Program

BACH, J.S.: BRANDENBURG CONCERTO NO. 3

Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 (ca. 1720)

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

From 1717 to 1723, Bach was “Court Kapellmeister and Director of the Princely Chamber Musicians” at the court of Anhalt-Cöthen, north of Leipzig, where he was responsible for the secular rather than the sacred music. Those years saw the production of much of his instrumental music, including the Brandenburg Concertos, orchestral suites, violin concertos, suites and sonatas for solo instruments and keyboard, sonatas and suites for unaccompanied violin and cello, and much solo keyboard music.

Bach met Christian Ludwig, Margrave of Brandenburg, in 1719, on a visit to Berlin to finalize arrangements for the purchase of a new harpsichord for Anhalt-Cöthen. While in Berlin, he played for Christian Ludwig, who was so taken with his music that he asked him to send some of his compositions for his library. Bach lost an infant son a few months later, however, and in 1720 his wife died and he rejected an offer to become organist at the Jacobkirche in Hamburg, so it was over two years before he fulfilled Brandenburg’s request. The Third Brandenburg Concerto, lacking, as it does, a slow movement, is a virtual dynamo of rhythmic energy. The opening measures not only introduce the first movement, but also serve as a storehouse of motives from which the ensuing music is spun. After a brief respite of a lone Adagio measure, the whirling motion resumes with a breathless gigue.

For his concertos, Bach avidly studied the recent works of the Italian masters, most notably Vivaldi’s L’Estro Armonico (“The Harmonic Whim” or “The Musical Fancy”). His idiomatic writing for strings grew not just from that study, however, but also from his own experience as a violinist. His son Carl wrote, “He played the violin cleanly and penetratingly. He understood to perfection the possibilities of the stringed instruments.” The E major Concerto follows the traditional Italian model of three movements, arranged fast–slow–fast.

TCHAIKOVSKY: SOUVENIR DE FLORENCE

Souvenir de Florence for Strings, Op. 70 (1890)

PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)

Tchaikovsky’s soul was seldom at rest in the years following his marital disaster in 1877, and he sought distraction in frequent travel abroad; Paris and Italy were his favorite destinations. In January 1890, he settled in Florence and spent the next three months in that city working on his latest operatic venture, Pique Dame (“The Queen of Spades”). After a brief stay in Rome, he arrived back in Russia on May 1st, noting five days later to a friend that after finishing Pique Dame, “I want to make sketches for a sextet for strings.” The orchestration of the opera was completed by early the next month, and on June 12th he told his brother Modeste that he was “starting the string sextet tomorrow.” The work was sketched within a month and performed privately in November, but Tchaikovsky reported to the composer Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov that “it turned out poorly in all respects.” He began a revision early in 1891, but had to put it aside for his tour to the United States in April and May, and then for the composition and production of The Nutcracker and the opera Iolanthe; the new version was not finished until January 1892 in Paris.

In their biography of Tchaikovsky, Lawrence and Elisabeth Hanson wrote, “The Souvenir de Florence is not great music but it is very pleasant and extremely cleverly constructed. It is above all suffused with an atmosphere not often associated with this composer, of a calm geniality.” It is probably this quality that prompted Tchaikovsky, who often wrote in his letters of the “heavenly” Italian climate, to use the sobriquet for the work’s original title. The music itself is decidedly Russian in mood and melody, with only a certain lightness of spirit in the first two movements showing any possible Italianate traits. The opening movement is in the style of a bustling waltz. The following Adagio is disposed in a three-part form whose brief center section is constructed from a fluttering rhythmic figuration. The two closing movements are based on folk-like themes, the first a sad song that is the subject of considerable elaboration, the other a bounding Cossack dance.

ARTISTS

Joshua Bell, director and violin

With a career spanning more than 30 years, chamber musician, recording artist and conductor, Academy of St Martin in the Fields Music Director Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated violinists of his era.

Joshua Bell, director and violin

With a career spanning more than 30 years as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist and conductor, Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated violinists of his era. An exclusive Sony Classical artist, he has recorded more than 40 CDs garnering Grammy, Mercury, Gramophone and Echo Klassik awards, and is a recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, as well as the Lumiere Prize for his work in the sphere of Virtual Reality. Named the Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in 2011, he is the only person to hold this post since Sir Neville Marriner formed the orchestra in 1958, and recently renewed his contract through 2020. In 2016, Sony released Bell’s album For the Love of Brahms with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Jeremy Denk, followed in 2017 by the Joshua Bell Classical Collection, a 14 CD set of Bell’s Sony recording highlights from the past 20 years.

Summer 2017 saw Joshua Bell perform at the BBC Proms with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, at the Verbier Festival, as Artist In Residence at the Edinburgh International Festival and – in the US - at Tanglewood, Ravinia, and the Mostly Mozart Festival. In the 2017/18 season in the US, Bell takes part in the New York Philharmonic’s celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s centennial, performing Bernstein’s Serenade led by Alan Gilbert, and also appears with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra among others. His North American recital tours take him to Carnegie Hall, Chicago’s Symphony Center and Washington D.C.’s Strathmore Center. Highlights in Europe include appearances as soloist with the Vienna Symphony and Danish National Symphony; as director and soloist with the Orchestre National de Lyon; and recitals in Paris, Zurich, Geneva, Bologna, Milan and London. With the Academy of St Martin in the Fields he will tour widely including in the United Kingdom, United States and Europe, featuring performances in London, New York, San Francisco, Reykjavik and at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.

Convinced of the value of music as a diplomatic and educational tool, Bell participated in President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’ first cultural mission to Cuba. He is also involved in Turnaround Arts, another project implemented by the Committee and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts which provides arts education to low-performing elementary and middle schools.

Joshua Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin and uses a late 18th century French bow by François Tourte.

Photo: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco