Lyric for Strings
George Walker
Walker enjoyed a significant surge in attention in recent years, fueled by a widespread growth in interest in African-American composers plus his already high reputation. In a lengthy career, he published more than 90 pieces, including piano and chamber works, songs and choral music. He received commissions from major American orchestras and won the Pulitzer Prize for Music—the first of his race to do so—for Daisies (1996). The deeply expressive Lyric for Strings originated as the second movement of the string quartet that he composed in 1946 while was a graduate student at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He transcribed it for string orchestra in 1990. It is his most frequently performed orchestral composition.
Viola Sonata in C Major, Op. 147
Dmitri Shostakovich
Transcribed for viola, celesta and strings by Vladimir Mendelssohn
- Moderato
- Allegretto
- Adagio
It becomes ever clearer that Shostakovich was one of the twentieth century’s greatest composers. Nearly 50 years after his death, his music continues to be performed frequently and on a global scale—the 15 symphonies and 15 string quartets in particular. Symphony No. 5 is the most-performed symphony of the twentieth century.
There has been much debate about the extent that events in his life influenced his music, and the nature of the messages he wished to deliver through it. In such a variety of possible interpretations lies one of his music’s many fascinations. When all is said and done, his compositions stand or fall on their musical and emotional values. These are considerable, and they continue to ensure a thriving life for his finest works.
Over the years, he suffered not only repression of his music under the brutal dictatorship of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, but also from several illnesses and accidents. During the early 1970s, he was stricken by several heart attacks. All his tribulations left him physically weakened and emotionally devastated. Yet such was his resolve that he continued to compose, even as it became ever more taxing for him simply to hold a pen.
Works dating from his final decade include Symphonies 14 (a song-cycle on the subject of death) and 15; Cello Concerto No. 2; Violin Concerto No. 2; October, a symphonic poem; String Quartets 11 through 15; Sonata for Violin and Piano; several sets of songs; and music for films including King Lear. Many of them are permeated with the looming spectre of death.
The Sonata for Viola and Piano was his final creation, completed in Moscow on 5 July 1975. He died of lung cancer on 9 August. He left some hints about the sonata’s ‘contents’ to a friend, violist Fedor Druzhinin: “The first moment is a novella, the second a scherzo, and the finale is an adagio in memory of Beethoven, but don’t let that intimidate you. The music is high, bright and clear.” A veiled quote from Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ sonata appears at the opening of the Viola Sonata’s finale.
He dedicated it to Druzhinin, the violist of the Beethoven Quartet. This ensemble had premiered 13 of Shostakovich’s quartets. After a private run-through in Shostakovich’s apartment, the Viola Sonata received it public premiere on 1 October by Druzhinin and pianist Mikhail Muntyan, as the finale of an all-Shostakovich recital for which the composer had chosen the repertoire. After the performance, Druzhinin solemnly held the score over his head to an intense ovation. A critic described the Sonata as “like the catharsis in a tragedy; life, struggle, overcoming, purification by light, exit into immortality.”
It was rapidly taken up by violists everywhere and it makes a most welcome addition to the viola’s always-slim solo repertoire. At this concert, you will hear a transcription for solo viola and string orchestra that was created by Vladimir Mendelssohn (1949-2021), a distinguished Romanian viola soloist, composer and teacher.
The opening movement deftly balances introspection with outbursts of passion.
The eloquent, throaty voice of the viola is the perfect vehicle to communicate the music’s innermost thoughts. The at least relatively humorous second movement is a transcription of a scene from an opera that Shostakovich had begun in 1942 but had abandoned. He drew the text from a black comedy by the esteemed author Nikolai Gogol called The Gamblers. Shostakovich headed this movement with a quote from another gifted Russian author, Alexander Pushkin: “the work of long-ago days …” The movement offers an intermingling of his trademark satirical sense of humour with more restrained and sombre tones. The finale, the longest of the three movements, includes quotes not only from the ‘Moonlight’ sonata but from every one of Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies, plus Richard Strauss’s tone poem Don Quixote. This last quotation is a possible case of personal identification, between Shostakovich and Cervantes’ noble, melancholy knight who tilted at windmills. An eloquent conclusion of an inspiring musical career.
Symphony No. 28 in C Major, K 200
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Allegro spiritoso
- Andante
- Menuetto
- Presto
This charming work probably dates from shortly after the period during which Mozart composed more symphonies than at any other time in his career. Between 1770 and 1773, he composed no fewer than 28 of them.
Research has shown that the catalogue numbers assigned to several of these works do not accurately reflect the order of composition. Mozart wrote the well-known Symphony No. 25 in G Minor in October 1773. Its highly dramatic nature reflected the exposure to the music of Joseph Haydn and other progressive composers that he had undergone in a recent trip to Vienna.
Next in order, in April 1774, came the sunny work known as No. 29. The precise date of No. 28 is still being debated, in part because some unknown person made a strong effort to erase it from the manuscript score. The most likely time is November 1774, which places it after Nos. 29 and 30 (composed in April and May 1774, respectively), and four years before the next symphony, No. 31, the ‘Paris’ Symphony.
Several scholars have noted that No. 28 marked a substantial creative progression for Mozart. Ekkehart Kroher wrote that its style “so well expresses the cheerfulness of the key of C that it must have surprised his contemporaries. The music’s creativeness, moreover, corresponds to an expansion of the form, which is reflected not only externally, for example in containing four movements, with a minuet, or in the addition of a coda, but also in the depth of expression. In particular the finale is no longer a mere conventional finish but is now elevated in rank to counterbalance the symphony’s opening movement.”
The noted American classical period scholar H.C. Robbins Landon wrote, “This has always been a popular work, and it was one of the few Mozart works which were available on records before the Second World War. Two enchanting aspects are the solo horn ‘echoes’ in the minuet and the trill-laden finale.”
Mozart constructed the brisk opening movement on a spirited first theme and a gracious second. Author William Malloch wrote that “the music is not grand, but smart ‘society’ music full of the frivolous laughter of the sort quietly captured by Elgar in the Enigma Variations’ tenth variation, Dorabella.” In the second movement, Mozart called for the strings to play with mutes, enhancing this sweet, flowing music’s genteel quality. The following minuet continues the second movement’s moderate pacing and dignified manners. The finale abandons all caution as it races merrily to a near-breathless conclusion.
