THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA | 2017-2018 61
Program Notes
SERGEI PROKOFIEV
SYMPHONY NO. 1 IN D MAJOR, OP. 25,
“CLASSICAL”
Duration: ca. 14 minutes
Prokofiev’s penchant for using Classical musical idioms
was instilled in him during the course of his thorough,
excellent training: when he was a little tot, his mother played
Beethoven sonatas to him while he sat under the piano; he
studied with the greatest Russian musicians of the time —
Glière, Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov, Glazunov, Tcherepnin;
he began composing at the Mozartian age of six. In 1917,
Prokofiev based his own “Classical” Symphony, his first work
in the form, on the Viennese models that had formed the core
of his musical education. The work is in the four movements
customary in Haydn’s symphonies, though at only fifteen
minutes it hardly runs to half their typical length. The dapper
first movement is a miniature sonata design that follows
the traditional form but adds some quirks that would have
given old Haydn himself a chuckle — the recapitulation, for
example, begins in the “wrong” key (but soon rights itself),
and occasionally a beat is left out, as though the music had
stubbed its toe. A graceful, ethereal melody floating high
in the violins is used to open and close the Larghetto, with
the pizzicato gentle middle section reaching a brilliant tutti
before quickly subsiding. The third movement, a Gavotte,
comes not from the Viennese symphony but rather from the
tradition of French Baroque ballet. The brilliant finale calls
for remarkable feats of agility and precise ensemble from the
performers.
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
CONCERTO NO. 26 FOR PIANO IN D MAJOR, K.
537, “CORONATION”
Duration: ca. 28 minutes
Overview
By the closing decade of the 18th century, the end of the
millennium-old Holy Roman Empire was only a few years
away. Already the rising tide of revolution was breaking
against this ancient imperial rock, but that did not prevent
Leopold II (whose son Francis II was to dissolve the Empire
in 1806) from planning a glorious coronation celebration
for himself when he was crowned Emperor in Frankfurt on
October 9, 1790. The ceremonies were organized from the
Habsburgs’ home city of Vienna, where Mozart had been
living for nearly ten years. Though Mozart had enjoyed
a considerable vogue when he first arrived in 1781, his
popularity had declined alarmingly during the preceding
four years, and, by 1790, his financial and family situations
were in steep decline. He held a small position at court as a
supplier of dance music, but if only a better job — perhaps
a job composing opera — would come his way, all would be
fine, he wrote to his wife, who, nearly exhausted by worry
and almost constant pregnancy, was often away seeking
relief at various mineral baths. A retinue of more than a dozen
musicians, including court music master Antonio Salieri and
his assistant Ignaz Umlauf, was being assembled to supply
music for the coronation, and Mozart felt that he could make
a fine contribution to the proceedings and at the same time
convince the Emperor of his qualifications for a promotion.
When the final personnel list was posted, however, Mozart’s
name was not included on it. He thought he might still attract
favorable attention if he went to Frankfurt and produced an
independent concert during the coronation activities. He
arrived in Frankfurt on September 23rd.
Mozart made arrangements for a concert on October 15th in
the Stadttheater, and then went around town trying to stir up
some business. The 11:00 a.m. starting time he had chosen
proved to be filled with stiff competition. Mozart called it “a
splendid success from the point of view of honor and glory,
but a failure as far as money was concerned.” He suffered
another disappointment before he left Frankfurt. His Don
Giovanni, which was originally scheduled to be performed
as part of the official coronation celebration, was replaced
by an opera of Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf: Die Liebe im
Narrenhaus (“Love in the Asylum”). Mozart included on his
concert program a piano concerto that he had composed
two years earlier, in 1788. Though that piece, the Concerto
in D major (K. 537), was first heard in Dresden a year and a
half before Leopold’s accession, it came to be known as the
“Coronation” for its association with the Frankfurt festivities.
What To Listen For
The Concerto’s first movement is large in size but
unadventurous in form. Its orchestral introduction opens
quietly with a simple, four-square theme in the strings. Other
melodic fragments tumble forth before the second theme
is reached following a brief phrase for unaccompanied
violins. The soloist then takes up the themes and wraps
them rippling, decorative filigree. After the movement’s
central portion, more free fantasia than a true development
of the exposition’s themes, the reprise of the earlier melodic
material and a cadenza for the soloist round out the
movement.
The graceful Larghetto is in three-part form (A–B–A). The
gallant main theme is presented immediately by the soloist,