Program Notes: Concert  #3, February 7, 2004  "A Night in Vienna"

By Composer In Residence Bruce Brown

Glittering elegance and old world charm come to mind immediately at the mention of Vienna.  This fabled capital was enormously important in the development of music, especially in the Classical era, when Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert elevated their art to astonishing new heights.  The city is famous for great waltzes, a magnificent opera house and one of the finest symphony orchestras in the world. 

The JSO is pleased to welcome pianist Katrine Gislinge, who has traveled to Jackson from Norway to help them celebrate “A Night in Vienna,” a program of glorious, exhilarating music to warm the soul at the coldest time of the year.

Overture to Die Fledermaus (“The Bat”)

Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899) was already famous as the “Waltz King of Vienna” when he wrote his enormously-popular operetta Die Fledermaus, which was first performed on April 5^th, 1874 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. 

The rollicking story first appeared as a comedic play Das Gefangis (“The Jail”) by Berliner Roderich Benedix.  The public responded enthusiastically, and it was soon adapted into French vaudeville and two British versions.  It wasn’t long before two gentlemen in Vienna, Karl Haffner and Richard Genée, converted it into a libretto for an operetta and began searching for a composer to write the music.

Strauss was the obvious choice, but he was reluctant for at least a couple of reasons.  Everyone seemed to love his waltzes, and he had tried twice before to write an operetta without much success.  Why should he risk it again?  Fortunately for posterity Strauss had fallen in love with a well-known operetta singer named Jetty Treffz.  She had become his wife, and as soon as she saw the libretto she knew this piece would be a big hit.  He had no choice but to write the score, which has been performed almost constantly ever since.

            Die Fledermaus also has a strong connection with our orchestra. A JSO performance of it several years ago was the first full-scale opera production in Jackson, and Maestro Osmond and his talented wife Melissa received great accolades for their performance in the cast of a production in Saginaw.

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra #23 in A Major, K. 488

            The twenty seven piano concertos of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) provide a remarkable record of his developing genius.  He wrote the first when he was only eleven and the last just months before he died.  It’s worth noting that many of them were also written at this wintry time of year.  The theaters in Vienna closed during Lent, attendance at concerts boomed, and Mozart always wanted to have a fresh concerto or two to perform.  He was in great demand as a performer, often playing three or four concerts a week during this busy season.

            Mozart’s twenty-third concerto was completed on March 2, 1786, only three weeks before the twenty-fourth concerto!  It’s key of A major was considered to be a special one by many musicians at the time.  Journalist C.F. Shubart wrote in 1874 that it brought to mind “declarations of innocent love, a satisfaction with one’s state of affairs; hope of seeing one’s beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.”  This concerto does indeed possess all of those qualities, along with a deeper, yearning dimension that makes it particularly expressive.

Mozart didn’t publish it during his lifetime, but that fact shouldn’t be taken as a sign that he didn’t like it.  In one of his many letters to his father he said that it was one of "the compositions that I keep for myself or for a small circle of music-lovers and connoisseurs, who promise not to let them out of their hands."  The only way to hear it was to attend one of his concerts.

Symphony No. 8 in F major, Opus 93

The eighth symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) often suffers unfairly in comparison to powerful seventh and astonishing ninth.  The ebullient eighth recalls the older, classical style he inherited from Mozart and Haydn, but still reveals Beethoven’s forward-looking brilliance. 

 Beethoven hadn’t written a symphony in four years when he wrote the seventh and the eighth in a remarkable, four-month burst of creativity.  The eighth appeared during summer and fall of 1812 and was first performed on February 27, 1814.

            One of the unique aspects of this symphony is that it doesn’t have the customary slow movement.  The opening movement is strong with an air of contentment.  The playful second derives from a canon Beethoven wrote for his friend Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, the inventor of the metronome.  Repeating notes in the woodwinds make it easy to imagine the insistent ticking sound that has tormented so many music students.  The movement ends with humorous abruptness, as if a youthful aspiring musician could take no more!  The third movement is a minuet, perhaps an homage to Haydn, Mozart and even Beethoven’s younger self. 

The Finale is full of drama and humor, along with some of Beethoven’s most imaginative writing.  It’s sometimes said that Beethoven didn’t know when to stop, and he might have even been poking a little fun at himself in this symphony.  Near the end the tonic chord, the ‘home base’ in the key, is heard no less than 45 times.