Program Notes: December 9, 2007
By 1802, the still-young Beethoven was so despondent over his increasing deafness that he wrote a will, now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, in which he laments the loss of his connection to nature, the rest of humanity, and God, but resolves heroically to persevere in the face of adversity. Within a year, Beethoven had made such heroism the theme the Eroica Symphony, which he presented nearly two years later to its first public audience--who were duly astonished at being confronted with a piece more than double the customary length of symphonies at that time. Recent scholarship by Thomas Sipe has clarified the symphony's original basis in Napoleon, who for a brief period had seemed to Beethoven worthy to serve as both inspiration and dedicatee for his greatest work. To launch his "Napoleon" symphony, Beethoven details in the first movement the struggle and victory of the hero, and in the second--the great C-minor funeral march--the hero mourns the loss of the fallen. The final two movements are celebratory, pointing to the more democratic world order many then believed should follow upon Napoleon's conquests. The third movement depicts a rustic encounter between the folk (in the opening) and gentry (in the central horn trio), who then, in the finale, "join hands" to create the new order. This joining of hands is based in the country dance, or "englische," one of the few social dances in which gentry and the lower classes could dance together. From this simple material spring elaborate variations that encompass, along the way, a march, sophisticated fugues, and a devoutly hymnic episode before, in the end, they give over to the purely celebratory. Famously, after completing the work, a disillusioned Beethoven rescinded his dedication to Napoleon in favor of the more generic designation of "heroic," implicitly claiming as his own the heroism he had so recklessly--if generously and hopefully--ascribed to Napoleon.
One would scarcely know from the overture alone that Mozart's Marriage of Figaro had anything to offer but comic intrigue. But then, that's part of the disguise that allowed Beaumarchais's politically charged play, banned by the Viennese censor in 1784, to find its way to the Viennese operatic stage in 1786 with most of its satire on the aristocracy intact. One might imagine, however, that early audiences, knowing full well the nature of the story they were about to see, heard past the overture's high jinks to the nose-thumbing attitude the music seems to display toward aristocratic (and male) presumption. But only those who knew Mozart's music well could have guessed how poignantly his music would later bring out the pathos of his characters, helplessly trapped in their buffa plot--since the overture is all fun, and gives scant hint of the darker side of Mozart's comic personality.
Christopher Rouse's Flute Concerto (1993) draws on the composer's Celtic roots for inspiration. The five movements form an arch, framed by meditative song movements based in an Irish idiom (Amhrán is Gaelic for song). Adjoining these movements are two fast movements that push the limits of their rhythmic bases, the second being a rather frenetic march and the fourth a jig-like scherzo. The poignant central movement is an elegy for James Bulger, a two-year-old abducted from a shopping center near Liverpool and brutally murdered by two ten-year-old boys in February 1993. Toward the end, the movement conveys a powerful sense of agonized outrage breaking through a surface of somber, dignified sadness, echoing the emotional trajectory of the funeral march of Beethoven's Eroica, whose central fugue makes a similarly anguished break from an otherwise controlled surface--akin, expressively, to a grief-stricken tearing of garments.
-- Raymond Knapp
David Shostac, flute
David Shostac, returns as soloist with the Santa Monica Symphony, after having performed the Ibert flute concerto in 1998. Well-known for his performances throughout North America, Mr. Shostac also principal flutist and a frequent soloist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He has collaborated as a featured artist with conductors Sir Neville Marriner, Jean-Pierre Rampal, Iona Brown, Christopher Hogwood, Cristof Perick, Gerard Schwarz, Claudio Scimone, Karl Richter, Helmut Rilling, Jorge Mester and Henryk Szeryng. Solo appearances have included the Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival, the Casals Festival of Puerto Rico, the Aspen Music Festival, the Ojai Festival, the Stratford (Ontario) Festival, the Carmel Bach Festival and four national Flute Conventions.
Mr. Shostac has been principal flutist of the St. Louis, Milwaukee and New Orleans Symphony Orchestras as well as the Mostly Mozart, Ojai, Carmel Bach Festival and Aspen Chamber orchestras. In addition to his long tenure with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, he has also been performing as principal flutist with the Aspen Festival Orchestra since 1982. Shostac us a former member of the American Symphony Orchestra with Leopold Stokowski and has performed with the Boston Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has appeared in recital with Roberta peters and Victoria de Los Angeles and can also be heard sound track of major motion pictures, recordings and television programs.
Shostac studied on scholarship at Julliard from which he holds a Master's Degree. As a student at Tanglewood he was awarded the Henry B. Cabot Prize as the outstanding orchestral player as well as the William Schwann Award. Recipient of two Rockerfeller performance grants, he was also a prize winner in the national Young Musicians Foundation solo competition and a first prize winner in the Coleman Chamber Music Competition. Formerly a professor at the University of Southern California, University of California at Irvine and the California Institute of the Arts, he is currently on the faculties of California State University at Northridge and the Aspen Music Festival.
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