Rumanian Folk DancesBÉLA BARTÓK The folk music of Hungary and its adjoining neighbors was the soul of Béla Bartók’s creative voice throughout his career. Beginning in 1906 and usually in the com-pany of his fellow composer Zoltán Kodály, he annually roamed the countryside, painstakingly noting down or recording on a primitive Edison recording machine the melodies he heard the peasants sing. Like other Nationalist composers in other lands, Bartók believed that the future of a distinctive Hungarian music lay in recov-ering its authentic past before the modern world swept it away forever.

The town where Bartók was born lay on the border of Rumania, and in fact today it falls within Rumanian territory. And so the collection of Rumanian folk melodies became an early passion; eventually Bartók was to transcribe some 3500 authentic Rumanian folk tunes. In 1915 he took seven Rumanian fiddle tunes and arranged them as Rumanian Folk Dances for piano solo, then in 1917 transformed them into the version we hear tonight for small orchestra.

The suite comprises seven very brief dances: “Stick Dance,” “Sash Dance,” “In One Spot,” “Horn Dance,” “Rumanian Polka,” and two concluding Fast Dances. Played one after another without pause, they last just six minutes. Most are vivacious quick-tempo dances in duple or two-beat rhythm. But the fourth, “Horn Dance,” is in slow 3/4 time and features a haunting violin solo.

Dramatic individualsZANE MERRITTCurrently residing in Buffalo, New York, Dubuque native Zane Merritt is an active guitarist, improviser, and composer. After undergraduate studies with Amy Dunker and Jaime Guiscafre at Clarke College and master’s studies with Michael Schelle at Butler University, Zane is in the final year of his Ph.D. in music composition at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he studies with David Felder. His recent activities have included solo performances featuring his own music at Symphony Space in New York City and in Nagoya, Japan in 2013, as well as regular performances with the Buffalo-based new music group Wooden Cities, including a summer 2014 tour showcasing his cello and guitar duo The Reputation and his cello solo Hot Cola. His music has been played by many groups, among them the New York New Music Ensemble, Ensemble Son, and Ensemble Either/Or.

Zane explains the inspiration for his new Dramatic individuals, commissioned by the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra, as follows:

“The orchestra piece Dramatic individuals was inspired by my home town of Dubuque, Iowa. I feel Dubuque to be an ideal place in which to carve a truly unique sense of identity. It is a beautiful place with a landscape quite exceptional to its loca-tion in the country and with opportunities to see and do that don’t fall within the stereotypes of bucolic midwestern life. In the 22 years I spent in Dubuque, I have

BÉLA BARTÓK b. 1881, Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary, now Rumania; d. 1945, New York City

Program Notes7:30pm Saturday, November 15, 20142:00pm Sunday, Novemebr 16, 2014

Five Flags Theatre

WILLIAM INTRILIGATOR, Music Director & Conductor

ZANE MERRITT

b. 1985, Dubuque, Iowa

FRANZ LISZT

b. 1811, Raiding, Hungary; d. 1886, Bayreuth, Germany

met numerous individuals who would baffle those with prejudices toward midwest-ern life.

“Writing a piece using that inspiration then involved the interjection of a degree of conflict and tension (ten minutes of celebration can tend to get a little tedious), thus the ‘dramatic’ part of the title. Writing a piece about individuality for a composite instrument like the orchestra, which almost requires a degree of individualistic forfeiture, seems contradictory, so I used that element in the piece as well. There are moments when soloists stick out from the group and a section in which every player in the orchestra is playing different material.

“This could plausibly reflect communal dynamics: I find it a necessity that a commu-nity is comprised of a diversity of individualistic thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that do not infringe on the development of individual identities. An entirely homogeneous society is little more than a giant amoeba. Thankfully, Dubuque is the composite of many thoughts and feelings of many different people — a hub of humanity.”

Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat MajorFRANZ LISZTThough born to poor parents on one of the rural Esterházy (the princely family that employed Haydn) estates on the Austro-Hungarian border, Franz Liszt became the most cosmopolitan of all 19th-century musicians. The greatest pianist of his — and perhaps any — time, he was also an accomplished conductor and a daring composer who pushed the technique of piano playing and the elements of musical construc-tion beyond anything imagined before. It seemed that he knew and frequently aided virtually every important European composer active during his long lifespan, in-cluding Richard Wagner.

Surprisingly, Liszt did not create his concerto works until after he had retired from his dazzling career as a touring virtuoso. Settling in Weimar from 1848 to 1860, he devoted much of his time there to prolific composition. The First Piano Concerto dates from between 1848 and 1853 and was premiered in Weimar by Liszt in Febru-ary 1855, with his famous colleague Hector Berlioz on the podium.

The First Piano Concerto demonstrates Liszt’s ceaseless exploration of new sound colors both for the piano and the orchestra, with an emphasis on the heroic abili-ties of the pianist as technician and dramatist. In layout, it is four compact move-ments — dramatic opening, singing slow movement, pert scherzo, and energetic finale — stitched together without pause. Highlights to listen for include: the stormy opening theme in the strings with wind “ha-ha’s,” which forms the basis for the first movement and recurs as a motto theme later; the piano’s rhapsodic flights of fancy in response; the lovely lyrical theme for solo clarinet and piano; the beautiful slow movement with two bewitching themes, the first presented at length by the piano, the second by the flute and clarinet; a brief scherzo of sparkling fireflies, assisted by a busy triangle (early critics objected mightily to such prominence for an instru-ment not yet a full-fledged orchestral member); and the return of the opening motto theme. And the finale thriftily transforms the slow movement’s delicate themes into a forceful conclusion.

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK

b. 1841, Nelahozeves, Bohemia, now Czech Republic; d. 1904, Prague

Symphony No. 8ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK

Even after he had become an internationally famous composer, Antonín Dvorák remained close to his Bohemian roots — “a simple Czech musician” in his own words. The son of a small-town innkeeper and butcher and originally destined for a butcher’s career himself, he was little affected by his fame. When his composi-tions had earned him some financial security, he used his money not for a grand town house in Prague, but to purchase a small farm in rural Vysoká. Here he soaked up the beauties and rhythms of the Czech countryside during the summer months, raised pigeons, and composed much of his mature music, including the Eighth Symphony.

His mentor Brahms repeatedly urged him to move to Vienna, the capital of European music as well as of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but Dvorák refused. A proud patriot, he, like many Czechs, saw Austria as the oppressor of his small country. As he wrote to his Viennese publisher, Simrock: “Let us hope that nations who represent and possess art will never perish, even though they may be small. Forgive me for this, but I just wanted to tell you that an artist, too, has a father land in which he must have a firm faith and which he must love.”

Composed between August and November 1889 and premiered on February 2, 1890 under the composer’s baton in Prague, the Eighth Symphony reflects the world of Vysoká and of Czech folk song and dance. After his rather Germanic Seventh Symphony, Dvorák wrote that he wanted to create something “different from the other symphonies, with individual thoughts worked out in a new way.” In the Eighth’s first, second, and fourth movements, he used freer forms and a flexible mixing of major and minor modes to produce marvelous shadows and nuances in a fundamentally happy work. This is also the most melodious of his symphonies and wonderfully orchestrated, with the woodwind and string sections juxtaposed throughout as contrasting color families.

The first movement begins with a short introduction. Cellos, reinforced by clari-nets, bassoons, and horns, sing a gently melancholic theme in the minor. Then a piping birdsong flute motive launches the main allegro section in G major, and the orchestra gathers its forces in an exciting crescendo. Violas and cellos intro-duce a stately repeated-note theme, and the orchestra bursts into vivacious life. This unconventional yet highly effective opening can be heard as a musical por-trait of daybreak in the Czech countryside, with the flute-bird greeting the first rays of the sun and daylight flooding the landscape as man and beast awaken to bustling activity. A second, more lyrical group of themes opens with a rocking melody in the violins, followed by an upward-leaping tune for woodwinds remi-niscent of one of Dvorák’s favorite composers Schubert. The exposition closes with a restatement of the opening cello theme. The development section, intro-duced by the flute birdcall, is full of rustic atmosphere and wit, rather than heavy-breathing dramatics. At its close, trumpets blaze forth the opening cello theme, giving it an altogether new character.

An atmospheric mood piece, the Adagio second movement weaves between minor and major modes, lightheartedness and a sense of sadness, even tragedy. It opens in C minor with a dark, yearning melody in the strings, punctuated by woodwind birdcalls. Then the tonality brightens to major, and solo oboe and flute sing a soaring, idyllic tune above down-rushing strings; this section gradually

grows weightier and more passionate. After a reprise of the opening music, horns introduce a menacing, tragic mood over funeral-march blows on the timpani. An airy coda gathers together the contrasting emotional colors of this subtle movement, evocative of the darker side of country life.

A delicately soaring waltz in G minor forms the third movement, surrounding a bucolic trio section in G major led by the woodwinds. So fertile are his powers of invention that Dvorák even throws in a brand-new folk dance to wrap up the move-ment.

A trumpet fanfare opens the finale, a series of free variations on a warm, folksy theme introduced by the cellos. The most striking variations come in an exotic, earthy section in C minor, recalling some of

Dvorák’s popular Slavonic Dances. At the close, the tempo keeps accelerating as the whole orchestra — but the whooping horns most of all — cuts loose in an uninhib-ited dance of joy.

Notes by Janet E. Bedell copyright 2014

ANTONÍN DVOŘÁKCONTINUED