Top talent in Amare

Prior to this concert, there will be a Starter. You can attend this in the Swing, on the second floor. The Starter starts 45 minutes before the start of the concert.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

The Lark Ascending (1914/20)

We begin tonight in another, older England. Covered in forests so big you could still get lost in them. An England dominated by nature. The England before World War I, when a lot of forest was cut down for warfare. A great example of that old England is E.M. Forster's novel The Longest Journey. Or tonight's programmed The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The lark takes off, we hear its song, its high flight.

A 'pastoral romance,' inspired by a poem by George Meredith, which begins like this: 'He rises and begins to round / He drops the silver chain of sound.' 'The violin imitates the songbird, the orchestra the landscape beneath,' wrote one critic. And another also noted the beautiful contrast between the lark in the sky and 'the melody of the flute (midway, higher tempo) with its folksy character [that] shifts the focus from the sky to the ground level and human activity.'

Vaughan Williams began his best-known score in 1914, then set it aside. Completion and the premiere with piano accompaniment followed only after the war, in 1920; on June 14, 1921, the version with orchestra sounded at Queens' Hall in London.

Clara Schumann (1819-1896)
Piano Concertoin a, op. 7 (1835)

- Allegro maestoso
- Romanze: Andante non troppo con grazia
- Finale: Allegro non troppo - Allegro molto

'At one time I believed I had creative talents but I have come back from that, a woman should not want to compose - no woman before me could do it, then would it be my calling? That would be arrogant.' And: 'I have no talent for composition.' This Clara Schumann-Wieck wrote, probably in a depressed mood. After all, why would she have been taught music theory, counterpoint, harmony, composition as a child? The fact is that she was in an awkward position as a female artist. Indeed, women then, in the nineteenth century, composed virtually nothing. Although her husband Robert Schumann encouraged her in composing, her works still did not catch on. But musically she was certainly a greatness: all over Europe she was a celebrated pianist. Moreover, she was one of the first pianists to perform works by Scarlatti and Bach on her recitals, and to do so by heart, thus setting a shining example for pianists after her.

But didn't Clara Schumann have a talent for composition? Indeed she did! And that at a very young age. She was only thirteen when she began her Piano Concerto, initially in one movement, a Konzertsatz. When she was fifteen she expanded it into a full concerto, promoting the Konzertsatz to the final movement and adding two more movements before it (perhaps that is why the finale is the main focus). A work with memorable themes and a sunny vision full of virtuosity and drama. The soloist was herself, at the 1835 premiere at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig with none other than Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy conducting.

In the intermission we serve a free drink

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Humoresque No. 5 in E-flat, op. 89c (1917)         

Stage fright shook him. Too nervous by nature, perhaps. His tone was thin, his intonation "peculiar. Can I perform at this level? In his second year at the conservatory, 22-year-old Jean Sibelius saw a career as a solo violinist slip away. Did a single orchestra audition but that too became nothing. Fortunately, he failed as a violinist and devoted himself entirely to composition. The result was the most impressive musical oeuvre Scandinavia has ever produced. Meanwhile, the violin remained a darling, a dream, of his. Think of the Violin Concerto. And the six Humoreskes for violin and orchestra, which he wrote fairly near the end of his career, in 1917. 'Humoresques,' but, Sibelius said, 'they express life's angst [...] capriciously illuminated by the sun.'

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No. 1 in C, op. 21 (1799/1800)

- Adagio molto - Allegro con brio
- Andante cantabile con moto
- Menuetto. Allegro molto e vivace
- Adagio - Allegro molto e vivace

The most striking thing about Beethoven's First Symphony is that it is not even that striking. Not revolutionary, hardly recalcitrant. By the time Beethoven composed this opus 21 - we are writing Vienna 1800, Beethoven will be thirty this year - he had already pulled off quite a few strange things, tinkering with the sonata form, for example (piano sonatas opus 14 among others). But now that he makes his orchestral appearance, he restrains himself. Places himself in the tradition of Mozart and Haydn, betraying very little of the revolutionary he would later become (starting with the Third, the Eroica, which put friend and foe on their hind legs). Perhaps this First may in places be called a parricide of Haydn - Beethoven had had some uncomfortable lessons in composition from Haydn - but it is also, above all, unthinkable without this teacher.

A few quirks: immediately the first chord leads to the 'wrong' key of F (the symphony is in C). Or the minuet, not a stately court dance like Haydn's but rather a whim, a joke, indeed a scherzo as Beethoven was later to call his "minuets. And the finale begins with a mischievous, teasing tone-ladder, increasingly elaborate, until ultra energetically the music erupts that makes it understandable why this First Symphony became his most played during Beethoven's lifetime.

Stephen Westra