this concert`s program notes.

SOST Classics Series, Concert 3 Program Notes
Overture to La Cenerentola (Cinderella)
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)
Premiered: 26 September 1816 in Naples (with the opera La gazzetta)
Rossini was the most important Italian opera composer before Verdi. His work as a dramatist
merged the lighter “opera buffa” style with the stricter “opera seria” style in a way that promoted
a musical reading more sensitive to dramatic action. Rossini’s music remains well-known
primarily because he composed such recognizable tunes, more than a few of which continue to
appear on television advertisements and cartoon soundtracks (including Looney Tunes, where his
“tunes” formed the backbone of the series).
It might come as a surprise, given his reputation as a dramatist, that Rossini’s overtures generally
have few, if any, connections to the opera that follows, however there was no expectation of such
connections until later in the nineteenth century. In fact, Rossini did not even compose the
overture to La Cenerentola’s for that opera! The overture premiered with the opera La gazzetta
and Rossini, working under pressure, recycled it a few months later. So while we might hope that
an overture to the fairy tale “Cinderella” would give clear musical references to pumpkin
carriages and glass slippers, none are there. Rossini’s opera replaces the glass slipper with
matching bracelets anyway. One benefit of the interchangeability of his overtures is that
audiences can hear them as stand-alone “absolute” music without the need to know anything
about the plot of the opera that followed. This, together with his ingenuity as a melodist, has
helped to keep Rossini’s overtures popular in the concert hall. The overture to La Cenerentola
opens with a slow introduction before moving into a straightforward sonata form. The work’s
second theme is a lilting clarinet solo echoed by the other woodwinds. Rossini’s form excludes
the development section, an omission typical for opera overtures from the early nineteenth
century.
Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Major
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Composed: 1783 in Eisenstadt, Austria, for soloist Antonín Kraft
A friend of Mozart and teacher of Beethoven, Joseph Haydn was the eldest of the three
“Viennese Classics.” Haydn was one of music history’s greatest innovators, especially in terms
of genre (where he invented the string quartet and standardized the four-movement symphony),
form (where he revolutionized the use of sonata and sonata-rondo forms), and thematic
development (where he set a key precedent for Beethoven and all who followed). With a career
spent in Austria, two enormously successful trips to London, honorary medals minted in Paris,
and commissions received from Spain and elsewhere, Haydn was the first composer whose
music was famous throughout Europe during his lifetime.
Who composed Haydn’s Second Cello Concerto? Up until 1951 the answer was Antonín Kraft,
the principal cellist in Haydn’s orchestra at the Esterházy Palace. The work’s autograph
manuscript was lost (most of the concertos Haydn wrote have been lost, including at least one
additional work for cello) and musicologists determined that the work’s style was too different
from Haydn’s other works to have been written by him. The reason the question was up in the air
was because unscrupulous publishers often ascribed works by lesser-known writers to famous
ones in order to increase sales (two other cello concertos by “Haydn” actually are by other
composers, and confusion with his brother Michael Haydn was not uncommon at the time
either). In any case, the autograph manuscript to the present work was discovered in 1951,
conveniently signed by Haydn and including his standard “fine laus deo” (the end, praise to God)
after the last measure, proving his authorship (and standing as a warning to overconfident
musicologists about making authorial decisions based on stylistic arguments!).
Part of the unique style of this work is its emotional and expressive intensity. It is a great work,
easily the equal of his more frequently-performed (and flashier) First Cello Concerto. Antonín
Kraft, Haydn’s soloist, must have had an unusually sensitive approach to playing, as each of the
Second Concerto’s three movements is more relaxed in tempo and more intimate in conception
than the more bombastic and formal First Concerto. The personal quality of this work allows
listeners to peek into the close friendship between composer and soloist. The first movement’s
reverie, remarkably Romantic in aesthetic, allows the cellist ample space in which to display
impassioned virtuosity. Almost an aria for the cello, it avoids the empty virtuosity typical of
other Classical-era concertos. The thirds-based turn figure heard at the tail end of this
movement’s opening theme returns as the main idea of the second movement, as if presenting
two sides of the same coin. Here we see how Haydn taught Beethoven to take small ideas and
turn them into entire movements. Yet this organic growth does not interfere with the amount of
passion the composer and soloist pour into the movement. The finale’s opening theme reprises
the “sighing thirds” idea heard in the previous movements, transforming it into a pastoral context
that evokes the natural beauty of the Austrian countryside – the final frontier of musical
expression explored in this unusually sensitive concerto.
Symphony No. 41 in C major, “Jupiter,” K. 551
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Completed: 10 August, 1788 in Vienna
If Haydn was the most famous composer of his time and Beethoven the most influential of the
next, Mozart was the only one of the three laurelled as a genius in every genre. Mozart was
famous for his operas, of course, a genre in which Haydn was too conventional and with which
Beethoven struggled mightily. Of course Mozart also wrote important works for instruments
alone, including a masterful opus of string quartets (dedicated to Haydn and used as models by
Beethoven). Mozart symphonies – especially the “Jupiter” – had a profound influence on Haydn
in that Mozart’s size and scale pushed Haydn to write larger and weightier works himself.
Formally speaking, Mozart’s operatic leanings led him to include a virtual cornucopia of themes
in his symphonies, which led Haydn to more consistently use “second themes” in his own sonata
forms. Mozart died just before Beethoven arrived in Vienna, so the two never met. However,
Beethoven’s prince nevertheless dispatched him from Bonn to Vienna in order to “receive
Mozart’s spirit from Haydn’s hands.”
Köchel’s catalog of Mozart’s works ascends in chronological order, so with Symphony No. 41’s
K. 551 number we know it was one of his later works (K. 626, the Requiem Mass was his final
work). The “Jupiter” would turn out to be Mozart’s final symphony; although he lived for two
more years, war with France limited the money available for public concerts in Vienna after
1788. It is unclear if K. 551 was itself performed during the composer’s lifetime, but it seems
likely given that Mozart usually wrote works on an “as needed” basis. He was basically the first
freelance composer in music history, both because he earned so much money writing operas and
because he was unwilling to submit to the strictures of working at a court.
K. 551 is only about a half hour long, but the apocryphal “Jupiter” nickname hints at its massive
scope. The first movement contrasts a number of themes with impassioned intensity. Formally
and harmonically the movement is straightforward, but Mozart’s inner opera composer refused
to be limited to the conventional two themes. His exposition introduces idea after idea – some
serious and others trifling – piling them up on top of one another before juxtaposing and
contrasting them in the development section. Think of these as musical characters in an operatic
sense: Mozart likely did. The second movement follows suit, grouping a number of lyric ideas
together in a contemplative reprieve (except for a particular passionate outburst near its
midpoint). The third movement, the obligatory minuet and trio, opens with a soft idea that
quickly gives way to a loud contrasting idea. The two themes continue to appear in close
proximity, but like oil and water refuse to cooperate with one another no matter how many times
Mozart shakes them up contrapuntally. Speaking of which, Mozart musters all of his
contrapuntal ingenuity for the finale of this symphony, resolving the tension created by
juxtaposing so many different themes in each of the previous movements. After a tumultuous
opening, the movement gives way to something that sounds overtly fugal in nature. The
movement is not a fugue strictly speaking, but Mozart’s coda section eventually unites a number
of ideas from previous movements in a way that brings the work to a triumphal conclusion.
When combined the five themes used in this movement all work together contrapuntally (that is,
he can play them all at the same time without creating voice leading or harmonic errors) – a
compositional computation worthy of old Bach himself. Mozart’s experience with writing opera
comes to the fore here too: he was used to writing ensemble pieces at the ends of his acts that
combined the voices of four or more characters. There is nothing wrong with hearing the finale
of this symphony as if it were the end of a text-less comic opera, and clearly this symphony has
more than its share of thematic “characters.”
Bryan Proksch
Lamar University
© 2014