Oklahoma City Philharmonic, CLASSICS 2: Oct. 10, 2009
GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792-1868)
Overture to L’Italiana in Algeri (“The Italian Woman in Algiers”) (1813)
EDOUARD LALO (1823-1892)
Symphonie espagnole for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 21 (1874)
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Scherzando: Allegro molto
III. Intermezzo: Allegretto non troppo
IV. Andante
V. Rondo: Allegro
Corey Cerovsek, violin
JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-97)
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 (1877)
I. Allegro non troppo
II. Adagio non troppo
III. Allegretto grazioso (Quasi Andantino)—Presto ma non assai
IV. Allegro con spirito
Overture to “The Italian Woman in Algiers”
Gioachino Antonio Rossini
Born: February 29, 1792 in Pesaro, Italy
Died: November 13, 1868 in Paris, France
Work composed: May 1813 (perhaps beginning in late April)
Work premiered: May 22, 1813 at the Teatro San Benedetto, Venice
Instrumentation: Different editions of this work use greatly variant orchestrations. The edition used in this performance calls for two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings
In 1863 Gioachino Rossini signed off in the postscript to his Petite Messe solennelle (“Little Solemn Mass”), a Mass that was none too petite and far from solemn, with a comment aimed on high: “Thou knowest, O Lord, that I was born to write opera buffa. Rather little skill, a bit of heart, and that’s all. So be Thou blessed and admit me to Paradise.” On the basis of his contributions to opera buffa, I would imagine that he got in, although he certainly had a few peccadilloes to answer for. 
Rossini knew himself well. By then 71 years old and on the verge of his 17th birthday—the fact that he was born on February 29 brought him untold delight—he had written plenty of songs and piano pieces, a substantial catalogue of sacred music, and even a handful of thoroughly serious operas on topics tragical, historical, and Biblical; but there was no getting around the fact that his most towering achievement had been as one of music’s greatest comedians—as a composer of opera buffa. Writing great comedy, of course, is far from easy; if you doubt it, spend an evening enthroned before the television watching a succession of sit-coms and growing increasingly depressed. Or, conversely, spend an evening enmeshed with any of Rossini’s comic operas, by the end of which you are likely to feel five pounds lighter and certain that the world is not so hopeless after all.
When Rossini wrote L’Italiana in Algeri (“The Italian Woman in Algiers”), a two-act dramma giocosa (“jocular drama”), he had been writing stage works for only three years. Still, he was hardly a beginner since, amazing to say, in those three years ten of his operas has already been staged. The last of these, his Tancredi (an opera seria after Voltaire, with its mega-hit aria “Di tanti palpiti”) was given at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice in February 1813, and in May the same city’s Teatro San Benedetto unveiled L’Italiana in Algeri. Both were immensely successful at their premieres and they became Rossini’s first operas to gain international acclaim. L’Italiana in Algeri would be the first of the composer’s operas to receive a production in Germany (in Munich in 1816) and in France (in Paris in 1817).
L’Italiana in Algeri is based on a libretto by Angelo Anelli that had already been set as an opera in 1808 by Luigi Mosca, but it was Rossini’s version that hit the mark. Like Tancredi, it offered one aria that was destined for a life on the A-list: “Cruda sorte! Amor tirrano!,” which is sung by Isabella, the “Italian Woman” of the title, near the beginning of the opera. We have here a typical opera buffa plot, though one that today may make audiences uncomfortable because of its cultural assumptions and portrayals. Mustafà, the Bey of Algiers, is annoyed by his wife and decides to get rid of her by marrying her off to his Italian slave, Lindoro, who in his captivity is languishing for love of Isabella, his girlfriend back in Italy. As it happens, Isabella is captured by pirates, who deliver her to Algiers. Following various misapprehensions, failed schemes, and some shtick involving sneezing, Isabella abducts her boyfriend and sails back to Italy, leaving the Bey to return to his wife.
The novelist Stendhal (Henri Beyle), who published an admiring if not unfailingly accurate biography of Rossini in 1824, loved L’Italiana in Algeri but complained about its Overture, “The overture of L’Italiana is charming, but it is too frivolous; and that, indeed, is a great fault!” Chacun à son goût, to be sure, but really Stendhal does seem rather churlish on this occasion. It’s a thoroughly delightful opening for a preposterous comedy, full of delicious wind solos and Rossini’s signature crescendos in which broadening orchestral textures are wed to increasing volume.
-- Note by James M. Keller©
Symphonie espagnole for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 21
Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo
Born: January 27, 1823 in Lille
Died: April 22, 1892 in Paris
Work composed: 1874
Work premiered: February 7, 1875 in Paris, with Pablo de Sarasate as soloist and Edouard Colonne conducting
Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle, snare drum, harp, and strings, in addition to the solo violin
After mastering both violin and cello at the Lille Conservatory, Édouard Lalo moved to Paris, where he numbered the painter Eugène Delacroix among his friends and performed in orchestras under Hector Berlioz. His earliest compositions include a pair of symphonies; he apparently destroyed both, perhaps already sensing that his inclination led towards chamber music of the sort that Mendelssohn and Schumann had lately promulgated in Germany. In 1855 he became a charter member of the Armingaud String Quartet, playing viola initially and later second violin. Created expressly to make the masterpieces of German chamber music better known in France, the ensemble proved critically influential in re-establishing chamber music’s prestige in Parisian circles. While relentlessly championing the music of others, Lalo grew more and more exasperated by the rejection of his own works. In 1859 he founded his own quartet, and at about the same time he abandoned composition entirely for a five-year period of frustration. Fortunately it would prove a temporary hiatus, and in his later years he would produce most of the pieces that have kept his name alive.
In Lalo’s modest catalogue of only 45 opus numbers chamber pieces outnumber large-ensemble works, and to this day chamber music aficionados occasionally seek out his three piano trios. He also produced a good many art songs, inspired in this direction by his wife, who was an accomplished contralto. But his reputation chiefly rests on a single work: the Symphonie espagnole (“Spanish Symphony”) for Violin and Orchestra, composed in 1874. It is not Lalo’s only concerted work since it was immediately preceded by an F-major Violin Concerto (1873) and would be followed by such works as an Allegro Appassionato for Cello and Orchestra (1875), a Cello Concerto (1877), a Piano Concerto (1888-89), a so-called Russian Concerto for Violin, and a handful of short works for violin and orchestra. But of all these the Symphonie espagnole is the only piece of Lalo’s to receive regular performances today, with the Cello Concerto standing as a distant runner-up.
It is a well-rehearsed truism that the best Spanish music was written by French composers, and whether or not you choose to agree absolutely with that pronouncement you will likely be content to acknowledge that Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole deserves a place near the top of the Franco-Spanish list, along with such later works as Bizet’s Carmen, Chabrier’s España, and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole. In fact, the Symphonie espagnole has a good deal of authentic Iberia in its genes. The surname Lalo is itself Spanish, a testament to the fact that the composer descended from an ancient Spanish family, though the Lalos had dispersed to Flanders and Northern France already in the 16th century.
What’s more, it was written with a Spanish violinist in mind: the esteemed virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate, for whom Lalo had composed his F-major Violin Concerto the year before. That earlier work displayed nothing that would be considered Spanish in flavor, nor did it offer much else that would ensure it a place in the repertoire. The Symphonie espagnole could not be more different, and Sarasate scored a major hit when he brought his national insight to the interpretation of the score.
Although it’s a concerto in the way that it gives virtuosic prominence to the violin and builds on the drama between the soloist and the orchestra, the Symphonie espagnole is not structured as one would expect a 19th-century concerto to be. Instead of the normal three (or maybe four) movements, we have five, each of which is within hailing distance of seven minutes in length except for the Scherzando, which is rather shorter. The first movement announces grandiose pretensions, but the remainder tends towards the lightweight and ingratiating, recalling the style of violin concertos by Wieniawski and Vieuxtemps. Rhythms and melodic turns that we are sure to recognize as Spanish pepper the piece once it gets past its preludial movement, and the very famous finale capably infuses the spirit of Iberia into a delightful, quick-paced Rondo.
-- Note by James M. Keller©
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73
Johannes Brahms
Born: May 7, 1833 in Hamburg
Died: April 3, 1897 in Vienna
Work composed: Summer 1877
Work premiered: December 30, 1877, with Hans Richter conducting the Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverein in Vienna
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings
“I shall never write a symphony!” Brahms famously declared in 1872. “You can’t have any idea what it’s like to hear such a giant marching behind you.” The giant was Beethoven, of course, and although his music provided essential inspiration for Brahms, it also set such a high standard that the younger composer found it easy to discount his own creations as negligible in comparison.
Four more years would pass before Brahms would finally sign off on his First Symphony. Once he conquered his compositional demons he moved ahead forcefully. Three symphonies would follow that first effort in relatively short order: the Second in 1877 (only a year after he completed the First), the Third in 1882-83, and the Fourth in 1884-85. Each is a masterpiece and each displays a markedly different character. The First is burly and powerful, flexing its muscles in Promethean exertion; the Second is largely sunny and bucolic; and the Third, the shortest of his four, though introspective and idyllic on the whole, mixes in a hefty dose of heroism. And with his Fourth Symphony, Brahms would achieve a work of almost mystical transcendence born from the opposition of melancholy and joy, severity and rhapsody, solemnity and exhilaration.
Brahms did much of his best work during his summer vacations, which he usually spent at some bucolic getaway or other in the Austrian countryside. The summer of 1877, during which he completed his Second Symphony, he spent in the resort town of Pörtschach, on the north shore of the Wörthersee (known in English, to the extent it is known at all to English speakers, as Lake Wörth) in the southern Austrian province of Kärnten (Carinthia), just a bit west of the university city of Klagenfurt. Brahms was greatly taken with this locale, which was new to him that summer, and he remarked in a letter to the critic Eduard Hanslick (his friend and cheerleader) that there were “so many melodies flying about that you must be careful not to tread on any.” He would return to the same spot the following summer to write his Violin Concerto and yet again the year after that, when he was occupied with his G-major Violin Sonata (Op. 78). Others found the place similarly inspiring: not many years later, Mahler would build a summer getaway on the lake’s southern shore, and Alban Berg would compose his Violin Concerto while residing along Lake Wörth in the summer of 1935.
Indeed, Brahms’ Second Symphony was viewed from the outset as a “landscape” symphony, a sort of equivalent to Beethoven’s Pastoral. “It is all blue sky, babbling of streams, sunshine, and cool green shade,” wrote Brahms’ musical physician-friend Theodor Billroth. “By Lake Wörth it must be so beautiful.” Later commentators have added many a fine point to the discussion; but the general idea remains, and on the whole the Second Symphony is accepted as a sort of nature-idyll. Having said that, it is also important to remark that this is, after all, a large-scale work by Brahms, and that fact in itself mandates that it will not be simplistic in its emotional stance, that even the most idyllic landscape will offer plenty of acreage for clouds and shadows, for the alternation of serenity and melancholy.
Another Brahmsian trait is that of not being in a hurry. This aspect is fully on display in the Second Symphony, which is the longest of his four. The movement markings themselves betoken the overall spirit of relaxation and moderation. The first movement is fast (Allegro) but “not too much so” (non troppo), just as the second movement is “Not too slow” (Adagio non troppo). Brahms labels his third movement ambivalently, wanting it to fall somewhere in the region of Allegretto grazioso (“pleasantly sort-of-quickly”) and Quasi Andantino (“as if sort-of-slowly”), before galloping off in a Presto (“very quick”)—but in this case Presto ma non assai (“Very quick, but not very much so”). Only in the finale does the composer not pull his punches so far as tempo is concerned, allowing the orchestra to proceed relatively unbridled at Allegro con spirito (“Fast, with high spirits”).
-- Note by James M. Keller©