CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 8:00 PM

St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor
Julia Fischer, Violin

MOZART Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto
PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 5

Encores:
BACH JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Andante from Violin Sonata No. 2 in A Major, BWV 1015 (played by Ms. Fischer before intermission)
ELGAR Salut d'amour, Op. 12

Program Notes:

By Harlow Robinson

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
Born January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria; died December 5, 1791, in Vienna.

Composed between 1785 and 1786, The Marriage of Figaro was first performed on May 1, 1786, in Vienna. The Overture received its Carnegie Hall premiere on May 7, 1891, with the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch, as part of the Opening Week Music Festival.

Scoring: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in D, 2 trumpets in D, timpani, and strings.

In 1814, nearly 30 years after the premiere of Mozart’s pointedly anti-establishment comic opera The Marriage of Figaro had its premiere at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Stendal described it as “a sublime mixture of wit and melancholy, which has no equal.” Mozart himself devised the idea of an opera based on Beaumarchais’ comedy, which was created in the anarchic spirit of the French Revolution and banned by the Hapsburg emperor as subversive for its highly unsympathetic portrayal of the aristocracy. With its remarkably appealing and all-too-human characters, its sublime mixture of compassion and humor, and its rethinking and humanizing of stale operatic conventions, Figaro has never really fallen out of favor with audiences.

Cast in optimistic D major and marked Presto, the brief one-movement overture opens jauntily, with the somewhat comical combination of bassoons and strings enunciating breathless eighth-note phrases punctuated by rests. As if in answer to these roguish sentiments, the second half of the first theme sounds more grounded and dignified. During the recapitulation, the music gradually leads to a triumphant, but never ponderous, final section of cascading eighth-note runs in thirds. Although Mozart does not include any musical quotations from the opera in what has become his best-known overture, it brilliantly achieves the task: preparing the audience for the infectious, playful, and flirtatious atmosphere of the musical drama to follow.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61
Born December 15 or 16, 1770, in Bonn, Germany; died March 26, 1827, in Vienna.

Composed in 1806, the Violin Concerto in D Major was first performed on December 23, 1806, in Vienna. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on March 8, 1895, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Frank van der Stucken and Eugène Ysaÿe, violin.

Scoring: solo violin, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 2 horns in D, 2 trumpets in D, timpani, and strings.

Though now firmly established as one of the most beloved violin concertos in the repertoire, Beethoven’s Op. 61 entered the world quite inauspiciously. At the time, Vienna—including the composer’s house—was occupied by Napoleon’s army. According to Carl Czerny, the score was completed in great haste only two days before the premiere, played by Beethoven’s friend the violinist Franz Clement, first violinist and director at the Theater an der Wien. According to some accounts, Clement sight-read the piece without a single rehearsal. Another story maintains that between the first and second movements, Clement played one of his own sonatas, “on one string and with his fiddle upside down.”

The reviewer from the Viennese Zeitung fur Theater, Musik und Poesie was so underwhelmed by Beethoven’s first completed concerto for violin that he even failed to spell the composer’s name correctly. “The verdict of the cognoscenti is unanimous: they concede that it has some beauty, but maintain that the continuity is often completely fragmented, and that the endless repetition of some commonplace passages might easily prove wearisome. They assert that Beethhofen [sic] could put his undoubtedly great talents to better use.” In the decades following the premiere, the Concerto was rarely heard. Only when the 13-year old virtuoso Joseph Joachim played it in London in 1844, under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn, did the piece begin to catch on with audiences.

By the time Beethoven started working on the Concerto, he had already completed four symphonies, four piano concertos, and several major works for violin, including the Op. 47 “Kreutzer” Sonata. Notable for its remarkably simple structure and harmonic language, the Concerto has been described as “serene” and “pastoral” by numerous commentators. A sense of spiritual and aesthetic unity pervades all three movements. By far the largest (at about 20 minutes) is the first movement Allegro, ma non troppo, with its enigmatic opening of five strokes on the tonic D in the timpani. These strokes are then repeated by the first violins—four on a dissonant D sharp descending to C sharp, circling and avoiding the tonic. The strokes reappear at climactic moments in the movement, as though injecting a reminder of military reality and fate into the prevailing mood of dignified calm.

The second movement Larghetto is in the form of theme and variations, with the strings muted. Here, Beethoven seems to be revisiting the past, using a repeated ground bass that creates what one writer has described as the “aroma of antiquity.” In the finale, Beethoven turns to the familiar form of the rondo (so beloved of Mozart), concluding in a folksy, almost rustic spirit, firmly in the tonic key except for a brief, delightful lyrical excursion into G minor . For the soloist, the writing is not especially challenging, but in the words of Beethoven scholar Leon Plantinga, its “very ordinariness contributes to that sense of majestic slow inevitability at the heart of this work.”

SERGEI PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, Op. 100
Born April 23, 1891, in Sontsovka, Bakhmutsk region, Yekaterinoslav district, Ukraine; died March 5, 1953, in Moscow.

Composed in 1944, Symphony No. 5 was first performed on January 13, 1945, in Moscow. It received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 14, 1945, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzy.

Scoring: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, piccolo clarinet in C, 2 clarinets in C, bass clarinet in C, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 3 trumpets in C, four horns in C, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, legno, snare drum, tamburino, bass drum, tam-tam, piano, harp,and strings.

The Fifth Symphony is the largest of Prokofiev’s symphonies, and nearly three times as long as his first, the terse “Classical.” Where the “Classical” took its inspiration from Haydn and the 18th century, the Fifth turns to the late Romantic tradition (Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius) and to the heritage of the Soviet symphonic masters—especially Prokofiev’s colleague and sometimes rival Shostakovich. It provides a graphic illustration, in fact, of the sea change that had occurred in Prokofiev’s thinking about symphonic form and language since 1917, when, in the midst of the Russian Revolution, he dashed off the jocular “Classical.” Later, Prokofiev would say that he considered his work on the Fifth “very important not only for the musical material that went into it, but also because I was returning to the symphonic form after a break of 16 years. The Fifth Symphony is the culmination of an entire period in my work. I conceived of it as a symphony on the greatness of the human soul.”

Most striking about this symphony is its epic scale and character. Here, for the first time, Prokofiev uses the massive patriotic style that had proven so successful in his vocal and dramatic music of the late 1930s and early 1940s (Alexander Nevsky, Zdravitsa, War and Peace, Ivan the Terrible) in a purely symphonic context. The themes, orchestration, and mood are broad and strong; the irony and grotesque that permeate the “Classical” Symphony and so many other works of Prokofiev’s youth play a greatly reduced, though still essential, role.

Like the Eighth Piano Sonata, completed just before it, the Fifth Symphony demonstrates an unusual preference for slow tempos. Both the first (Andante) and third (Adagio) movements—which together make up more than half of the symphony—are predominantly slow. The long first movement, in sonata-allegro form, opens with a heroic but supple theme, free of chromatic alteration and ironic leaps, in the tonic key of B-flat major. Few themes in Prokofiev’s entire oeuvre can match it for power and expansiveness. (Its return in the opening bars of the fourth movement is a bold, dramatic gesture that gives the symphony emotional and structural unity.) The second theme of the first movement, announced by oboes and flutes, is more chromatic, but in the optimistic neo-classical idiom of the recently completed Flute Sonata. In this and in the following three movements, the piano plays an unusually prominent role, used for both percussive and melodic effect. In contrast to the epic expanse of the first movement, the second is light and jocular, contrasting a gently tongue-in-cheek martial theme with a free-falling one in A-B-A form. Constructed over an insistent ostinato in eighth-notes, the music creates a strong sense of dance. (Prokofiev had completed his ballet Cinderella not long before writing the Fifth Symphony).

The dominant quality of the Symphony is epic rather than tragic, but the long, slow third movement does express feelings of grief and pathos that seem directly related to the terrible events of World War II—especially in the funeral march section in 3/4 meter. Rhythmically, this section stands in marked contrast to the unusual, flowing 9/8 meter of the rest of the movement, in which Prokofiev juxtaposes triplets against quarter notes and eighth notes to produce a rocking, unsettling effect, while spinning out a beautiful lyrical melody whose phrases are initially given to different woodwind instruments in turn. This reflective, nostalgic mood is broken by the playful, jaunty main theme of the compact, action-packed last movement (in sonata-allegro form), full of optimism and joy; the second theme is similarly bright and cheerful. But Prokofiev saves the very best for last—the finale and coda are startling and original: a rambunctious, galloping romp propelled by wood block, triangle, cymbals, and piano, recalling the scene of the striking of the clock at midnight in Cinderella.

Prokofiev wrote the Fifth Symphony very quickly, while staying at a composers’ retreat outside Moscow during the summer and early fall of 1944. Although he did not give the symphony a descriptive title or a program, or even a dedication, he clearly thought of it as his “war symphony.” By the time of its premiere, on January 13, 1945, the Red Army was advancing on Berlin and the defeat of Nazi Germany was in sight. So important did Prokofiev (who did not much enjoy conducting) consider this occasion that he conducted the first performance himself, on the legendary stage of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. All of the prominent figures in Moscow musical life were present. Among them was Prokofiev’s friend and collaborator pianist Sviatoslav Richter, who later described the event:

“The Great Hall was illuminated, no doubt, the same way it always was,” he wrote later, “but when Prokofiev stood up, the light seemed to pour straight down on him from somewhere up above. He stood like a monument on a pedestal. And then, when Prokofiev had taken his place on the podium and silence reigned in the hall, artillery salvos suddenly thundered forth. His baton was raised. He waited, and began only after the cannons had stopped. There was something very significant in this, something symbolic. It was as if all of us—including Prokofiev—had reached some kind of shared turning point.”

The salvos came from Soviet cannons, paying tribute to the Red Army soldiers who had just crossed the Vistula on their victory march towards Berlin. The end of the Second World War, which caused more suffering and casualties in the USSR than for any other participant, was now clearly in sight. When the orchestra finally began to play, it seemed to continue the music begun by the cannons.


Copyright © 2007 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

Harlow Robinson is Matthews Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University, and author of Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography and the recently published Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians: Biography of an Image.

St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra
Yuri Temirkanov, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor
Over the last 40 years, Yuri Temirkanov has forged a fiercely individual brand of music-making, marking him as one of the most dynamic conductors on the international concert circuit. In his primary role as Music Director and Principal Conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra—a position he has occupied since his predecessor Yevgeny Mravinsky’s departure in 1988—Temirkanov frequently elicits performances lauded for their intelligence, precision, and wide-ranging emotional depth. In addition to his tenure in St. Petersburg, the maestro currently serves as Principal Guest Conductor of the Bolshoi Opera, Principal Guest Conductor of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Conductor Laureate of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Music Director Emeritus of the Baltimore Symphony. He has also served as Principal Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Music Director of the Kirov Opera and Ballet (now known as the Mariinsky Theatre), Principal Guest Conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic, and most recently, Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony. Mr. Temirkanov regularly appears with many of Europe’s leading orchestras, including the Berliner Philharmoniker, Vienna Philharmonic, Dresden Staatskapelle, London Philarmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Santa Cecilia of Rome, and La Scala. He is a regular visitor to the US, where he conducts the major orchestras of New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

In addition to his eagerly awaited fall tour with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, highlights of Mr. Temirkanov’s 2007–08 conducting season include Verdi’s La Traviata at Parma’s Teatro Regio, Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades and Bizet’s Carmen at the Bolshoi Opera; programs of Prokofiev and Shostakovich with the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony; the premiere of a new commission by Georgian composer Giya Kancheli with the Danish Radio Symphony; and a tour of Latin America with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic in summer 2008.

Yuri Temirkanov’s extensive discography features collaborations with the New York Philharmonic, the Kirov Opera Orchestra and Chorus, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, and the Danish National Radio Symphony. He has recorded the complete Stravinsky ballets and Tchaikovsky’s symphonic cycle with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as many of the major works of Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, and Mussorgsky with the other ensembles.

Mr. Temirkanov is the recipient of numerous distinguished citations and awards, including the State Prize of Russia (1999) and the Association of Italian Music Critics’ Abbiati Prize (2003); he has also been made an honorary member of the International Academy of Sciences, Industry, Education and Art (1998). In 2003, he was awarded the President’s Medal by Vladimir Putin and was named Conductor of the Year in Italy. He has received Grammy nominations for his recordings of Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky (1996) and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7 (1998).

Yuri Temirkanov started his musical studies at the age of nine. After studying violin and viola as a boy, he eventually pursued viola and conducting at the Leningrad Conservatory. He took first place at the prestigious All-Soviet National Conducting Competition in 1966, and was subsequently invited by conductor Kiril Kondrashin to tour Europe and the US with legendary violinist David Oistrakh and the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Temirkanov debuted with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic a year later, and was invited to join the orchestra as Assistant Conductor to Yevgeny Mravinsky. He served as Principal Conductor of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra from 1968 to 1976, then as Music Director of the Kirov Opera and Ballet until 1988, when he assumed his current position as Music Director and Principal Conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.

ST. PETERSBURG PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

The St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra is Russia’s oldest symphonic ensemble, tracing its origins to a group of music-loving aristocrats who founded Europe’s first Philharmonic Society in 1802. The St. Petersburg Philharmonic we know today has earned near-legendary status as the preeminent exponent of the modern Russian symphonic tradition. With Music Director and Principal Conductor Yuri Temirkanov at its helm since 1988, the SPPO follows an ambitious schedule of worldwide touring and recording, building on the foundation laid by the Orchestra’s great former conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky.

To celebrate its notable 200th anniversary in 2002, the Orchestra performed at a star-studded Gala concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London, with soloists including Evgeny Kissin and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. In the earliest days of its existence, the SPPO’s energies were directed first, and exclusively, to the Russian aristocracy, and, after the revolution in 1917, to the working classes. In the first half of the 20th century, the SPPO was led by some of the greatest conductors of the time, including Glazunov, Koussevitsky, Tcherepnin, Walter, Klemperer, Kleiber, and Knappertsbusch. Beginning in 1938, when the Orchestra was known as the Leningrad Philharmonic, Yevgeny Mravinsky led SPPO to greatness. The maestro established and maintained an extraordinary level of musical quality and integrity, which remains the hallmark of this superb ensemble to this day. Mravinsky’s special friendship with composer Dmitri Shostakovich enabled the Orchestra to become a recognized champion and authoritative interpreter of the composer’s works. After World War II, the Orchestra’s reputation took on a global dimension: as the first Soviet ensemble to tour abroad, the Orchestra performed throughout Europe, Asia, and the US under the direction of such greats as Stokowski, Munch, Cluytens, Markevitch, Krips, Kodály, and Britten. Maestro Mravinsky also made numerous recordings with the Orchestra, which eventually obtained distribution outside the USSR.

In 1991, the city of Leningrad reclaimed its original name, and the orchestra became known as the St. Petersburg Philharmonic. Under the leadership of Music Director and Principal Conductor Yuri Temirkanov, the ensemble now regularly tours Europe, the US, and Japan. The SPPO is a favorite at such major summer festivals as Salzburg, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Rheingau, MDR, Lucerne, and the BBC Proms. The Orchestra’s live and recorded performances have established its worldwide reputation of unparalleled excellence.

Recordings of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic can be heard with Yuri Temirkanov conducting on Sony BMG Masterworks, with Mariss Jansons on EMI, and with Vladimir Ashkenazy on Decca.

Julia Fischer, Violin
Violinist Julia Fischer has emerged as a singularly expressive voice of her generation, combining technical mastery with a commanding interpretive vision. Born in 1983 in Munich, Ms. Fischer began her violin studies at the age of three. At the age of nine, she was admitted to the Munich Academy of Music, where her principal teacher was Ana Chumachenco. Ms. Fischer is the winner of the coveted ECHO Klassik Award for her PentaTone Classics recording of Russian violin concertos by composing greats like Khachaturian, Prokofiev, and Glazunov. She is increasingly in demand in North America, having recently performed with The Philadelphia Orchestra (Christoph Eschenbach), the Pittsburgh Symphony (Marek Janowski), the Cincinnati Symphony (Yakov Kreizberg), the National Symphony (Emmanuel Krivine), the Minnesota Orchestra (Yakov Kreizberg), and the New York Philharmonic (Lorin Maazel) on their European Tour.

Ms. Fischer’s European engagements include her debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra (David Zinman) and return appearances with the Dresdner Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orchestre National de Belgique, Orchestre National de Lyon, Orchestra of the Suisse Romande, the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart, and many others. She will tour with the Kammerorchester Basel (Christopher Hogwood) and with the Netherlands Philharmonic (Yakov Kreizberg), with which she will give the Dutch premiere of the Maazel Violin Concerto. Other conductors with whom Ms. Fischer has collaborated include Sir Neville Marriner, Jun Märkl, Jeffrey Tate, Ruben Gazarian, Herbert Blomstedt, and Michael Tilson Thomas. Julia Fischer has performed in most European countries, the US, Brazil, and Japan, and her recorded concerts with PentaTone Classics have met with extraordinary critical acclaim on television and radio stations worldwide. Two of these recordings were named Gramophone’s “Editor’s Choice”: an all-Tchaikovsky CD (including the Violin Concerto) and her recording of Mendelssohn piano trios with cellist Daniel Müller-Schott and pianist Jonathan Gilad. Her double-CD recording of Bach sonatas and partitas won the Diapason d’Or, and Gramophone praised her recording of Mozart violin concertos with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra (Yakov Kreizberg). In 2006, Ms. Fischer was chosen “Best Newcomer of the Year” by BBC Music Magazine and graced the cover of Gramophone the same year. Her new CD of the Brahms Double Concerto with cellist Daniel Müller-Schott and the Netherlands Philharmonic (Yakov Kreizberg) has just been released. In addition to her audio recordings, Ms. Fischer is featured on a DVD of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Opus Arte).

Ms. Fischer is now Professor of Violin at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main. Her violin was made by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini in 1750.