| Program Notes -
March 6, 1993
Berlioz - Benvenuto
Cellini won the coveted Prix de Rome in 1830 which required an Italian residence. Although quite reluctant at first to go, Berlioz loved Italy; the climate, the countryside, the temperament. One of the many works influenced by his stay was his opera Benvenuto Cellini, the story of a sculptor. By all accounts, including Berlioz's, the opera wasn't very good. A convoluted plot and weak libretto doomed the work from the outset. The overture and the quasi curtain rasier to the second act, Roman Carnival, have successfully survived. After an opening flourish and beautiful melody first heard by the English Horn there is a frolicking Italian dance - a saltarello. Many people wonder what would have happened if Mozart had lived longer than his brief 35 years. How many more masterpieces would we have? Every clarinettist wakes up each morning and thanks God Mozart didn't live three months less. The Clarinet Concerto, the first important concerto of its kind, was completed in the last few months of Mozart's life and has been a model for every wind concerto written ever since. The work was originally intended for basset horn, a slightly larger instrument than the clarinet. The music is some of Mozart's most elegant and graceful. Tchaikovsky Symphony #5! War horse, chestnut, maybe, but masterpiece for sure. It is difficult to believe that this work was last performed by the JSO in 1979 at Jackson High. It's impossible to imagine given that formula that it won't be performed again by this orchestra until 2007. Eleven years elapsed between Tchaikovky's 4th Symphony and his 5th. This is unusual especially given the popularity of the 4th. During the interim he had a disastrous marriage, a failed suicide attempt and a nervous breakdown. Tchaikovsky had a benefactress and close friend, Mine von Meck with whom he corresponded regularly but never met in person. His letters to her regarding the Symphony #5 shed light on what was going through his mind while composing the work. "I shall work very hard to prove not only to others but to myself that I am not yet played out. Very often, doubt seizes me and I ask myself isn't it time to stop writing music, haven't I overstrained my imagination, hasn't the wellspring itself dried up? This must happen sometime if I live on for ten or twenty years, and how do I know that the time is not arrived when I should lay down my arms.. I don't remember if I told you I have decided to write a symphony. Ken I began it, composition came hard, but now it looks as if inspiration as come... We shall see. "There is also a programmatic outline for the first two movements which Tchaikovsky roughed out before setting to work. Introduction - Complete resignation before Fate, followed by murmurs, doubts plaints, reproaches against X. II Shall I throw myself in the embraces of faith ? X is believed to refer to the core of his emotional problems - his struggle to accept his homosexuality. Ile third movement is not a typical minuet or scherzo but a beautiful waltz; one of the most perfect he ever composed. The melody was inspired by a street singer Tchaikovsky heard while in Florence. Ile last movement begins with the same theme as the first but his time much more positive and determined. Tchaikovsky conducted the first performance at St. Petersburg in November of 1888 and was not at first happy with his newest creation and in another letter to Mme von Meck stated that it was a failure. "there is something repellent, something superfluous, patchy and insincere, which the public instinctively recognizes..." Ibis period of depression was a prelude to composing Sleeping Beauty. In Hamburg a year later a performance changed his mind about the work and he accepted it as a great success. The four movements are linked together by a single theme heard at the outset of the first movement and then transfigured in the second and third and given a full "major" treatment in the coda of the last. This actually was a practice developed by Berlioz in his 1830 Symphonie Fantastique.
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