Program Notes

Jennifer Higdon

BORN: December 31, 1962 in Brooklyn, New York

blue cathedral (1999)

PREMIERE: May 1, 2000 at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia

Approximate performance time is 13 minutes.

Jennifer Higdon is one of America’s most acclaimed figures in contemporary classical music, receiving the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, a 2010 GRAMMY� for her Percussion Concerto, a 2018 GRAMMY� for her Viola Concerto, and a 2020 GRAMMY� for her Harp Concerto. In 2018, Higdon received the prestigious Nemmers Prize, awarded to contemporary classical composers of exceptional achievement who have significantly influenced the field of composition. Most recently, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Higdon enjoys several hundred performances a year of her works, and blue cathedral is today’s most performed contemporary orchestral work, with more than 700 performances worldwide. Her works have been recorded on more than 60 CDs. Higdon’s first opera, Cold Mountain, won the International Opera Award for Best World Premiere, and the opera recording was nominated for two GRAMMY� Awards. Her music is published exclusively by Lawdon Press.

Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral was commissioned in 2000 to mark the 75th anniversary of the Curtis Institute of Music. Composed after the death of her younger brother, the work reflects a deeply personal journey through a sacred space and upward toward the heavens. In her program notes, Higdon explains that cathedrals serve as “a symbolic doorway into and out of this world,” while blue represents the sky, “where all possibilities soar.” She envisions the listener “floating down the aisle, slowly moving upward at first and then progressing at a quicker pace, rising toward an immense ceiling which would open to the sky.” The piece prominently features solos for the clarinet, her brother’s instrument, and the flute, Higdon’s own. At the end of the work, the flute drops out, leaving the clarinet to continue its upward, progressing journey.

Edgar Meyer

BORN: November 24, 1960 in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Concerto for Double Bass No. 1 in D Major (1993)

PREMIERE: 1993 with the Minnesota Orchestra Approximate performance time is 17 minutes.

The impetus for Edgar Meyer’s Double Bass Concerto in D Major came from Peter Lloyd, Principal Bass of the Minnesota Orchestra from 1986–2007. Meyer was the soloist in the 1993 world premiere of the concerto, with Edo de Waart conducting the Minnesota Orchestra.

The concerto is in three movements. Movement I opens with the soloist introducing an undulating, seductive, blues-tinged melody. That melody journeys throughout the movement, notable also for the orchestra’s delicate scoring.

Movement II is in A-B-A form, opening with an episode in which the solo bass is accompanied by pizzicato strings. Meyer notes: “I lifted the idea of using pizzicato strings as an accompaniment from the Haydn C-Major Violin Concerto.” The brief, agitated central episode resolves to a reprise of the opening, with the bass’s embellished line now joined by the oboe.

Movement III is based upon a recurring melody, “a fiddle tune with blues overtones.” Meyer “got the idea for this type of tune and the way of playing it from hearing Sam Bush play the violin and mandolin.” The energy of the finale’s opening measures continues to the concerto’s resolution.

Giovanni Bottesini

BORN: December 22, 1821 in Crema, Italy

DIED: July 7, 1889 in Parma, Italy

Concerto No. 2 for Double Bass in B Minor

arr. & cadenzas by Edgar Meyer (ca. 1850)

Approximate performance time is 17 minutes.

Giovanni Bottesini enjoyed a celebrated career as a double bass virtuoso, conductor, and composer. It is for his achievements as an instrumentalist that Bottesini is best remembered, earning him the nickname “Paganini of the Double-Bass,” a reference to the legendary Italian violinist. He astounded audiences with his extraordinary technical brilliance and musicality. After making his triumphant concert debut in 1840, Bottesini performed both as a soloist and as a member of various orchestras. Concert engagements took Bottesini throughout Europe and the New World. His American recitals included appearances in New York and New Orleans.

Bottesini most certainly showcased his technical and interpretive brilliance in his Concerto No. 2 in B Minor for Double Bass. The concerto is in the traditional three-movement form, with two quicktempo movements (Allegro moderato and Allegro) framing the secondmovement Andante.

Virtuoso double-bassist Edgar Meyer deems the work “my favorite piece in the bass concerto repertoire.” Meyer continues: “In my headlong desire to put my mark on the piece, I indulged in some rewriting of the concerto.” Meyer replaces the cadenza toward the close of the first movement with one of his own creation, composed several years ago: “It’s much more extroverted than what I would come up with now. It consists primarily of whatever tricks I knew on the bass at that point.” In the finale, Meyer provides yet another cadenza, this one ascending to the D three octaves above middle C. Meyer observes: “Of course, that last octave or so, once you get well past the end of the fingerboard, is really novelty material.” But those kinds of daredevil excursions are very much in the great tradition of 19th-century virtuosos like Bottesini, and his modern counterpart, Edgar Meyer.

Ludwig van Beethoven

BORN: December 17, 1770 in Bonn, Germany

DIED: March 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria

Symphony No. 8 in F Major

Opus 93 (1812)

PREMIERE: February 27, 1814 at the Redoutensaal in Vienna

Approximate performance time is 26 minutes.

Beethoven began work on both his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies in 1811. After finishing the Seventh Symphony in June of 1812, Beethoven turned his full attention to the Eighth, completing that score on October 12. The premiere of the Eighth Symphony took place as part of a February 27, 1814 concert at the Redoutensaal in Vienna. The program also contained the composer’s Seventh Symphony — which had received its premiere the previous December 13 — and the (then) wildly popular Wellington’s Victory.

Beethoven’s Eighth is the Symphony that most emphatically reflects the composer’s humorous side. The Eighth also bears a kinship with another comic jewel: Giuseppe Verdi’s final opera, Falstaff (1893). In both works, the composers — at the height of their maturity and powers — employ techniques previously used for the composition of “serious” music to fashion masterpieces overflowing with playful humor. And, if the Eighth Symphony presages the future, it also pays tribute to the past. The work’s high spirits and economy of expression recall the greatest symphonic humorist of them all, Beethoven’s teacher, Franz Joseph Haydn.

The Symphony No. 8 is in four movements. The opening measures immediately establish the first movement’s (Allegro vivace e con brio) boisterous mood. A lighthearted Allegretto scherzando replaces the traditional slow-tempo second movement. The third movement (Tempo di Menuetto) is the only minuet among Beethoven’s symphonies (the First Symphony’s third movement is called a “Minuet,” but is in reality the first of the composer’s many symphonic scherzos). The finale (Allegro vivace) begins with a device familiar from many Haydn symphonies. The strings play a scurrying, pianissimo figure that suddenly, and without warning, explodes with tremendous force. The finale, a beehive of activity from start to finish, concludes with an extended and decidedly emphatic series of chords.