Conductor
Bruno Ferrandis

featuring
Ingrid Fliter, piano

DUTILLEUX: Métaboles for Orchestra
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 2
FAURÉ: Masques et Bergamasques
DEBUSSY: La Mer

February 16, 17, 18, 2008
Wells Fargo Center
$27 - $50

Maestro Ferrandis refers to the composer of Métaboles, Henri Dutilleux (now in his nineties), as “a Gallic poet like Fauré and Debussy.” Fauré’s suite, Masques et Bergamasques, is the epitome of lyrical elegance and charm. Debussy’s impressionistic masterpiece, La Mer, is a sonic portrait of the ocean with its rolling swells and stormy, yet majestic, fury. The 2006 Gilmore Artist Award winner, pianist Ingrid Fliter, performs Beethoven’s 2nd Piano Concerto “as if it were being born under her fingers.”

Underwritten by Lambert Bridge Winery.

Bruno Ferrandis underwritten by Margaret and Harry Wetzel.

PRESENTED BY THE LAW OFFICES OF

Henri Dutilleux: Métaboles for Orchestra

Henri Dutilleux was born in Angers, France, on January 22, 1916; he is living in Paris, one of the treasures of music now in his nineties. He composed Métaboles on a commission from the Musical Arts Association of Cleveland to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra. The score was completed in 1964 and dedicated to George Szell, who conducted the Cleveland Symphony in the first performance on January 14, 1965. The score calls for two flutes and two piccolos (doubling flutes), three oboes and English horn, two clarinets, the small E‑flat clarinet, and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, four trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, two temple blocks, side drum, small, medium, and large tom‑toms, bass drum, small suspended cymbal, Chinese cymbal, medium and large tam‑tams, crash cymbals, triangle, cowbell, xylophone, glockenspiel, celesta, harp, and strings.

Though one of the most respected of contemporary composers, Henri Dutilleux remains relatively little‑known. He is a careful, fastidious worker, never eager to rush the completion of a piece, Dutilleux has never fit comfortably into any of the pigeonholes of contemporary composition, but he has always been entirely himself.

With Métaboles, the composer aimed to present musical ideas gradually changing until they undergo a transition, a “change of nature.” The rhetorical term “metabole” refers to the process of gradual change that ultimately becomes so great as to lead to an entirely new state.
Each movement is also provided by the composer with an epithet, an adjective serving to describe in the most general way the character of each section. An abridged version of Dutilleux’s note for the premiere describes the process this way:

Throughout the score the range and variety of the instrumental color, the unerring sense of line, whether in the meditation on the incantatory opening motive or in the midst of intricate contrapuntal elaborations, the sensitivity to texture and sonority, and the effective rounding off of the opening material at the end, to provide a solid sense of completion and closure confirm the composer’s mastery in this hypnotically beautiful score.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra in B‑flat major , Opus 19

Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, probably on December 16, 1770 (his baptismal certificate is dated the 17th), and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. He evidently completed his B‑flat piano concerto in 1794-95 and probably premiered the piece in Vienna on March 29, 1795. A revision made in 1798 for a performance in Prague is the only version known today. In addition to the solo piano, the score calls for flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, and strings.

Although numbered second, the B‑flat concerto is actually the earliest of Beethoven’s piano concertos to be completed, Beethoven had moved from Bonn to Vienna in 1792, a 22-year-old pianist and composer eager to make his mark in a big way. Mozart and Haydn both influenced his work, specifically including the B‑flat piano concerto. The orchestra—which lacks clarinets—probably reflects the practice of Haydn, who came to employ the clarinet regularly only late in his life. And it may also recall Mozart’s last piano concerto, K.595, which is also in B‑flat and (unusually for Mozart) omits trumpets and timpani.

When the opportunity arose for a performance in Prague in 1798, he revised it considerably. This later version was ultimately published, but as Concerto No. 2 because a later work had already appeared in print as Concerto No. 1. Beethoven never lost an opportunity to set the record straight, since he felt that he had made progress between the two works. Of course, he never disowned the concerto, but, like every composer, he wanted his most recent work to be appreciated.

When it was new, the work was regarded as full of daring elements. We, on the other hand, are likely to notice what is traditional: the Mozartean trick of combining a forceful and a lyrical idea together in the opening phrase, or the Haydnesque emphasis on rhythmic upbeat ideas. Already Beethoven shows an obsession for unexpected changes of harmony. The first of these is signaled in the simplest way—the full orchestra hammers out three repeated C’s fortissimo, followed by an echo, pianissimo, of D‑flat. The melody seems about to continue in D‑flat, a key very remote from where we just were, until Beethoven quickly engineers a phrase that brings it around to the “right” place.

The slow movement shows us a Beethoven who is already a master of the art of variation and decoration, which would ultimately lead beyond the facile and the merely pretty to new worlds of expression.
The unusual rhythm of the main theme marks the rondo finale. The rondo plays all sorts of little harmonic and rhythmic tricks on its listeners, with the aim of leaving its listeners smiling. This extended movement, carefully balanced and varied, full of wit and charm, was Beethoven’s finest accomplishment to this point.

GABRIEL FAURÉ: Masques et Bergamasques, Opus 112

Gabriel Fauré was born in Pamiers, Ariège, on May 12, 1845, and died in Paris on November 4, 1924. Masques et Bergamasquse was commissioned by Prince Albert I of Monaco in September 1918, He assembled a score, largely made up of orchestral versions of much older works. It was premiered in Monte Carlo in April 1919. The full score consisted of eight movements, of which Fauré chose Nos. 1, 5, 7, and 2 (in that order) to make up the suite. The score calls for flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, and trumpets in pairs, timpani, harp, and strings. Duration is about 14 minutes.

The years during and after the Great War were difficult ones for many French composers. The devastation wrought by the war and the economic problems that it created meant that musical performance was greatly reduced. For Gabriel Fauré it was even worse, since—owing to his age and increasing deafness—he had been tactfully eased out of his position as director of the Conservatoire, with a pension that was not sufficient.

Happily a commission from the Prince of Monaco allowed him to spend the months of February and March 1919 in the south of France, completing a newly-commissioned divertissement. The piece that resulted is a slender work for dancers and a small orchestra to an extremely slight “plot” derived from the poetry of Verlaine:  Three masked characters from the Italian commedia dell’arte are enjoy themselves during a free day amid the rusticity of a Cytherean island. Their fashionable audience arrives and, inspired by love, puts an impromptu show of flirtation that is observed by the professional Italian actors—a charming turning of the tables.

The full-length work contained eight numbers, most arranged from early works. Later Fauré chose four of the least familiar movements not well known from other contexts as a suite from the divertimento. The orchestral suite began with the Overture (based on an intermède symphonique followed by a Menuet and Gavotte—all of which had originally been composed in 1869 and were not presented in orchestral guise. For his close, Fauré included the only completely original movement, the Pastorale.

It was a great success. After the horrors of a war that had seemed to be in perpetual stalemate, audiences clearly loved spending part of an evening imagining that they were back in a more innocent age, a lovely garden of the 18th century, filled with beautiful and flirtatious people.

Claude Debussy: La Mer, Three symphonic sketches

Achille‑Claude Debussy was born at St. Germain‑en‑Laye on August 22, 1862, and died in Paris on March 25, 1918. He began work on La Mer during the summer of 1903 and completed the score in March 1905, though he continued to make revisions for many years. Camille Chevillard conducted the Lamoureux Orchestra in the first performance on October 15, 1905, in Paris. La Mer is scored for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets, three bassoons and contrabassoon (the latter in the third movement only), four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, timpani, cymbals, tam‑tam, triangle, glockenspiel, bass drum, two harps, and strings. The string section Debussy hoped for but can rarely, if ever, have found, was an unusually large one, including sixteen cellos.

Debussy’s parents planned a sailor’s career for their sun, but these ended when at age 9 his musical talent revealed itself; within a year he was studying piano and theory at the Paris Conservatoire.

Debussy’s memories of the sea were charged with images drawn from literature and art. The first clear reference to La Mer comes from a letter of September 12, 1903, to André Messager: “I am working on three symphonic sketches under the title La Mer.”  He provided three titles (with some literary references) but most of them were different by the time the piece was finished. But the most direct inspiration for La Mer was from art. Debussy had admired the sea paintings of Turner, with their misty impalpability, which had been on display in Paris. Still more influential were the Japanese artists Hokusai and Hiroshige, whose work became hugely popular in France by the end of the nineteenth century.

When La Mer was published, Debussy requested that the cover design include a detail of Hokusai’s most famous print, “The hollow of the wave off Kanagawa,” a detail showing the giant wave towering above a small boat, starting to curve over in its downward fall, its foaming billows frozen in a stylized pattern that almost resemble leaves on a tree.

Debussy came to La Mer soon after the great success of his opera Pelléas et Mélisande. He may have expected La Mer to be even more successful, if only because the music was more assertive. He modestly called La Mer “three symphonic sketches,” but it is a full‑fledged symphony and has been called the greatest symphony ever written by a French composer. But the work at its premiere caused violent controversy, with assessments ranging from “the composer’s finest work” to “lifeless as dried plants in a herbarium.” The mixed impression was reversed when Debussy himself conducted La Mer in January 1908—even though he had never before conducted an orchestra.

La Mer has never been amenable to the simple summaries such as “sonata form” that can at least give direction to the listener’s perceptions of, say, a classical symphony. The use of orchestral color is more immediately identifiable than melodic shapes, though these play a crucial role in the work as well, and the harmonies are sui generis.

The first movement’s title, “From Dawn to Noon on the Sea,” indicates a progression from near darkness, in which objects are indistinct, to brightness, in which they are clearly perceptible. (Debussy’s friend Erik Satie, always a joker, and one who loved inventing elaborate titles for his own music, once commented to Debussy that he “particularly liked the bit at a quarter to eleven.”)

The second movement, “Play of the Waves,” is a lighter scherzo, scored with extreme delicacy. It is an interlude between the storm and emphatic passions of the first and last movements.

“Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea” begins with an evident pictorial image: the waves softly surging up in the low strings, answered by the winds—the woodwinds, in fact—blowing high up in chromatic shrieks. The struggle of wind and waves is developed at length, turning to material drawn from the opening movement, and building to a brilliant sunlit conclusion.
                   
© Steven Ledbetter  (www.stevenledbetter.com)