Born in Mexico, oboist and composer Alejandra Odgers received her musical training in Mexico City and in Montreal, Canada. A prolific composer, she draws her inspiration from traditional Mexican and indigenous Native-American melodies, trying to blend them with the forms of Western Music. She currently resides in Canada.

Composed in 2007 as part of her PhD thesis and revised in 2029, Toni Alossaan is built on the legends and songs of the Abenaki, the indigenous tribes of the woodlands of New England and western Quebec Province. It incorporates Abenaki songs, each presented by a different instrument family. The title represents the first line of one of the Abenaki songs.

Odgers is currently composing an opera based on Abenaki legends.

No other composer symbolized the Romantic movement in music as did Robert Schumann. Talented both in music and literature, he used the latter to promote his romantic ideals about the future of music. He was a true elitist, pitting “us,” the enlightened (the Davidsbündler) against “them,” the masses, whom he called “Philistines.” The latter appellation has remained part of the international elitist vocabulary to this day.

Schumann’s five-year pursuit of his beloved, the brilliant Clara Wieck, had all the ingredients of a soap opera (or grand opera): A hostile father-in-law, an adoring young bride-to-be, secret correspondence, lawsuits and court battles, accusations of alcoholism, banishment from Wieck’s house, economic pressure, etc. Clara was an outstanding pianist and composer in her own right, and their eventual triumph led to a stormy but happy marriage unleashing a flood of creativity in both husband and wife – including seven children.

Although listed as Robert Schumann’s fourth symphony, the Symphony in D minor was actually his second, composed in 1841 during the happy first year of his marriage to Clara. In his diary, the composer wrote “…my next symphony will be called Clara and I will portray her with flutes, oboes and harps.”

The Symphony broke with the prevailing symphonic traditions, being more of an orchestral fantasy on several related themes that undergo transformations and variations as in a Classical symphony. In this way it forms a bridge between the Classical symphony and the later tone poems of Franz Liszt. Schumann himself referred to it as “Symphonistische Phantasie.”

The result of these innovations was a chilly reception at the premiere in Leipzig. Schumann withdrew the work and only returned to it in 1851 after the success of his Third Symphony. He revised and reorchestrated it, fusing all four movements to be played without a break, which made it even closer to a “Phantasie.” However, many conductors ignore this directive and separate the movements.

Two motifs, the theme of the introduction and a three-note hammer-blow motif in the Allegro of the first movement serve as the unifying theme for the whole work, reappearing in many guises in all subsequent movements.

The pensive mood of the Introduction, Ziemlich langsam (quite slowly) gains momentum and leads to the Lebhaft (lively) first movement, with its harsh “hammer-blow.” The second movement, Romanza, again Ziemlich langsam, introduces a melancholy theme on the oboes and cellos, alternating with the opening theme of the Introduction.

The lively Scherzo marked Lebhaft (lively) opens with the hammer-blow motif providing the rhythmic pulse to a theme again based on the Introduction. The movement ends on a poetic and gentle note that merges imperceptibly with the slow introduction to the Finale. Again, in the lively Finale, the hammer-blow motif sets the rhythm for the two lively themes until the joyous presto closing section.

As a member of a minority in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Antonín Dvořák was looked upon as a second-class citizen. He sensed condescension in the support and encouragement of the Austrian musical establishment and was resentful at being forced by economic necessity to accept government stipends.

In 1875 Dvořák met and became a disciple of Brahms; the admiration was mutual. Brahms urged Fritz Simrock, the most famous music publisher in Berlin, to publish Dvořák’s Moravian Dances and the first set of the Slavonic Dances. Brahms supported him when he entered – and won – the competition for the Austrian State Prize in music for young, poor and talented artists. The committee report stated that “…the applicant, who has never yet been able to acquire a piano of his own, deserves a grant to ease his strained circumstances and free him from anxiety in his creative work.”

By the time Dvořák started the Violin Concerto in the summer of 1879, prizes, honors and commissions were pouring in. The suggestion to write a violin concerto came from Simrock, and Dvořák hoped to enlist the help of the famed violinist Joseph Joachim to evaluate and edit the concerto. Joachim, who had also helped Brahms and Max Bruch with their concertos, suggested after a trial rehearsal that the composer start from scratch. Dvořák rewrote the Concerto and destroyed the original version. He finally completed it in 1882, stating, “I have retained the themes, and composed some new ones too, but the whole concept of the work is different.” But still the two friends did not see eye to eye. Joachim, although the dedicatee, did not premiere the finished work.

There is no specific information regarding Joachim’s objections to Dvořák’s Concerto. On the surface, it shares many elements with the concertos of Brahms, Bruch and Mendelssohn, frequently performed by Joachim. Unlike these works, however, the Concerto strays from the more conventional forms in the first and second movements, in which Dvořák reveals an intensely emotional, almost elegiac side of his musical personality.

The Concerto is in the conventional three-movement form, but the first two are played without interruption. A short orchestral fanfare followed by a lyrical melody on the solo violin present the material from which this extensive first movement is built, although a second theme is introduced much later. There is no formal recapitulation, only a six bar fragment that leads to the transition to the second movement.

The slow movement opens with a gentle melody on the solo violin, answered by the flute. But the initial folk-like simplicity of the melody is deceptive; Dvořák develops it, as well as the new theme in the middle section, with abrupt harmonic shifts that blatantly tug at the heartstrings. The movement is largely a personal conversation between the violin and the upper winds. It also provides the soloist with an opportunity for some delicate figurative passages, but always subdued, in keeping with the wistful mood.

In the finale Dvořák reveals his Bohemian roots; the soloist introduces a lively dance, a furiant that recurs as a refrain throughout the movement, each time with a different instrumental mix.

Program notes by:
Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn
Wordpros@mindspring.com
www.wordprosmusic.com