Location: The DeBartolo Performing Arts Center 574-631-2800

Richard Wagner
A Siegfried Idyll

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1813 and died in Venice in 1883. He composed this piece for his wife in 1870; the circumstances of its first performance are recounted below. The work is scored for flute, oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, trumpet, and strings.

Easter was called “The Bright Holiday” in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russia, where the Christian holiday had joined, not replaced, the pagan celebrations of the rebirth of nature that preceded it. To the traditional themes of awe, serenity, and joy found in Western Easter music, Rimsky wanted to add a sense of sheer merriment, too: “The transition from the gloomy and mysterious evening of Passion Saturday,” he wrote, “to the unbridled pagan-religious merry-making on the morn of Easter Sunday is what I was eager to reproduce in my Overture.”

The work takes most of its themes from a collection of Russian Orthodox canticles called the Obikhod. We hear the first of these (“Let God arise”) in the woodwind chant that opens the work. Rimsky said that the slow, mysterious introduction that follows was inspired by Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming resurrection. The brief, luminous music of the transition to the Allegro is a musical depiction of the passage in St. Mark, “And, entering into the sepulcher, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment, and they were afraid. And he saith to them, ‘Be not afraid; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is risen.’”

As the Allegro begins, the music carries on with St. Mark: “And the joyful tidings were spread abroad all over the world, and they who hated Him fled before Him, vanishing like smoke.” By the end, the composer wrote, “‘Resurrexit!’ sings the choir of angels in heaven to the sound of the archangels’ trumpets and the fluttering of the wings of the seraphim. ‘Resurrexit!’ sing the priests in the temples, in the midst of clouds of incense, by the light of innumerable candles, to the chiming of triumphant bells.

Richard Strauss
Concerto for Horn & Orchestra No. 1 in E-flat major, Op. 11

Richard Strauss was born in Munich in 1864 and died in Garmisch, Germany in 1949. He completed this concerto in 1883 and it was first performed by Gustav Leinhos, horn, with the Meiningen Orchestra under the direction of Hans von Bülow, in 1885. The score calls for solo horn, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Much becomes clear when it transpires that the composer of Ein Heldenleben and Til Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks was the son of a virtuoso horn player. Richard Strauss’ works show both a love for the instrument and a canny awareness of its capabilities. But what to make of his horn concertos?

They were composed 59 years apart, but they resemble each other more than they resemble his other works. Of course, a concerto is a concerto and Also Sprach Zarathustra is—well, you know what it is. One doesn’t expect to become a Superman (or merely climb the Alps) in a concerto, even a romantic one. Still, Strauss’ horn concertos aren’t nearly as romantic as we’d expect—they’re largely classical in form and style. They are polished, elegant—even Mozartean.

Franz Joseph Strauss, Richard’s father, was principal hornist of the Munich Court Orchestra for an astonishing 49 years. He not only had the power and stamina to perform the heroic horn parts of the day, but was considered by all to be a musician of consummate artistry and taste. He was also a bit of a terror: Richard described him as “vehement, irascible, tyrannical,” and more than a few conductors of the day would readily agree. At the same time, the elder Strauss held his son to the highest musical standards, for which Richard was grateful to his dying day.

Richard Strauss composed his First Horn Concerto at age nineteen. By that time he had years of experience accompanying his father as they read through horn music of all kinds. The incomparable concertos by Mozart were in their repertory, and doubtless made their impression on Strauss the younger. Richard was not yet the full-blooded romantic he was to become, and while no one would mistake this concerto for one of Mozart’s, one can recognize the shape of Mozart’s molds.

The Concerto’s first movement begins with a huge chord from the orchestra and the immediate entrance of the soloist with a bravura fanfare. The orchestral tutti is short, whereupon the horn returns with the graceful and lyrical second theme. From here things proceed in a suitably heroic fashion.

An artful transition brings on the second movement without pause. This music is somber and lyrical, with an accompaniment that reveals Strauss as a master of the orchestra at an impressively young age.

The Finale brings on the hunt with a rollicking 6/8, thoroughly spiced with sweet lyrical passages to set off the fanfares. There is no cadenza as such, but rather a place where the horn reiterates the movement’s themes with spaced chords from the orchestra. From there it’s a quick, cheerful gallop to the end.

Carl Maria von Weber
Symphony No. 1 in C major, J 50 (Op. 19)

Carl Maria von Weber was born in 1786 in Eutin, Oldenburg, Germany and died in 1826 in London. He completed his First Symphony in 1807 and it was likely performed soon thereafter in Karlsruhe, Germany, at the court of Duke Eugen Friedrich Heinrich von Württemberg. The symphony calls for flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

Weber composed his First Symphony very early in his career, though by this time he had already composed two operas, part of another, much piano music, a number of songs, and had been for one season the conductor of the Beslau Opera. His next employment came as composer to the court of Duke Eugen Friedrich Heinrich von Württemberg at Karlsruhe, where he produced the only two symphonies he would compose. The instrumentation of the symphonies reflects the forces available to him at the Duke’s court, most notably in the absence of clarinets.

Weber’s two symphonies have been largely ignored, especially when compared with his far more influential operas. Part of the critical assessment has been that while they were composed at about the same time as Beethoven’s Eroica symphony they fail to reach the same lofty heights. Well, there aren’t many works that reach that benchmark, and it seems churlish to fault Weber for not having been Beethoven.

hurlish to fault Weber for not having been Beethoven.
This is especially true when we hear the opening movement of Weber’s First Symphony: as with Beethoven, Weber seems to be in pursuit of motivic building-blocks rather than strictly melodic ones. At the same time, Mozart springs to mind as we hear the triadic themes, upward-reaching scales, pungent harmonies, and the martial themes immediately followed by lyrical responses.

The movement begins with a big, brassy statement, but this is only a feint—the music is hushed immediately for a lyrical passage for the strings. As the instruments pile on, this passage builds back to that brassy statement and the movement begins in earnest. The surprising full-stops in the second subject are a delight, and lead us to some brilliant writing for the winds. The development is lengthy for so short a movement and Weber brings us back to the opening music, in truncated form, almost without our noticing it.
In the second movement Weber becomes the opera composer we’ve expected all along. Its introduction in the brasses is dramatic and its sense of time expansive. The oboe becomes the voice of the melancholy aria before a loud, dramatic section leads us back to the opening music again.

The Scherzo is rambunctious and light-hearted, full of rhythmic hijinks and a beautiful trio led by the winds. The Presto Finale is a rondo that begins with generous good cheer and caps the symphony in madcap opera buffa style.