Program Notes: Randall Goosby Plays Mozart

JULIA PERRY  
A Short Piece for Orchestra 
BORN: March 25, 1924 
DIED: April 24, 1979 
WORK COMPOSED: 1952 
WORLD PREMIERE: 1952 with the Turin Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dean Dixon. 

What to Listen For:

• The call-and-response creates tension and releases it, helping to propel the work forward.

Julia Perry made music her professional focus and creative core. As an undergraduate at Westminster Choir College, she studied composition, conducting, voice, violin and piano. She graduated in 1947 and completed her master’s degree one year later. In 1950, while taking courses through Juilliard’s Extension Division and rooming at the International House in New York (a private nonprofit residence for postgraduate students and research scholars), she met Piero Bellugi; the young conductor was a former student of composer Luigi Dallapiccola and fellow border at the International House. They bonded immediately, and Bellugi wrote his former teacher, encouraging him to accept his new friend as a student. Perry studied with Dallapiccola at Tanglewood that summer and boarded a steamer to Europe that fall, eager to continue her growth as a composer.    

Throughout the decade, Perry split her time between the United States, Siena, Salzburg and Fountainebleau, studying with Dallapiccola and Nadia Boulanger. She secured the first of two residencies at the MacDowell Colony; snapped up a second Guggenheim Fellowship; and garnered critical reception for her works. A Short Piece for Orchestra emerged in this productive period. It was composed in 1952 and premiered by Dean Dixon and the Turin Symphony Orchestra that same year. The U.S. premiere with Thomas Scherman and the Little Orchestra Society would come three years later. It was recorded by the Imperial Philharmonic of Tokyo under William Strickland in 1961, and programmed by the Pittsburgh Symphony on their 1964 State Department Tour and the New York Philharmonic in 1965, both with William Steinberg. (Note: several online sources state that the New York Philharmonic performance of 1965 was also recorded, which this author has been unable to verify via the Philharmonic’s archives or contemporaneous reviews.)  

Unlike her works from her early and late periods, which featured African American harmonic material and programmatic titles, A Short Piece for Orchestra is squarely within Perry’s serialist period, foregoing consonant harmonic progressions for pitch cell sets, but not at the expense of rich lyricism and development of short theme. The piece begins with a pointed motive in the brass, answered by harried passages in the strings. Perry drives work through use of ascending and descending pitches; call and response between orchestral sections; and layering of two independent lines to create a clear, energized texture. The result is a brief and arresting work of a composer entering a new era of their artistic voice.  

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART 
Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216 
BORN: January 27, 1756, in Salzburg, Austria 
DIED: December 5, 1791, Mozart death house, Vienna, Austria 
WORK COMPOSED: 1775 
NOTABLE SEATTLE SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE: January 23–25, 2008, in four Community Concerts presented at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center and Seattle City Hall, with Carolyn Kuan conducting and Dr. Quinton Morris (founder and executive director of the Key to Change Studio) on violin. 

What to Listen For:

• The contrasts created in the shift from major to minor modes.

There are many canonical pieces with nicknames bestowed in hindsight (e.g., Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata). But there is the less well-known phenomenon, where a composer gives a piece a nickname and it doesn’t stick. Such is the case with Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216. The 19-year-old described his in-progress concerto as “Straßburg-Concert,” a moniker nowhere to be found in discussion, instruction, or labeling of the work on concert programs or published editions.  

But there are thousands of performances, many editions and likely hundreds of recordings of this work. It is not only one of Mozart’s most popular violin concertos, but one of the most popular violin concertos ever composed. His Third Concerto is a bright, optimistic work; a reflection of the standard technique of Mozart’s time — and his desire to push that standard into more electric places.  

In the Allegro, the relationship between orchestra and soloist is collaborative rather than supportive. And the solo part broadens the violin’s expressive capabilities, with phrasing lengths that connect and meld rather than gasp and release. The relationship between soloist and orchestra shifts to supportive in the Adagio, allowing the violin to take the melody and develop it. The Rondeau: Allegro, like many third movements of concertos, is set in rondo form, with a dance-like character and a hint of maturity. Two brief contrasting interludes, one in G-minor, the other in G-major, bring the drifting attention of the audience back into the fold before Mozart takes the soloist and orchestra into the familiar thematic soundscape at the start of the movement, culminating in a satisfying end. 

This performance marks Randall Goosby’s Seattle Symphony debut. In an era when technical virtuosity sometimes overshadows expressive depth, Goosby is a reminder that the former should always be in service of the latter. Whether leaning into the grit of a standard like Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, bringing depth and nuance to an emerging standard like Price’s First Violin Concerto or swinging in a duo by Xavier Foley, Goosby’s playing is vibrant, purposeful and beautifully timed. He’s also a young artist dedicated to making new music as integral to his artistry as the canonical. 

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH 
Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 70 
BORN: September 25, 1906, in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire 
DIED: August 9, 1975, in Moscow, Soviet Union 
WORK COMPOSED: 1945 
WORLD PREMIERE: November 3, 1945, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky. 

What to Listen For:

• "Mozartian" features such as clear textures, balanced phrases, and both light and pointed articulation.

It can be daring, announcing the details of a work before the work is completed. Especially if you’re a composer like Dmitri Shostakovich, living in Stalinist Russia and familiar with state-sanctioned censorship that could easily slide into imprisonment and execution. Ever since Stalin’s public denouncement of his opera Lady Macbeth, Shostakovich walked a fine line between creative individuality and state expectation.  

He (literally) saved himself with the Symphony No. 5 in 1937; his Symphony No. 7 (1942) was performed and broadcast amid the Nazi siege of Leningrad; and his Symphony No. 8 (1943) was, in his words, a reflection of his “elevated creative mood, influenced by the joyful news of the Red Army’s victories.” The Ninth Symphony would continue this patriotic sardonicism. Shostakovich made this clear in several interviews and a deposition. Words like “victory,” “honor” and “greatness” carry the weight of expectation, of a work of magnificence and solemnity, of national pride and militaristic respect.  

Not quite the words that leap to mind when you hear the Symphony No. 9 in E-flat major, Op. 70. A work less than 30 minutes long. A work where the cutting, grotesque humor that we have come to expect from Shostakovich rings clear. It’s hard to say why there was such a disconnect between what was promised and what was delivered. One possibility is that Shostakovich began then set aside his Ninth Symphony during World War II, finally completing it several months after the Nazi’s defeat. The homage to the Red Army’s bravery was now supplanted with the thrill of war’s end. Composer Gavriil Popov certainly heard the optimism, stating: “Transparent. Much light and air. Marvelous tutti, fine themes (the main theme of the first movement — Mozart!). Almost literally Mozart. But, of course, everything very individual, Shostakovichian ... The finale is splendid in its joie de vivre, gaiety, brilliance, and pungency!” 

Another possibility is that Shostakovich purposefully told the press one thing and wrote another. That this work is a biting critique in the vein of his Fifth Symphony, the sarcasm and disdain just barely contained by an opaque seal.  

You hear it in the opening theme of the Allegro, impish and prickly, leading to a second, equally cheeky theme in piccolo. The Moderato begins with a languid and solemn theme in solo clarinet, followed by a creeping motive in the strings. The third movement Presto is the closest Shostakovich gets to unabashed whimsy. The tonality is more consonant, the triple meter solidifying its scherzo character. A robust brass chorale sets the tone for the Largo, with solo bassoon pushed into a high, painful range that makes it sound like a saxophone at times. The Allegretto is a return to the prickliness of the first movement, but with a newfound disregard. The texture remains clear, but Shostakovich’s distinctive use of quarter and eighth notes as well as slurring across measures enhance the instability. The building to the brass’ statement of the theme is less triumphant than uncomfortable. With the return to the main theme, the tempo increases, the music growing more frenzied, shifting into an antiphonal texture before ending mid-sentence.  

All notes by A. Kori Hill © 2023