Relish in the last glimpse of this season’s Fellows alongside MTT in this formidable finale to an epic season. Originally an interlude for his opera A Village Romeo and Juliet, Frederick Delius’ The Walk to the Paradise Garden stands alone as a soaring work of art, perfectly portraying the young lover’s enchantment and hinting at their fateful demise. Alisa Weilerstein, one of today’s brightest stars, makes her much anticipated return for Benjamin Britten’s rich and restless Cello Symphony. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Third Symphony, a triumphant homage to heroism, has been hailed as “the greatest single step made in the history of music.” This tour de force is an exhilarating cap on this monumental 29th season.

May 6 Pre-Concert Chat: Join NWS Fellows on Saturday, May 6 for a free Pre-Concert Chat! These half-hour chats begin one hour prior to the performance in the New World Center's SunTrust Pavilion and are accessible only to members of the WALLCAST® Concert Club and concert ticket holders. There will not be a pre-concert chat on Sunday, May 7. 

Want to learn more about Eroica? CLICK HERE to explore Keeping Score, an interactive resource developed by MTT with the San Francisco Symphony and the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies | San Jose State University. 

This concert is sponsored in part by Ximena Caminos and Alan Faena, David Edelstein of Tristar Capital, Susan D. Kronick and Edward Manno Shumsky, and Liliya "Rose" Mukhamadyarova and William Strong.

Program

Frederick Delius

The Walk to Paradise Garden (1906)
Approximate duration: 8 minutes

The music of Frederick Delius deserves more attention than it gets today, but this distinctly multinational composer is hard to shoehorn into any one of the national “schools” that dominated his prime years. His German-born parents had taken British citizenship by the time their son Fritz was born (he later Anglicized his name to Frederick), so by matter of birth Delius belongs among that class of late Romantic composers who revived British music, including Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Holst. As per his father’s wishes, Delius apprenticed at various wool outlets around Europe, but he did not take to the family business; instead he embarked on a plan to grow oranges on a plantation near Jacksonville, Florida, where African-American musical traditions made a lasting impact on the aspiring composer.

Delius finally won his father’s blessing to study music in Leipzig, Germany, where he befriended the budding Norwegian star Edvard Grieg, leading to pivotal performances of Delius’ early music in Norway. Delius settled next in Paris, where he associated with Fauré and Ravel, and then after marrying a German artist he moved to the French village where he spent most of his remaining decades.

Delius completed his fourth opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet, in 1901, but it did not reach the stage until 1907. While preparing for the premiere in Berlin, Delius realized that he needed to allow more time for a change of scenery, so he added the orchestral interlude known as The Walk to the Paradise Garden. In this opera based on a novella by the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller, the “Paradise Garden” is actually a country inn and a young couple is walking there to get away from their feuding families.

The sweet sounds that begin this interlude, including prominent solo lines for English horn and oboe, capture the pastoral atmosphere and the tender feelings between the star-crossed lovers.

Other passages emphasize the immensity of the moment, as the pair careens toward their fate of drowning together—the only way they can see to escape their family strife.

 

Additional Resources

Website of the Delius Society

Photo montage of the site of Delius’ former Florida plantation

Video of the complete opera, A Village Romeo and Juliet

 

Benjamin Britten

Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 68 (1963)
Approximate duration: 34 minutes

The enduring friendship between Benjamin Britten and Mstislav Rostropovich began in 1960, when the Russian cellist came to London to perform the British premiere of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, with the composer in attendance. When Shostakovich introduced Britten and Rostropovich after the concert, the adventurous cellist immediately asked for a new piece (apparently this was his routine with all composers) and Britten soon obliged with the Sonata for Cello and Piano. Rostropovich came and performed it at Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival in 1961, the first of many such visits; Britten went on to write three suites for solo cello, introduced by Rostropovich at festival appearances in 1964, 1967 and 1971. It didn’t even matter that they could not speak each other’s native languages; they both knew just enough German to conduct their friendship in a bastardized idiom they dubbed “Aldeburgh Deutsch.”

The most substantial product of this collaboration was born on Rostropovich’s home turf. Rostropovich had asked for a concerto in 1962, but as Britten worked on it the dimensions stretched beyond a typical concerto form. After considering the title of Sinfonia concertante, Britten landed on the label of Symphony for Cello and Orchestra. He completed it shortly after a visit to Moscow in 1963, and he returned the next spring to conduct Rostropovich and the Moscow Philharmonic in the world premiere.

Even with the label of symphony, this composition make clear from the outset that it is a feature vehicle for the cello, which enters with forceful chords over a rumble of the orchestra’s deepest voices: double bassoon, tuba, bass drum, gong and basses. 

An aspect that distinguishes this work from a typical concerto, though, is how often the cello functions as a secondary or accompanying part, even when it is executing music of incredible virtuosity.

The very quick scherzo that comes next is another feature more typical of a symphony. With its brittle phrases and dark sense of humor, this double-edged divertissement is a testament to Shostakovich’s influence on Britten.

The Adagio third movement allows the most space for Britten’s expressive lyricism, a quality honed through 20 years focused primarily on operas. One extended passage assigns the cello to play delicate melodies in the very highest part of its range over glassy flutters from the strings, while a solo horn works through its own contrasting theme—one of those classic Britten moments that is serene and beautiful and yet strangely disquieting.

An extended solo cadenza caps the slow movement and links directly to the finale.

In structuring the closing movement as a Passacaglia (a Baroque technique featuring continuous variations over an underlying theme) and incorporating bright trumpet solos and other antique touches, Britten confirmed his deep ties to Henry Purcell, who stood alone as England’s one great homegrown opera composer until Britten made his mark 250 years later.

 

Additional Resources

Online score from Boosey & Hawkes (free login required)

British obituary of Rostropovich, with details on his friendship with Britten

Article on Russia’s 2013 festival in honor of the Britten centennial, and the issues it raised around homosexuality

Article on the Cello Symphony’s Moscow premiere and the recent discovery of lost video footage of Britten and Rostropovich

Article by Alisa Weilerstein on Bach: "It Demands Everything of You"

 

Ludwig van Beethoven

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55, "Eroica" (1804)
Approximate duration: 50 minutes

Suppose Beethoven had died at the age of 31: He would have left behind two symphonies, three piano concertos and ample proof that he was a true heir to the Classical style of Haydn and Mozart. At just that age, Beethoven bordered on suicidal, as we know from the “Heiligenstadt Testament,” dated October 6, 1802. At the moment that the curse of encroaching deafness might have silenced him forever, Beethoven instead entered a legendary spurt of productivity and creative growth. Musicologists have classified these years, 1803 to 1812, as his “middle period.” The first great example of this new approach—and the work that could be considered the starting point of the entire Romantic era in music—was Beethoven’s Third Symphony. 

What we now know as the “Eroica” Symphony (Italian for “Heroic”) began under the title “Bonaparte.” Beethoven had been contemplating a work inspired by Napoleon for several years by the time he took up the symphony, and he held the revolutionary hero in high regard as of 1803. Beethoven’s adulation turned to disgust in 1804, when he learned that Napoleon had declared himself Emperor. According to Beethoven’s student Ferdinand Ries, who delivered the disturbing news, “Beethoven went to the table, seized the top of the [symphony’s] title-page, tore it in half and threw it on the floor.” When Beethoven prepared the symphony for publication in 1806, he titled it “Sinfonia eroica, composed to celebrate the memory of a great man.” The “great man” may have still referenced Napoleon, but some have speculated that the title actually meant to honor Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, who died in 1806 fighting against Napoleon’s army. Ferdinand was a friend of Prince Joseph Franz von Lobkowitz, Beethoven’s patron and the symphony’s dedicatee. 

The “Eroica” Symphony did not impress the Viennese public at its debut on April 7, 1805. First the audience had to grapple with the length, an unprecedented 50 minutes. (Haydn’s “London” Symphonies, by comparison, averaged about 30 minutes each.) To further complicate matters, the marathon first movement offered no real singing melodies to latch onto, just short motives and patterns that circulated and developed in novel ways. Such concision and unity became hallmarks of Beethoven’s middle-period works, as in the start of the Fifth Symphony, in which just four notes establish the argument for the entire opening movement. 

The defining motive of the “Eroica” Symphony’s first movement is a rocking cello strain that trails into foreign harmonies after four measures. 

As the development section closes, a French horn makes a surprise entrance with a recapitulation of that same theme a few measures ahead of schedule—an effect so unexpected that even Beethoven’s student Ries, upon hearing the symphony for the first time, suspected the horn player of having lost count of the measures. 

The symphony’s second movement, labeled a funeral march, sinks into a prolonged state of despair that might induce misery if not for its undeniable grace and beauty. 

A major-key interlude, providing respite, incorporates an arpeggiated accompaniment that recalls the gentle sway of the first movement. 

After returning to the minor key, the appearance of fugal counterpoint reinforces the profound, ceremonial atmosphere of the funeral march. 

Out of this grief comes a giddy Scherzo, a symphonic construct that Beethoven popularized as an alternative to Haydn’s slower, tamer minuets. 

A contrasting trio section features the three horns in vigorous hunting calls. 

The finale, built as a theme and variations, incorporates material from the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus that Beethoven had also used in an earlier set of piano variations. A short but fiery introduction gives way to an unusual presentation of the theme, reduced to its bare skeleton. 

This treatment makes perfect sense in terms of the symphony’s overall thrust, since the real heroism of the “Eroica” Symphony, one could argue, is its uncompromising quest to distill each musical gesture down to its essential core. In this way, Beethoven opened a new chapter in the history of the symphony, in which audiences, seeking more than entertainment, could expect to be stretched and challenged on physical, emotional and even spiritual levels.
 

Additional Resources 

PDF score from the IMSLP Petrucci Music Library 

Interactive guide to the symphony from Keeping Score, created by Michael Tilson Thomas with the San Francisco Symphony 

MTT’s Discovering Beethoven concert with the LSO 

Listening guide from The Guardian

-- Copyright © 2017 Aaron Grad

Aaron Grad is a composer, guitarist and writer based in Seattle. Besides providing program notes for the New World Symphony, he has been the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s program annotator since 2005 and also contributes notes to the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Seattle Symphony.

Audio clips provided by Naxos of America, Inc.