BSO Autumn Concert

      Saturday 21 November 2009, 7.30pm

       St Mary's Church, Banbury

• Elgar Overture In the South
• Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Weber
• Bartok Concerto for Orchestra

You are warmly invited to join us for this exciting concert of 20th century symphonic works.

The Elgar was written in the period 1903 - 1904 and both the Hindemith and Bartok in the very different days of the early to mid 1940's.

Programme notes and images are added below:

Programme Notes from www.wikipedia.com

Elgar's In the South (Alassio), Op.50 is a concert overture composed by Edward Elgar during a family holiday in Italy in the winter of 1903 to 1904.

The subtitle "Alassio" is a town on the Italian Riviera where Elgar and his family stayed. He strolled around during the visit, while buildings, landscape and history of the town provided him the sources of inspiration. He later recalled:

Then in a flash, it all came to me - streams, flowers, hills; the distant snow mountains in one direction and the blue Mediterranean in the other; the conflict of the armies on that very spot long ago, where I now stood - the contrast of the ruin and the shepherd - and then, all of a sudden, I came back to reality. In that time I had composed the overture - the rest was merely writing it down.

The première of the work was conducted by the composer with the Hallé in 16 March 1904 in the last of three festival concerts of his own work at the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden.

Perhaps the best known part of the piece is the central melody "Canto Popolare", played by solo viola. In July of the same year, Elgar took the "Canto Populare" section from the piece and fitted it to a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley as a song under the title In Moonlight, and later he made several instrumental versions.

The piece is about 20 minutes long and does not have separate movements. The main descending theme is echoed throughout the sections of the orchestra all through the piece. The viola solo is of particular note due partly to its length, being on such an underused instrument, but also because of the contrast it creates with the rest of the piece which is very bold. There are large legato passages between the strings and french horns, and the rest of the brass add tremendous excitement in the middle of the piece with loud chords separated by large intervals

The orchestral work Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Weber was composed by Paul Hindemith in 1943.

The idea of composing a work based on Carl Maria von Weber's music was first put forward to Hindemith by the choreographer and dancer Léonide Massine, who originally suggested that Hindemith compose a ballet based on Weber's music. After studying Weber's music, Hindemith watched one of Massine's ballets and disliked it, so he wrote the Symphonic Metamorphosis instead.

The Symphonic Metamorphosis is in four movements:

1. Allegro
2. Scherzo (Turandot): Moderato - Lively
3. Andantino
4. March

The Weber themes are taken from incidental music Weber wrote for a play by Carlo Gozzi based on the same Turandot legend that later inspired Giacomo Puccini and others. Hindemith and his wife used to play Weber's music for two pianists, and Hindemith used some of these little-known pieces -- Op. 60/4 (first movement) (no. 253 in the Jähns catalog of Weber's works), Op. 10/2 (third movement) (J. 10), and material from the two piano duets Op. 60/2 and 60/7 (J. 242 and 265) for the themes for the other movements. Weber's piano duets were written around 1801 and 1818-9, his Turandot music in 1809.

The work was first performed on January 20, 1944 in New York City (Artur Rodziński conducting.)

Bartok Concerto for Orchestra

The work was written in response to a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation (run by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky) following Bartók's move to the United States from his native Hungary, which he had fled because of World War II. It has been speculated that Bartók's previous work, the String Quartet No. 6 (1939), could well have been his last were it not for this commission, which sparked a small number of other compositions, including his Sonata for Solo Violin and Piano Concerto No. 3.^[1] Bartók revised the piece in February 1945, the biggest change coming in the last movement, where he wrote a longer ending. Both versions of the ending were published, and both versions are performed today.

Bartók makes extensive use of classical elements in the work;^[1] for instance, the first and fifth movements are in sonata-allegro form. The work combines elements of Western art music and eastern European folk music, especially that of Hungary, and it departs from traditional tonality, often using non-traditional modes and artificial scales.^[1] Bartók researched folk melodies, and their influence is felt throughout the work; for example, the second main theme of the first movement, as played by the 1st oboe, resembles a folk melody, with its narrow range and almost haphazard rhythm. The drone in the horns and strings also indicates folk influence (see example).^[1]

The piece is scored for 3 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (one doubling cor anglais), 3 clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, side drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tamtam, 2 harps and strings.^[3]

First movement

The first movement, called Introduzione by Bartók, is a slow introduction of Night music type that gives way to an allegro with numerous fugato passages. This movement is in sonata allegro form.^[2]

Second movement

The second movement, called "Giuoco delle coppie" or "Game of the pairs" by Bartók (but see note below), is in five sections, each thematically distinct from each other, with a different pair of instruments playing together in each section.^[2] In each passage a different interval separates the pair—bassoons are a minor sixth apart, oboes are in minor thirds, clarinets in minor sevenths, flutes in fifths and muted trumpets in major seconds.^[3] The movement prominently features a side drum which taps out a rhythm at the beginning and end of the movement.

While the printed score has the second movement as Giuoco delle coppie (Game of the pairs), Bartók's manuscript had no title at all for this movement at the time the engraving-copy blueprint was made for the publisher. At some later date, Bartók added "Presentando le coppie" (Presentation of the pairs) to the manuscript, and addition of this title was included in the list of corrections to be made to the score. However, in Bartók's file blueprint the final title is found, and because it is believed to have been the composer's later thought, it is retained in the revised edition of the score.^[4] The original 1946 printed score also had an incorrect metronome marking for this movement. This was brought to light by Sir Georg Solti as he was preparing to record the Concerto for Orchestra and the Dance Suite. Solti writes:

When preparing these two works for the recording I was determined that the tempi should be exactly as Bartók wrote and this led me to some extraordinary discoveries, chief of which was in the second movement of the Concerto for Orchestra. The printed score gives crotchet equals 74, which is extremely slow, but I thought that I must follow what it says. When we rehearsed I could see that the musicians didn't like it at all and in the break the side drum player (who starts the movement with a solo) came to me and said "Maestro, my part is marked crotchet equals 94", which I thought must be a mistake, since none of the other parts have a tempo marking. The only way to check was to locate the manuscript and through the courtesy of the Library of Congress in Washington we obtained a copy of the relevant page, which not only clearly showed crotchet equals 94, but a tempo marking of "Allegro scherzando" (the printed score gives "Allegretto scherzando"). Furthermore Bartók headed it "Presentando le coppie", (Presentation of the pairs) not "Giuoco delle coppie", (Game of the pairs). I was most excited by this, because it becomes a quite different piece. The programme of the first performance in Boston clearly has the movement marked "Allegro scherzando" and the keeper of the Bartók archives was able to give us further conclusive evidence that the faster tempo must be correct. I have no doubt that thousands of performances, including my own up to now, have been given at the wrong speed!^[5]

Third movement

The third movement, called Elegia by Bartók, is another slow movement, typical of Bartók's so-called "Night music". The movement revolves around three themes which primarily derive from the first movement.^[2]

Fourth movement

The fourth movement, called Intermezzo interrotto by Bartók, consists of a flowing melody with changing time signatures, intermixed with a theme parodying and ridiculing the march tune in Dmitri Shostakovich's "Leningrad" Symphony (No. 7) [1]. The theme is itself interrupted by glissandi on the trombones and woodwinds. In this movement, the timpani are featured when the second theme is introduced, requiring 12 different pitches of the timpani over the course of 20 seconds. The general structure is "ABA–interruption–BA."^[2]

Fifth movement

The fifth movement, called Finale by Bartók and marked presto, consists of a whirling perpetuum mobile main theme competing with fugato fireworks and folk melodies. This is also written in sonata allegro form.^[2]