Program notes by Eric Bromberger

On Wings of Song (Auf Flügeln des Gesanges), Opus 34, No. 2
FELIX MENDELSSOHN
Born February 3, 1809, Hamburg
Died November 4, 1847, Leipzig

On January 23, 1837 – just a few days short of his 28^th birthday – Felix Mendelssohn completed a set of six songs on texts by various German poets. The second of these sets Heinrich Heine‘s Auf Flügeln des Gesanges, a love-song that describes a journey to an exotic land, one well-suited to the lovers‘ “dream of bliss.” This song, which had been composed in 1835, is a fine example of Mendelssohn‘s vocal writing: the voice floats smoothly above a quiet accompaniment, and the song rocks forward constantly along its 6/8 meter. Though Heine‘s poem is stanzaic, Mendelssohn is willing to repeat and vary specific phrases.

Auf Flügeln des Gesanges quickly became popular, and its gorgeous melodic line made it an ideal candidate for instrumental arrangement. It has been performed in a number of arrangements, and violinists in particular have been attracted to this song, which is known in English as On Wings of Song. Yehudi Menuhin and Joseph Achron made arrangements of it, and Jascha Heifetz recorded it three different times.

Les nuits d‘été, Opus 7
HECTOR BERLIOZ
Born December 11, 1803, La Côte-St. André, Grenoble
Died March 8, 1869, Paris

By 1840 Berlioz had become embittered by his efforts to establish himself as composer and musical force in Paris. Over the previous decade he had created a series of large-scale works that are today a central part of the repertory: the Symphonie Fantastique, Harold in Italy, the Requiem, the opera Benvenuto Cellini and Romeo and Juliet. But Parisian audiences and tastes remained hostile to the composer, and Berlioz – one of the most original imaginations in the history of music – had been forced to support himself by writing music criticism. Perhaps exhausted by this long struggle to establish himself, Berlioz consciously turned away from large-scale works and in the summer of 1840 began to compose songs on texts by the French novelist and poet Théophile Gautier. Berlioz had met Gautier (1811-1872) when the two were both still very young men. Now he chose six poems from Gautier‘s La comédie de la mort (1838) and over the next year composed a set of songs, which he published in 1841. By the mid-1850s he had orchestrated them all, in the process creating the first set of orchestral songs. Berlioz himself, however, heard only two of the six songs in their orchestral version.

The songs are all by one poet, and all (more or less) touch upon some aspect of love, but Nuits d‘été does not really form a cycle – there is neither unity nor a progression across the span of these songs, and individual songs from the set are sometimes sung separately. Berlioz re-titled several of Gautier‘s poems when he set them to music, and he himself provided the title Nuits d‘été (Summer Nights). No one is really sure what that title means. Does it refer to the time of year when they were composed? To a particular atmosphere that runs through all six? No one knows.

Berlioz‘s orchestral version of Nuits d‘été has proven particularly successful: he was a master of the orchestra, and he used that rich palette of color to intensify the atmosphere and meaning of these songs. The present recital, however, offers the unusual opportunity to hear four of these songs as Berlioz originally conceived them – for voice and piano. A few notes on the songs: a Villanelle is a rustic or rural song, and the springtime atmosphere of Berlioz‘s opening song is underlined by its harmonic freshness. Le spectre de la rose, with its striking subject (the flower that celebrates the occasion of its own death), has become one of the best-known of the set. Listeners who know only the orchestral version of Nuits d‘été will discover that Berlioz expanded the introduction of this song when he arranged it for orchestra. Sur les lagunes is dark, but the atmosphere changes completely in the final song, L‘île inconnue. Here is a song charged with romantic expectancy – the rocking rhythms mirror the motion of the boat as it sails toward a land of infinite possibility, and over the final pages the piano‘s steady murmur of sixteenths echoes the sound of the wind that propels the poet toward an unknown fulfillment.

String Quartet in F Minor, Opus 80
FELIX MENDELSSOHN

Mendelssohn‘s life was short, and its ending was particularly painful. Always a driven man, he was showing signs of exhaustion during the 1846-7 season, which included trips to London and conducting engagements on the continent. In May 1847 came the catastrophe: his sister Fanny, only 41, suffered a stroke and died within hours. She and her younger brother had always been exceptionally close–Mendelssohn collapsed upon learning of her death, and he never recovered. Worried family members took him on vacation to Switzerland, where they hoped he could regain his strength and composure.

At Interlaken, Mendelssohn painted, composed the String Quartet in F Minor, and tried to escape his sorrow, but with little success. An English visitor described his last view of the composer that summer: “I thought even then, as I followed his figure, looking none the younger for the loose dark coat and the wide brimmed straw hat bound with black crepe, which he wore, that he was too much depressed and worn, and walked too heavily.” Back in Leipzig, Mendelssohn cancelled his engagements, suffered severe headaches, and was confined to bed. After several days in which he slipped in and out of consciousness, the composer died on the evening of November 4. He was 38 years old.

Given the circumstances of its creation, one might expect Mendelssohn‘s Quartet in F Minor to be somber music, and in fact it is. It is the last of Mendelssohn‘s quartets (and his last major completed work), but it has never achieved the popularity of his five earlier quartets – the pianist Ignaz Moscheles found it the product of “an agitated state of mind.” Yet this quartet‘s driven quality is also the source of its distinction and strength. One feels this from the first instant of the Allegro vivace assai (it is worth noting that three of the four movements are extremely fast): the double-stroked writing, even at a very quiet dynamic, pushes the music forward nervously, and out of this ominous rustle leaps the dotted figure that will be a part of so much of this movement. A more flowing second subject nevertheless maintains the same dark cast, and after a long development this movement drives to its close on a Presto coda.

The second movement, marked Allegro assai, is in ABA form: the driving outer sections keep the dotted rhythm of the opening movement, while the trio rocks along more gently. The Adagio, the only movement not in a minor key, is built on the first violin‘s lyric opening idea. The music rises to a somewhat frantic climax full of dotted rhythms before subsiding to close peacefully. The finale, marked Allegro molto, pushes ahead on the vigor of its syncopated rhythms, which are set off by quick exchanges between groups of instruments. As in the first movement, there is more relaxed secondary material, but the principal impression here is of nervous energy, and at the close the music hurtles along triplet rhythms to an almost superheated close in which the F-minor tonality is affirmed with vengeance. It is not a conclusion that brings much relief, and it speaks directly from the agonized consciousness of its creator.

Concerto for Violin, Piano and Strings in D Minor
FELIX MENDELSSOHN

Like Mozart, Mendelssohn was a miracle of musical precocity from childhood onward. The son of an immensely cultivated family (his grandfather was the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn), he made his piano debut at age 9, had his works performed when he was 10, and at age 12 became a friend of Goethe, sixty years his senior. By the early 1820s, the boy –already a prolific composer – was confident enough of his music that he began to publish it.

Just before he began to give his music opus numbers, however, Mendelssohn completed a number of works for orchestra, including twelve symphonies for strings, a violin concerto and two concertos for two pianos. Also from these final years of apprenticeship comes the Concerto for Violin and Piano with string orchestra, which Mendelssohn completed on May 6, 1823, three months after his fourteenth birthday. The idea of a concerto featuring violin and piano as solo instruments was unusual, though not unknown. The lyric, sustained sound of the violin and the percussive sound of the piano are difficult to combine in a concerto, which may help explain why this particular combination is so rare: Mozart had begun such a concerto, though he gave it up; Beethoven‘s Triple Concerto features piano, violin and cello.

Mendelssohn‘s Concerto for Violin and Piano offers graceful, accomplished writing for both instruments – the young composer wrote the piano part for himself, the violin part for his friend Eduard Rietz. In the opening Allegro, a long orchestral introduction gives way to a brilliant, leaping entrance by the piano, followed quickly by the violin. This sets a pattern that continues throughout the concerto: the piano takes the lead, the violin follows and both share the development. A gentle, tuneful Adagio is followed by a vigorous Allegro molto, which opens with a brilliant passage for piano. Though the thematic material of this concerto may not be particularly distinctive, the music remains amiable, accomplished and pleasing throughout, an astonishing achievement by a 14-year-old. And, in the brilliance of the final movement, it looks ahead to the music of the mature Mendelssohn.