Program Notes: Joshua Bell Plays The Elements

KEVIN PUTS, EDGAR MEYER, JENNIFER HIGDON, JAKE HEGGIE, JESSIE MONTGOMERY  
The Elements Suite for Violin and Orchestra 
BORN: 1972 (Puts), 1960 (Meyer), 1962 (Higdon), 1961 (Heggie), 1981 (Montgomery)  
WORK COMPOSED: 2023 
WORLD PREMIERE: September 1, 2023, in Hamburg with the NDR Elbphilharmonie conducted by Alan Gilbert.  

What to Listen For:  

• The different styles of lyricism and orchestral color between each composer and the seamless way their different voices contribute to a cohesive whole.   

The different styles of lyricism and orchestral color between each composer and the seamless way their different voices contribute to a cohesive whole.   

For violin virtuoso Joshua Bell, the idea of a new concerto based on the elements began to take shape early in the pandemic. He had long dreamed of commissioning a work that would connect listeners with nature, much like Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons and Holst’s vast orchestral tour de force, The Planets. When considering the ancient elements of earth, air, fire and water, he decided to include a fifth element, space, seeing it as an integral component of our environment. Bell chose five American composers, one for each element, and invited them to write a work that could be performed as a stand-alone piece but that would also serve as part of a cohesive suite showcasing all the elements.

The Elements begins and ends with Earth by Kevin Puts, a Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy Award-winning composer. His triple concerto, Contact, written for the group Time for Three, caught the attention of Bell, who was blown away by the work. Puts writes that his movement “begins on solid ground, with a repeating four-note ostinato over which the solo violin and the orchestra violins trade lyrical phrases. The opening idea was drawn from my Violin Concerto (2006) but takes a different journey here, eventually ‘taking flight’ for a brief period … Beyond the fundamental sense of stability and endurance the element earth suggested to me, I hope the music also conveys a more spiritual reverence for the planet Earth itself and, in some minute way, might inspire its protection.” 

Double bassist and composer Edgar Meyer is a prolific artist whose work defies any one genre. His many recordings feature classical, bluegrass, jazz and original music, and his latest release, As We Speak, won two Grammys this year for Best Contemporary Album and Global Music Performance. He described his inspiration for the second movement, Water, as dealing with “a gentler side of water and a more forceful side. Music early in the movement is non-specific and maybe evocative of a gentle rain. The music later in the movement comes from a specific vision. I thought of being a particle of water in a high South American waterfall, hurled in seconds down into the swirling silt and sludge at the bottom, and onward from there.” 

Jake Heggie, who contributed the third movement, Fire, has composed nine operas and hundreds of songs. He is best known for his work Dead Man Walking (2000), which is the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years and was most recently the opening production for the current season of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.  

The opening of Fire begins with a spark. In his notes for the work, he writes that early in the music, “something possibly beautiful and essential emerges, fascinating and elusive. We cannot hold fire, but it can consume us. It is essential for life but can also be the cause of immense destruction. And then, miraculously, for rebirth.” The work is inflected with hints of folk music and a whirling dance that builds toward a blazing eruption.  

Jennifer Higdon is one of America’s most frequently performed living composers. She received a Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for her Violin Concerto and has won three Grammys. She also stands out as an entrepreneur for establishing her own publishing company that distributes her music around the world. She wrote the following about her movement and the element that surrounds everything, Air: “It feeds our bodies (in our first breath as we enter the world) and the plants and the oceans; we feel it with every change of season. It is also the sigh that we make when listening to the beautiful tone of Joshua Bell. Knowing that this movement would likely be in the middle of all these other dramatic elements with high energy and swirling notes, this moment is a calm spot, a space for breathing and quiet reflection.” 

Space, the fifth element, went to composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery, who won a Grammy this year for her piece Rounds for piano and string orchestra, and is currently the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer in Residence. She writes that it is no small feat to musically convey space, the element that “encompasses all of the elements, all of the planets, and all the matter of the universe.” In her work, the violin leads the listener inward, “into their own imagination of the universe, and outward, into the very depths of outer space.”  

Montgomery’s Space flows seamlessly into the Earth - Reprise and Finale by Puts. The ostinato that opened the work returns with a sense of transformation that comes from experiencing the varied perspectives of each element. The work concludes with a vigorous coda that sweeps the orchestra and soloist into an exhilarating final burst of energy.  

JOHANNES BRAHMS  
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 
BORN: May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany 
DIED: April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria 
WORK COMPOSED: Summer of 1877 
WORLD PREMIERE: December 30, 1877, with Hans Richter conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. 

What to Listen For:  

• Brahms’s Second Symphony is the sunniest of his four symphonies, full of lyricism, charm and joy.  

• The entire work is unified and structured around a highly concentrated use of musical ideas. The shape of its opening three-note motif appears in various iterations throughout the four movements.  

When it came to composing a symphony, Johannes Brahms felt the overwhelming expectations of those who came before him, most notably, Ludwig van Beethoven. He once exclaimed to a friend, “I’ll never write a symphony! You have no idea what it’s like to hear the footsteps of a giant like that behind you.” Brahms took 20 years to complete his First Symphony, which received a warm reception at its premiere, greatly easing the burden of Beethoven’s towering shadow and giving Brahms confidence to further explore the form.  

In striking contrast, his Second Symphony was completed over the course of one summer, less than a year after finishing his First Symphony. Brahms often spent the summer months in Alpine retreats, using the time away from his busy concert schedule for composing. In 1877, he traveled to the town of Pörtschach am Wörthersee, on Lake Wörth, a place “so abundant with melodies,” he wrote to a friend, that you had to be “careful not to step on one.” Brahms was clearly at peace and happy in his summer idyll and the Second Symphony reflects this spirit in its joyful expansiveness. Brahms enjoyed teasing his friends and wrote on more than one occasion of his new symphony’s sad, bleak nature. Yet when his close friend Theodor Billroth first heard it, he stated that “it is all blue sky, babbling of streams, sunshine and cool green shade.”  

The symphony opens serenely with a three-note motif in the cellos and basses. The horns gently impose a pastoral mood complete with the distant thunder of a soft drum roll in the timpani. The strings follow with a lyrical melody that is passed to the flutes as it builds in energy. The first three notes of the movement, a subtle back-and-forth motion, form the musical germ for the entire symphony, with ideas from each movement sharing the same simple pattern. A soaring theme in the cellos and violas provides an arresting moment of beauty in a movement already packed with graceful elegance.  

The second movement begins with a peaceful and yearning melody that again features the cellos. A sense of melancholy that was only hinted at in the previous movement is more present here in the subtle instability of the rhythmic and harmonic phrases. Swirling strings bring about a more turbulent middle section before the opening melody is recalled gently in the violins and oboe.  

A breezy dance in triple meter opens the third movement, with the oboes providing a rustic quality to the atmosphere. The first quicker trio section is a flurry of activity with off-kilter accents in duple time. After a return to the lilting mood of the opening, a second trio section erupts with more scurrying strings and tripping accents. The theme returns and wanders through a shifting, chromatic landscape before sweetly resolving.  

The finale starts in a dramatic hush of barely contained energy that soon bursts out joyfully. A rich melody in the low register of the violins introduces a second theme, which grows to include the entire orchestra. Syncopated rhythms and more off-beat accents create an irresistible drive toward the finish, and the magnificent entrance of the trombones adds a richness to the exuberant conclusion.  

All notes by Catherine Case © 2024