PROGRAM NOTES

by

Hanguang Wang

 

Jim Klein, Ian Jamison

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The Flood (2022) - world premiere

 

“The Flood is an autobiographical account of the 1973 flood in the Kersey area. That April, there was a sudden breach in a local reservoir, which sent the town into pandemonium. News helicopters were present as the nearby farm community pooled together to load cattle into trucks and out of harm’s way.

 

The composition’s structure features two distinct sections, and is cast from the point of view of a cow.

 

The first section represents the pastoral peace and idyllic beauty of the locale. Inasmuch as it is defined by its absence of external conflict, it can be associated with a sense of general fulfillment in being.

 

The second section is announced by an ominous brass fanfare. The music depicts the chaos and disorienting panic that ensued as it became obvious that disaster was afoot.”

Ian Jamison and Jim Klein

 

 

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

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Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15

 

Although Beethoven's Piano Concerto in C Major is known today as his first, it was actually the second piano concerto he composed; however, it was the first to be published. The piano concerto was probably composed in 1795 and premiered at a concert in Prague in 1798. As a work of his first period, there is always a tendency to estimate Beethoven's music of this stage as simply an imitation of Mozart and Haydn, ignoring those elements that are characteristic of his own.

It may be difficult for modern audiences to notice, the C Major Concerto is certainly a bold and advanced work, especially for musicians accustomed to the ordered logic of the music that has dominated a generation. As the Austrian-Bohemian pianist and composer Jan Václav Tomášek wrote after hearing the premiere concert：

“I admired his powerful and brilliant playing, but his frequent daring deviations from one motive to another, whereby the organic connection, the gradual development of ideas was put aside, did not escape me. Evils of this nature frequently weaken his greatest compositions, those which sprang from a too exuberant conception. It is not seldom that the unbiased listener is rudely awakened from his transport. The singular and original seemed to be his chief aim in composition…”

Moreover, unlike the earlier drawing-room works of his contemporaries, the Concerto in C major is a piece of public music, written for the concert hall, with the unprecedented use of a large orchestra in the piano concerto. You will hear full horns, trumpets and timpani, and with them comes a loudness and softness of contrast not found in those earlier concertos.

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Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21

 

I. Adagio molto—Allegro con brio

II. Andante cantabile con moto

III. Menuetto. Allegro molto e vivace

IV. Adagio—Allegro molto e vivace

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Ludwig van Beethoven’s First Symphony was composed at the turn of the century in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The general consensus about this symphony is much of it conforms to traditional paradigms, including classical topoi, conventional musical forms, a typical size orchestra, and elements of a “public style” present throughout the piece. According to Theodore Thomas, founder and first music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, “It is sometimes said that the First Symphony is Haydn and Mozart rather than Beethoven, but that is not correct. It is Beethoven, pure and simple, but Beethoven carrying on the art of his day as it had been transmitted to him by his predecessors. He knew no other style of symphonic writing because, until his own later development, there was no other… [The First Symphony] is a noble work and is of especial interest as the connecting link between the art of the classic and that of the romantic period.”

Beneath the surface, however, many voices and compositional innovations with Beethoven's personal touch would shine through from time to time. For instance, Beethoven used traditional forms for each movement (sonata form for the first, second and last movements, and the minuet dance form for the third movement), but the tempo, style, and energy of the third movement make it Beethovenian: instead of a stately minuet, it swings into an uplifting scherzo. Other innovations include the use of the timpani in the slow movement and the somewhat significant use of the winds, which also attracted the attention of the contemporary critics. According to the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, “…symphony of [Beethoven’s] own composition that displayed great artistry, innovation, and a wealth of ideas; except that the winds were overused, so that it was music for band rather than for the whole orchestra.”