Easter Oratorio

Sunday, April 1, 2012 • 3:00 p.m.
First Free Methodist Church

Orchestra Seattle
Seattle Chamber Singers
Darko Butorac, conductor
Karen Urlie, soprano
Melissa Plagemann, mezzo-soprano
Stephen Wall, tenor
Michael Dunlap, baritone

Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Easter Oratorio, BWV 249

—intermission—

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
Valse Triste, Op. 44, No. 1

Richard Strauss (1864–1949)
Suite from Der Rosenkavalier

About the Concert

Conductor Darko Butorac, music director the Missoula Symphony, returns to conduct OSSCS in a Palm Sunday performance of J.S. Bach’s festive Easter Oratorio. The second half of the program features the haunting Valse Triste of Jean Sibelius and the ever-popular Suite from Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss.

About the Conductor

Guest conductor Darko Butorac serves as music director of the Missoula Symphony Orchestra and principal conductor of the Fidenza Opera Festival in Italy. Critics have lauded his performances as marked by a “great range of expressiveness,” “extraordinary refinement of dynamic shading” and a “fine sense of shape and color.” Since taking the helm of the Missoula Symphony in 2007, Mr. Butorac has propelled that orchestra to a new level of musical achievement, with an expanded repertoire and local premieres of works by established and emerging composers. An enthusiastic ambassador for classical music, he also produces the award-winning Downbeat DownLow podcast with Leah Lewis.

Mr. Butorac has appeared as a guest conductor with such ensembles as the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Charleston Symphony, Canton Symphony and Montana Lyric Opera, and served as principal conductor of the Northwest Mahler Festival. His guest-conducting engagements abroad include performances with the Trondheim Symphony in Norway, Mendoza Symphony in Argentina, Xiamen Philharmonic in China, Kharkov Symphony Orchestra and Kharkov Philharmonic in Ukraine, and the Giuseppe Verdi Orchestra of Parma. Engagements this season include performances with the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra and the Charleston Symphony Orchestra as well as OSSCS.

Darko Butorac earned his Master of Music degree from Indiana University, where he conducted over 30 concerts with the school’s major ensembles. He has also worked extensively at the Brevard Music Center, Aspen Music Festival and the University of Toronto, his alma mater. His principal mentors are David Effron, Jorma Panula and David Zinman.

About the Soloists

Soprano Karen Elizabeth Urlie appears on opera, concert and recital stages across the Pacific Northwest, appearing as featured soloist with Northwest Sinfonietta, Bellevue Chamber Chorus, Bellevue Opera and the Seattle Opera Guild Previews, and has sung as a member of the Seattle Opera Chorus since 1999. Ms. Urlie has also been a frequent soloist at Gallery Concerts and worked with Tony Award-winning composer Adam Guettel on a recording of his original work for a production of Uncle Vanya at Intiman Theater. An avid recitalist, Karen draws upon repertoire that ranges from Purcell and Mozart to Wolf, Strauss, Rodrigo and Barber.

Mezzo-soprano Melissa Plagemann has been praised by audiences and the press for her “clear, burnished voice” Tacoma News Tribune) and “attractively expressive mezzo” (Crosscut Seattle). She performs frequently with the finest musical organizations throughout the Pacific Northwest, and is rapidly becoming known for the passion and musical intelligence she brings to performances on opera and concert stages alike. A first-prize winner in competitions of the Ladies’ Musical Club, the Seattle Musical Art Society and the Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society, she holds degrees from the University of Victoria and Indiana University.

Tenor Stephen Wall has appeared frequently with OSSCS since 1985 and can be heard on the OSSCS recording of Handel’s Messiah. During that time he has also been featured in leading and supporting roles with Seattle Opera, in addition to roles with Portland Opera, Utah Festival Opera and Tacoma Opera, and appearances with the symphonies of Seattle, Vancouver, Spokane, Everett, Bellevue, Yakima, Pendleton, Great Falls and Sapporo (Japan). Mr. Wall has also served as the director for many musical theater productions and maintains an active voice studio in Seattle.

Baritone Michael Dunlap began his musical studies as a violist, focusing on instrumental music at Western Washington University, where he studied composition with Roger Briggs. After college, he began performing musical theater and singing in choirs. A Seattle Opera chorister for the past several years, his notable performances include Dr. Bartolo in Rossini’s Barber of Seville at Tacoma Opera and Colline in Puccini’s La Bohème for Kitsap Opera and Vashon Opera. His own setting of Psalm 8 for chorus and piano premiered at West Seattle Peace Lutheran Church in February 2009.

Program Notes

Johann Sebastian Bach
Kommt, eilet und laufet, ihr flüchtigen Füßen, BWV 249

Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany, on March 21, 1685, and died in Leipzig on July 28, 1750. His Easter Oratorio began life in early 1725 as a birthday cantata, which the composer revised as a sacred work that premiered on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1725. Further revisions occurred around 1735 and again during the late 1740s. In addition to four vocal soloists and chorus, the work calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes (one doubling oboe d’amore), bassoon, 3 trumpets, timpani, strings and continuo.

Bach’s Easter Oratorio is really a large-scale Sunday cantata consisting of 11 movements. Four of Jesus’ followers—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Peter and John, who appear in the Biblical resurrection drama—present the Easter story: After rushing to the tomb early in the morning, the disciples discover that the women have found Jesus’ tomb empty. An angel has told them that Jesus is risen. Jesus’ followers decide that burial spices are now not as appropriate as a victor’s laurel wreath and understand, through finding Jesus’ shroud, that death can now be seen as a peaceful slumber because it has been conquered through Jesus’ resurrection. They thus replace their mourning of Jesus’ death by rejoicing that their future will be eternal life in his presence.

Bach had composed the celebratory cantata Entfliehet, verschwindet, entweichet, ihr Sorgen (“Flee, vanish, fade, you sorrows,” BWV 249a) in the form of a Baroque pastoral fantasy for the February 23, 1725, birthday of Duke Christian of Saxe-Weißenfels. He soon thereafter transformed it into the cantata Kommt, gehet und eilet for Easter Sunday of that year by setting a new text (which likely represented one of Bach’s earliest collaborations with the poet Christian Friedrich Henrici, known as Picander) to existing arias (shepherds and shepherdesses in the birthday cantata became the four characters in the Easter play) while adding new recitatives. The practical Bach again reworked the original secular cantata as Verjaget, zerstreuet, zerrüttet, ihr Sterne (“Dispel them, disperse them, you heavens,” BWV 249b) to commemorate the birthday of Count Joachim Friedrich von Flemming, Governor of the City of Lepizig and a patron of the composer, on August 25, 1726. Sometime during the mid-1730s, Bach expanded the Easter cantata into a work he called an “oratorio” (a large work for soloists, chorus and orchestra that tells a story, often from the Old Testament) and revised the work again a decade later, rearranging the work's third movement—originally a duet for tenor and bass—for four-part chorus.

The oratorio, filled with dance rhythms that express the varying emotions evoked by Jesus’ death and resurrection, opens with an orchestral sinfonia whose brisk triple-meter first section welcomes the rising of the sun—and of the Son—with joyful trumpet fanfares. Sixteenth-note passages for the violins, oboes and bassoon run breathlessly about the garden that surrounds Jesus’ tomb, chased by trumpet flourishes. In the following adagio (a sarabande), the wistful solo woodwinds contemplate, above dotted rhythms in the strings, the sorrows that have preceded this miraculous morning. After this unusual beginning, the jubilant mood of the sinfonia return to usher in the chorus, whose voices scamper and leap upward, inviting listeners to hurry with them to the tomb from which Jesus has risen.

The remainder of the oratorio follows the usual structure of arias (songs) that alternate with recitatives (brief musical passages in speech rhythm) for diminishing numbers of the soloists. In the first recitative, all four lament their loss. In the following aria (a slow minuet), Bach intertwines the soprano voice of Mary Jacobi with the curling tendrils of a solo flute, the “circling” musical line reminding one of the laurel wreath and God’s perfection and infinity. The second recitative, for Mary Magdalene, Peter and John, leads to the heart of the oratorio, a gentle “bourrée-lullaby” in which the tenor sings Death to sleep to the accompaniment of a pulsating bass line and a gorgeous rippling river of flutes and soft strings that flows continuously, bringing peace and refreshment to an exhausted soul. After the two Marys join in a recitative to express their longing to see their Savior for themselves, an alto aria, in the rhythm of a gavotte, features a vocal line decorated by a delighted oboe d’amore and steadied by a “walking” bass.

The final recitative, for John’s reassuring bass voice, introduces trumpets and chorus that praise and give thanks for the conquest of the devil and hell by Jesus, the “Lion of Judah.” The bipartite structure (an opening section in 4/4 meter yields to one in triple meter in which the voices enter imitatively), swaying triplet figures and dotted notes that characterize this concluding gigue of joy bring to mind the glorious “Sanctus” from the monumental Mass in B Minor. Jesus’ triumph over the grave opens the gates of Heaven, and the bonds of time are burst in the final measure as Bach achieves his goal: “The ultimate end of true music is the honor of God and the recreation of the soul.”

Although Bach’s other Easter cantatas include a concluding chorale, his Easter Oratorio does not—yet it is likely the composer employed a pre-existing chorale when performing the work. Following the practice of many modern recordings and performing editions, this afternoon’s performance concludes with a chorale taken from Bach’s cantata BWV 130, composed for the feast day of St. Michael on September 29, 1724, which—like the Easter Oratorio—employs three trumpets and timpani. The chorale melody is a 3/4 version of the tune most commonly known as the “Doxology” or “Old Hundredth.”

—Lorelette Knowles

Jean Sibelius
Valse Triste, Op. 44, No. 1

Sibelius was born in Tavestehus, Finland, on December 8, 1865, and died at Järvenpää on September 20, 1957. This waltz originated as part of his incidental music for the 1903 play Kuolema. On April 25, 1904, Sibelius conducted the Helsinki Philharmonic in the premiere of the revised Valse Triste, which calls for flute, clarinet, 2 horns, timpani and strings.

Throughout his active compositional career, Sibelius provided incidental music for a number of stage plays, from 1888—when he collaborated on music for a Helsinki Music Institute production of Gunnar Wennerberg’s The Water Sprite—to a 1926 Copenhagen staging of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Other dramatic works to which Sibelius contributed music include: the 1893 historical pageant Karelia; the 1898 play King Christian II, by Adolf Paul, a close friend of the composer; the 1903 play Kuolema (Death) by Arvid Järnefelt, Sibelius’ brother-in-law; a 1905 Swedish production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas and Mélisande; Hjalmar Procopé’s 1906 play Belshazzar’s Feast (markedly different from the William Walton work performed by OSSCS last month); and August Strindberg’s 1908 Swanwhite. For a 1916 production of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s 1912 adaptation of the 15th century morality play Everyman, the composer aimed to synchronize his incidental music precisely to the dialogue and stage action, much as film composers would come to do several years later.

Sibelius biographer Erik Tawaststjerna wrote about Kuolema: “The play is very much of its period. In the first act in particular, one is reminded of Strindberg’s A Dream Play. Reality and dreams intermingle, and in the moment before her death the mother relives a ball scene from her youth: phantom-like figures in evening dress glide noiselessly while Sibelius’ music tries to mirror an interplay between this vivid memory and the sense of oncoming death.” As the play opens, a young boy sits beside his sick mother, who sleeps in her bed. When she starts to dream of dancers, the stage directions dictate: “We begin to hear the quiet playing of orchestral violins which, as the lights go up, becomes clearer and finally becomes a graceful waltz.” The mother rises to dance with the imaginary guests, who avoid her gaze. When the activity exhausts her, she returns to bed and “the playing ceases as well.” The dancers begin to leave the stage, but return when the mother regains her strength and begins dancing anew. In response, the music revisits its faster tempo but halts suddenly when Death knocks three times on the door.

At the December 2, 1903, premiere of Kuolema (which closed after six performances) Sibelius conducted a string orchestra from behind the stage in the waltz described above, plus five other numbers. The following year he rescued his waltz, revising it and rescoring it for a slightly larger ensemble. In the revision, four solo violins conclude the work with three quiet chords to represent Death’s three knocks. The composer soon sold the work, which he dubbed Valse Triste (or “Sad Waltz”), for a small amount of money (approximately $25) to a Finnish publisher, who in 1905 bundled it with other Sibelius music in his catalog for resale to Breitkopf & Härtel. Valse Triste quickly became a smash hit for Breitkopf—but Sibelius received no royalties (although he often conducted it as an encore in his appearances with orchestras around Europe).

Richard Strauss
Suite from Der Rosenkavalier

Strauss was born June 11, 1864, in Munich, and died September 8, 1949, at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. He began work on the opera Der Rosenkavalier during 1909, completing it on September 26, 1910. The Dresden Court Opera presented the world premiere on January 26, 1911. This orchestral suite drawn from the opera, which received its first performance on October 5, 1944, with Artur Rodzinski conducting the New York Philharmonic, calls for 3 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (one doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, E♭ clarinet, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, percussion, celesta, 2 harps and strings.

Richard Strauss’ third opera, Salome, shocked the world and brought the composer fame and fortune. His fourth, Elektra, moved even further toward musical modernism, after which the composer declared, “Now I shall write a Mozart opera.” Together with his Elektra librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Strauss conjured up a tale set in 18th century Vienna, with elements of love and comic intrigue that recalled the plot of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro yet, as Hofmannsthal wrote, containing “more subtle psychological contours…now already latent in the characters like Figaro, Susanna, Cherubino.”

The story centers around Princess Marie Thèrése von Werdenberg, known as the Marschallin because she is the wife of a Field Marshal. In her husband’s absence, she carries on an affair with young Octavian, who disguises himself as a female servant when Baron Ochs, the Marschallin’s lecherous cousin, arrives unannounced. Ochs seeks a Rosenkavalier (“knight of the rose”) to present a silver rose to the much younger Sophie as part of a courtship ritual. The Marschallin suggests Octavian for the task, and when he and Sophie meet, they quickly fall in love. Octavian devises a plan to derail Ochs’ engagement to Sophie, and in the opera’s moving final scene the Marschallin relinquishes her claim on the affections of Octavian. Sophie and Octavian declare their love for each other as the story concludes.

It was Hofmannsthal, not Strauss, who suggested the (anachronistic) musical device of a waltz. “Try to think of an old-fashioned Viennese waltz, the librettist wrote to the composer, “sweet and saucy, which should pervade the whole of the last act.” The Munich-born Richard Strauss was no relation to the famous Viennese Strauss family, but he did draw inspiration from at least one work of Josef Strauss (1820–1870): the first four bars of a theme from that composer’s Geheime Anziehungskräfte (“Secret Magnetic Forces”) Waltzes and the Act II waltz for Baron Ochs are identical, and in the same key.

Upon its Dresden premiere, Rosenkavalier instantly became a phenomenon, creating such a stir that special trains carried operagoers from Berlin expressly to attend performances of the work. The popularity of Strauss’ music—particularly the waltzes—resulted in all manner of arrangements, for ensembles ranging from salon orchestras to brass bands. Strauss himself arranged selections from his score to be played as accompaniment to a 1926 silent film based on the opera and sanctioned the publication of a “waltz sequence”—later creating a second waltz sequence himself after growing dissatisfied with the first. Several famous conductors also arranged their own orchestral suites from the opera, but the provenance of the most familiar of these, dating from 1944 (and published by Boosey & Hawkes the following year) remains a mystery. While many sources credit it to Polish maestro Artur Rodzinski, who led the New York Philharmonic in its first performance, the Philharmonic program book from that concert makes no mention of an arranger. A program for a 1953 Boston Symphony performance of the same suite claims it “was made anonymously for its publisher.”

The suite opens with the opera’s instrumental prelude, during which the Marschallin and young Octavian engage in an amorous encounter. Next comes the presentation of the silver rose from the beginning of Act II, closely followed by the duet in which Octavian and Sophie fall in love. A brief energetic passage announces the arrival of Valzacchi and Annina, two “spies” who play a role in the opera’s intrigue, followed by Ochs’ waltz from the end of Act II, in which he celebrates a forthcoming assignation with a chambermaid (in reality, Octavian in disguise). A brief instrumental passage from the opening of the second act leads to the famous Act III trio—more precisely, three simultaneous monologues—followed by a few bars of the simple duet between Sophie and Octavian from the end of the opera. The suite then jumps back to the middle of Act III for a spirited waltz during which a befuddled Ochs reacts to the arrival of a veiled Annina (with several children in tow), claiming to be the baron’s wife.

—Jeff Eldridge