UW Symphony with Craig Sheppard, piano

David Alexander Rahbee conducts the University of Washington Symphony in a program of music by Grażyna Bacewicz, W.A. Mozart,  Florence Price, and Antonín Dvořák. With faculty pianist Craig Sheppard, performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24, K. 491 in C minor with the orchestra. 

Program

Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-1969): Overture 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Piano Concerto No.24, K.491, in C minor 
I. Allegro
II. Larghetto
III. Allegretto
Craig Sheppard, piano

-INTERMISSION-

Florence Price (1887-1953): Andante moderato (Movement 2 from String Quartet No.1, arranged for string orchestra)

Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): Otázka (Question)
Orchestrated by David A. Rahbee

Antonín Dvořák: Symphony No.8, in G major, op.88
I. Allegro con brio
II. Adagio
III. Allegretto grazioso
IV. Allegro ma non troppo

Acknowledgement

Craig Sheppard plays the cadenza by Murray Perahia in the first movement of Mozart K491, with kind permission of Mr. Perahia.

Program Notes

GRAŻYNA BACEWICZ (1909-1969)

Overture (1943)

Grażyna Bacewicz was one of the first major female composers from Poland to gain international recognition. Born in Łódź to a Lithuanian father and a Polish mother, she exceled from an early age at the violin and entered the Warsaw Conservatory when she was just 19 years old. After graduating in 1932 as a violinist and composer, she moved to Paris to study with the famed teacher Nadia Boulanger, whose students around that time included the likes of Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, and Astor Piazzolla. After completing her studies, she returned to Warsaw where she served as principal violinist of the Polish Radio Orchestra, a position which gave her the opportunity to hear much of her own music. Following the outbreak of World War II, she continued to compose and give secret underground concerts in defiance of Nazi occupation. It was during this time that she composed this Overture for orchestra, a piece which showcases her ability to write virtuosic-sounding music for each section of the orchestra in turn.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)

Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491 (1786)

 Mozart composed this concerto during the same winter he was completing work on his opera The Marriage of Figaro. While that opera is almost entirely written in major keys, this piano concerto is one of his few minor key works. Indeed, it seems entirely reasonable that Mozart might have found an outlet for the darker side of his artistry to shine though in this piece at the same time he was completing a comic opera. Mozart himself was the soloist at the premiere in April 1786 at Vienna’s famed Burgtheater. While commonly labeled as the Piano Concerto No. 24, modern scholarship has shown that Mozart composed only 21 truly original concerti for piano and orchestra during his lifetime.

 This is perhaps the most advanced work Mozart ever wrote in the concerto genre. The shadowy opening theme of the first movement introduces us to all 12 pitches of the chromatic scale before finally settling on the key of C minor, something highly unusual for the time. Another notable innovation is the introduction of a brand-new second theme during the soloist’s exposition, a device which subverts the traditional idea that the function of the opening orchestral tutti is to predict what the soloist has to say. The primary theme of the second movement seems rather simple and naive by comparison, creating a stark contrast against the stormy intensity of the first. This movement provides wonderful moments for all the woodwinds to shine, with the clarinets in particular pompously stating a new theme which seems to evoke rustic, almost peasant-like music. The third movement is a masterclass in theme and variation form, setting the stage for a brilliant finale. The theme is subjected to all manner of orchestration, passing between strings, winds, and soloist alike in both major and minor key areas. The coda surprises the audience both by shifting to a new rhythmic time signature and by desperately proclaiming the triumph of the minor mode. 

FLORENCE BEATRICE PRICE (1887-1953)

from String Quartet No. 1 in G major: II. Andante moderato (1929)

 Florence Price (née Smith) was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887, one of three children of a mixed-race family. Her father was the only African American dentist in the city, while her mother was a music teacher. She published her first composition at the age of just 11 and went on to study organ and composition at the New England Conservatory of Music. She returned to the south in 1910, where she married lawyer Thomas J. Price. After a series of racial incidents in Little Rock, including the lynching of a black neighbor in 1927, her family eventually settled in Chicago.

Price’s works have received a long-overdue resurgence in recent years. Her idiomatic melodic language, inspired by the music of African American spirituals, makes her music both highly accessible and uniquely American. This arrangement of the slow movement of her first string quartet showcases her ability to write for classical European instruments within her own unique and deeply expressive idiom.

ANTONÍN LEOPOLD DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)

Otázka [Question] (1882), orchestrated by David Alexander Rahbee

The three works on the second half of our program will be performed continuously, without any pause for applause between them. This ‘Question’ by Dvořák is an eight-measure fragment of music which was written to a friend of his. Discovered in the 1930s, it was subsequently published as a part of his complete works. The fragment is in G minor, ending on an unresolved half-cadence, which feels desperate to resolve into a new phrase, such as the one which begins the…
 

ANTONÍN LEOPOLD DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)

Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88 (1889) 

Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony is a work of tremendous joy and exuberance, although its opening theme would not lead you to believe so. Indeed, the idea of beginning a symphony in G major with a theme in G minor was one seldom, if ever thought of before or since. And yet this solemn melody gives way to an almost capricious ‘bird-call’ announced by the flute, a simple yet highly distinctive motive which will pervade the entire symphony. From here we are off to the races; we hear the pulsating rhythms of life, feelings of bucolic euphoria, and the occasional dramatic outburst, winding its way through a first movement as well-crafted and imaginatively orchestrated as any Dvořák ever composed.

The second movement feels in many ways like a dialogue between two unknown speakers. This is felt in the contrast between minor and major mode themes, melodies passed between winds and strings, extreme contrasts of loud and soft, and especially within the juxtaposition of dense chorale-like writing and beautifully simple, folk music-inspired passages. One might even be tempted to draw a comparison to Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, in which a bright summer’s day is interrupted by a fierce thunderstorm.

The typical expectation of the third movement of a symphony is a lively and charismatic scherzo, yet Dvořák here provides us with a melancholy waltz. This has the feeling of an ‘intermezzo’, not unlike the third movements of Brahms’ First and Third Symphonies. Indeed, Brahms was a great supporter of the young Dvořák, who in turn felt always indebted to Brahms, the greatest living master of the symphonic tradition.

The fourth movement finale begins with a fanfare of trumpets, which in Dvořák’s native Bohemia were generally seen as a call to the dance, rather than a call to battle. In this complex theme and variations, the cellos take the first turn, just as they had done in the opening of the first movement. Dvořák then progresses through richly varied and highly dramatic variations, including a tempestuous middle section which modulates from major to minor several times. After seemingly coming to a quiet and peaceful rest, the orchestra suddenly erupts into a highly-chromatic coda, bringing the symphony to a noisy yet jovial conclusion.

-Ryan D. Farris

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