Prelude to Act I of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Die Meistersinger, premiered in 1868, was Richard Wagner’s only mature attempt at comic opera although, clocking in at four-and-a-half hours, its rib-tickling elements are possibly diffuse to a point where levity may not strike a listener as a constant feature. Set in 16th-century Nuremberg, Die Meistersinger tells the story of the dashing young nobleman Walther von Stolzing and Eva, the daughter of a goldsmith. Learning that Eva is to be married to the winner of an upcoming song contest sponsored by the Mastersingers Guild, Walther applies for Guild membership (a prerequisite for participating in the contest) but is denied membership due to backstage politics—principally the scheming of the town clerk Beckmesser, who hopes to win the contest (and Eva’s hand) himself. The wise cobbler Hans Sachs comes to the lovers’ assistance and helps Walther pen a song that may triumph. Beckmesser steals a copy of the song and performs it himself at the competition—dismally. Walther then sings it so beautifully that he wins the contest by popular acclaim and thus gains entry into the Guild as well as betrothal to Eva.

The opening music from the opera, the Prelude to Act I, is one of Wagner’s most immediately irresistible pieces. In this Prelude we hear five principal themes that will recur in the ensuing opera attached to specific characters or events: the opening march of the Mastersingers Guild, some gentle rhapsodizing signifying the love between Walther and Eva, a theme relating to the banner of the Mastersingers, the song with which Walther will win his bride, and another melody suggested the ardor of the lovers’ passion. In the movement’s development section Wagner interlaces all five themes in ingenious and somewhat comical counterpoint before moving on to a blazingly triumphant conclusion.

To See the Sky: an exegesis for orchestra (Colorado Premiere, Joint Commission of The American Composers Forum, New York Philharmonic, Atlanta Symphony, Aspen Music Festival, and Bravo! Vail)
SYMPHONIC COMMISSIONING PROJECT
     I. Sometimes...
     II. ...you have to gaze into a well...
     III. ...to see the sky.

Born to Jamaican parents in the Bahamas, Joel Thompson is completing his doctorate in composition at the Yale School of Music. His music often addresses topics involving social justice. Breakthrough works include his choral composition Seven Last Words of the Unarmed, which sets words of seven Black men who suffered police brutality in the United States, and To Awaken the Sleeper, which sets texts by James Baldwin. Following the premiere of his opera A Snowy Day (based on Ezra Jack Keats’ beloved children’s book) at Houston Grand Opera, that company appointed him to a five-year term as its first composer-in-residence. “My identity as a Black man,” he has said, “is inherently political in this country, and to be able to bring my identity to bear in this genre and idiom of music that I love so much, it means so much to me. If we all reckon with our current circumstance  and get to see each other—and I think music is a perfect vehicle for us to be able to see each other—I think we can move toward that more perfect union for sure."

To See the Sky was inspired by the line, “Sometimes you have to gaze into a well to see the sky,” from Cécile McLorin Salvant’s song “Thunderclouds.” Thompson segments this sentence into three parts, which give rise to the piece’s three movements. “This line,” he explained “asked me to examine the circumstances in which one’s head could be so craned towards the ground that you would have to look into a well in order to see the reflection of the sky. It asked me to engage in an active introspection that’s even greater than what I usually engage with as an artist looking inward.” This is the second work by Joel Thompson that the New York Philharmonic has premiered, the first being The Places We Leave, a setting of texts by former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, which Jaap van Zweden conducted in January 2022.

Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98
     Allegro non troppo
     Andante moderato
     Allegro giocoso
     Allegro energico e passionato—Più allegro

With his Fourth Symphony, Johannes Brahms achieved a work of almost mystical transcendence born of opposing emotions: melancholy and joy, severity and rhapsody, solemnity and exhilaration. His friend and musical confidant Clara Schumann recognized this play of duality already in the first movement, observing, “It is as though one lay in springtime among the blossoming flowers, and joy and sorrow filled one’s soul in turn.

Although it is cast in the same classical four-movement plan as his earlier symphonies, Brahms’ Fourth seems more tightly unified throughout (largely through the pervasive insistence on the interval of the minor third), and its movements proceed with a terrific sense of cumulative power. The opening movement is soaring and intense, and the second is by turns agitated and serene. The Allegro giocoso represents the first time Brahms included a real scherzo in a symphony, quite a contrast to the lighter, even wistful allegretto intermezzos that had served as the third movements of his first three. And for his finale, Brahms unleashes a gigantic passacaglia, a neo-Baroque structure in which an eight-measure progression, derived from the last movement of Bach’s Cantata No. 150, is subjected to 32 variations of widely varying character.

He composed this work during two summers he spent in the picturesque Austrian town of Mürzzuschlag, at the eastern edge of the Alps. The community conservatory there is the Johannes Brahms Musikschule, the hiking route the composer followed is now the Brahmsweg, and the town square sports a statue of the composer setting off on one of those hikes. There is a Brahms Museum “in the genuine summer residence of Johannes Brahms,” which contains memorabilia relevant to his vacations and sponsors innumerable mostly-Brahms concerts— before or after which you can refresh yourself at the Brahms-Bar.