VIVALDI FOUR SEASONS the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. She has performed with the New World Symphony, at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, at the Brevard Music Center and as a member of Washington D. C.’ s 21 st Century Consort. Finck has been a fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center and holds a degree from Boston University School of Fine Arts. As a teacher and clinician, she has served on the faculties of Towson University, Brevard Music Center, the National Symphony’ s Summer Music Institute and the BSO’ s own BSO Academy. Beyond classical music, her interests include cooking, hiking and going to the park with her three young children.
Gabrielle Finck last appeared with the BSO as a soloist in March 2014, performing Bach’ s Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, Jonathan Carney, conductor.
About the Concert
SELECTIONS FROM ROSAMUNDE
Franz Schubert
Born in Vienna, Austria, January 31, 1797; died in Vienna, November 19, 1828
It is one of music’ s ironies that Franz Schubert, possibly the greatest song writer of all time and one who could pack a whole drama into one lied, should have been so unsuccessful writing for the theater. At the height of Rossini’ s popularity in Vienna’ s opera houses, Schubert longed to make his fame and fortune with operas of his own. His lack of success was no reflection on his musical ability; instead, it was due to his careless choice of inept librettos that were laughed off the stage by contemporary audiences. Perhaps if he had lived past 31, he would have corrected this problem and composed his own Barber of Seville or Magic Flute.
Today his theatrical and operatic scores are largely forgotten except for the charming incidental music he wrote for Rosamunde in 1823 and the vivacious overture mistakenly associated with it. Actually, the so-called
Rosamunde Overture was written for an earlier play with music, Die Zauberharfe(“ The Magic Harp”) written in the summer of 1820 for Vienna’ s Theater an der Wien. It was renamed when a publisher accidentally included it in a piano arrangement of the Rosamunde music in 1827.
Here’ s how the contemporary critic Schlecta described Die Zauberharfe:“ Take one good and one evil magician, who are at loggerheads with each other; then take a lunatic young lady of noble ancestry living in the ruins of a castle, a blubbering father and a spell-bound son; add a few absurd knights … and finally ten or twelve monsters, the more fantastic the better. Mix these ingredients with a bucket of tears, a handful of sighs and a solid lump of ridiculous magic. Stew the concoction until it is completely unintelligible— and the dish of nonsense is then ready to serve.”
Fortunately, this best-loved of Schubert’ s overtures shines above this play’ s absurdity. It includes a slow introduction containing a beautiful Italian-style aria for oboes and clarinets, followed by an energetic Allegro section featuring a dashing principal theme introduced by the violins.
The three pieces of incidental music we’ ll also hear really are from Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus, which unfortunately lasted for only two performances on the Viennese stage. First we hear the Ballet in B minor from Act II, which begins with brasspowered drama, but closes in beautiful, melancholy lyricism. One of Schubert’ s most famous and enchanting lyrical melodies keeps returning throughout the Entr’ acte following Act III, which also features particularly wonderful music for the woodwinds. The winsome Ballet Music in G major from Act IV captures the ingratiating charm of Austrian rural folk dance.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings.
THE FOUR SEASONS
Antonio Vivaldi
Born in Venice, Italy, March 4, 1678; died in Vienna, Austria, July 28, 1741
So popular is Vivaldi’ s The Four Seasons today that it seems incomprehensible that these four delightful concertos should have languished in the musical attic for more than 200 years before re-appearing around 1950, just in time for the invention of the long-playing record. For it was the LP that spread the Seasons’ fame throughout the world, making it probably the most recorded classical work of them all.
After a long and illustrious career in which he composed some 800 works— including 500 concertos for virtually every instrument extant in his time, as well as operas and church music— Vivaldi died a pauper in 1741 in Vienna, far from his native Venice. But in his prime, he was a celebrated violin virtuoso, and his dynamic concertos influenced many other contemporary composers, including J. S. Bach.
By the 1720s, Vivaldi was devoting some of his time to the service of Count Wenzeslaus von Morzin of Bohemia. In 1725, he dedicated a remarkable new publication of 12 concertos, entitled Il cimento dell’ armonia e dell’ invenzione(“ The Trial of Harmony and Invention”) to the Count— the first four of these concertos being The Four Seasons. But scholars believe the Seasons were actually composed a few years earlier, probably around 1720, making them contemporaries of Bach’ s Brandenburg Concertos.
Although Vivaldi had written other concertos with colorful titles, the Seasons took descriptive writing several steps farther by graphically illustrating four sonnets, possibly written by Vivaldi himself, which are included in the original printed edition. Moreover, Vivaldi added verbal cues in the scores so performers would know exactly what they were representing: whether a barking dog in the second movement of“ Spring” or a drunkard
SEP – OCT 2018 / OVERTURE 29