November 21-22, 2009 Concert

Aaron Rosand is ''one of the great living exponents of Romantic violin music,'' according to The New York Times. Rosand's remarkable career as an internationally recognized soloist and recording artist has spanned more than half a century. He has performed in all major international concert halls and has collaborated with some of the greatest conductors of our time, including Bernstein, Kubelick, Maazel, Reiner, Rostropovich and Tennstedt, among others. He has recorded more than 150 individual compositions, many earning rave reviews.

''There is not a violinist today who possesses a finer,
more subtle command of his instrument.''
– The Washington Post

Program Notes

Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla
Michail Glinka (1804-1857)

Michail Glinka was one of those rare composers who had no formal musical training but had an immense influence on composers who followed him. Russian music in the 18th and early 19th centuries was basically founded on European musical tastes, especially those of Italy, Germany and France. There were no indigenous Russian characteristics that would give a nationalistic identity to the music. Glinka's early compositions, mainly songs, reflect this lack of identity. However, after spending a few years in Italy composing Italianate pieces, Glinka was compelled to search for ways to create a Russian quality. In this regard, he was simply reflecting the wave of nationalism in all countries that played a great part in the Romantic movement of the 19th century.

His operas, A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Russlan and Ludmilla (1842), were the works that established him as ''the father of Russian music.'' He wrote, ''We, the inhabitants of the North, feel differently...I was led gradually to the idea of writing in a Russian manner.'' Igor Stravinsky later commented, ''All music in Russia stems from him.''

Glinka's idea was far more involved than simply incorporating Russian folk music into his pieces. More importantly, he called upon literary works based on ancient national epics, such as the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin's poem, Russlan and Ludmilla, which, in turn, was based on an old Russian fairy tale. The plot involves the chivalrous and heroic warrior Russlan, who defeats the sorcerer dwarf Chernomor to win beautiful Ludmilla, daughter of Svetozar, prince of Kiev. Fantastical elements include a magic sword; an evil enchantress Naina; Chernomor's enormous beard, the source of his strength; and a magic ring.

Glinka's bright, transparent scoring, readily apparent here, established the character of Russian orchestration, later heard in the orchestral masterpieces of Rimsky-Korsakoff, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. This overture in sonata form opens with two prestissimo themes contrasted with a warm, lyrical melody played by violas and cellos, recalling Russlan's aria of longing for Ludmilla. A triumphant coda, which includes trombones playing a descending whole tone scale, Chernomor's theme, ends this colorful landmark overture.

Scottish Fantasy, Opus 46
Max Bruch (1838-1920)

In his lifetime, Max Bruch witnessed great changes in musical composition. He was born eleven years after the death in 1827 of that monumental early Romanticist, Beethoven, and Bruch died in 1920, a period when a strong rejection of German Romanticism prevailed in significant musical circles. During this time, most of the great Romantic composers lived and died, followed by those experimentalists espousing totally different approaches to serious composition in the early 20th century. Although he composed until the end of his long life, he obviously never subscribed to the move toward serialism, chromaticism and atonality. Rather, he remains known for some of the most accessible, warmly romantic music we know. In Germany, his choral music still has a devoted following. Internationally, Bruch is remembered primarily for three instrumental works: the Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra (1880), the Violin Concerto No. 1 (1866) and the cello variations on the Hebrew ritual chant Kol Nidre (1881).

Undoubtedly, Bruch's great interest in folk music, notably that of his native Germany as well as traditional Scottish, Welsh and Hebrew folk tunes, accounts for works ranging from one of the most evocative, moving treatments of Hebrew melodies as well as a charming virtuosic fantasy based on Scottish folk songs. Neither Scottish nor Jewish, Bruch had a magnificent capacity to capture the essence of those ethnicities in some of his music. The Kol Nidre was completed while he served as conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic from 1880 to 1883 and was an extension of friendship to the local Jewish community. The Scottish Fantasy was a result of his travels in Britain where he heard folk music performed in the villages and countryside. He took great pride in the fact that he used folk tunes he had actually heard, rather than relying only on printed collections and other resource material.

The Scottish Fantasy prefaces four movements with a melancholy opening section, featuring a sonorous brass choir followed by a lovely, pianissimo entrance for the soloist. This proceeds without a break into the first movement, the Adagio cantabile, which incorporates the tune ''Auld Rob Morris.'' Providing a contrast with this warm lyricism, the jolly ''The Dusty Miller'' is heard in the second movement Allegro, which also continues without a break into the touching, moving third movement, Andante sostenuto, with the folk tune ''I'm a-Doun for Lack o'Johnnie.'' The final movement, Finale guerriero, is based on the martial song ''Scots wha hae,'' and provides a rousing, stirring display of violin virtuosity.

Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat major, Op. 55 ''Eroica''
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

The transition from the 18th to the 19th century saw a great rise of rebellion against oppressive rulers in Europe. Ensuing violence and bloodshed resulting from battles, as well as the arrival of new leaders espousing freedom, brought many ''heroes'' into wide recognition, none more than the great Napoleon himself, whose astounding military victories elevated him to the role of the people's liberator. It was a time of heroism, liberty and equality, and a time when composers, writers and artists honored these qualities.

In Beethoven's case, the years 1802 to 1804 began that part of his musical life that many writers refer to as his ''Heroic'' second period, which had so much to do with our present image of the composer. As writer K. Robert Schwartz succinctly put it, ''The Romantic image of Beethoven – the heaven-storming lion shaking his fist at the gods, the heroic, willfully independent free spirit...''

The year 1802 marked the point at which Beethoven realized that his hearing problem was chronic and that it was not caused by the noises of city life in Vienna as he had fervently hoped. This crushing realization of impending deafness, especially for a musician, and one propelled by such an incredible creative force, led to feelings of devastating despair and suicidal depression, as written in his ''Heiligenstadt Testament.'' But his strong will and rebellious spirit, coupled with the responsibilities he felt about his musical contributions, led to his defiant rejection of submission to this trauma and demanded his going forward. Beethoven said, ''I will take Fate by the throat – it shall not bend me completely to its will.'' As so many analysts attest, it is difficult to find a more ''heroic'' act.

And so a new path, one of idealistic heroism, became a force in his music. He had much admiration for Napoleon, the great liberator, and gave the title ''Bonaparte'' to the Symphony No. 3, completed in 1804. However, when Napoleon proclaimed himself Emperor and ruler of the people that year, the enraged composer literally tore the General's name from the title page of the piece, subsequently replacing it with ''Sinfonia Eroica.'' This presented no loss, however, since the great work goes far beyond a statement of one man's heroic ideals. As Richard Osborne points out in A Guide to the Symphony, ''In formulating the 'Eroica' Symphony, Beethoven contemplated the heroism of the young Napoleon and the heroism of the fire-stealing and god-defying Prometheus; and to these contemporary and Classical precedents he added his own heroic defiance of deafness and incipient despair. Of these, the last two are probably a good deal more important than Napoleon ever was to the scheme of the 'Eroica.'''

But the significance of the Symphony No. 3 also lies in its enormous impact on the development of orchestral music, especially symphonic composition, following its public premiere in April, 1805. This can be attributed to Beethoven's powerful creative forces forging new directions in the music; for example, it represented a great leap forward from the last symphonies of the Classical master Joseph Haydn, written less than ten years before. Personal expression and drama became major factors, leaving behind much of the formal elegance, grace and symmetry prevalent earlier. Schwartz comments about ''its rending the bonds of Classical propriety by means of dissonance, rough-hewn counterpoint, volume, orchestration, and sheer violence.''

The first movement opens with two sforzando E-flat major chords, immediately establishing the tonality and introducing a simple theme based on the tonic triad of E-flat, G and B-flat. The quick, sudden shift to a totally foreign C-sharp, seemingly from out of nowhere, serves notice that whole new musical dimensions are about to follow. The movement's unprecedented length, causing outrage at its first hearing, attests to Beethoven's genius in developing and expanding the plainest, simplest thematic motives into massive sections, using an astounding variety of melodic treatments, dramatic changes in harmony and dynamics, clashing meters, syncopations and colorful instrumental textures.

The slow second movement, ''Funeral March,'' is heard as a universal lamentation to fallen heroes, guardians of freedom and liberty. Beethoven, true to the times, uses dotted rhythms, muffled drum rolls represented in the basses, and minor key dirges, much of the time played by the oboe.

In the third movement, Beethoven composed a brilliant ''Scherzo,'' leaving forever the genteel minuet of the Classical symphony. The quiet, rapid opening blazes out into a fortissimo, likened to the political prisoners in his opera ''Fidelio'' emerging from the dungeon's darkness to blinding sunlight and freedom. The stirring and inventive middle section of this three- part movement features striking passages scored for French horns.

The final movement begins with a tumultuous opening but soon quietly presents a first theme played pizzicato in strings. Two variations on this theme follow, after which Beethoven employs the same theme as a bass line below a new melody, a theme from his ballet, ''Creatures of Prometheus,'' played by the oboe. Eleven magnificent variations are based on this combination, followed by a fugue recalling the first melody. A grand climax leads to a pause in the piece, setting the stage for a slow, beautifully orchestrated passage, heard first in woodwinds. Sir Donald Tovey described it as ''the opening to the gates of Paradise.'' An extended coda points toward an inspiring, triumphant conclusion, so fitting for Beethoven's glorious expression of heroic defiance.

– Richard Wolter