Andrew Watkinson, violin and guest leader
Harvey de Souza, violin
Jennifer Godson, violin
Martin Burgess, violin
Robert Smissen, viola
Duncan Ferguson, viola
Stephen Orton, cello
John Heley, cello
The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields was formed in 1959 by a group of
eleven enthusiastic musicians with the aim of performing in public without a
conductor. Their first three recordings led to a succession of
long-term contracts, and the Academy quickly took their place among the most
recorded ensembles in history. As the repertoire expanded from Baroque
to Mozart, Bartók, and Beethoven, so it became necessary for the principal
violin, Neville Marriner, to conduct the larger orchestra.
The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble was created in 1967
to perform the larger chamber works—from quintets to octets—with players who
customarily work together, instead of the usual string quartet with
additional guests. Drawn from the principal players of the orchestra,
the Chamber Ensemble tours as a string octet, string sextet, and in other
configurations including winds. Its touring commitments are extensive,
with annual visits to France, Germany, and Spain, and frequent tours to
North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan.
The Ensemble's autumn, 2011 North American tour brings them to nine cities,
including Vancouver, Canada; Chico, CA; Madison, WI; Columbus, OH; Iowa
City, IA; Ithaca, NY; London, Ontario, Canada; Sault St. Marie, Canada; and
Clinton, CT.
Contracts with Philips Classics, Hyperion, and Chandos have led to the
release of over thirty CDs by the Chamber Ensemble.
The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble appears by
arrangement with David Rowe Artists,
www.davidroweartists.com.
Richard Strauss (born Munich, June 11, 1864; died Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, September 8, 1949)
String Sextet (excerpted 1943, from the opera Capriccio, op. 85, composed 1940-1941)
Andante con moto
Richard Strauss’s position in German society during the period of
National Socialism has long been a matter of controversy. Although he
was neither a Nazi sympathizer nor an anti-Semite, several of his choices
and actions over the years played into Nazi hands. When Toscanini
withdrew from the Bayreuth Festival in 1933 in protest against Nazi
anti-Semitism, Strauss stepped in to save the event. In the process,
however, he also handed the Nazis a public relations coup. Goebbels
rewarded Strauss by creating the Reichsmusikkammer, the state music bureau,
and making him its head, without the composer’s consent.
Strauss wasn’t to hold the post for long, though. In July 1929, his
longtime librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal had died of a stroke, and it was
not until Strauss met the Jewish biographer and novelist, the Austrian
Stefan Zweig in 1931, that he felt he had found a worthy successor.
Zweig and Strauss’s major collaboration was on the opera Die Schweigsame
Frau (1933-1934). During the process, Strauss drew increasing
criticism for working with a Jew. The situation grew so intolerable
for Zweig that he exiled himself to Zürich, making it difficult to continue
their partnership. Strauss was furious that the Nazis would interfere
with his work in such a way. In an intemperate letter to the exiled
Zweig, Strauss insulted the Nazis. The letter was intercepted by the
Gestapo. As a result, Hitler and Goebbels stayed away from the
premiere of Die Schweigsame Frau and, after four performances, the
opera was banned in Germany. Strauss was subsequently forced out of
the presidency of the Reichsmusikkammer. Zweig would continue both to
suggest new opera subjects and to assist later Strauss librettists
surreptitiously.
It was Zweig, in fact, who brought to Strauss’s attention the original
source of what turned out to be his final completed stage work,
Capriccio. Zweig stumbled upon the Giovanni Battista Casti
libretto for Antonio Salieri’s opera Prima la musica, poi le parole,
a satire on Italian opera tastes of their time, the 1780s. Both Zweig
and Strauss saw in it great potential for dealing with one of the composer’s
major concerns, the sonic balance between singers and orchestra.
Subtitled a “Conversation Piece for Music,” Capriccio was almost
literally just that: a one act debate about the relative importance of
words and music in opera. Zweig and others contributed small elements
to the libretto, but it is officially credited to Strauss and the conductor
Clemens Krauss.
Composed during 1940 and 1941, Capriccio premiered in Munich on
October 28, 1942, with Krauss conducting. The String Sextet (labeled “Einleitung”
or “Introduction” in the opera score) is actually a sonata form
overture with a lush and leisurely contrapuntal exposition. When the
somewhat livelier development section comes to a halt, the curtain rises and
the opera proper opens with the main characters listening to a performance
of the sextet. Then, over the recap, the poet and the composer begin
their discussion. In 1943, Strauss excerpted the Sextet as an
independent chamber work, excising the voices and allowing the recap to
conclude in peace without the indignity of being sung over.
Joachim Raff (born Lachen, Switzerland, May 27, 1822; died Frankfurt, June 24/25, 1882)
Octet in C major, op. 176 (composed 1872)
Allegro
Allegro molto
Andante moderato
Vivace
At the time of his death in 1882, Joachim Raff was widely considered to
reside among the pantheon of German composers, alongside the likes of
Brahms, Liszt, and Wagner. Raff had great influence during his
lifetime, contributing especially to the developments of the symphony and
the symphonic poem, and leaving his imprint on Richard Strauss, Max Bruch,
and his most famous student, Edward MacDowell. Composing too much
music of questionable quality, however, left even such admirers as Clara
Schumann and Hans von Bülow doubting Raff’s legacy. By the 1920s, he
was largely forgotten, a victim of his own success and overexposure.
Taught first by his father, Raff evolved into an impressive keyboard player
and composer. His early piano pieces so impressed Felix Mendelssohn
that the older composer sent them on to Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig for
publication. Encouraged by this, Raff moved to Zürich in 1844 to
compose and perform. In June of 1845, Raff discovered that Franz
Liszt, whom he greatly admired, was to perform in Basle. Legend has it
that Raff, unable to afford either transportation or a ticket, walked the
fifty miles to Basle and was let into the concert by the sympathetic
virtuoso. Scholars have since determined that the story was most
likely an invention of his daughter Helene.
Liszt and Raff did, however, meet in the summer of 1845, at which time Raff
joined the touring Liszt and was eventually set up in Cologne as both a
critic and a music shop worker. For much of the next decade or more,
Raff served Liszt as a copyist, arranger, and assistant. Liszt offered
financial help and performance opportunities; Raff offered orchestration
skills. By 1856, though, Raff was weaning himself away from the “New
German School” of Liszt and Wagner, moving to Wiesbaden, and devoting
himself to his own compositional blend of older forms and techniques with
modern developments. In 1863, Raff’s Symphony no. 1 in D major,
op. 96 (“An das Vaterland”) won first prize from Vienna’s Gesellschaft
der Musikfreunde, marking his emergence as a major composer. In 1878,
he was appointed director of the newly-established Hoch Conservatory in
Frankfurt, a post he held until his death in 1882.
Raff’s Octet in C major, op. 176 dates from his Wiesbaden period, in 1872,
and is dedicated to the violinist Johann Lauterbach (1832-1918). It
received its premiere performance in Leipzig on March 30, 1873. Like
Mendelssohn before him, Raff composed his only octet for eight independent
string voices. The Allegro opens with a syncopated theme,
which leads to a more lyrical subject. The first violin introduces a
third melody near the end of the development. The Allegro
molto minor mode scherzo alternates a rhythmically exciting theme with
a more sedate one. Marked Andante moderato, the slow movement
is tender and serene in its outer sections, brooding in the center with its
pizzicato accompaniment. Starting hesitantly, the Vivace
finale sprints forward through a minor second theme and a brief pause for
thought before a breathless close.
Felix Mendelssohn (born Hamburg, February 3, 1809; died Leipzig, November 4, 1847)
Octet in E-flat major, op. 20 (composed 1825)
Allegro moderato, ma con fuoco
Andante
Scherzo (Allegro leggierissimo)
Presto
Playwright and screenwriter John Guare has familiarized us with the "six
degrees of separation" between any two human beings on the planet.
Sometimes, the trail is considerably shorter than that. Consider Felix
Mendelssohn, Protestant grandson of the great Jewish philosopher Moses
Mendelssohn. Born in Hamburg in 1809, Felix moved with his family from
that French-occupied city to Berlin in 1812. There in 1819, he began
theory and composition studies at the Singakademie with its director, Carl
Friedrich Zelter.
Soon, Mendelssohn was composing a torrent. So impressed was his
teacher that in 1821, Zelter took the twelve year old Felix to Weimar to
meet the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. That launched a lifelong
friendship that helped develop the poet's appreciation of music and the
composer's sense of artistic mission. Between then and Goethe's death
in 1832, Mendelssohn paid five more extensive visits.
Until meeting Goethe, Mendelssohn had written mostly small-scale works.
Inspired by the poet's confidence in him, Mendelssohn took up larger works
and his skills grew apace. In the summer of 1825, the Mendelssohn
family settled down in a new home that became a center of Berlin
intellectual and artistic life. The presence of Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel and the works of Shakespeare and Goethe were major
influences.
The Octet, op. 20, composed in October of 1825 for the 23rd
birthday of his close friend, the violinist Eduard Rietz, is probably
Mendelssohn's first truly mature composition. In one letter, he called
it his favorite. Given its wealth of melodies, its infectious rhythms,
and its blend of baroque polyphony and classical structures, many have since
agreed.
In a note to the first edition, Mendelssohn wrote, "This Octet must be
played by all instruments in symphonic orchestral style. Pianos and
fortes must be strictly observed and more strongly emphasized than usual."
The composer's intention is tested quickly, as the first movement certainly
has full-scale breadth. The violin's opening arpeggio echoes
throughout the work. After the dramatic changes of the first section,
the next feels relatively calm. The development turns expectation on
its head with a fall from intensity to quiet.
The mournful Andante sways gently but grows ever more restless; its
midsection features an undulating cello. A forerunner of the
overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream, which Mendelssohn would write a
year later, the Scherzo enters another world. It is the first
of Mendelssohn's many so-called "fairy" scherzos, said to have been inspired
by Goethe's Faust. The fugal finale grows out of the spirit
of the Scherzo, throws in what sounds like a quote from Handel's
Messiah, and eventually reappropriates the Scherzo's theme
as another bit of contrapuntal grist for Mendelssohn's inventive mill.
--
Program notes by Jay Weitz, Senior Consulting Database Specialist for music,
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin, Ohio.
He is a contributing performing arts critic for the weekly
alternative newspaper Columbus Alive
(http://www.columbusalive.com).
