Royal Fireworks

Sunday, October 10, 2010 • 3:00 p.m.
First Free Methodist Church

Orchestra Seattle
Seattle Chamber Singers
Roupen Shakarian, conductor
Alexandra Takasugi, viola
Stephen Provine, violin
Shari Muller-Ho, flute
Lisa Michele Lewis, harpsichord
Diane Radabaugh, alto
Stephen Wall, tenor
Charles Robert Stephens, baritone

Program

Georg Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351

Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754–1812)
Viola Concerto in D Major [Allegro]

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050

—intermission—

Georg Frideric Handel
Te Deum in D Major, HWV 283 (“Dettingen”)

About the Conductor

Guest conductor Roupen Shakarian is currently in his seventh season as music director of the Skagit Symphony. For the past 24 years, he served as the music director of Philharmonia Northwest in Seattle, stepping down after the 2009–2010 season. In October 2009, he appeared as guest conductor with the Seattle Symphony, and in June 2010 with the Northwest Mahler Festival. He has also conducted the Victoria Symphony, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle Youth Symphony, California Youth Symphony and the Northwest Chamber Orchestra. With Skagit Opera, he has conducted performances of The Magic Flute, The Barber of Seville and Pirates of Penzance at McIntyre Hall. A published composer and recipient of numerous commissions, his works include Whimsy, a Chamber Symphony, Five Bagatelles for wind quintet, Inner Places for organ and brass quintet, Pastime for small ensemble, a flute concerto (premiered by Jeffrey Cohan and Orchestra Seattle, conducted by George Shangrow), a violin concerto, “…is but a dream” for solo oboe (written for and recorded by Rebecca Henderson), Other Voices for chorus and small ensemble, two choral pieces (Almighty and Everlasting God, commissioned by Opus 7, and If Ye love Me, Keep My Commandments, published by Oxford University Press), Bone Island Suite (a song cycle for soprano and orchestra) and The Turnip, Clock and the Kid, commissioned and recorded by the Rainier Chamber Winds.

About soloists

Violist Alexandra Takasugi is currently a junior majoring in string performance at Seattle University, where she studies viola with Amber Archibald and chamber music with Quinton Morris. Originally from Pasadena, California, Ms. Takasugi started playing violin at age three, switching to viola at age 10 under the tutelage of Liz Arbus. She attended the Colburn School of the Performing Arts in Los Angeles for 10 years, studying viola with Margaret Shimizu, Joni Shtesko and Richard Rintoul. Ms. Takasugi has participated in masterclasses with violinists Emma McGrath and Ilya Kaler, attended various music festivals (including the Suzuki Institute for Chamber Music, the Pasadena Summer Youth Chamber Orchestra and UCLA’s Chamber Orchestra Camp) and this past summer participated in Siena Summer Music in Italy. This afternoon’s performance is the result of her first-place award in the inaugural Seattle University Concerto Competition.

Violinst Stephen Provine has served as co-concertmaster of Orchestra Seattle since 2004. Born in the North of England he began studying the violin at an early age, winning many local and regional competitions. He has performed throughout Europe and the United States, including concerts at the Royal Festival Hall in the presence of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and in the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Promenade concert series. As a concertmaster, Mr. Provine has worked closely with conductors Jacek Kaspszyk, Daniel Harding, Nicholas Cleobury and George Shangrow.

Flutist Shari Muller-Ho currently serves as principal flutist of both Orchestra Seattle and the Rainier Symphony and has performed as soloist with both ensembles. She appears regularly as a recitalist in Seattle and throughout the Pacific Northwest both as soloist and as a member of the Seattle Chamber Ensemble, and has performed in Europe, China and Hong Kong. In 2003 she was named Performing Artist by the Suisse Global Foundation. In addition to an active and diverse freelance career, she maintains private music studios in Seattle and Issaquah.

Harpsichordist Lisa Michele Lewis received a master’s degree in harpsichord performance from University of Washington and has subsequently performed with many area ensembles, including the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Choral Company, Northwest Sinfonietta, Octava Chamber Orchestra and, of course, Orchestra Seattle. She enjoys playing chamber music on both harpsichord and piano in addition to maintaining a teaching studio in North Seattle.

Alto Diane Radabaugh is known to Seattle audiences as a concert soloist and performer in opera and oratorio productions and has been a regular member of the Seattle Opera Chorus since 1993. She has performed supportive roles with Tacoma Opera and has appeared as soloist with the Northwest Mahler Orchestra, the Northwest Symphony, the Cascade Symphony, Philharmonia Northwest, the Bainbridge Chorale, the Everett Chorale, the Northwest Chorale and on the Hartley Mansion Concert Series. Her Gilbert and Sullivan roles include Katisha (The Mikado), Ruth (Pirates of Penzance) and Buttercup (H.M.S. Pinafore) with Skagit Opera, The Peccadillo Players, The Northwest Savoyards and the New Savoy Opera. Ms. Radabaugh is the alto soloist and choral section leader at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church.

Tenor Stephen Wall has appeared frequently with Orchestra Seattle and the Seattle Chamber Singers since 1985 and can be heard on the OSSCS recording of Handel’s Messiah. During that time he has also been featured in leading and supporting roles with Seattle Opera, in addition to roles with Portland Opera, Utah Festival Opera and Tacoma Opera, and appearances with the symphonies of Seattle, Vancouver, Spokane, Everett, Bellevue, Yakima, Pendleton, Great Falls and Sapporo (Japan). Mr. Wall has also served as the director for many musical theater productions in western Washington and maintains an active voice studio in Seattle.

Baritone Charles Robert Stephens has performed leading roles with the New York City Opera and at Carnegie Hall with the Oratorio Society of New York, the Masterworks Chorus, Musica Sacra and with Opera Orchestra of New York. He regularly performs with distinguished ensembles such as New York’s Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, Seattle Pro Musica, Portland Chamber Orchestra and Portland Baroque. This season he debuts with the Oregon Symphony and Boston Early Music Festival and returns to the Seattle Symphony and Helena Symphony as well as OSSCS.

Program Notes

Georg Frideric Handel
Music for the Royal Fireworks, HWV 351

Handel was born in Halle, Germany, on February 23, 1685, and died in London on April 14, 1759. He composed this work in early 1749; its official premiere took place in London on April 14 of that year. The version most often performed calls for 3 oboes, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 3 horns, 3 trumpets, timpani, harpsichord and strings.

The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed on October 18, 1748, ended the War of Austrian Succession. To celebrate the cessation of hostilities, King George II of England planned a festive evening the following April in London’s Green Park, to feature music specially written for the occasion, accompanied by a massive fireworks display. George II was the king who purportedly began the tradition of standing during the “Halleluiah Chorus” of Handel’s Messiah, and it was to this composer whom he turned to create music for the outdoor festivities. Handel immediately (albeit somewhat reluctantly) acquiesced and even gave in to the monarch’s edict not to include any stringed instruments in his orchestra, assembling a massive band of double reeds, brass and percussion.

Handel’s work begins with a grand overture in the French style, with a regal introduction leading to a vigorous fugal allegro in triple meter, all in glorious D major. There follows a suite of shorter dances: a boureé in D minor, a movement celebrating “the peace” and another the “rejoicing” made possible by the treaty. The work concludes with a pair of minuets, the first in D minor and the second providing a resounding conclusion in D major.

Handel resisted a public dress rehearsal, but the occasion resulted in a great success: an estimated 12,000 people flocked to the Spring Gardens at Vauxhall, causing one of London’s first traffic jams when carriages bottle-necked at London Bridge. At the official premiere, Handel’s music was overshadowed by the pyrotechnics display, during which one of the adjoining pavilions caught fire. The composer conducted the work’s first indoor performance—for which Handel rescored the work to include strings—on May 27, 1749, at a benefit for Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital.

On October 3, 1990, the Music for the Royal Fireworks was part of a celebration marking the reunification of East and West Germany. OSSCS wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the German Embassy for this afternoon’s concert in commemoration of the 20th anniverary of this event.

Franz Anton Hoffmeister
Viola Concerto in D Major

Hoffmeister was born in Rottenburg am Neckar (near Stuttgart) on May 12, 1754, and died in Vienna on February 9, 1812. He composed this viola concerto sometime prior to 1799, scoring it for pairs of oboes and horns with string orchestra.

Today Franz Hoffmeister’s fame rests largely on his activities as a music publisher (and as the dedicatee of Mozart’s “Hoffmeister” string quartet), but he was a prolific composer who turned out at least eight operas, more than 50 symphonies (most being short “sinfonias” rather than longer works in the Haydn vein), an abundance of concertos (many of them for flute) and a great deal of chamber music (including several delightful works for wind octet and over 30 string quartets).

Hoffmeister’s parents sent him to Vienna to study law at age 14, but he soon abandoned that career path and switched to music. Around the age of 30, he began publishing his own compositions, and by 1785 had established a publishing firm in Vienna bearing his name, issuing works of—among others—Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (the latter two whom he counted as personal friends). During the 1790s he turned his attention back to composing, but after a 1799 concert tour (as harpsichordist) to England with flutist Franz Thurner, he traveled to Leipzig, where he opened a second publishing house. By 1805 he had sold off his share in this new venture (which eventually became the well-known firm C.F. Peters) and returned to Vienna, where he sold his other firm to establish an annuity allowing him to devote his last years to composition.

Hoffmeister produced two concertos for viola—in addition to a set of 12 etudes for the instrument—and the D-major concerto (the other is in B♭) remains one of his few compositions to appear with regularity in the concert hall. This is no doubt due in equal parts to the relative lack of Classical-era concertos for viola and to the work’s inherent charms. This afternoon we hear the first movement of the work, an Allegro in traditional sonata form.

Johann Sebastian Bach
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050

J.S. Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, on March 21, 1685, and died in Leipzig on July 28, 1750. His six Brandenburg Concerti were assembled and copied in 1720, and dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg on March 24, 1721. Most likely the last of these works that Bach composed, BWV 1050 is scored for solo flute, violin and harpsichord with string orchestra.

Now considered perhaps the greatest genius in all of music, during his lifetime Bach was best known as an organist. Between 1703 and 1707 he served as a church organist at Arnstadt (where he often confused the parishioners during hymns with his virtuoso improvisations) and from 1708 as court organist for the Duke of Weimar.

In 1717, Prince Leopold hired Bach as court organist and director of chamber music at Anhalt-Cöthen. Because the prince was a Calvinist rather than a Lutheran, Bach was not required to prepare music for church services, so instead devoted himself to instrumental composition. Although the prince himself was an accomplished musician, the woman he married in 1720 did not appreciate music and thus Bach, fearful of losing his job, began to seek a new employer.

While on a trip to Berlin in 1719 to take delivery of a new harpsichord, Bach had met the Margrave of Brandenburg, who made a casual request for some concerti from the composer. When looking about for new employment the following year, Bach remembered this incident and collected together a group of six concerti, which he sent off to Brandenburg in March 1721 as a sort of job application, accompanied by a letter in florid French.

Each of the six “Brandenburgs” is a concerto grosso, a piece of music that contrasts a small concertino group with a larger orchestra. Bach utilized a different ensemble for each concerto: the fifth Brandenburg employs a solo trio of violin, flute and harpsichord, although toward the end of the first movement the keyboard takes over in a cadenza of virtuoso proportions. Many music historians believe that Bach composed this work specifically for the instrument that he he had brought back from Berlin in 1719, and that the composer moved from his usual position as principal violist to play the solo keyboard part. (The principal second violinist then switched to viola, explaining the absence of a second violin part in the orchestra.)

— Jeff Eldridge

Georg Frideric Handel
Te Deum in D Major, HWV 283 (“Dettingen”)

Handel began composing this work, his last important one for the church, on July 17, 1743, finishing it about two weeks later. It received its first performance at a private service in the Chapel Royal in St. James’ Palace on November 27, 1743, in the presence of King George II. Handel scored the work for three vocal soloists, SSATB chorus, 2 oboes, bassoon, 3 trumpets, timpani, strings and continuo.

By the time of his death in London in 1759, Handel, a German musician trained in Italy, had become England’s “national composer.” This remarkable man, one of the choral art’s greatest geniuses—who gained wide fame for his operas, oratorios and concertos—had become both a musical master and a “personality” regarded with special awe and affection throughout the musical world.

Both of the Handel works heard this afternoon are associated with the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748), which involved most of the European powers and was fought in Europe, North America and India. France and Prussia used the supposed ineligibility of Maria Theresa of Austria to succeed to the Hapsburg thrones of her father, Charles VI, as an excuse to challenge Hapsburg power. On June 27, 1743, a battle took place at the village of Dettingen (near Frankfurt in Bavaria) in which a larger and more strategically deployed French military force saw defeat at the hands of an alliance of British, Austrian and Hanoverian troops, personally led into battle by King George II of Great Britain (who was also Elector of Hanover, and thus interested in protecting his German territories). King George, surprisingly courageous but a poor general, did not follow up this victory: the Battle of Dettingen became “famous” chiefly as the last occasion on which a British sovereign led his troops on the field.

To celebrate this victory, Handel, “Composer of the Musick to the Chapel Royal,” composed an anthem and a fittingly festive setting of “We Praise Thee, O God” (Te Deum), a song of praise and thanksgiving appearing in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer of Handel’s time and frequently performed on grand state occasions, such as the commemoration of military triumphs.

This gloriously imperial “Dettingen” Te Deum, in which the chorus dominates (as befits a generally “outward-looking” work), consists of 18 relatively brief sections. In overall style and in many specific instances, the work resembles Messiah, written just two years before (the trumpet fanfare that follows the “coming of God as Judge” brings to mind “The Trumpet Shall Sound,” for example), and some portions of the work seem to be based loosely on an older setting of the Te Deum by Francesco Urio, a little-known Italian composer who died around 1719.

After an ebullient instrumental fanfare-prelude featuring trumpets and timpani (reminiscent of the “Rouse Him” chorus in Handel’s Alexander’s Feast of 1736), there follows an exuberant five-part chorus in which jubilant outbursts of praise surround and accompany a short contrapuntal passage. A similarly festive second number, in which Handel decorates the word “all” by “all sorts” of running eighth notes, leads to brief responses by the tenors and basses to soprano “angels” that “cry aloud” from the skies. The grand chorus that this section introduces is marked by the continual repetition of the word “continually,” while “Holy, holy holy!” rings out bell-like from various voices that “do cry” over and over until the section ends with a majestic proclamation of God’s glory. In the fifth number, the sopranos, altos and tenors praise God in response to the chanting of the main text by the basses; at the end of the number, the entire chorus acknowledges the infinite majesty of God the Father in radiantly resonant chords.

A short, imitative choral number leads to an exhilarating trumpet-spangled bass solo in which Christ is proclaimed the King of Glory and which introduces the five-part chorus confirming Christ’s kingship. In the introspective solo that follows, the bass contemplates Christ’s deliverance of humanity via his incarnation, after which Jesus’ body is nailed to the cross, marked by five striking orchestral blows; the chorus, in a brief “recitative,” stresses the “sharpness” of death with dissonance. The chorus then opens to “all believers” (emphasized by frequent repetition) the kingdom of heaven, a realm sparkling with musical jewels strung into running sixteenth-note necklaces that decorate varied pairs of voice parts. A trio for alto, tenor and bass concludes with a stately three-part choral section, and then a trumpet fanfare introduces four choruses that feature music of contrasting moods (reflecting those of the texts), imitative writing and glittering trumpets. The chorus worships God’s name forever in glowing, sustained chords, and the bass soloist then prays for protection and mercy.

A trumpet duet opens the exultant closing chorus, which is introduced by an alto solo with oboe accompaniment. When the full chorus enters, the trumpets return, and the other orchestral instruments join the voices in presenting the section’s themes—Heaven indeed opens to reveal the glory of the God in whom complete trust may be placed!

— Lorelette Knowles