October 24, 2009 La scala di seta: Overture Gioachino Rossini b. Pesaro, Italy / February 29, 1792; d. Passy, France / November 13, 1868
During the first half of the nineteenth century, European audiences loved opera more than any other kind of music, and their favorite composer of opera was unquestionably Rossini. The immense fortune that his operas brought him allowed him to retire from composing for the stage when he was only 37. The plot of the one-act farce La scala di seta (The Silken Ladder, 1812) concerns the efforts of a vivacious young woman to escape the constraints placed upon her by her tyrannical guardian. Rossini set the stage for these playful goings-on with music of tunefulness and bubbling high spirits.
Harp Concerto, Op. 25 Alberto Ginastera b. Buenos Aires, Argentina / April 11, 1916; d. Geneva, Switzerland / June 25, 1983
Ginastera was the finest composer his country has yet produced. His early works show a strong influence of Argentinean folk music. Later creations display a dynamic and exceptionally colorful cosmopolitan style that won him a strong global reputation. In the late 1940s, a Guggenheim award allowed him to spend time in the United States, where he benefited from the guidance of Aaron Copland and other prominent musicians. Returning to South America, he assumed several prominent educational and cultural positions and continued to compose prolifically.
It may have been through Copland’s influence that Edna Phillips, Principal Harp of the Philadelphia Orchestra, commissioned a concerto from Ginastera in 1956. Her plan was to premiere it at the 1958 Interamerican Music Festival in Washington, D.C., but this was not to be. “I could hardly dream that it was going to be the most difficult work I had ever written, and that it would take several years to see the light,” the composer recalled afterwards. “The first sketches for the work are dated 1956; the last measures of the completed score were written in the last weeks of 1964.” By that time, Edna Phillips had retired, so the world premiere was given by Spanish virtuoso Nicanor Zabaleta on February 18, 1965, with Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. Zabaleta and Ginastera had worked together closely on making sure that the solo writing was completely idiomatic – and brilliant. Despite her undoubted disappointment at not being able to perform the work, Phillips declared it the best of the many works she had commissioned. It is quite possibly the finest harp concerto composed during the twentieth century, an opinion reflected in its frequent performances and numerous recordings.
Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92 Ludwig van Beethoven b. Bonn, Germany / December 15, 1770; d. Vienna, Austria / March 26, 1827
Three years had passed since the completion of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the relaxed, rustic “Pastoral,” before the urge to create another piece of this kind came upon him. He composed the principal sketches for the Seventh Symphony during the autumn of 1811, while taking a rest cure in a resort town near Prague. He returned to his home in Vienna later that year, taking up the new symphony once again early in 1812. He finished it in May.
The range of moods that it covers is striking, even by Beethoven’s standards. Three of its four movements overflow with energy and high spirits, a fact that led Richard Wagner, writing in 1849, to state, “this symphony is the apotheosis of the dance herself: it is dance in her highest aspect, as it were the loftiest deed of bodily motion incorporated in an ideal mould of tone.”
The first movement begins with an introduction in slow tempo, one longer than any to be found in the previously-composed symphonies of Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven himself. It is bold and teasing in its forecast of what is to follow: an exhilarating romp. British author Sir George Grove wrote, “It is full of swift, unexpected changes and contrasts, exciting the imagination in the highest degree, and whirling it suddenly into new and strange regions.”
In terms of form, the third movement, a scherzo, duplicates the corresponding movement in the Fourth Symphony. The restrained trio section appears repeatedly in alteration with the bustling opening panel. The finale is a headlong perpetual motion engine. It hurtles along joyously with scarcely a pause to catch its breath between first bar and last.
On the other hand, the second movement communicates one of the most profound expression of grief and despair that had been heard in symphonic music up to that time. Moving forward upon an implacable rhythm, it bears the air of a melancholy, even funereal procession. Two brief episodes in a major key provide the only consolation. |
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