Overture Magazine: 2016-2017 Season May-June 2017 | Page 22

Only Only at at the the of Jewish Jewish Museum Maryland Museum of Maryland Museum of Maryland Only at the Jewish Museum ON of Maryland VIEW ON VIEW ON VIEW 17, 2017 JUNE 18 - SEPTEMBER JUNE - SEPTEMBER 17, JUNE 18 18 - SEPTEMBER 17, 2017 ON VIEW JewishMuseumMd.org JUNE 18 - SEPTEMBER 17, 2017 JewishMuseumMd.org JewishMuseumMd.org facebook.com/jewishmuseummd facebook.com/jewishmuseummd @jewishmuseummd facebook.com/jewishmuseummd JewishMuseumMd.org @jewishmuseummd @jmm_md facebook.com/jewishmuseummd @jewishmuseummd @jmm_md @jewishmuseummd @jmm_md @jmm_md What? ’ you re not in Overture? Advertise, and reach over 150,000 patrons of the BSO five times a year in Overture, a program that’s about more than just beautiful music. Design Printing AD sAles to advertise, ContaCt: Ken Iglehart: [email protected] Lynn Talbert: [email protected] Call 443.873.3916 Advertising proceeds go to the BSO, not Baltimore magazine 20 O v ertur e | bsomusic.org 2017 Energy gallops over grace in the Allegro con spirito finale in the style of the hunting finales so popular in Mozart’s day. But this one has a verve, an attention to detail and a dramatic development section that lofts it above its mates. As in the first movement, the principal theme opens with a decisive octave plunge. Listen for the baying of the dogs in the grace note-accented second theme. Instrumentation: Two oboes, two horns, strings. Concerto for Trumpet in E-flat Major Franz Joseph Haydn Born in Rohrau, Austria, March 31, 1732; died in Vienna, Austria, May 31, 1809 In August 1795, Joseph Haydn came back to Austria after spending the better part of the preceding four years in London, where he was the celebrity of the day, feted by no less than King George III himself, who urged him to stay in England. But Haydn was sufficiently homesick that he decided to return to his old position at the Esterházy court, where he had served for four decades. There, he found his new boss, Prince Nikolaus II, to be more interested in church music than in symphonies. And so the last decade and a half of the composer’s career was primarily devoted to writing Masses and the majestic, Handel-inspired oratorios The Creation and The Seasons. Nevertheless, the invention of a new trumpet inspired, in 1796, one of Haydn’s few purely instrumental works from this period and indeed the finest concerto he ever wrote: the Concerto for Trumpet in E-flat Major. It was composed for the new keyed trumpet — or “organized trumpet,” as he called it — devised by Anton Weidinger, the trumpet soloist at the Royal Imperial Theater in Vienna. The natural trumpet in use until this time was a brilliant but rather limited instrument that could only play complete scales in certain keys and certain parts of its range. Weidinger added keys to the instrument that enabled the trumpet to play scales anywhere in its range and even all the half steps — or chromatic notes — in between. After several more years refining the instrument, Weidinger unveiled his new trumpet — and the masterpiece Haydn had created to show it off — at a concert in Vienna on March 28, 1800. For his performance of Haydn's humorous and virtuosic concerto, Principal Trumpet Andrew Balio performs a set of three cadenzas by Krzysztof Penderecki, the prominent living Polish composer. The Concerto opens with an elegant and surprisingly lyrical first movement in sonata form. The violins sing a principal theme that is built around smoothly flowing scales, music that would have been impossible for the natural trumpet to play in the low register the soloist chooses when he takes up the theme a moment later. Haydn then doubles the ante by filling his melodic lines with slithering half steps, again totally beyond the natural trumpet’s capacities. Liberated from playing gap-scaled fanfares, the trumpet now revels in its ability to sing legato melodies with all the facility of a woodwind instrument. The Andante second movement in A-flat Major is even more melodious: an Italianate siciliano in lilting rhythm whose principal theme is even marked cantabile (“singing”). Here the trumpet’s ability to move easily by half steps permits a darkly poignant middle section in the minor mode. The finale is a vivacious Allegro in the sonata-rondo form Haydn favored for his closing movements. The merrily dancing rondo refrain — one of those tunes you can’t get out of your head! — dominates the music and drives a harmonically roving development in the movement’s central episode. Throughout, the trumpet’s playful fanfares recall its traditional role in court ceremonies. Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings.