Hasse, Haydn, Bruch & Bottesini

HASSE, HAYDN, BRUCH & BOTTESINI Thursday 21 January 2021, The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh –––––

PROGRAMME NOTE

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PERFORMERS HARPSICHORD/PIANO Maxim Emelyanychev

CELLO Philip Higham

VIOLIN Benjamin Marquise Gilmore Kana Kawashima

DOUBLE BASS Nikita Naumov Adrian Bornet

VIOLA Felix Tanner Steve King

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WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR HASSE (1699-1783) Adagio and Fugue in G minor (1740) HAYDN (1732-1809) Harpsichord Concerto in D major, Hob. XVIII:11 (1779-83) Vivace Un poco adagio Rondo all'Ungarese: Allegro assai

BRUCH (1838-1920) Kol Nidrei, Op 47 (1880) BOTTESINI (1821-1889) Grand Duo Concertante (1880)

––––– With the exception of Joseph Haydn, today’s concert brings together composers whose music, while not exactly neglected, really deserves to be better known. In fact, that description probably applies equally well to Haydn himself: though his is probably the most familiar and prominent name here, whether his music enjoys its rightful place in concert programmes is another question entirely.

Nonetheless, most undeservedly neglected of today’s composers is Johann Adolph Hasse, a musical superstar right across Europe in his own time, but barely known to listeners nowadays. Perhaps that’s simply because of the period in which he lived (he was born in 1699, died 1783), and the musical giants who came before and after him. Indeed, his lifetime spanned a remarkable era: he achieved his first successes around the time of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, and was finishing his long career at the time Mozart was finding his feet in Vienna.

No doubt that straddling of musical styles and periods partly fuels the neglect: Hasse sits astride what we’d call the Baroque and Classical periods, and was one of the first to coax music from the brilliance and extravagance of the former into the clarity, elegance and relative simplicity of the latter. But sadly, that also means he’s quite difficult to categorise.

Born in Germany, Hasse achieved his major successes in Italy, particularly in opera. Though many works in his enormous output have been lost, we still have 63 of his operas, as well as hundreds of other works including a dozen or so

Hasse sits astride what we’d call the Baroque and Classical periods, and was one of the first to coax music from the brilliance and extravagance of the former into the clarity, elegance and relative simplicity of the latter.

Johann Adolph Hasse

oratorios, 20 masses, 90 cantatas and numerous instrumental pieces. His brief Adagio and Fugue comes from 1740,

where he had some of Europe’s finest musicians at his disposal. But he also felt increasingly isolated, cut off from the

and clearly looks back to earlier styles and forms, while putting a distinctively dramatic, even operatic, twist on them.

It opens in high drama and deep despair, with daring harmonic sidesteps in its opening Adagio section, before moving on to a bustling, no-nonsense Fugue with an infernally catchy main theme. Even here, Hasse brings drama to the fore, with surging, impatient figurations in his bristling string textures.

rest of Europe in a far-flung corner of Hungary – a situation that only worsened as his music grew increasingly admired and sought after outside the Esterházy court.

Haydn’s Harpsichord Concerto in D is probably the best known of the composer’s 13 keyboard concertos, and it came at an interesting period of growing confidence and freedom for him. Haydn had no doubt benefited from his long

In 1779, he struck a new deal with Esterházy that removed the exclusivity the court had previously retained over his music. Now, Haydn was free to promote and publish his music wherever he wanted, and there was quite a demand for it. This new-found freedom only served to strengthen and expand the celebrity he’d already achieved across Europe. He wrote the D major Concerto in precisely this period, probably some time between 1779 and 1783, and it was

employment at the Palace of Esterházy,

an immediate success. Haydn rather

Haydn’s Harpsichord Concerto in D is probably the best known of the composer’s 13 keyboard concertos, and it came at an interesting period of growing confidence and freedom for him.

Franz Joseph Haydn

disingenuously sent it off to a prospective London publisher several years later, in 1787, as a ‘new’ work, despite it having

‘gypsy’ music in several earlier works, but he outdoes himself here with his heady combination of devil-may-care

already been published several times across Europe, and having become one of the composer’s most popular pieces.

flamboyance and outright comedy. Its stop-start main theme has been identified as a dance tune from somewhere in the Balkans, and Haydn contrasts its extrovert good humour with a more delicate central section with the soloist spins a long-limbed melody over rapid, fluttering accompaniment.

And with its immediacy, its lyricism and its taut, to-the-point brevity, it’s not hard to see why the D major Concerto proved so popular. The perky violin theme that opens the first movement hints at the fun and games to come, even though the movement explores darker emotions, too, in its minor-key passages. The slow movement is a thing of fragile beauty, with elaborate decoration of its singing melody from the harpsichord soloist.

It’s the Concerto’s finale, however, that almost certainly assured the work’s popularity. Haydn had already taken inspiration from rollicking Hungarian

We jump forward a century for the concert’s next piece. But rather than being neglected, Max Bruch probably counts as a composer who gained such overwhelming recognition for a single piece – in his case, the Violin Concerto in G minor – that it overshadowed the rest of his output. In truth, however, a clutch of his works – today’s Kol nidrei among them – have found regular spots in concert

But rather than being neglected, Max Bruch probably counts as a composer who gained such overwhelming recognition for a single piece – in his case, the Violin Concerto in G minor – that it overshadowed the rest of his output.

Max Christian Bruch

programmes, if not to quite the same extent as the adored Concerto.

and the holiest festival in the Jewish calendar. The second is based on a section of the song ‘O weep for those that

It’s often assumed, too, that Bruch was Jewish, since he’d written this work inspired by Jewish traditions and Jewish melodies. He was in fact a German Lutheran, but was nonetheless inspired

by Old Testament stories, and close friendships with prominent Jewish artists.

wept by Babel’s stream’, a paraphrase of Psalm 137 by the Anglo-Jewish composer Isaac Nathan, heard in the work’s more meditative second section. Here, the music is not without its moments of drama, but ultimately dissolves into deep introspection.

He wrote his Kol nidrei in Liverpool in 1880, where he was Principal Conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and dedicated it to the city’s Jewish community. Bruch employs two Hebrew melodies, one traditional and one composed. The first is a German synagogue chant, heard in the cello’s hesitant, sighing theme near the start, traditionally sung at the service on the

Today’s final composer is another figure adored and admired across Europe and beyond who’s far less known today.

Giovanni Bottesini was a much-feted conductor and composer – it was he, on the special request of the composer, who travelled to Egypt to conduct the premiere of Verdi’s Aida in 1871. But he was most admired as a double bass virtuoso, and not for nothing dubbed

eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement,

the ‘Paganini of the double bass’. He’d

It’s something of a freeflowing, stream-ofconsciousness succession of character episodes, as though unashamed of the fact that its true purpose is to showcase the remarkable athleticism of its two soloists.

Giovanni Bottesini

come to the instrument almost by chance, needing a scholarship to be able to study at the Milan Conservatoire as a

written for two basses and orchestra. It was reconceived as a piece for violin and double bass by Camillo Sivori, Paganini’s

teenager, and discovering he’d only get one if he applied on either double bass or bassoon. In the end, he prepared a bass audition in just a few weeks, and soared through his studies and beyond.

He’d even reputedly entertain audiences during the intervals of the operas he was conducting by wheeling out his bass and producing spontaneous improvisations on tunes from that night’s offering. One contemporary critic wrote: “It is necessary to hear Bottesini… to discover what possibilities are hidden in the giant of the stringed instruments; to hear what can be done in the way of sonorousness, tone, lightness of expression and grace.”

only student, and it’s in this version – with, probably predictably, breathtakingly virtuosic, showy solo parts for both instruments – that it’s best known today.

And it’s something of a free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness succession of character episodes, as though unashamed of the fact that its true purpose is to showcase the remarkable athleticism of its two soloists. In fact, the piece feels more like an operatic scena than a traditional concerto, with a declamatory, recitative-like opening, rhapsodic solos for both soloists, and an ultimately triumphant conclusion bringing them firmly together.

The Gran duo concertante is probably his best-known piece, and was originally

© David Kettle

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