Friday, October 9 at 7 pm, Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church Sunday, October 11 at 2 pm, Old Pine St. Presbyterian Church
PROGRAM NOTES
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart “Kegelstatt” Trio
For someone arriving at the main rail station in Vienna on a fine day, the perfect way to pass the time until the hotel room is ready is to make the short walk to the city’s botanical garden. In Mozart’s day, the garden was already one of the pleasant places in the city. Its director, and the professor of botany at the university, was the eminent naturalist Nikolaus Joseph van Jacquin (1727-1817), who lived with his family in a house on the grounds. The Jacquins were musical, and Nikolaus arranged for his daughter Franziska (1769-1850) to study piano with Mozart; she became one of his favorite pupils, and he dedicated several works to her. Mozart also became friends with the two Jacquin sons, Joseph Franz (1766-1839), who succeeded to his father’s positions in 1797, and Emil Gottfried (1767-1792), an amateur composer. The Mozarts were regular guests of the Jacquins, often playing skittles (nine-pin bowling; Kegeln in German) on the lawn on nice days. The street next to the botanical garden is named the Jacquingasse to commemorate the family.
This trio is the first of three pieces we will hear this season composed by Mozart for his musician friends in Vienna. Mozart entered it in his catalog of works with the date August 5, 1786. It has acquired the nickname “Kegelstatt-Trio” (‘bowling alley trio’) because of a belief that Mozart wrote it while playing skittles. The story is almost—but alas, probably not quite—true. On the autograph of the twelve charming duets for wind instruments, K. 487, composed just over a week earlier on July 27, Mozart added to the date the indication “while playing skittles,” and this comment also became attached to the trio. Even Mozart could not have composed a piece like the trio while waiting for his turn to bowl! The trio did, however, probably arise from his connection to the Jacquins and is thought to have received its first performance at the Jacquin home, with Franziska playing the piano part, Mozart playing the viola, and Mozart’s close friend Anton Stadler, the finest clarinetist in the city (and, no doubt, another one of the skittles players), playing the clarinet. 1
The very idea of a work for this combination of instruments was a novelty in 1786. The piano had only reached a stage of development that allowed it to be used in orchestral and chamber music in the preceding decade. Composers (notably Mozart) were just beginning to write for the viola as a solo instrument in its own right rather than as a secondary member of the violin family. Finally, the clarinet had barely emerged as a concert instrument as opposed to a substitute for the oboe in military bands, and Stadler was one of the pioneers in developing both its construction and its technique—we will hear more of the music Mozart wrote for him later in the season.
The trio opens with a graceful theme for the piano solo with some reinforcement by the viola; the turn figure at the very beginning recurs throughout the movement. The clarinet’s first entry starts a dialogue with the piano that leads us to a more energetic second theme. Mozart develops the opening idea extensively, rewriting the theme completely when it returns. The second theme comes back in the viola, and the movement concludes by developing the opening material further.
The Menuetto is sedate, with a livelier middle section featuring the viola. Mozart calls the last and longest movement of the trio a Rondeaux, indicating that the cheerful opening theme returns after each of a series of contrasting episodes. Here again the viola takes a large role, sharing the musical interest equally with the other instruments; it is particularly prominent in a dramatic section in the middle of the movement.
Ingrid Arauco Three for Two
A long-time member of the music faculty at Haverford College, Ingrid Arauco received her doctorate in composition from the University of Pennsylvania. This set of jazzy miniatures was composed in 2006; the wind part can be played by either clarinet or saxophone. The two outer movements are lively, with the two instruments in jazz-inflected dialogue; in the slower, blues-tinged middle movement, the clarinet has the melody and the cello accompanies it. The dramatic finale opens with a cello cadenza, before the clarinet joins in a syncopated, energetic dance. A reference to the opening returns briefly, before a vehement final unanswered question.
Although Three for Two has been recorded by John Koen and clarinetist Ricardo Morales for an all-Arauco disc on the Albany label, these are the world premiere performances.
John Conahan The Five Stages of Rodolfo
“The Five Stages of Rodolfo” is a multi-movement suite with a brief prologue and epilogue that follows an original fictional narrative. This story follows the character of Rodolfo from the opera La Bohème and begins sometime after the death of Mimi at the conclusion of the opera. Once Rodolfo has experienced the death of his love, Mimi, the composer envisions a time following her funeral where Rodolfo is beginning to experience the five stages of grief. Each stage of the Kübler-Ross model is demonstrated in this work as a short dance duet between English Horn and Violoncello.
Each instrument represents a character from the opera. The English horn is Rodolfo, winding his way through the streets of Paris following Mimi’s death, experiencing a range of emotional landscapes. The cello represents the memory of Mimi in Rodolfo’s mind, and perhaps an apparition who interacts with him at times throughout this journey.
In the titling, each of the Kübler-Ross stages is followed by a subtitle (e.g.: I. DENIAL, a doubt). These subtitles are meant as a nuance for each stage, and may be used as an emotional color for the performance of each.
Narration:
His beloved has died. He knew this time would eventually come, but the reality feels wholly different now: an uncomfortable fit and disparate view. His beloved has died. Their time together was ardent and volatile. But at once, the world is small and illegible. So, he simply began to walk – walking through Montmartre, walking through the quarters, walking across thebridges – in and out of his sorrowful dream. Constantly, walking. He feels that he has nothing else to do. So for days, he walks and lives these days hearing his thoughts, repeating in his head. His beloved has died.
[PROLOGUE]
This is not real. This is not my life. She is always ill, and she is simply ill again. If she were gone, there would be no reason to keep living. This is not my life. This is not real.
[I. DENIAL]
Why have you done this to me? No omnipotent god that loves his children would do this. Why did you do this? I hate this. I hate you. I hate you, and I will find you one day and hurt you this much. Why have you done this? Why have you done this to me?
[II. ANGER]
I could have done more. I could have engaged a doctor sooner. I could have shown her love without conditions. I could have apologized and told her everything right away. I promise that I’ll do better. Please. I’m sorry. I will. I could have done more.
[III. BARGAINING]
I can’t feel my legs. This is pulling at me – pulling straight down and without letting go. There is no light; all is muted, sullen. Please. Please. Time and silence, please. I just want to sleep forever. I can’t feel my legs.
[IV. DEPRESSION]
This is my life. This is too much for me to carry. I can feel my blood and my breath. I’m so tired. Where are you? I’m all alone with this. Being like this. This is my life.
[V. ACCEPTANCE]
His beloved has died. His walking has ceased, and he has collapsed into a chair in this drafty, brittle apartment. There is paper on the table – a pen – bottles on the floor in the corner – candles on the mantle. Someday, he will write again – drink again. Time and silence will sit in company. His beloved has died. How can she be here and nowhere to be seen? His beloved has died.
[EPILOGUE]
Antonín Dvořák Quintet in G
Dvořák composed three string quintets: an early one (op. 1, 1861), a late one (op. 97, 1893) for string quartet with a second viola, and this one from the middle of his career for the unusual combination of string quartet and double bass. The bass adds to the richness and heft of the sound of the group, and it is curious that so few composers have explored the possibilities of the combination. When Dvořák composed the original version of this quintet as op. 18 in 1875, he was just starting to become known as a composer; the work was performed in Prague but not published. Thirteen years later, Dvořák, now internationally famous, revised it, dropping the second of the five original movements and publishing it as op. 77.
The entire quintet is composed in the spirit of Czech folk music, though there are not necessarily any references to specific tunes. The piece begins tentatively with the viola introducing an idea that swiftly grows into the lively main theme of the first movement. Normally in his four-movement works, Dvořák places the slow movement second, but when he omitted the original slow second movement of this quintet (it became a piece for string orchestra), he left the order of the other movements intact. The second movement therefore is a furious scherzo with a contrasting middle section. The slow movement provides the main point of repose in the piece. Like the first two movements, the finale is all energy, bringing the quintet to a cheerful conclusion.
