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About the Music

Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972): Elegía Andina
Instrumentation: Scored for pairs of flutes, oboes,
clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, and horns, timpani, percussion, and strings
Composed: 2000
Duration: 13 minutes

Gabriela Lena Frank perfectly embodies what it means to be a successful composer of mixed heritage in America. Of Chinese-Peruvian-Spanish descent, her life growing up was “filled with Chinese stir-fry cuisine, Andean nursery songs, and frequent visits from our New York-bred Jewish cousins,” flavors that went on to influence much of what she has written. Frank has also expertly navigated her way through a crowded and challenging contemporary music market. The winner of numerous prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Latin GRAMMY, Frank has been awarded commissions by, served residencies with, and performed alongside many of the foremost orchestral institutions in the U.S. She has also collaborated with the Kronos Quartet, Lincoln Center and Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, with which she is a member.

Frank has described her Elegía Andina (Andean Elegy) as “one of my first written-down compositions to explore what it means to be of several ethnic persuasions, of several minds. It uses stylistic elements of Peruvian arca/ira zampoña panpipes (double-row panpipes, each row with its own tuning) to paint an elegiac picture of my questions. The flute part [heard as an extended flute duo approximately 2/3 through the composition] was particularly conceived with this in mind, but was also inspired by the technical and musical mastery of Floyd Hebert, principal flutist of the Albany Symphony Orchestra.”

The music opens mysteriously and cinematically, building quickly in volume and intensity. Technically, Frank relies on small, repetitive fragments as anchors for larger blocks of sound, effectively engaging the entire orchestra. Comprised of two outer orchestral sections bookending the unaccompanied flute duet, Elegía Andina illustrates Frank’s flair for crafting musical kaleidoscopes of color and rhythm.

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921): Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor
Instrumentation: Scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns, trumpets, timpani, strings, and solo piano
Composed: 1868
Duration: 26 minutes

Described by music critic Harold Schoenberg as “the most remarkable child prodigy in history, and that includes Mozart,” Saint-Saëns displayed perfect pitch and began picking out tunes on the piano at the age of three. He would go on to live another eighty-three years, a gift he used to his advantage. By the time he died at age 86, Saint-Saëns had amassed a portfolio of over 300 works, many of which quickly took their place in the standard repertoire, including thirteen operas (among them Samson and Delila), symphonies (including the Organ Symphony), and symphonic poems (Dance macabre), chamber music, his famous Carnival of the Animals, vocal, choral and keyboard works, concerti and so on.

The life of Saint-Saëns was one of paradoxes. Though he possessed a keyboard technique that could easily have launched a career as a piano virtuoso—he made his piano debut at the age of ten, performing concertos by Mozart and Beethoven—he followed a rather conventional path, serving for twenty years as organist of La Madeleine, the official church of the French Empire. Thereafter, he pursued a career as a highly sought-after composer and composition teacher. He admired the progressive music of Richard Wagner and Hungarian-born Franz Liszt but found little to like in the music of his French Impressionist colleagues. About Debussy, Saint-Saëns quipped, “We must at all costs bar the door of the Institut against a man capable of such atrocities,” and Darius Milhaud’s polytonality prompted the response, “Fortunately, there are still lunatic asylums in France.” He thought Stravinsky insane. And despite living well into the 20th century, Saint-Saëns remained musically tethered to the 19th, even if he occasionally sought to explore music’s formal outlines (evident in this evening’s concerto).

Saint-Saëns may have lacked that divine spark granted Mozart or Schubert, but nevertheless produced brilliant, impressively crafted music by relying on sweeping melodies, expert pacing, and, when necessary, dramatic power. His Second Piano Concerto is a perfect example of everything Saint-Saëns brought to the table. Rather than beginning with a fast movement, the score opens Andante sostenuto (Moderate and sustained), with a Bach-inspired fantasia. When the orchestra finally enters, it does so with a broad theme borrowed from one of his composition students, Gabriel Faurè. But the piano maintains its hold on the limelight and indeed closes the movement with another extended solo cadenza.

The clever Allegro scherzando is characterized by two ideas, both derived from the material of the first movement—that heard at the start of the playful opening, featuring dazzling pianistic scales and cascades, and a broad theme offered up by the strings and set to a droll piano accompaniment. Rather than truly developing these ideas, Saint-Saëns plays them off against each other by relying on the colors of the orchestra, creating a brilliant backdrop to the virtuoso keyboard. The dramatic character of the Presto finale is established in the pianist’s triplet opening notes, serving as the basis for the relentless propulsion of this tarantella, a frenetic Italian dance beloved by the Romantics. Though again drawing on the concerto’s basic material, it is so transformed as to be all but unrecognizable.

Ultimately, it is the captivating keyboard writing that holds our attention. Indeed, it was so demanding that even Saint-Saëns is said to have struggled with portions. Owing to the circumstances of the work’s composition, he had but three weeks to compose the concerto and learn the piano part, which he played for the premiere. Predictably, things did not go particularly well, and Saint-Saëns later confessed that he had played poorly. But, as with so much of the composer’s music, its attractiveness and rock-solid craftsmanship all but guaranteed it a place in the repertoire and it has proven a favorite of pianists and audiences alike ever since.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Symphony No. 4 in C minor, D. 417, “Tragic”
Instrumentation: Scored for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, trumpets, four horns, timpani, and strings
Composed: 1816
Duration: 20 minutes

“Who can do anything after Beethoven?” Schubert asked in utter hopelessness, reflecting the uphill battle composers faced in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Never mind how Beethoven must have felt following in the musical footsteps of Mozart and Haydn. To be taken seriously as a composer, one needed to reinvent what music could do while working within a framework that listeners could understand and appreciate. Beethoven had several advantages not inherited by Schubert: he was stubborn and self-assured, a formidable pianist, and lived to be fifty-seven, albeit his health and hearing often made life miserable. Schubert, who would only live to see his thirty-first year, was…a violist (insert viola joke here!). He played piano as well, though was no virtuoso. Still, Schubert had something that few composers of any age possessed—natural genius. Melodies poured out of him unceasingly from an early age, and he quickly learned how best to bottle such lyricism. For Schubert, it was simply a matter of getting the tunes out quickly enough. In a lifetime half as long as it should have been, Schubert produced twice as much as most others.

Schubert was but nineteen when he set to work on what would become the fourth of his nine symphonies. His incorporation of four horns suggests he, like Beethoven, was looking to expand the size of the orchestra, but posterity offers no additional clues about why the work was composed. We know only that the first public performance of the “Tragic” took place in Leipzig in 1849, more than two decades following the composer’s death. Although Schubert attached the label “Tragic” to his latest offering, its darker moments are arguably more dramatic than tragic, perhaps reflecting Schubert’s attempt to infuse the score with Sturm und Drang, the characteristics of “storm and stress” as practiced by an earlier generation of composers. We must also keep in mind that at the time of the symphony’s composition, the composer was still a young man and perhaps given to a bit of pretention. Thus, despite the occasional dark cloud, much of the symphony’s mood is enchanting and cheerful.

The slow introduction opens with a single fortissimo C spread across the entire orchestra, a bold, dramatic, even Beethovenian gambit proclaiming neither major nor minor tonality. The scoring invites mystery and perhaps suggests that Schubert’s harmonies can—and often do—turn on a dime. The violins next introduce a dark phrase characterized by leaps and half-step dissonances—intervals crafted for their torturous effect. But Schubert soon resolves matters on a G-flat Major chord, underscoring two critical elements of the symphony as a whole: he plans to traverse unexpected harmonic terrain (G-flat Major is quite removed from the symphony’s overall key of C minor), and that tragedy ultimately will not carry the day.

The introduction complete, Schubert returns to the dramatic realm of C minor at the start of the Allegro vivace. He now presents several thematic ideas closely associated with the introduction’s opening violin melody, including a running group of eighth notes and an accented falling gesture that immediately follows, the latter characterized by the quick turn at its outset. A secondary idea, a tight, rocking gesture, is introduced after seventy bars, again by the violins. Listen as the music swiftly tours the tonal worlds of D-flat, E-flat, F, and A-flat. At the outset of the development section—signaled by a brief caesura—Schubert completely clouds the tonality, then winds through still more keys—B-flat minor, G-flat, and finally C-flat. Rather than return to the “proper” key of C minor, Schubert now recapitulates the opening material in G minor, before launching into an extended coda in the sunny key of C Major! Schubert has demonstrated a stunning command of harmony, but where, exactly, is the tragedy?

The charming Andante illustrates the lyrical gifts that so effortlessly sprang from Schubert’s pen. Note the two sharply defined characters: a gentle A-flat Major theme marked dolce (sweetly), clearly derived from the opening Allegro, and an agitated F minor section which repeatedly draws on the falling motive from the movement’s opening violin theme. Despite the composer’s obsessive reliance on the latter, his rich wind coloration keeps this otherwise simple movement lively. The intensely chromatic motive heard at the outset of the third movement Menuetto plays with a constantly shifting bar line, much as Beethoven had done. Though set in 3/4 time, Schubert often stresses the third beat of the bar, creating a confusing sense of a meter. Thus, between the weakened harmonic gravity and the displaced bar line, this dance is kept entirely off balance. The contrasting Trio temporarily sets things right, as winds, then strings, vie for the lyrical ländler melody. This 3/4 dance, associated with German and Austrian peasant life, was a favorite of the composer. It featured a downbeat hop, which Schubert emphasizes by a noticeable avoidance of a third beat accompaniment.

The finale, marked simply Allegro, again conjures up the agitated world of C minor. A rising bassoon arpeggio launches the impassioned violin melody, set atop a driving string accompaniment, whose fourth-beat accents add extra intensity. But the tempestuous mood will not persist. Already with his second statement, Schubert swings to the major mode. Almost jokingly, strings and winds begin tossing around a two-note figure and then a quick four-note fragment from the opening idea that Schubert drives higher and higher. A silent bar announces the repeat of this sonata form’s exposition and likewise, the start of the development, wherein Schubert presents an uncomplicated review of his material. If the starts and stops suggest the humorous world of Haydn, the tonal excursions remain vintage Schubert. A bassoon arpeggio announces the recapitulation before swinging toward the joyous key of C Major that closed the first movement. It is Schubert’s final coup, confirming once and for all that his “Tragic” Symphony is anything but!

© Marc Moskovitz
marcmoskovitz.org