Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season January-February 2016 | Page 26

{ program notes
About the concert:
Jealousy, Overture for
Large Orchestra

Leǒs Janáček

Born in Hukvaldy, Moravia, July 3, 1854;
died in Moravská Ostrava, August 12, 1928

Leoš Janáček was to become one of the
20th century’s greatest opera composers,
but he was already nearly 50 years old
when his first operatic masterpiece, his
third opera Jenufa, was premiered on
January 21, 1904 in his native Brno in
Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic.
Jenufa had taken nearly a decade — from
1894 to 1903 — to be completed.
Jenufa tells the story of a love triangle
between two stepbrothers, the handsome
Steva and the less appealing Laca, who both
love Jenufa, the village beauty. When Laca
realizes she prefers Steva, he, maddened
with jealousy, slashes her face with a knife
to make her unattractive to other men.
Janáček decided to preface the opera
with an overture, which he wrote in 1894
at the beginning of his work on the score.
This prelude contained thematic material
from an earlier work also dealing with the
subject of jealousy, a chorus for male voices
called Zárlivec (“The Jealous Man”), that
uses a theme from a Moravian folksong.
When Jenufa was finally premiered,
Janáček cut the overture from the performance. However, he did permit it to be
performed by the Prague Philharmonic in
1906 as an independent short tone poem,
and as Jealousy (Zárlivost), it has led a separate life from its opera ever since. After the
violent, syncopated opening chords, bassoons and low strings quietly introduce an
obsessive, malevolent tune that will haunt
the piece with the same relentlessness that
jealousy can dominate the human soul.
Violin Concerto

Jean Sibelius

Born in Hämmenlina, Finland,
December 8, 1865; died in Järvenpää,
Finland, September 20, 1957

Despite all the acclaim he received as a
composer, Sibelius nursed a hidden wound

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over a musical accomplishment that had
eluded him. In his diary in 1915, he wrote:
“Dreamt I was twelve years old and a
virtuoso.” Sibelius loved the violin above
all instruments, but he had begun too
late — age 14 — and lacked the physical
coordination and temperament to become
a virtuoso. In his early 20s, he tried for a
position with the Vienna Philharmonic;
failing the audition, he returned to his hotel
room and wept for his lost dream.
But in his late 30s, Sibelius fulfilled that
dream vicariously by writing a magnificent
violin concerto and one moreover filled
with the most exacting virtuoso demands.
Responding to the concertmaster of the
Helsinki Philharmonic Willy Burmester’s
urging, Sibelius —fresh from the triumph
of his Second Symphony—began composing the concerto late in 1902, but barely
completed the work in time for its premiere
in February 1904. Sibelius in his younger
days was a bon vivant with a fondness for
liquor and Helsinki’s café life, which often
got in the way of composing. Rushing to
finish the concerto, he completely forgot
Burmester, turning instead to a far less able
fiddler Viktor Nováček. Nováček was the
first, but not the last, to go down in flames
tackling the work’s formidable difficulties,
and the premiere was not a success. Sibelius
then extensively revised the work in 1905,
making the solo part just slightly easier.
This work falls into the category of the
soloist-dominated concerto rather than the
more symphonically conceived concertos
of Beethoven and Brahms. But it boasts
greater musical complexity and a more
interesting role for the orchestra than most
virtuoso vehicles. Soloist and orchestra
alternate in the foreground, often following
different agendas.
Over the shimmer of muted orchestral
violins, the soloist opens the first movement, in the key of D minor, with a long
solo melody that steadily grows in intensity
and passion, sweeping over the instrument’s full range. From its component
elements the movement grows. The mood
suggests a Scandinavian bard reciting one
of the Norse sagas Sibelius loved so well.
At first subservient, the orchestra finally
asserts itself with grim pow \