Composer and violinist Jean-Féry Rebel is one of the shining stars of the French Baroque. The son of a tenor at the court of Louis XIV and a pupil of the great Jean-Baptiste Lully, he ended up in the prestigious position as Court Composer, and the leader of the elite Versailles orchestra called the 24 Violons du Roi.

Rebel was an innovative composer. He introduced Italian-style sonatas to Paris, peppered his music with complex cross-rhythms, and used daring harmonies that baffled his audience. His ballet Les Éleméns. which he called a symphony, is probably his most innovative work.

The ten movements of Les Éleméns depicts the beginning of the universe as set forth in the story of Genesis in the Bible, coupled with the pseudo-scientific notion of the time that all things are composed of some combination of the elements of earth, water, air and fire. What distinguishes this Suite from the many suites and ballets composed for the royal court is the opening movement, Chaos. With its fortissimo clashing sonorities on all instruments, Chaos was harmonically daring for its time. “I dared to combine the confusion of the Elements with harmonic confusion. I tried to make heard all the sounds mingled together, or rather all the notes of the octave together in one chord.” wrote Rebel in the introduction. Followed by the more orderly creation of earth, water, fire and air, the suite ends in an epilogue which again has all instruments playing fortissimo, but now in an orderly and sonorous sound, appropriate for the royal court.

In 1883, at the request of his publisher Fritz Simrock, Antonín Dvořák composed From the Bohemian Forest, a set of 6 pieces for piano four-hands, a form of household entertainment popular and commercially lucrative in the nineteenth century.

In 1891, before embarking for America, Dvořák arranged the fifth piece, Silent Woods, for cello and piano for a farewell concert tour he gave with cellist Hanuš Wihan (who also inspired him to compose the Cello Concerto). The arrangement became very popular, and two years later Dvořák made the arrangement for cello and orchestra.

The Czech title of the work is Klid, which is more appropriately translated as “rest” or “tranquility.” It was the German publisher who named it Waldruhe – Silent Woods. It is gentle, lyrical piece, a suitable companion for a lone ambling through the woods.

When Sweden relinquished Finland to the Russian Empire in 1809, it became an autonomous duchy with significant control over its own affairs. Beginning in 1870, however, the Tsar gradually whittled away at the Finns’ privileges and autonomy. While Swedish had continued to be the language of the educated and of the middle class, Russian repression aroused strong nationalist feelings and initiated a revival of the Finnish language. Jean Sibelius was born into this nationalistic environment and in 1876 enrolled in the first grammar school to teach in Finnish.

His first success as a composer came in 1892 with Kullervo, Op.7, a nationalistic symphonic poem/cantata that premiered to great acclaim but was never again performed in Sibelius’s lifetime for lack of sufficient forces. For the next six years he composed numerous nationalistic pageants, symphonic poems and vocal works, mostly based on the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. In 1897, in order to enable him to compose undisturbed, the Finnish government gave him a pension for life. For 29 years he composed the symphonies and other orchestral works that made him world-famous. But in 1926, at the age of 61, he essentially quit composing, for reasons he never disclosed, remaining silent until his death 31 years later.

All his life Sibelius suffered from bouts of alcoholism. Early on, the condition caused a tremor in his right hand that prevented him from fulfilling his primary ambition of becoming a concert violinist. At numerous times in his life he went on the wagon, only to backslide repeatedly. It was during one of his dry periods late in 1914 that he started composing his Symphony No. 5, premiering it in 1915 in celebration of his 50th birthday. The version generally performed today, however, is the product of four additional years of revisions.

The Symphony is strongly influenced by the sounds of the forests and lakes surrounding his home in Ainola, north of Helsinki. An early inspiration for the finale came on April 21, 1915, when Sibelius saw 16 swans in flight over his house: “One of my greatest experiences! Lord God, that beauty!…their call the same woodwind type as that of cranes, but without tremolo. The swan call is closer to the trumpet, although there is something of a sarrusophone sound. A low refrain reminiscent of a small child crying. Nature mysticism and life’s Angst! The Fifth Symphony’s finale-theme: Legato in the trumpets!!” [sarrusophone was a family of woodwind instruments developed in mid-nineteenth century for band use; with their stronger sound, they were intended to replace the oboe and bassoon for outdoor band performances]

The final version of the Symphony presents a musical puzzle: is it in three movements or four? The first movement is in two sections, each of which presents the same thematic material, but in two entirely different moods. The first section opens with a brooding fanfare introduced by the horns and taken up by the woodwinds that makes up the bulk of the thematic material for this melancholy, sometimes even threatening, part. The second section, marked Allegro moderato, transforms the same material into a whirling triple meter in a more optimistic mood.

The second movement, Andante mosso, quasi allegretto is a set of freely structured variations on a short thirteen-note motive, although without the formal repeat structure of the classic variation form.

A hushed chromatic whirring theme in the strings introduces the Finale. The movement shares this excited motive, often in counterpoint, with a somber chordal phrase in the horns that recurs throughout as an ostinato – perhaps a memory of the sound of the flying swans.

The authenticity of most of Franz Joseph Haydn’s cello concertos has been in question for the last two centuries. The existence of the Cello Concerto in C major, however, has never been in doubt since Haydn listed it in the Entwurf-Katalog (a thematic draft catalogue) of his works, which he began compiling in 1765 after his patron, Nicolaus von Esterházy, admonished him for “negligence.” For nearly 200 years, however, the Concerto was considered lost; neither the original manuscript nor a copy of a printed edition was ever located. But in 1961, a copy was discovered in a collection in the Czech National Library, bearing the signature of Joseph Weigl, Sr., Haydn’s cellist, who was in the service of the Esterházy court from 1761 to 1768, and for whom Haydn probably composed it. The score lacks a separate orchestral cello, leading some scholars to surmise that the Esterházy orchestra had only a single cellist. Considering both the technical and musical demands of the work, Weigl must have been an outstanding musician.

Both the first and third movements of the Concerto are each dominated by a single theme. Haydn, who was always looking for ways to spice up conventional forms, begins the first movement rather sedately until the cadenza, which includes unusual modulations and virtuosic tricks. The lyrical second movement contains a certain pathos we have come to associate more with Mozart than Haydn. It seems entirely likely that the richness of the voice of the solo instrument may have inspired in the composer a more intense emotional outpouring.

The spirited Finale, however, is the real showpiece for the soloist, especially in its rapid, staccato bowings. The entire movement was also a chance for Haydn to show what he could do in spinning out a single theme into a variety of rapidly changing moods.

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