CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Orchestra of St. Luke's

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 2:00 PM

Orchestra of St. Luke's
Xian Zhang, Conductor
Hélène Grimaud, Piano

THOMAS ADÈS Three Studies from Couperin for Chamber Orchestra (NY Premiere)
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5, "Emperor"
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 4

Program Notes:

By Steven Ledbetter

Thomas Adès Three Studies from Couperin

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58
Baptized December 17, 1770, in Bonn; died March 26, 1827, in Vienna.

Composed in 1805 and early 1806, Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto received its first performance in March 1807, in the home of Prince Lobkowitz; the public premiere took place at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on December 22, 1808, with the composer as soloist. The Concerto was first performed at Carnegie Hall on March 4, 1892, with pianist Franz Rummel and the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch.

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

The “heroic” Beethoven of the Third Symphony and a handful of other works has so dominated our image of him that we often overlook how one-sided a picture it is. During the years immediately following the composition and first performance of the “Eroica,” Beethoven, flush with ideas, completed one piece after another in rapid succession. The Fourth Piano Concerto, the most lyrical of his ventures with the genre, came just before the “Razumovsky” Quartets and was soon followed by the songful Violin Concerto.

The striking quality of the Piano Concerto’s opening, like that of the Violin Concerto, comes from its stillness, not its noise level. Here the soloist begins with gentle insinuation, ending a quiet phrase on a half-cadence; the lush orchestral response echoes in the mind through the rest of the movement.

The soloist later re-enters with suspenseful preparation—scales, trills—before plunging into the material already heard. The solo exposition is a reworking of the orchestral ritornello, expanding on familiar ideas before modulating to the dominant for an entirely new theme (heard first in the strings, then in a chuckling version in the piano). Surprises abound as the soloist works up to an extended trill, from which we are conditioned to expect a fortissimo orchestral close leading to the development. That close certainly comes, but not before the pianist coyly inserts a sweetly expressive version of a theme that is otherwise grand and overpowering.

The soloist leads off the development on an unexpected pitch, reiterating the ubiquitous rhythmic pattern (three eighth-note pickup and a downbeat) this concerto shares with the Fifth Symphony. The woodwinds continue the motive almost throughout the development, finally persuading the rest of the orchestra to build to the pianist’s fortissimo restatement of the lyrical opening.

The slow movement, with its strict segregation of pianist and strings, is so striking that it seems to demand an explanation: Professor Owen Jander of Wellesley College has suggested that Beethoven is describing the story of Orpheus going to the Underworld to recover his wife Eurydice. The strings at the opening--in stern unison, with sharply dotted notes--represent the Furies barring Orpheus’ way; the piano is the hero, softening their hardness with the power of his song. The piano sings with increasing urgency, finally overcoming the opposition of the strings sufficiently to end their hard unison, persuading them to melt into harmony.

Beethoven establishes a direct link to the third movement by retaining two of the notes of the E minor triad (E and G) that ends the second movement and reharmonizing them as a part of a C major chord. Thus the rondo theme of the last movement seems to begin in the “wrong” key, since by the end of the phrase it has worked its way around to the home key of G. This gives Beethoven special opportunities for musical sleight‑of‑hand, since his returns to the rondo theme throughout the movement will come by way of the “off‑key.” Most of the movement rushes along at a great pace, though Beethoven soon offers a moment of unusual (for him) orchestral color: under a delicate spray of high notes in the piano, the divided violas play a smoothed‑out, almost rhythmless version of the main theme. But this same smooth version of the crisp rondo theme recurs in the enormous coda—most wonderfully in a canon between the pianist’s left hand and the bassoons and clarinets—before the final full orchestral statement of the theme brings the concerto to its brilliant close.

The Concerto received its first performance in a private concert held in March 1807 at the home of Prince Lobkowitz, one of Beethoven’s strongest supporters (and one of the three aristocrats who convinced him not to leave Vienna by promising him a lifetime pension to stay there and keep on composing). For performance before a general audience, the concerto had to wait until December 22, 1808, for the famous concert that Beethoven gave in the Theater-an-der-Wien which included the first public performances of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, the Fourth Concerto, the concert aria Ah! perfido, movements from the Mass in C, and the Choral Fantasy, this last composed in a hurry only a short time before to serve as a grand finale. Aside from the historical importance of the evening, it had a personal significance to Beethoven as well: on account of his increasing deafness, it turned out to be the last time that he ever appeared before the public as a piano soloist.


Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60
Composed in summer and early fall 1806, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 received its first performance at Prince Lobkowitz’s Vienna residence in late March 1807; it was first performed at Carnegie Hall on March 9, 1894, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Anton Seidl.

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

While spending the summer of 1806 at the summer castle of Prince Lichnowsky, Beethoven struck up an acquaintance with a neighbor, Count Oppersdorf, who had been so pleased by the Second Symphony that he offered Beethoven a substantial sum for another like it. No sketches survive for the Fourth Symphony, and Beethoven seemingly completed it with little delay or effort, perhaps using ideas that had been fermenting for the Fifth Symphony (whose composition Beethoven interrupted to write his Fourth), though with different effect for the more cheerful Fourth. The basic mood of the two works could hardly be more different, yet the fundamental musical gesture of a falling third is central to both: the opening notes in the slow introduction of the Fourth follow the same melodic outline as the famous rhythmic figure that opens the Fifth.

The symphony opens with a mystifying slow introduction suggesting the key of B-flat minor and finally arriving in the major by a daring circuitous route. The Allegro suddenly materializes in a headlong rush of movement flashing with high spirits, as if the past were forgotten. The slow movement begins with the hint of a distant horn call in the second violins before the arrival of a serenely beautiful melody. The call keeps returning more obtrusively, while the melody undergoes lavish ornamentation until the serenity is ousted by a stormy outburst for the full orchestra. It moves to a darkly distant key, but returns (with help from the flute) for the restatement of the opening.

The so-called Menuetto is filled with musical jokes, broad and refined. The first phrase highlights the cross-rhythms that so frequently disturb the triple meter of the dance. A smooth melodic phrase demolishes the sense of key. The Trio is more rustic in character, but no less filled with wit.

The effervescent finale, built on a perpetuo moto figure that could be a parody of violin exercises, leads to more humorous sallies, the wittiest of which comes at the very end when the entire orchestra stops and the first violins play the theme at half speed, as if Beethoven is giving the tired players a break. The bassoon chimes in, echoed by the second violins and violas. Suddenly the entire orchestra races through the last measures to end its labors and one of the wittiest symphonies in the repertory.

Copyright © 2008 Steven Ledbetter

Steven Ledbetter, musicologist and program annotator of the
Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998, writes and lectures widely
on many aspects of classical music.

Orchestra of St. Luke's
Xian Zhang, Conductor
Xian Zhang was named the first Arturo Toscanini Associate Conductor of the New York Philharmonic in February 2007. She has been Associate Conductor of the Philharmonic since 2005, having served as Assistant Conductor the preceding year. She made her Philharmonic debut leading a Young People’s Concert on February 7, 2004, and since has led numerous concerts with the orchestra, including the 2006 annual free Memorial Day Concert at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, a series of Philharmonic Concerts in the Parks, and performances during two of the Orchestra’s residencies at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. In October 2006 she led the Philharmonic in Prokofiev’s complete score for Sergei Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky, which was screened simultaneously.

Ms. Zhang, a co-winner of the Maazel-Vilar Conductors’ Competition, made her Los Angeles Philharmonic debut in summer 2006. Future North American engagements include appearances in Detroit, Toronto, and Seattle. Following her debut with the London Symphony Orchestra in May 2005, she was re-engaged for October 2006 (conducting Steve Reich’s Desert Music and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring) and also for February 2008. Other engagements abroad include the Bamberg Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic, and Residentie Orchestra of the Hague, as well as the New Zealand Symphony, Auckland Philharmonia, and Seoul and Hong Kong philharmonic orchestras. She made her Minnesota Opera debut conducting Don Giovanni and her English National Opera debut with Puccini’s La Bohème, which she previously conducted with the Valencia and Cincinnati operas. In Cincinnati she has also conducted Verdi’s La traviata and Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

Born in Dandong, China, Ms. Zhang made her professional conducting debut at the age of 20 leading Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the Central Opera House in Beijing. She trained at Beijing’s Central Conservatory, earning both her bachelor and master’s degrees, and served one year on its conducting faculty before moving to the US in 1998. She served as assistant professor of conducting and music director of the orchestra at the University of Cincinnati College–Conservatory of Music, and as music director of the Lucca Festival Orchestra at the Opera Theatre of Lucca in 2000.

Hélène Grimaud, Piano
Born in Aix-en-Provence, Hélène Grimaud was accepted into the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris at the age of 13. Her international concert career began in 1987 with performances at MIDEM in Cannes, La Roque d’Anthéron Piano Festival, and a concert with the Orchestre de Paris at the invitation of Daniel Barenboim.

Ms. Grimaud now performs regularly in most of the leading music centers and with major orchestras worldwide, and she continues to appear with conductors of the highest caliber. The current season began with concerts with Christoph Eschenbach and the Orchestre de Paris in Bucharest, at the BBC Proms in London, and with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam under Riccardo Chailly. Future engagements include concerts in Japan with the Czech Philharmonic and Ashkenazy and performances with the Danish National Radio Symphony with Thomas Dausgaard, the Detroit Symphony with Neeme Järvi, and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic with Peter Eötvös.

An award-winning recording artist since the age of 15, Ms. Grimaud has recently signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon. At the French Victoires de la Musique she was nominated Soloist of the Year in 2000, and in January 2002 was appointed an Officier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministère de la Culture. Hélène Grimaud is ambassador of Montblanc’s arts and culture projects.