WSO ~ Premier Classics

Johannes Brahms
Serenade no.1, op.11 in D major

Antonín Dvorák
Romance, violin & orchestra,
op.11, F minor

Felix Mendelssohn
Symphony no.4, op.40 in A major, “Italian”

Saturday, November 4, 2007
8:00 p.m.
Chrysler Theatre
Instrumentally Speaking, pre-concert talk, inside the Chrysler Theatre
at 7:00 p.m.

Tickets: $56-$13

John Morris Russell, Conductor
Lillian Scheirich, Violin

Serenade no.1, op.11 in D major
Johannes Brahms
B. May 7, 1833, Hamburg,
D. April 3, 1897, Vienna

Premiered on October 3, 1860, in Hanover, conducted by Joseph Joachim. Approx. 40 minutes.

By Dr. Ed Kovarik
By the time he was in his mid twenties, Brahms was a figure of some importance in the musical world: he had concertized with the violinist Remenyi, had published a number of piano works and songs, and had met most of the leading musicians of the day, including that well-connected violinist and composer Joseph Joachim. For the past two years he had watched his mentor Robert Schumann quietly go mad and die in an asylum, all the while acting as family counsellor to Clara and the children. Now Clara removed her household to Berlin, where she began a career of teaching and concertizing, while Brahms looked elsewhere. “Elsewhere” was the tiny principality of Detmold, on the edge of a large forest in west-central Germany, where for the next three years (1857-1859) Brahms spent each fall working as a Court musician. He was charged with conducting the choral society, made up chiefly of the ladies of the Court, and with giving piano lessons to the Princess and her friends; he also served as pianist and accompanist at the occasional Court musicale. For this he was well rewarded, making enough in three months to live comfortably for an entire year. They liked him in Detmold despite his uncouth appearance and lack of social graces, and he might have stayed on indefinitely, but after three years he decided to escape this provincial backwater and set his sights on the imperial capital, Vienna.

Meanwhile, the quiet little country town called forth from Brahms some of his most serene music: the two Serenades, Op. 11 and Op. 16. The first serenade was originally conceived as a chamber work, probably for solo strings and winds in the manner of the Beethoven septet or Schubert octet. Suggestions from Clara Schumann and Joachim led him to rework the piece, first for small orchestra and then for full orchestra. The first performance of the small-orchestra version took place in Brahms’ home town, Hamburg, in the spring of 1859 with Joachim conducting. The premiere of the full-orchestra version took place a year later in the court city of Hanover, with Joachim again conducting.

Like many classical serenades, the work is in six movements rather than four, with two additional light movements framing a central slow movement. Serenade No.1 consists of: (1) a broad, lyric opening movement in sonata form, with three well-defined thematic sections; (2) a scherzo in minor with a central section (trio) in a related major key; (3) an extended Adagio in which the recap begins in the Neapolitan (a half-step above the home key) but soon settles into the correct tonality; (4) alternating minuets, the first in major, the second in minor, both scored for a reduced body of instruments; (5) a scherzo with much display of the solo horn; (6) a rondo finale with exuberant refrain and extended episodes.

Romance, violin & orchestra, op.11, F minor
Antonín Dvorák
B. September 8, 1841, Nelahozeves, near Prague, Czech Republic
D. May 1, 1904, Prague

Approx. 8 minutes.

By Dr. Ed Kovarik
The Romance was composed in 1873, when Dvo?ák was thirty-two years old and still almost totally unknown as a composer. It is based on a theme from a quartet in F minor that Dvo?ák had composed earlier that same year—this in response to the formation in Prague of a new Chamber Music Society with its own resident group of string players. The Society, however, did not look with favour upon Dvo?ák's quartet, and the work was not performed in public and was never printed. Dvo?ák withdrew the work and cancelled the opus number (Op. 9) he had given it, but he did salvage the best part of the music—the main theme of the slow movement.

This, reworked and expanded, became the Romance, Op. 11. Written originally for violin and piano, it was later arranged by the composer for violin and small orchestra.

Symphony no.4, op.40 in A major, “Italian”
Felix Mendelssohn
B. February 3, 1809, Hamburg, Germany
D. November 4, 1847, Leipzig

First performed in London on May 13, 1833, by the Philharmonic Society, with the composer conducting. Approx. 26 minutes.

By Dr. Ed Kovarik
After his first trip to England and Scotland in 1829-30, the twenty-year-old Felix Mendelssohn returned briefly to his home in Berlin and then set off to tour Italy (1830-31). He saw the sights, met Berlioz in Rome, and conceived the idea for an “Italian Symphony.” In a letter home he called it “the merriest piece I have thus far composed.” He worked on it through the balance of his journey, along with two other works inspired by his travels, the Fingal’s Cave Overture and the Scottish Symphony. Thus when the London Philharmonic Society commissioned him to write “a symphony, an overture, and a vocal piece” (November, 1832), two of the works were already well under way.

Mendelssohn himself conducted the premiere of the Italian Symphony during the Philharmonic’s next spring season (May, 1833). He was not entirely satisfied with the work, however, and so he continued to revise it over a period of years; the work as we know it now was not published and performed until after the composer’s death.

The first movement is an excellent example of Mendelssohn’s classical style —almost Mozartian in its precision. The rapidly repeated woodwind chords at the opening produce one of the composer’s happiest orchestral effects. The second movement depicts a solemn march of pilgrims, approaching and then receding; it is said to have been inspired by a religious procession that the composer saw in Naples. The third movement, in a flowing triple metre, has the form and function of a scherzo, but like its composer it is suave and urbane rather than rough and boisterous. The trio, with its horn calls answered first by violin and then by flute, is particularly magical. The finale is a lively dance movement featuring the rhythms of the saltarello and tarantella. In a reversal of the usual procedure, the finale provides a minor-key ending to a work otherwise pitched in the major; this minor, however, has nothing sad or despondent about it.

Lillian Scheirich

Originally from Windsor, Ontario, Lillian Scheirich studied violin at the Detroit Community Music School, Detroit, Michigan, and was a scholarship recipient to the Eastman School of Music, in Rochester, New York, where she graduated with a degree in Violin Performance and in Music Education, studying with the late Catherine Tait.

Upon graduating from Eastman, Ms. Scheirich won the Assistant Concertmaster position with the Windsor Symphony, and two years later, was appointed Concertmaster, a position which she has held from 1991 until the present. In addition to her role as Concertmaster, Ms. Scheirich is the Violin Instructor at the University of Windsor, and maintains an accomplished private violin studio.

Ms. Scheirich has played with various orchestras in Canada and in the United States, and has performed in music festivals in Europe, and North America. As a member of the La Corda Ensemble, the Ambassador Chamber Players, and the Detroit-Windsor Chamber Ensemble, she is involved in numerous concerts in the Windsor-Detroit area performing on violin and on viola. Since 1992, the Ambassador Chamber Players have been in summer residence at Schoolcraft College (Livonia, Michigan) for their summer chamber music programme. Ms. Scheirich has been recorded for CBC in various chamber music concerts in Ontario and Quebec, and in 2001 was awarded the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Music.

April 2006, marked the release of her first CD (a world premier) with pianist Mary Siciliano, and the Detroit-Windsor Chamber Ensemble, featuring the chamber works of Ignatz Waghalter. The CD has been heard on CBC Radio, WRCJ-FM in Detroit, and in Germany where it was featured at “Dussmann’s”, Berlin’s largest bookstore. In the Fall of 2006, Ms. Scheirich and colleague Mary Siciliano recorded the Sonata for Violin and Piano by French composer, Jacques de la Presle, to be released in France later this year as part of a collection of his chamber works.

Last month, Lillian was involved in another world premier concert, as part of the Scarab Club Concert Series in Detroit, featuring the Quartet by French composer André Gedalge which is currently being recorded for a CD of Gedalge’s Chamber Music.

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