2011 Anniversary Brochure - Paxos Festival Trust

Concert 2 Saturday 10 September at 8.30 Loggos Schoolhouse
Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): String Quartet No.63 in Bb Major, Sunrise, Op.76, No.4
Haydn’s Opus 76, a set of six string quartets, is a prime specimen of the radical inventiveness, even
mischievousness, for which he stands out among composers. It was commissioned by the Hungarian
Count, Joseph Erdödy, while Haydn was employed at the court of Prince Nicolaus Esterházy,
and includes many of his best known quartets, including the famous Emperor—number three in this
set. This one, number four, begins with a memorable rising violin figure over a sustained B-flat chord,
which gives the piece its nickname—‘sunrise’. A similar figure is then played over a more dissonant
sustained chord, before the music bursts into a radiant string texture. Other inventive features include
the passing of material from instrument to instrument, false starts, abrupt changes in dynamics,
and surprising phrase lengths.
Though full of sunshine, the piece is not without its dark moments; the second movement, for example,
reflects the same artistic maturity and profound themes as The Creation, Haydn’s great oratorio,
which he wrote at roughly the same time as this piece.
Jules Massenet (1842-191): ‘Méditation’ from Thaïs
Massenet’s opera Thaïs tells the story of Athanaël, a Cenobite monk living in Egypt during the time
of the Byzantine empire, who manages to convert the beautiful courtesan Thaïs to Christianity and
a life of chastity, only to regret his decision when he realises that he is in love with her. The opera
ends tragically, with Athanaël visiting Thaïs in her convent years later and finding her on her deathbed.
He loses all of his belief in eternal life and contempt for this world, realising that ‘nothing is true
but life and the love of human beings.’ It premiered at the Opéra Garnier in Paris on 16 March
1894, with the American soprano Sybil Sanderson as Thaïs – a role that Massenet had written especially
for her.
The Méditation is the entr’acte between the two scenes of the second act. Athanaël has arrived
from his monastery to attend a feast in Alexandria, held by his old friend Nicias, now a wealthy sensualist
and Venus-worshipper. Thaïs is the star attraction. Athanaël comes to her room late at night
and, after resisting her attempts to seduce him, attempts to persuade her that if she abandons the
life of the flesh her spirit will live eternally. She remains unconvinced, but later, while alone, begins to
contemplate the mysterious things Athanaël has told her. The Méditation is played while she deliberates,
before resolving to follow Athanaël into the desert and give up earthly things.
Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979): Viola Sonata
Impetuoso Vivace Adagio
In her prime Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) was widely recognized as England’s leading female violist,
performing with artists such as Heifetz, Thibaud, Suggia, Casals, Szigeti, Rubinstein and Schnabel.
Her compositional output is small, but shows her to have been a highly gifted composer. She wrote
a selection of chamber works, including short pieces for the viola and piano that she wrote to perform
herself, as well as solo piano music, choral works, and a number of English songs to the poetry
of Yeats, Masefield and Housman. Sadly, only twenty works were published in her lifetime, and at
the time of her death in 1979, all of these were long out of print. Her music is striking not only for its
passion and power, but also for its lyricism and influences from French impressionism and English folk
song.
Arguably her best known work, the Viola Sonata is a powerful and expansive example post-
Romantic sonata. In 1919 Clarke entered the piece into a composition competition run by Elisabeth
Sprague Coolidge- a great American patroness of the arts. The distinguished competition jury was
unable to decide between two works for the $1,000 first prize- one was the Clarke Sonata, the other
Ernest Bloch’s Suite for Viola. In the end the Bloch Suite won the competition when Coolidge herself
was asked to make the deciding vote, but the fact that a woman had composed such a brilliant
work caused quite a stir, and it was even speculated that “Rebecca Clarke” was in fact a pseudonym
for Bloch himself.
28
Clarke inscribes the sonata with a quotation from the 1835 poem La Nuit de mai, by Alfred
de Musset:
Poète, prends ton luth; le vin de la jeunesse
Fermente cette nuit dans les veines de Dieu.
Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Auf dem Strom, D943
Poet, take up your lute; the wine of youth
Ferments tonight in the veins of God.
This piece is a setting of a poem by Ludwig Rellstab (1799-1860). Rellstab originally offered his poems
to Beethoven, who died before setting any of them but passed them on to Schubert, having
made some preliminary markings. The younger composer’s tribute to Beethoven is clear in this song,
which quotes from the Funeral March of the Eroica Symphony. Perhaps Schubert imagined the
lover in the poem, saying farewell to his beloved as he disappears down the river, as Beethoven
himself, saying goodbye to the world. The piece was among those performed in the only concert
he attended that was entirely dedicated to his own works, given on the anniversary of Beethoven’s
death, March 26, 1828. Schubert died only later that year, and, at his own request, was buried beside
Beethoven in the village cemetery of Währing.
Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937): Mythes Op.30
La Fontaine d’Aretheuse Narcisse Dryades et Pan
Szymanowski composed these three pieces in 1915, dedicating them to Zofia Kochańska, the wife
of the famous violinist Pawel Kochański, with whom the composer himself premiered the piece. His
and Kochański’s intention was to create a new style of expression on the violin, and indeed the violin
writing of this piece was carefully studied by the greatest twentieth-century composers including
Bartok, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky.
The subjects are, of course, taken from Greek mythology. Arethusa, one of the Nereids, was the
nymph of the famous fountain in the island of Ortygia, near Syracuse. Narcissus was a beautiful and
vain youth who ignored the advances of the nymph Echo, who died of grief. As a punishment, he
was caused to fall in love with his own reflection in a still pool. Pan was the god of flocks and shepherds,
who wandered around the valleys of Arcadia leading the dances of the Dryads (nymphs) on
his shepherd’s flute. Here are Szymanowksi’s own words concerning the mythical subjects of the
piece:
‘This is not meant to be a drama, unfolding in scenes one after another, (each) of which has
anecdotic significance - this is rather a complex musical expression of the inspiring beauty
of the Myth. The main ‘key’ of the ‘flowing water’ in Arethusa, the ‘stagnant water’ in Narcissus
(the still and clear surface of the water in which the beauty of the (ephebe) Narcissus
is reflected) - these are the main lines of the piece ... In the Dryads one can imagine the
content in an anecdotic sense. Hence the murmuring of the forest on a hot summer's night,
thousands of mysterious voices, all overlapping in the darkness - the fun and dancing of the
Dryads. Suddenly the sound of Pan's pipe. Silence and anxiety. An atmospheric, dreamy
melody. The appearance of Pan, the Dryads’ amorous [word illegible], their ambiguously
expressed fear = Pan skips away - the dance begins anew - then everything calms down in
the freshness and silence of the breaking dawn. In all, a musical expression of the dreamy
tension of a summer night....’
Michail Palaiologou (1981- ): Kaonas
The work Kaonas takes its title from the Greek word for seagull (in the dialect mostly used in the
Greek islands of the Ionian sea). It is a set of five miniatures for tenor, piano and string quartet. The
poems used are all Kantsones composed by Spyros Bogdanos, the current mayor of Paxos. Each
miniature is composed based on a different poem and while in none of the poems is presented in
whole, each conveys the vivid images and emotions drawn by the poet.
Kaonas is commissioned by the Paxos Festival Trust.
29
29