Respighi. Mozart. Mendelssohn

PERFORMERS:
Lorenz Nasturica-Herschowici (violin)
Yuri Afonkin (viola)
The Mariinsky Stradivarius Ensemble
Conductor: Lorenz Nasturica-Herschowici

PROGRAMME:
Ottorino Respighi
Antiche arie e danze per liuto (Suite No 3)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sinfonia concertante for Violin and Viola in E Flat Major, KV 364

Felix Mendelssohn
String Symphony No 9 in C Major

Felix Mendelssohn composed five symphonies for full orchestra and thirteen for string orchestra. He finished the score of his Ninth Symphony for String Orchestra on 12 March 1823, at the age of just fourteen. For his early maturity and the surprising effortlessness with which he wrote, Mendelssohn is not infrequently compared with Mozart. The first movement of the Ninth, with the exception of the pathétique introduction, is restrained in exactly Mozart’s style and the entire symphony is rich in polyphonic techniques, as if Mendelssohn were aspiring to surpass Mozart’s Jupiter symphony.
In the second movement of the symphony the young composer uses modest means and, with their assistance, creates a masterful canvas – as is well known, limitations frequently stimulate inspiration...
He contrived to split the small orchestra in two: the first section in major key and the reprise are performed by the violins, the central section (a fugato in minor) by the violas, cellos and double basses. Such powerful contrasts for strings alone are rarely to be found in music.
The third movement is a hunting scherzo (the first such in the music of Mendelssohn, the composer-to-be of the famous scherzo in the music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream). The pastorale trio contains a theme from a Swiss song that Mendelssohn heard while travelling with his parents in Switzerland: because of this fact, the Ninth Symphony is sometimes referred to as the Swiss. Almost the entire finale of the String Symphony in C Major, including the swift and strident coda, flows in C minor (in all probability following the example of Haydn’s Emperor quartet). This movement is unique for its polyphonic nature. Typically, a composer wishing to employ fugato in sonata form places it in the development, while Mendelssohn gave the symphony’s final movement three (!) fugatos – in the exposition, the development and the reprise. Which does not at all mean that his Ninth is a dry and academic exercise in composition.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was drawn to serve in Salzburg, and visits to his home town were always more than fruitful. In 1779 in Salzburg he composed his Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra. The idea for it came from analogous works for several solo instruments composed in abundance by composers from Mannheim (the famous orchestra there was known as the “army of generals”, as the solos could basically be performed by any musician). The first bars of Mozart’s score coincide with the beginning of one of the symphonies by Johann Stamitz from Mannheim.
At that time, the viola was the “Cinderella”, though Mozart loved to play this instrument and gifted violists this virtuoso and, at the same time, deep work. In order for the viola to sound more resonant, Mozart proposed reorganising the strings in his Sinfonia Concertante. Going against tradition, the orchestra features not one viola section but two.
There is total equality between the solo violin and the solo viola. As there are two soloists, it was impossible to improvise the cadenzas, as was standard practice at the time. The Sinfonia Concertante is one of few works by Mozart in which all the cadenzas were written by the composer himself.

The legacy of Ottorino Respighi includes many works that revived Italian music from past eras. Among them are the three suites Antiche arie e danze per liuto (Ancient Airs and Dances for Lute, 1917, 1923 and 1931). They comprise 16th-17th century works for lute freely adapted for strings. The third suite also exists in a version for string quartet. It opens with the piece Italiana by an unknown composer of the late 16th century – even, measured, passionless and relatively lifeless – this is how the ideal of the “early style” was seen in the time of Respighi. The court (or courtly) Aria by the Burgundian Jean-Baptiste Besard is an entire suite of short pieces that are different in character. The anonymous Sicilienne is melancholy, like almost every Sicilienne of the 20th century, while the final Passacaglia by Count Ludovico Roncalli (who, in fact, composed it not for the lute but for the guitar) is predictably triumphant. Judging by the four-note chords given initially to the violins and subsequently to all the other strings, in his free arrangement Respighi was clearly imitating Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous Chaconne for solo violin.
Anna Bulycheva