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The Jon Mac Anderson Program Notes underwritten by Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791): Symphony No. 1 in E-flat Major, K. 16
Instrumentation: Scored for two oboes, two horns and strings
Composed: 1764
Duration: 11 minutes

Ask most people where Mozart wrote his first symphony and they’ll likely guess Salzburg, the city of his birth and where his formative years were spent, or perhaps Munich or Vienna, among those cities where his folks exhibited his prodigious talents beginning at the age of six. Mozart’s First Symphony, however, was penned in London, by a boy of eight, who had by this time done very little by way of composing. What he had done, however, was listen, not only to his domineering father and his own impressive violin and piano playing, but to other composers. These included, above all others, Johann Christian Bach, among the many sons of J.S. Bach, and who was living and working in London when the Mozarts dropped in on the English capital during a grand tour.

Known as the “London Bach,” Johann Christian had come to England by way of Italy, where he had adopted the Italian style. Among other aspects, the Italians had demonstrated a keen attention to melody and were instrumental in attaching the three-movement architecture (slow-fast-slow) to the fledgling symphony, a genre still in its early stages of development. At any rate, we know that at court Mozart played keyboard duets with Christian Bach (who served as the queen’s music master), arranged some of his music and when the Mozarts left town, they took a Christian Bach manuscript along for the ride. In sum, after Mozart’s father, Christian Bach probably exerted the single greatest influence on massively talented and musically hungry young Wolfy.

Listening to this eleven-minute work, we need to keep several things in mind. First, this was one of Mozart’s first real compositions, so he had a long way to go before any of his own real fingerprints made their way into his compositions. There is little by way of any true musical development and much of the writing is derivative, relying for example on the charm of attractive chord progressions. Still, if one listens carefully to the sustained, lyrical phrases, one can hear vestiges of the sublime writing to come a few years down the road. As stated above, this early symphony reflects more the influence of others than any real attempt for Mozart to find his own way, and once he did, Mozart became the model for others to emulate, at least until he attained the perfection that no one could hope to emulate! But for the moment, remember that this is a product of an eight-year-old who clearly didn’t have Matchbox Cars with which to occupy his free time. Enough said.

From the composer:
Noah Bendix-Balgley (b. 1984): Fidl Fantazye: A Klezmer Concerto (for Violin and Chamber Orchestra)
Instrumentation: Scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, percussion, piano and strings
Composed: 2016
Duration: 22 minutes

I grew up around klezmer music and it had a significant influence on my musical upbringing. My father, Erik Bendix, is a dance teacher who specializes in Eastern European folk dancing. He is an expert on Yiddish dance, so as a child I often listened to recordings of klezmer music or heard live bands play at workshops and festivals where my father taught. I began picking up klezmer tunes shortly after I had started playing the violin. I then was lucky to learn from great klezmer musicians such as Michael Alpert and Alan Bern of Brave Old World and Alicia Svigals of The Klezmatics. To this day, playing klezmer music is a wonderful counterweight to my classical playing, since it allows the performer to improvise and embellish on the spot. Developing this freedom helps me play with greater flexibility and imagination within the stricter structures of classical repertoire. Klezmer music is vividly emotional, ranging from deeply mourning improvisations to the irresistible drive of its fast dance music.

The idea of a klezmer violin concerto was one I had for a while since I was looking for a virtuoso piece in the klezmer style to play with orchestra. My original thought was to commission the work from another composer, but I was encouraged by my father, by Manfred Honeck, and by Michael Alpert to write the work myself. I am thankful to them for this suggestion. I decided to write a virtuosic violin fantasy accompanied by full orchestra. I am extremely grateful that the wonderful composer Samuel Adler agreed to orchestrate the piece for me, realizing a full version of the violin and piano score that I composed.

My first question when composing was whether to use existing traditional klezmer melodies or to compose my own. I decided to compose my own tunes in the style of traditional ones I have learned over the years.

The piece is constructed in three movements that are played without pause. Each movement is a medley of different dances. After a short orchestral introduction, the violin enters alone, playing a simple Khosidl tune. A Khosidl is a slow and heavy line dance in the old Hassidic style. The violin soon plays duets with various other solo instruments, presenting the tune in virtuosic style. This is followed by a Doina, a Romanian-style improvisation over of a held harmony, the first of three Doina sections in the piece that serve as transitions. The melody of the next section uses my musical translation of the name Samuel: E-flat (eS in German), A, E-natural (Mi in solfege), C (Ut in solfege), E, A (La in solfege). My middle name is Samuel, and I was named after my great-grandfather, Samuel Leventhal, who was a violinist. Like me, he went to Germany to study violin, and following his studies joined the Pittsburgh Symphony. He was later concertmaster of the Hartford Symphony. Because of my connection with him as well as the happy coincidence that Samuel Adler is the orchestrator of this work, the musical version of the name felt like a nice dual homage. It appears throughout the work in different forms. Sam’s Syrtos at the end of the first movement is a dance in mixed meter (7/8) and refers to the Syrtos music of the Greek islands that was absorbed into klezmer music under the name Terkisher, or ‘in the Turkish style’, Greece having long ago been under Ottoman Turkish rule.

The second movement opens with another Doina that features a duet with solo viola. This leads to a slow Nigun or Lid, a wordless song which then becomes a Hora, a slow dance in three. Here I incorporate small quotes from Mahler’s 5th Symphony. Gustav Mahler incorporated klezmer tunes and elements into a number of his works (most famously in the 3rd movement of the 1st symphony). Here my quotations of his melodies came from the question: what if the classical melodies in Mahler’s 5th symphony had been in-spired by klezmer tunes? What would those tunes have sounded like? So, in the 2nd movement of the Fantazye, I incorporated some Mahler into a version of Hora, and wove more Mahler into my version of Freylekhs.

The third movement is an extended medley of fast tunes, alternating between full orchestra and smaller ensembles within the orchestra. Throughout I wanted the solo violin to trade off tunes with individual members of the orchestra. At the end, the full orchestra joins in, with a wild race to the finish.

W.A. Mozart: Symphony No. 41 in C Major, “Jupiter,” K. 551
Instrumentation: Scored for flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns and trumpets, timpani and strings
Composed: 1788
Duration: 29 minutes

In August of 1788, twenty-four years after writing the jejune symphony heard earlier this evening, Mozart recorded in his logbook the completion of what was his latest symphony, a towering work in C major. He may not have known it was his 41st, as he probably had lost count of some of his early works along the way—if he were alive today, he might actually wonder why such juvenile compositions were even being performed!—and certainly he wouldn’t have known it would be his last. Still, Mozart was no doubt aware that he was working at the height of his powers. What would become known as the “Jupiter” —a nickname probably coined by Peter Salomon, the impresario who would bring Haydn to London a few years later—was the third symphony of a set Mozart dashed off during the summer months, although the precise motivation for their composition remains a mystery.

Mozart had by now long outgrown his status as a child prodigy and so had to hustle like any other composer of the day to find work. Nor was it a happy time for the composer, who had moved to the suburbs of Vienna, theoretically to reduce his expenses. Here he was soon reduced to begging for money from friends. Indeed, at the start of the summer, while working on this last set of symphonies (in addition to piano trios and sonatas for piano and violin), he wrote his friend Michael Puchberg,

I have now opened my whole heart to you in a manner which is of the utmost importance to me; that is, I have acted as a true brother. But it is only with a true brother that one can be perfectly frank. And now I look forward eagerly to your reply, which I do hope will be favorable . . . I take you to be a man who … will like myself certainly assist a friend, if he be a true friend, or his brother, if he be indeed a brother.

Mozart’s successive letters become increasingly desperate and to Puchberg’s credit he came through, loaning the composer a total of some 1400 florins. Historians have also pointed out that Mozart’s straits may not have been as dire as he made them out to be. His suburban apartment, for instance, which cost him a not insignificant 250 florins a year, was actually quite spacious, and during this time he also kept a carriage and horses. Nevertheless, Mozart could no longer rely on sheer talent to get by and over the next few years we see him traveling elsewhere in the effort to find work when opportunities in Vienna had all but dried up. And while the movie Amadeus is as much fiction as fact, there is no doubt that his final months were pitiful ones.

True to Mozart’s nature, none of this is evident in his 41st Symphony, for it rises above all earthly cares or concerns. And equally true to his nature, the work is regarded by many as the epitome of what the symphony had become—as with opera, concertos and pretty much everything else Mozart composed, he brought the genre to unparalleled heights. Expanded from three to four movements to include a courtly Minuet, and lasting upwards of thirty minutes, Mozart has developed the uncanny ability to transform even the most innocuous sounding ideas into something grand, spacious, and dramatic. One need only follow the course of the three stubborn C’s at the outset of this symphony as a point in fact. Mozart’s other miracles are too numerous to trace here save the conclusion of the symphony, the final minute of which must be acknowledged as among the most stunning bars in the literature. See if you can follow his virtuosic handling of the finale’s five themes, which he effortlessly weaves together in a five-voice fugato. Given what he accomplished, he may well have believed there was no reason to compose another symphony. Mozart had indeed learned a few things since those early days in London!

© Marc Moskovitz
www.marcmoskovitz.com