MOZART AND MENDELSSOHN
playing music, I also started composing
music—it was a symbiotic relationship.
I enjoyed the process of getting lost in an
imaginary world and creating short pieces
for myself and my friends to play. I didn’t
have formal lessons until the third year
of my undergraduate degree whilst on
an exchange year at Queens University
in Canada with Marjan Mozetich and
continued my studies upon returning
to Edinburgh University with Marina
Adamia, later studying at Manhattan
School of Music with Julia Wolfe. I feel
fortunate to have had such wonderful
female role models as my mentors and
am grateful for the barriers the previous
generation has broken in order to create a
more diverse and equal field today. I don’t
think of myself as a ‘female composer’ but
simply as a ‘composer.’”
Here is how Clyne describes her new
work, COLOR FIELD:
“The central inspiration for COLOR
FIELD is a person: Melanie Sabelhaus, the
honoree of this work. I began the creative
process upon first meeting Sabelhaus in
New York City, when I learned about her
family, her Serbian roots, her work and
the music she loves. She is bold, audacious,
generous and a pioneer for women in
business and philanthropic work.
“She also loves the color orange–in
particular Hermès Orange–and thus began
my exploration of color. This led me to
Mark Rothko’s Orange, Red, Yellow (1961):
a powerful example of this artist’s Color
Field paintings, featuring red and yellow
framing a massive swash of vibrant orange
that seems to vibrate off the canvas.
“While I explored creating music that
evokes colors, I thought about synesthesia: a
perceptual phenomenon in which a person
hears sound, pitch and tonal centers and
then sees specific colors, and vice versa. The
composer Alexander Scriabin associated
specific pitches with specific colors, which
I have adopted as tonal centers for the three
movements of this piece: Yellow = D,
Red = C, Orange = G.
“Each movement of COLOR
FIELD weaves in elements of the life of
Melanie Sabelhaus. Yellow evokes a hazy
warmth and incorporates a traditional
Serbian melody, first heard as a very slow
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bass line and then revealed in the middle
of the movement in the strings and winds.
In Red, the fires blaze with bold percussive
patterns and lilting lines. In Orange, the
music becomes still and breathes, and then
escalates once more, incorporating elements
of Yellow and Red to create Orange: the
signature color of Melanie Sabelhaus.”
Instrumentation: Two flutes including piccolo,
two oboes including English horn, two clarinets
including E-flat clarinet, two bassoons including
contrabassoon, two horns, two trumpets,
timpani, percussion and strings.
PIANO CONCERTO NO. 9
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756;
died in Vienna, Austria, December 5, 1791
At the time of his 21 st birthday in January
1777, Mozart wrote the first of his great
piano concertos, the Concerto in E-flat, K.
271. He would only surpass this youthful
masterpiece several years later when he
created his extraordinary concerto series for
Vienna between 1784 and 1786.
Mozart often needed an external
challenge—something to engage his
strong competitive spirit—to do his best
work, and in this case it was the arrival in
Salzburg of Mademoiselle Jeunehomme,
a famous French piano virtuoso. (This
concerto is subtitled “Jeunehomme” in
honor of the French visitor; however, its
translation, “young man,” applies equally
well to its youthful creator.) When Mozart
was asked to write a concerto to perform for
Mademoiselle Jeunehomme, he leapt at the
opportunity to demonstrate his composing
and keyboard prowess before a celebrated
foreign artist who might be able to spread
his fame around Europe.
The result was this inventive concerto
in which Mozart experimented boldly
with the concerto practices of his day,
creating a richer and more flexible
dialogue between orchestra and soloist
that would become the hallmark of his
later concertos. It also contains the first
of his sublime tragic slow movements.
And since Mozart was also the performer,
he crammed the concerto with virtuosic
passages to display his fleet and flexible
fingers for the honored guest.
Mozart breaks the concerto norms of
his period in the first measures when the
pianist immediately answers the orchestra’s
fanfare motive. The soloist then bows
out while the orchestra presents a bright-
spirited introduction with a gracious pair
of ascending lyrical themes for a second
subject. But before the orchestra can finish,
the impatient soloist has already launched
his own exposition with a long trill.
As became Mozart’s custom, the eventual
recapitulation of the opening section
is no mere reprise. The principal horn,
rather than the soloist, sings the second-
subject melody. After the solo cadenza, the
impetuous soloist again breaks precedent by
joining the orchestra’s concluding music.
In C minor, for Mozart a key for
revealing deep feelings, the andantino
second movement is the heart of the work.
The piano’s long phrases are adorned with
trills and other embellishments, but here
they are deeply expressive rather than
merely decorative. Piano and orchestral
parts interweave marvelously; listen for a
lovely passage in which the first violins echo
the piano’s sighing phrases.
We move out of the shadows for the
very fast rondo finale. The rondo theme
has a manic feeling as Mozart shows
Mademoiselle Jeunehomme how fast
his fingers can fly. In the middle comes
almost a movement within a movement
as Mozart switches to a slower tempo for
an elegant minuet.
Instrumentation: Two oboes, two horns
and strings.
OVERTURE IN C MAJOR
Fanny Mendelssohn–Hensel
Born in Hamburg, Germany, November 14,
1805; died in Berlin, Germany, May 14, 1847
In the Mendelssohn family, there was
not just one brilliant musician—there
were two. While Felix Mendelssohn
enjoyed international fame as a composer,
performer and conductor, his slightly
older sister Fanny was equally gifted,
but ran into the barriers against a