Program Notes: Dvořák Symphony No. 8

A “SUPER-FANDANGO” 

Sierra composed Fandangos on a commission from the National Symphony Orchestra, which premiered the work under the baton of then-Music Director Leonard Slatkin on February 28, 2001. Slatkin, who founded the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest and served as its artistic director from 1980 to 1989, brought Fandangos to Orchestra Hall for a program in November 2002. Over two decades passed before the Minnesota Orchestra performed any of Sierra’s music again—with Fandangos appearing on a May 2023 concert in Austin, Minnesota, as part of the ensemble’s Common Chords residency week. The composer provided the following note in the score:

“Antonio Soler’s Fandango for keyboard has always fascinated me, for its strange and whimsical twists and turns. My Fandangos is a fantasy, or a ‘super-fandango,’ that takes as its point of departure Soler’s work and incorporates elements of [Luigi] Boccherini’s Fandango and my own Baroque musings. Some of the oddities in the harmonic structure of the Soler piece provided a bridge for the incorporation of contemporary sonorities, opening windows to apparently alien sound worlds. In these parenthetical commentaries, the same materials heard before are transformed, as if one would look at the same objects through different types of lenses or prisms. The continuous variation form over an ostinato gave me the chance to use complex orchestration techniques as another element for variation.”

Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, suspended cymbal, castanets, 2 cencerros, cowbell, tambourine, tamtam, tom-toms, wood block, vibraphone, xylophone, marimba, triangle, harp and strings 

Program note by Carl Schroeder.

ROYAL CONNECTIONS AND UNMATCHED TECHNIQUE

Sarasate’s credentials as a violinist were formidable, earned at a very young age in spite of his origins in the musical outskirts of Pamplona, the Basque city known for its annual Running of the Bulls. As is usually true with prodigious musical talent, one of his parents was a musician—in this case, his father, a violinist and military bandmaster who taught 5-year-old Pablo the basics. Perhaps his biggest career break came when his playing caught the attention of Spain’s Queen Isabella, who sponsored Sarasate’s enrollment at the Paris Conservatory at the tender age 12, and gave him a 1724 Stradivarius violin. As a teen, Sarasate quickly rose to fame as a fearless virtuoso with an unmatched technique that won not only ardent fans, but major competitions in Europe as well. This launched an international touring career that brought him to America twice and regularly to London, where he took audiences by storm. Not since Paganini had a fiddler caused this kind of sensation. He inspired a number of important composers to write pieces for him, among them Max Bruch, Édouard Lalo and Camille Saint-Saëns.

Early in his career, Sarasate began to perform his own works: extended, virtuosic fantasies based on themes from popular operas of the day. His fantasies on Georges Bizet’s Carmen and Charles Gounod’s Faust are bravura pieces that only the most gifted virtuosos need attempt. Regarding Sarasate’s idiomatic writing for the violin, the playwright and music critic George Bernard Shaw may have said it best when he declared that though there were many composers of music for the violin, there were but few composers of violin music.

A DASH FOR THE FINISH LINE

Sarasate’s best-known work is Zigeunerweisen, evoking the fire of Romani life. Written in 1878 and recorded by nearly every major violin virtuoso since, it has become a staple for violinists, often as a concert encore. In today’s performance, it is heard in modified form in which Pacho Flores has masterfully transcribed the violin part for trumpet—one virtuoso soloist tipping his cap to the other. Zigeunerweisen begins with about seven minutes of slow, soulful melodies, leading into a spectacular two-minute dash for the finish line—extremely demanding of the performer—that leaves audiences breathless.

Instrumentation: solo trumpet with orchestra comprising 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, timpani, triangle and strings

Program note by Michael Adams.

“QUEEN IN THE HEART OF MEXICO”

Márquez is known for absorbing musical forms and styles of his home country and incorporating them into his original compositions. “What I do,” he remarked while describing Danzón No. 2, “is to take up the spirit of the rhythm and the harmony and the melody and transport it to the concert hall.” Among his many honors, he has received grants from the Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico, the French Government and the Fulbright Foundation. In 2006 he became the first musician to receive the Medalla de Oro de Bellas Artes (Gold Medal of Fine Arts), the highest honor given to artists by Mexico’s government.

Concierto de Otoño, which was composed specifically for Pacho Flores, is cast in three movements, shining a spotlight on an instrument that has long been associated with various forms of Latin music dating to the fusion of European, African and Indigenous styles in the Americas. “The trumpet is the queen in the heart of Mexico,” Márquez comments. “We find it in practically every form of popular musical expression; it is the Mexican cry of joy and of sorrow. It is also foundational in Latin American concert music, and my Concierto de Otoño is a compilation of all those feelings, colors, and consolations.”

More specifically, the concerto spotlights four instruments from the trumpet family: the commonly heard trumpet in C in the first movement; both the flugelhorn and cornet in the second; and the more brightly toned trumpet in D in the finale. Márquez composed the work between January and June of 2018 on a joint commission from four orchestras: the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico, Tucson Symphony Orchestra, Hyogo PAC Orchestra of Japan and the Oviedo Filarmonía of Spain. Flores gave the concerto’s initial performances with these four orchestras between September 2018 and August 2019.

DRAMA, LOVE AND BRILLIANCE

Annotator John Henken has offered a description of Concierto de Otoño that is abbreviated here:

SON DE LUZ. “Son of Light (the son is an Afro-Cuban dance genre) is a darkly dramatic dialogue for trumpet (in C) and orchestra in classic sonata form, exploring and resolving the encounter with ‘new horizons of peace and reconciliation.’”

BALADA DE FLORIPONDIOS. “The middle movement…is a song without words in tribute to ‘el amor brujo’ (‘love, the magician,’ as the phrase is often translated in reference to the famous dramatic work by Manuel de Falla, but also ‘enchanting love’). It develops as a set of continuous variations, like a chaconne, crooned by the soloist first on flugelhorn, then soprano cornet (in F).”

CONGA DE FLORES. “The finale is another Cuban dance with the soloist back on trumpet (in D). It is an absurdly difficult, blazingly brilliant monothematic rondo, with a place for an improvised cadenza. It evokes the spirits of Haydn, Chopin and Rafael Méndez, the legendary Mexican American musician known as ‘the Heifetz of the trumpet,’ in homage to Pacho Flores’ own dazzling breath control and double-tonguing technique.” 

Instrumentation: solo trumpet in C, trumpet in D, cornet and flugelhorn with orchestra comprising 2 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, snare drum, crash cymbals, suspended cymbal, claves, congas, guiro, maracas, tambourine, xylophone, chimes and strings

Program note by Carl Schroeder, with musical description by John Henken.

A few weeks later, on August 25, he made the first sketches for a new symphony, and once again the melodies poured out: he began the actual composition on September 6, and on the 13th the first movement was done. The second movement took three days, the third a single day, and by September 23 the entire symphony had been sketched. The orchestration was completed on November 8, and Dvořák himself led the triumphant premiere of his Eighth Symphony in Prague on February 2, 1890. From the time Dvořák had sat down before a sheet of blank paper to the completion of the full score, only 75 days had passed. 

HARMONIC SURPRISES AND VARIATIONS

ALLEGRO CON BRIO. “Symphony in G major,” says the title page, but the beginning of this work is firmly in the “wrong” key of G minor, and this is only the first of many harmonic surprises. It is also a gorgeous beginning, with the cellos singing their long wistful melody. But—another surprise—this theme will have little to do with the actual progress of the first movement. We soon arrive at what appears to be the true first subject, a flute theme of an almost pastoral innocence (commentators appear unable to resist describing this theme as “birdlike”), and suddenly we have slipped into G major. There follows a wealth of themes; one observer counted six separate ideas in the opening minutes of this symphony. Dvořák develops these across the span of the opening movement, and the cellos’ somber opening melody returns at key moments, beginning the development quietly and later blazed out triumphantly by the trumpets at the stirring climax.

ADAGIO. The two middle movements are just as free. The Adagio is apparently in C minor, but it begins in E-flat major with dark and halting string phrases; the middle section flows easily on a relaxed woodwind tune in C major in which some have heard the sound of cimbalom and a village band. A violin solo leads to a surprisingly violent climax before the movement falls away to its quiet close.

ALLEGRETTO GRAZIOSO. The third movement opens with a soaring waltz in G minor that dances nimbly along its 3/8 meter; the charming center section also whirls in 3/8 time, but here its dotted rhythms produce a distinctive lilt. The movement concludes with nice surprises: a blistering coda, Molto vivace, whips along a variant of the lilting center section tune, but Dvořák has now transformed its triple meter into a propulsive 2/4. The movement rushes on chattering woodwinds right up to its close, where it concludes suddenly with a hushed string chord.

ALLEGRO MA NON TROPPO. The finale is a variation movement—sort of. It opens with a stinging trumpet fanfare, an afterthought on Dvořák’s part, added after the rest of the movement was complete. Cellos announce the noble central theme (itself derived from the flute theme of the first movement), and a series of variations follows, including a spirited episode for solo flute. But suddenly the variations vanish: Dvořák throws in a Turkish march full of rhythmic energy, a completely separate episode that rises to a great climax based on the ringing trumpet fanfare from the opening. Gradually things calm down, and the variations resume as if this turbulent storm had never blown through. Near the end comes lovely writing for strings, and a raucous, joyous coda—a final variation of the main theme—propels this symphony to its rousing close.

Instrumentation: 2 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (1 doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani and strings

Program note by Eric Bromberger.