CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The Met Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 3:00 PM

The MET Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Christian Tetzlaff, Violin

BEETHOVEN Große Fuge, Op. 133
MESSIAEN Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum

BRAHMS Violin Concerto

Encore:
BACH Gavotte en Rondeau from Partita No. 3 in E Major, BWV 1006

Program Notes:

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827)
Grosse Fugue (Grand Fugue), Op. 133, for strings

Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 4, 1916, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Karl Muck.

Composed between August and October 1825, the Grosse Fuge was originally the final movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130, the last of a set of three quartets commissioned by the Russian prince Nicholas Galitzin. Beethoven did not attend the first performance of the Quartet, given by the Schuppanzigh Quartet in Vienna on March 21, 1826, but waited in a tavern near the concert room to hear comments afterward. When told that the audience had called for encores of two earlier movements but not of the elaborate and unconventional fugue that concluded the quartet, Beethoven reacted angrily. However, he was eventually persuaded by his publisher to compose a new and less daunting final movement for the quartet, and the original fugal finale was published as an independent work, dedicated to Beethoven’s patron, the Cardinal-Archduke Rudolph. (A single Paris performance in 1853 seems to have been the only subsequent public performance documented until the 20th century.) Although the Grosse Fuge was not often performed in public before the 1920s, modern ensembles undertaking Beethoven quartet cycles, in concert or on recordings, generally make room for both versions of Op. 130. The Grosse Fuge is also performed independently, often by larger forces than a string quartet—as in today’s concert, with a full orchestral complement of strings (18 first violins, 16 seconds, 12 violas, 12 cellos, and 10 double basses).

Beethoven qualified the title of his fugue with the French phrase “tantôt libre, tantôt recherché” (“partly free, partly worked out”); by the standards of classical fugal composition, the adjective “free” is decidedly something of an understatement. Though essentially continuous, the fugue comprises several sections, sharing and developing a range of thematic material.

The first section, in 6/8 meter, designated as Overtura: Allegro, sets forth a variety of thematic materials: a sustained G spanning four octaves; a broad striding motive in octaves that will figure prominently throughout the work; a more concise, angular, upward-thrusting form of the latter; and then a smoother version (Meno mosso e moderato).

The initial fugal section (Allegro again) is in fact a double fugue, beginning with two elements: the first violins softly invoke the notes of the striding motive, and then offer an energetic leaping figure (at which point Beethoven inserts the heading Fuga), while the violas take up the striding motive more forcefully. Soon the full quartet is propounding combinations and derivatives of these elements, in an intense polyphony of wide intervals and multiple rhythmic patterns, eventually coming to rest in the key of G-flat major, where the striding motive is partnered by flowing sixteenth notes and a more fluent texture before resolving itself to a pianissimo murmur.

The next episode (Allegro molto e con brio) is primarily occupied with transformations of the upward-thrusting motive from the introduction. The increasingly airier textures are permeated with trills, the energy eventually resolves itself into a sustained murmur, and the “compressed” form of the opening octaves returns, juxtaposed with a gently flowing texture of shorter notes, increasing in density. A new phase (still Allegro molto e con brio) juxtaposes the upward-thrusting motive against galloping lines in the other strings. After a pause, the increasingly homophonic texture breaks off on a dominant chord. The violins have a go at invoking the Allegro’s initial measures, but then they too bow out, and the full ensemble settles for a broad statement of the Fugue’s motto phrase before proceeding to an increasingly vigorous coda.


OLIVIER MESSIAEN (1908–1992)
Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum

Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum received its Carnegie Hall premiere on May 6, 1984, with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Moshe Atzmon.

Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum (“And I await the resurrection of the dead”) was composed in 1964, on commission from André Malraux, the French Minister of Culture. Its first performance, conducted by Serge Baudo, was a state occasion in the Saint-Chapelle in Paris, famous for its magnificent stained-glass windows. As Messiaen reported, “It was 11 o’clock in the morning, and the sun also played its part, carrying new splashes of color hither and thither along with the rebounding sounds.” President Charles de Gaulle was present at a second invitational performance several weeks later, in Chartres Cathedral.

Like many aspiring French composers since 1803, Olivier Messiaen entered the annual government-managed competition for the Prix de Rome (Rome Prize), which sought to encourage and nourish young French composers. The winner was given four subsidized years in artistically salubrious locations in Italy, Germany, and Austria, resulting—it was hoped—in the production of significant works. But Messiaen, who had won prizes left and right at the Paris Conservatory from the age of ten, didn’t get past the first round in 1929. After one more unsuccessful effort, he accepted an appointment as organist of La Trinité in Paris, a secure and congenial position that he would hold for more than four decades.

In part because Messiaen’s religiously focused concerns were not fashionable in a Paris dominated by Stravinskian neoclassicism and Erik Satie’s dada-like ingenuities, he made his way slowly as a composer. After spending a year in a prisoner-of-war camp during the German occupation, he was appointed to teach at the Paris Conservatory, but not until 1966 was he finally named to its composition chair. A devout Catholic with an inquiring mind, Messiaen was fascinated by non-Western music and by nature, particularly the songs of birds. His analyses of rhythmic techniques, notably those based on Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, became greatly influential on younger postwar composers such as Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Drawing upon his faith and his studies of non-European music, Messiaen developed a highly personal musical language, both exotic and austere, but often clothed in luxuriantly sensuous instrumental garb and celebratory rhythmic vibrancy. His catalogue includes the opera Saint Francois d’Assise (1983); works for large ensembles (notably the celebrated Turangalîla Symphony of 1948); chamber pieces (most famously the Quartet for the End of Time of 1941, composed and first performed in the German prison camp), piano pieces ( many written for his second wife, Yvonne Loriod); and vocal and organ music.

The work comprises five untitled movements, each preceded by a Biblical epigraph. The following notes incorporate quotations from Messiaen’s extensive preface to the score.

I. Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, o Lord. Lord, hear my voice (Psalm cxxx, 1–2). This text, Messiaen explains, is the prayer of the souls awaiting the Resurrection. The chant-like body of the movement (first in unison, then harmonized) is followed by a series of chords representing “the cry from the depths.”

II. Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him (Romans vi, 9). An angular motive flashing from the woodwinds and a brass chord (which expires while uttering the same motive) introduce the movement. The loose rondo-like structure also involves woodwind dialogues on an unaccompanied melody, and material that begins with the introduction, in the percussion, of the rhythm of the Indian tala “Simhavikrama” (the strength of the lion), which Messiaen found suitable to signify “the victory over death.” This rhythm is quickly overlaid with a sort of rapid chorale led by the high trumpet, likened by the composer to “the resurrected Christ of Matthias Grünewald, who seems to take flight in a rainbow issuing from his own light.”

III. The hour is coming when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God . . . (John v, 25).
“This voice symbolizes the signal of the Resurrection: a divine order, its execution immediate … Here it is newly symbolized threefold.” The first symbol, played by the winds, is based on the song of the Uirapuru, a fabled Amazon bird that “according to legend, one hears ... at the moment of death.” The second symbol comprises changes rung on the bells and a chordal crescendo, the third a massive resonance on tam-tam and gong. The symbols are presented twice for contemplation.

IV. It will be raised in glory, with a new name—with the morning stars singing together, and all the sons of God shouting for joy (I Corinthians iv, 43; Revelation ii, 16; Job xxxviii, 7). This, the longest movement, depicts the singing and shouting of its epigraph, punctuated by triple tam-tam strokes that “symbolize all at once the call of the Trinity, the solemn moment of the Resurrection, and the distant melody of the stars.” Bells and cencerros sound the Gregorian Easter introit, followed by the Easter Alleluia in woodwinds and brass. More irregular is the song of the Calandra lark, assigned to woodwinds alone, “characterized by great rhythmic variety, a rapid tempo, a very rich timbre, and a constant cheerfulness,” symbolizing “joy” and the “gift of agility.” The third time the Easter chants are heard, low brass add the theme of the first movement, and grandiose chords bring the movement to a conclusion.

V. And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude ... (Revelation xix, 6). To represent the song of praise to the Saints, “like the roaring of great waters,” Messiaen combines a steady beat in the gongs with a steady chorale in the orchestra, rising to “an enormous, unanimous, and simple fortissimo.”


JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897)
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77

Brahms’s Violin Concerto received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 13, 1891, with the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch; Adolph Brodsky was the soloist.

In his mature years, Brahms tended to focus his composing in the summer, usually in some rural vacation spot, while devoting the rest of his year to revising the summer’s work, editing music by earlier composers, and touring as a performer of his own music. After completing and launching the long-awaited First Symphony in 1876, he sought a new country venue, settling on the Carinthian town of Pörtschach, which he described as “virgin soil, with so many melodies flying about that you must be careful not to step on one.” In the summer of 1877, he composed the Second Symphony, a sunnier, more lyrical work than the First, and introduced it in major cities the following winter. After a month-long visit to Italy, he repaired again to Pörtschach.

The major consequence of 1878’s summer labors turned out to be a violin concerto. First to learn about it would be Joseph Joachim (1831–1907), the leading German violinist of the day; in a letter of August 22, 1878, Brahms announced that he would like to send his old friend and associate what he facetiously described as “a number of violin passages! I need hardly express the request which goes with them . . . .” A day later, the composer sent Joachim a draft of the solo part for the first movement of a violin concerto, expressing with mock diffidence his wish for his friend’s assistance in making the violin writing workable:

Naturally I was going to ask you to make corrections, though you should have no excuse either way—neither respect for music that is too good, nor the excuse that the score isn’t worth the trouble. Now I’ll be satisfied if you say a word, and maybe write in a few: difficult, uncomfortable, impossible, etc.

He added that the concerto had four movements, and sent along the opening of the last one to find out whether it would be technically feasible. (In November, Brahms would withdraw those middle movements, replacing them with what he belittled as “a poor Adagio.”)

Joachim was, of course, delighted to have a concerto from Brahms. Though initially suggesting a few changes, he found that “most of it is manageable, some of it even very original, violinistically. But whether it can all be played comfortably in a hot concert-hall I cannot say, before I’ve played it straight through.” And thus commenced a lengthy haggle, carried on sometimes in person, sometimes in correspondence. Brahms was a pianist, not a string player, and Joachim wanted a solo part that would be, not merely playable, but dazzling—and also audible over the orchestra. They traded suggestions, revised each other’s revisions, and kept at it even after the premiere, which took place, at Joachim’s wish, in Leipzig on New Year’s Day, 1879. The reception was lukewarm, but the modified version Vienna would hear two weeks later proved a great success: even the cadenza (which Brahms had left to Joachim to compose) was applauded.

I. Allegro non troppo, D major, ¾. The opening of the first movement defines the concerto’s distinctive combination of spacious lyricism and latent power. An unharmonized melody in the lower winds and strings, ranging around the tonic chord, is answered by the oboes with a cooler, more lyrical strain. Massive octaves bring an energetic climax, after which the second subject sings until brought to order by a peremptory dotted-rhythm figure that persists into the soloist’s cadenza-like entrance. Gradually calm returns and gentle swirls of violin notes lead into the solo exposition. All the prior material returns, often warmly caressed by the soloist, who eventually adds yet another lyrical theme, with pizzicato accompaniment, that ends in a series of upward leaps.

At this point the violin assumes the lead, raising the temperature for the development with cadenza-like fireworks that incite the full orchestra. Later, violent trills, then oversize descending and ascending intervals (among the solo part’s most-feared technical hurdles) stimulate new phases of development, eventually leading into a joyously turbulent recapitulation. Brahms left the cadenza up to the soloist; Mr. Tetzlaff plays Joachim’s classic one; beginning with a recollection of the soloist’s initial entry, it elaborates virtuosically on familiar material and eventually resolves into Brahms’s spacious apotheosis of the movement’s principal theme.

II. Adagio, F major, 2/4. The slow movement foregoes not only trumpets and drums but also two of the horns. Here the principal oboe becomes a second protagonist, singing the eloquent pastoral melody that is the burden of the movement’s outer sections, at first accompanied only by the other winds. The violin, accompanied by the strings, then offers its more rhapsodic and elastic take, further inspired by brief wind modulations that sidestep into distant keys. The reprise of the opening paragraph is a joint affair, soon propelled by gentle pizzicatos in the strings and then returning to a sweetly drawn-out cadence.

III. Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace, D major, 2/4. Brahms could hardly have failed to pay homage to Joachim’s Hungarian heritage, which is why the composer wanted his friend’s appraisal of the finale’s multiple-stopped theme before proceeding with the remainder of the movement. Brahms treats the rondo form freely and inventively but in no way distractingly, and the orchestration, with its rapid-fire repeated notes and fizzy trills, is a constant delight. For the coda (Poco più presto), the theme is amusingly translated into a new meter.

—Copyright © 2008 by David Hamilton

David Hamilton has written music criticism and record reviews for High Fidelity, The Nation, The New Yorker, the Financial Times, and the New York Times. He has been program annotator for the MET Orchestra since the beginning of its Carnegie Hall concerts, edited the Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia, and was co-producer of the Met’s Historic Broadcast Recordings.

The MET Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is today regarded as one of the world’s finest orchestras. From the time of the company’s inception in 1883, the ensemble has worked with leading conductors in both opera and concert performances and has developed into an orchestra of enormous technical polish and style.

The Met Orchestra maintains a demanding schedule of performances and rehearsals during the 32-week New York season, when the company performs seven times a week in repertory that normally encompasses approximately 27 operas, followed by a series of free parks concerts in New York and New Jersey.

Arturo Toscanini conducted almost 500 performances at the Met, and Gustav Mahler, during the few years he was in New York, conducted 54 Met performances. More recently, many of the world’s great conductors have led the orchestra: Walter, Beecham, Reiner, Mitropoulos, Kempe, Szell, Böhm, Solti, Maazel, Bernstein, Mehta, Abbado, Karajan, Dohnányi, Haitink, Tennstedt, Ozawa, and Gergiev. Carlos Kleiber’s only US opera performances were with the Met Orchestra.

In addition to its opera schedule, the Orchestra has a distinguished history of concert performances. Toscanini made his American debut as a symphonic conductor with the Met Orchestra in 1913, and the impressive list of instrumental soloists who appeared with the Orchestra includes Leopold Godowsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, Josef Hofmann, Ferruccio Busoni, Jascha Heifetz, Moritz Rosenthal, and Fritz Kreisler. Since the Orchestra resumed symphonic concerts in 1991, instrumental soloists have included Itzhak Perlman, Maxim Vengerov, Alfred Brendel, and Evgeny Kissin, and the group has performed three world premieres: Babbitt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (1998), Bolcom’s Symphony No. 7 (2002), and Shen’s Legend (2002).

The Orchestra’s current high standing led to its first commercial recordings in nearly 20 years: Wagner’s complete Ring cycle, conducted by James Levine. Recorded by Deutsche Grammophon over a period of three years, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung are winners of an unprecedented three consecutive Grammy Awards in 1989, 1990, and 1991 for Best Opera Recording. Other recordings under Maestro Levine include L’Elisir d’Amore, Idomeneo, Le Nozze di Figaro, Der Fliegende Holländer, Parsifal, Erwartung, Manon Lescaut, and seven Verdi operas. They have recorded two CDs of Wagner overtures, Verdi ballet music, an all-Berg disc with Renée Fleming, and arias albums with Bryn Terfel, Kathleen Battle, and Miss Fleming. The Orchestra’s first symphonic recordings are pairings of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring; Beethoven’s Eroica with Schubert’s “Unfinished” symphonies; and Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote and Tod und Verklärung.

In the spring of 1991 the Orchestra under the leadership of Maestro Levine began concert touring, which has since taken them several times both across the US and to Europe (including their debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2002), as well as annually to Carnegie Hall. In the spring of 2006 the company returned to Japan for its fifth tour there in 18 years.


James Levine leads 27 performances of six operas in his 38th season at the Metropolitan Opera, including the new production of Berlioz’s La damnation de Faust and revivals of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurydice and Wagner’s Ring cycle, as well as the Opening Night and Met 125th anniversary galas. At Carnegie Hall, he and the MET Orchestra give three performances this season—in music of Beethoven, Messiaen (for the 100th anniversary of his birth), Brahms, Rossini, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, and a world premiere by Charles Wuorinen—and the MET Chamber Ensemble is heard in November and January in Weill and Zankel Hall, respectively, featuring works by Boulez, Dallapiccola, Carter, Wagner, Mozart, Johann Strauss and Schoenberg. (He and Daniel Barenboim will also give a special duo-piano program on that series in Weill Hall in November with members of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.) The Boston Symphony appears here under his direction in three programs this season, including the New York premiere of new works by Leon Kirchner, Elliott Carter—on and for his 100th birthday, a new work for piano and orchestra with Barenboim as soloist—and Gunther Schuller. At the Guggenheim Museum in November, Maestro Levine conducts two performances of Wuorinen’s “Ashberyana” to celebrate that composer’s 70th birthday, and he also gives a master class for the Marilyn Horne Foundation at Zankel Hall in January.

Mr. Levine opened his fifth season as Music Director of the BSO last week with an all-Russian program and Brahms’s Deutsches Requiem, to be followed in coming months by world premieres from Carter, Kirchner and Schuller, and ten programs including concert performances of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra and three successive concerts of Mozart symphonies.

Christian Tetzlaff, Violin
Christian Tetzlaff is recognized as one of the most important violinists of his generation. From the outset of his career, Mr. Tetzlaff has performed and recorded a broad spectrum of the repertoire, ranging from Bach’s unaccompanied sonatas and partitas to 19th-century masterworks by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Brahms; and from 20th-century concertos by Bartók, Berg, and Shostakovich to world premieres of contemporary works.

Born in Hamburg in 1966, music occupied a central place in his family, and his three siblings are all professional musicians. Mr. Tetzlaff began playing the violin and piano at age six, but pursued a regular academic education while continuing his musical studies. He did not begin intensive study of the violin until making his concert debut playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto at the age of 14.

In North America he has performed with the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Toronto, among many others; and with the major European ensembles including the Berliner Philharmoniker, London Symphony, Orchestre de Paris, Vienna Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.

Mr. Tetzlaff’s 2008–09 North American season opens with this afternoon’s performance and continues with appearances with the Cleveland and Philadelphia orchestras, New York Philharmonic, Cincinnati and Houston symphonies, and the North American premiere of Mark Anthony Turnage’s Violin Concerto Mambo, Blues and Tarantella with the Toronto Symphony. Turnage’s concerto, written for Mr. Tetzlaff, received its world premiere last month with the London Philharmonic. He also plays all-Bach recitals in five US cities including Philadelphia, Detroit, and Santa Barbara; duo recitals with Leif Ove Andsnes in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Boston, Princeton, and New York; and performances with the Tetzlaff Quartet in Washington, Atlanta, and New York.

Mr. Tetzlaff’s recordings include concertos ranging from Haydn to Bartók, an album of 20th-century sonatas by Janáček, Debussy, Ravel, and Nielsen with pianist Leif Ove Andsnes; the complete works for violin and orchestra of Jean Sibelius with the Danish National Radio Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard and a Grammy-nominated album of Bartók’s Violin Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 with Leif Ove Andsnes and the Bartók Sonata for Solo Violin, all on Virgin Classics; the Brahms Sonatas for Violin and Piano with Lars Vogt for EMI Classics; the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Russian National Orchestra and Kent Nagano for PentaTone Classics; and the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Tonhalle Orchestra and David Zinman for Arte Nova. His most recent releases are the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin on the Musical Heritage and Haenssler labels and the Brahms and Joachim Violin Concertos with the Danish Radio Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard for Virgin Classics.

Christian Tetzlaff makes his home near Frankfurt with his wife, a clarinetist with the Frankfurt Opera, and their three children. He currently performs on a violin modeled after a Guarneri del Gesu made by the German violin maker, Peter Greiner.