Michael Collins plays Mozart:Themes and variations

4 December 2018: Stratford Play House
5 December 2018: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire

• Igor Stravinsky – Concerto in D for string orchestra ‘Basle’
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622
• Igor Stravinsky – Concerto in E flat for chamber orchestra ‘Dumbarton Oaks’
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphony No.40 in G minor ‘Great G minor Symphony’, K.550

Today’s concert is a rich demonstration of just how broad the classification – and content – of ‘classical’ music can be. Stravinsky’s paired concertos are Neoclassical (1920-1950, or thereabouts); and their inspiration and form stem mainly from the Baroque period (approximately 1600-1750). Mozart (1756-1791), of course, is held up by many as the very model of a Classical (1750-1820 or so) composer; but – especially at the outset of his life and career – was, of course, also indebted to the works of Bach, Handel, Lully, etc..

However, it did not take long for young Wolfgang to stretch the categorization of his output and dig the foundations of what would become to be known as the Romantic (roughly 1780-1910) – despite Britten claiming that “A certain rot… set in with Beethoven”. Nor, listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, is it difficult to find such defining personal passion and self-centred sentiment within, or to be intensely moved by them. All of which only goes to show why the above numbers (apart from Mozart’s) are so very “thereabouts”, “approximately”, “or so”, and “roughly”; and may explain why Descartes once opined that “Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare…” – although Hamlet’s written claim to Ophelia that “I am ill at these numbers” may be much more accurate!

The case I am trying to make is that Mozart – despite, to that “many”, being just the creator of memorable melodies (such as lies at the centre of today’s heartbreaking Clarinet Concerto) – not only crossed musical divides; but, in many cases, actually invented them. And the ‘Great G minor Symphony’, which closes the concert, is the perfect demonstration of that: evoking Classicism and Romanticism, and predicting Serialism, all in the space of around twenty-five minutes. In other words, his music is all his own; it defies (or at least pushes back at the boundaries of) classification… – although there is no doubt in my mind that his œuvre can be labelled that of a genuine genius.

PS: Even defining the overarching term ‘classical music’ can be laborious; but I am happy to accept Wikipedia’s – that it is “Art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western culture, including both liturgical (religious) and secular music”. If you think you know, and/or can do better, please email your suggestion to writer@orchestraoftheswan.org with the subject ‘Definition’. The best entry will win two complimentary tickets for a concert of your choice, and will be published in the next programme.

Tai Murray plays Mendelssohn:Themes and variations

2 November 2018: The Courtyard, Hereford
6 November 2018: Stratford Play House
7 November 2018: Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
8 November 2018: Cheltenham Town Hall

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Overture, ‘The Marriage of Figaro’
• Felix Mendelssohn – Violin Concerto in E minor, Op.64
• Felix Mendelssohn – Sinfonia for Strings No.6 in E flat major
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Symphony No.25 in G minor, K.183

Reviewing a performance (by OOTS, of course) of “The six movements extracted from Mendelssohn’s version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, in May 2016, I contended that the composer I have subsequently named my cat after…

…was an undoubted genius…. That he produced his first violin concerto – not the one [you will] be singing for the next week… – when still in shorts; followed it not much later with a string octet that has never been beaten; wrote some great oratorios; magnificent symphonies; and some of the best piano pieces I have ever managed, fumblingly, to play – all before dying at a stupidly young age (not much older than Mozart, indeed) – should be evidence enough. But anyone who can transform an orchestra into a braying donkey must rank amongst the very greatest composers of all time!

Tonight’s Sinfonia for Strings – the sixth of a set of twelve, written between the astonishing ages of twelve and fourteen – can also be slotted easily into this prodigy’s long list of precocious masterworks: his command of the smaller orchestra (and particularly of strings) easily on a par with this concert’s other great wunderkind, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

And, although the temptation is to dream of, say, Mendelssohn’s Fifteenth Symphony, or Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.67 (alleging, perhaps, that “only the good die young”), I would prefer to concentrate on the incredibly long list of incredibly wonderful works that thankfully survive from their abbreviated existences (Mozart dying at thirty-five, Mendelssohn at thirty-eight) – both, like Schubert (dead at thirty-one), perhaps, compelled by some premonition to communicate as much of the beauty they found in and around themselves as frequently and urgently as possible.

Interestingly, the works before the interval are both from the composers’ later outputs; whereas those following are the earlier pieces. However, all four compositions are readily matched in style to their creators: their maturity having ripened – if not come totally to fruition – during their temperate teenage years.

English Fantasies for String Orchestra:Themes and variations

25 September 2018: Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon

• Arcangelo Corelli – Concerto Grosso in F major, op6, no2
• Michael Tippett – Fantasia Concertante on a theme of Corelli
• Thomas Tallis – Spem in alium
• Frank Bridge – Idyll for String Quartet, op6, no2
• Benjamin Britten – Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge
• Thomas Tallis – Why fum’th in fight: The Gentils spite
• Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

As well as all of tonight’s instrumental pieces being written for various configurations of string orchestra, they also, I believe, have an intense and unremitting spiritual vein running through them – which is more than matched by the two choral works of Thomas Tallis. (I would like to cite this as proof that the English stiff upper lip is merely a nationalist and populist meme and myth: and that our hearts bleed, and our eyes weep, as instantaneously and copiously as any other nation’s – including Italy, of course: where Arcangelo Corelli generated some of the most expressive and captivating Baroque music still in existence.)

Such emotion, I know, is likely to be be amplified by tonight’s location – surely one of this country’s most famous and beautiful parish churches – especially its resonant acoustic. I therefore repeat the request I penned for the orchestra’s previous performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis – but now ask it for every single one of tonight’s seven glorious masterpieces:

…especially as this is one of the very few pieces of music in which we are privileged to hear (what sounds remarkably like) God sighing… – which is that, after that final, astonishing, numinous G-major chord has faded away, you would allow a few seconds to pass, please, before rewarding [Stacey] and the orchestra [or Suzzie and the choir] with the applause they will undoubtedly deserve.

In other words, please give the ancient mortar and stones of this glorious building time to absorb yet more of the wondrous atmosphere they have indubitably experienced in their eight centuries of history; and – for those of us who will frequently be in need of a tissue of two, after “finding something in our eyes” – space in which to find ourselves, and our handkerchiefs. Thank you.

PS: Although Corelli’s and Bridge’s works were written two centuries apart, you may notice that they possess identical opus numbers. Surely this is a coincidence? [Thankfully, as far as I know, Tallis did not number or catalogue his huge output of mostly religious music. Not that I’m superstitious. (Touch wood.)]

Latin America meets Classical:Themes and variations

5 June 2018: Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon

• Aaron Copland – Three Latin American Sketches
• Lucía Caruso – ‘Light and Wind’ piano concerto (world premiere)
• Pedro H. da Silva – ‘Snow’, for Portuguese guitar and orchestra (world premiere)
• Lucía Caruso and Pedro H. da Silva (orchestrated by Pedro H. da Silva) – ‘Folía’, for Portuguese guitar, piano, and orchestra
• Aaron Copland – Appalachian Spring

In 1959 the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, asked me to write a short work for orchestra. The ‘Paisaje Mexicano’ and ‘Danza de Jalisco’ were completed in time for performance in July of that year…. Both pieces were first performed in the United States under [my] baton at a private invitation concert given by the Pan American Union in 1965…. [However, I] decided not to release the two movements for general performance before adding a third section. This was accomplished in 1971 with the completion of ‘Estribillo’, based on Venezuelan popular materials…. In 1968, a two-piano arrangement of the ‘Danza de Jalisco’ was published, with some revisions of the original orchestral version. These changes were later incorporated in the completed three-movement work, and the whole given the title ‘Three Latin American Sketches’.

Thus Aaron Copland introduced the first performance of his last composition for orchestra, by Andre Kostelanetz and the New York Philharmonic, on 7 June 1972. Lighter in nature than much of his earlier output – although he counselled that the Sketches are “not so light as to be pop-concert material” – they contain no hint of such finality.

As with many new works (even one with such a long gestation period), the handwritten, spiral-bound score used by Kostelanetz for the premiere (held online in the NY Phil archives) is brimming with last-minute amends and annotations; as well as details of what should appear in Boosey & Hawkes’ final printed version. Fascinating to follow for the purpose of penning a programme note; but – although it is apparent Kostelanetz knew Copland’s composition thoroughly – I would not have wished to conduct from it!

Leonard Bernstein’s marks on his score of Appalachian Spring are a little less dense. They reinforce, though, the almost incomprehensible amount of work that conductors must complete before they first stand in front of the orchestra: their understanding of what is now open before them on the podium exhaustive, but lacking one key ingredient: the similarly in-depth input and feedback which the other performers bring – and not just in rehearsal. One of the joys of live music is that no performance is ever fixed: a figurative hummingbird flapping its wings in the opening bars can bring happy innovation several pages later – and perhaps colour all that follows. So when you applaud Bruce, tonight: please do so with a little more awareness, perhaps; and even greater admiration!