SAN DIEGO YOUTH SYMPHONY CHAMBER ORCHESTRA – PROGRAM NOTES
of his adopted country, and in his compositions he sometimes included “non-musical” sounds he heard around him in Spain. One of his quintets, full of the sound of hunting horns and Born March 4, 1678, Venice bird-calls, is nicknamed the “Aviary,” and another work– Died July 26/7, 1741, Vienna subtitled “Nocturnal Music of the Streets of Madrid”–makes Duration: Approximately 20 minutes use of church bells and bugle calls from the military garrison. Of Vivaldi’s more than 500 concertos, the vast majority This attention to the native sounds of Spain appears as well are for the composer’s own instrument, the violin, and he in the series of guitar quintets that Boccherini composed wrote prolifically for other stringed instruments such as during the 1790s, late in his life. In the Guitar Quintet in D the cello and viola d’amore. Vivaldi also wrote a number Major, he expands the range of Spanish sounds in his music of concertos for winds, including flute, recorder, oboe, and by including two of the most “Spanish” instruments of all, bassoon. Beyond these, he wrote a tiny handful of concertos guitar and castanets. These late guitar quintets were not new for some unexpected instruments, including the Lute Concerto compositions, but rather arrangements–for guitar and string performed on this concert. Its rarity, however, has not quartet–of music Boccherini had originally composed some prevented the Lute Concerto from becoming one of Vivaldi’s years earlier for string quintet. In the present case, Boccherini most popular pieces–this music has attracted performers borrowed the first two movements from a quintet composed of many different instruments: guitarists have eagerly in 1771, the final two from another composed in 1788. transformed it into a concerto for their own instrument, and This concert offers the final two movements, which it has also been played on the mandolin and even the violin. are joined. They open with a slow introduction marked This popularity is no surprise at all. Its pleasing melodies, Grave assai, and the music leaps ahead at the Fandango. rhythmic vitality, and infectious spirits of this music have A fandango is an old dance of Latin origin in which the made this concerto just as attractive to audiences as it is to tempo gradually accelerates; the accompaniment is usually performers. by castanets or guitar. Boccherini achieves a rather full Perhaps because he is writing for an instrument that is sonority from his players in this movement, and the writing– not very powerful, Vivaldi scores this concerto for an unusual sometimes featuring long cello glissandi–is imaginative. He orchestra, consisting only of two violin parts and a basso brings all these elements together in the exciting and colorful continuo line. Much of this music’s effectiveness comes from conclusion to this quintet, where the tempo gradually eases the deft interplay of soloist and orchestra, for the ritornello ahead and then rushes to the close, pushed ahead by explosive themes are full of snap and energy, and they contrast nicely interjections from the castanets. with the delicate but agile sound of the lute. This music requires little description, and many listeners will discover they already know this pleasing concerto. The concerto is Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Opus 92 in three movements in the expected fast-slow-fast sequence. It opens with a firm Allegro giusto built on the orchestra’s Born December 16, 1770, Bonn rhythmic opening ritornello, and the soloist plays off the Died March 26, 1827, Vienna orchestra’s strong statements. This music feels constantly Duration: Approximately 36 minutes alive, from the snapped 32nd-notes of the ritornello through the busy runs that are exchanged by soloist and orchestra. An Beethoven turned 40 in December 1810. Forty can be a difficult age for anyone, but for Beethoven things were going expressive Largo is followed by a concluding Allegro that very well. True, his hearing had deteriorated to the point dances (gallops?) happily along its 12/8 meter. where he was virtually deaf, but he was still riding that whitehot explosion of creativity that has become known, for better or worse, as his “Heroic Style.” Over the decade-long span Grave assai; Fandango from Quintet in D Major for Guitar and of that style (1803-1813) Beethoven essentially re-imagined Strings, G.448 “Fandango” music and its possibilities. The works that crystalized the Heroic Style–the Eroica and the Fifth Symphony–unleashed a Born February 19, 1743, Lucca, Italy level of violence and darkness previously unknown in music, Died May 28, 1805, Madrid forces that Beethoven’s biographer Maynard Solomon has Duration: Approximately 11 minutes described as “hostile energy,” and then triumphed over them. During his forty-year tenure as court composer in Madrid, In these violent symphonies, music became not a matter of Boccherini appears to have been charmed by the exotic life polite discourse but of conflict, struggle, and resolution.
Concerto in D Major for Guitar, Strings, and Continuo, RV 93
ANTONIO VIVALDI
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN
LUIGI BOCCHERINI
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LA JOLLA MUSIC SOCIETY