PROGRAM NOTES
MARIN CONDUCTS BEETHOVEN ’ S FIFTH
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
BY JAMES M . KELLER
William Grant Still
Born May 11 , 1895 , in Woodville , Mississippi Died December 3 , 1978 , in Los Angeles , California
IN MEMORIAM : THE COLORED SOLDIERS WHO DIED FOR DEMOCRACY [ 1944 ]
Following study at Wilberforce College and Oberlin Conservatory , William Grant Still began his career working with popular musical ensembles . He made the first arrangements of W . C . Handy ’ s famous “ Beale Street Blues ” and “ St . Louis Blues ” and played in the pit orchestra for Handy ’ s show Shuffle Along . More formal study ensued privately with Edgard Varèse and George Chadwick , who urged him to seek an identifiably American voice as a composer .
The first of his five symphonies , titled Afro- American Symphony , was premiered in 1931 , with Howard Hanson conducting the Rochester Philharmonic in what was the first performance by a major American symphony orchestra of a piece by a Black composer . In 1936 he became the first Black conductor to lead a major American symphony orchestra : that , too , was the Rochester Philharmonic , which he conducted at the Hollywood Bowl . When his first opera , Troubled Island ( to a libretto concerning Haiti by Langston Hughes ) was mounted by New York City Opera , in 1949 , it was the first time an opera by an African-American composer had been presented by an opera company of national note .
In 1943 he was one of 17 starry composers the League of Composers commissioned to write a short orchestral piece on a patriotic theme to buoy the War effort . “ When you suggested that I compose something patriotic ,” he responded , “ there immediately flashed through my mind the press release which announced that the first American soldier to be killed in World War II was a Negro soldier . Then my thoughts turned to the colored soldiers all over the world , fighting under our flag and under flags of countries allied with us .” Thus was born In Memoriam : The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy . Within three years of its premiere ( on January 5 , 1944 , by the New York Philharmonic ) it was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic , Boston Symphony , and Cleveland Orchestra , as well as the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in Paris . Reviewing its premiere in The New Yorker , critic Robert A . Simon described it as one of the most successful of the commissions , “ an effective presentation of mood expressed by a grave and charming melody that was like a spiritual .” It was high praise ; among the other composers contributing to the League of Composers project were Howard Hanson , Roy Harris , Bernard Herrmann , Charles Ives , and Roger Sessions .
Instrumentation Three flutes including piccolo , two oboes , English horn , two clarinets , bass clarinet , two bassoons , four horns , three trumpets , three trombones , tuba , timpani , percussion , harp , and strings .
Dmitri Shostakovich
Born September 12 ( old style )/ 25 ( new style ), 1906 , in St . Petersburg , Russia Died August 9 , 1975 , in Moscow
VIOLIN CONCERTO NO . 1 IN A MINOR [ 1948 ]
Dmitri Shostakovich ’ s official approval ratings had already soared and plummeted several times when , in 1948 , he was condemned along with many composer-colleagues for “ formalist perversions and antidemocratic tendencies in music , alien to the Soviet people and its artistic tastes ” ( as the official “ Zhdanov Decree ” phrased it ) and was fired from the faculty of Leningrad Conservatory . He responded with a pathetic acknowledgement of guilt , and the next year he redeemed himself with The Song of the Forests , a nationalistic oratorio that gained him a Stalin Prize backed by 100,000 rubles .
He was working on his Violin Concerto No . 1 throughout these scary proceedings . He told his friend Isaak Glikman that every evening when he returned from the Zhdanov sessions he distracted himself by working on the concerto ’ s third movement . One of his pupils asked him where he was in the score when the Zhdanov Decree was published . “ He showed me the exact spot ,” the student recalled . “ The violin played sixteenth-notes before and after it . There was no change evident in the music .” Nonetheless , the whole business left Shostakovich unnerved , and the concerto waited until 1955 to be premiered , by violinist David Oistrakh and the Leningrad Philharmonic , Yevgeny Mravinsky conducting .
In March 1948 , Venyamin Basner , a violinist , attended Shostakovich ’ s last class at the Leningrad Conservatory , during which the composer “ played for us for the very first time his newly finished violin concerto .” He continued : “ The Concerto is a relentlessly hard , intense piece for the soloist . The difficult Scherzo is followed by the Passacaglia , then comes immediately the enormous cadenza which leads without a break into the Finale . The violinist is not given the chance to pause and take breath . I remember that even Oistrakh , a god for all violinists , asked Shostakovich to show mercy . ‘ Dmitri Dmitriyevich , please consider letting the orchestra take over the first eight bars in the Finale so as to give me a break , then at least I can wipe the sweat off my brow .’ … By the next day he had made the necessary correction by giving the first statement of the theme in the Finale to the orchestra .… In such cases of detail , Shostakovich was never obstinate , and he liked to take into consideration any valid objection from a performer . On the other hand , he always refused to make any correction that would affect the overall shape or structure of a work .”
Instrumentation Three flutes including piccolo , three oboes including English horn , three clarinets including bass clarinet , three bassoons including contrabassoon , four horns , tuba , timpani , percussion , harp , celesta , and strings .
Ludwig van Beethoven
Born December 16 , 1770 ( probably )— he was baptized on the 17th — in Bonn , Germany Died March 26 , 1827 , in Vienna , Austria
SYMPHONY NO . 5 IN C MINOR [ 1808 ]
Probably no work in the orchestral canon has been analyzed and discussed as exhaustively as the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven ’ s Fifth Symphony . Here we may imagine catching a glimpse of the composer ’ s state of mind during the four-year period in which he wrote this symphony , from 1804 to 1808 . As early as October 1802 he was losing his hearing — a great adversity for anyone , but a catastrophe for a musician . In the years since , his deafness had increased dramatically . He was surrounded by a nervous political climate ; Vienna had been occupied by Napoleon ’ s troops since November 1805 , and the civic uneasiness would erupt into
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