerts. Tasmim Little has played with many of the world’s greatest orchestras in a career that has taken her to every continent of the world. In addition to her regular solo performances, she has play/directed orchestras such as Royal Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, London Mozart Players, English Chamber Orchestra, Norwegian Chamber, European Union Chamber Orchestra, and Britten Sinfonia. In March 2012 Little gave the world premiere of the completed version of Roxanna Panufnik’s Four World Seasons with the London Mozart Players. This live national broadcast on BBC Radio 3 was the opening concert of the Music Nation weekend, marking the beginning of the cultural events leading up to the London 2012 Olympic Games. Performances in 2012-13 include her debuts with the Wisconsin Symphony and her return to Warsaw for two performances of Brahms’s Violin Concerto, return performances in Perth and Tasmania, her second curation of a three-day festival of chamber music at London’s Kings Place, a celebrity recital in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall with Martin Roscoe, performances in London’s South Bank Centre, and five recording projects for Chandos Records. In 2012, Little became an OBE (officer of the Order of the British Empire ) for services to music, announced as part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Birthday Honors List. She is an Ambassador for the Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts, is a Fellow of the Guildhall of Music and Drama, and has received Honorary Degrees from the Universities of Bradford, Leicester, Hertfordshire and City of London. She plays a 1757 Guadagnini violin and has, on kind loan from the Royal Academy of Music, the “Regent” Stradivarius of 1708. 32