Program Notes }
back to the woods, he tries to shoot her. In
the forest, the now grownup Vixen falls in
love with the handsome Fox, and they have
a litter of little cubs. But the Vixen remains
a free and mischievous creature, and when
she taunts the Poacher by stealing his
chickens, he kills her.
Janácek, however, did not see this as a
tragic ending. Instead, he added a final
scene in which the Gamekeeper returns
to the forest and has a dream in which the
Vixen, whom he has grown to love, seems
to have returned to life. But it turns out
that the new little fox is the Vixen’s daughter, her exact replica. The music rapturously
celebrates the miracle of Nature’s continuing renewal. Now enlightened about the
interlocking relationship between all living
beings, the Gamekeeper throws away his
gun for good.
The orchestral suite we’ll hear was not
created by the composer himself, but by
the distinguished British conductor Sir
Charles Mackerras. The suite’s music is
drawn from the opera’s first act. Janáček’s
creative approach was to build up his music
from powerful short melodic motives that
he continuously repeated and developed.
Mackerras has preserved the composer’s
unique sound world— spare and pungently
colorful—which creates a hypnotic portrait
of the natural world he loved so well.
Instrumentation: Four flutes, two piccolos, two
oboes, English horn, three clarinets, piccolo
clarinet, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three
trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp,
celeste and strings.
Piano Concerto in A Minor
Edvard Grieg
Born in Bergen, Norway, June 15, 1843; died in
Bergen, September 4, 1907
When the adolescent Edvard Grieg
showed exceptional musical promise, he
was sent off at age 15 to Leipzig, Germany
because Norway — not yet an independent country — had no conservatory to
train him. Although he chafed at Leipzig's
rigid pedagogy and at German music
in general, Grieg did eventually find a
27TH SEASON
sympathetic teacher in Ernst Wenzel, who
had been a friend of Robert Schumann.
Wenzel passed on his love of Schumann's
music to the young Norwegian, and when
in 1858 Edvard heard a performance of
Schumann's Piano Concerto played by
Schumann’s wife, Clara, he was enthralled
by the work. Ten years later, while composing his own Piano Concerto in the
same key of A minor, he would draw on
Schumann's concerto for inspiration.
Although Grieg's Piano Concerto
followed the traditional form of the
Romantic, central-European concerto, it
was the subtle use of Norwegian folk influences plus his own genius that kept the
work from being a clone of Schumann’s.
This is a work that glories in its
multitude of appealing themes — very
personally Grieg’s own — and its highly
successful blending of tender lyricism
with virtuoso display. Its first movement
dispenses with the customary orchestral
exposition: just a dramatic timpani roll
galvanizes the soloist into action. His
vertiginous three-octave plunge begins
with a three-note melodic pattern — a
descending half-step, following by a
descending third — that is common in
Norwegian folk music and became known
as the “Grieg motive.” Woodwinds then
introduce the folkish principal theme,
animated by crisp dotted rhythms. It also
has a smoothly lyrical second idea, which
the piano makes more rhapsodic with
swirls of arpeggios. In a slightly slower
tempo, cellos sing a warm, romantically melancholic second theme. After a
brief development, the opening music is
reprised, coming to a sudden halt for a big
cadenza for the soloist composed by Grieg.
The slow movement travels far from
the home key of A minor into the very
distant D-flat major. Muted strings open
with a weary theme, saturated in sorrow;
notice the eloquent contributions here
from the solo horn and cello. The piano's
wistful response is woven of exquisite fast
figurations. In a new phase, the piano
passionately declares the pain implied in
this melody before the movement dies out
in elegiac beauty.
A short bridge passage intervenes to
return the key of D-f lat to A minor before
EDWAR D POLOCHICK
Artistic Director
fret not.
Human-powered beauty...
MAESTRO SERIES
MASS APPEAL
Sat., Mar. 8, 2014 | 7:30pm †
OPERA AND BEYOND
Sat., May 3, 2014 | 8pm *
MANSION SERIES
CUETO-ROLDÁN DUO
Sun., Apr. 6, 2014 | 2:30pm °
LYCEUM SERIES
FLOPS TO TOPS: OPERA’S
GREATEST FALSE STARTS
Thurs., Apr. 24, 2014 | 7pm ^
* Gordon Center For Performing Arts,
3506 Gwynnbrook Ave, Owings Mills
† St. Pius X Church, 6428 York Rd.
° The Engineers Club, 11 W. Mt. Vernon Pl.
^ Location, in private Mount Vernon homes,
announced the week of the Lyceum talk.
ALL TICKETS $20
each
cabalto.org | 410.625.3525
MArch– April 2014 |
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