First Light
Richard Danielpour
Born January 28, 1956 in New York City
Instrumentation: Flute, oboe (doubling English horn), clarinet, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, percussion, and strings
Performance time: 13 minutes
First performance by the TSO
Premiered March 2, 1988 in New York City
Richard Danielpour considers First Light to be his first opus, the turning point in his career where his work sounds more like himself than anyone else. Commissioned by Gerard Schwarz and members of the New York Chamber Symphony, its premiere set in motion the events and connections that led to a prestigious publishing contract and a string of major early commissions. The title was inspired by the last section of Four Pictures of the Real Universe by American poet Robert Duncan, who died one month before the premiere:
And does not the spirit attend secretly
the music that is hidden away from me
chords that hold the stars in their courses
outfoldings of sound from the seed of first light?
Were it not for the orders of music hidden
we should be claimed by the preponderent void.
First Light is a concerto for chamber orchestra in one movement whose four sections alternate between viscerally propulsive rhythms and quietly elegiac lyricism. Danielpour notes that the two Alleluias from the Roman Catholic liturgy heard most completely in the last section “are not extraneous quotes but serve both as a source for much of the material found throughout” the work and “as an ultimate destination of the music’s journey.” The work’s musical style is predominantly neo-romantic with echoes of Stravinsky and Bernstein, and discernible elements of minimalism and the rock/pop rhythms of Danielpour’s youth, but it is his individual musical voice that comes through most strongly in this auspicious beginning to what is arguably the most celebrated compositional career of his generation.
Concerto No. 2 in G minor for Piano & Orchestra, Op. 22
Camille Saint-Saëns
Born October 9, 1835 in Paris
Died December 16, 1921 in Algiers
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, percussion, and strings
Performance time: 24 minutes
Last performed by the TSO: April, 2008
Premiered May 13, 1868 in Paris
Camille Saint-Saëns started out as a piano prodigy; at his public debut at the age of ten, he offered, as an encore, to play any of Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas from memory! He developed into an important organist, conductor, critic, and composer, and was good friends with Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz, who remarked of Saint-Saëns that “he knows everything, but lacks inexperience.” He possessed a wide-ranging intellect and wrote scholarly articles on subjects as diverse as acoustics and the occult, and penned a philosophical tract (Problèmes et mystères) that presaged Existentialism. Though he championed much of the more daring romantic music of his time, his own style tends toward the classical end of the romantic spectrum.
Composed in only three weeks and premiered soon after with minimal preparation, with the composer at the piano and Anton Rubinstein at the baton, it would be hard to predict from its initial reception that the Piano Concerto No. 2 would become one of Saint-Saëns’ most popular works. The concerto begins with a Bach-like fantasia-style cadenza that sets the stage for a dialog between virtuoso and orchestra that is by turns dramatic and lyrical; the main theme was appropriated from a sketch of a motet by his student, Gabriel Fauré. Marked Andante sostenuto, this first movement has much of the character of a traditional slow movement, and Saint-Saëns wrote a lively and light scherzo for the second movement instead. The last movement is a furious tarantella propelled by virtuosic trills and arpeggios.
Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504 “Prague”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria
Died December 5, 1791 in Vienna, Austria
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings
Performance time: 26 minutes
Last performed by the TSO: February, 2010
Premiered January 19, 1787 in Prague
Symphony No. 38 (K. 504) is actually Mozart’s 37th symphony, since we now know that what was mistakenly published as Symphony No. 37 (K. 444) was composed by Michael Haydn except for an introduction added by Mozart, who copied the Haydn work for study purposes.
Mozart and Prague are known to have had a happy affinity for each other (Bohemians have long claimed that Mozart said “my Prague-people understand me”) and we know this work as the “Prague Symphony” because it was premiered there, as was Le nozze di Figaro a few weeks earlier.
The work is in three movements, lacking the minuet movement included in most symphonies of the period. In common with much of Mozart’s later works, the symphony makes extensive use of contrapuntal techniques, thanks to one of the most musically influential patrons of the classical era, Gottfried van Swieten. Baron van Swieten paid no salaries or commissioned any works, but supported Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and others with occasional bits of cash and especially by sharing his library of all-but-forgotten treasures by J.S. Bach and sons and Handel. Mozart started attending van Swieten’s salon in 1781 and by 1782 Mozart was hooked on Bach. Despite what you may have seen in the movie Amadeus, it was van Swieten (not Salieri) who made Mozart’s funeral arrangements and helped support his widow by sponsoring a benefit performance of the Requiem; he also arranged an education for Mozart’s son Karl in Prague.
Program notes by Alan Hershowitz