Mondays with the Maestro - Virtual Family Concert

Welcome to PCO’s Virtual Family Concert created by guest conductor, Timothy Farrand!

On Saturday, April 4th, musicians from the Pennsylvania Chamber Orchestra and I were going to present a Family Concert focused on exploring the expressive and imaginative capabilities of music. Throughout this concert, we would examine how that transfers to what the audience can actively do while listening. Music truly comes alive in our minds when we listen not only with our ears but with our imagination, interpreting what we hear into our own unique vision.

Unfortunately, we had to cancel this event due to the COVID-19 outbreak. In place of this concert, I wrote the following post as a guide that you and your families can use to form your own unique understanding of these pieces and discover what they express to you. I encourage you to do this together with everyone in your household so that you can share your thoughts with each other. The beauty of music is that everyone will have their own unique interpretation. I hope this provides a way to actively engage our minds in an exciting way during these difficult times.

Question to keep in mind: What do you hear in these pieces? Do they fill you with different emotions? Do they provoke mental images and scenes for you? Are you reminded of something you have experienced? Does everyone hear the same things or have different visions?

Arcangelo Corelli, Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 2

Here is a recording by Voices of Music performed on “period” instruments, which is what we call instruments that are close to the design and sound of the instruments that Corelli would have been familiar with.

Corelli’s Concerti Grossi contain a large landscape of emotional expression which take the listener from spirited heights to emotional depths within a short span of time. These incredibly concentrated pieces allow for the imagination to pull quite different expressive ideas together. In his second Concerto Grosso, which I chose to open our Family Concert, Corelli wrote a rather stately opening followed by an energetic dance where you can imagine people whirling around in an exuberant, if somewhat frenzied way, skirting around the room with their dance partners. I always feel like lifting my feet to dance along with them! This spirited opening is interrupted by a section of slow, meditative, and reverent music in complete contrast to the first part (marked 3. Adagio in the linked recording). The music slows down as if to stop and then catapults forward with a repeat of the stately opening followed by the dance music heard earlier. At the end of the movement, Corelli inserts a nostalgic postlude that seems to depict the dancers, now worn out by the previous music, retreating into their memories of the joyous time they just had.

The second movement (marked 7. Allegro in the recording) always brings a smile to my face. There is something about the hopefulness of this music that fills me with peace and a general feeling of ease. The solo instruments introduce material and then the rest of the orchestra responds, almost like there is a conversation going on where everyone is reacting to each other.

The last movement (marked 8. Grave) opens with a section of music that sounds as if it is moving very cautiously from one chord to the next. This is followed by a melodious section which contains a number of figures representing sighs as if someone is remembering something that has past. It ends softly but then the soloists, followed by the rest of the orchestra, burst forth into an invigorating and uplifting finale (marked 10. Allegro) that seems to bubble up with excitement and anticipation. There is a playfulness to the music with a wonderful feeling of joy and unbridled happiness.

In the recording linked above, notice the speed with which Corelli is able to shift the emotional expression of the music and see if you can find an imaginative way to link these seemingly opposite sections together in your mind. Maybe there is a story to be told through the series of emotions that are constantly changing. You can hear a stately exterior followed by a reflective interior; the remembrance of past days as well as the excitement of times to come. Corelli is able to transport us to seemingly opposite realms within a rather short period of time while also making it feel almost inevitable that we should find ourselves exploring these realms of experience.

Tamás Beischer-Matyó, Hommage à Pau Casals

There is only one recording of this piece that I am aware of and it would have been a great pleasure to perform this live to you and your families. Take a listen to the first performance of the piece from 2013 by the Budapest Strings linked below and cherish this beautiful homage to a great soul.

Tamás Beischer-Matyó is a contemporary Hungarian composer and wrote this piece as a homage to the legendary cellist Pablo Casals who died in 1973. Beischer-Matyó, composing this piece in 1998, was able to combine the old with the new in a unique way. He takes a famous motif (musical theme) from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1, a piece that every cellist aspires to play at some point in their career, and combines it with a Catalan folk song titled “The Song of the Birds” which Casals would often perform.

Here is Casals playing the Bach Suite (Beischer-Matyó quotes from the first movement in his Hommage).

Pablo Casals, after not performing for around 40 years, gave a performance for the United Nations in 1971 where he was awarded the U.N. Peace Medal in “recognition of his stance on peace, justice and freedom.” He said that he had to play this folk song titled “The Song of the Birds” where the birds sing “peace, peace, peace.” The recording above gives an excerpt of the introduction that Casals gave for “The Song of the Birds” to the UN, followed by an older recording of Casals playing this special piece. May this piece bring the peace you need during this difficult time that Casals was trying to bring to the world back in 1971.

Beischer-Matyó chose these pieces because they represent two formidable aspects of Casals repertoire, making them the perfect way to pay homage to his memory. Hommage à Pau Casals opens with a descending motif played first by the cellos, making an immediate connection with Casals, and then each section of the string orchestra adds their own voice above this cello line. This descending bass has long been associated with paying homage to someone’s life, so much so that it has been labeled the “Lament Bass”. (Listen to this recording of Dido’s Lament which includes a similar bass line).

The first part of the Hommage is a lamenting of the loss of Casals which is then followed by three violins playing music that represents birds, leading the imagination to think of Casals’s spirit which is inhabited in the folk song where the birds cried out “peace, peace, peace.” It feels that Casals is now somehow connected with the flight of these majestic beings. Beischer-Matyó inserts a second mournful section which reflects the deep emotion felt by those who were touched by the playing of Casals. The music then transitions into a more hopeful and reverent section where we hear the Bach Suite motif played by the cellos with the folk song appearing supplanted overtop of it. This meshing of a classical Suite with a folk song creates a unique sound and reflects two great memories of the spirit of Casals.

Beischer-Matyó develops this music further before returning to the opening lament which he expands so that the violins seem to reach up higher and higher, inhabiting the realm of the birds. There is a climax and then the orchestra continues to soar higher and higher while also fading away in volume until they seem to be somewhere up in the clouds themselves. At this point, the Bach Cello Suite appears again and the Folk song comes in shortly afterwards but this time the two are not integrated together as before but act separately, as if you are hearing two different performances occurring at the same time. It is as if we had climbed up into the clouds and, somewhere faintly in the distance, we hear the echoes of the performances of Casals past or maybe we have an ear towards the heavens where Casals is now performing for the stars.

J. S. Bach, Air on the G String (from Orchestral Suite No. 3)

Tying in with the Bach heard in Beischer-Matyó’s Hommage á Pau Casals, I decided to program one of the most famous pieces by Bach for orchestra. The Air on the G String, as it is often referred, showcases not only one of the most beautiful pieces that Bach ever wrote but a piece that can completely change based on the way in which one performs it. Listed here, I have put three different recordings of this Air showing how many different expressive possibilities are available to a performer of this work. Depending on the recording, you can hear a slow and reflective piece, a light and tender rendition, an expressive remembrance, or a combination of

First is a performance of Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic.

 
 

Next is a recording by Seji Ozawa and the Mito Chamber Orchestra.

 
 

Finally, there is a period instrument recording from the same group, Voice of Music, that played the Corelli above.

 
 

Gustav Holst, A Fugal Concerto No. 2

To end our program, I selected A Fugal Concerto by Holst which is written for two soloists, a flute and an oboe, with a string accompaniment. This piece showcases the ability of music to mimic conversation between different instruments just like you can have a conversation with another person. Each of the three movements has its own character and this fun piece often plays with what we are expecting, altering something slightly to always keep us alert to what will happen next. In light of the exercise in imaginative listening that we have gone through thus far, what do you hear represented in this piece?

Posted on April 6, 2020 by PA Chamber Orchestra.