Saturday, February 3 2007, 8:00 pm, Cary Hall
Conductor's talk 7:00 pm
Jonathan McPhee, conductor
Gail Williams, horn
| Mozart | Overture to Don Giovanni |
| Plog | Nocturne for Horn and String Orchestra |
| R. Strauss | Horn Concerto No. 1 |
| Beethoven | Symphony No. 4 |
Gail Williams, former associate principal horn of the Chicago Symphony - known for its incredible brass sound - is a "multidimensional artist [with] a wonderfully rich, wholesome tone, which [is] full of punch or mellow and honeylike."
-- The Sunday World-Herald
While Don Giovanni presents one of the great "villain" portrayals of all time, the horn is pure "hero" in Richard Strauss's first horn concerto, influenced by the sounds heard throughout Strauss's youth of his professional horn-playing father. We are thrilled to present to you a special East Coast visit by Gail Williams, the consummate horn player of our time, as she performs the Strauss and Plog on a program perfectly framed by Mozart and Beethoven.
Other events this week
February 1, 2007: Gail Williams at Lexington High School
World-renowned hornist Gail Williams will participate in a clinic with music students at Lexington High School on Thursday, Feb. 1.
February 2, 2007, approximately 1:00 pm: Gail Williams live on WGBH radio, 89.7
(Subject to change; please check listings or listen to station for announcements.)
February 2, 2007, 4:00 pm: Gail Williams master class at New England Conservatory
Program Notes
W. A. Mozart – The Marriage of Figaro
Following the great success of The Marriage of Figaro at the National Theater in Prague, Mozart received a commission for yet another opera for that house.
The first performance was planned for the entertainment of the soon-to-be-wed Archduchess Maria Theresia and Prince Anton Clements of Saxony upon their scheduled visit to Prague in October of 1787. The subject of the opera would be Don Juan, with the libretto to be written by Mozart's Figaro librettist Lorenzo da Ponte via the respective literary lenses of de Molina, Giliberti, Molière, and most recently Giovanni Bertati, a hated rival of da Ponte.
Although the premiere performance was scheduled for October 14th (the royal couple was due to leave Prague the following day), the performance date had to be moved several times because of insufficient rehearsal time, an indisposed singer or two, and the fact that some of the music had yet to be written. The Archduchess and her prince would have to make do with Figaro, and Mozart was left with two extra weeks to compose the remaining music for the new opera. This would include the overture, the last-minute writing of which would become a tradition with Mozart.
The composer's wife, Constanze, would later recount how she assisted in this wee-hour effort by brewing him punch and telling him tales of Aladdin, Cinderella, and the like. Eventually, however, the punch and the writing made Mozart so drowsy that she suggested that he take a nap while she keep watch. According to Constanze, she awakened him with a few hours to spare before the copyists arrived, at which point the overture was completed. Apparently the orchestral parts were ready in time for the first performance (or for the dress rehearsal, depending upon whose chronology one believes) and the first performance of Don Giovanni was a success.
As part of the opera, the overture flows without pause into the opening scene, changing key in preparation for Leporello's opening solo. Anticipating the use of the overture as a free-standing work, however, Mozart also penned an alternate ending which allows the overture to remain in its original key.
A. Plog – Nocturne for Horn & Strings
Anthony Plog began studying music at the age of 10, and by the age of 19 he was playing extra trumpet with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under conductors such as Zubin Mehta, James Levine, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Claudio Abbado, to name a few. His first orchestral position was Principal Trumpet with the San Antonio Symphony from 1970-1973 and was followed by a 2 year stint with the Utah Symphony as Associate Principal. He left the Utah Symphony in 1976 to pursue a solo and composition career, and while living in Los Angeles from 1976-1988 supported himself by playing Principal Trumpet with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Pacific Symphony and by occasionally playing in the film studios (Star Trek 1, Gremlins, Rocky 2&3, Altered States, etc.).
In 1990 he moved to Europe to play Solo Trumpet with the Malmo Symphony in Sweden, and since 1993 has been a Professor at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik in Freiburg, Germany. During this time he was co-solo Trumpet with the Basel Symphony in Switzerland for 3 years. He has also toured as co-solo Trumpet with the Stockholm Royal Philharmonic (Japan 1992) and the Buenos Aires Symphony (Germany and Holland 1997).
As a soloist, Anthony Plog has toured throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Japan. He has numerous recordings to his credit, and has recorded solo albums for labels as diverse as BIS, Crystal, Centaur, and Summit. In addition to his solo career, Mr. Plog has made chamber music an important part of his musical life. He is a founding member of the Fine Arts Brass Quintet and the Summit Brass, and has performed with such chamber music organizations as the Chicago Chamber Musicians, Chamber Music Northwest, St. Louis Brass Quintet, etc.
Since being appointed to his first teaching position upon his return to California from the Utah Symphony in 1976, Anthony Plog has taught at various institutions around the world, including California State University at Northridge, the University of Southern California, the Music Academy of the West, the Schola Cantorum (Basel, Switzerland), the Malmo Music Academy (Malmo, Sweden) and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
Anthony Plog retired from the concert stage in 2001 in order to pursue a full time composition career.
R. Strauss – Horn Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 11
Richard Strauss' father, Franz, was a highly respected horn player who performed with the Bavarian Court Opera for 49 years. After his first wife had died of cholera, he managed to secure his financial future by wedding the daughter of a prosperous Bavarian brewer. Richard, born into a family of means, was thus able to pursue music as a career once he demonstrated early creative talent. (Breitkopf & Härtel's publication of the 12-year-old's Op. 1, a festival march, was paid for with family money.)
Richard's early music instruction would take place at the hands of his father. Richard mastered traditional theory well, although he would later describe his father's teaching style as "vehement, irascible, and tyrannical." The elder Strauss would restrict his son's exposure to such "modern" composers as Brahms and Schumann, and Wagner was completely out of the question. (In spite of having played the first performances of several of Wagner's operas, Franz detested both the composer and his music; Wagner in turn found the hornist to be personally unbearable, although musically beyond reproach.)
It was only natural that the young Strauss would experiment with music for the instrument his father played so well. An early set of variations for horn and piano, as well as the song "I Hear an Alphorn Sounding," the latter with a quite difficult horn obligato, were both composed at age fourteen. An early symphony (1880), violin concerto (1882) and concert overture (1883), would provide Strauss with valuable experience in larger forms, so that by his 18th year he was ready to attempt his first concerto for the horn.
The concerto was dedicated to Oscar Franz, a well-known horn virtuoso of the time, although the first public performance with orchestra was actually given in March of 1885 by the Meiningen hornist Gustav Leinhos, with Hans von Bülow conducting. Strauss wrote to his father that Leinhos was a soloist of "colossal sureness" – a quality much prized in horn players – and possessed a tone very much like that of Franz's own.
Although avowedly written for the natural, valveless Waldhorn, the concerto is virtually unplayable on that instrument, and the work is always performed on a valved instrument. Johanna Strauss, the composer's sister, once sent a postcard to the English hornist Dennis Brain, wherein she recounted memories of her father struggling with the concerto's solo part, which he found quite tiring. In particular, he seems to have considered the recurrent high notes too daring and dangerous for public performance, and never played the work himself in concert.
Beethoven – Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60
Beethoven spent the summer of 1806 away from Vienna, visiting first his friend Count Brunswick at the latter's ancestral Hungarian estate, and then moving to the summer castle of Prince Lichnowsky in Silesia (now the Czech Republic). Lichnowsky introduced the composer to Count Franz von Oppersdorf, a moneyed aristocrat who loved music so much that he hired as domestic staff only those individuals who could play an instrument, thus creating for the Count his own private orchestra. Oppersdorf was a great admirer of Beethoven's music, and arranged a performance of the Second Symphony for the composer's first visit. In June of the next year, Oppersdorf commissioned Beethoven to write a symphony for him.
Beethoven had already begun sketches for the C minor symphony in 1805, and it seemed to have been this work that was promised to Oppersdorf. In a letter of March 1808, Beethoven would write to the count about the symphony's finale, mentioned the scoring for "3 trombones and flautino," whereby the count was to expect "more noise than 6 kettledrums, and, indeed, better noise." But the composer apparently changed his mind, deciding to fulfill the commission with the B-flat symphony which he had begun writing during his earlier time with Lichnowsky. In November of 1808, the composer would write to Oppersdorf: "You will view me in a false light, but necessity compelled me to sell the symphony which was written for you, and also another, to someone else."
The dedication for the promised C minor symphony went to Prince Lobkowitz and Count Rasumovsky, as did the dedication for that "other" symphony, the Pastoral. Count Oppersdorf, who had expected a six months' right of performance, received nothing more than the dedication of the substituted Fourth Symphony, which had already been both performed (by Prince Lobkowitz) and sold for publication. Beethoven made no offer to return Oppersdorf's substantial advance; unsurprisingly, there is no record of further communication between the two of them.
The B-flat symphony, sandwiched as it is between the mighty Third and the iconic Fifth – Schumann described the work as a "slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants" – has found itself, along with the composer's symphony in D, to be much less known or performed than the other seven symphonies. And yet the Fourth has had (and continues to have) its champions. Berlioz described the score as being "lively, nimble, joyous, or of a heavenly sweetness." Thayer, in his Life of Beethoven, singled out the "placid and serene Fourth Symphony – the most perfect in form of them all." And Sir George Grove thought that the symphony's movements fit in their places like the limbs and textures of a lovely statue; and full of fire and invention as they are, all is subordinated to conciseness, grace and beauty.
