Mendelssohn, Ravel & Mozart

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MENDELSSOHN, RAVEL & MOZART Thursday 13 May 2021, Perth Concert Hall –––––

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PROGRAMME

Season 2020/21

MENDELSSOHN, RAVEL & MOZART

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Thursday 13 May 2021, 7.30pm Perth Concert Hall Mendelssohn The Fair Melusine Ravel Piano Concerto in G Mozart Symphony No 31 ‘Paris’ Douglas Boyd Conductor Steven Osborne Piano Introduced by Steven Osborne and Douglas Boyd

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Our Musicians

YOUR ORCHESTRA FIRST VIOLIN Stephanie Gonley Ruth Crouch Kana Kawashima Aisling O’Dea Siún Milne Fiona Alexander SECOND VIOLIN Gordon Bragg Rachel Spencer Amira Bedrush-McDonald Sarah Bevan-Baker Niamh Lyons Gongbo Jiang VIOLA Felix Tanner Brian Schiele Rebecca Wexler Ruth Nelson CELLO Philip Higham Su-a Lee Donald Gillan Eric de Wit BASS Nikita Naumov Adrian Bornet

FLUTE Brontë Hudnott Lee Holland

HORN Zoë Tweed Harry Johnstone

OBOE Robin Williams Imogen Davies

TRUMPET Peter Franks Shaun Harrold

COR ANGLAIS Imogen Davies

TROMBONE Cillian Ó’ Ceallacháin

CLARINET Maximiliano Martín William Stafford

TIMPANI Louise Goodwin

E FLAT CLARINET William Stafford BASSOON Paul Boyes Alison Green CONTRA BASSOON Alison Green

PERCUSSION Iain Sandilands Tom Hunter Colin Hyson HARP Sharron Griffiths

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR Mendelssohn (1809–1847) The Fair Melusine, Op 32 (1834) Ravel (1875-1937) Piano Concerto in G (1929–1931) Allegramente Adagio assai Presto

Mozart (1756-1791) Symphony No 31 ‘Paris’, K 297/300a (1778) Allegro assai Andante Allegro

––––– If there’s one thing that links the three contrasting pieces in today’s programme, it’s a sense of extroversion, colour and rhythm.

Mozart set out to exceed the expectations of demanding Parisian audiences in his Symphony No 31, his biggest and most lavish to date. Ravel may have been more inwardlooking in his Piano Concerto in G, but he still melded new-fangled jazz and Basque earthiness to energising effect.

And for Felix Mendelssohn, it was a sense of disappointment and disapproval, and the knowledge that he could do so much better, that inspired his evocative Fair Melusine Overture. He’d seen one of the few performances of Conradin Kreutzer’s opera Melusina, in Berlin in 1833, and was clearly unimpressed. He wrote to his sister Fanny that the opera’s overture “was encored, and I disliked it exceedingly, and the whole opera quite as much: but not [the singer] Mlle. Hähnel, who was very fascinating, especially in one scene when she appeared as a mermaid combing her hair; this inspired me with the wish to write an overture which the people might not encore, but which would cause them more solid pleasure.”

The fishy subject matter of Mendelssohn’s Overture (and Kreutzer’s opera) had been around since at least the Middle Ages: the legend of Melusine is first recorded in a medieval French romance as far back as 1387, and has clear parallels with Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, which by coincidence the Danish author was writing around the same time that Mendelssohn was composing his Overture.

According to the legend, the water-nymph Melusine marries the dashing knight Count Raymond of Poitiers, on the condition that he never enters her room on Saturdays, the one

And for Felix Mendelssohn, it was a sense of disappointment and disapproval, and the knowledge that he could do so much better, that inspired his evocative Fair Melusine Overture.

Felix Mendelssohn

day of the week when she must take on her original mermaid form. Predictably intrigued by what she gets up to at the weekend, Raymond spies on her in her bath, with the

brusquer and more dramatic – can only refer to Count Raymond, and perhaps even to his shocking discovery. After its central development section combining these two

result that she disappears forever from the sight of all humans, leaving nothing behind but the distant sound of wailing.

themes, they return again at the end, and Melusine’s watery music brings the Overture to a gentle, somewhat melancholy close.

Mendelssohn wrote his Overture in 1834, as a late birthday present for Fanny, and it was premiered in London in April of that year, one of a trio of works commissioned from the composer by the Philharmonic Society of London (so close was their relationship that Mendelssohn even sent them a fourth piece, free of charge: his ‘Italian’ Symphony, No 4). And though Mendelssohn denied that he was explicitly attempting to tell the story of Melusine in his music, there are nonetheless clear references to the tale. It opens with a gently rippling figure that moves across the orchestra, clearly evoking Melusine’s watery

Maurice Ravel came up with the idea of writing a piano concerto following an enormously successful concert tour of America in 1928 – a trip during which he also encountered US jazz in its natural environment, a style that would influence the new Concerto hugely. It would be for himself to play, naturally, and form the centrepiece of an even grander return tour of the States. But those performances were not to be. For a start, the Concerto took him two years to write – he was already a notoriously slow composer, but he was also distracted by the simultaneous composition of his far darker Piano Concerto for the Left Hand,

home, and its second main theme – far louder,

commissioned by pianist Paul Wittgenstein

“I can’t manage to finish my Concerto, so I’m resolved not to sleep for more than a second.

When my work is finished I shall rest in this world… or the next! ” Those were prophetic words: the Piano Concerto in G was Ravel’s last major work.

Joseph Maurice Ravel

who had lost his right arm in World War I. Nearing the deadline, he wrote: “I can’t manage to finish my Concerto, so I’m resolved not to sleep for more than a second. When my work

than 20 repeat performances throughout Europe, where it was received equally enthusiastically.

is finished I shall rest in this world… or the next! ” Those were prophetic words: the Piano Concerto in G was Ravel’s last major work, his gradual decline in health also contributing to the slowness of its composition.

Though quintessentially French in its craftsmanship and wit, the Piano Concerto in G also shows the clear influence of the newfangled US jazz that Ravel had encountered in 1928, and of the Spanish folksongs sung to him by his Basque mother. Its first movement opens with a whip-crack and a perky piccolo tune (possibly Basque, although Ravel said it came to him on a train from Oxford to London), later taken over by trumpet, but despite some propulsive accompaniment figures, the piano only properly makes its presence felt with the sultry, bluesy second main theme – which sounds uncannily like Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue at times.

When it came to performing the piece, the increasingly ailing Ravel found his strength and skills were not up to the task. Instead, he dedicated the Concerto to the eminent French pianist Marguerite Long, and offered her the first performance. She gladly accepted, later calling the piece “a work of art in which fantasy, humour and the picturesque frame one of the most touching melodies to have come from the human heart” (more on that melody later). The hugely successful premiere was in January 1932, with Ravel conducting the Orchestra Lamoureux, and led to more

The slow second movement is where we hear the melody that Marquerite Long so admired – and following her praise, Ravel replied:

He scored his new symphony for the largest orchestra he’d used at that point, including clarinets, a new instrument he’d first encountered in Mannheim, for the first time in a symphony.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

“That flowing phrase! How I worked over it bar by bar! It nearly killed me! ” A long, slow piano melody seems to stretch to infinity, only to be interrupted by a darker, more

Electorate of the Palatinate, then publicly at the Concert Spirituel, the French capital’s pre-eminent concert institution, on 18 June.

dissonant central section, following which the long opening melody returns on cor anglais, with discreet decoration from the piano soloist. The brief, virtuosic third movement is often repeated as an encore – which is probably exactly what Ravel intended. It opens with a call to attention on brass and snare drum, launching into a bubbling piano part that’s interrupted by shrieks and howls from the woodwind, rushing through several characterful interludes before its distinctive opening chords round the Concerto off with a thud.

Mozart, too, set out to enthral, entertain and exceed expectations in his Symphony No 31, unveiled privately on 12 June 1778 in the Paris home of Count Karl Heinrich

Mozart had embarked on an extended tour of Europe the previous year, accompanied by his mother, Anna Maria, in search of new jobs and new patrons. They’d already taken in Munich, Augsburg and Mannheim (where he encountered Europe’s most pioneering orchestra, more on which later), and they arrived in Paris on 1 April 1778, where they would stay for six months. Though only 22, Mozart was already well established as a composer and performer, and his visit was highly anticipated, though he had to endure a disastrous account of his wind Sinfonia Concertante at the Concert Spirituel. It was as a form of apology for the shoddy performance that the concert series’ producer, Joseph Legros, commissioned a new symphony. Mozart had very little time

Joseph von Sickingen, Ambassador of the

to put such a work together, but he was a

notoriously fast worker – and in this case, he knew what Parisian tastes expected, and set out to give them exactly what they wanted,

toward the end, and they began applauding all over again. ” Despite his withering disdain, however, there’s the undeniable sense

even if he viewed their predilections with a certain disdain. He scored his new symphony for the largest orchestra he’d used at that point, including clarinets, a new instrument he’d first encountered in Mannheim, for the first time in a symphony. No wonder, perhaps, that one of its earliest listeners described the Symphony as Mozart’s ‘noisiest’.

that Mozart took a great deal of pleasure in his creation. His letter about its first performance continued: “I was so happy that as soon as the Symphony was over I went off to the Palais Royal and had a large ice, said the rosary, as I'd vowed to do, and then went home.”

Having completed the work, he wrote home to his father Leopold: “I am very pleased with it. But whether other people will like it I do not know… I can vouch for the few intelligent French people who may be there; as for the stupid ones – I see no great harm if they don’t like it. But I hope that even these idiots will find something in it to like; and I’ve taken care not to overlook the premier coup d’archet…

What a fuss these boors make of this! What the devil! – I can’t see any difference – they all begin together – just as they do elsewhere.

It’s a joke. ” The premier coup d’archet Mozart mentions is a unison figure played particularly forcefully, which he duly supplies at the very start of the Symphony’s opening movement – and returns to again and again throughout the movement, to make sure his Parisian listeners were well and truly satisfied.

In fact, Mozart employs not one but two musical effects at the very start of the Symphony’s first movement: following the arresting premier coup d’archet, he explodes a ‘Mannheim rocket’ that he’d heard in the German court city, in this case a skyward rush of notes. They together form a theme that recurs throughout the movement, and sets its tone of swaggering confidence. The slow movement, by contrast, is far gentler and more transparent, with a lilting melody high in the first violins against a lighter accompaniment in the strings. Finally, Mozart pulls off a couple of what must be

The first performance was a huge success, so much so that the Concert Spirituel repeated the Symphony several times in subsequent seasons. Mozart figured it would be, writing later to his father: “Right in the middle of the first Allegro, there was a place I was sure they would like. All the listeners were electrified and there was tremendous applause. And since I knew when I was writing it what an

musical jokes in his finale. He opens quickly but quietly with just the first and second violins – prompting lots of shushing among the Parisian audience, apparently – before the music suddenly erupts in volume (to the Parisian listeners’ startled applause).

Secondly, he almost breaks into more complex contrapuntal sections later in the movement – first briefly, later in a more extended section – before veering quickly back to more straightforward material.

It’s as if Mozart is implying he’s capable of more elevated music, but knows his Parisian listeners won’t want to hear it. Ironically, however, what he did produce is nonetheless one of his most engaging, extrovert works, and one that unfailingly shows all his compositional skill and craftsmanship.

effect it would make, I repeated the passage

© David Kettle

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