Program Notes: March 15, 2009
Antonín Dvorák's Symphony No. 7 in D Minor, originally numbered "2" but since renumbered to reflect its true chronology, was written in 1885 for London's Philharmonic Society, which had warmly received both him and his music a year earlier. His new symphony, he knew, had to transcend its predecessor (in D Major) in order for him to secure his growing international reputation; moreover, he also felt a strong need, as always, to live up to Brahms's high expectations for him, especially after Brahms had done so much to put his music before the world. To meet this dual challenge, he chose the daunting key of D Minor (the key of Beethoven's Ninth and Mozart's favorite "dark" key) and wove into his symphony several resonances with Brahms's recent Third Symphony (1883), including apparent references in the first movement to the broadly stroked "motto" theme that opens Brahms's Third, and the fade-outs that close all four of Brahms's movements (Dvorák fades out in only the first two movements, but with a particularly strong echo of Brahms in the latter instance). Perhaps, as well, the symphony pays homage to Mendelssohn's Scottish music and to Wagner (an early hero of Dvorák who had died in 1883), especially in the seething wave-like gestures of the first movement. Particularly memorable--and particularly Dvorákian--is the third movement, whose rhythmic energies recall the highly successful Slavonic Dances that first made his reputation; here, a lilting rhythmic dance figure hovering between triple and duple meter proves capable both of great intensification and of serving effectively as a backdrop for a variety of other melodic material that is layered over it. The composer himself introduced the symphony to London, with great success.
Though seldom played today, Ludwig van Beethoven's "Consecration of the House" Overture was a favorite of the composer, in his words "a big overture" "composed in grand style." And so it is, with a stately introduction replete with trumpet fanfares, and sustaining a breathlessly high level of energy after it is properly launched. Beethoven wrote the piece for the reopening of the "Josephsstadt" Theater in 1822, as the curtain raiser for a play by Carl Meisl, and later chose it to open the program that premiered the Ninth Symphony and movements from his Missa solemnis. Although the overture's gestures and energy are unmistakably Beethoven's, one may also hear an after-echo of Handel's grand style, which had recently placed Beethoven under its spell--just as it had Haydn at a similar point in his career.
Zoltán Kodály's Dances of Galánta was written for the 1933 celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic, which received its dedication. Basing the piece on tunes published over a century earlier, Kodály claimed to be evoking "a famous, but since forgotten, gypsy orchestra" which he had heard in Galánta, a town (now in Slovakia, then in Hungary) where he had spent seven years of his childhood. And indeed, it is the sound of that orchestra--which provided one of Kodály formative experiences--that constitutes the real substance of the piece, the basis for its distinctive Hungarian flavor, full of passion, color, grand effects, and mercurial shifts of fancy. Although laid out in five sections, the dances unfold as a single continuous movement.
-- Raymond Knapp
Allen Gross, conductor
Music Director/Conductor of the Santa Monica Symphony since 1991, Allen Gross continues to delight the public with enthusiastic and well-prepared performances of a challenging and diverse repertory that embraces the new and the old, the familiar and the unfamiliar. A native New Yorker, he studied with Pierre Monteux, Walter Susskind, Sandor Salgo and Hans Swarowsky, beginning at Queens College and UC/Berkeley before earning his doctorate at Stanford and continuing at the Vienna Music Academy and the American Institute of Orchestra Conducting. From 1972-1978, he directed the Heidelberg Castle Festival, also serving as conductor of the Junges Kammerorchester Heidelberg and in the opera houses of Freiburg and Aachen. Back in the United States, Gross directed the orchestra and opera programs at the University of Louisville before joining the music faculty at Occidental College in 1983 to serve as Director of the Occidental-Caltech Symphony Orchestra. He has since served as Music Director/Conductor of the Pasadena Young Musicians Orchestra and the Pasadena Summer Youth Chamber Orchestra and has appeared with the Los Angeles Monday Evening Concerts, the Minnesota Composers Forum, broadcast concerts from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and honors orchestras in California and Nevada. Last Season, Mr. Gross returned from China, where he conducted a concert with the orchestra of the Shenwang Conservatory of Music. The past two summers, he has traveled and concertized in Italy, the Czech Republic and other Eastern European countries with members of the Santa Monica Symphony.
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