Program Notes: Mendelssohn Violin Concerto

SALINA FISHER 
Tupaia 
BORN: October 6, 1993, in Christchurch, New Zealand 
WORK COMPOSED: 2018 
WORLD PREMIERE: April 19, 2018, in Hamilton, New Zealand 

What to Listen For: 

• Along with standard timpani, the score calls for an array of colorful percussion instruments, including tam-tam, glockenspiel, tom-tom drums, crotales, marimba and vibraphone. 

• Plunger mutes — the same rubber attachment used on clogged sinks — create a wah-wah effect in the trumpets and trombones. 

Tupaia eponymously honors the great Tahitian explorer. As a navigator and translator, Tupaia (ca. 1725–1770) facilitated contact between the Māori and Captain James Cook, who circumnavigated New Zealand. Steeped in the Polynesian tradition of wayfinding, Tupaia aided Cook by drawing a map of Tahiti and 74 islands within sailing distance. With no charts or a sextant, Tupaia mapped a region of the Pacific Ocean approximately the size of the continental United States. 

Of Tupaia’s map and the composition, Salina Fisher writes, “This fascinating record of cultural and navigational interaction inspired my compositional process, particularly in terms of the concept of notation as mapping or transcription of space.” The New Zealand-based composer adds that her work “also draws inspiration from the idea of celestial navigation: the constant and gradual shift in perspective necessary to perceive the ‘rise and fall’ of stars, and ultimately to move forward.” 

Tupaia begins with the approaching rumble of a bass drum and agitated bowing by the cellos and double basses. Rather than mimic ocean waves or the clockwork orbits of the sun, moon and other astronomical bodies, Fisher depicts sea and sky as a single protean expanse, boundless and unknown. A forlorn, almost fearful melody by a lone viola (and later taken up by a violin) floats through tremolo (Italian for “trembling”) figures by the bass clarinet, alto flute, harp and other instruments all swaying at different speeds. 

While the music accumulates and swells, we can discern eddying whorls of strings and brass. A flotilla of percussion hints at far off squalls and a bewilderingly crowded canopy of stars. The massive wave-like crescendo subsides, leaving spangles of sound in its wake. Jingling tree chimes — small hollow metallic tubes suspended on a horizontal frame — and solos by an alto flute and viola express relief and wonder at a placid, limitless horizon. 

FELIX MENDELSSOHN 
Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 
BORN: February 3, 1809, in Hamburg, Germany 
DIED: November 4, 1847, in Leipzig, Germany 
WORK COMPOSED: 1844 
WORLD PREMIERE: March 13, 1845, in Leipzig, Germany 

What to Listen For: 

• A sustained note B played by a solo bassoon connects the first and second movement without pause. 

• The soloist plays double and fearsomely difficult triple stops (two and three notes at once) throughout the work. 

In a letter to the German poet Goethe, Mendelssohn’s teacher wrote “I cannot get over my astonishment at the enormous strides which this boy of 15 makes. Novelty, beauty, individuality, originality, all alike are to be found in him...” Unlike most musical prodigies, Mendelssohn continued to compose works teeming with those traits well into adulthood, including the Violin Concerto in E minor.  

Starting with a novel, fleeting, one-measure (four beats!) introduction, the soloist enters with a sweetly gallant melody that accelerates towards the first of many virtuosic passages. The orchestra echoes this opening theme followed by a charming tranquillo (“calm” or “tranquil”) bridge, a short section that facilitates a transition and imbues tension. For a moment, the soloist unexpectedly becomes an accompanist: A low G on the violin undergirds flutes and clarinets thrumming the second theme of the Allegro molto appassionato. 

After an animated transition, the violinist tackles the cadenza, a beautiful bravura solo passage intended to challenge the performer’s skill and finesse. The opening and second themes are reprised, concluding with a strutting Presto; tuttis from the orchestra energize the soloist, who replies with vaulting, stratospheric phrases. 

A lingering note on the bassoon leaks into the introspective Andante. Tinged with sadness, the solo violin drifts along with the strings in a reverie. The combination of bowed and plucked notes — Mendelssohn needlessly worried it might “bring about a confused effect” — leads to a subdued episode highlighted by sorrowful string figurations and the return of the second (then the first) theme from the first movement. 

Ill-timed applause irritated Mendelssohn, so he prefaced the Allegro molto vivace (“fast, full of life”) with another bridge, perhaps to gently disorient our expectation of an ending. Brief timpani rolls and a compact brass fanfare introduce a new, fleet-footed theme in the solo violin. A nimble call and response ensues until the entire orchestra proclaims the new theme, an extension of the brass fanfare. Soloist and orchestra playfully race to the finale, enlivening earlier themes with ebullient — and uniquely Mendelssohnian — high spirits. 

RICHARD STRAUSS 
Aus Italien, TrV 147, Op. 16 
BORN: June 11, 1864, in Munich, Germany 
DIED: September 8, 1949, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany 
WORK COMPOSED: 1886 
WORLD PREMIERE: March 2, 1887, in Munich, Germany 

What to Listen For: 

• Arpeggios — a chord in which individual notes are struck one by one, rather than all at once — on the harp accompany a serene, bucolic melody in the central section of Auf der Campagna. 

• Hushed, almost guttural drones by the bassoons, contrabassoon and horns in In Roms Ruinen demonstrate Strauss’s penchant for unusual timbres. 

After dashing off two youthful symphonies, a violin concerto and sheaves of chamber music, Strauss found his artistic voice in Aus Italien (“From Italy”) — in part thanks to blunt words from Johannes Brahms. On April 2, 1886, the 21-year-old prodigy co-conducted a concert with Brahms, who persuaded him to visit Italy “straight away” instead of “wasting time” in Berlin. Strauss hurried off to Italy two weeks later. 

Following the footsteps (and some of the same roads) of his idol, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Strauss journeyed to Rome, Naples and Sorrento while transcribing the passages that appeared in his mind’s ear. Upon returning home in late May, the composer spent the next five months working on Aus Italien. The score was published as a “symphonic fantasy,” but long and distinctive (and sometimes deliriously fun) movements serve up four tone poems packed into a symphony-sized work. 

Auf der Campagna (“In the Country”) opens with a musical dawn and bucolic air, which, according to Strauss, captures his mood “at the sight of the Roman Campagna bathed in sunlight.” Distant horn calls and responses by the winds, especially flutes and piccolo, converge into a grand proclamation. The opening air reappears and returns to the radiant procession of harmonies heard at the outset. 

Strauss gave In Roms Ruinen (“Amid the Ruins of Rome”) a subtitle that today reads like a prompt for AI-generated art: “Fantastic images of vanished glory, feelings of melancholy and grief amid the brilliant sunshine of the present.” Trumpets announce a sauntering theme, which occurred to Strauss while touring the Baths of Caracalla. After melodic development and a change in mood, the violins lead the second main theme, a wistful phrase extended by Strauss into an elegy. Adhering (mostly) to the sonata form of a typical first movement in a symphony, In Roms Ruinen concludes with a vigorous recapitulation of the main themes. 

The lustrous harp chords and shimmering strings of Am Strande von Sorrent (“On the Beach at Sorrento”) foreshadow the rhythmic suppleness and rich orchestration of Strauss’s Don Juan (1889) and his famed tone poems of the 1890s. Triplets (three notes in the time of two) and sextuplets help the music pulsate and flow freely from one moment to the next. Trilling violins, violas, flutes and clarinets evoke birdsong. Later, what the composer described as “a solitary song on the beach” is heard from the oboe amid rushing currents of strings and bassoons. 

After a momentary yet nonetheless dizzying preamble, the finale, Neapolitanisches Volksleben (“Neapolitan Life”), launches into a bouncy tune by the strings and snare drum. Marked in the score as a “Neapolitan Folksong,” what we actually hear is a slightly altered melody of “Funiculì Funiculà” (“Funicular Up, Funicular Down”) by Giuseppe Turco and Luigi Denza. 

Strauss unwittingly assumed he had picked up a venerable strain sung by generations of peasants — not a calculating, copyrighted hit written in 1880 to cash in on the inaugural transport system at Mount Vesuvius. At early performances of Aus Italien critics and audiences found the symphonic treatment of such an obviously frivolous ditty to be offensive or in poor taste. Impervious to criticism, Strauss did not care; he wrote to his uncle after the premiere and reported sharp hissing from the audience, which he declared was “great fun.” 

Abiding by Goethe’s maxim “Find nothing uninteresting,” Strauss places “Funiculì Funiculà” at the head of a parade of kaleidoscopic variations. Setting aside the programmatic intent of Neapolitanisches Volksleben, the composer then reiterates themes from previous movements in a bold — and thrilling — bid for symphonic unity. Reflecting on his struggle to hone and perfect Aus Italien and his subsequent tone poems, Strauss insisted, “New ideas must seek new forms for themselves.” 

All notes by Christopher DeLaurenti © 2023