The Program:


Berlioz: Overture to Benvenuto Cellini
Dubois: Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra
Mozart: Symphony No. 40 in g minor


Overture to Benvenuto Cellini by Hector Berlioz







French composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was recognized for his skill as an orchestrator. His music embraced many aspects of the Romantic style but he struggled for acceptance of his ideas, often financing his own concerts.



Sent to Paris to study medicine, he instead began taking advantage of the city’s musical opportunities and, not surprisingly, abandoned medicine to enter the Paris Conservatoire in 1826. Berlioz won the Prix de Rome in 1830, but he was reluctant to make the required trip to Italy. Italian history, art, and the country itself would turn out to be especially influential on his music in such famous works as Harold in Italy, Romeo and Juliet, and all of the operas including Benvenuto Cellini.



The opera was based on the actual memoirs of the title character, a Renaissance Italian sculptor, metal smith, musician, and writer. His autobiography, Vita, is considered to be the most important of the Renaissance period and it provides a vivid and somewhat shocking picture of his complex life. Berlioz was drawn to Cellini story and thought of him as a kindred spirit in part because he saw in him the Romantic ideal of the artist as the hero.



Berlioz began working on Benvenuto Cellini in 1830 and it premiered, in its first version, at Paris Opera in 1838. Unfortunately it was a resounding failure and one of Berlioz’s biggest disappointments. He revised it, creating a three act opera that was more successfully presented in Weimar by Liszt, but that version also failed the following year when presented in London.



In the opera, Cellini is in love with Teresa Balducci, the daughter of the Papal treasurer. He is late with a Papal commission for what will become his famous sculpture of Perseus with the head of Medusa. While trying to elope with Teresa, he is confronted and kills his rival, Pompeo. Threatened with the death penalty for the crime, Cellini is offered clemency if he will quickly complete the Papal commission. When he does, he is freed and wins the hand of Teresa.



At the premiere, the overture received a loud round of applause even though it was a bit of a surprise for a Parisian audience that wasn’t used to such a long overture preceding an opera. Because of this success, Berlioz often conducted it as a separate piece. The overture opens with an explosive flourish perhaps descriptive of Cellini the man and his work forging metals. The slow section contains themes from the opera. The string theme is from the Cardinal’s arioso in which he grants Cellini clemency and the woodwind theme is derived from the Harlequin’s arietta in the Carnival scene. The main section of the piece presents the atmosphere of the carnival. This is followed by a brief love theme from the duet between Cellini and Teresa, and then the conclusion returns to the melody of the Cardinal’s absolution.







Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra by Pierre Max Dubois







French composer Pierre Max Dubois (1930-1995) studied at the Paris Conservatoire from 1949 to 1953. His teachers included Jean Doyen and Darius Milhaud. Dubois won the Prix de Rome in 1955 with his cantata Le rire de Gargantua and went on to teach in both Quebec and at the Paris Conservatoire as the professor of analysis. He made conducting tours of France, Belgium, USA and Canada. His output includes educational materials, instrumental works, small scale operatic works, ballets, chamber music, a concerto for four trombones and orchestra and Hommage à Hoffnung, scored for an orchestra of saxophones.



Concert saxophonist, professor, and author of teaching methods for saxophone, Jean-Marie Londeix commissioned his friend Pierre Max Dubois to write the concerto. Both were at Paris Conservatoire at the same time and became friends when the composer asked the saxophonist to perform one of his recently completed works.



This neoclassical concerto opens with a Lento expressivo e Allegro first movement in the model of a French overture. It begins with a long introduction by the saxophone in an improvised style. The Allegro section and the second movement Sarabande inspire the themes of the cadenza at the end of the slow section. Londeix was disappointed with the original cadenza and Dubois suggested that he write a new one himself. The composer was happy with new cadenza so it remained in the piece. The second movement Sarabande owes some of its melancholy character and inspiration to Russian composer, Aram Khachaturian. The sarabande was a triple meter dance with an accent on the second beat. It was banned in Spain in the late 1500s for its obscenity. It later became a traditional component of the dance suite in the Baroque period, but at a much slower tempo. The final movement Rondo sets off with a perpetual motion-like effect. The rollicking, happy melody continues throughout and ends with a flourish.







Symphony No. 40 in g minor, K. 550, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart







The years between 1783 and 1788 were the busiest and most musically successful for Mozart. In the beginning, he was in demand for public and private concerts and he began to publish his music. The family was living in expensive rented apartments in the heart of Vienna. In 1784, Constanze Mozart gave birth to the older of couple’s two surviving children, Carl Thomas (1784-1858), who as an adult became a bureaucrat, working for the Viceroy of Naples in Milan and playing music only privately.



By 1786 Mozart was starting to feel some financial pressure and reduced income. Leopold Mozart died in May 1787 and Mozart’s share of the estate would have briefly helped to ease his situation. In December, Emperor Joseph II, impressed by Mozart’s success with Don Giovanni, appointed him the new Kammermusicus at a salary of 800 guldens annually. In that same month, Theresia Constanzia Adelheid Friederike Maria Anna was born.



The Turkish War had caused a decrease in music patronage and Mozart was struggling with debts. He borrowed money, pawned valuables, and sought advances from publishers, leading him to earn his lowest income since he arrived in Vienna seven years earlier. In mid 1788 the Mozart family moved to the distant suburb of Alsergrund because of the cheaper rents. Mozart’s limited income was coming from payments from patrons and publications. He had developed a plan to secure a regular paycheck from lessons by charging monthly and requiring payment even if a lesson were missed.



Mozart’s six-month old daughter, Theresia Constanzia, died on June 29, 1788. Their only other surviving child was Franz Xaver Wolfgang (1791-1844), who was born only six months before his father passed away. Constanze made sure that the boy received music lessons from Salieri after Mozart’s death and Franz Xaver Mozart went on the become a composer, pianist, and Kapellmeister.



Still dealing with grief from the death of his daughter, Mozart’s last symphonies, Symphonies No. 39, 40, and 41, were composed that summer within a nine-week period. Symphony No. 40 was completed on July 25,1788 and it seems to have been the only one of the three symphonies that was performed publicly during Mozart’s lifetime. Antonio Salieri, who had been made Kapellmeister of the Vienna Court, conducted the two performances at Vienna’s Burgtheater in April 1791. The original instrumentation for the symphony did not include clarinets, but Mozart reorchestrated the score, altering the oboe parts to accommodate the additional woodwinds.



The well-known Molto allegro first movement is in the characteristic sonata form. The first theme is dark and agitated and while the second theme is certainly more graceful, it still possesses a dark quality. The development section modulates a great deal and fragments the first theme. The recapitulation arrives, keeping both themes in the tonic key of g minor.



Although it is in a major key, the second movement, Andante, continues the darker inclination of the symphony. It begins with imitative entrances and contains short restless-sounding rhythms, crossrhythms, and unexpected accents.



The third movement, Minuet: Allegretto, is not a conventional dance movement. The minuet itself is heavier and more aggressive with a thicker polyphonic texture and unusual phrase lengths. The trio section is often described as pastoral in character and the beautiful horn parts deserve the listener’s attention.



The final movement, Allegro assai, begins with an anxious first theme that springs up through the orchestra and is answered by a lyric second theme. The chromaticism of the development section presages the tonal exploration of the late Romantic style. The recapitulation returns, clearing the air and bringing both themes back in the tonic key.



Eric Blom says of the symphony, it “…is full of unhappy agitation, but it reveals it because the composer’s genius could not help producing this particular expression, and not because he intended to impress his hearers with his private concerns.”







Notes by Kristen Hauser
January 27, 2009