We are welcoming back Amy Schwartz Moretti Wednesday night as she joins the Palladium Chamber Players for a special concert that celebrates Shakespeare.
Amy Schwartz Moretti
The concert is part of a city-wide celebration of the Bard of Avon, that included St. Petersburg Opera’s production of Kiss Me Kate , an upcoming concert by Tampa Bay Symphony (led by Maestro Mark Sforzini), and other events both at the Palladium and around town.
To get you in the mood, you can read Kurt Loft’s program notes on the Feb. 13 concert. Tickets are selling fast. You can get yours by calling our box office at 727-822-3590 or you can follow this link for on-line tickets. There should be tickets available for purchase at the door prior to the 7:30 curtain.
We’ll be joined by our friends from Westminster Communities of Florida. The good folks from WEDU will also be on hand and bringing great desserts from La Segunda for our post-show reception.
Now check out Kurt Loft’s thoughts on the concert:
By Kurt Loft
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Trio in D Major Op. 70 No. 1, “Ghost”
Imagine bumping into Beethoven in a pub in the 1820s, and sharing a few thoughts on music. You ask about his favorite compositions, and he mumbles something about a Ninth Symphony, the opera Fidelio, and the A Minor String Quartet. Don’t be surprised if he talks about his little twins, the Op. 70 Piano Trios, which he composed in the relative comfort of a wealthy patron’s Viennese estate. As a thank you, he dedicated both works to Countess Maria von Erdody, no doubt hoping to her generosity would continue.
The first of the pair is known as the Ghost, named for the spooky slow movement that links the two optimistic sounding outer sections. Beethoven launches the work like a rocket, and off we go into a rapid-fire thicket of notes intertwining the threesome. The themes are confident and forceful, and uniformly played by each instrument. The haunting largo follows, with its dark, ominous harmonics and vibratos that suggest its sobriquet. The piano motif, allegedly, comes from fragments of a scene in an opera based on Shakespeare, which Beethoven abandoned.
“This movement, with its strange whisperings and flutterings, its spare and bizarre textures, its utterly eerie ending, may have originated as an idea for MacBeth,’’ notes Jan Swafford in his 2014 biography Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph. “If so, this music would have been for the witch’s cauldron scene that begins the play.
The largo is among the slowest of all movements in the Beethoven canon. It creeps along at a glacial pace, the harmonies unstable and broken into shards, all of which create tension and a sense of doom. But it doesn’t last. The sun breaks through in the concluding presto, the music cheerfully escaping what came before, and the piece ends with three resounding chords.
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957)
Four Pieces for Violin and Piano from the Incidental Music to Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, Op. 11
If you watch old flicks on the Turner Classic Movies channel, chances are you’ve heard the music of Korngold. He was one of Hollywood’s most prolific film composers ─ with 16 to his credit ─ including Captain Blood of 1935, starring Errol Flynn, which would later inspire the music for the original Star Trek television series. Kings Row followed in 1942 and Of Human Bondage four years later. His scores for Anthony Adverse and The Adventures of Robin Hood won him Oscars.
Korngold’s knack for lyricism, character leitmotifs and swashbuckling orchestration were ideally suited both to live theater and film. He was a fast learner, improvising at the piano at age five, and before he turned 12 was dubbed “a musical genius’’ by none other than Gustav Mahler. By his mid-teens he was composing operas, ballets, orchestral and chamber music.
But by the mid-1930s, the pro-Nazi atmosphere in his native Austria intensified, and Jewish musicians and artists were being forced from prominent positions. In 1934, Korngold left Vienna for the United States, and landed a job with Warner Bros. Pictures in Los Angeles.
Korngold shined in Hollywood, and he equated writing for the big screen to composing opera without singing. In its retrospective 50 years after Korngold’s death, the Independent of London praised his music for its “white-hot dramatic sweep and an overwhelming sense of atmosphere. His distinctive voice comprises rich harmony and melody, a rhythmic flexibility and a deeply human spirit.’’
The film years, however, didn’t define Korngold’s breadth as a composer. His catalog of early and late works stand on their own, outside the cinema, as vital works of art. One of those, the Four Pieces for Violin and Piano, Op. 11, written in 1920, was based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and would become one of his best-known compositions. Korngold’s affinity for the Bard comes through in this sparkling suite, full of comic irony in its four sections: The Maiden in the Bridal Chamber; March of the Watch; Scene in the Garden; and Masquerade.
In retrospect, Korngold’s compositions continue to inspire. John Williams, arguably the dean of film composers with more than 120 movies to his credit, attributes to Korngold his ideas behind the sounds for Star Wars and other movies. Even in the films of today, his impact can’t be underestimated, notes Jessica Duchen in her 1996 biography on Korngold.
“Since modern film music is known to far more people the world over than the vast majority of contemporary classical music,’’ she writes, “that, paradoxically, makes Korngold one of the most influential composers of the 20th century.’’
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Sonata No. 17 in D Minor Op. 31 No. 2, “The Tempest”
Beethoven’s career was a continuous struggle. Plagued by financial troubles most of his life, a creeping deafness, nagging illnesses, and a paradoxical relationship with those around him, he easily could have succumbed to what he called his “unfavorable fate.’’ Instead, he persisted, and his stubbornness his most resilient trait literally changed 19th century musical thought and action.
His resolute character persists throughout the 32 piano sonatas, which describe in sound his evolution as a young man, mid-life explorer, and aging philosopher. The Tempest, the only sonata in the key of D Minor, is a deeply felt portrait in anguish that lies somewhere between explorer and philosopher. Like his iconic Symphony No. 5, it generates power through a compact opening phrase, which in both cases is just four notes.
In the symphony, Beethoven recycles the opening theme ─ da da da dumm! ─ to drive his ideas forward and create a unifying structure in which everything is related. In the Piano Sonata No. 17, the four-note theme pierces throughout the work like a dagger. He composed this impassioned music about the time of his Heiligenstadt Testament, a touching letter of confession about his encroaching deafness and lingering thoughts of suicide.
A broken arpeggio in the opening movement leads to the development of two contrasting ideas that together form an exquisite tension, and a theme the composer described as “a voice from the tomb.’’ The central adagio serves as an oasis, but tremblors soon reveal that something is amiss. Cast in a perpetual motion of 16th notes, the third movement quickly evolves into one of the most emotional statements in the piano literature, the dynamic shifts, reiteration and suspension of the four notes suggesting a gnawing grief, and what the Beethoven biographer Lewis Lockwood calls a “demonic fury that is entirely its own.’’ After the turmoil, the piece ends quietly, which only deepens its impact.
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Piano Quartet in E flat Major, Op. 47
Schumann’s father was a publisher and book seller, and his son developed a keen interest in the writings of his time, both poetry and novel, and by his teens was well versed in European literature. He grew up with dramatic works, and brought them to life through youthful songs and character pieces with colorful names such as Butterflies and Kreisleriana. His literary inspirations would continue throughout his life and help define musical romanticism by, in his own words, sending “light into the depths of the human heart.”
A superb pianist, literary critic and advocate for such up-and-coming talents as Brahms and Chopin, Schumann was prescient about the culture of his time, and interpreted current trends in his role as editor of the periodical, the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik (New Journal of Music). He wasn’t shy in voicing an opinion or taking sides in a battle, and formed the Davidsbundler – and imaginary league that fought against “philistinism in the arts.’’
As we look at Schumann’s career, his compositions can be lumped into chapters, following his habit of writing in one medium at a time: chamber music one year, symphonies the next, and entire seasons devoted to songs or church music. In 1842 alone, after extensive study of Haydn and Mozart, he wrote three string quartets, the Piano Quintet, the Phantasiestucke, and the Piano Quartet you will hear tonight. After this burst of creative energy, Schumann would never again continue at such a pace; mental illness ruled the remaining 14 years of his life.
The Quartet mirrors the Quintet (which the Palladium Players performed last March) in sharing the same key of E Flat Major, and shows influences of both Schubert’s Trio No. 2 and Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 127 – also in E Flat Major. The piano drives the action throughout the work, but the expansive game plan feels almost symphonic in size and scope, stretching nearly half an hour. Schumann tips his hat to Beethoven by switching the traditional lineup of movements, with the scherzo coming before the slow movement.
From start to finish, Schumann expresses his ideas with both romantic sweep and intimacy. Most touching is the third movement, marked andante cantabile, a delicate conversation among the four instruments that sets the stage for an exuberant fugue in the closing vivace. Note the prominence of the cello throughout the entire work; Schumann dedicated the Quartet to an amateur cellist and patron, and he no doubt wanted to make an impression.
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