Enigma Variations
Our 95th season begins with a journey through musical lineage and stylistic homage, featuring cellist Tommy Mesa. The concert opens with Gala Flagello’s "Bravado," embodying dynamic energy, which paves the way to the classical grace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 “Paris”. This symphony's Rococo style echoes in Tchaikovsky’s "Variations on a Rococo Theme," performed by Mesa, where the cello dialogues with a theme reminiscent of the elegance Tchaikovsky admired in Mozart’s compositions. The program concludes with Edward Elgar’s "Enigma Variations," where the thematic genesis becomes a canvas for Elgar's rich, emotional landscapes, mirroring the evening’s exploration of known themes transformed into new, intricate musical narratives.
Conductor
Timothy Muffitt
Tommy Mesa
Cello
Bravado
Gala Flagello
Bravado
Gala Flagello (1994–)
Written: 2023
Movements: One
Style: Contemporary
Duration: Three minutes
Gala Flagello’s music is inspired by a passion for lyricism, rhythmic vitality, and fostering meaningful collaboration. With music described as “both flesh and spirit, intensely psychological without sacrificing concrete musical enjoyment,” Flagello collaborates with leading ensembles, artists, initiatives, and institutions nationally and internationally to craft impactful projects for performers and audiences alike. She is the Festival Director and co-founder of the nonprofit contemporary music festival Connecticut Summerfest and has been a Composition Fellow at Tanglewood Music Center, the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, and Aspen Music Festival.
Striving to use music as a vehicle for social change, Flagello frequently engages with topics such as environmental advocacy, gender equity, and mental health in her work. Gala is a passionate educator in the classroom, privately, and as a guest lecturer. In her teaching, she enthusiastically works with students to develop fledgling ideas into fully realized pieces, examine repertoire from the composers Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges to Kaija Saariaho, and incorporate non-musical elements such as visual art and technology into their work. Gala maintains a private studio of composition students at the high school and collegiate level. She has been engaged to speak on composition, orchestration, arts administration, and entrepreneurship at institutions such as The Hartt School, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Virginia Tech, Heidelberg University, and Central Connecticut State University.
Flagello earned her Bachelor of Music in Composition from The Hartt School, and her Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from the University of Michigan, where she was awarded the Dorothy Greenwald Graduate Fellowship.
Bravado was written for the Tanglewood Music Festival 2023 orchestral readings and explores the many connotations of the word “bravado,” a descendent of the Old Italian adjective “bravo,” meaning “wild” or “courageous.” A person with bravado can be seen as bold or reckless, daring or arrogant, confident or overbearing. The orchestra musically embodies this range of traits through the transformation of the piece’s primary melody.
You’ll hear that primary melody immediately at the beginning of Bravado. It is a jaunty little tune characterized by heavy and asymmetrically placed accents. After several repetitions of the tune, the horns play a more lyrical melody that seems to speed up as the notes in the melody get further apart. A third musical idea, a slowly-ascending bass line, also makes an appearance. After a brief lull, the brass play the primary melody in a slowed-down version. The strings get a final crack at the melody and before you know it, Bravado is over.
©2024 Gala Flagello and John P. Varineau
Symphony No. 31 “Paris”
W.A. Mozart
Symphony No. 31 in D Major K. 297 (300a) “Paris”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Written: 1778
Movements: Three
Style: Classical
Duration: 17 minutes
When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote to his father Leopold that there is “no place in the world like Paris,” he wasn’t being complimentary. “The filth of Paris is indescribable,” he wrote, and the French manners “now border on coarseness and they are terribly discourteous.” Paris was not a place where “people had ears to hear, hearts to feel and some measure of understanding of and taste for music. . . . I am living among mere brute beasts.”
Mozart was in Paris looking for a job. Normally, Leopold would accompany his son on these job hunts. This time, he couldn’t get the time off from his job as deputy Kapellmeister in Salzburg. Nevertheless, he could still give his son nagging advice via the mail:
“Remember that your whole reputation hangs on your first piece. Listen before you write and study the national taste . . . your object is to get fame and money . . . if you write anything for publication, make it popular and easy for amateurs. Do not write in a hurry! Strike out what does not satisfy you. Do nothing for nothing, and see that you get paid for all.”
In spite of Mozart’s low opinion of the Parisian musical climate, it did have one good thing, the Concert Spirituel, one of the first public concert series in Europe. Its director, Joseph LeGros, commissioned leading composers of the day to write new works for the series. Mozart got one of his few big breaks in Paris when LeGros asked him to write a new symphony for the Concert Spirituel. The rehearsal of Mozart’s “Paris” symphony went very badly:
“Never in my life have I heard a worse performance. You can have no conception of how they bungled and scrambled through it the first time and the second. . . . Accordingly I went to bed, fear in my heart, discontent and anger in my mind.”
The concert was a different story. Mozart took his father’s advice and wrote to please the public:
“In the midst of the first allegro came a passage I had known would please. The audience was quite carried away—there was a great outburst of applause. But, since I knew when I wrote it that it would make a sensation, I had brought it in again in the last—, and then it came again, da capo. The andante also found favor, but particularly the last allegro because, having noticed that all last allegri here opened, like the first, with all instruments together and usually in unison, I began with two violins only, piano [softly] for eight bars only, then forte [loud], so that at the piano (as I had expected) the audience said “Sh!” and when they heard the forte began at once to clap their hands. I was so happy that I went straight to the Palais Royale after the symphony, ate an ice, said the rosary I had vowed—and went home.”
LeGros didn’t like the second movement. He thought it was too long and modulated too much. Mozart felt it was because “the audience forgot to applaud it as noisily and persistently as they did the other movements.” Nevertheless, Mozart indulged LeGros and wrote an alternate second movement for a repeat performance. (Tonight you will hear the original slow movement.) As for the outer movements, you will hear why this symphony so quickly impressed French audiences, and why Mozart later used it to wow other newcomers to his music.
©2024 John P. Varineau
Program notes by John VarineauVariations on a Rococo Theme
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893)
Written: 1876
Movements: Ten
Style: Romantic
Duration: Eighteen minutes
Tchaikovsky is the gold standard for audiences who love lush, romantic orchestral music. In particular, his concertos and last three symphonies (the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth) occupy the top positions of the romantic orchestral repertoire. This is highly emotional music with tremendous contrasts in dynamics and mood. Of all of the late nineteenth century composers, Tchaikovsky had a knack for writing beautiful and eloquent melodies that would instantly connect with the listener. However, Tchaikovsky, who musically wore his heart on his sleeve, had a deep respect—if not reverence—for the music of the eighteenth century. The music composed by such greats as Haydn and Mozart is more restrained and succinct than any romantic composition. It has a clarity of form and simple elegance that is rarely found in the music of the nineteenth century. It is this sort of music that Tchaikovsky was trying to emulate with his Variations on a Rococo Theme. Tchaikovsky the romantic was dressing up as a classical composer.
Tchaikovsky wrote this set of variations for the principal cellist of the Imperial Russian Music Society, Wilhelm Karl Friedrich Fitzenhagen. He asked Fitzenhagen to go through the music and make suggestions. Tchaikovsky got way more than he had asked for. What audiences hear today in this composition is considerably different from what Tchaikovsky had originally intended. Much of the actual cello writing is Fitzenhagen’s. He reordered the variations as well, even deleting one of them! However, when Tchaikovsky’s publisher gave him the opportunity to restore the piece to its original form, he declined. Incredibly, with all of the reams of academic work on Tchaikovsky’s music done in the last century, there are still no published orchestral parts to the original version.
The Variations themselves are easy to listen to and understand. After a brief introduction, the cello plays a simple little melody. That theme is probably original to Tchaikovsky—his attempt at writing with the simple elegance of the Rococo. (Rococo really refers to paintings from the time of Mozart and Haydn. They are decorative works, frequently of country scenes.) Seven variations follow the theme, each exploiting the cello and challenging the cellist. Although easy to listen to, these variations are tremendously difficult to perform—a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
©2024 John P. Varineau
Enigma Variations
Edward Elgar
Variations on an Original Theme (Enigma)
Edward Elgar (1857–1934)
Written: 1898–99
Movements: Theme and Fourteen Variations
Style: Romantic
Duration: 29 minutes
Edward Elgar was the first English composer to gain international prominence after Henry Purcell (1659–1695). After such a long drought, one would think the English would be quick to embrace a composer of stature. Not so! It was only after Elgar’s fortieth birthday that he was recognized in England, and it was his Enigma Variations that propelled him into international concert halls.
There are two puzzles in Elgar’s Enigma Variations. The first is “what is the theme?” Elgar simply labelled it “Enigma.” Then he labeled all of the variations with cryptic initials or names. Those are easy to solve, but Elgar's "Enigma" is still unsolved.
In the program notes for the first performance Elgar wrote,
"The enigma I will not explain—its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the apparent connection between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes,’ but is not played. . . . So the principal Theme never appears, even as in some late dramas the chief character is never on the stage."
So, there are two enigmas: the actual melody of the theme, and the larger unplayed theme of the work. There are many guesses about what that theme really is, from the banal God Save the Queen, Pop Goes the Weasel, and Rule Britannia to the sublime nonmusical ideas of Friendship or even 1 Corinthians 13:12. One fascinating recent conjecture is that the theme is a musical representation of the mathematical concept of π (pi): the numbering of the first four notes of the theme within the minor scale is 3, 1, 4, 2—the same as the first four numerals of π.
The Variations are all character studies of Elgar's friends and acquaintances. "I've written the variations each one to represent the mood of the party," Elgar wrote. "I've liked to imagine the 'party' writing the variation him (or her) self and have written what I think they would have written, if they were asses enough to compose."
C.A.E. is Elgar's wife, Alice. Hew David Steuart-Powell (H.D. S-P.), was an amateur pianist who played trios with Elgar. Richard Baxter Townshend (R.B.T.) was an explorer. He prospected for gold, taught classics, translated Tacitus, and wrote many books.
William Meath Baker (W.M.B.), Lord of Hasfield Court, was the brother-in-law to R.B.T. His mercurial temperament is heard in his variation, including the inadvertent slamming of a door. Richard Penrose Arnold (R.P.A.) was the son of the poet Matthew Arnold. He continually broke up serious conversation with whimsical and witty remarks.
Ysobel is the old English spelling of Isabel Fitton. Elgar taught her viola. A phrase in her variation is an exercise for crossing the strings. Arthur Troyte Griffith was an architect, watercolorist, and trusted friend. He also indulged in "maladroit essays to play the pianoforte." Winifred Norbury (W.N.) was a very sedate and calm woman like a kind governess. Elgar suggested that this variation was really a musical depiction of her eighteenth century house at Sherridge.
Nimrod is A.J. Jaeger, a friend and music editor at Elgar's publisher, Novello. Elgar claimed that the variation was a "record of a long summer evening talk, when my friend discoursed eloquently on the slow movements of Beethoven." Dorabella was Dora Penny. The dance-like lightness of this variation suggests Dora's delight in devising dances to Elgar's piano playing.
George Robertson Sinclair (G.R.S) was organist of Hereford Cathedral, but this variation is about his bulldog, Dan. The music describes him falling into the river Wye, paddling upstream to find a landing place, and barking and rejoicing at succeeding. Basil G. Nevisnon (B.G.N), a serious and devoted friend, was at Oxford with H.D. S-P.
*** was Lady Mary Lygon of Madresfield House. She had left for Australia when Elgar wrote her variation. It represents the throbbing of a ship's engine. It also includes a quotation from Mendelssohn's Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. E.D.U. is a self-portrait (Alice called him Edoo). It presents a composer confident of his stature. It was also prophetic. The first performance was an instant success.
©2024 John P. Varineau
Program notes by John Varineau
