Season Finale

Sunday, May 2, 2004
at 3:30 PM

at
St. Michael Catholic Church
1801 Sage Road
Houston, Texas 77056

Concertino for Flute ,Viola and Strings
Ernest Bloch
Carolyn Hutchinson and Gretchen Gillis, soloists

Overture from "The Magic Flute"
Wolfgang Amadaeus Mozart

Symphony No. 9 in E-minor, "From The New World"
Antonin Dvorak

Concertino for
Flute, Viola and
String Orchestra

Ernest Bloch

Ernest Bloch (1880-1959) was born in Switzerland and studied music in that country, as well as in Belgium, France and Germany. In 1902, after failing to have his first Symphony in C-sharp minor performed in Switzerland, in disappointment, he became a businessman in Geneva. However, he continued writing music in his free time. A few years later, in 1910, when the French critic Romain Rolland heard Bloch's opera Macbeth performed in Paris, he was impressed and he travelled to Geneva to convince Bloch to get back into composition. Bloch returned to music, but had to make a living primarily as a conductor.

In 1916 Bloch came to the United States as the conductor of a dancing troupe, which went bankrupt very soon, and Bloch found himself unemployed in New York. Several important musicians, however, helped him obtain commissions, and in 1919 he won a thousand dollar prize for his Suite for Viola and Piano. That established him as a composer in the United States.

Some of his better known works are The Suite for Viola and Piano, Schelomo, for cello and orchestra, the Concerto Grosso No. 1, for Piano and Orchestra, the Sacred Service for baritone,choir and orchestra, and other compositions featuring cello or viola as solo instrumens. Bloch's music draws strongly from his Jewish background.

One of the compositions commissioned by the Julliard School of Music is the Concertino for Flute, Viola and String Orchestra and performed today Gretchen Gillis, viola, and Carolyn Hutchinson, flute.

The Concertino for Viola, Flute and Strings is in three movements:the first is an Allegro comodo in which the main theme is introduced by the viola and then taken up by the flute in a two-part cointerpoint which develops along in a very free form. The second movement, Andante, starts with the the lower strings -violas, cellos and basses-presenting the theme first, and then the soloists taking it over. Again the polyphonic writing, chant-like style predominates.

The first two movements are generally serene in their atmosphere. The third movement, is an Allegro which stands in stark contrast to the first two movements: it has speed, verve, angularity and numerous metric changes. In this movement , the melodic lines in the viola and the flute make large unusual jumps at dissonant intervals and is anything but singable. It is capricious, and contains meters in 5 beats, 4 beats, 3 beats and 2 beats. To make matters more interesting, within a given bar some of the beats are subdivided in two parts, and some in three. In addition to the rhythmic complexity, the parts are still polyphonic.

At a couple of spots, however, the strings stop their disagreements, and get all together to pronounce a bar of a marcial music in unisson. The movement ends with a few lines of very American, dance-like music in 2/4 meter. The writer of these notes feels that the last movement is meant to remind the listener of the excitement and chaotic life of the street in a big city, New York perhaps, with strands of dance music overheard as one passes by a dance hall.

Overture from
"The Magic Flute"
Opera

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"From the New World"
Symphony No. 9
in E minor, Op. 95

i. Adagio, Allegro molto
ii. Largo
iii. Scherzo Molto Vivace
iv. Allegro con Fuoco

Antonin Dvorak

Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904), was a highly gifted Bohemian composer of humble origin who gained recognition in his thirties especially after the publication of his Slavic Dances. Dvorak was supported by Johannes Brahms, who nominated him to the Austrian government for financial support. Dvorak travelled widely, and obtained commissions in both England and the United States.

Dvorak believed that great art music can be developed from native folk music. In the United States he identified the Negro spiritual and the songs and dances of American Indians as such rich sources of musical inspiration.

This idea is very well illustrated in his Ninth Symphony, Op. 95 "From the New World", composed in 1893 after a three year tour of America. Actually, what Dvorak identified as "Indian" melodies are really based on the so called pentatonic scale, which is common folk music material used throughout the world, and the aeolian mode,one of the many ancient Greek and Byzantine modes, namely the scale starting and ending on A without any sharps or flats.

Whatever the source, Dvorak wrote a masterpiece using materials either directly or indirectly identifiable as spirituals. In the first movement, one of the themes recalls the famous melody of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot".

The symphony has four movements:

The first movement starts with an Adagio which introduces the first theme, a bold fanfare for two horns, and switches over to an Allegro Molto with the same fanfare theme, leading to the solo flute mentioned above. The second movement, a slow Largo, leads to the famous english horn solo, which itself has been adopted as another spiritual melody. The third movement is the Scherzo: Molto vivace. It is an exciting dance-like movement suggesting a village scene with dancing peasants. The fourth and last movement, Allegro con Fuoco, is again built around the assertive brass theme of horns and trombones and ends in an exciting finale.