UMS Concert Program, November 10, 1973: Budapest Symphony Orchestra --

Concert: Fifth
Complete Series: 3848
Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan

The University Musical Society
of
The University of Michigan
Presents
Budapest Symphony Orchestra
GYORGY LEHEL, Conductor GYORGY SANDOR, Pianist
Saturday Evening, November 10, 1973, at 8:30 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, Michigan
PROGRAM
Two Nocturnes for Orchestra..........Debussy
Nuages (Clouds) Fetes (Festivals)
Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21........Beethoven
Adagio molto; allegro con brio Andante cantabile con moto Menuetto, allegro Finale: adagio, allegro molto e vivace
INTERMISSION
Musica per Orchestra............Szollosy
Concerto No. 3 for Piano and Orchestra.........Bartok
Allegretto Adagio religioso Allegro vivace
Gyorgy Sandor
Deutsche Grammophon and Pathe Marconi Records. Fifth Concert Ninetyfifth Annual Choral Union Series Complete Programs 3848
PROGRAM NOTES
Two Nocturnes--Nuages (Clouds) and Fetes (Festivals) Claude Achille Debussy
Though Debussy was openly averse to written explanations of his music, and though the score contains no program, he did write this description of the Nocturnes:
"The title Nocturnes is to be interpreted here in a general and, more particularly, in a decorative sense. Therefore, it is not meant to designate the usual form of the Nocturne, but rather all the various impressions and the special effects of light that the word suggests. Nuages renders the im?mutable aspect of the sky and the slow, solemn motion of the clouds, fading into the poignant gray softly touched with white. Fetes gives us the vibrating, dancing rhythm of the atmosphere with sudden flashes of light. There is also the episode of the procession (a dazzling fantastic vision) which passes through the festive scene and becomes merged in it. But the background remains persistently the same: the festival with its blending of music and luminous dust participating in the cosmic rhythm."
--Paul Affelder
Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21........Beethoven
Beethoven was thirty years of age before he produced his first symphony--a vivid contrast to Mozart, who, at the age of thirtytwo, had composed his fortyfirst. But Beethoven always ap?proached a new form methodically and attempted it only after elaborate preparation. He felt his way with caution, and it took several attempts before he gained real freedom.
Even in his initial symphony the real Beethoven speaks, if not in a sustained tone at least in utterances that are prophetic of a career that was to free music from the fashionable but wornout patterns of the world. The opening measure of this symphony with its boldly dissonant chord in the key of F, although the movement is in C, and its leading in the course of three measures to a new key of G, is prophetic. The third movement, although referred to as a minuetto, is in reality and in spirit a scherzo, whose speed broke down the formal and antiquated mold of the minu,t and established the scherzo found in his subsequent symphonies. This constituted one of his most epochmaking innovations. The Cmajor Symphony, appearing in the first year of the new century, left the past and faced a new era of emancipated ideas and emotions.
Reminiscent as his first symphonic utterance seems to us today, we must recall that its boldness offended a Leipzig critic who in 1S01 characterized it as "confused explosions of a presumptuous effrontery of a young man--a danger to musical art." Today we have perspective and judge Beethoven by his greatest and most mature works; and in the light of these the Cmajor Symphony bespeaks the comingofage of the symphonic form.
--Glenn D. McGeoch
Musica per Orchestra..........Andras Szollosy
Andras Szollosy (born in 1921 in Transsylvania) studied at the Budapest Academy of Music with Zoltan Kodaly and Janos Viski. Later he also was a pupil of Goffredo Petrassi at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
Szbllosy's profile as a composer is marked by an extremely strict formal structure which, how?ever, never comes to the forefront, a preference for dramatic contrasts but never through ex?traneous means--the orchestral palette is always puritanical, and has a variety of musical means of expression. Musica per Orchestra was composed in 1973, commissioned by the Budapest Municipal Council, for the 100th anniversary of the unification of Buda, Pest, and Obuda, into Budapest. The composition is a tribute to Szollosy's master--"In memoriam, Zoltan Kodaly."
The work is in one movement, divided into seven sections constituting a kind of bridge form. The structure is based on a motif consisting of whole tones and semitones, a trait that Liszt's and
Bartok's Hungarian style have in common. The transposed row of the motif adds up to a 12tone row, but the piece is not serially composed. The sections include Inlroduzione, fast dynamic in?tensification; Prima parte prhicipale, melodic development of the first subject; Motto, the first subject played tutta forza; Partc di transizione, large dynamic recapitulation from the climax; Seconda partc prhicipale, harmonic development of the subject; Riprcsa dell'inlrodiizione, inversionlike return of the introduction, dynamically and mclodically, and Epilogo, the linking of melodic and harmonic development.
--Peter Varnai
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3.......Bela Bartok
When Bela Bartok died in 1945, the world of music lost one of the most distinctive and original creative artists of the twentieth century. During his lifetime, he spent much time and effort collecting the folk music of his native Hungary and separating it from the Gypsy influences which crept into so much of the music that we erroneously consider to be purely Hungarian. He did not merely quote the folk melodies in their original form but assimilated them into his own music in a manner that made it difficult to determine where the folk music ended and the original Bartok began.
Such a work is the Piano Concerto No. 3, Bartok's last composition. He had come to the United States in 1940, a refugee from the ravages of war in his native land. Cut off from the income that European royalties on his music would normally have provided, he suffered here from poverty, lack of appreciation and ill health. Though his health continued to decline, he never stopped com?posing. He was working on the score of the Third Piano Concerto in his New York apartment right up until the time on September 22, 1945, when he was taken to the hospital, where he died four days later.
At that time the concerto was virtually completed, and it remained only for Bartok's friend and former pupil, the HungarianAmerican violist, conductor, and composer Tibor Serly, to apply the finishing touches. The work received its world premiere at a concert of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting, on February 8, 1946, with another friend and former pupil of Bartok's, Gyorgy Sandor, as piano soloist. For that occasion, Serly provided the annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra with the following notes:
"Bela Bartok wrote four major works during the last four years of his life which he spent here in America. The first was an unaccompanied Sonata for Violin, composed for Yehudi Menuhin. This was followed by the Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned and introduced by the Boston Symphony. The third and fourth works were written simultaneously during the summer of 1945. By this time, Bartok was gravely ill and often in great pain. Of these two works, the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, his third in this genre, was scored fully with the exception of the last seventeen bars, which were sketched in a kind of musical shorthand used by Bartok. These last seventeen bars were deciphered and scored by his friend and colleague, Tibor Serly.
"Bartok worked feverishly to the very last to complete the Concerto, and it was touching to note that he had prematurely scrawled in pencil the Hungarian word vege--the end--on the last bar of his sketch copy as though he were desperately aiming to reach it. On no other score had he ever written the word.
"The Concerto, following the traditional classic form, is in the regulation three movements and is of ideal length--twentytwo minutes. It has the brilliance of the typical virtuoso concerto. Dissonances are resolved to a degree of refinement which seems consonant, a tendency strongly characteristic of all Bartok's last works."
The first movement, Allegretto, is in the customary sonata form, and is dominated by what Serly describes as "a clarionlike main subject." The second movement, Adagio rcligioso, is a Bachlike chorale with a "delicately turbulent" contrasting middle section. The final movement, Allegro vivace, is a spirited rondo, into which is introduced a complex fugue for contrast. The work ends
brilliantly.
--Paul Affelder
COMING EVENTS
The Little Angels........Sunday, 3:00, November 11
National Folk Ballet of Korea
Tel Aviv String Quartet......Wednesday, 8:30, November 14
with Yona Ettlinger, Clarinetist
Bartok: Quartet No. 3; Mozart: Clarinet Quintet; Schubert: Quartet in G major, Op. 161
Modern Jazz Quartet.......Thursday, 8:00, November IS
(piano, vibraharp, bass, drums)
Martina Arroyo, Soprano......Monday, 8:30, November 19
Songs by Stradella, Gluck, Handel, Faure, de Falla
Narciso Yepes, Guitarist......Wednesday, 8:30, November 28
Handel's "Messiah"........Friday, 8:30, November 30;
Saturday, 8:30, December 1; Sunday, 2:30, December 2
For over ninety years, the University Choral Union has presented the "Messiah" in celebration of the Christmas season. Donald Bryant conducts the 350voice chorus, members of the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra, and soloists Ruth Falcon, soprano, Muriel Greenspon, contralto, John Sandor, tenor, and Saverio Barbieri, bass.
Krasnayarsk Siberian Dancers . . . Saturday, 3:00 and 8:00, December 1
AllBrubeck Concert........Thursday, 8:30, January 17
"Two Generations of Brubeck": Dave Brubeck and sons, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Festival Chorus, New Heavenly Blue rock group, Erich Kunzel and Don Th. Jaeger, con?ductors, featuring the cantata "Truth."
LaSalle String Quartet.......Sunday, 2:30, January 20
Schonberg: Quartet No. 4; Mozart: Quartet in D minor, K. 421; Verdi: Quartet in E minor.
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.....Sunday, 2:30, January 27
Witold Rowicki, Conductor; Stefania Woytowicz, Soprano
Szymanowski: Concert Overture, Op. 12; Britten: Illuminations, Op. 14; Boguslawski:
Capriccioso notturno; Stravinsky: "Petrouchka"
Carlos BarbosaLima, Guitarist......Saturday, 8:30, February 2
Awaji Puppet Theatre, Japan......Tuesday, 8:30, February 19
Roumanian Trio.........Friday, 8:30, February 22
(Piano, Violin, Cello)
AllBeethoven: Trios, Op. 1, No. 3 in C minor; Op. 70, No. 1 in D major; Op. 97 ("The
Archduke") in Bflat major
Goldovsky Opera Theater (double bill) . . . Saturday, 8:00 February 23
and Sunday, 3:00, February 24 Mozart: "The Impresario" Menotti: "The Old Maid and The Thief"
Luciano Pavarotti, Tenor......Wednesday, 8:30, February 27
Netherlands Wind Ensemble.....Thursday, 8:30, February 28
Gounod: Petite symphonic; Mozart: Serenade, K. 388; D'Indy: Chanson et dances, Op. 50; Dvorak: Serenade, Op. 44
UNIVERSITY MUSICAL SOCIETY
Burton Memorial Tower, Ann Arbor, Michigan Phone 6653717
The University Musical Society relies on public support in order to maintain the scope and artistic quality of these programs. Taxdeductible contributions to our Gift Program are welcome.