Friendship & Faith PROGRAM NOTES

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) - Nimrod

In the history of English music, Edward Elgar is considered a real hero. The first English composer of international stature since Henry Purcell (1659–95), Elgar became a leading figure in British music by blending continental techniques with a distinctly English style that led to a 20th-century English musical renaissance.

Although Elgar had little formal musical instruction and was largely self-taught, he found ample resources in his father’s music store where he studied scores and textbooks on his own, and eventually became proficient on cello, bass, piano, bassoon, trombone, and violin. Elgar struggled to achieve success as a composer, but in 1899 he produced the Enigma Variations, which immediately became popular in Britain and overseas. The Variations were followed by an immensely successful symphony and violin concerto, which led to a knighthood in 1904, and a professorship at the University of Birmingham in 1905.

Perhaps Elgar’s most well-known work, Enigma Variations, is comprised of fourteen variations on an original theme. Each variation is a musical portrait of a different close acquaintance of the composer. The ninth variation, Nimrod, represents Elgar’s friend A.J. Jaeger, and is said to capture a discussion between Elgar and Jaegar on Beethoven’s slow movements. The title is a play on words, as the biblical Nimrod was a great hunter, and the German word for hunter is Jaeger. The opening bars of the variation are suggestive of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata, and by placing Nimrod at the center of the Enigma Variations, Elgar expresses a deeply felt regard for his closest friend. Nimrodis the only section of the Variations that tends to be performed in isolation, often at solemn occasions.

Dr. Daniel Perttu – Appalachian Vistas

Dr. Daniel Perttu teaches Music Theory and Composition at Westminster College and is currently Chair of the School of Music at that institution. His music extends across a wide range of themes from the planets, the sorcery of Merlin, the Callanish Stone Circle, to the Torngat Mountains, and is widely performed over four continents and the United States.

Perttu’s Appalachian Vistas ( Appa LATCH n)is based on traditional folk songs and melodies from the Appalachian Mountain chain that stretches from southern New York to northern Alabama and Georgia. Characterized by rugged terrain and isolated communities, the Appalachian region played a critical role in American expansion and identity, becoming home to a diverse group of predominantly Scots-Irish, German, and English pioneers who shaped the region’s unique culture and customs. The roots of Appalachian music can be traced back to those early settlers who migrated to the region in the 18th and 19thcenturies and brought with them a variety of musical traditions, including the many ballads that tell of the lives and loves of the early settlers who endured untold hardships to find a new home and freedom in a strange land.

Commissioned by the Western Piedmont Symphony, Appalachian Vistas is intended to convey the spirit of the Appalachian landscape. Appalachia in North Carolina is rich with folk music traditions, and Perttu has chosen three traditional ballads collected by song catchers Francis Child and Cecil Sharp for his tone poem. The main theme is based on “Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies,” which warns young women against the whims of the men who were trying to court them. The second tune, “Young Hunting,” tells a dark story of a love triangle while the third, “The Golden Vanity,” is a sea-faring ballad, frequently sung by modern folk singers in their own unique styles.

Appalachian Vistas celebrates the music of Appalachia’s early settlers and brings new life to the ancient ballads that were first heard across those mountains and valleys so many years ago. In Daniel Perttu’s Appalachian Vistas the music lives on.

Max Bruch (1838-1920) – Concerto No. 1 in G Minor for Violin, Op. 26

A distinguished composer, conductor and teacher of the German Romantic period, Max Bruch is widely recognized for his famous masterpiece, the Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26. A precocious musical genius, Bruch received his early musical training from his mother, began composing at age eleven, and by age fourteen had completed at symphony and a string quartet. His rich body of over 200 works includes operas, orchestral, works for soloist and orchestra, and choral works. During his lifetime Bruch held several musical posts including a professorship at the Berlin Academy of Arts, conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society, and teacher of composition for two decades at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik.

Although famous as a choral composer, Bruch also gained attention for some of his remarkable orchestral compositions. One of his most revered works, the Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26, remains to this day among the most popular Romantic violin concertos in solo violin repertoire. The concerto, in three movements, uses many techniques borrowed from Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor and was first completed in 1866. The piece was revised later with assistance of the distinguished Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, and the final version heard in this evening’s performance was completed in 1867.

Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (1809-1847) – Symphony No. 5 in D Major, Op. 107 “Reformation”

Born in 1809 in Hamburg, Felix Mendelssohn grew up in the most intellectually stimulating circumstances imaginable. As the grandson of the renowned Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and the son of one of Berlin’s most successful bankers, his education included art, literature, languages, and philosophy as well as music. In addition, there were stimulating interactions with the frequent visitors to the family’s salon that included artists, musicians and scientists. Both Felix and his sister Fanny were inordinately gifted musicians, and their sister Rebecca was a linguist who could read Homer in the original Greek.

An extremely precocious composer, Mendelssohn wrote numerous works during his boyhood, among them 5 operas, 11 symphonies for string orchestra, concerti, sonatas, and fugues. Most of these works were long preserved in manuscript in the Prussian State Library in Berlin but are believed to have been lost in World War II.

October 31, 1517, is traditionally held to be the day that Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saint’s Church in Wittenberg, an act that signaled the start of the Reformation, the religious revolution that brought far-reaching political, economic, and social changes across the entire Western world,

In 1829 Mendelssohn was looking forward to a conference planned in Germany for the following year to celebrate the 300thanniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the formal profession of faith of the followers of Martin Luther. Although Luther did not attend the conference, he wrote his most famous hymn “Ein’ feste Burg is unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress is Our God”) in recognition of the occasion. With this celebration in mind, Mendelssohn began work on his own musical contribution to the festivities using Luther’s great hymn.

Mendelssohn composed the Reformation Symphonyin time for the celebrations in Berlin, but it was passed over in favor of a more conservative choral work by Eduard Grell. As it turned out, however, the celebrations never took place due to the political turmoil at the time. A planned premiere in Paris also did not occur, this time due to the musicians rejecting the symphony because “it lacked melody and had too much thick counterpoint.” Feeling humiliated, Mendelssohn never recovered confidence in the symphony and withheld it from publication during his lifetime. Although he led the first performance of the Reformation Symphony two years later in Berlin, he apparently never performed it again. It was finally published 21 years after his death.

Perhaps as befits a symphony composed for a historical celebration, the Reformation draws on a number of older musical traditions, including references to Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony, plainsong, ancient Jewish melodies, and the Dresden Amen (originally used in a Catholic church). “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” forms the basis of the final movement, which opens with a solo flute introducing the melody. Fragments of the hymn tune can be heard throughout the movement until it blazes forth triumphantly in the full orchestra to conclude the symphony.