A Night at the Opera

What are you going to listen to?

One Minute Symphony

"How are you?" A simple question, often with no expectation of an honest answer. Yet that very question can be the beginning of something sincere. It is that question that composition student Antek Cholewinski asks in his One Minute Symphony premiering tonight.

Haydn

Symphonies, string quartets, piano trios - of these we know Haydn in the Concert Hall. But he also wrote music in which the vocal is central. Two oratorios, masses, over twenty operas. And a concert aria, then a popular genre. Scena di Berenice was premiered at Haydn's Last concert in London, to which two concert tours had taken him as a graybeard. May 4, 1795 was the day, and one of the most celebrated prima donnas of the time sang: Brigida Giorgi Banti. The text is from Paisiello's operalibretto Antigono, then often sung. Berenice is separated from her lover Demetrio and, as he is about to die, she is overwhelmed with frenzied grief.

Mozart

Tragic the circumstances under which Mozart's Symphony No. 39 was created. It was in the summer of 1788. Although only 32, Mozart was actually already in the autumn of his life (he would die three years later). His star was no longer rising in Vienna and an important position elsewhere was out of the question. But he did have a family to support and was, unfortunately, accustomed to living large. How badly off he was, Michael Puchberg, one of Mozart's brothers in the Masonic lodge "Zur neugekrönten Hoffnung," to whom the composer addressed his first so-called "begging letters," also knew: "Esteemed brother! If you do not help me, I shall lose my honor and my credit, the only thing I wish to retain [...] If I were not so often tormented by gloomy thoughts - which I can only expel by force - work would go even better.' And Puchberg helped him with some money.

Incidentally, about his creative power Mozart need not have worried: in barely six weeks he then wrote two other grandiose symphonies besides this 39th (completed June 26), No. 40 in g and No. 41 in C "Jupiter. A feat difficult to comprehend. A persistent story has it that Mozart composed them purely for posterity. And the magnificent trio would never have been performed during his lifetime; it was purely his obligation to Art. Possibly this is not true. Indeed, letters to Puchberg also mention Akademie concerts that Mozart was planning and for which he may have written them, and a program in Frankfurt mentions a "new great symphony" to open and another Mozart symphony to close.

Haydn

As mentioned, Haydn also composed operas. Which are not as well known as those of fellow friend Mozart but still contain much beauty. He wrote L'isola disabitata (The Uninhabited Island) in 1779 for the court of Eszterházy, where he worked for many years. For a long time we knew only the eventful "Sturm und Drang" overture from it; only in 1976 was the entire opera published and the aria "Se non piange un' infelice (If an unfortunate one does not weep) also came to light.

In his Symphony No. 49 "La Passione Haydn is still somewhat in search: for the definitive contours of the classical symphony form, namely. The first movement is a long adagio: so here not yet the imposing, moderately fast opening movement that would become the main characteristic of the classical symphony and crystallized several decades later in Haydn's great symphonies written for London. Also notable is that it is in minor. In fact, Haydn's first 38 (!) symphonies are all in major (one excepted), as are those famous late London ones (one excepted). Only during the brief period when La Passione was also created, around 1770, did Haydn have an extremely abrupt preference for minor. La Passione just so immediately became one with four flats, something truly remarkable at the time. The opening adagio conjures up for some listeners the image of a long, winding line of penitents before the Cross, and those who wish can discern in the beginning the foreshadowing of Schubert's song Der Tod und das Mädchen. This makes the nickname, which means "the passion, the passion" and probably belongs to Haydn himself, more than appropriate.

Rossini

World fame was yet to come when Rossini wrote his opera La scala di seta wrote. He was also only twenty. Rossini composed the opera for a small Venetian theater, the Teatro San Moisè. The resources there were not ample: set changes were not possible, the singers were second-rate, the orchestra was only small and there was no chorus at all. And it had to be comical. The opera itself is not often performed but the overture sounds regularly on concert stages. To conclude this concert evening the aria "Una voce poco fa" (One voice has just) from Rossini's most famous opera Il barbiere di Siviglia from four years later, an opus created in just three weeks

Stephen Westra