Program Notes: Richard Egarr Plays and Conducts

From 1723 to his death in 1750, Johann Sebastian Bach was employed by the city of Leipzig and provided music for four of the city’s churches, an appointment that led him to compose hundreds of cantatas and his famous Mass in B minor. Shortly after his arrival in Leipzig, Bach had the opportunity to take over as director of the Collegium Musicum, an ensemble of university students who gathered at Zimmerman’s Coffeehouse for weekly concerts. The city’s vibrant café culture proved an ideal match for these events and gave Bach a chance to compose orchestral suites, concertos and secular cantatas, including the comic Coffee Cantata.  

Bach composed his seven keyboard concertos for the Collegium concerts, using earlier concerti written for violin or oboe and reworking them to fit the keyboard. The Keyboard Concerto No. 3 in D major, BWV 1054, was adapted from Bach’s Violin Concerto in E Major, BWV 1042, and scholars believe that either Bach or one of his sons would have performed the solo part. The outer movements are joyous and forthright while the second movement, in B minor, is a beautiful adagio featuring ornate embellishments in the keyboard.  

Henry Purcell lived only 36 years, dying of tuberculosis in 1695, yet his vast body of work is that of a genius. After serving as a choir boy at the Chapel Royal, where children received room and board along with extensive music training, he was appointed composer for the King’s Violins and then organist of the famed Westminster Abbey. Purcell worked during the height of England’s Restoration, when King Charles II, newly returned from exile, ensured that music and the arts flourished. Countless songs and anthems were written for royal court occasions and Purcell was cherished as the country’s greatest composer. After his death, he was given an elaborate funeral and buried next to the organ at Westminster Abbey. Fantasia in Three Parts Upon a Ground is an extraordinary example of a popular baroque compositional technique in which a series of variations play out over a recurring ostinato bass line. Over the course of 28 repetitions of the bass pattern, the three parts play variations full of counterpoint and canons ranging from virtuosic to languid.  

Johann Christian Bach was born in Leipzig in 1735, the 18th child and youngest son of J.S. Bach. After studying music with his father, he moved to Berlin and later to Italy, where he learned to compose operas. His success in Italy led to an invitation to London to write operas for the King’s Theatre. He stayed in England for the remainder of his life and became known as “the London Bach.” The Symphony in G minor, Op. 6, No. 6 was one of J.C. Bach’s most dramatic works, full of the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) style that was gaining popularity in artistic and literary circles. The turbulent music was part of a movement that prioritized passion and freedom of expression, and offered an alternative to the intellectual complexity of earlier baroque music that had been championed by J.S. Bach.   

Written in three movements, each one in a minor key, the symphony opens with an immediate sense of urgency. The sudden dynamic shifts and rustling strings infuse the air with a sustained tension throughout the movement. The second movement, in C minor, begins with an upward-reaching unison figure that is then developed over a slow, pulsing accompaniment. (In a nod to J.C. Bach’s enduring influence, the respective piano concertos in C minor by Mozart and Beethoven both begin with this same ascending figure.) The finale resumes the explosiveness of the opening movement, with dramatic leaps in the strings and accented horn calls. In a surprising conclusion, the storm falters abruptly and decays quickly into silence.  

The majority of Franz Joseph Haydn’s career was spent in the service of the wealthy Esterházy family, where he oversaw the court orchestra and composed numerous string quartets, operas and over 100 symphonies. Symphony No. 44 in E minor, “Trauersinfonie” was written in 1772 and is part of a group of works by Haydn widely known as the Sturm und Drang symphonies. Though this term came to light later — Haydn would not have recognized it himself — it is closely associated with his minor-key symphonies and the tumultuous, probing nature of their themes. The “Trauersinfonie,” or Mourning Symphony, was likely given its nickname by the composer himself, who reportedly requested the slow movement be played at his funeral.  

The nervousness of the Sturm und Drang style is apparent in the first movement’s striking dynamics and rushing notes. The Minuet is a strict canon, with the lower strings following one bar behind the upper strings. The tender Adagio offers a moment of reflection before the finale returns to the anxious energy of the opening.  

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his Symphony No. 33 B-flat major in 1779 after returning to his Salzburg home following a year of travel to Mannheim, Munich and Paris. He had been dissatisfied with his post as a court musician in Salzburg and was eager to find a more lucrative job abroad. Though the tour yielded great compositions, it did not end in a new post and was instead marked by tragedy when his mother, who was traveling with him, fell ill and died in Paris.  

Considering his distress during this time, Mozart’s Symphony No. 33 is surprisingly playful and light. Its small orchestration, which leaves out trumpets and timpani, and the independence of woodwind parts gives this work a feeling of intimacy more often found in chamber music settings. The symphony originally contained only three movements, but when Mozart presented it again several years later in Vienna, he added the upbeat Menuetto to appease the Viennese audiences who were accustomed to a four-movement symphony. The work is replete with motific ideas. The four-note theme found at the midpoint of the first movement features the exact notes Mozart would later use as the main theme for the last movement of his great “Jupiter” Symphony.   

 Catherine Case © 2023