ST. PAUL’S SUITE. Op.29, No.2
Gustav Holst (1874-1934)

Composer, educator and conductor Gustav Holst is known outside his native England essentially as a one-work composer. The Planets, composed between 1914 and 1916, gained him international fame, and snippets of its opulent music with its broad orchestral palette have become a favorite fodder of advertisers. He composed, however, many other works, including symphonies, operas and chamber works.

For most of his life Holst’s musical efforts went into teaching. From 1905 until his death he taught music at St. Paul’s Girls’ School, Hammersmith, and many of his compositions were written for the school’s orchestra and chorus.

The St. Paul’s Suite was composed in 1912, originally for strings only, but Holst later added wind parts for performance with full orchestra. It is in four movements, opening with “Jig,” depicting English fiddle dance tunes, skillfully blended with a contrasting second theme.     The second movement, “Ostinato,” a series of whimsical melodies introduced by the second violins, set over an ostinato (a repeated melodic figure). The “Intermezzo,” in ABABA form, opens slowly with a solo violin introducing the theme, accompanied by pizzicato chords. A viola eventually joins the violin in a duet. The tempo picks up to a quick country tune that alternates with the slow opening theme. Holst, of course, renders this theme, as well as others, a little more quirky by adding the kind of dissonant harmonies of the sort one might more likely hear with composers of twentieth century art music or very out of tune country fiddlers.

The final movement, “The Dargason,” is an English folk ballad traceable to the 16th century and used as a country dance melody. Holst had used it previously in the last movement of his popular Second Suite in F for Military Band. The folk tune is introduced softly, answered by the cellos playing the familiar “Greensleeves” as a counter melody. The two melodies, played together, end the suite.

PIANO CONCERTO No.3, Op.95
Lowell Liebermann (b.1961)

A native of New York City, composer, conductor and pianist Lowell Liebermann began piano studies at age eight and composition studies at fourteen. He composed his Piano Sonata, Op.1, at fifteen, and used it for his performing debut a year later at Carnegie Recital Hall. He studied at the Juilliard School with David Diamond and Vincent Persichetti, graduating in 1987 with a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree. From 1998 to 2002 he served as composer-in-residence with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, for whom he composed his Symphony No.2 in 2000 to commemorate the Orchestra’s centennial. In addition to composing, Liebermann maintains an active performing schedule.

Liebermann is often considered by critics as “backward-looking,” employing a musical language that recalls the neo-Romanticism of Samuel Barber, his teacher David Diamond and Howard Hanson. Audiences and conductors, however, appreciate his lyrical voice, making him one of the most frequently performed and recorded contemporary composer, with multiple recordings of many of his pieces. Among his most popular works are the Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra and Flute Concerto, both commissioned by James Galway.

A prolific composer, Liebermann has dipped into every musical genre, in particular chamber music in such standard configurations as the string quartet and piano trio but also including sonatas for piano and various instruments – including bass koto. His first opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was premiered at the L'Opéra de Monte-Carlo in 1996 with great success. His second opera, Miss Lonelyhearts, to a libretto by J. D. McClatchy after the novel by Nathanael West, was commissioned by the Juilliard School as part of its centennial celebration and was premiered in April 2006 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Lincoln center.

Liebermann's Third Piano Concerto was commissioned by a consortium of 18 orchestras assembled here and abroad by pianist Jeffrey Biegel, who premiered it in May 2006 in Milwaukee. In an interview in Milwaukee before the premiere, Biegel described the Concerto: “I hate to use the word accessible, but the concerto is melodic and something you can grasp immediately. You can walk out of the hall singing the tunes, and you don't get that out of a lot of new music."

Liebermann himself offers a few words about the Concerto: “I do not really have much to say about the Concerto – as usual I much prefer to let the music speak for itself. What I can say is that the emotional framework in which I composed the Concerto was perhaps more affected by extraneous (meaning non-musical) events than is usual with my music: the first movement is deeply pessimistic; the second, ruefully nostalgic with an ominous middle section that serves as a cadenza in the form of a combined passacaglia and canon; and the third, whose title "Burlesque" is meant sarcastically, is full of anger and irony prompted by some of the things that have been going on in our country lately.”

Given his remarks, Liebermann cannot help but call to mind comparisons with Shostakovich, whose music – when not composed for Stalin or the aesthetic commissars – expressed his bitterness and despair in the murderous political repression around him.

The first movement contains three principal themes that vacillate between anger – evident in both the percussive piano part and the heavy dissonance – and lyrical sadness in its second, third and fourth themes.     Towards the end of the movement, the composer adds a slow, melancholy fugue on the third theme.   It concludes in a whisper.

The second movement, which the composer calls “ruefully nostalgic” illustrates two aspects of nostalgia: the first, his use of more lyrical, tonal themes; the second, his use of musical structures of the past, in this case the passacaglia, so common in the Baroque period. The first theme is introduced by the violins, with an ostinato accompaniment by the piano.   The ostinato becomes a dramatic element in the first part of the movement, as the piano virtually clings to it, becoming louder and louder, much the way we try to make a foreigner understand our language by uselessly repeating the word or phrase.   The passacaglia ground is clearly presented by the cellos, punctuated by pianissimo pizzicato bass notes. Eventually, the soloist also takes a turn at the ground as the orchestra creates a howling whirlwind around it. The movement closes with a varied reprise of the first section.

The emphasis of the third movement is on anger and sarcasm rather than sadness. It is this movement that is most reminiscent of Shostakovich. It begins with a snide, our-of-tune fanfare that leads into the first of a series of militaristic themes. Suddenly it breaks into ragtime. Almost as if the dancers had been interrupted to return to the front, the first theme reasserts itself, with percussive outbursts from the piano. Just as suddenly as it started, the nostalgic first theme from the second movement reappears. A cacophonous coda of brass and percussion delivers a razzberry at the world.

SYMPHONY No.1 IN E MINOR, Op.39
Jean Sibelius

When Sweden relinquished Finland to the Russian Empire in 1809, it became an autonomous duchy with significant control over its own affairs. But in 1870 Tsar Alexander II gradually began whittling away the Finns’ privileges and autonomy. While Swedish had continued to be the language of the educated and of the middle class, Russian repression aroused strong nationalist feelings and initiated a revival of the Finnish language. Jean Sibelius was born into this nationalistic environment and in 1876 enrolled in the first grammar school to teach in the Finnish language.

Sibelius was by no means a child prodigy. He began playing piano at nine, didn't like it and took up the violin at 14. Although he also started composing at ten, Sibelius’s ambition was to become a concert violinist and throughout his adult life regretted not following his dream. Lifelong addiction to alcohol produced a persistent tremor in his hands that precluded a concert career.

Sibelius’s first success as a composer came in 1892 with a nationalistic symphonic poem/cantata titled Kullervo, Op.7. The work met with great praise but was never again performed in his lifetime. During the next six years he composed music for numerous nationalistic pageants, symphonic poems and vocal works, mostly based on the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. In appreciation and in order to enable him to compose undisturbed, the Finnish governing council gave Sibelius a pension for life in 1897. For the next 28 years he composed the symphonies and other orchestral works that made him famous. In 1925, at the age of 60, he suddenly ceased composing for reason never disclosed – although probably from the combined ravages of alcoholism and bipolar disorder. His pen remained silent until his death, 32 years later.

Sibelius composed his Symphony No.1 during 1898-99 to instant success. It was greatly influenced by Russian symphonic music, especially by Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, which Sibelius particularly admired. While the Symphony still owes much to the Romantics of the nineteenth century, it contains much that is new and gives a foreshadowing of his future works. In orchestral color, Sibelius’s unique blend of winds and strings is already unmistakably in evidence.

The symphony opens with a clarinet solo over timpani serving as an introduction, leading into the typical Sibelius technique of fragments gradually coalescing into themes. & While it still owes much to the romantics of the nineteenth century, containing much that is new and giving a glimpse of the composer's future musical language.

The second movement opening is most reminiscent of Tchaikovsky, compared to . The movement is replete with Sturm und Drang (storm and stress), containing rapidly changing moods and tempi throughout. The third movement is a rowdy scherzo; the opening bars sounding like Bruckner with a sense of humor. The contrasting trio middle section is gentle and dreamy.

The fourth movement opens with the clarinet theme of the first movement, but now with full orchestra. It is the most dramatic movement, with expansive melodies that foreshadow the later symphonies. It ends in a rousing crescendo that fades into a pizzicato whisper.

Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn