Intermission

Program Notes

Bach: Concerto for Violin in A Minor

As well known as Bach’s two surviving solo violin concertos are, we know almost nothing about their origins. We don't know when, where, or why he wrote them.  At one time it was fashionable to ascribe them both to the years between 1717 and 1723, when he was Capellmeister at the court of the Duke of Anhalt-Cöthen.  We know he composed concertos in Cöthen, but we also know that when he left Cöthen and became music director of Leipzig’s Lutheran churches, he supplied concertos to the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, which he also directed. And indeed, the only extant evidence for the A-minor Concerto in Bach’s handwriting is a set of parts that date from well into his Leipzig years.

In the A-minor Concerto, the soloist and the orchestra don’t share much material. The assertive theme that starts the first movement never appears in the solo episodes. Nor does the orchestra ever play the yearning theme that the first solo introduces. The rolling theme in the bass, cello, and continuo that begins the slow movement, and recurs throughout it, disappears during the solo episodes, as do the bass, cello, and continuo themselves, leaving the violas as the bottom of the ensemble. Not until the last phrase of the movement do all the elements come together and all the instruments play at the same time. The finale combines the rhythm and feel of the jig (the traditional last movement of the Baroque suite) with fugal techniques, with the tutti passages corresponding to the fugal expositions.

Notes from the Los Angeles Philharmonic website, written by Howard Posner.

Bach: Concerto for Two Violins in D minor

[This] concerto is surely among his finest work. Written around 1730, it would have received its first performance in – remarkably – a coffee house. Bach was at that time Music Director in the prosperous German city of Leipzig, and while the duties of his post would have stunned a lesser person (among other things, he was responsible for creating and seeing to the performance of a new cantata each Sunday at the city’s main church), he managed to find time to lead the city’s Collegium Musicum as well. The Collegium Musicum was a group of proficient instrumentalists who gathered to perform secular music on a more or less weekly basis. In 1730 public concert halls were still a thing of the future, and the group chose the next best thing: the city’s biggest coffee house.But notwithstanding the decidedly secular setting of its first performance, there can be little doubt that Bach – sincere Lutheran church musician that he was – intended the piece to be morally educative as well as engaging.

Notes from the Spartanburg Philharmonic website.

Britten: The Simple Symphony, Op. 4

The Simple Symphony, Op. 4, is a work for string orchestra or string quartet by Benjamin Britten. It was written between December 1933 and February 1934 in Lowestoft, using material that the composer had written as a child, between 1923 and 1926. It received its first performance in 1934 at Stuart Hall in Norwich, with Britten conducting an amateur orchestra.

The piece is dedicated to Audrey Alston (Mrs Lincolne Sutton), Britten's childhood viola teacher. The piece is based on eight themes which Britten wrote during his childhood (two per movement) and for which he had a particular fondness. He completed his final draft of this piece at age twenty.

Notes from Wikipedia