Mozart's Dark Side

Name: Mozart's Dark Side
Start: 2023-02-04T19:30
End: 2023-02-04T21:30
Location: Sagebrush Theatre

Saturday, February 4, 2023, 7:30 pm
Sagebrush Theatre
1300 9th Avenue, Kamloops
A Noran Masterworks Performance

Sunday, February 5, 2023, 2:30 pm
The Nexus at First
450 Okanagan Avenue E, Salmon Arm
A Salmon Arm Series Performance

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Canadian pianist Maxim Bernard returns to Kamloops to join us for a journey through the darker side of classical music. Kelly-Marie Murphy's In The Time of Our Disbelieving is a powerful reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sibelius' dark & menacing incidental music sets the scene for the tragic love triangle of Pelléas and Mélisande, and Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor is a beautifully melancholic work, bringing the darker side of his creativity to the surface.

Featuring

Dina Gilbert, conductor
Jennifer Tung, guest conductor
Maxim Bernard, piano (late guest artist change)

PROGRAMME

Kelly-Marie Murphy: In the Time of Our Disbelieving
conducted by Jennifer Tung*
Jean Sibelius: Pelléas and Mélisande
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 20

The approximate duration of the concert is 110 minutes including intermission

*Participation made possible by Kamloops Symphony’s partnership with Tapestry Opera in the Women in Musical Leadership Program

Read the programme notes

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Today’s concert reveals that although Mozart may have had his “dark side” he is by no means alone, as an artist, in this. It is the nature of great art to explore the full range of human experience, and great artists bravely confront the dark as well as the light in the pursuit of their craft. Set aside the popular memes of “a dark side” in Star Wars or of the “dark arts” in Harry Potter movies. The music of both Kelly-Marie Murphy and of Jean Sibelius confront much that is “dark” in human nature. The melancholy that colours elements of Mozart’s piano concerto No.20 (melancholy is an infrequent occurrence with him) is perhaps more personal, while the music of Murphy and Sibelius seems to embody a broader “dark side” that is at once personal but also social: an alarming darkness in human nature itself as it searches for meaning in this world.

Kelly- Marie Murphy

Based now in Ottawa, Kelly-Marie Murphy is one of Canada’s most productive composers whose works are commissioned and performed by some of the country’s leading artists and ensembles, including the Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras, The Gryphon Trio, James Campbell, Shauna Rolston, the Cecilia and Afiara String Quartets, and Judy Loman. Her reputation is not just North American, however, as her music has been performed around the world by outstanding soloists and ensembles and has been broadcast on radio in over 22 countries. Her music has been interpreted by eminent conductors such as Sir Andrew Davis, David Brophy, the late Bramwell Tovey and Mario Bernardi. Her music has been heard in renowned concert halls, such as Carnegie Hall in New York, The Mozarteum in Salzburg, and The National Concert Hall in Dublin.

The quality of Dr. Murphy’s creativity is reflected in the many academic scholarships she has received, and the impact her compositions have had on contemporary music is evident in the regularity with which her work has for many years been acknowledged with prizes, starting early in her career in 1992. As a look at her list of works would quickly reveal, Kelly-Marie Murphy is committed to an art that confronts the nature of contemporary reality, both external and internal, light and dark: “Smoke Darkened Sky” for piano, “Rains of Ash and Embers” for strings, “To Hold Back Chaos” for quintet, ”For Fragile Personalities in Anxious Times” for quartet, as well as “In the Time of Our Disbelieving” that opens today’s concert.

In the Time of Our Disbelieving (2020)

Kelly-Marie Murphy’s commitment to an art that is relevant to the realities of our own time is reflected in her own account that follows, of the genesis of this work:

In the Time of Our Disbelieving was commissioned by I Musici de Montréal for a concert in April 2020. It was written between December 2019 and March 2020 when there were extraordinary things going on in the world. We are in a time which has been described as “a crisis of disbelief.” There are consequences in refusing to acknowledge reality—whether about ourselves, or about the world around us.

When Australian wildfires raged on and created the worst wildlife disaster in modern history, and were then followed by severe flooding, there were still those for whom climate change was not to be believed. When the news began to come from China about a potentially deadly virus—one that actually cancelled the world premiere of this piece—there are those for whom this was “fake news.” As the US polls were indicating a win for the Democrats in November of 2020 there were those who continued to disbelieve.

Facts are there; belief is an option.

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957): Pelléas et Mélisande (1905)

Maurice Maeterlinck’s drama Pelléas et Mélisande was first performed in 1893 and within a dozen years had inspired four major musical works: its first English production, in 1898, featured the music of Gabriel Fauré. In 1903, Arnold Schoenberg recounted the story in a substantial symphonic poem that emphasised the passionate and brutal elements of the story’s action. Claude Debussy (who had been at the play’s premiere in Paris) spent several years collaborating closely with Maeterlinck on his operatic version, which had its first performance in 1902. Then Sibelius was commissioned to compose music for the play’s Finnish premiere in 1905. The production ran for eighteen performances, six of which Sibelius himself conducted. The concert suite on today’s programme is Sibelius’ adaptation of that theatrical score.

Pelléas et Mélisande is a symbolic drama that takes place in a mythical medieval world, Allemande, ruled by King Arkel, and is concerned not so much with the individual characters and their conflicts, but more with the enigma of human life itself, and with the mystical forces that seem to drive the characters whose backgrounds are never fully revealed and whose destinies are never entirely understood. Its “plot” is the familiar love triangle: in brief, Golaud finds Mélisande alone in the woods. She has lost her crown but cares not. He takes her to the castle and marries her. Her love, however, is for Pélleas, stepbrother of Golaud, who begins to watch them jealously as their relationship flourishes. Catching them in a passionate embrace, Golaud kills Pélleas, and shortly after Mélisande dies as she gives birth. The scenes which Sibelius’ music embodies and illuminates—the gates, cellars, and terraces of the castle, the sunset, the gardens at dusk, the seashore—are not just physical locations but are states of mind, the realms of the conscious and unconscious. His musical scenes are like a sequence of tapestries, a series of memories the details of which the music is striving to recall. The small orchestral forces match this intimate intent: one flute (piccolo), one oboe (cor anglais), two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, timpani, triangle, bass drum, and strings.

The play’s opening scene, 1. At the Castle Gate, is portentous, and so is Sibelius’ music. It is both overture to the whole work and a prelude to the opening scene. Servants work strenuously to clean the castle steps for a celebration. But this is also the Gate of Destiny. The play’s action will now begin. Will it lead to Death? Yes. Or to Birth? Yes— it is in this place that Mélisande will die, giving birth at the play’s end after the death of her lover, Pélleas. Sibelius portrays 2. Mélisande with a plaintive waltz played on the cor anglais to which the flute and clarinets respond as do the pizzicato strings, capturing at moments the mysterious and evasive quality of her character. 3. At the Seashore is a scene of impressionistic tone painting when Mélisande and Pélleas go at dusk down to the sea. The monotonous string sounds convey the steady swell of the waves and the woodwinds the cries of sea birds. The scene of almost sombre darkness is suddenly interrupted with a high fortissimo. Is it a sign of an approaching storm, and if so what kind of “storm”? 4. A Spring in the Park: Mélisande and her lover Pelleas walk in the park and stop beside a spring. This basically happy, even passionate scene also contains hints of tragic events to come. Mélisande (inadvertently) drops her wedding ring into the spring. Did you hear the triangle sound? In a scene in the castle tower, Mélisande combs her hair and sings a ballad 5. The Three Blind Sisters. The concert suite does not include a voice part, but the melody Sibelius creates for Mélisande (principally on the clarinets), its simplicity and limited range, strengthens the remote medieval atmosphere of the play’s setting and the alien qualities of Mélisande herself. The 6. Pastorale: is fluid and peaceful music suited to the play’s pastoral setting but must seem ironic in relation to events that are increasingly threatened by Golaud’s jealousy of Pélleas. In the castle, 7. Mélisande Spins with her distaff and wheel. Behind the spinning motion conveyed by the trill of the violas we hear a sinister and more urgent melody in the strings and clarinets that is prophetic of violence to come. The 8. Entr’acte that follows is a prelude to the tragic concluding events. The sprightly and cheerful mood with which it starts seems ironic as the atmosphere grows increasingly more ominous as the piece progresses. Sibelius concludes his suite with 9. The Death of Mélisande. The music is dignified and elegiac and grows gradually to an extraordinarily powerful climax that itself descends into reverential quietness once more as Mélisande fades gently into death, leaving her newly born child to face a sad and enigmatic world.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor K.466 (1785)

Mozart is universally admired among composers of classical music, and part of that admiration stems from the breadth of his accomplishments—from sonatas for individual instruments through a variety of chamber music ensembles, to orchestral works of several kinds especially his symphonies, and then to his magnificent operas. However, his concertos have a special appeal for many people—there is always something captivating about the encounter between the virtuoso display of a solo instrument and the imposing range of resources of an orchestra. And of the concertos it is those for piano that appeal most widely.

Of the more than 20 concertos Mozart composed for piano and orchestra only two are in a minor key. This one, No.20 in D minor, generates more passion in listeners than any other, leading some to afford it mythical status. It is openly emotionally “dark,” dramatic and full of passion These were qualities which in the “romanticised” taste of the 19th Century made this concerto, along with Mozart’s Symphony No.40 in G minor, and his opera Don Giovanni the most admired of his works and influenced the work of a generation of composers from Beethoven through to Brahms. Its persistent minor tonality, its rumbling discontent and stormy outbursts, its rich orchestration (that included trumpets and kettledrums) and evocative contrasts in texture, all seemed to speak of individuality, personal freedom and even revolution.

If we seek the source of the “dark side” that this concerto expresses, we should be careful. It is natural to want to attribute it to “dark events” in Mozart’s life such as the loss of an infant child, or problems with money, or else to increasing personal or artistic maturity. But such is the nature of genius—these things are difficult to disentangle. About a month after finishing this D minor concerto Mozart completed Piano Concerto No.21 in C major which we have named (since1967) “Elvira Madigan” from its use in the Swedish romantic film. This is a work of a different mood entirely: a delicate, affirmative work. Yet Mozart must have been working on both of them at the same time! Do “dark” experiences explain both?

First Movement Allegro
The concerto begins with a decisively forceful introduction, after which the piano enters with a gentle tune that it never shares—and perhaps with good reason – its wide leaping intervals are uniquely suited to the keyboard and would sound awkward on any other instruments. After the emotional turmoil that follows throughout the heart of the movement it is interesting that the movement ends with gentility and restraint—combatants weary after their prolonged exertions, perhaps, or just an anticipation of the change in tone to come.

Second Movement Romanze
What a contrast the slow movement presents with its transparent opening melody on the piano and its key of B-flat major. The new key and the repeated sweetness of the melody may beguile us into peaceful relaxation. A sudden, dramatic outburst introduces a prolonged stormy episode in G minor that eventually becomes more subdued, even pensive, before the opening melody and key re-emerge to shape a contented close.

Third Movement Rondo: allegro assai
The piano decisively re-establishes key of D minor at once, but the mood is not quite the same as the opening movement: one critic called it not so much “sinister” but, rather, “turbulent grimness.” The musical form is a rondo which involves the introduction of several principal themes and the development of several episodes, through several different keys, which lead eventually to the piano cadenza and the closing bars in which Mozart cleverly (generously?) transforms the music’s mood from “grimness” to a quiet affability.