Subscription Concert C Series

Subscription Concert No.974 C Series

This concert is over. Date: Wed. 26. April 2023 14:00 (13:00)

Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre Venue Info Seat

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Artists

Kazuhiro KOIZUMI, Conductor
Mayumi KANAGAWA, Violin

Profile

Kazuhiro KOIZUMI (Honorary Conductor for Life)

Kazuhiro Koizumi studied at Tokyo University of the Arts and at Universität der Künste Berlin. After winning the 1st prize at Karajan International Conducting Competition in 1973, he has appeared with Berliner Philharmoniker, Wiener Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, among others. Currently, he serves as Honorary Conductor for Life of TMSO, Music Director of Kyushu Symphony, Honorary Music Director of Nagoya Philharmonic, and Special Guest Conductor of Kanagawa Philharmonic.

Mayumi KANAGAWA (Violin)

A winner of the prestigious competitions including 4th prize in the 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition as well as 2nd Prize and the best concerto prize at the 2018 Long-Thibaud Crespin competition, Mayumi Kanagawa has collaborated with orchestras such as Prague Radio Symphony, Mariinsky Orchestra, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Deutscher Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Finnish Radio Symphony, Belgian National Orchestra, Orchestre National des Pays de La Loire, Moscow Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic, NHK Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony with conductors include Hannu Lintu, Sebastian Weigle, Yuri Simonov, Pascal Rophé, Vassily Sinaisky, Alexander Shelley, Hugh Wolff, Kahchun Wong, Tadaaki Otaka, Kazuhiro Koizumi, Michiyoshi Inoue and Junichi Hirokami. In 2023, her debut album “RECITAL” has been released.
She studied at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin with Kolja Blacher. Prior to moving to Berlin, she studied with Yoshiko Nakura, Masao Kawasaki and Robert Lipsett.
She performs on the 1725 “Wilhelmj” Stradivarius violin on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation.

photo: ©Victor Marin

Program

Verdi: Overture to La Forza del Destino

Program Notes
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, op.64

Program Notes
Mendelssohn: Symphony No.3 in A minor, op.56, “Scottish”

Program Notes

Giuseppe Verdi: Born in Le Roncole, Italy, October 10, 1813; died in Milan, January 27, 1901

　In late 1861, Verdi received an invitation to write a work for the Imperial Opera of St. Petersburg. His first choice for a subject was Victor Hugoʼs 1838 tragic drama Ruy Blas, first produced in 1838. (Men-delssohn lost no time in writing a concert overture to this theme just a year later.) But Verdi eventually lost interest in the subject, and turned instead to the Spanish play Don Alvaro o La Fuerza del Sino (Don Alvaro, or The Force of Destiny) by Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Divas. Francesco Piave, who had worked with Verdi on most of his best-known operas up to this point, fashioned the play into a libretto. Verdiʼs wife Giuseppina (they were married two years earlier, though they had been “living in sin” for twelve years before that) made elaborate preparations for the journey to Russia, sending in advance all manner of provisions (wine, cheese, salami, pasta, etc.). However, when the soprano singing the lead role of Leonora fell ill, there was no one on hand to replace her, so in February 1862 Verdi requested postponement of the production and returned to Italy. He journeyed to St. Petersburg again in the fall of hat year, when Forza was premiered on November 10 (October 29 in the Russian calendar).
　Accounts differ as to its success there, but within a short time it was seen also in Rome, Madrid (where de Saavedra was in the audience), New York, Vienna, Buenos Aires and London. By the time the opera reached La Scala in 1869, Verdi had made numerous changes to the score. These revisions included a completely new ending in which Don Alvaro is redeemed, and an extended, well-developed overture to replace the original. La Forza del destino, Verdiʼs twenty-second opera (just four more were to follow), is often described as “a flawed masterpiece,” but as biographer Charles Osborne points out, “it is not very [much] like anything else in Verdiʼs oeuvre. Much of it betrays the circumstances that it was com-posed for Russia: the choral writing, the almost Dostoevskian monks with their dark bass voices, the sprawling formlessness of the action, the military scenes.”
　Flawed masterpiece or not, the overture alone enjoys the reputation for being one of Verdiʼs finest or-chestral achievements. In the concert hall it is probably the most frequently heard of all Verdiʼs overtures.
A number of the operaʼs most important themes are presented, hence providing an evocative synthesis of the drama. After three loud unison brass chords (repeated), the ominous “destiny” motif associated with the heroine Leonora is heard. Underneath the potpourri of tunes which follow, this “destiny” motif continues to impose its threatening presence. A graceful andantino for flute, oboe and clarinet is later sung by Alvaro in Act IV, Scene 1. Violins playing very softly in octaves announce Leo-noraʼs rapturous Act II prayer, “Deh, non mʼabbandonar”; then comes a theme in the clarinet with harp accompaniment − the duet for Leonora and the Father Superior, who has allowed Leonora to hide near a convent dressed as a monk. Grandiose brass writing brings the overture to a thrilling conclusion

　Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

Ⅰ Allegro molto appassionato
Ⅱ Andante
Ⅲ Allegretto non troppo - Allegro molto vivace
(played without pause)

　Felix Mendelssohn: Born in Hamburg, February 3, 1809; died in Leipzig, November 4, 1847

　Mendelssohn wrote his E-minor Violin Concerto for his friend Ferdinand David, concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In July of 1838, the composer had written to David: “Iʼd like to write a violin concerto for you next winter; one in E minor sticks in my head, the beginning of which will not leave me in peace.” One year later Mendelssohn wrote again, saying that he needed only “a few days in a good mood” to write the concerto. “But it is not, to be sure, an easy assignment; you want it to be brilliant, and how should someone like me do that? The whole first solo will consist of high Eʼs.” Ear-ly sketches reveal that Mendelssohn had indeed written a large number of high Eʼs, but by the time of the finished product in 1844 he had obviously reconsidered. Along the way, while David waited and waited for his concerto, those “high Eʼs” seem to have become something of a private joke. Mendels-sohn finally completed the work in September of 1844.
It was well worth the wait. The sense of facility and effortless grace, its polish and eternal freshness, and the amiable, genteel mood it generates totally belie Mendelssohnʼs effort to compose it. Critic Philip Hale asserted that “the concerto always, under favorable conditions, interests and pro-motes contagious good feeling.” David was of course the soloist at the premiere, which took place at a Gewandhaus concert in Leipzig on March 13, 1845.
There is no opening orchestral introduction; the soloist enters with the main theme almost immediately. All three movements are joined, with no formal pauses to break the flow. Mendelssohn places the cadenza at the juncture of the development section and the recapitulation, with the soloist continuing on as accompanist after the orchestra reenters. Thus, the cadenza assumes a more im-portant dramatic and structural role within the movementʼs design.
The term “well-bred” is often invoked to describe this concerto, and nowhere better does it serve than for the quiet rapture and poetic beauty of the second movementʼs principal theme. A mo-ment of sweet melancholy in A minor intrudes briefly, with trumpets and timpani adding a touch of agitation. The principal theme then returns in varied repetition and a gently yearning passage, again in A minor, leads to the finale.
As in the two previous movements, the soloist gives the first presentation of the principal theme, one of elfin lightness and gaiety. The mood of this movement has often been compared to that of the fairyland world of an earlier Mendelssohn score, his music for A Midsummer Nightʼs Dream.

　Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

Ⅰ Andante con moto - Allegro un poco agitato
Ⅱ Vivace non troppo
Ⅲ Adagio
Ⅳ Allegro vivacissimo - Allegro maestoso assai
(played without pause)

　During July and August of 1829, the twenty-year-old Mendelssohn enjoyed himself touring Scotland. As he was an inveterate letter writer, we know in considerable detail his reactions, mostly favorable, to the Highland country, its weather, and its people with their “long, red beards, tartan plaids, bonnets and feathers, naked knees, and their bagpipes in their hands.” One day in Edinburgh he came upon the pic-turesque ruins of the Palace of Holyrood, in which Mary, Queen of Scots, had once lived. On July 30, Mendelssohn, the impressionable young tourist, wrote home that

　In the darkening twilight today, [I] went to the Palace where Queen Mary lived and loved. There is a little room to be seen there with a spiral staircase at its door. That is where they went up and found Rizzio in the room, dragged him out, and three chambers away there is a dark corner where they mur-dered him. The chapel beside it has lost its roof and is overgrown with grass and ivy, and at that broken altar Mary was crowned Queen of Scotland. Everything there is ruined, decayed, and open to the clear sky. I believe that I have found there today the beginning of my Scottish Symphony.

　The “beginning of my Scottish Symphony” consisted of a scrap of paper containing a few bars of mu-sic. That is all that became of the symphony until twelve years later, by which time Mendelssohn had already been to Italy and had written his Italian Symphony. In 1831, he wrote from Italy that he could “not find his way back into the Scottish fog mood,” a quite understandable condition given Italyʼs sunny climes. The Scottish Symphony was eventually completed in January of 1842, making it Men-delssohnʼs last major orchestral work. Hence, though called “No. 3,” it is really the fifth of his five im-portant symphonies. (There also exist twelve works belonging to his juvenilia.) The symphony re-ceived its premiere in Leipzig on March 3, 1842, with Mendelssohn on the podium.
　Is there anything particularly “Scottish” about the work? Well, yes and no. The degree of “Scottishness” is dependent on the individual listenerʼs susceptibility to programmatic suggestion and on hindsight. The somber, melancholic opening is certainly at least suggestive of the brooding, misty Scottish land; the ebullient clarinet theme of the Scherzo may be based on a Scottish folk air, since the scale pattern corresponds to that of the countryʼs folk music; the leaping, vigorous, dance-like main theme of the finale is thought by some to be a musical representation of the gathering of the clans.
　None of this is conclusive, of course. But we do know that Mendelssohn had little sympathy with native folk idioms, and had he not spoken of it as his “Scottish” symphony, probably no one would have guessed as much. Scottish or not though, this work is fully representative of Mendelssohn at his best. Hans von Bülow thought it to be, in 1877, still one of the finest symphonies since Beethoven. If our es-timation today is not quite as high as von Bülowʼs, we can still respect this classically-chiseled sym-phony for its gentle charms, melodiousness and imaginative ideas.

　Robert Markow's musical career began as a horn player in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. He now writes program notes for orchestras and concert organizations in the USA, Canada, and several countries in Asia. As a journalist he covers the music scenes across North America, Europe, and Asian countries, especially Japan. At Montreal's McGill University he lectured on music for over 25 years.
　

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