CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The Cleveland Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 8:00 PM

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director and Conductor

MOZART Symphony No. 28 in C Major, K. 200
JOHN ADAMS Guide to Strange Places

TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6, "Pathétique"

Program Notes:

The Concert At a Glance

The three works on tonight’s program are varied in many different ways. The Mozart symphony that opens the concert is an early work, written at the age of 17 or 18; and yet, even in this relatively conventional early work, Mozart was beginning to change our musical world. By contrast, at the end of the program, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, nicknamed the “Pathétique,” is the very last work of a master who died at the height of his powers only a few days after its premiere in 1893. Although he lived 53 years (20 more than Mozart), Tchaikovsky’s long list of works, for both the concert and operatic stages, left a legacy as powerful and moving as this interestingly pessimistic final symphony. In between, this evening’s other work, Guide to Strange Places, is the creation of one of today’s most dynamic, evolving, and irresistible composers. John Adams, a young maverick recently turned age 60, continues as a fertile source of new and innovative works, always surprising, pleasing, and guiding us through new musical soundscapes.

Notes on the Program

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Symphony No. 28 in C Major, K. 200
Born January 27, 1756, in Salzburg; died December 5, 1791, in Vienna.

Composed in 1773 or 1774 in Salzburg, this symphony was most likely first performed at a private concert for Mozart’s employer, Archbishop Colloredo; it received its Carnegie Hall premiere on March 1, 1923, with the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch.

Scoring: 2 oboes, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, and strings.

This symphony stands near the end (if not at the very end) of a five-year period in Mozart’s life when he wrote more symphonies than either before or after. Because his position with the Archbishop of Salzburg required a steady flow of orchestral compositions, as he progressed from his teenage years to early adulthood, Mozart also evolved into a major symphonist. It was at this time that his writing acquired that enormous richness in musical detail that set him apart from his contemporaries and that led some contemporary critics to consider his music to be, at times, too complex.

The C-Major Symphony, K. 200, is certainly not one of Mozart’s most complicated scores. It was clearly not written for posterity and was not intended to be part of any “canon.” It was simply meant to be performed for the Archbishop once or twice and then be replaced by another symphony. Yet Mozart never did anything routinely, and he carried out his “daily business” with a musical imagination that only a genius can possess.

The usual four movements—opening, slow, minuet, and finale—are filled with exquisite touches, such as the use of mutes on the violins in the Andante and the consistent use of trill-like motifs in the first and last movements.

The symphony doesn’t have a nickname, but it might well be called “The Unaccompanied Violins.” In three of its four movements, Mozart contrasts a full orchestral sound with the first and/or the second violins playing without any harmonic support whatsoever from the basses. This contrast is introduced at the very beginning of the first movement, and it appears again in the minuet, the trio, and the finale.

Having featured his violinists in such a soloistic role, it is only natural that Mozart not neglect his wind players either. The two oboes take over the first movement’s second theme from the violins and play it all by themselves; the horns have their solo moment in the minuet. The trumpets don’t have any solos, but their high register and their timbre guarantee that they will be heard whenever they enter.

One important thing that was happening to the symphonic genre in the 1770s was the expansion of sonata form. This “architectural plan” for musical compositions changed from a two-part to a three-part design, with the insertion of development sections of ever-increasing length and complexity. The young Mozart was well aware of this trend and made significant contributions to it; in the middle of the first movement of this symphony, he plays with the motivic ideas presented earlier, and then transforms and subdivides them according to the new manner of thematic elaboration.

—Peter Laki

Copyright © 2007 by The Cleveland Orchestra


JOHN ADAMS Guide to Strange Places
Born February 15, 1947, in Worcester, Massachusetts; now living in California.

Composed in 2001 as a joint commission from VARA (sponsor of a Dutch radio concert series), the BBC Symphony, and the Sydney Symphony, Guide to Strange Places received its world premiere on October 6, 2001, with the composer conducting the Netherlands Radio Orchestra at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The work received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on February 28, 2004, with the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Slatkin.

Scoring: piccolo, 2 flutes (second doubling second piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (2 marimbas, glockenspiel, snare drum, 2 bass drums, cowbell, chimes, almglocken, triangle, suspended triangles, crotales, roto-toms, claves, suspended cymbal, and woodblock), piano, celesta, harp, and strings.

John Adams, according to his publisher Boosey & Hawkes, has become “the most frequently performed living American composer of orchestral music.” That his work is proving so durable is one gauge of the stature Adams has attained. His Whitmanesque openness to artistic experience can be seen in his embrace of many musical styles and forms.

But this is not merely eclecticism, for the Adams signature is unmistakable. It imprints his music across a remarkable versatility of genres, with his mastery extending from monumental symphonic spans to path-breaking operas, multi-media stage works, and wittily inventive chamber music. One aspect of Adams’s achievement is that he bridges key aspects of American music traditions with the heritage of European art music—linking the vibrancy of present consciousness with an increasingly distant musical past.

Guide to Strange Places had its origins in an Adams family vacation to southern France. There the composer chanced upon a guidebook titled Guide noir de la Provence mystérieuse (“Black Guide to Provence and Its Mysteries”), filled with oddly fanciful curiosities about the local region, from geological observations to catalogs of miracles. Strange “details” from the book sparked Adams’s imagination.

Journeys (both outer and inner) have often served composers as metaphor for large-form orchestral works, but the image of travelling through landscapes has had particular resonance within much of Adams’s music. He gives his own analogy between musical and geographical space: “The formal idea with my music,” Adams says, “is that something appears on the event horizon, and then it increases in importance as it begins to dominate the screen, and then it passes you and it’s gone. Meanwhile, several other events have arisen and are at various stages of moving towards you.”

Among the “strange places” in this work are the marvels of orchestral sonorities themselves. Much of Guide’s fascination lies in how Adams unfolds varying instrumental combinations throughout the piece. The rustling and restless figurations at the start suggest we are already in the middle of things. In typical Adams fashion, the level of tension actually increases from here, with the landscape becoming a labyrinth featuring false starts and pauses explored in glowing but dead-end chorales.

Later, when the pulsating momentum picks up again, prominent swellings in the brass have a Doppler effect. Thunderous beats on the roto-toms and bass drums add threat to the soundscape, and the rest of the piece is informed by the jagged edges of unexpected accents.

In 2003, choreographer Peter Martins created a ballet from Guide to Strange Places for ten principal dancers with the New York City Ballet. Many reactions both to the concert experience and the ballet version of this music have noted the prominent presence of Stravinsky (from the revolutionary ballets) as filtered through Adams’s imagination. While the brightness of the opening may recall Petrushka, the final pages of Guide to Strange Places evoke a postmodern Rite of Spring, one in which Stravinsky’s own Cubist-like dissections and slicings of meter are intensified to a new plane. By the end, we have been taken to a very different place from where we started. Adams concludes with a new perspective on the fitful starts and stops from earlier in the piece, now punctuated with unsettling menace. With a half-step down to a sustained low G, the piece seems not so much to stop as to run aground, like a ship amid rocky shores.

—Copyright © 2007 Thomas May


PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74, “Pathétique”
Born May 7, 1840, in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka province, Russia; died November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg.

Composed in 1893, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony was first performed on October 28 of that year in St. Petersburg, under the composer’s direction; it received its US premiere at Carnegie Hall on March 16, 1894, with the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch.

Scoring: 3 flutes (third doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion (bass drum, cymbals, tam-tam), and strings.

On October 28, 1893, Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of his Sixth Symphony in St. Petersburg. Nine days later, he was dead. The reported cause of death was cholera. Some decades later, a hypothesis was put forward suggesting that the composer committed suicide (by drinking cholera-infected water) over questions about his sexuality. This idea has enjoyed a certain amount of currency, both among scholars and audience members in the past 20 years. However, recent and more thorough examination of the available evidence, together with wide-ranging discussions about the context of the times in which Tchaikovsky lived, now tend to discount this idea.

Long after the fact, it is all too easy to interpret the indisputable musical pessimism of the “Pathétique” Symphony as a premonition of death, but Tchaikovsky was, in fact, in good health. And despite what Tchaikovsky biographer David Brown describes as the “deepening inner gloom” of the last years, these were also the years in which Tchaikovsky arrived at the zenith of his international fame. Two years earlier, he had been feted throughout his trip to America, had participated in the opening concerts for New York’s new Carnegie Hall, and had been hailed in the press in the New World as well as in the Old.

The “Pathétique” is not only the most intensely emotional of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, it is also the one in which Tchaikovsky reached the pinnacle of his art in terms of compositional technique and sophistication. And it is the combination of these two aspects—exceptional emotional richness and supreme craftsmanship—that makes the “Pathétique” Tchaikovsky’s crowning masterpiece.

When the bassoon theme of the introductory Adagio section of the opening movement is repeated as the first theme of the movement’s main Allegro non troppo section, it creates an immediate dramatic effect, enhanced by the brilliant orchestration (divided violas and cellos answered by a quartet of woodwinds). The gulf between this “active” first theme and the expansive, warmly melodic second idea is maximized by the circumstance that the two themes are separated by a lengthy transition section, and a significantly slower tempo (Andante) for the second theme. In the development section, the tension reaches a breaking point and we hear an almost Mahlerian tragic march whose rumbling bass accompaniment is derived from the main theme. At the beginning of the recapitulation, the subdued sounds are replaced by the powerful sonority of the full orchestra, changing the entire character of the first theme from painful and languid to desperate and dramatic. The return of the expansive second melody then brings some much-needed solace.

The subdued, morendo (“dying away”) ending of the first movement foreshadows the fourth-movement Adagio lamentoso. In between, however, there are two lighter movements: a graceful waltz with a limp (in 5/4 time, written with every other waltz-like 3/4 measure shortened by a beat), and a lively march whose theme unfolds only gradually and which seems, at least momentarily, to suggest triumph and happiness.

The respite brought by the two middle movements, however, proves to be only temporary. The fourth-movement Finale is one of the most heart-rending Adagios in the history of music. Its doleful B-minor theme (whose notes are played alternately by first and second violins) is followed by a second idea that is no less sad in tone despite being in the major mode. Tchaikovsky marked this D-major theme con lenezza e devozione (“softly and with devotion”). Twice, the music grows louder to triple fortissimo, in a state of utter despair, only to fall back each time into the quietest of pianissimos, from which the symphony finally dies away.

—Peter Laki

Copyright © 2007 by The Cleveland Orchestra

More Information:

The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director and Conductor
Franz Welser-Möst is in his sixth season as Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra. His long-term commitment to the Orchestra extends through the 2011–12 season.

Highlights of Mr. Welser-Möst’s concerts with The Cleveland Orchestra during his first five seasons have included many works new to the Orchestra’s repertoire that span four centuries, including nine world premieres and as many US premieres. His programming also has featured eagerly anticipated annual concert performances of opera. In Cleveland, Mr. Welser-Möst actively participates in community concerts and educational programs including the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra and partnerships with area colleges and universities.

Under Franz Welser-Möst’s direction, the Orchestra has toured extensively, to critical acclaim. In addition to biennial residencies at the Musikverein in Vienna, the first of their kind by an American orchestra, the Orchestra continues its residencies at the Lucerne Festival featuring Roche Commissions, a collaboration between the Orchestra, the Festival, and Carnegie Hall. Domestically, the Orchestra and Mr. Welser-Möst have toured from coast to coast. In January 2007, the Orchestra began its ten-year residency project in Miami, Florida, at the new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts.

The first commercially available DVD featuring the Orchestra and Mr. Welser-Möst, of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5, was released worldwide by EuroArts in February 2007. The Orchestra’s first commercial CD with Mr. Welser-Möst, of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, will be released by Deutsche Grammophon during the fall of 2007.

In June 2007, Mr. Welser-Möst was named General Music Director of the Vienna State Opera beginning in 2010. His long partnership with the company features a new production of Wagner’s Ring cycle in the 2007–08 and 2008–09 seasons.

Mr. Welser-Möst became general music director of the Zurich Opera in 2005, having previously served as music director (1995 to 2002) and principal conductor (2002 to 2005). He regularly conducts leading European orchestras and opera companies, including those of Berlin and Vienna, and served as music director of the London Philharmonic from 1990 to 1996.

Among Mr. Welser-Möst’s honors are recognition from the Western Law Center for Disability Rights of his advocacy on behalf of people with disabilities; honorary membership in the Vienna Singverein; the 2003 Conductor of the Year Award from Musical America; honorary doctorates from Case Western Reserve University, Oberlin College, and the Cleveland Institute of Music; the Silver Medal of the Region of Upper Austria; and the appointment as an Academician of the Yutse European Academy Foundation.

THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRA

Long considered one of America’s great orchestras, The Cleveland Orchestra stands today among the world’s most-revered symphonic ensembles. In concerts at home in Severance Hall; at its summer home, Blossom Music Center; and on tour, The Cleveland Orchestra continues to set standards of performing excellence and imaginative programming that serve as models for audiences and performers alike.

The Cleveland Orchestra was founded in 1918, under the direction of Nikolai Sokoloff, who served until 1933. Succeeding music directors have included Artur Rodzinski (1933–1943), Erich Leinsdorf (1943–1946), George Szell (1946–1970), Lorin Maazel (1972–1982), and Christoph von Dohnányi (1984–2002). Franz Welser-Möst’s appointment as the seventh Music Director of The Cleveland Orchestra was announced in June 1999, providing for a seamless transition in the artistic leadership of the Orchestra with the 2002–03 season.

Under Franz Welser-Möst’s direction, the Orchestra has toured extensively, to critical acclaim. Their European Tour following these Carnegie Hall appearances includes their third residency at the Musikverein in Vienna. In addition to these biennial residencies, the first of their kind by an American orchestra, the Orchestra continues its residencies at the Lucerne Festival featuring Roche Commissions, a collaboration between the Orchestra, the Festival, and Carnegie Hall. Domestically, the Orchestra and Mr. Welser-Möst have toured from coast to coast, and in January 2007 the Orchestra began its ten-year residency project in Miami, Florida, at the new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts.

The Cleveland Orchestra has a long and distinguished recording and broadcast history. Recent releases include the Orchestra’s first commercially available DVD recording, of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5, which was released worldwide by EuroArts last February. The next DVD by the Orchestra and Mr. Welser-Möst will be of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9, which will be recorded at the Musikverein this fall. Deutsche Grammophon has just released the Orchestra’s first commercial CD with Mr. Welser-Möst, of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Concerts by The Cleveland Orchestra are broadcast on radio stations throughout North America and Europe.

In 1931, the Orchestra moved to its permanent home, Severance Hall. In 2000, Severance Hall reopened following a $36 million restoration and renovation project, which included the construction of a new concert stage, enhanced technical capabilities, and the refurbishment and re-installation (in 2001) of the building’s original E.M. Skinner organ.

The Cleveland Orchestra is in a new era under Franz Welser-Möst’s guidance, while maintaining a steadfast commitment to its long-held traditions of artistic excellence, educational outreach, and community service.