CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
The MET Orchestra

Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 8:00 PM

The MET Orchestra
James Levine, Music Director and Conductor
Jonathan Biss, Piano

ELLIOTT CARTER Variations for Orchestra
SCHUMANN Piano Concerto
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4

Program Notes:

By David Hamilton

ELLIOTT CARTER Variations for Orchestra
Born December 11, 1908, in New York City.

Composed in response to a commission from the Louisville Orchestra, Variations for Orchestra was begun in Rome during the years 1953–54 and completed in 1955 in Dorset, Vermont. The premiere, under the orchestra’s music director, Robert Whitney, took place in Louisville on April 21, 1956; the work was first performed at Carnegie Hall on February 9, 1966, with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (now the Minnesota Orchestra) conducted by Stanislaw Skrowaczewski.

Scoring: 2 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 tenor trombones, bass trombone, tuba, 4 timpani, 2 side drums (one with, one without snares), bass drum, 2 cymbals, triangle, gong, tambourine, suspended cymbal, slapstick, wood block, and claves, harp, and strings.

In the years after World War II, Elliott Carter found his way to a novel, highly personal compositional language and style, which in the end owed little to either of the then-dominant idioms of Schoenberg or Stravinsky, or to the Americanist movement of the later 1930s and ’40s. The initial defining works were a Piano Sonata (1946) and Cello Sonata (1948), and the breakthrough piece, in terms of international attention, was the First String Quartet (1951, first performed in 1953). The evolving conception behind these works stretched the conventional tradition of chamber music as a “conversation,” to the point of defining radically individual characters for the players in a work; each “actor” would use distinctive metrical patterns, tempos, harmonic resources, and could be heard to be arguing, dominating, even sometimes agreeing, either simultaneously or by turns.

Carter first brought these conceptions to the symphony orchestra in his Variations for Orchestra, while also developing some new ideas about variation form. As he wrote at the time:

Traditionally, of course, this type of composition is based on one pattern of material, a theme or a succession of harmonies out of which are built many short contrasting pieces or sections of music. The theme and each little section form musical vignettes usually presenting one single, unchanging mood or character and often only one musical idea or technique. Viewed as a series of separate pieces of sharply defined character, a set of musical variations resembles certain old literary works such as the collection of brief, trenchant delineations of Ethical Characters by Theophrastus, held together by one common idea or purpose. Such a set implicitly gives expression to the classical attitude toward the problem of “unity in diversity.”

In this work I was interested in adopting a more dynamic and changeable approach. The general characteristics of the form are maintained—one pattern of material out of which a diversity of characters come, but the principle of variation is often applied even within the scope of each short piece. In some, great changes of character and theme occur; in others, contrasting themes and characters answer each other back and forth or are heard simultaneously. By these and other devices, I have tried to give musical expression to experiences anyone living today must have when confronted by so many remarkable examples of unexpected types of changes and relationships of character, uncovered in the human sphere by psychologists and novelists, in the life cycle of insects and certain marine animals by biologists, indeed in every domain of science and art. Thus the old notion of “unity in diversity” presents itself to us in an entirely different guise than it did to people living even a short while ago.

The conception of the work involves not only an extended “official” theme (74 notes long), but also two other melodic materials that Carter called “ritornelli”: one is a descending line that becomes faster over the course of the piece, the other a more disjunct, up-and-down series that becomes slower over the same span. The resulting variations in speed bring the two ritornelli into a temporary parity at the work’s middle (Variation 5), after which they continue their speed changes to end up at opposite poles from where they began. In Carter’s summary,

The large plan consists in a presentation of degrees of contrast of character and their gradual neutralization during the first four variations. In the Fifth Variation, contrast is reduced to a minimum, and from there on there is increasing definition and conflict of character until, in the Finale, the restatement of the notes of the theme by the trombones reestablishes unity.

The process of variation proceeds in several dimensions; as the melodic elements are independently transformed in rhythm, timbre, contour, tempo, and character, their relationships are constantly changing as well, creating an experience of constantly developing transformation. As a result, a first hearing bent on tracing the transformations of the theme itself may prove less rewarding than a general appreciation of the “great changes of character and theme” passing before the ears (and the considerable orchestral wizardry that these changes invoke). One useful clue is given at the very start of the Introduction (Allegro): the three quick chords, one each in winds, strings, and brass, signal a timbral differentiation frequently applied to the melodic elements. At the Introduction’s end, sustained notes in two solo violins form a bridge to the Theme proper (Andante), initially voiced by the remaining strings and continuing in other instruments at a measured pace, punctuated by elements of the slower and faster ritornelli.

While each section has its own tempo, the music is continuous. The composer’s description continues:

Each variation has its own shape, since shape, too, as a mode of musical behavior, helps to define character. For instance, the First Variation and the Finale are both rapid dialogues of many contrasting motives in contrasting rhythms. The Second Variation presents contrast of character by quoting the theme almost literally and confronting it with its own variants derived alternately by intervallic expansion and intervallic diminution. The Third contrasts textures of dense harmony and expressive lines with transparent fragmentary motives. The Fourth Variation is a continual ritard, and the Sixth an accelerating series of imitations. The Fifth obliterates contrast in a succession of chords using the notes of the theme. The Seventh is an antiphonal variation presenting three different ideas played in succession by the strings, brass, and woodwinds, and representing three different rhythmic planes. The line the woodwinds play in Variation VII is continued and developed in Variation VIII, while ideas of a much lighter musical nature are presented against it. The same idea is carried over into Variation IX, where it is rejoined by the other two ideas from Variation VII, now played simultaneously. The Finale is a rapid interplay of different characters, finally called to order by the trombones, who restate the notes of the first half of the theme while the strings play those of the second half softly.


ROBERT SCHUMANN Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
Born June 8, 1810 in Zwickau, Germany; died July 19, 1856 in Endenich, near Bonn.

Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor grew from one of several projects he undertook in 1841 to win recognition as an orchestral composer: a substantial one-movement Fantasy for piano and orchestra. When that failed to interest publishers or pianists (other than his wife Clara), he transformed it (with modifications) into the first movement of a concerto, adding two new movements: a central Intermezzo was completed on July 16, 1845, and a final movement on July 31. The first public performance of the complete concerto took place in Dresden on December 4, 1845, with Clara as soloist and Ferdinand Hiller conducting; the Concerto received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 19, 1891, with Ignacy Jan Paderewski, piano, and the New York Symphony Orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch.

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

The Piano Concerto in A Minor that emerged after Robert Schumann’s transformation of his one-movement Fantasy into a full-scale concerto has remained one of the central works of the keyboard repertory, despite occasional potshots from critics and historians to the effect that he failed to master the larger forms of orchestral music. Even as recently as 1980, in the pages of The New Grove Dictionary, the distinguished British historian Gerald Abraham took Schumann to task over this much-beloved work:

It is significant that his first completed essay in this field [the concerto] was the lyrical, essentially monothematic Fantasy for piano and orchestra that he later converted into a full-length concerto by the addition of an intermezzo and finale. All the tonal and thematic subtleties of the classical concerto are jettisoned: the A-Minor Concerto is essentially a piano work with a lightly, transparently scored orchestral accompaniment which here and there takes over cantabile melodies from the soloist: as Schumann himself said, “something between symphony, concerto, and grand sonata.”

Some decades earlier, writing about the same work in the “Concerto” volume of his Essays in Musical Analysis (published in book form in 1936), another distinguished British writer on music, Donald Francis Tovey, offered a more judicious judgment, which did not take the composer to task for having failed at something he did not intend to do—that is, to observe “all the tonal and thematic subtleties of the classical concerto”:

There is a depth and a breadth in Schumann’s lyric vein which already shows that it was no mistaken ambition that led him to turn from it to larger designs. His career was shortened and clouded by illness, but this concerto is one of at least a dozen large works which utterly refute the Wagnerian judgment of Schumann as a might-have-been. A work so eminently beautiful from beginning to end, so free, spacious, and balanced in form, and so rich and various in ideas, is more than proof that Schumann was justified in attempting any and every art-problem.

I. Allegro affetuoso, 4/4, A minor. The orchestra’s opening sonority, spanning many octaves, precipitates a descending cascade of two-handed downward chords from the soloist, landing on the home key of A minor. (As a student in Leipzig in 1868, Edvard Grieg heard Clara Schumann play this concerto, and clearly remembered its opening at the beginning of his own piano concerto in the same key.) The winds offer a harmonized version of what will prove to be the principal theme and the piano repeats it. A rolling transition leads to more vigorous dialogue between soloist and orchestra, after which the soloist returns to the principal theme and is joined by the clarinet in a rhapsodic dialogue that gradually becomes a joyous outburst from the full orchestra. When this fades into the distant key of A-flat, the piano plies rolled chords beneath a rapt melody, soon echoed by a clarinet, that has been regarded as a tribute to Clara.

The recapitulation begins abruptly, with the same gesture that opened the concerto, now a semitone below the principal key; this time it elicits a discussion between orchestra and soloist. After recalling the movement’s main events, the recapitulation leads into an substantial cadenza and a coda in quick-march tempo.

II. Intermezzo: Andantino grazioso, 2/4, F major. Only woodwinds and strings join the piano in this reflective movement in an ABA form. The outer sections are devoted to dialogue between soloist and orchestra, while the central section is dominated by sweeping, passionate phrases from strings and winds while the piano offers arpeggios. A recapitulation of the movement’s opening leads to a transition built on the first movement’s principal subject.

III. Allegro vivace, 3/4, A major. Horn calls and rapid rising scales from the strings introduce the exhilarating finale, in which the full orchestra trades turns with relatively lightly scored solo passages.

Let Tovey have the final word: Never has a long and voluble peroration been more masterly in its proportions and more perfectly in character with the great whole it crowns with so light a touch. Every note inspires affection, and only an inattentive critic can suspect the existence of weaknesses to condone. Fashion and musical party-politics have tried to play many games with Schumann’s reputation, but works like this remain irresistible.


PIOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36
Born May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, in the Viatka district of Russia; died November 6, 1893, in St. Petersburg.

Begun during the winter of 1876–77, Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony was substantially completed late in the following May. Tchaikovsky began the orchestration the following autumn, and the symphony was completed in San Remo, Italy, on January 7, 1878. The premiere performance, in Moscow on February 22, 1878, was conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein; the Carnegie Hall premiere took place on November 18, 1892, with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Anton Seidl.

Scoring: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, bass trombone, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, bass drum, and strings.

Standing at a crucial point in Tchaikovsky’s life and career, the Fourth Symphony is dedicated to the wealthy heiress Nadezhda van Meck, who had recently become his patroness (while insisting that they should never meet in person). At the same time, he was becoming involved in a disastrous marriage to one Antonina Milyukova, whose stubborn pursuit took no heed of his homosexuality. After finally giving in to her importunities and marrying her on July 18, 1877, he suffered a nervous collapse, and even attempted suicide before leaving her. His family arranged a separation, and the composer went off to San Remo in Italy, where he completed the Fourth Symphony.

While composing it, he had corresponded extensively with Mme. von Meck, describing his new work as “in reality . . . a reflection of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I have not of course copied Beethoven’s musical content, only borrowed the central idea”—an idea that, as he noted, “is so clear that there cannot be the smallest difference of opinion as to its meaning.” (Here he was surely referring to Beethoven’s well-known remark about the repeated notes at the beginning of—and, indeed, throughout—his Fifth Symphony: “Thus Fate knocks at the door.”)

The symphony’s overall layout is traditional enough (although, as Michael Steinberg has pointed out, Tchaikovsky’s key relationships are not always conventional ones):

I. Andante sostenuto—Moderato con anima (in movimento di Valse)—Molto più mosso, 3/4, F minor.

The repeated notes that open the first movement are Tchaikovsky’s version of Beethoven’s motto, but the main body of the movement proceeds in a more dance-like 9/8 meter, slowing down and then picking up speed near the end.

II. Andante in modo di canzona, Più mosso, 2/4, B-flat minor.

A slow movement “in the style of a song,” though not a particularly cheerful one.

III. Scherzo (Pizzicato ostinato): Allegro—Meno mosso—Tempo I, 2/4, F major.

A movement for strings alone, which early became famous for its use of strings playing pizzicato throughout.

IV. Finale: Allegro con fuoco—Andante—Tempo I, 4/4, F major.

A brilliant, celebratory finale. (Steinberg observes that “this irresistible Finale beats all records for the number of cymbal clashes per minute.”)

Copyright © 2008 by David Hamilton

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 led 30 performances of four operas in his 37th season at the Metropolitan Opera, including new productions of Lucia di Lammermoor and Macbeth and revivals of Tristan und Isolde and Manon Lescaut (the latter three works were also transmitted live in high definition to movie theaters around the globe); he will be on the Met podium for the same number of performances next season in repertoire ranging from a new production of Berlioz’s Damnation de Faust to Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice and complete cycles of Der Ring des Nibelungen, as well as the Opening Night and Met 125th anniversary galas. At Carnegie Hall, he and the MET Orchestra gave two concerts, and the MET Chamber Ensemble was heard on three dates this past season (in music of Berg, Webern, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Carter, Harbison, Babbitt, Schuller, and Mozart); the Boston Symphony also appeared here under his direction in three programs (including New York premieres of new works from Dutilleux and Bolcom). At The Juilliard School’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater in February, he conducted the Juilliard Orchestra in the New York premiere of Carter’s “Symphonia: sum fluxae pretium spei” and his Cello Concerto, to close Juilliard’s FOCUS! 2008: All About Elliott, a festival celebrating his 100th birthday next December. Maestro Levine opened his fourth season as Music Director of the BSO last fall with an all-Ravel concert, followed in later weeks by world premieres from Carter, Bolcom, and Harbison, and 10 programs culminating at the beginning of this month 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 features 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.

Jonathan Biss, Piano
Twenty-seven-year-old American pianist Jonathan Biss has already proved himself an accomplished and exceptional musician with a flourishing international reputation through his orchestral, recital, chamber music, and festival performances in North America, Asia, and Europe and through his EMI Classics recordings. Noted for his prodigious technique, intriguing programs, and artistic maturity, Mr. Biss performs a diverse repertoire ranging from Mozart and Beethoven, through the Romantics to Janáček and Schoenberg as well as works by contemporary composers, including commissions from Leon Kirchner and Lewis Spratlan.

Mr. Biss returns to New York this summer for the Mostly Mozart Festival and will also perform at Tanglewood and Aspen.

An enthusiastic chamber musician, Mr. Biss has been a member of Chamber Music Society Two at Lincoln Center, a frequent participant at the Marlboro Music Festival, has toured with Musicians from Marlboro on several occasions, and often collaborates with such chamber ensembles as the Borromeo and Mendelssohn quartets. In July and August he joins Midori and cellist Johannes Moser in a two-week tour of Bavaria, London, Harrogate, Slovenia, Holland, Copenhagen, and Menorca.

Mr. Biss represents the third generation in a family of professional musicians that includes his grandmother, cellist Raya Garbousova, for whom Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto, and his parents, violinist Miriam Fried and violist/violinist Paul Biss. He studied at Indiana University with Evelyne Brancart and at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia with Leon Fleisher.

In April 2006 EMI Classics signed Mr. Biss to a two-year exclusive contract. His newest album—Mozart Piano Concertos No. 21 and 22 with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra—is being released this fall, and his most recent EMI Classics release of four Beethoven sonatas was just nominated for an Edison Prize. His previous EMI recordings were an all-Schumann recital, which received a Diapason d’Or award and a 2004 recording on EMI’s Debut series of works by Beethoven and Schumann.

Mr. Biss was an artist-in-residence on NPR’s Performance Today, was the first American chosen to participate in the BBC’s New Generation Artist program, and has been recognized with numerous awards, including the 2003 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and the 2005 Leonard Bernstein Award.