WSO ~ Classics in the County

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Adagio and Fugue, K.546, C minor

Franz Schubert
Rondo for Violin and Strings,
D.438, A major

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Symphony IV in A major

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Two Melodies op. 53

Saturday, April 5, 2008

7:30 p.m.
Leamington United Mennonite Church, Leamington

Tickets: $32-$20

Marc Destrubé, Violin/Leader

Adagio and Fugue, K.546, C minor

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
B. January 27, 1756, Salzburg
D. December 5, 1791, Vienna

Composed 1788. Approx. 9 minutes.

Edited by Shelley Sharpe
In the 1780s Mozart and his colleagues or amateur-musician friends would hold Sunday musical gatherings, in which “nothing but Handel and Bach” was played. Bach’s influence is clearly felt in this composition, however, Mozart’s Fugue in C minor is no slavish copy of Bach’s style or baroque technique. Despite the intense counterpoint and stretto episodes, it is clearly a “Classical” fugue with homophonic cadences, neo-baroque figurations, and balanced proportions that betray its late 18th-century aesthetic.

Mozart also started writing an Allegro Prelude to pair with this two-piano Fugue, but abandoned it after only 22 measures. Five years later, in June 1788, he decided to arrange the Fugue for a four-voiced string ensemble, composing a new Adagio “Prelude” to precede it. As a string work, the Adagio and Fugue has enjoyed much more success than the two-piano Fugue ever did by itself.

The four-voiced scoring for strings fits naturally with the instrumentation of the string quartet. But in the manuscript score, Mozart assigns the “viola” part to “violoncelli” (plural), and the lowest voice to “contra basso.” Some scholars have suggested that these indications show he was thinking of a string orchestra rather than the one-per-part disposition of the string quartet.

The Adagio prelude creates an atmosphere of solemnity and seriousness. The dotted rhythms are intentionally heavy, consciously evoking the archaic style of the baroque French Overture, while the sudden pauses and dynamic changes recall the drama of Sturm und Drang. The jerking fugue subject is developed with the kind of imitative interplay Mozart usually employed in monumental sacred works such as the “Great” Mass in C and the Requiem.

Rondo for Violin and Strings, D.438, A major

Franz Schubert
B. January 31, 1797, Vienna
D. November 19, 1828, Vienna

Composed 1816. Approx. 14 minutes.

Edited by Shelley Sharpe
The brief and unhappy life of Franz Schubert reads like an Edward Gorey book: ignored by the musical establishment, all but unpublished in his lifetime, Schubert lived in poverty and died of syphilis in relative obscurity at the age of 31. End of story? Absolutely not.

One of the incandescent geniuses of classical music, Schubert penned more than 1000 works, including over 600 songs. “I write all day,” Schubert said to an inquiring visitor, “and when I have finished one piece I begin another.” His evenings were spent with a small circle of close friends at the local pub, or at informal recitals of his music, dubbed “Schubertiades”. The loss of potential masterpieces caused by his early death is expressed in the epitaph on his tombstone written by the poet Franz Grillparzer, “Here music has buried a treasure, but even fairer hopes.”

Composed in June 1816, Schubert’s Rondo for Violin and String Orchestra (D. 438) wasn’t published until 1897. It is in two parts: a lengthy Adagio spins a magical web of sound, over which our solo violinist dips and turns with cascading runs and enormous leaps. The following Rondo is light-hearted in nature, Mozartian in its simplicity. Based on a playful theme, the mood throughout is songful, light, and virtuosic in the extreme for our soloist.

Symphony IV in A major

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
B. March 8, 1714, Weimar, Germany
D. December 14, 1788, Hamburg
Approx.12 minutes.

By Dr. Ed Kovarik
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, second son of Johann Sebastian, grew up in the shadow of his elder brother Friedeman, and he left home at an early age to make his own way—first as a free-lance musician, then as court harpsichordist and accompanist to Frederick the Great, the flute-playing King of Prussia. Unlike his father and brothers, Emanuel never mastered the violin, for he was left- handed. This put him at something of a disadvantage when it came to the new instrumental music of the 1740s and 1750s. Emanuel did not have at his fingertips the conventional idioms of violin playing—the string crossings and double stops which were second nature to most early symphony composers. Whatever his works may lack in superficial brilliance, however, they more than make up for in depth of musical thought.

Emanuel wrote eighteen symphonies—a small number compared to the output of his younger contemporaries Haydn and Mozart. Like all of Emanuel’s symphonies, this one is in three movements.

The first movement, the Allegro ma non troppo leads us into the haunting slow movement, which bears the unusually descriptive tempo marking Largo ed innocentamente—very slowly and with innocence. The finale is ambiguous, sounding as if it might actually begin in the minor, another instance of Emanuel’s brilliant sleight of hand. (Final paragraph by Doug Briscoe)

Serenade in C major for Strings, op.48

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
B. May 7, 1840, Votkinsk, Russia
D. November 6, 1893, St. Petersburg

Composed in 1880 and premiered in St. Petersburg on October 30, 1881. Approx. 21 minutes.

By Dr. Ed Kovarik
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in May 1840, in a spacious country house in a provincial area in central Russia; his father, a mining engineer, was one of the most prominent men in the district. Pyotr began studying the piano at an early age, but with no thought of a musical career. In his early teens he was sent to St. Petersburg to study law and prepare for a career in government. Once there, however, he began taking private lessons in composition and eventually quit his job to study music at the new St. Petersburg Conservatory. Shortly after graduation he was appointed professor of harmony at the even newer Moscow Conservatory, and there he stayed for the next twelve years, producing orchestral music and a series of operas which are better known in Russia than they are in the West.

By 1876 he was well enough established to receive a special invitation to the first Wagner festival at Bayreuth. A year later he unwisely allowed himself to be married to an admiring young student some fifteen years younger than himself. Domestic life proved intolerable to the high-strung and sexually inverted composer, and he soon fled from Russia on the verge of a nervous collapse. Recuperating in Switzerland, he found financial security in the form of a generous annuity from a wealthy admirer named Nadezhda von Meck. He was able to resign his teaching position and travel freely in France, Germany, and Italy. From this period come a number of his sunniest works, including the lyric Serenade for Strings (1880).

Eventually he settled in a modest cottage at Klin, near Moscow, which remained his home thereafter. In his last years he undertook several highly successful concert tours conducting his own music; one of these took him to the east coast of the United States (1891). Two years later he was dead of cholera at the relatively young age of fifty-three.

Tchaikovsky was not a string player, but his writing for strings in the Serenade shows a technical mastery which we sometimes tend to overlook in his works for full orchestra. The first movement, “Piece in the form of a sonatina,” is a lively sonata without development preceded by a slow introduction; the second movement is one of Tchaikovsky’s most ravishing waltzes; the third movement is a brief, tender Elegy—a miniature masterpiece—and the finale (after a slow start) is a whirlwind folksong setting. At the end Tchaikovsky brings back the introductory section of the first movement to round off the work.

Marc Destrubé

Internationally recognised as a violinist of extraordinary talent, Marc Destrubé has been leader and Artistic Director of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra since its inception in 1990.

He began his training at the Conservatory of Music in his native Victoria, BC, followed by studies in Salzburg, at the University of Toronto, and privately with Norbert Brainin of the Amadeus Quartet.

For the past decade Mr. Destrubé’s electrifying interpretations of baroque and classical repertoire on period instruments have allowed him to perform with many of the world’s leading period ensembles. He was a founding member of the renowned Tafelmusik Orchestra and has been guest concertmaster with both the Hanover Band and the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood. Other orchestras with which he has performed and recorded include the London Classical Players, the Taverner Consort, the English Concert, the Leonhardt Consort, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Claudio Abbado and Sir Georg Solti.

Mr. Destrubé is former concertmaster of the CBC Vancouver Orchestra and is co-concertmaster of Frans Brüggen’s Amsterdam-based Orchestra of the 18th Century, with which he tours three times each year. As leader of the Anima Eterna Orchestra, he collaborated on an acclaimed recording of Mozart piano concertos with Jos van Immerseel.

Marc Destrubé’s recent activities include regular performances in the group L’Archibudelli with Anner Bylsma, Jurgen Kussmaul, and Vera Beths. He has recently been appointed first violinist with the Axelrod String Quartet, in residence at the Smithsonian institute in Washington D.C. He has been concertmaster under such renowned conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Helmuth Rilling, and Franz Brüggen. As a much sought after teacher, he has given master classes at the Paris and Moscow Conservatories and led classes in Mateus (Portugal), at the Internationale Bach Akademie (Germany), and the Jerusalem Music Centre. He has also presented concerts for children at the Cité de la Musique in Paris. Marc Destrubé also performs annually with the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene.

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