program notes {
display the flute’s range, agility, and tonal
purity to fine advantage.
For the second movement, Mozart
exchanged the bright-toned oboes in his
orchestral woodwinds to a pair of softer,
cooler flutes. Along with muted strings,
they create a more ethereal sound world for
this ravishing music. Even though the key
is D Major, there is sadness here: a remembrance of a lost paradise. Notice especially
the wistful upward flourishes that end each
phrase of the main theme. Like many of
Mozart’s most captivating slow movements,
this one seems to express his yearning for
an ideal world, free of real-life problems
and tragedies.
Movement three is a rondo with the
elegant gait of a minuet. It is a beautifully
crafted finale full of wonderful details.
After the flute and orchestra’s presentation
of the stylish repeated-note refrain theme,
listen for the bubbling triplet accompaniment in the violins. And later when the
flute sings its last reprise of the refrain, note
how joyfully it ornaments the melody.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two
horns and strings.
Symphony No. 3 in D Major,
“Polish”
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born in Votkinsk, Russia, May 7, 1840;
died in St. Petersburg, Russia,
November 6, 1893
The last three of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies
are among the most popular works in the
orchestral repertoire, played over and over
season after season. While less familiar, the
First Symphony, “Winter Dreams,” and the
Second, “Little Russian,” also have their
devoted fans. But there is one Tchaikovsky
symphony almost nobody knows: his
Third Symphony, called — although
without any real relation to its content
— the “Polish.” When it was premiered
in Moscow on November 19, 1875, it
was quite enthusiastically embraced by
both the audience and the critics, but
soon was eclipsed by Symphonies 4, 5
and the “Pathétique.” Today it is almost
never performed.
There are indeed reasons for its
neglect. With five movements rather
than the customary four, the Third is
a sprawling work and rather uneven in
quality. Its two outer movements have
lengthy stretches of note-spinning, but
these are compensated by the glories of
its three inner movements: a haunting
waltz, a virtuoso scherzo, and, best of
all, a sublime slow movement, one of
the most beautiful things Tchaikovsky
ever wrote.
Tchaikovsky was hampered by inner pressures when he wrote it during
the summer of 1875 while staying at
the peaceful rural estates of several
friends. The previous December, he
had experienced perhaps the greatest blow of his career when the head
of the Moscow Conservatory and his
former teacher, Nikolai Rubinstein,
had savagely criticized his First Piano
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