CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The MET Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 3:00 PM

The MET Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Deborah Voigt, Soprano
Alfred Brendel, Piano

WEBERN Six Pieces for Orchestra
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491

BERG Three Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6
R. STRAUSS Final Scene from Salome

Encores:
BEETHOVEN Bagatelle in A Major, Op. 33, No. 4

Program Notes:

By David Hamilton

ANTON WEBERN Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6
Born December 3, 1883, in Vienna; died September 15, 1945, in Mittersill, Austria.

Webern completed the Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 6, at the Preglhof, his family’s summer estate in Lower Carinthia, around the end of August 1909; they are dedicated to Arnold Schoenberg. The original version was first performed in Vienna on March 31, 1913, at the Large Hall of the Musikverein; Arnold Schoenberg conducted. Between early August and September 4, 1928, Webern rescored the Six Pieces for a smaller orchestra; this version (which he considered definitive) was first performed on January 27, 1929, conducted by Hermann Scherchen, and received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 12, 1957, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra conducted by William Steinberg.

Scoring: 2 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons (1 doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, bass tuba, timpani, glockenspiel, cymbals, triangle, side drum, bass drum, tam-tam, deep bells (without definite pitch), celesta, harp, and strings.

A remarkable feature of Arnold Schoenberg’s composition teaching was his ability to embrace and nurture both the restrained, finely detailed economy of Anton Webern’s music and the expansive emotionality of Alban Berg’s. Both men began their studies with Schoenberg in 1904; under his guidance, each matured into a markedly distinctive musical personality.

Webern’s first orchestral work, completed in 1908, was a Passacaglia for orchestra, followed by songs, a set of “five movements” for string quartet, and a group of six pieces for a large orchestra. The orchestra pieces (dedicated to Schoenberg, and inspired by his teacher’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16) were not performed until 1913, when they were played at a concert in Vienna that provoked a tumult in the hall. According to one newspaper account,

Immediately after the first part of the programme, an orchestral work by Anton von Webern, there was a confrontation lasting several minutes between the applauding and hissing factions of the audience. But this still remained within the bounds of the demonstrations with which we are all too familiar from other Schoenberg concerts. After the second {Webern] orchestral piece, a storm of laughter went through the hall. This was drowned out by thunderous applause from admirers of this tension-laden and provocative music. The other four pieces also . . . contributed to a mood in the hall which led one to fear the worst.

(Worse things did follow later in the evening, but this Viennese scandal faded in public memory two months later when Diaghilev unveiled Stravinsky’s and Nijinsky’s The Rite of Spring in Paris.)

Some 15 years later, in the late summer of 1928, Webern returned to his Six Pieces, rescoring them for a rather smaller orchestra—a version he intended to supersede the original. In practice, the orchestra is essentially a pool from which Webern assembles chamber groups; the whole ensemble never plays together. He also highlights instruments in roles outside their normal territory.

The movements (and their tempo markings in the revised version) are as follows; they range in length from 11 to 41 measures of music.

I. Langsam (quarter-note = ca. 50). A nearly static opening gives way to a “trio” among clarinet, trumpet and harp; a climax is reached and the music fades away.

II. Bewegt (eighth-note = ca.160). Simultaneous short notes in some instruments contrast with flowing lines in others.

III. Mässig (quarter-note = ca. 50). The shortest and sonically sparest of the pieces, an assemblage of melodic fragments.

IV. Sehr mässig (quarter-note = ca. 46). In the original version, this was labeled Marcia funebre, which we might have guessed even though the title was removed in the revision. Over a funereal tread of bass drum, tam-tam, and deep bells, it builds to a brassy and noisy climax, without assistance from the string section. (Robert Craft has suggested that the crescendo ending the piece may be the first instance in Western music where percussion plays alone.)

V. Sehr langsam (eighth-note = ca. 40). Beginning as an assemblage of fragments, this piece fades away with an unusual “chorale,” involving muted brass, strings, oboe, kettledrum, 4 trombones, trumpet, solo violin in a high register, and other strings playing harmonics, all fading away.

VI. Langsam (quarter-note = ca. 50). Assorted brief gestures from winds and strings lead to triplets in the winds, after which the music is ushered away by fading chords on celesta and harp.


WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491
Born January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria; died December 5, 1791, in Vienna.

Mozart entered the Piano Concerto in C Minor into his generally meticulous personal catalogue of his production on March 24, 1786; it was probably first performed the following April 7, in his concert at the Burgtheater on March 24, 1786. The Concerto received its Carnegie Hall premiere on February 13, 1920, with Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, piano, and Victor Herbert, conducting his orchestra.

Scoring: solo piano, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.

As early as 1777 in Salzburg, Mozart had produced a great and innovative piano concerto: the one in E-flat, K. 271, which Charles Rosen has called his “first unqualified masterpiece in any genre.” But his greatest impact on the form came later, in Vienna, in the years 1784–86, with a dozen concertos, most of them written for himself to play at his subscription concerts, usually held during Lent. For the 1786 concerts, he wrote three concertos: E-flat Major (K. 482), A Major (K. 488), and the present work. (These would be his last concerts at this venue; the popularity of these events was fading, and Mozart was now turning his attention once again to opera: the short comic opera Der Schauspieldirektor, the profound comic masterpiece Le Nozze di Figaro, and revision of the earlier Idomeneo for a concert performance, were all projects in progress in early 1786.

Not the first of Mozart’s concertos in the minor mode (that was the D-Minor, K. 466, most beloved of the Romantic era), the C-Minor is surely the most extraordinary. Its form is more innovative, its character subtler—and its realization appears to have challenged Mozart to an uncommon degree, judging from the state of the autograph manuscript, which shows insertions and even some alternative readings. As with K. 466, no cadenzas by Mozart himself survive; Hummel, Brahms, and Saint-Säens were among the eminent composers who made cadenzas for K. 491, and in the present century many pianists have also fashioned their own, as has Alfred Brendel for this afternoon’s concert.

Though in triple meter, the opening movement has at the outset something of the stride of a march; its gnomic theme begins in unison and evolves into harmony. Descending scales dominate the secondary material in the orchestra’s exposition, and the piano begins with such a motive, until brass and strings summon its attention back to the opening material. The secondary key of E-flat major is duly achieved and confirmed with a piano trill—which, however, proves to lead to still further exposition: first a new theme in the winds, then a remarkable harmonic diversion on the strength of the principal theme, led by the flute. Another piano trill reconfirms E-flat, and a “proper” development ensues. The recapitulation traverses the exposition’s materials more concisely, and after the cadenza the movement ends in an almost spectral dissolution.

The basic pattern of Mozart’s slow movements has been well characterized by his recent biographer, Maynard Solomon: “a calm, contemplative, or ecstatic condition gives way to a troubled state—is penetrated by hints of storm, dissonance, anguish, anxiety, danger—and this in turn is succeeded by a restoration of the status quo ante, now suffused with and transformed by the memory of the turbulent interlude.” In this Larghetto in E-flat major, a chaste and regular theme (handed back and forth among piano and the orchestral choirs) alternates with two episodes (in C minor and A-flat major, respectively), both featuring exquisitely detailed wind writing). Although this concerto’s other movements are less operatic than was usually Mozart’s custom in this genre, this one comes to a close with a radiant piano cantabile.

The finale is in variation form, its theme a genuine march, manifesting several affinities with the first movement’s main theme; each of its eight-bar limbs is immediately repeated. The variations are scored as follows: 1) piano with strings, each part literally repeated; 2) winds first, the repeats for piano and strings; 3) orchestra (a dotted-rhythm march), repeats for piano solo; 4) piano and strings (A-flat major), repeats for winds; 5) piano (a contrapuntal variation), repeats (in dotted rhythm) accompanied by strings; 6) winds (C major), repeats in piano and strings; 7) the original form of the theme in strings, decorated by piano and winds, without repeats, leading to a cadenza. Subsequently, the piano embarks on a “pathetic” variation, highly chromatic, in 6/8 meter (a passage whose influence on Beethoven has often been remarked) and then builds a coda with the help of the orchestra.


ALBAN BERG Three Orchestra Pieces, Op. 6
Born February 9, 1885, in Vienna; died there December 24, 1935.

The Three Orchestra Pieces, Op. 6, were composed between July 1913 and summer 1915. Anton Webern conducted the premiere of the first two pieces in Berlin on June 5, 1923. In 1929, Berg revised the work in preparation for the first complete performance, in Oldenburg on April 14, 1930, under the direction of Johannes Schüler. The Three Pieces received their New York premiere at Carnegie Hall on November 20, 1952, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Scoring: 4 flutes (all doubling piccolo), 4 oboes (the fourth doubling English horn), 4 clarinets in A (the third doubling clarinet in E-flat), bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, contrabass tuba, 2 pairs of kettledrums, cymbals, bass drum (with cymbal attached), snare drum, large and small tam-tams, triangle, large hammer, glockenspiel, xylophone, celesta, two harps, and strings.

Although dedicated “to my teacher and friend, Arnold Schoenberg, in immeasurable gratitude and love,” and surely inspired by his master’s Five Orchestral Pieces, Op. 16, the music of Alban Berg’s Three Orchestra Pieces, Op. 6, equally testifies to the younger composer’s reverence for the music of Gustav Mahler, whose Ninth Symphony received its posthumous premiere in Vienna on June 26, 1912. In fact, in July 1913, at an early stage in his work on what became the Three Orchestra Pieces, Berg did think in terms of a symphony. But what emerged, after much self-doubt, was a set of three richly textured and motivically interlinked pieces, at once impressionistic in their rapidly shifting characters and expressionistic in their intensity. (Debussy’s contemporaneous Jeux has a comparably fugitive formal profile, though the manner and matter could hardly be more different.)

I. Präludium. From obscure rumblings in the percussion, intervals, rhythms, and motives gradually emerge, develop, and combine; the arch-like shape returns eventually to the depths.

II. Reigen (Rounds). Here waltz and Ländler fragments are the subject matter, but the expectations of the conventional symmetry and formal logic associated with such vernacular materials are continually thwarted and deflected—indeed, Berg’s treatment is more radical than Mahler’s way with similar material.

III. Marsch (March). As Berg scholar George Perle has noted, this “is not a march, but music about a march, or rather about the march as a form/genre, just as Ravel’s La Valse is music in which the waltz is similarly reduced to its minimum characteristic elements.” Here the essentially nocturnal atmosphere of the previous pieces becomes distinctly threatening. (The March was finished in the summer of 1914, after the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo that triggered the First World War.)

In contrapuntal density and orchestral complexity, these pieces present major challenges in performance: balancing the many simultaneous lines, maintaining continuity despite frequent fluctuations of tempo and dynamics, and, above all, achieving just the right degree of clarity in the textures without betraying the intended volatility. Berg would use vernacular material in later works, but nowhere else as freely and complexly as in this score of his early maturity. Among his major scores, this one has probably the thinnest performance tradition; though composed before Wozzeck, the Orchestra Pieces were not performed until after Berg had completed the opera, and only recently have they received regular attention.


RICHARD STRAUSS Final Scene from Salome
Born June 11, 1864 in Munich; died September 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria.

Composed in 1905, Salome was first performed on December 9 of that year at the Dresden Opera, conducted by Ernst von Schuch; Marie Wittich sang the title role. The US premiere, at the Metropolitan Opera on January 22, 1907, conducted by Alfred Hertz, with Olive Fremstad in the title role, so displeased the theater’s sponsors that nearly 27 years passed before Salome was performed there again. The Final scene of the opera received its first Carnegie Hall performance on January 13, 1916, with Marcella Craft, soprano, and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Joseph Stransky.

Scoring: 3 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, Heckelphone, clarinet in E-flat, 4 clarinets (2 in A, 2 in B-flat), bass clarinet in B-flat, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon; 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, bass tuba; 4 standard and one small timpani, gong, cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, tambourine, triangle, xylophone, castanets, glockenspiel; 2 harps, celesta, strings, organ.

Though she appears briefly (and without a name) in the terse Biblical accounts of the death of the prophet John the Baptist (Mark 6, Matthew 14), the figure of Salome has little historical depth. Daughter of Herodias, second wife of Herod, Tetrarch of Judea, she was persuaded to dance for her stepfather after he promised her “whatsoever thou shalt ask of me . . . unto the half of my kingdom,” and she, being before instructed of her mother, said “Give me the head of John the Baptist in a charger,” thereby avenging the prophet’s denunciations of Herodias as a loose woman.

Nowhere in these brief narratives, or in later versions of the story, is there any suggestion of the frustrated passion for John on Salome’s part that became the mainspring of Oscar Wilde’s one-act drama, written in the winter of 1891–92. The subject of Salome was then “in the air” in artistic and literary circles, notably in France, but Wilde’s juxtaposition of sexual and religious passions antagonized both secular and religious authorities. All the same, Max Reinhardt’s 1902 Berlin production ran for some 200 performances. By then, Richard Strauss had become intrigued by Salome’s operatic possibilities; however, instead of commissioning a poetic libretto, he basically set to music the German translation of play used by Reinhardt, though trimming it for concision, and relying on his virtuosic command of the early-20th-century orchestra to intensify the drama’s exoticism and sensual extravagance.

The uninterrupted action enfolds on a terrace in Herod’s palace, where Salome, weary of her stepfather’s lustful solicitude, beguiles the impressionable young captain Narraboth into showing her the imprisoned prophet (known as Jochanaan in the opera). She is both fascinated and repelled by him and his invective against her mother, but the prophet rejects her and returns to his prison. Herod and Herodias arrive and quarrel, especially when the Tetrarch urges Salome to dance for his pleasure. Salome agrees to dance—but only if he swears to give her whatever she desires. The besotted monarch rashly agrees. After she has danced, to his horror (and the delight of Herodias), Salome requests Jochanaan’s head as her reward and will accept no alternative. After a distinctly unregal argument with his wife, Herod caves in and sends the executioner down to the cistern where Jochanaan has been imprisoned.

Here Salome’s remarkable solo scene begins: a tour de force for the protagonist, comparable to (and perhaps inspired by) the solo “Immolation Scene” for Brünnhilde that concludes Wagner’s Ring cycle, and Isolde’s Love-Death in Tristan. (The concert version of Strauss’s scene omits several interjections from Herod and Herodias.)

As an anxious Salome peers into the cistern, upset by the headsman’s delay, an eerie sound is heard: over tremolos from bass drum and two contrabasses, a solo bass player, instead of pressing the string against the instrument’s fingerboard, holds it firmly between thumb and index finger and gives the bow a very short, sharp stroke, producing, in Strauss’s words, “a sound resembling a woman’s stifled sighs and groaning.” Frantic over the delay, Salome tells Herod to send soldiers down to fetch the head of Jokanaan. But her desired reward quickly appears from the cistern, held aloft by the executioner on a silver shield.

The burden of the scene is Salome’s conversation with the prophet’s head: expressing her frustration that he would not even look at her, let alone allow her to kiss his mouth or let himself kiss hers, as she desired. Now he can no longer savor her beauty: she is certain that “If you had once looked at me, you would have loved me.” The stage becomes very dark as the horrified Herod prepares to leave. Salome kisses the prophet’s lips as she fulfills her necrophiliac yearnings. The moon, which has been hidden behind clouds, breaks through, and Herod orders the soldiers to “Kill that woman!”

The demands on the soprano soloist in this scene are extraordinary: a tessitura ranging over more than three octaves (from G-flat below the staff to B-flat above it); rapid changes of pace from conversational delivery to long sustained notes, often in the upper register; obsessive repetitions of terse motives, underlining Salome’s fixation upon the prophet; and the challenge of carrying over (and through) the very large orchestra, which often teems with frantic activity, underlining the princess’s mental frenzy. Finally, after her triumphant declaration, “I have kissed your mouth, Jochanaan,” the orchestra sonically enacts the assault of the soldiers as, at Herod’s orders, they crush her body under their shields.

Copyright © 2008 by The Carnegie Hall Corporation

The MET Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
James Levine conducts 33 performances of four operas in his 37th season at the Metropolitan Opera, including new productions of Lucia di Lammermoor and Macbeth and major revivals of Tristan und Isolde and Manon Lescaut. At Carnegie Hall, he and the MET Orchestra give two concerts and the MET Chamber Ensemble is heard on three dates (in music of Berg, Webern, Schoenberg, Elliott Carter, John Harbison, Milton Babbitt, Gunther Schuller, and Mozart); the Boston Symphony also appears here under his direction in three programs (including New York premieres of new works from Henri Dutilleux and William Bolcom). At The Juilliard School’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater in February, he led the Juilliard Orchestra in the New York premiere of Mr. Carter’s “Symphonia sum fluxae pretium spei” and his Cello Concerto, to close Juilliard’s FOCUS! 2008: All About Elliott, a festival celebrating Carter’s 100th birthday next December. Maestro Levine opened his fourth season as Music Director of the BSO with an all-Ravel concert (featuring Susan Graham, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet), followed in later weeks by world premieres from Carter, Bolcom, and Harbison, and ten programs culminating at the beginning of May with Berlioz’s complete Les Troyens—with which he also opens the 2008 Tanglewood Festival on July 5 and 6. This summer’s Tanglewood season includes a five-day, all–Elliott-Carter Festival—including BSO performances of four works recently added to its repertoire—as well as a concert version of Eugene Onegin (Fleming/Mattei/Vargas) and three staged performances of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, both with the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

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.

Deborah Voigt, Soprano
“Deborah Voigt, arguably the leading dramatic soprano singing today, has a gleaming voice that easily soars over the largest Wagnerian orchestra,” states the New York Times. She has starred in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Walküre, Fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin and in Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, Egyptian Helen, Elektra, Rosenkavalier, and Salome.

Ms. Voigt opened the 2007–08 season with her career role debut as Maddalena in Giordano’s Andrea Chénier in Barcelona, continuing to Lyric Opera of Chicago for the Kaiserin in Strauss’s Frau ohne Schatten. Metropolitan Opera audiences’ long wait for her first company Isolde in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde ends on March 10, and worldwide audiences can enjoy the Met’s live HD transmission on March 22. She also reprises Sieglinde in Wagner’s Die Walküre at the Met. Later she returns to Vienna for her career-first Brünnhilde, in Wagner’s Siegfried, and in June she closes out her season at London’s Royal Opera House as Strauss’s Ariadne.

A devotee of cabaret, Broadway and classics, Ms. Voigt opens Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series in January. Variety has reported that her delivery is “expressively honest and her voice lustrous and creamy” as she “crosses the opera-Broadway boundary with grace and elegance.” She sings at Carnegie Hall with both the MET Orchestra under James Levine and the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas.

Highlights of last season were Deborah Voigt’s first staged performances as Strauss’s Salome at Lyric Opera of Chicago—a performance received with universal encomium—and the Met’s production of Strauss’s Egyptian Helen, staged especially for her.

Ms. Voigt has received accolades in such Italian roles as Amelia, Aida, Lady Macbeth, Tosca, and Leonora (in both La Forza del destino and Il Trovatore), and as Cassandre in Berlioz’s Les Troyens. Her discography of complete operas ranges from Tristan und Isolde to Les Troyens and Die Frau ohne Schatten. Her second solo disc, All My Heart, followed the best-selling Obsessions, featuring arias and scenes by Wagner and Strauss—both on EMI Classics.

Ms. Voigt’s numerous awards and honors include first prizes in Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition and Philadelphia’s Luciano Pavarotti Voice Competition, and France’s Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She was named Musical America’s Vocalist of the Year in 2003 and received a 2007 Opera News Award for distinguished achievement in the art form.

Alfred Brendel, Piano