It was Victor Herbert, the composer of Babes in Toyland and Naughty Marietta, who inspired Dvořák to write the most beloved cello concerto in the repertory. We owe this historical curiosity, along with some of Dvořák’s most popular music, to Jeannette M. Thurber, the wife of a New York wholesale grocer, who exhausted her husband’s millions establishing an English-language opera company that folded and a National Conservatory of Music that flourished long enough to entice Dvořák to settle temporarily in the New World. The composer agreed to serve as director of her school for $15,000, and when he arrived in 1892, Victor Herbert was the head of the cello department. Herbert, who had come to the United States from Vienna only six years before, was highly regarded as a cellist, conductor, and composer, though he hadn’t yet written the first of the forty operettas that would make him enormously popular.

In 1892, Dvořák was as famous as any composer alive. Taking on an administrative title and a heavy teaching schedule was probably an unfortunate waste of his time and talents, although the music Dvořák wrote in this country includes some of his best: a string quartet and a string quintet (both titled American) composed in Spillville, Iowa; the New World Symphony; and this cello concerto.

For several years Dvořák had been unmoved by a request from his friend Hanuš Wihan, the cellist of the Bohemian Quartet, to write a cello concerto. During his second year at the National Conservatory, Dvořák attended the premiere of Victor Herbert’s Second Cello Concerto, given by the New York Philharmonic on March 9, 1894. It is difficult today to know why this long-forgotten score made such a deep impression on him, for Herbert was hardly an overwhelming or influential talent. But Dvořák enthusiastically applauded Herbert’s concerto, and he heard something in it that made him think, for the first time, that there was important music to be written for solo cello and orchestra. This concerto would prove to be the last major symphonic work of his career.

On April 28, 1894, Dvořák signed a new two-year contract with the conservatory. After spending the summer holiday in Bohemia, he returned to New York on November 1; a week later he began this concerto. While he was writing the second movement, he received word that his sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzová (with whom he had once been in love), was seriously ill. As a tribute to her, he quoted at length one of her favorite melodies, “Kéž duch můj sám” (Leave me alone), the first of his Four Songs, op. 82. He completed the concerto on February 9 (his son Otakar’s tenth birthday), at 11:30 in the morning.

After the premiere of the New World Symphony in 1893, Dvořák said, “I know that if I had not seen America I never would have written my new symphony.” The cello concerto shows no such outward signs of the composer’s American experience—it doesn’t imitate the rhythms and melodies of the native music he heard in the United States—and has often been accepted as an early warning sign of his 2 homesickness. In fact, once Dvořák returned to Bohemia for the summer of 1895, with his new concerto in his bags, he realized that he couldn’t leave his homeland again; in August he wrote to Mrs. Thurber asking to be released from his contract. Since he had already contributed so much to American music, including a symphony as popular as any ever written, she could not refuse. The unveiling of the cello concerto, the last of Dvořák’s American products, belongs to the final chapter of his life: the premiere was given in London in March 1896, with the composer conducting. (The first American performance was not given until December.)

The literature for solo cello and orchestra isn’t extensive. At best, Dvořák can’t have known more than the single concertos by Haydn (a second was discovered in 1961) and Schumann, the first of Saint-Saëns’ two, and Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations for cello and orchestra. (He also knew the Triple Concerto by Beethoven and the Double Concerto by Brahms.) Dvořák had written one long-winded cello concerto in his youth and later said he thought little of the cello as a solo instrument (“High up it sounds nasal, and low down it growls”). Now, with little previous inclination and few useful models, Dvořák gave the form its finest example. Brahms is reported to have said, “Why on earth didn’t I know that one could write a cello concerto like this? Had I known, I would have written one long ago.”

The first movement of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto is as impressive as anything in the composer’s output. The music is long and expansive. The orchestral exposition commits the textbook sin of traveling to a foreign key for the second subject — a luxury traditionally saved for the soloist — but Dvořák’s theme is so magnificent (Donald Tovey called it “one of the most beautiful passages ever written for the horn”) that it can justify the risk. Dvořák later admitted the melody meant a great deal to him. Once the soloist enters, the music grows richer and more fanciful. The development section dissolves into simple lyricism. By the recapitulation, Dvořák is writing his own rules: he bypasses his first theme and goes straight for the big horn melody, as if he couldn’t wait to hear it again. The movement is all the stronger for its daring and unconventional architecture.

Dvořák’s progress on the slow movement was sidetracked by the memory of Josefina, and, as a result, the music he wrote is interrupted midway by the poignant song she loved. The depth of his feeling for her, often debated and sometimes denied, is painfully clear. Josefina died soon after Dvořák permanently returned to Bohemia, and, hearing the news, he took this jaunty rondo finale down from the shelf and added a long, contemplative coda as a memorial. The concerto still ends in high spirits, but it’s no longer the same piece Dvořák took home from the New World.

Dvořák began his cello concerto in New York on November 8, 1894; he completed the score on February 9, 1895 (at 11:30 A.M.), revised the ending that June, and conducted the first performance, with Leo Stern as soloist, on March 19, 1896, in London. Performance time is approximately forty minutes.

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On April 27th, Sarah Yunji Moon comes back to Saskatoon for one final farewell.  Sarah was the SSO’s Principal Flute for two seasons, and while we’re sad to see her go, we’re thrilled to have one last chance to make music with her!

She’ll be performing the dynamic flute concerto “Departures”, by Canadian composer Christos Hatzis.

We had a chance to ask her a few questions about this departure:

SSO: Being that the piece is called Departures, and sadly you’re departing the SSO, does this give extra special meaning to this performance?

SM: It certainly does, although when we chose this concerto together in March last year, I had no idea that I was going to be leaving. I am sad that this is going to be my last performance with the SSO after two seasons, but I also feel lucky to have another chance to connect and share this amazing Canadian concerto with the audience that have been so supportive.

SSO: What is your favourite memory of your time with the SSO?

SM: Since I originally moved to Saskatoon to join the SSO, I will miss being part of the orchestra the most. The SSO’s various concert series really pushed me to grow as a musician- I got to perform a lot of chamber music that required intimate and delicate musical communication with my co-workers, and also had to get better at speaking to younger audience members in elementary schools. I also loved performing a lot of contemporary music to an eager and/or slightly intoxicated audience at After Dark.

If I have to pick just one memory, it would be when a little boy from one of the school shows quietly raised his hand to ask an innocent question that blew all of our minds. We had just performed a mini version of John

Cage’s famously silent 4’33’’, and had a discussion about how every sound can be used to make music. The innocent question was, ‘if every sound is music, when does the music stop?’

SSO: What drives you towards challenging modern repertoire for the flute?

SM: I love playing modern repertoire because I often find it more relevant to my life, as a Korean immigrant living in 21st century Canada, specializing in western European classical music. Performing modern repertoire helps me find relevance as a performer in the community I live in. It can simply mean asking my composer friends if they have written any flute music I can program at my next concert. I commissioned a student composer to write for the school flute choir, because she is a living Canadian female composer who had a chance to have her work premiered by her colleagues. Listening to Departures for the first time on the internet was such an exciting experience, I can only imagine it must be how the Beatles fans felt when they listen to the new record for the first time. I hope to share my excitement for the concerto with the audience.

SSO: The flute is often seen as a “sweet” and “gentle” instrument, but in Departures we see many sides of this expressive instrument – do you this it will catch the audience off guard?

SM: Oh, yes! This concerto is full of sweet and gentle melodies, and explosive jazzy licks and bluesy tunes as well. Imagine what kind of music Mozart or Beethoven would have been written if they grew up listening to Michael Jackson, indigenous music from every corner of the world, Celine Dion and jazz. Departures is the perfect example of 21st century Canadian classical music that demonstrates the perfect balance of the traditional and new music.

SSO: What are you going to miss most about Saskatoon?

SM: Perogies, the sky, and Saskatoon Berry pies!

Catch Sarah in action with the SSO April 27th in our concert featuring Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.

At our May 12th Mother’s Day concert at Convocation Hall, the SSO String Quartet will be performing a Mozart quartet that has a unique connection to motherhood.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quartet No. 15 in D minor, K. 421/417b is the second of the Quartets dedicated to Haydn and the only one of the set in a minor key. Though undated in the autograph, it is believed to have been completed in 1783, while his wife Constanze Mozart was in labour with her first child Raimund.  Constanze stated that the rising string figures in the second movement corresponded to her cries from the other room.

“…we are probably right in assuming that it was the sudden forte of the two octave leaps and the following minor tenth (bars 31-32 of the andante), a brief uproar that quiets down, in a syncopated passage, to piano. These are figures that otherwise do not occur in Mozart.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIli9mrMFSo]

The first movement is characterized by a sharp contrast between the aperiodicity of the first subject group, characterized by Arnold Schoenberg as “prose-like,” and the “wholly periodic” second subject group. In the Andante and the Minuet, “normal expectations of phraseology are confounded.” The main part of the Minuet is in minuet sonata form, while “the contrasting major-mode Trio … is … almost embarrassingly lightweight on its own … [but] makes a wonderful foil to the darker character of the Minuet.” The last movement is a set of variations. The movement ends in a picardy third.

When we were planning our now Annual Mother’s Day concert, our Concertmaster Michael Swan immediately suggested this piece and its unique ties to motherhood!

Hear it live on May 12th at Convocation Hall, 2pm.

We’re thrilled to be performing Christos Hatzis’ Departures on April 27th.  Little did we know when we programmed it that it would be a perfect and fitting way to send off our Principal Flute Sarah Yunji Moon on her departure from the SSO.

From the composer:

Departures for flute and string orchestra was written for Canadian flutist and friend Susan Hoeppner and was given its premiere performance by her and the Kyoto Symphony at the Japan Flute Convention 2011 where she was invited to perform as a keynote guest at the Gala Concerto Concert. I worked on its composition during a time when a number of dear friends had passed away and the 2011 tsunami in Fukushima, Japan, and the resultant nuclear disaster was constantly in the news. All of these events were foremost in my mind as I was composing Departures and are acknowledged in the subtitles of each movement.

Blooming Fields, the first movement, is dedicated to the memory of theatre and television director George Bloomfield. In his obituary, George was quoted describing his own life as”the most fun anyone has ever had, ever!” This is certainly how I remember him. George used to buy new clothes and sew his own buttons on them. One’s appearance was an important statement to him but he would always find half-convincing excuses to justify my own utter neglect for my apparel or appearance in generalóto my unfailing amusement, I might add. The music reflects his playfulness and sheer delight with life, people and deliberate style and a wide expressive range, which was also the hallmark of his television and stage work. From its “Asiatic” opening, through the acrobatics for the flute and the orchestra, to the unexpected “burlesque” interpolations further along, the music of Blooming Fields is full of exuberance and delight. However, the flipside of George’s existence was his constant flirting with death (one medical emergency after another, at least during the years that I knew him) and his constant cheating of death each time, except for the inevitable final encounter. The deeper experience of these encounters he kept hidden from his friends but, to me at least, it must have been the great teacher of his life: the one that revealed to him the more profound aspects of being and the richness that results from interacting with them. In the music, this is the moment when the out of control burlesque-like revelry is interrupted by an intense and dissonant flute multiphonic, which in turn introduces a different way of listening: to the small voice within, depicted here by the quiet whistle and Aeolian tones of the flute. In the end, a soft, muted tremolo on high strings confirms this introspection of the soloist as the path to true awakening.

Serenity, the second movement, is dedicated to the memory of Bertha Modlich, an inspirational woman who passed away just shy of her 105th birthday. Bertha lived alone, ran her own house and a pottery workshop, played the violin and did sports (mostly rowing) until the very end of her lifeóa remarkable feat for a woman of that age. She modestly attributed her longevity to her daily dose of Lindt chocolate (from the factory on Lake Zurich, right across the lake from her family home) but I think her secret was her perpetual optimism and her determination to always see the best in other people no matter what the circumstances. Bertha experienced hardships in her life, like living in Berlin as a young woman and mother of two during the allied bombings of the city and the material deprivations that followed the fall of the Nazis, but she always focused on the positive aspects of life and had a way of making other people feel important. The music of Serenity follows her lead: there are clouds but they are short-lived and the music returns quickly to sunnier vistas. The latter part of Serenity is a song without words. As I was writing it immersed in my loving impressions of Bertha (and perhaps her own ghostly presence,) I imagined her dancing away into eternity in this unpretentious, slow waltz melody that seems to exist on its own terms and against all conventional wisdom about human limitations.

Progress Blues, the final movement, is a meditation on the nuclear disaster of Fukushima; not on the accident itself, but on the lessons that can be learned from our unwarranted and single-minded faith in technological progress. Even though the tsunami caused more human tragedy than the near meltdown of the nuclear reactors, the latter event may end up having a more transformative effect on the Japanese psyche than any act of God, however devastating. The modern history of Japan has two nuclear disasters 66 years apart as bookends, one at the end of WW2 and one in our days. After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki holocaust, Japan embarked on a path of technological development and exuberance, which, although it brought a great deal of material and emotional satisfaction and wealth, it also caused fissures within the Japanese psyche and society that are only recently becoming visible to everyone. The music follows this path of exuberance, which is not that different from that of the first movement, although in Progress Blues it is more relentless, more impulsively driven. Its fissures show occasionally, as in the “wobbly” phonograph effect that exposes the emotional pretentions of the Hollywood-like treatments of the main theme or the “ticking clock” metaphors of the string pizzicati. Introspection is not absent for long (even the Hollywood-like theme undergoes a dark rethinking as a fugato) but the sheer drive forward and the forces that have given it impetus in the first place, repeatedly succeed in sidetracking any attempt to question the wisdom of this relentless drive or the dire consequences that it may engender. At the apogee of speed and energy, the music suddenly collapses, the clocks keep on ticking ominously and then . . . (well, I will let the music tell you what happens next.) Progress Blues is dedicated to the victims of falsely understood “progress” in Fukushima and elsewhere.