UMS Concert Program, October 5, 1972: The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra --

Concert: Third
Complete Series: 3779
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

The University Musical Society
of
The University of Michigan
Presents
THE ISRAEL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
ZUBIN MEHTA, Conductor
Thursday Evening, October 5, 1972, at 8:30 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
PROGRAM
Symphony No. 34 in C major, K. 338..... Allegro vivace Andante di molto Finale: allegro vivace Mozart
Symphony in Three Movements (1945) .... Stravinsky
Tempo not denned Andante Con moto
INTERMISSION
Symphony No. 7(2) in D minor, Op. 70 .... Dvorak
Allegro maestoso Poco adagio Scherzo: vivace Allegro
Third Concert Ninetyfourth Annual Choral Union Series Complete Programs 3779

PROGRAM NOTES
Symphony No. 34 in C major, K. 338 .... Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
In its diversity and scope the music of Mozart is one of the most astonishing achievements in the history of European art. In more than six hundred works, created at breathless speed during less than thirty years, Mozart revealed a universality unknown to any other composer, for his art was founded upon a thorough assimilation and sublimation of the prevailing Italian, French, and German styles of his period. No composer ever revealed simultaneously such creative affluence and such unerring instinct for beauty. Few artists in any age have been so copious and yet so controlled, or have so consistently sustained throughout their creative lives such a high level of artistic excellence.
Mozart's works of the year 1780 included the opera Idomeneo and the Symphony in C major. The Symphony is in three movements, rather than the usual four. Originally Mozart planned a minuet for the second movement--another break with the usual practice which made the third movement a minuet. Fourteen bars of the discarded minuet are crossed out in his manuscript, indicating that he evidently felt the work to have balance and unity as it stood.
The opening movement of the Symphony is marked Allegro vivace (C major, 4.4 time). After an introductory fanfare, an energetic figure based on an ascending Cmajor arpeggio is introduced by the oboes, bassoons, and strings. A contrasting subject, evolved from a descending chromatic scale, is introduced by the strings and echoed by the bassoons and oboes. A restatement of the upward arpeggio figure leads to the development section, in which the subjects are expanded and modified. The ascending arpeggio is heard again to begin the recapitulation.
The expressive slow movement (Andante di molto, F major, 24 time) is played by the strings alone. The first violins, with canonic imitation in the second violins, introduce the theme which, with many variations and embellishments, forms the basis of the movement.
The Finale (Allegro vivace, C major, 68 time) opens with a vigorous orchestral tutti. Oboes, bassoons, and strings establish the energetic 68 rhythm that pulsates throughout the movement. Bravura playing by the oboes, bassoons, and strings, with bright punctuation by the horns and trumpets, builds to a final crescendo, and the work ends with a flourish of arpeggios.
Symphony in Three Movements........Igor Stravinsky
Five years after he wrote his Second Symphony in C major, Stravinsky produced a third work in the symphonic form. A radical change in the composer's approach to the symphonic style is here evident. The "Symphony in Three Movements" is completely independent of formal symphonic structure. There is no sonata form, no development, no recapitulation. The music is conceived, as Incolf Dahl wrote in his definitive analysis, "as the succession of clearly outlined locks, or planes, which are unified and related through the continuity of a steadily and logically evolving organic force."
The first movement is the most ambitious of the three. Though it has no marking other than metronomic, it is essentially an Allegro. It has been described as a toccata and is in three sections, the first and third being harmonic and the middle, polyphonic. Ingolf Dahl points out that this movement is constructed from thematic germs, identifying them as "the interval of the minor third (with its inversion, the major sixth), and an ascending scale fragment which forms the background to the piano solo of the middle part." A kind of "delicate intermezzo," with the concertino formed by harps and flutes, is heard in the second movement, which has a chamber music texture. This
movement dispenses with trumpets, trombones and percussion. A majestic theme in full orchestra prefaces the closing movement, which, like the first, is in three sections--though here the sections may be regarded as variation on the original theme. A fugue, unusual for its rhythmic and intervalic construction, leads to a codalike finale, its subject stated by trombone and piano.
Symphony No. 7(2) in D minor, Op. 70......Antonin Dvorak
Dvorak's Seventh Symphony (Second in the old listing) is his largest and most serious essay in the form. Sir Donald Tovey remarks, "I have no hesitation in setting Dvorak's Second (sic) Symphony along with the Cmajor Symphony of Schubert and the four symphonies of Brahms as among the greatest and purest examples in this artform since Beethoven." Although commissioned by the Philharmonic Society of London in 18S4, its more important impetus came from hearing the Third Symphony of Johannes Brahms. Dvorak was evidently impressed by its grandeur and sense of struggle and fate. Also Brahms had remarked, apropos of the rather lighthearted Sixth Symphony in D major, that he expected something more important the next time. Dvorak was determined therefore to excel in a truly serious and wellconstructed academic work in the absolute style, to prove that he could be Brahmsian as well as Wagnerian. This symphony is the result; it is often called the "Tragic" Symphony.
Dvorak eschews here, for the most part, any appeal to the popular ear, something often found in many of his other large works. His musical thoughts are extended and carefully constructed. Like Proust, his sentences may tend to meander at times, but they are worth the effort of intelligent comprehension. On the first page of the manuscript score the composer has written about the open?ing theme which begins darkly and dramatically in violas and violoncellos. "This main theme occurred to me when the festival train from Pest arrived at the State station in 1884." So the music has nationalistic overtones, for the train was bearing several hundred antiHapsburg Hungarian patriots from Pest to a Czech National Theater Festival. (Here is another conflict in Dvorak's personality; an ardent Czech nationalist, he yet was immersed in the Germanic musical idiom, as well as receiving honors and rewards from the Emperor Franz Josef and the Austrian State.) The second subject is remarkably Brahmsian in feeling. The development, according to John Clapham in his work on Dvorak "is one of the most concise in the Czech master's music, and may well be his greatest." The movement ends in the melancholy vein of the opening.
A lofty spirit worthy of Bruckner pervades the slow movement. There is a passage for horn and clarinet who play, says Sir Donald, "the parts of a rustic Tristan and Isolde." Any listener familiar with the music will immediately recognize the resemblance. Brahms didn't have it all his own way! But also that master's Third Symphony must have been lurking in Dvorak's subcon?scious ; witness the grave melody over solemn repeated pairs of chords.
The Scherzo is that Czechish dance called a Furiant, an energetic form that has a conflict between threetwo and threefour rhythms to exhilarating and piquant effect. The Trio makes for a pastoral (G major) contrast to the fiery main part in D minor. Here the composer is writing characteristic music of his own culture, rather than embracing the broad spectrum of European music of that time.
For the Finale, the toga and the lyre of tragedy are once more taken up. Brahms is once more the lodcstone that attracts the magnetic lines of style, but if it were not such a serious piece of music, one might almost be amused by the way Tristanesque harmonies and figures manage to insinuate themselves amidst the classical austerities. And at the end we have to refer once again to the incomparable Tovey. "The solemn tone of the close is amply justified by every theme and every note of this great work, which never once falls below the highest plane of tragic music, nor yet contains a line which could not have been written by any composer but Dvorak."
An Evening with The Duke
Saturday, November 11, in Hill Auditorium at 8:30
Duke Ellington and his worldfamous orchestra will be presented by the University Musical Society for the first time as a special Benefit Concert, with the contributions to help insure the longstanding tradition of excellent concerts in Ann Arbor. Tickets, including contribution, are priced at $50, $25, $15, $10, $7, $6, and $4, and are now on sale at our Burton Tower offices. Included in the $50 ticket is a special afterconcert supper party and "more jazz." Brochures with complete details available upon request.
COMING EVENTS
The World of Gilbert and Sullivan .
Beryozka Dance Company......
Ernesto Bitetti, Guitarist......
Dancers of Mali, Africa......
Ah Ahk, Music and Dance from Korea
Guarneri String Quartet......
Batsheva Dance Company from Israel
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra ....
Chinese Skin Shadow Puppets.....
Yuval Trio from Israel.......
Christopher Parkening, Guitarist
Friday, October 6 Saturday, October 7 (8:00, Power Center)
Tuesday, October 10 Wednesday, October 11 (8:00, Power Center)
Tuesday, October 17 (8:30, Rackham Auditorium)
Friday, October 20 (8:00, Power Center)
Sunday, October 22 (2:30, Rackham Auditorium)
Sunday, October 29 (2:30, Rackham Auditorium)
Friday, November 3 (8:00, Power Center)
Saturday, November 4 (8:30, Hill Auditorium)
Monday, November 6 (8:30, Rackham Auditorium)
Wednesday, November 8 (8:30, Rackham Auditorium)
Tuesday, November 14
(8:30, Rackham Auditorium)
Paniagua Quartet.........Saturday, November 18
(8:30, Rackham Auditorium)
Itzhak Perlman, Violinist........Tuesday, November 21
(8:30, Hill Auditorium)
Handel's Messiah, three performances in Hill Auditorium:
(8:30) Friday, December 1
(8:30) Saturday, December 2
(2:30) Sunday, December 3
Austral String Quartet from Sydney.....Tuesday, December 5
(8:30, Rackham Auditorium)
sold out
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Burton Memorial Tower, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Phone 6653717