Program Notes
Amadeus Trio
Saturday, February 7, 2004

Amadeus Trio
            Marian Hahn, piano
            Timothy Baker, violin
            Jeffrey Solow, cello

Anton Arensky (1861-1906)

            Trio no. 1 in D minor, op. 32 (composed 1894)

                        Allegro moderato
                        Scherzo:  Allegro molto
                        Elegia:  Adagio
                        Finale:  Allegro non troppo

Born in Novgorod, Russia, Anton Stepanovich Arensky received his first music lessons from his mother, an accomplished pianist.  Arensky had several piano pieces and songs to his credit by the time he was nine.  Entering the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1879, he studied composition with Rimsky-Korsakov and graduated with a gold medal in 1882.  Thereafter, he began his own teaching career at the Moscow Conservatory, counting among his students Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and Glière.

In Moscow, Arensky came under the direct influence of Tchaikovsky, but he also absorbed musical ideas from across much of Europe.  In addition to his composing, Arensky conducted extensively, in particular directing concerts of the Russian Choral Society from 1888 to 1895.  That year, he returned to Saint Petersburg, succeeding Balakirev as director of the imperial chapel, where he remained until 1901.  During the final few years of his short life, Arensky composed and toured successfully as both conductor and pianist, at home and abroad.  He died of tuberculosis while in Finland in February 1906.

Among Arensky’s most popular and respected compositions, the Trio no. 1 in D minor, op. 32 was dedicated to the memory of the great Russian cellist Karl Davïdov, who was director of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory while Arensky was a student.  The Allegro moderato features three themes and a gentle coda.  The Scherzo is swift, piano virtuosity competing with string pizzicati and multiple stops.  The Davïdov tribute is most prominent in the Elegia, which opens with a mournful cello line.  The Finale brings back both the Elegia theme and the first theme of the opening movement in a powerful rondo.

David Ott (born 1947)

            The Painter's Eye (composed 2003)

                        I.  Bosch:  Damnation.  Allegro con fuoco
                        II.  The Crucifixion.  Adagio doloroso
                        III.  Merode Altarpiece.  Andante
                        IV.  Da Vinci:  Mona Lisa.  Andante cantabile
                        V.  Botticelli:  Nymphs.  Allegretto
                        VI.  Flight to Egypt.  Andante misterioso; Moderato con forza

Born in Michigan and reared in Janesville, Wisconsin, David Ott earned his bachelor’s in music from the University of Wisconsin, Platteville; his master’s in piano performance from Indiana University, and a doctorate in theory and composition from the University of Kentucky.  He is the recipient of the 1986 Fisher Fellowship, the 1995 Lancaster Symphony Composer of the Year Award, and the 2003 Music Alive Award.  He has been a composer-in-residence with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Norwest Florida Symphony Orchestra, and was recently named the Pace Eminent Scholar.

Commissioned for the Amadeus Trio by the Singletary Center for the Arts at the University of Kentucky, “The Painter’s Eye” is a six-movement piano trio inspired by half a dozen Renaissance art works.  Composer David Ott has supplied the following notes on his new work.

When a composer uses painting as a source for artistic expression, the composer sets in motion a frozen moment.  In music, the details of composition, i.e., pitches, rhythms, harmonies, colors, are stretched across time, given moment by moment.  From these come a sense of structure and a feeling for what the piece is about.  The composer relies on the listener to hear events, remember them, and reconstruct them to arrive at a sense of form.  Just the opposite is true of painting.  Here the subject of the work is immediately obvious.  In a sweeping moment, the observer has a feel for the intentions of the painter.  In that light, the details, i.e., brush strokes, background elements, minute details, become noticeable over time and through studious attention. As the eye moves across the canvas noting the tiniest of elements, these are understood as a complement to the general impression of the subject material.

In each of these six Renaissance paintings, I have set into motion the essence of each work which can be described in a word or two.  The Garden of Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch dating from about 1500, is a cluttered work.  Its imagery strikes us as irrational and weird, where disparate events are juxtaposed.  The real focus of its middle panel lies in the garden of carnal delights.  Bosch depicts scores of human figures taking pleasure in momentary delights of the flesh but which make prisoners of these carnal appetites.  I have used rhythm as the primary focus here to replicate the delights.  Of all the musical elements, it is the power of rhythm that appeals most directly to Dionysian senses.  The pulse is driving, intense, which is reinforced by dissonant harmonies.  Melodic elements are fashioned from a mixture of diatonic and octatonic scales.

Jan Van Eyck stands as one of the most gifted painters in history.  Working with the patience of Job in the new field of oil painting, he created masterworks of realistic display of photographic precision.  He could also persuade with powerful images, of which his The Crucifixion offers proof positive.  Pain, both physical and spiritual, are the immediate responses to this traumatic moment in history.  To render this in music, the violin and cello offer pungent harmonies to dramatize the pain.  In each use, these acrid chords are interspersed between minor and major harmonies and serve as focal points within each measure.  A mysterious sustained solo piano line is introduced heightening the sense of drama.  The string texture is then imposed upon the piano line to close the movement.

The center panel of the Mérode Altarpiece, painted by the Master of Flémalle around 1425, depicts the moment of St. Gabriel’s Annunciation to the juvenile Mary.  Seated on the floor of a contemporary room to demonstrate her humility, she reads of the promise of the Messiah.  Everything about the panel is a mixture of reality and mystery, of the contemporary and the ancient, of God and of man.  Musically, I have represented this with the juxtapositioning of musically contrasting elements.  Bitonal harmonic events, cross rhythms, contrapuntal textures dominate the opening portion.  A lullaby melody, suggested by the promised event of the birth, is given to the violin. Suddenly, a sense of urgency and amazement, suggested by the snuffed out candle prominently placed at the center, invades the lullaby’s rapturous mood, but returns to restore and complete of picture of wonderment.

While a number of descriptive words would appropriately describe Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, I have selected beauty.  The flow of her hands, the lush and simple loveliness of her face, with her flowing garbs, all suggest fluidity of detail and of form.  The details of the background, represented by the exquisite use of sfumato techniques where tones shade imperceptibly with other tones, are overwhelmed by the prominence of the foreground element of Mona Lisa herself.  The musical focus is on long and sustained lyricism.  Each instrument of the trio is given ample opportunity to explore beautiful renderings.  Sfumato techniques are suggested in the music by the shadings of harmonies, based on shifts of chromaticism, that underpin the melodies.

Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, painted about 1480, is a study of grace, balance, and charm.  A certain reservation and coolness are readily apparent throughout the work.  A rhythmic flow of hair and garb is counterbalanced by the staid nature of the forest and the lack of a feeling of depth.  I have used a light texture to represent these elements in the music.  Violin and cello work as a team with a piano accompaniment that does not invade on the strings.  In the middle portion the texture changes as the piano and strings alternate quickly and in constant succession, but the sense of lightness and clarity is always apparent.

The oldest of the six paintings was created by Melchior Broederlam around 1400. I have selected half of a work that is actually two representations side by side.  One half describes the presentation of the Christ child in the temple, while the focus of my work is the Flight into Egypt.  To our modern eyes the painting seems out of scale or perspective, but it represents the best of Broederlam’s age.  The painting also suggests motion as the eye sweeps from lower center to upper right.  I begin the composition by representing Joseph’s dream of the impending order to kill all baby boys by King Herod.  The music is as mysterious and disconcerting as a restless dream with constant glissandi, bowing techniques near the bridge, and thin-strung harmonies.  Then a four-voice fugue, aptly defined as flight, is the source of inspiration for the main body of the closing movement.

This Columbus performance of “The Painter’s Eye” is the work’s second, following just days after the world premiere in January 2004 in Lexington, Kentucky.

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

            Trio no. 2 in C minor, op. 66 (composed 1845)

                        Allegro energico e con fuoco
                        Andante espressivo
                        Scherzo:  Molto allegro quasi presto
                        Finale:  Allegro appassionato

His friend Robert Schumann called Felix Mendelssohn "the Mozart of the 19th century," not least because of the astounding number of works he produced in his short lifetime:  volumes of works for piano and for organ; five symphonies; monumental choral pieces; overtures and incidental music; songs and partsongs; and no fewer than two dozen chamber works.  Throughout Europe, Mendelssohn was in demand as an organist, pianist, conductor, and composer, spending his last decade as conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig.  There he championed neglected works of the previous century, premiered his own compositions and those of his contemporaries, and tried to raise the standards of both orchestral performance and public taste.

Never an innovator, Mendelssohn strove to reconcile the classical heritage of the 18th century with the romantic tenor of his own.  Though only two piano trios by Mendelssohn have come down to us, we know that he wrote one (which has since been lost) before he was eleven years old.  Various letters also suggest that the genre interested him much more than his two contributions to it would indicate.  During a visit to Paris when he was 23, he wrote to sister Fanny of plans to write another.  But it wasn't until 1839 that he actually wrote his Trio no. 1 in D minor, op. 49.  It was another six years before Mendelssohn dedicated his Trio no. 2 in C minor, op. 66 to Louis Spohr (1784-1859), one of the great violinists of his time and a prolific composer in his own right.

In late 1844, Mendelssohn had been feeling unsettled about working conditions in Berlin.  In December, he decided to retire to Frankfort for rest and recovery.  By February 1845, he had begun work on the Trio no. 2, completing it in the early summer.  The work's premiere performance later that year at the Gewandhaus featured Spohr on violin and Mendelssohn on piano.  This period of renewal also saw the production of six organ sonatas, incidental music to Sophocles's Oedipus at Colonos, and a new set of Songs Without Words.

Pedal point in the cello and drama in the piano open the Allegro energico e con fuoco, moving on to string arpeggios and vehement piano chords.  The lyrical E-flat major second theme eases the tension.  After an impassioned development and a recap, the canonic coda pits an augmented version of the opening against the original.  Two themes, one tender, the other thoughtful, dominate the Andante espressivo (9/8), the midsection of which modulates to the tonic minor key.

Without pause, the Scherzo:  Molto allegro launches into its toccata-like chase.  The Quasi presto trio contributes a Gypsy grace to the proceedings with its Scotch snaps and waverings between major and minor.  The brief recap combines the themes from both scherzo and trio.  Mingling secular and sacred, the Finale:  Allegro appassionato combines a startling ninth in the upbeat of the first theme with the chorale Vor deinem Thron, originally published in the 1551 Geneva Psalter.  That first theme sounds a lot like the gigue from Bach's English Suite in G minor.  A similar tune would later surface in the scherzo from Brahms' Sonata, op. 5 and in symphonic movements of both Mahler (Symphony no. 2) and Bruckner (Symphony no. 3), proving that good ideas have a life of their own.

Program notes by Jay Weitz, Consulting Database Specialist for music, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio.  He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly alternative newspaper “Alive:  Music, Art, and Culture in Columbus” (http://www.columbusalive.com).

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