Program Notes: May 27, 2007
Charles Ives began his Second Symphony while he was still at Yale (where he graduated in 1898), and completed it in 1902. This was a pivotal period for the young composer, who had to divide his energies among three main activities: performing the duties of a church musician, composing in imaginative blends of tradition and innovation, and working in the family business, insurance. Although Ives made immediate and lasting contributions to the latter, it took a much longer time for America to catch up with Ives the composer. Thus, the Second Symphony was not performed until 1951, long after he had stopped composing. And, although Leonard Bernstein's belated premiere was a great success, the version he conducted was far from Ives's intentions, and was apparently not to his liking -- he listened in on a neighbor's radio and stomped out afterwards, spitting into the fireplace as he left. In recent years, a more faithful version of the symphony has found a growing audience, who respond to its satisfying blend of sincerity and humor, European traditions and Americana, presented with an admixture of muscular counterpoint and honest sentiment. Movements four and five run in parallel to the first two, setting off the middle movement as the expressive heart of the work. As with many another Ives work, the Second Symphony includes several echoes of traditional hymns, patriotic songs, folk tunes, and abolitionist songs; among these quotations and near-quotations, most familiar to today's audiences will be "Camptown Races," "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," "Bringing in the Sheaves," and "Turkey in the Straw."
Beethoven wrote four different overtures for his only opera, which itself underwent two substantial revisions and a change of name (from Leonore to Fidelio) on the way to its final form. Leonore #2, despite the misleading numbering, is Beethoven's first version of the overture, written for the premiere in 1805; Leonore #1, at one time thought to be a discarded first draft, has since been connected to an abandoned revival of the opera in 1807. Like the more often heard Leonore #3 (1806), Leonore #2 anticipates the dramatic rescue in the opera itself by introducing off-stage trumpets near the end. Although for his final version of the overture (Fidelio, 1814) Beethoven wisely avoided this anticipation of the drama to come, the three Leonores, particularly #s 2 and 3, have found a secure place in the repertory as concert overtures precisely because of their overtly operatic character.
Franz Joseph Haydn wrote his Trumpet Concerto in 1796 for the virtuoso Anton Weidinger, who had developed a keyed trumpet capable of playing chromatically. This new instrument, which used keys to cover and uncover holes in the tubing (much like most woodwind instruments), eventually lost out to the now standard valved trumpet, which changes the length of the tubing through a system of valves. The trumpet's new capabilities are crucial to the success of what is arguably the best of Haydn's concertos, written at the height of his powers. Before keys were added, the trumpet could play only a few notes, and mostly had to avoid its lower registers, where such notes were even fewer and farther between. But the new instrument could do everything a concerto soloist might be expected to do, moving freely over its range, leading the way in moving to new harmonic areas, and adding expressive detail and warmth to melodic lines. While these attributes are perhaps most effectively exploited in the Andante, they announce themselves early on and set the terms for the whole.
-- Raymond Knapp
Darren Mulder, trumpet
Darren is currently a member of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and he regularly performs with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philharmonic Brass, the Los Angeles Opera, and the Santa Monica Symphony. has performed at the famous Spoleto Festival in Italy. Formerly the principal trumpet with the National Orchestra of Mexico City, he has been a lecturer at University of California, Irvine. He is currently the trumpet professor and Wind Ensemble Director at the Colburn School of the Performing Arts in Los Angeles. Darren received his BA in music from California State University, Long Beach and his Masters Degree from University of Southern California.
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