Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season September-October 2017 | Page 34

SYMPHONIC STORIES
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 21 IN C MAJOR
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756;
died in Vienna, Austria, December 5, 1791
During the concert season of 1784 – 85,
Mozart was at the peak of his popularity
as a piano virtuoso in Vienna. And
unlike today’s concert pianists, he created
his own repertoire. From 1784 to 1786,
the continual demand for new works
with which to dazzle his audiences
brought forth 12 of the greatest piano
concertos ever written — concertos in
which Mozart was not content simply
to cater to popular taste. Instead, he
enjoyed stretching both himself and his
audiences, and his Piano Concerto in
C Major, K. 467 is a splendid example
of his ability to simultaneously seduce
and challenge his listeners.
Even before Swedish director Bo
Widerberg made its slow movement the
theme music of his film Elvira Madigan
in the 1970s, this was one of the most
popular of Mozart’s concertos. But
when it premiered on March 10, 1785,
the composer’s father, Leopold, was so
alarmed by the amount of dissonant
notes in it that he thought the
overworked copyist must have made
an unusual number of mistakes. After
all, his son was notorious for barely
meeting his deadlines and had just
completed the score the day before the
premiere. But the dissonant notes were
correct. In the sublime slow movement,
Mozart demonstrated what the French
poet Charles Baudelaire put into words
a century later: “The Beautiful is
always strange.”
This second movement is a soaring
aria sung by pianist and orchestra, always
hushed and breathing a nocturnal,
dreamlike atmosphere. The orchestration
is exquisite: muted strings magically
blended with poignant woodwinds. But
listen closely: in this song without words,
soothing consonances constantly tumble
into dissonances. Its harmonies always
yearn toward keys far from the home
key of F major. And its gentle flow is
troubled by a nervous accompaniment.
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Of course, this concerto also has
two other movements, and the first
movement especially matches the
slow movement’s greatness. Expansive
and leisurely, it is a remarkably subtle
military march, with its stealthy opening
“a tiptoed march in stocking feet”
(Cuthbert Girdlestone). Listen for the
charming gesture of oboe, bassoon and
flute gently beckoning the pianist onto
the stage for his first solo.
The finale is a comic-opera rondo with
a sly repeating refrain and mischievous
contributions from the woodwinds.
Here, Mozart wakes his audience from
the yearning dream of his slow movement
and sends them home smiling.
Instrumentation: Flute, two oboes, two
bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani
and strings.
DON QUIXOTE
Richard Strauss
Born in Munich, Germany, June 11, 1864;
died in Garmisch-Partenkirchen,
West Germany, September 8, 1949
At the end of the 19 th century, the
young Richard Strauss rapidly became
the most celebrated composer of his
time with his extraordinary series of
symphonic tone poems written for
very large orchestra. Although his
first two made little impression, the
mighty sequence that followed — Don
Juan, Death and Transfiguration, Till
Eulenspiegel, Also sprach Zarathustra,
Ein Heldenleben and Don Quixote —
mesmerized audiences with their
graphic power in telling stories
through the imaginative and virtuosic
manipulation of instrumental sound.
Storytelling came naturally to the
young German, for he was an avid
reader. Cervantes’ classic Spanish novel
Don Quixote (first published in 1605)
had probably been percolating in his
imagination for many years before 1896,
when he decided to use it for his sixth
tone poem. Simultaneously, he began
composing Ein Heldenleben (“A Hero’s
Life”), and these two works portray the
concept of heroic life from very different
perspectives. While Ein Heldenleben
treats heroism with bombastic
seriousness, Don Quixote is wryly tragi-
comic, showing the delusions that often
drive the would-be hero to excess.
Strauss subtitled this tone poem
“Fantastic Variations on a Theme of
Knightly Character.” Formally, he
constructed the music as a series of ten
variations on “a composite theme” to
describe the many different episodes
in Quixote’s picaresque career. That
composite theme is not one, but many.
Strauss gives Quixote three distinct
themes, his trusty sidekick Sancho
Panza several more, plus another for
his ideal lady, Dulcinea. Additionally,
the tone poem somewhat resembles a
cello concerto in that the instrument
represents the Don throughout, while
a solo viola portrays Sancho Panza and
an oboe, Dulcinea.
Lasting some 40 minutes, Don
Quixote comprises 13 sections:
Introduction: Cervantes tells us
that Quixote “was nigh 50 years of
age, of a hale and strong complexion,
lean-bodied and thin faced… he
passed his time in reading books of
knight-errantry.” So entranced did
Don Quixote become by these stories
that he let his farm go to wrack and
ruin and “by sleeping little and reading
much, the moisture of his brain was
exhausted [so] that at last he lost the use
of his reason.” Enflamed by his books,
Quixote decides to go out into the world
and pursue his own