CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The MET Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Sunday, January 25th, 2009 at 3:00 PM

The MET Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Joyce DiDonato, Mezzo-Soprano
Peter Serkin, Piano

MOZART "Ch'io mi scordi di te ... Non temer, amato bene," K. 505
CHARLES WUORINEN Time regained, a Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra (World Premiere)
ROSSINI La regata veneziana (orch. Gamley)
MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 4, "Italian"

Encore:
ROSSINI "Non più mesta accanto al fuoco" from La Cenerentola

Program Notes:

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791)
Ch’io mi scordi di te? … Non temer, amato bene, K. 505

Daughter of an Italian father and an English mother, the soprano Ann Selina Storace (1765–1817), known to her intimates as Nancy and to the Viennese public as Anna, was a member of the Italian opera company in Vienna from 1784 to 1787. Mozart appears to have known her for most of this time, perhaps performing at her concert in the Burgtheater on March 20, 1785. When she returned to the stage that fall (after having lost her voice entirely at the premiere of her brother Stephen’s opera Gli sposi malcontenti in June), Mozart collaborated on a song (alas, lost) to celebrate her recovery. Storace was a great Viennese favorite in comic roles, notably Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, which Mozart wrote for her; the Hungarian poet Franz Kazinczy noted in his diary that “Storace, the beautiful singer, enchanted eye, ear, and soul.”

Just before the departure of his first Susanna, Mozart composed for her one of his finest concert arias, Non temer, amato bene. Earlier in 1786, the opera Idomeneo, unheard since its Munich premiere in 1781, was privately performed in Vienna, with some new music, including an aria for the Cretan prince Idamante, in which he reassures the captive Trojan princess Ilia that, despite appearances, he still loves her; that setting, preceded by a dialogue, was composed for soprano with an obbligato violin part (the author of the text is unknown). Though omitting the initial dialogue of Idamante and Ilia, the piece Mozart wrote at year’s end “for Mlle Storace and myself” uses the same text—this time, however, with a piano obbligato. Despite the absence of documentary evidence, it has always been presumed that Storace and Mozart performed it at her Viennese farewell concert. (Some Mozart scholars have gone so far as to suggest that Mozart was in love with Storace and that, in Alfred Einstein’s words, K. 505 was “a declaration of love in music, the transfiguration of a relation that could not be realized except in this ideal sphere”—but then Einstein disliked Mozart’s wife Constanze and preferred to believe that her husband did not really love her.)

An accompanied recitative based on two orchestral phrases, each twice repeated, introduces the two-part aria, formally similar to the Countess’s “Dove sono” in Figaro. The Andante (Non temer, amato bene) is in ABA form, with the reprise curtailed (at “Stelle barbare”), leading to an Allegretto (“Alme belle”) in rondo form (ABACA); the second contrasting episode brings back text from the Andante. An elaborate coda is based on a descending scale. Throughout the aria, voice and piano intertwine, exchanging cantabile melody and ornamentation.


Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868)
La regata Veneziana (orch. Gamley)

Unquestionably the most influential composer of the first half of the 19th century, Gioachino Rossini surprised the operatic world of his time by retiring from the field after the completion of his greatest serious opera, Guillaume Tell (1828), and his finest French opera, Le Comte Ory (1829). Declining health was probably partly responsible for this “great renunciation,” along with political changes in Paris, the financial security provided by his years of financial success in the opera house, and the rising competition from the grand operas of Meyerbeer.

In the early years of his retirement, though, Rossini composed a Stabat Mater and other sacred choral works, he was not in the best of health or spirits. Things looked up when a French publisher came across the score of the Stabat Mater and revived it. In 1855 Rossini returned to Paris with his mistress; there they settled in a suburban villa and an urban apartment, where they held forth at “one of the most interesting and elegant salons in Paris.” And he began composing again: not only his Petite messe sollenelle (Little Solemn Mass, 1864), but also a steady stream of semi-serious works for which he devised facetious and witty titles; these have found themselves many admirers, as parlor music and as ballet scores, among other uses.

One of the more elaborate of these Sins of My Old Age, as Rossini titled them, is a triptych entitled La regata Veneziana (The Venetian Regatta), a set of three canzonettas in Venetian dialect for mezzo-soprano and piano. The texts, by Count Carlo Pepoli (1796–1881), present the reactions of Anzoleta, a Venetian girl whose lover, Momolo, is taking part in the regatta.

1. Anzoleta avanti la regata (Anzoleta before the regatta). Over an accompaniment suggesting the waters of the Venetian lagoon, Anzoleta teases Momolo with threats of leaving him, and urges him to do his best: “Fly, fly, fly like the wind.”

2. Anzoleta co passo la regata (Anzoleta when the regatta passes). An agitated theme suggests the girl’s anxiety, but she calms down as Momolo wins the race.

3. Anzoleta dopo la regata (Anzoleta after the regatta). The excited girl bestows kisses on her lover: “As many as you want!” Waltz rhythm underlies her loving boasts about him, and the expectable high note leads to an epilogue.


FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809–1847)
Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90, “Italian”

Born into one of Germany’s most prosperous and cultivated families, Felix Mendelssohn lacked no educational or cultural advantage: the best teachers in music, art, and letters; exposure to great minds; and opportunities to travel widely. His major travels began in 1829 with a trip to England and Scotland (inspiring his “Scottish” Symphony and “Hebrides” Overture). In 1830, at the urging of that inveterate Italophile Goethe, he spent nearly a year visiting the peninsula’s major cities and artistic sites, absorbing the visual and aural images that would inspire his Fourth Symphony, which took its final form in Berlin in the early months of 1833.

The impetus for its completion had come the preceding November from the London Philharmonic Society, in the form of a generous commission embracing a symphony, an overture, and a choral work. The symphony was first played under Mendelssohn’s direction in London on May 13, 1833. Despite its success, he revised it in 1837, and was still not completely pleased. He never offered it for performance in Germany, nor was it published until after his tragically early death. (Further detailed revisions he planned for the first three movements were not included in that score or any since.)

The first movement is dominated by the exuberant thrust of the opening theme, its repeated-chord accompaniment, and its outriders of running figures. Winds in thirds introduce the second subject, a more restful scansion of the basic motion. A lilting melody in winds and then strings returns us to the home key and the traditional exposition repeat. (If that repeat is omitted, the reappearance of this melody near the symphony’s end appears as a “new theme,” a solecism of which Mendelssohn would hardly have been guilty.) The development features a new, contrapuntally treated theme that eventually acquires a march-like stride, and also returns during the recapitulation.

According to Mendelssohn’s colleague Ignaz Moscheles (who conducted the work’s second performance), the slow movement is based on a Czech pilgrim song; whatever the nationality, the effect is certainly that of a sober, pensive procession. Each of the song’s limbs is introduced by oboes, clarinets, and violas over a “walking bass” in the lower strings, then repeated by violins with lovely counterpoint from the flutes; a codetta for staccato strings follows. A more consolatory contrasting melody frames a developmental section, and the codetta leads to a recapitulation that quickly fades as the procession moves out of hearing.

The third movement combines a flowing minuet with a trio that offers intimations of the hunt; the liquidation of both elements at the end is exceptionally graceful. The finale, in minor mode, exploits the rhythm (and perhaps actual melodies) of the saltarello, a folk dance of the central Italian provinces involving jumping steps. Towards the middle of the movement, a gentler and smoother running figure evokes the Neapolitan tarantella. Eventually the dancers appear to be moving into the distance, but the orchestra revives to hammer home a conclusion—unusually, still in the minor mode.
—David Hamilton

© 2008 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.