Nov 14, 2021 Masterworks II

Program Notes by Lee Dise

Cedric Adderley (b. 1965) is the President of the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities in Greenville, SC, and an accomplished composer, trumpet player, and vocalist. Though he wrote his composition Flight! for full orchestra, it prominently features the orchestra's winds. The piece was commissioned for the South Carolina Philharmonic Orchestra. The music itself is very much in the style of modern symphonic wind ensembles, and is drivingly rhythmic. According to Adderley, the composition was inspired by the artwork of Tyrone Geter and "derives much of its melodic and rhythmic interest from the opening trumpet motive."

Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) was a pivotal figure in the dawning of Western music's Romantic era and a pioneer in German Romantic opera, serving as a model and an inspiration for later Romantic composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer, Richard Wagner and Engelbert Humperdinck. He is mainly known for his operas, the most famous of which are Der Freischütz and Oberon. However, he also composed symphonies and solo instrumental concert pieces. Weber's waltz-like tour de force, "Invitation to the Dance", has proven very popular in at least three different versions: in its original solo piano version, in the version arranged for full orchestra by Hector Berlioz, and as a jazz tune, "Let's Dance!" during the Big Band era (it became the theme song for the Benny Goodman Orchestra). Today, we will perform Weber's Bassoon Concerto in F Major, Op. 7. Weber had written a solo piece for a clarinetist in the Munich court, prompting court bassoonist Georg Friedrich Brandt to beg King Maximilian I to commission Weber to write a bassoon concerto. Weber completed the concerto in 1811 (and revised it in 1822). Though a Romantic composer through and through, Weber wrote the concerto in the older classical style because he believed that was a safer approach for commissioned works. The first movement is in standard classical sonata form, which chafed Weber; he felt the older style inhibited his creativity. The second movement is lyrical and resembles an operatic aria. The last movement is a spirited rondo (repeated melodies). This composition is firmly entrenched as a staple of the bassoonist's repertoire.

Not much is known today about Johann Baptist Georg Neruda (c. 1708 – c. 1780), aside from a few basic facts. He was a Bohemian (in terms of nationality, not lifestyle), became the concertmaster of the Dresden Court Orchestra, and achieved success not only as a violinist and composer, but also as a conductor. Neruda's Concerto in Eb for Trumpet and Strings was originally intended for the corno da caccia (hunting horn) or posthorn (a bugel-like contraption used for signaling the arrival or departure of the mail coach) -- these were instruments whose gainful employment today, if not utterly obsolete, is at least moribund. But trumpets are not obsolete. The trumpet's tessitura makes the solo part a natural fit, and trumpet players are more than willing to address the scarcity of trumpet solo literature via careful editing of fortuitous discoveries. In the mid-20th century, this long-forgotten concerto was unearthed, so to speak, from a manuscript tucked deep in a London library -- or a Czech library, accounts differ. Several contemporary trumpet players have published adaptations of the Neruda concerto -- among them, Timofei Dokschitzer and John Wallace. The cadenza being performed today was edited by David Hickman, Arizona State's trumpet professor. It's hard to get a clear bead on Neruda's style -- not surprising, since he lived during a transitional period. On the one hand, the piece retains elements of the Baroque basso continuo tradition; on the other hand, it features the clear melodic lines of the Classical style and innovations from the Mannheim School (such as emphasis on dynamics). One constant with concertos, though, is that they give instrumentalists a chance to show off what many thousands of hours cloistered in the practice room have earned for them.

One of the wives of Johann Strauss II (1825-1899) asked Johannes Brahms to autograph her fan. Though customary for a composer to pen a quote from his own music to accompany his signature, Brahms scribbled a few measures of The Blue Danube waltz and wrote, "Unfortunately, not by Johannes Brahms." Johann Strauss II was born in Austria, near Vienna, into a very musical family -- his father (Johann Strauss I) and two brothers (Josef and Eduard) were also composers and musicians. However, musical though the family was, functional it was not. The senior Johann wanted the junior Johann to become a banker and beat his son severely when he was caught practicing violin. The prospects for the younger Johann's music career burned brighter when the senior Johann ran off with his mistress. Later, the two Johanns became musical rivals in Vienna and each jealously guarded his own respective turf. Finally, the elder Johann did another good turn for the younger Johann's career -- this time, by dying and thus allowing the surviving Johann to incorporate his late father's orchestra into his own and take over his gigs.

The main melody of The Blue Danube is one of the most famous, familiar, and iconic melodies in music history, and has been memorialized in popular culture as dance music, cartoon music, and cinematic music; in 2001 A Space Odyssey it accompanies a waltzing space station. This waltz became a hit at the 1867 Paris World's Fair and was premiered in London and New York later in the same year.