Program Notes: Conrad Tao Mozart Piano Concerto No. 24

By Tristan McKay

Dumbarton Oaks is a historic estate in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C., acquired in 1920 by American diplomat Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss. The Blisses renovated and enlarged the residence, and expanded the grounds to 54 acres of gardens, terraces and wilderness, which they named Dumbarton Oaks in 1933. As art collectors and patrons of the arts, the Blisses created a research institute to house their collection, which is today maintained by Harvard University, Robert Bliss’ alma mater. For their 30th wedding anniversary, Mildred Bliss commissioned Igor Stravinsky to compose a concerto in the tradition of Bach’s Brandenburg concertos, which became the Concerto in E-flat, Dumbarton Oaks (1937–1938).  

An icon of 20th-century classical music, Stravinsky composed masterpieces across three diverse periods: Russian, Neoclassical and Serial. Dumbarton Oaks was composed in the middle of Stravinsky’s Neoclassical period, in which he embraced classical values such as economy, clarity and emotional restraint. Performed without pause, the three movements of Dumbarton Oaks juxtapose these classical elements with Stravinsky’s modern palate. The Tempo Giusto springs forth with syncopated, open intervals and an irresistible forward momentum. A close listen reveals the quoted opening theme of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. The Allegretto is more pointillistic, with short motives passed around the orchestra atop the jaunty bassoon. The Con moto features charming exchanges between firmly chugging strings as well as more melodic episodes in the horns and woodwinds.  

Henry Purcell, perhaps best known for his chamber opera Dido and Aeneas (1688), is an emblem of the English Baroque period. He had a profound influence on contemporaries such as John Blow in addition to composers of the English musical renaissance of the 20th century, including Benjamin Britten. Purcell’s Fantasia for Strings in F Major, Z. 737 is one of 15 fantasias for viols dated from June to August 1680, on the cusp of his explosive output of theatrical music in the decade ahead. At the heart of this four-minute work is Purcell’s luscious counterpoint, in which multiple melodic lines are interleaved across the ensemble. An underlying melancholy pervades this work, subtly transforming with each contrapuntal twist and turn.  

Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith composed Orient Point (2016) with a specific location in mind: the easternmost tip of Long Island in New York, where there’s a village of the same name. An amalgam of farmland and marshes, inlets and coves, the view from Orient Point is one of sea and sky. With an impressionistic eye, Smith captures the ethereal nature of water, air and light as waves of sustained pitches flow across the string ensemble. The occasional rhythmic motive surfaces, bobbing along the shimmering surface of resonance before receding once again. For all its beauty, there is an uneasiness to Orient Point that belies its glassy surface. 

In his 1965 essay “The Anxiety of Art,” American maverick Morton Feldman articulated his interest in the resonance that follows a sound over the typical attack, or initiation of the sound. “The attack of a sound is not its character … Decay, however, this departing landscape, this expresses where the sound exists in our hearing — leaving us rather than coming toward us.” Feldman explored various aspects of this “departing landscape” of sound across his career, and The Viola in My Life III is no exception.  

Composed between 1970–1971 for American violist Karen Phillips, The Viola in My Life is a quartet of individual works that pair the viola with small and large ensembles; the third installment, performed in this program, is an intimate duo for viola and piano. Although Feldman experimented with open notations during his career, in which some aspects of sound are suggested rather than dictated, but he returned to using conventional notation for these works. The Viola in My Life III’s soundscape is intentionally rather flat, with the pianist playing soft chords over which the violist quietly soars with small crescendi. However, a deeper listen reveals harmonies that glisten with delicate, muted colors, and a musical perspective granted by the viola that Feldman likens to “a bird trying to soar in a confined landscape.” 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491 during a particularly productive time in his life. Composed over the winter of 1785–1786, the concerto was the final of three written in rapid succession and was completed just before the premiere of his comic opera, The Marriage of Figaro, in May of 1786. Hailed by musicologist Arthur Hutchings as Mozart’s greatest piano concerto and by Johannes Brahms as a “masterpiece of art and full of inspired ideas,” the work has several unique features that set it apart: it is one of the composer’s two minor-key concerti (and one of his few minor key works overall), it features an enormously colorful timbral palette with the largest array of instruments of any of his concerti and, finally, it has a solo part that is incomplete, suggesting that Mozart improvised large sections when performing the work. 

Mozart’s imaginative artistry shines through in the opening Allegro movement. Set in 3/4 meter, an uncommon choice for an opening concerto movement, it is also the longest and most formally complex movement he had written so far. The orchestra begins with a winding unison theme that unusually utilizes all 12 pitches of the chromatic scale by the 13th measure. When the piano first appears, after a lengthy orchestral introduction, it does not enter with the typical restated thematic material, but with completely new material. Although Mozart did not write a cadenza for the movement, other composers took a crack at writing the virtuosic solo, including Brahms, Busoni, Schnittke and Fauré.  

The second movement, Larghetto, is set in the relative major key of Eb-major and in stark contrast to the first movement, begins with a quaint and unadorned theme. Set in rondo form, the theme returns several times throughout the movement with a variety of rhythmic alterations. For the third and final movement, Allegretto, we return to the key of C-minor for a theme and variations. The theme, first played by the orchestra, has a stately and serious tone to it that is playfully altered across the eight variations that follow. Following a showy cadenza, the pianist begins the final variation solo with the orchestra soon rejoining for the work’s harmonically adventurous final phrases.