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!

New York comes to Stratford:Themes and variations

5 December 2017: Stratford ArtsHouse

• Aaron Copland – Music for Movies
• Pedro H da Silva – Portuguese Guitar Concerto [world premiere]
• Lucía Caruso – ‘Clouds’, for piano and orchestra
• Aaron Copland – Music for the Theatre

Both George Gershwin and Aaron Copland were born in Brooklyn, New York: Gershwin in September 1898; Copland in November 1900. Having both played the piano from an early age, both went on to study composition with Rubin Goldmark – who had once been a pupil of Antonín Dvořák. However, whilst Gershwin remained in America (producing, among other things, a string of successful musicals), in 1920 Copland moved to France, to study with Nadia Boulanger. While there, he was introduced to many European composers – including Igor Stravinsky – and began to realize that, whereas he could easily identify music as, say, ‘French’, or ‘Russian’, there was no immediately recognizable ‘American’ style.

He therefore set out to deliberately create such a language (and “purge” his music of its European influences). Thus, when he returned to the US in 1924 (the year of Rhapsody in Blue), he looked to jazz as a key ingredient. It certainly permeates (if not dominates) this concert’s Music for the Theatre (strangely, Copland preferred the British spelling) – and is the first piece to sound so obviously ‘by Copland’ (as we now know him). “I was anxious to write a work that would immediately be recognized as American in character,” he later recollected. While no particular dramatic device was involved, Copland said that he chose the title because “the music seemed to suggest a certain theatrical atmosphere”. Labelled a “suite in five parts for small orchestra” (not to mention an expansive percussion section!), it received its first performance by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on 20 November 1925.

But there is a great deal more to Copland’s music than ‘all that jazz’. Indeed, that genre’s influence dissipated soon afterwards; and other constituents – especially those derived from American ‘folk’ and ‘popular’ music – started to come to the fore. These can clearly be heard in later masterpieces such as Rodeo, Billy the Kid, and Appalachian Spring – music which is readily identifiable as both Copland’s, and, therefore, as ‘American’.

Although Stateside ‘classical’ music has also moved on – think of John Adams or Milton Babbitt – it could be suggested that Copland was, perhaps, too successful in propagating his national idiom. Nearly a century later, and so many film scores still owe him their existence. Thankfully, his own Music for Movies – which opens this concert – stands head and shoulders above those who try to mimic his matchless style.

PREVIEW: Mozart and Friends with Lucía Caruso

As well as a thrilling set of variations, Folía, for piano, Portuguese guitar, and orchestra – written with her husband, guitarist Pedro H da Silva (above) – Argentine-born pianist and composer Lucía Caruso will be performing Mozart’s intriguing Piano Concerto no.13 in C major (K415) three times with the orchestra this month:

• 19:30, Tuesday, 11 October – at Stratford ArtsHouse;
• 14:30, Wednesday, 12 October – at Town Hall, Birmingham; and
• 19:30, Wednesday, 19 October – at Cheltenham Town Hall.

The inestimable Frances Wilson – otherwise known as ‘The Cross-Eyed Pianist’ – caught up with Lucía ahead of these concerts; and the resulting in-depth and thoughtful interview can be read on her website, as part of her addictive Meet the Artist… series.

Thank you, therefore, to Frances for her hard work; and to Lucía for her beautifully detailed responses.

Mozart and Friends with Lucía Caruso:Themes and variations

11 October 2016: Stratford ArtsHouse
12 October 2016: Town Hall, Birmingham

• Antonio Salieri – Sinfonia in D major ‘Il giorno onomastico’
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Piano Concerto no13 in C major, K415
• Lucía Caruso and Pedro H da Silva (orchestrated by Pedro H da Silva) – Folía
• Joseph Haydn – Symphony no92 ‘Oxford’ in G major, Hob I:92

Ignore everything you may have gleaned about Antonio Salieri – especially from that film! With only five-and-a-half years difference in age, it is no surprise that he and ‘Amadeus’ were rivals for many of the leading musical jobs on offer at the time. However, it is extremely unlikely that homicide was the end result! Indeed, in later life, these two great musicians were, if not friends, peers who worked together, and had a great deal of respect for each other. Likewise, Mozart and Haydn – who, when the former died, called the younger man “irreplaceable” – their friendship probably being established the year after today’s concerto was completed: when Mozart was in his late twenties; Haydn, his early fifties. Effectively, then – apart from the tremendous bonus which follows the interval (although it not only travels through this period, but echoes Salieri’s undoubted masterpiece: twenty-six incredibly virtuosic, ingenious orchestral variations on the very same theme, from 1815) – today’s concert captures the world of three pre-eminent composers who not only knew and influenced each other, but also dominated the musical scene of their age: with Mozart at its Viennese core.

If the opening symphony and the subsequent concerto are not regularly performed (relative to the fame of their creators; and the 13th is certainly not one of the most famous of Mozart’s 23 piano concertos), then the opposite is true of Haydn’s 92nd symphony – although, as Michael Kennedy once said, this was “composed in 1788 with no thought of Oxford”! However, it is a pocket-sized treasure: beautifully expressing that Austrian zeitgeist; as well as encapsulating and building on the composer’s previous orchestral triumphs… – immediately before he entered the glorious Indian summer of his twelve London symphonies.

What all four works here have in common then are not just bonds of friendship (an OOTS trademark), but excitement, contrasted with lyricism of the highest, most penetrating order – the Salieri thrilling in its exploration of orchestral technique and timbre (as well as its riveting beginning, luxurious middle, and gravity-defying end); Mozart’s concerto mesmerizing in its almost unceasing, meandering and vaulting virtuosity; Lucía and Pedro’s Folía electrifying with both mastery of musical evolution and execution; and finally, Haydn, yet again stretching the bounds of symphonic form: with invention, intelligence and the most exhilarating finale!