Details

Toggle open/close

George Perle

Sinfonietta No. 1 (SPCO Commission)

Jaime Martín, conductor

George Perle’s dual pursuits as composer and theorist were inextricably linked, and fostered a singular body of work that ranks among the most valuable contributions to music in the twentieth century. Perle was one of the first composers in this country to take interest in the innovations of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg. But rather than strictly follow those composers’ twelve-tone method, Perle devised a system of “twelve-note tonality,” which incorporated elements of serialism with the fundamentals of tonal music (i.e., the concept of a composition’s being rooted in a home key). (In more candid moments, Perle suggested half-jokingly that he developed his compositional language based on a misunderstanding of Schoenberg, et al.) His catalogue of solo, chamber, and orchestral music represents an essential part of the twentieth-century American repertoire.

Perle’s compositional sensibility resulted in music that was intellectually stimulating and emotionally immediate in equal measure. The importance to Perle of the visceral human element in complex musical structures is equally evident in his theoretical work: most famously, his groundbreaking analysis of the music of Alban Berg, which included a revelatory decoding of that composer’s Lyric Suite. Confronting one of the most opaque works in the literature, Perle revealed the Lyric Suite to be an encoded love letter to Berg’s mistress, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, rife with melodic ciphers (e.g., the combination of their initials, H-F-A-B—German notation for B-F-A-B-flat, the work’s germinal cell) and numerological considerations.

George Perle’s Sinfonietta No. 1 was commissioned and premiered by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in 1988, on a program that also featured Mozart’s Piano Concerto in F Major, K. 459: an apt pairing, for, filtered through Perle’s unmistakably modern idiom, the Sinfonietta harkens back to the Classical era. Its three-movement (fast-slow-fast) format, delicate orchestration, and, at times, its harmonic language evoke the music of the eighteenth century. A review in the St. Paul Pioneer Press noted: “The first movement is a work of Mozartean elegance, its spiky harmonies notwithstanding. And the last is filled with gentle humor, not the least in its valedictory reference to the music of the opening movement.” As with many of Mozart’s concerti, the central slow movement here is the Sinfonietta’s emotional centerpiece, featuring a tender dialogue between solo oboe and clarinet.

Patrick Castillo ©2014

Toggle open/close
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Sinfonia concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra

Jaime Martín, conductor
Kyu-Young Kim, violin
Maiya Papach, viola

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s sinfonia concertantes blend the style of the Classical solo concerto with the instrumental configurations of earlier Baroque orchestral works, such as George Frideric Handel’s concerto grossi and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Brandenburg concertos. Scored for two solo instruments — the violin and viola — and oboes, horns, and strings, this piece was inspired during Mozart’s visit to Paris. Concerto-like works for a group of two or more solo instruments and orchestra were quite popular in Mannheim and Paris, leading Mozart to compose several such works in the late 1770s and early 1780s.

The Sinfonia concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra was likely written in late 1779. Although we have surviving documentation detailing the premieres of many of Mozart’s other works, all information about who he wrote this particular piece for and who may have first performed it remains speculative. Contemporary scholars place it stylistically in the early part of Mozart’s middle period. While it is the culmination of his writing for solo strings, it demonstrates musical characteristics of his more youthful works.

This piece is divided into three movements that alternate between fast and slow tempos. The viola, an instrument which is often somewhat overlooked in music from this time period, plays an especially important role as both a soloist and a member of the orchestra. Mozart creates a rich harmonic texture and full orchestral timbre by dividing the orchestral violas into two separate parts. Additionally, the solo viola part is written in D major, while the remainder of the parts are in E-flat major. Thus, the viola is to be tuned one half step higher than usual, a technique called scordatura. This increases the brilliance of the solo viola’s sound.

The grand first movement begins with an opening tutti section made up of six contrasting melodic themes, and the solo passages add an additional five themes. The development section of the first movement is unusually based on a significant amount of new material, rather than being derived from the opening themes. The Andante second movement portrays a profound sense of tragic power. The work concludes with a brisk and triumphant Presto movement, which features horn calls and alternations of thematic material between the winds and strings.

Paula Maust ©2022

Intermission
Toggle open/close
Listen to Audio

John Corigliano

Snapshot: Circa 1909

Jaime Martín, conductor

John Corigliano ranks among his generation’s most acclaimed American composers. His numerous honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Grawemeyer Award, the Pulitzer Prize for his Symphony No. 2, two Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Composition, and an Academy Award for his film score to The Red Violin.

Though establishing his reputation with his earliest works’ conservative idiom (complemented by his oft-professed imperative that modern music remain accessible), Corigliano has cultivated a technique as rigorously progressive as it is inviting. Joshua Bell has praised Corigliano’s language as “unique and unmistakable, yet rooted in the grand traditions of the past. While his music is often harmonically complex and rhythmically challenging, he also dares to write a simple, beautiful melody.”

Corigliano composed Snapshot: Circa 1909 in 2003 for the Elements Quartet.

Composer's Note:

When the Elements Quartet asked me to write a piece inspired by a photograph, I immediately thought of one I have had since I was a child. It was taken in Greenwich Village in my grandparents’ Sullivan Street apartment, which I have only seen in photos.

The photographer came to do a group shot of my grandparents, whom I never met, and their six children. After taking that picture, the photographer was coaxed into doing a shot of my father and his brother Peter performing on violin and guitar.

The picture has never ceased to move me. My father looked about eight years old, wearing knickers and earnestly bowing his violin, while my uncle, then a teenager, held a guitar in an aristocratic position and stared at the camera.

In the short quartet inspired by the photo, the second violin plays a nostalgic melody, while the other strings pluck their instruments in a guitar-like manner. This solo is obviously the boy violinist singing through his instrument. After the melody is completed, however, the first violin enters, muted, in the very highest register. In my mind, he was playing the dream that my eight-year-old father must have had—of performing roulades and high, virtuosic, musing passages that were still impossible for him to master. This young violinist grew into a great soloist—my father, John Corigliano, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic for over a quarter century. He, as an adult, performed the concerti and solos that as a child he could only imagine.

The two violinists, boy and dream, join together at the end as the guitar sounds play on.

Patrick Castillo ©2014

Franz Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn

Symphony No. 94, Surprise (23 min)

Jaime Martín, conductor

About This Program

Approximate length 2:00

Led by Spanish conductor Jaime Martin in his SPCO debut, this program featured SPCO musicians Kyu-Young Kim and Maiya Papach performing Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante and an SPCO commission from the 1980s by George Perle. John Corigliano’s Snapshot, Circa 1909 was inspired by a family photograph of his father and uncle as children posing with a violin and guitar. In this piece, Corigliano imagines the dreamworld of his father as he aspired to become a world-class violinist. Haydn’s Surprise Symphony closed the program, displaying the prolific composer’s characteristic wit and ebullience.