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To The PointJENNIFER HIGDONb. Brooklyn, New York, 31 December, 1962

Written as a string quartet in 2003 as a commission by the Cypress String Quartet as part of their Call & Response series. Premiered in the orchestral version by the Brooklyn Philharmonic on March 15, 2004. (Approx. 4 minutes)

Jennifer Higdon is one of America’s most acclaimed and most frequently performed living composers. She is a major figure in contemporary Classical music, receiving the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, a 2010 Grammy for her Percussion Concerto and a 2018 Grammy for her Viola Concerto. Most recently, Higdon received the Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University which is given to contemporary classical composers of exceptional achievement who have significantly influenced the field of composition. Higdon enjoys several hundred performances a year of her works, and blue cathedral is one of today’s most performed contemporary orchestral works, with more than 600 performances worldwide. Her works have been recorded on more than sixty CDs. Higdon’s first opera, Cold Mountain, won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere and the opera recording was nominated for 2 Grammy awards. Dr. Higdon holds the Rock Chair in Composition at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

“To The Point” is a work derived from Jennifer Higdon’s 4th string quartet, “Impressions.” That work was commissioned to be a compositional response to the Debussy and Ravel string quartets. This particular movement is a response to their second movements, which both imitate the Gamelan heard by the

composers at the 1889 World Exposition in Paris. This movement uses extensive pizzicato and other string colorings (as a reflection of the Gamelan ensemble’s colorful percussion instruments). Each instrument has its own theme (as would a Gamelan instrumentalist) and there is no development of those themes (following Debussy and Ravel’s lead). In addition, the word “point” in the title refers to the pointillistic technique in Impressionist painting (from the composers’ time period).(C) Jennifer HigdonFor more information: www.jenniferhigdon.com

Sinfonia ConcertanteWOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZARTb. Salzburg, 27 January, 1756d. Vienna, 5 December, 1791

Written in Salzburg in early 1779. (Approx. 30 minutes)

As a young child, Mozart had made his mark as a violinist and keyboard player, touring Europe with his family and playing for the highest nobility his father could arrange. He wrote violin concertos for himself to play as a virtuosic teenager and had begun to write piano concertos for himself – a pursuit that would last into his maturity and leave us with a wealth of great piano concertos from throughout his life. But in 1778 Mozart journeyed to Paris where he was surrounded by the unique form of the sinfonia concertante, a hybrid form of a concerto/symphony in which multiple soloists are featured independent from the orchestra, with a more defined soloistic role than the Baroque concerto grosso form.

When Mozart returned to Salzburg, he tried his hand at several pieces in this new form, and the three

MAGNIFICENT MOZART PROGRAM NOTES By Erik Rohde © | Violin II, Illinois Symphony Orchestra | Music Director, Winona Symphony Orchestra | Director of Strings and Activities, Indiana State University

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examples that we have are each gems in their own right: a concerto for flute and harp, a concerto for two pianos, and the sinfonia concertante for violin and viola. While all three pieces are excellent, the sinfonia concertante is the most ground-breaking work. Writ-ten last of the three, it is the most self-assertive, as if Mozart is striking out with a new, improved musical voice. Certainly in his life, he was attempting to do so. After several successful tours through Europe, Mozart was chafing against his court appointment that tied him to what he considered the back-water hovel of Salzburg, and he desired more than anything else to have a post in a major European city where he could support himself and be connected with the main-stream of culture and musical life. He would finally get the opportunity just two years later after getting himself literally kicked out by his employer, and, while he would write all of his mature masterworks in that time, would struggle financially the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, this piece represents a unique turning point in Mozart’s career as a performer. From a young age, Mozart had been a prodigious violinist. Taught by his father, whose pedagogical violin treatise is still in print today, he became famous as a teenager for his ability on the violin. It was, however, the viola that was Mozart’s true love in the string family. The rich, dark sonority was appealing to Mozart, and he often took advantage of this by writing two viola parts in the orchestra instead of just one, as he does in this piece. Of his string chamber music, it is the viola quintets which add a viola to the regular string quartet that are the most lush and wonderful. Mozart linked being

a violinist with his position in Salzburg (it was part of his required duties to play), so once he moved to Vienna in 1781, he actually gave up playing the violin altogether and would turn always to the viola when getting together with friends (including regular quartet partners Haydn, Dittersdorf, and Vanhal) to play chamber music.

So it is that in writing a major work for the shared soloists of violin and viola that Mozart found a truly personal voice. The viola part was almost certainly written for Mozart himself to play, and perhaps the violin part for his father. Mozart took special care with the viola part, not only is it technically demanding, but in order to help the viola to compete with the more brilliant, higher-pitched violin, Mozart wrote the viola part in a more sonorous D Major, with instructions for the soloist to simply tune up a half-step to E-flat, thereby creating a brighter effect.

The first movement is grand and noble, introducing the soloists with each taking stately turns through the melodic figures. The second movement, a rich C minor slow movement is both poignant and profound – unusual in that it is a minor slow movement in a major-key concerto. The final movement is a mischievous interplay between the two soloists, both parts virtuosic and again in high spirits. Pleasantly, this concerto is the only string concerto for which Mozart’s own cadenzas have survived, so what you will hear will be very much like what it would have sounded were Mozart himself here to perform – of course playing the viola part!

MAGNIFICENT MOZART PROGRAM NOTES continued ...By Erik Rohde © | Violin II, Illinois Symphony Orchestra | Music Director, Winona Symphony Orchestra | Director of Strings and Activities, Indiana State University

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Concerto in E-flat, “Dumbarton Oaks”IGOR STRAVINSKYb. Oranienbaum, a suburb of St. Petersburg, Russia, 17 June, 1882d. New York City, 6 April, 1971Premiered on May 8, 1938 in Dumbarton Oaks outside of Washington, D.C., Nadia Boulanger, conductor. (Approx. 15 minutes)

Igor Stravinsky was a composer of many styles and saw himself as an international artist. Having grown up in Russia, he became famous for his ballet scores written in the early 20th Century in Paris: Firebird, Petroushka, and The Rite of Spring. After splitting time in Russia and Switzerland, Stravinsky moved to France following World War I, eventually becoming a French citizen in the mid-1930s. In 1939, thanks to the outbreak of World War II, Stravinsky would sail to the United States, where he settled in Hollywood and became a naturalized US citizen in the 1940s. He would not return to Russia until a visit in 1962, after being away for almost 50 years from the country of his birth. He eventually would move to New York where he lived the last years of his life.

Just before moving to the United States, Stravinsky received a commission from Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes Bliss, named for their Dumbarton Oaks estate in honor of their 30th anniversary. At the time, Stravinsky was extremely interested in composing music modeled after music of the past, an era in his life called his neoclassical period. Because of this, and also impacted by financial constraints brought on by the wars, Stravinsky’s works were smaller in scope and orchestration from the lush, huge ballets of the early 20th Century. Specifically, the “Dumbarton Oaks” concerto was deeply indebted to the works of Bach, and modeled after Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. Stravinsky had

always been inspired by Bach – his Violin Concerto from six years earlier also bears many hallmarks of Bach inspiration (including a specific nod to the Bach Double Concerto), and he said he “played Bach very regularly during the composition of the (Dumbarton Oaks) concerto.” He went on to say:

I was greatly attracted to the Brandenburg Concertos. Whether or not the first theme of my first movement is a conscious borrowing from the third of the Brandenburg set, however, I do not know. What I can say is that Bach would most certainly have been delighted to loan it to me; to borrow in this way was exactly the sort of thing he liked to do.

While Stravinsky was clearly inspired by Bach, the music is distinctly in his own style. The small orchestra fairly bristles with bright, edgy energy, and the opening really does remind one of the third Brandenburg concerto. Dancing rhythms abound and the ensemble often seems to teeter on the edge of staying together as Stravinsky drops part of a beat every few measures to give the music a surprising, slightly askew sensation. In the opulent music room of the magnificent Federal-style mansion of Dumbarton Oaks, it must have sounded fresh, unexpected, and brilliant at the premiere.

Stravinsky uses each member of the ensemble as a soloist and everyone has their own part to play, just like in the third Brandenburg. The orchestration is vivid and virtuosic, opening and closing with two fast movements surrounding an aria-like slower second movement. The piece goes from beginning to end without pausing between movements, forming a cohesive arc that still sounds fresh eighty years after its composition. It is the mark of a great composer, rooting himself by being inspired by, and connected to the old music of Bach, yet remaining contemporary and new in his own time.