Bravo IV: Romantic Preludes and Scandinavian Grandeur

Sponsors

This evening's concert is generously sponsored by:

Carol McKenzie, Nancy Anne Branton and Wells Fargo Advisors 

Complimentary wine at intermission provided by:

E. & J. Gallo Winery

Accommodations provided by:

Program

Franz Liszt Symphonic Poem No. 3, Les Preludes

Carl Maria von Weber Clarinet Concerto No. 1 in F Minor, op 73

1. Allegro
2. Adagio ma non troppo
3. Rondo: Allegretto

Ana Catalina Ramírez Castrillo, clarinet

Intermission

Jean Sibelius Symphony No. 2 in D Major, op. 43

1. Allegretto
2. Tempo andante, ma rubato
3. Vivacissimo
4. Finale: Allegro moderato

Ana Catalina Ramírez Castrillo: Clarinet

(Watch a personal video invitation from Ana Catalina Ramírez Castrillo.)

Ana Catalina Ramírez Castrillo was born in San José, Costa Rica. She had her first experience with the clarinet in her school band in 1992. In 1993 she was accepted in the National Institute of Music of Costa Rica (NIM). There, she studied clarinet with Marvin Araya, principal clarinetist of the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica. In her country, Ms. Ramirez was principal clarinetist of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica for four years, assistant clarinet teacher at the NIM, first clarinet for the National Band of San Jose, Costa Rica, second clarinet for the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica for the 1999-2000 season, and an active chamber musician. In 1999 and 2000 she was a winner of the Costa Rica Young Soloist Competition, appearing several times as a soloist with both the Youth and National Symphony Orchestras of Costa Rica.

In 2000 Ms. Ramirez came to Louisiana to study clarinet with Frankie Kelly at Southeastern Louisiana University. A year later, she continued her studies at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with soloist Jonathan Cohler, where she obtained a Diploma in Music Performance in 2004.

During her stay in Cambridge, she was a winner of the Longy School of Music Honors Competition, a semifinalist of the Young Artist Competition of the International Clarinet Association, clarinet teacher at several schools in the area, and production manager and bass clarinetist for the Brockton Symphony Orchestra in Brockton, Massachusetts.

Ms. Ramirez has performed solo recitals in her native country, the United States, and in Venezuela, where she has performed as a guest artist since 2004. She has performed in master classes for world renowned clarinetists such as Philippe Cuper, Ricardo Morales, Luis Rossi, Wenzel Fuchs, Paquito D’Rivera, Kalman Berkes, Alessandro Carbonare, and Charles Neidich. She also participated in the Sewanee Music Festival, Interlochen Arts Camp, XIX International Orchestra Festival in Murcia, Spain, the 2001 and 2002 International Clarinet Connection in Boston, the Youth Orchestra of the Americas Latin-American tour 2005, and the 38th International Winter Festival at “Campos do Jordão” in Brazil.

In December 2007 she received a master’s degree in Music Education with emphasis in Performance from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, where she studied with clarinetist Michael Sussman. Today, she is principal clarinetist of the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, and teaches clarinet at Mississippi College.

Notes by Lynn Raley

Franz Liszt: Les Préludes
First performance on Feb. 23, 1854, Liszt conducting the Weimar Court Orchestra. 

Franz Liszt, piano virtuoso, composer, superstar, and-late in life-clergyman, was the creator of the orchestral "symphonic poem." Liszt and his followers were confident that program music was "The Music of the Future," in the heated debate that took place against followers of Brahms and Hanslick. Brahms represented the best in "absolute" music (based on standard forms), and Liszt urged composers to write with a "program" in mind, to better come up with original and progressive musical forms. Between 1848 and 1858, he composed twelve such works. Each has a unique form, dictated by its programmatic idea.

The most popular and enduring, Les Préludes is based on a poem of the same name by Alphonse de Lamartine. Liszt's work reflects both the poem's programmatic content and formal design. The four sections deal with the topics of Love, Destiny, War, and The Countryside. Liszt carefully reflects Lamartine's design, down to the transitions between the four sections, and the introductory and concluding sections. Liszt's four sections can be clearly distinguished, for each has a distinct mood. Each opens with a transformation of the opening melody of the work. The "love" section is sweet and melancholy; the "pastoral" section features harp and horn figures over a bagpipe-like drone; the "war" section is a march, featuring trumpets, inspired by the poem's line "It is clarion's cry."

Five years after it was written, Liszt included a program note in the published score. Although it does not refer to Lamartine, it explains Liszt's thoughts about the poem's themes:

What is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song, the first solemn note of which is sounded by Death? The enchanted dawn of every existence is heralded by Love, yet in whose destiny are not the first throbs of happiness interpreted by storms whose violent blasts dissipate his fond illusions, consuming his altar with fatal fire? And where is to be found the cruelly bruised soul, that having become the sport of one of these tempests does not seek oblivion in the sweet quiet of rural life? Nevertheless, man seldom resigns himself to the beneficent calm which at first chained him to Nature's bosom. No sooner does the trumpet sound the alarm than he runs to the post of danger, be the war what it may that summons him to its ranks. For there he will find again in the struggle complete self-realization and the full possibilities of his forces.

Carl Maria von Weber: Concerto No. 1 for Clarinet, Op. 73
All three of Weber's works for clarinet and orchestra were written for the clarinetist Heinrich Baermann, one of the great clarinetists of the early nineteenth century. When King Max Joseph I of Bavaria heard Baermann's virtuosity in the Weber's Concertino for Clarinet and Orchestra, Op. 26, he was so impressed that he commissioned Weber to write two other works for Baermann. Inspired by Baermann's playing Weber wrote works for clarinet that are highly idiomatic, outstanding for their deep understanding of all the instrument's capabilities. (His Grand Duo Concertante for clarinet and piano is a staple of the clarinet repertoire.) Like Beethoven, Weber was a transitional figure, appearing at the beginning of the Romantic period, and had a major influence on Romanticism. He began his career as a concert pianist and his works for piano often rival Liszt's in their technical demands. An underrated composer, he is overshadowed today by Mendelssohn, Liszt, and Chopin, all of whom came after him but all of whom he influenced.

Jan Sibelius: Symphony No. 2, Op. 43
Premiered in Helsinki, Mar. 8, 1902 in an all-Sibelius concert conducted by the composer.

Jan Sibelius, the most Finnish of composers during a rise of Finnish nationalism, is usually regarded as a composer who did not explore new territory, a conservative who avoided the gauntlets thrown down by pioneers of atonality like Schoenberg and Stravinsky. But Sibelius, in his own way, was an innovator, still willing to mine the possibilities of tonal writing. His approach, radical in its simplicity, was to work out his melodic material from fragmentary motives. He even remarked once, "It is as if the Almighty had thrown down the pieces of a mosaic from Heaven's floor and asked me to put them together."

In the first movement of this symphony, Sibelius begins with melodic fragments, fragments that promise melody but never quite complete them. Sometimes he uses repeated notes (as at the very beginning), sometimes a sustained tone. As composer Jonathan Kramer has written, "We anticipate and expect eventual continuity. As the movement progresses, certain fragments emerge as more important, since they are heard more often. Traditionally a development section breaks apart long themes into their constituent motives. Here, the themes are already fragmented, so Sibelius begins instead to extend the join the pieces. Eventually they are integrated and continuity is achieved. This process is, in a certain sense, the opposite of traditional symphonic development."

In 1911, while working on his fourth symphony, he wrote in his diary, "A symphony is not just a composition in the ordinary sense of the word; it is more of an inner confession at a given stage of one's life." Perhaps feeling out of sympathy with the trends dominating contemporary music at the time, Sibelius inexplicably stopped composing in 1926, a full thirty years before his death in 1957.