Programme Notes | Lahav Shani plays Mozart - 23 June 2022

Programme Notes

Lahav Shani plays Mozart Thu 23 June 2022 • 20.15

Lahav Shani, Conductor and piano Born: Tel Aviv, Israel Current position: chief conductor Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra; music director Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Before: principal guest conductor Vienna Symphony Orchestra from 2017 to 2020 Education: piano at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music Tel Aviv; conducting and piano at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler Berlin; mentor: Daniel Barenboim Breakthrough: 2013, after winning the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg Subsequently: Staatskapelle Berlin, Berlin State Opera, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Debut Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2016

Photo: Marco Borggreve

PROGRAMME conductor and piano Lahav Shani Felix Mendelssohn 1809-1847 Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, op. 27 [1828] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1756-1791 Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488 [1786] • Allegro • Adagio • Presto Interval Felix Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3 in A minor, op.

56 ‘Scottish’ [1829-42] • Andante con moto – Allegro un poco agitato • Vivace non troppo • Adagio • Allegro vivacissimo - Allegro maestoso assai Concert ends at about 22.20 Most recent performances by our orchestra: Mendelssohn Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt: Sep 2011, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23: Mar 2015, piano Lise de la Salle, conductor Jiři Bělohlávek Mendelssohn Symphony No. 3 ‘Scottish’: Sep 2020, conductor Valery Gergiev One hour before the start of the concert, orchestra members Wim Ruitenbeek and Galahad Samson will give an introduction to the programme, admission €5. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for ’Vrienden’.

The introduction is in Dutch.

Cover: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Detail of a family portrait by Johann Nepomuk della Croce, Salzburg ca 1780

Sea journeys, rainwater, and tears The theme uniting these three pieces of music is water. Mendelssohn portrayed the sea in his Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, whilst his Scottish Symphony drips with heavy rain, weather that is characteristic of that country.

In the Adagio of his Piano Concerto no. 23 Mozart displays such unvarnished sorrow that tears are never far away…

Danger

The merchant ship on which the poet Goethe sailed back to the Italian mainland from Sicily in 1787 had come within a hair’s breadth of colliding with the rocks of Faraglioni. But just in time the wind picked up, and the ship could be steered to safety. Thank God, because what dangers lurked within this still sea! In 1792, inspired by this experience, Goethe wrote two short poems, Meeresstille (Calm Sea) and Glückliche Fahrt (Prosperous Voyage). Thirty-six years later Mendelssohn set these poems to music. Beethoven had already done so, in the form of a cantata, but a musicologist friend of Mendelssohn thought that it could be done again. He recommended to Mendelssohn not to include a choir: such a Calm Sea could be much better described without text and with

orchestra alone. In any event, the poems were so well known to the general public that the audience would be able to easily follow the journey taken by the music. Mendelssohn acquitted himself admirably. Calm Sea (‘Silence deep rules o’er the waters / Calmly slumbering lies the main’) is not just a slow introduction to a cheerful setting sail on a Prosperous Voyage in the Allegro, but of equal weight.

Mendelssohn goes even further than Goethe, who ended with ‘I see land beyond’: he has the ship sail into the harbour to a trumpet fanfare (with extra third trumpet). Right at the very end – as a masterstroke – following the unalloyed joy of a safe return home, he harks back to the pianissimo notes of the start, so that we end in a mood of peacefulness and calm.

Braan Falls at Dunkeld, Scotland.

Sketch by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, August 1, 1829

Church window

You cannot evoke sound with light, but you can evoke a sensation of light with sound.

The words ‘light’, ‘clear’ and ‘translucent’ are often used to describe Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 23. Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein compared the concerto to light flooding through a church window: soft, rich, and multi-coloured. It is interesting to think that this evocation of light came to life at the same time as Mozart’s darkest piano concerto, the C-minor concerto K. 491. Where there is light, there must be shadow, even for someone with the vitality of Mozart. This A major concerto, composed in March 1786 and premiered with himself at the keyboard shortly thereafter, was close to Mozart’s heart.

This is clear from a letter that Mozart wrote to a friend – Winter - in which he mentions Prince Fürstenberg, to whom he dedicated this and two other concerti: ‘It is quite natural that some of my compositions should be sent abroad, but those that I do send are deliberately chosen. … the compositions that I keep for myself or for a small circle of music-lovers and connoisseurs (who promise not to let them out of their hands) cannot possibly be known elsewhere, as they are not even known in Vienna. And this is the case with the three concerti that I have the honour of sending to His Highness. … I must ask His Highness not to let them out of his hands.’

Tenderly the orchestra takes off, the main character remains tender, and the music modestly retreats inside itself towards the end of the first movement, as though making way for the direct lament of the Adagio. The piano has been called Mozart’s ‘instrument of solitude’ to which he entrusted his innermost thoughts; this

What could be more romantic than a young composer who, peering over the crashing waves, the dark curls of his hair dripping with rainwater, finds inspiration in the islands off the far north-west of Scotland for his famous Hebrides Overture?

And for even more… What could be more intriguing than that he conjures the theme in an old, ruined chapel in Edinburgh, a theme that will preoccupy him for years until it finds its voice in a big symphony? ‘In the evening twilight we went today to the palace where Mary Queen of Scots lived and loved’ wrote twenty-year-old Mendelssohn in 1829 to his family in Leipzig, during his journey through Great Britain. ‘There you find a little room that leads to a spiral staircase. They climbed this staircase, where they found Rizzio. They dragged him away to a dark corner three rooms off, where they murdered him. The nearby chapel is now roofless; grass and ivy grow there, and at that broken altar Mary was once crowned Queen of Scots.

Everything around is broken and mouldering, and the bright sky shines in. I believe I found today in that old chapel the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.’

contemplating the tragedy of the Scottish Queen and her failures to find love? Or was he evoking the natural landscape? At times there is a specifically heroic sound to the work, perhaps inspired by the proud figure of Mary Stuart. But there is more to be said for the evocation.

However, it would be unwise to simplistically label it as ‘Scottish’, since, for example, Mendelssohn did not introduce any folk tunes into the work.

He had been recommended to give such music a good listen, but he found it simply hideous: Dear me, a harpist sits in the hall of every reputed inn, playing incessantly so-called national melodies; that is to say, the most infamous, vulgar, out-of-tune trash, with a hurdy-gurdy going on at the same time. It’s enough to drive you mad, and has given me a toothache already.’

However, the rain, mists and storms, the recognised features of the Scottish climate, are certainly discernible in the music and the chromatic coda of the first movement transports you effortlessly to the fermenting seas especially around Britain’s northwest coast. This was certainly true for Richard Wagner, who was happy to ‘borrow’ something from this passage for his ‘sea opera’ The Flying Dutchman. But everyone is free, of course, to listen to the Scottish Symphony and to hear what they want.

Tellingly, perhaps, upon hearing the symphony for the first time, and being wrongly informed that this was the Italian Symphony, Robert Schumann described visions of the Italian landscape that appeared in his mind’s eye.

Churning seas

Stephen Westra

seems no exaggeration given that this movement is written in the unusual key of F sharp minor. However, in the Presto (a relatively rare choice of tempo for Mozart) his sense of humour breaks out; who is able to produce the more bizarre tunes – the clarinet that understood so well the piano’s lament in the Adagio, or the bassoon?

Murder

What precisely did Mendelssohn have in mind as he was composing his Scottish Symphony? Was he

Agenda

Musicians

Fri 2 September 2022 • 20.15 conductor Lahav Shani Ligeti Atmosphères Pijper Symphony No. 2 Mahler Symphony No. 1

Chief Conductor Lahav Shani

Thu 29 September 2022 • 20.15 Fri 30 September 2022 • 20.15 conductor Lahav Shani violin Hilary Hahn Widmann Con brio Dvořák Violin Concerto Brahms Symphony No. 1

First violin Igor Gruppman, concertmaster Marieke Blankestijn, concertmaster Quirine Scheffers Hed Yaron Meyerson Saskia Otto Arno Bons Mireille van der Wart Shelly Greenberg Cor van der Linden Rachel Browne Maria Dingjan Marie-José Schrijner Noëmi Bodden Petra Visser Sophia Torrenga Hadewijch Hofland Annerien Stuker Alexandra van Beveren Koen Stapert

Sat 30 September 2022 • 17.00 piano Lahav Shani violin Igor Gruppman and Hed Yaron Meyerson cello Emanuele Silvestri horn David Fernández Alonso Dvořák Piano Trio No. 4 ‘Dumky’ Brahms Horn Trio Fri 14 October 2022 • 20.15 conductor André de Ridder piano Daniil Trifonov Barber Adagio for Strings Bates Piano Concerto (Dutch premiere) Roukens Symphony No. 1 ‘The Kaleidoscopic’ (commission, world premiere) Thu 27 October 2022 • 20.15 Fri 28 October 2022 • 20.15 conductor Han-Na Chang cello Victor Julien-Laferrière Prokofiev Symphony No. 1 ‘Classical’ Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 Beethoven Symphony No. 3 ‘Eroica’

Honorary Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Second violin Charlotte Potgieter Cecilia Ziano Frank de Groot Laurens van Vliet Tomoko Hara Elina Staphorsius Jun Yi Dou Bob Bruyn Letizia Sciarone Eefje Habraken Maija Reinikainen Sumire Hara Wim Ruitenbeek Babette van den Berg Melanie Broers

Viola Anne Huser Roman Spitzer Maartje van Rheeden Galahad Samson Kerstin Bonk Lex Prummel Janine Baller Francis Saunders Veronika Lénártová Rosalinde Kluck León van den Berg Cello Emanuele Silvestri Joanna Pachucka Daniel Petrovitsch Mario Rio Gé van Leeuwen Eelco Beinema Carla Schrijner Pepijn Meeuws Yi-Ting Fang Double bass Matthew Midgley Ying Lai Green Jonathan Focquaert Robert Franenberg Harke Wiersma Arjen Leendertz Ricardo Neto

Clarinet Julien Hervé Bruno Bonansea Jan Jansen Clarinet/ bass clarinet Romke-Jan Wijmenga Bassoon Pieter Nuytten Lola Descours Marianne Prommel Bassoon/ contrabassoon Hans Wisse Horn David Fernández Alonso Wendy Leliveld Richard Speetjens Laurens Otto Pierre Buizer Trumpet Giuliano Sommerhalder Alex Elia Simon Wierenga Jos Verspagen

Flute Juliette Hurel Joséphine Olech Désirée Woudenberg

Trombone Pierre Volders Alexander Verbeek Remko de Jager

Oboe Remco de Vries Karel Schoofs Hans Cartigny Anja van der Maten

Tuba Hendrik-Jan Renes

Oboe/cor anglais Ron Tijhuis

Timpani/ percussion Randy Max Danny van de Wal Ronald Ent Martijn Boom Adriaan Feyaerts Harp Charlotte Sprenkels