University AuditoriumThursday EveningDecember 12, 19748:00 p.m

Corra, Arthur, Conductor

Kim, Won Mo, Violin

English

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Illinois State University ISU ReD: Research and eData School of Music Programs Music 12-12-1974 Symphony Orchestra: Arthur Corra, Conductor; Won Mo Kim, Violin; December 12, 1974 Arthur Corra Conductor Won Mo Kim Violin Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/somp  Part of the Music Performance Commons Recommended Citation Corra, Arthur Conductor and Kim, Won Mo Violin, "Symphony Orchestra: Arthur Corra, Conductor; Won Mo Kim, Violin; December 12, 1974" (1974). School of Music Programs. 5454. https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/somp/5454 This Performance Program is brought to you for free and open access by the Music at ISU ReD: Research and eData. It has been accepted for inclusion in School of Music Programs by an authorized administrator of ISU ReD: Research and eData. For more information, please contact ISUReD@ilstu.edu. Illinois State UniversitySYMPHONY ORCHESTRAARTHUR CORRA, ConductorWON MO KIM, ViolinistViolin Concerto in D Major, Opus 61 Ludwig van BeethovenAllegro ma non troppoLarghettoRondoINTERMISSIONFive Pieces for Orchestra, Opus 16 Arnold SchoenbergPremonitions (Molto Allegro)Yesteryears (Andante)Summer Morning by a Lake [Colors] (Moderato)Peripetia (Molto Allegro)The Unending Recitative (Allegretto)in observance of the 100th anniversary of Schoenberg's birth* Second Essay for Orchestra Samuel BarberUniversity Auditorium Thursday Evening December 12, 1974 8:00 pm*As part of the celebration of our country's bicentennial the Illinois State Un­iversity Symphony Orchestra will include at least one work by an American composer on each concert of the 1974-75,1975-76, and 1976-77 seasons.The history of Beethoven's Violin Concerto and the life of its first interpreter form an absor­bing tale. Beethoven wrote the piece for violinist Franz Clement, one of the most remarkable Viennese musicians, who was also respected by Haydn, Weber, and Cherubini. As a child prodigy, he created a sensation in London, where he played in a concert directed by Haydn. His relationship with Beethoven began when Clement, as concertmaster of the orchestra, par­ticipated in the first performance of Beethoven’s opera Fidelio in 1805. The necessity of revising the opera was realized, and at a session held at the palace of Beethoven’s patron, Prince Lichnowsky, Clement played from memory the leading voices of the entire opera on his violin. (On another occassion, after hearing Haydn's oratorio The Creation, Clement prepared, with only the help of a copy of the text, a complete piano score of the oratorio which the composer declared fit for publication. He accomplished a similar feat with Cherubini’s opera Faniska, and the amazed composer professed that he had never witnessed a similar musical memory.) Cle­ment was for a time assistant conductor to Weber in Prague, but his restlessness drove him to become a roving virtuoso. He died in Vienna in 1842.As a conductor of an amateur orchestra, he programmed Beethoven's first two symphonies and was bold enough to dare a reading of the "Eroica" symphony with his group. Hethen includ­ed the symphony in the program of one of his own concerts and invited Beethoven to conduct it. Thus, the first public performances of the "Eroica” were Clement's achievements. No wonder Beethoven felt very much obliged to Clement and reciprocated by composing the Violin Concer­to for him. Its humorous title reads: "Concerto par Clemenza pour Clement primo violino e diret- tore al theatro di Vienna. Dal L. V. Bthvn. 1806. "[Concerto for mercy of Clement, concertmaster at the Theater an der Wien. By Ludwig van Beethoven. 1806]Cement played it on December 23, 1806, according to contemporary reports, without even a rehearsal, as Beethoven had finished the piece hardly two days before the performance. The public applauded it, but the experts showed a somewhat critical attitude that, strangely enough, affected the composer. Beethoven decided to convert the piece into a piano concerto (recordings of which have enjoyed a considerable vogue in the last two years) and publish this version also. He dedicated it to Julie von Breuning, wife of Steffen, his friend from the early Bonn days who was later honored with the dedication of the original violin version. For that premiere perfor­mance, Clement had not seen the manuscript until he stepped on the stage to perform it; he played it "at sight." (Further light is shed upon the artistic practices of the time by the fact that at the same concert Clement presented a fantasy of his own with the violin held upside down. Such was integrity of performers in "the good old days.")The Violin Concerto fell into disrepute in Vienna as being unrewarding and unperformable. In Beethoven's lifetime only a reading of the second and third movements was given (1816.) A complete performance was offered by Joseph Bohm, whom Beethoven had greatly esteemed, in May, 1827, at a concert arranged in homage of the recently deceased composer. In Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and other music centers, the few performances of the work met with little enthusiasm. Finally, the Concerto found a youthful champion in Henri Vieuxtemps, a Belgian of French extraction who had come to Vienna to study counterpointwith Simon Sechter. Learning of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, Vieuxtemps studied and played the work in 1834, when he was barely fourteen years old! It seems strange and inexplicable that the many fine Viennese violinists, including several who were strong advocates of Beethoven's string quartets, had failed to play the work in the years after it was composed.In Leipzig, the center of German musical life in the 1830s and 1840s, Mendelssohn, as con­ductor of the Gewandhaus orchestra, programmed the work in 1841, but there too it met with little success. Mendelssohn included it in a program of the London Philharmonic Orchestra he conducted in 1844, with the 13-year old Joseph Joachim as soloist. It was a triumph for Beethoven and Joachim, who came to be regarded as the interpreter of Beethoven's Violin Con­certo of the 19th century and who was so directly involved in the creation of Brahms'Violin Con­certo.A few of the many individual and novel features in Beethoven's Violin Concerto may be noted here. In the first movement four timpani strokes, which are soon revealed to be thematically important in both the firstand second themes, form a startling beginning. As in the preceding piano concerto (No. 4 in G Major), the solo part grows out of the orchestral texture. Asin several other works of this period of his life, the Violin Concerto exhibits a peculiar absorption with themes based upon reiterated notes. The recapitulation makes a triumphant entry with the four mighty strokes that were gently indicated at the beginning. In the second movement the flutes, oboes, trumpets, and timpani are silent, and the violins are muted, giving the movement a delicate orchestral fabric. A cadenza by the soloist leads directly into the last movement.What seems especially significant about Schenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra. Opus 16 today, well over a half a century after their composition, is their sure charting of the course which Schoenberg had mapped for himself. They do not, of course, incorporate the principle of twelve-tone row (serial technique); that particular development did not begin until the 1920s. Nevertheless, in their atonal and textural style, these pieces foreshadow very closely the general atmosphere of the entire Schoenbergian school of composition as it later came into be­ing.This work is a compendium of the methods Schoenberg used to limit the infinity of possibilities suggested by the abandonment of tonality. Movements in a large-scale composi­tion grew shorter both as a result of the increasing complexity of texture which packs musical experience into shorter time spans and the need for all-pervasive motive work to govern tex­tures in the absence of tonality.The length of a classical sonata exposition, varying from half to about a third of the length of the movement, was dictated by the need to establish the tonic and the move to another, related, but conflicting, tonal area. This primary factor made it possible to set out thematic material in a leisurely way. A substantial length was needed to give a balanced statement of the tonic­dominant relationships. Atonal forms make no such demands on the composer, since all that now needs to be exposed is the material itself. Consequently, the "exposition” is invariably short, anddevelopment begins almost immediately. Recapitulation, in the classical sense, is not necessary, for there is no longer a need to complete designs with a celebration of the tonic and the attendant repetition of themes.The score was completed in the summer of 1909. The work was published in 1912. Schoenberg revised it in 1922 and made a second revision, for a somewhat smaller orchestra, in 1949. That new version was one of the Schoenberg's last undertakings before his death in 1951. A new edition of the 1949 version was published in 1973. The version used fortonight’s performance is the original 1912 edition incorporating corrections made in the 1922 and 1973 editions. Titles appeared for the first time in the 1922 score, although the composer had chosen them a decade earlier, before publication of the original score, as an entry in his diary, January 1, 1912, reveals:"Letter from Peters [a publisher], making an appointment with me for Wednesday in Berlin, in order to get to know me personally. Wants titles for the orchestral pieces—for publisher's reasons. Maybe I'll give in, for I've found titles that are at least possible. On the whole, unsympathetic to the idea. For the wonderful thing about music is that one can say everything in it, so that he who knows understands everything; and yet one hasn't given away one's secrets—the things one doesn't admit even to oneself. But titles give you away! Besides—whatever was to be said has been said, by the music. Why, then, words as well? If words were necessary they would be there in the first place. But art says more than words. Now, the titles which I may provide give nothing away, because some of them are very obscure and others highly technical. To wit:I. Premonitions (everybody has these)II. The Past (everybody has that, too)III. Chord-Colors (technical)IV. Peripetia (general enough I think)V. The Obbligato (perhaps better the "fully-developed" orthe "endless") Recitative However, there should be a note that these titles were added for technical reasons of publication and not to give a "poetic” content.The effect of the Five Pieces, once their atonal idiom is accepted and they are seen in perspective, is one of delicate, impressionistic pastels. In volume of sound they are sufficientlyreticent to seem at times as if they were played by a chamber orchestra. Yet along with this delicacy goes an essential complication: the music is prevailing contrapuntal, fragmentary, and harmonically complex; there is rarely a "long line" for the ear to follow.In the first movement, the first 25 measures constitute the "exposition" in which all the basic materials are set out; the remaining 103 measures develop these materials. The fragmen­tary style is noticeable at the beginning, and to some extent later on; one hears short motives, trills, rapid runs, and occasional isolated loud tones. The general plan of the piece is a gradual building up in strength and complexity, followed by a gradual return to the simplicity and softness of the opening. The contrabass clarinet and contrabassoon play prominent roles in this movement.The second movement, "Yesteryears", is somber and brooding, More quiet and sustained than the first movement, it is also less complicated. The lyrical theme played by the viola early in the movement is typical of the greater softness of the movement. In this movement, as well as in the first, Schoenberg frequently uses rhythms of 3 dividions of the beat superimposed on 4 divisions of the beat. The celesta plays a prominent role in this movement.From a purely technical point of view, the significant thing about the third movement is its attempt to create interest largely by means of timbre alone: a single chord is gradually and almost imperceptibly altered by the changes of orchestration which are rung upon it. This piece is the most pictorial of the five. Schoenberg here intended to represents lake's shimmering sur­face with the sun shining upon gently rippling water."Peripetia" is in strong contrast to the preceding movement, being predominantly active, at times even agitated, against a foil of meditative interludes. The high degree of complication ex­hibited makes this movement probably the most difficult of any for the listener. Just before the end of the movement there is a tremendous crash, the loudest contributor to which is a whistl­ing sound produced by a cello bow drawn across the rim of a large cymbal. The term "peripetia" is defined by Webster as "a sudden reversal of circumstances in a drama, or, by extension, in ac­tual affairs."The fifth movement is extraordinarily contrapuntal, yet the counterpoint is quiet and lyrical. The melodies which make up the counterpoint are noticeably more angular than those used heretofore in the work.Samuel Barber, born in 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania, is one of the best known American composers. At the age of 25 he won both the Prix de Rome and the Pulitzer Prize, and he has since won many other awards and commissions for works. He owes his great popularity in equal measure to innate musicality and to the circumstance that he is a musical conservative. Barber is an avowed romantic; his music is poetic and suffused with feeling, leaning heavily on the grand rhetoric of the 19th Century. Its gentle melancholy alternates with passages of great brilliance and dramatic impact.The Second Essay for Orchestra was composed in 1942 and was first performed in that year by the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Bruno Walter. The first theme is a sim­ple four-mearsure phrase played by the flute and immediately restated by the bass clarinet. As other instruments take it up, the timpani and then the violins introduce an accompanying figure of triplets which plays a prominent role later in the work. A second theme, in 6/8 meter, is an­nounced by the violas. As it is passed around the orchestra, it builds to a climax, at which point the first theme returns in the timpani and low strings. For a moment the two themes are heard in alternating measures until a slashing chord from the full orchestra brings them both to a halt. A fugato based on the triplet figure with which the timpani and violins accompanied the first theme ensues, first in the woodwinds and then in the trumpets. As the strings take it up, the woodwinds superimpose the second theme. The fugue subject is fragmented, inverted, and augmented, all the while being combined with the second theme. Following another climax, the fugato continues but now with the first theme superimposed. The first theme gathers strength and after a forceful statement in the trumpets and trombones seems to snuff out the fugato, which exits quietly in the percussion. A lyric coda, which begins in the strings and soon encom­passes the entire orchestra, brings the work to a powerful close.SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA PERSONNELViolin 1 Flute HornTaik Ju Lee ‘Carol Neuleib ‘Rodger BurnettMartha Barker ‘Judith Ross Richard WeyrichDeborah Perry Kathleen Townsend ‘Tim SwensonGreg Oakley Rebecca Meyer Stanley ReimelTerry Jares Sharon Higus Mary RileyHwei Ming Twu James WilliamsDeborah Selin PiccoloNancy Widmer TrumpetViolin II Judith Ross ‘David GoldenFrank Schwarzwalder ‘Rob FundPamela Combs Oboe James CassensElizabeth Westerlund ‘Marvin CarltonCecelia Roth ‘Jan Lohs TromboneDebra Pederson Beth Christensen ‘Michael HaynesWanita Smith Huu PhamPatricia Seino ‘David KotowskiEnglish horn Bass TromboneViola Jan Lohs James BermannHelen Zamie Linda LangellierMarvin Carlton Mark VictorLarry Spence Clarinet TubaChris Reichert ‘Barry Kolman ‘Wayne MontagEd FirthCello Ricardo Mariani TimpaniTom Wang Philip HenryPeter Garfield E-Flat ClarinetDaniel Bunce Barry Kolman PercussionLissa Myhre Ted PargeSusan Kahn Bass Clarinet Tom HensoldSue Allen David Dineff Jose AleciaKathy WatsonContrabass ClarinetRon EngelBass Kathleen Hoerner HarpPeter Guy Steven HartmanPhilip Murphy BassoonDebra Buchanan ‘Mary Dalziel CelestaCarol Jansen ‘Joyce Hitchcock Pam MosierSteven Hayes Patricia BillsThomas Fatten Grant Gillett LibrariansGeorge Gillham Suzanne HoweContrabassoonPhilip Murphy Hwei Ming TwuGrant Gillett Stage Managers’co-principals David KotowskiFrank SchwarzwalderDr. Won-Mo Kim, violinist and associate professor of music at Illinois State University since 1969, formerly served as artist-professor at the University of Wisconsin and Indiana University. A native of Seoul, Korea, he came to the United States at an early age to begin formal music study. He has since earned degrees from Manhattan School of Music, Eastman School of Music, and Florida State University, and was awarded the Albert Spaulding Prize by Charles Munch at the Berkshire Music Festival. He has appeared with orchestras, in solo recitals, and on national radio and television in the United States and the Far East, and is described by New York and Boston critics as an artist "playing with absolute authority" and "technically im­pressive and poetically expressive."

Symphony Orchestra: Arthur Corra, Conductor; Won Mo Kim, Violin; December 12, 1974

https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6207&context=somp

Symphony Orchestra: Arthur Corra, Conductor; Won Mo Kim, Violin; December 12, 1974

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