Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble

Jean Sibelius (reconstructed by Gregory Barrett), En Saga Septet for 2 Violins, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Flute & Clarinet:  Born into an upper-class, Swedish-speaking family, Sibelius (1865-1957) didn’t learn Finnish until his late teens.  After switching from law to music, he studied composition in Helsinki, Berlin and Vienna.  He joined the Helsinki Academy of Music and began composing works based on Finnish legends.  “In reality Sibelius was two composers.  The first one wrote late Romantic folkloristic music dressed in established forms ....  [Later], a second composer emerged ... and evolved into one of history’s great symphonists, the successor of Brahms” [David Dubal].  Sibelius explained that his tone poem  En Saga (“A Saga”), written at age 27, was more personal than nationalistic:  "En Saga is psychologically one of my most profound works.  I could almost say that the whole of my youth is contained within it.  It is an expression of a state of mind.  When I was writing En Saga I went through many things that were upsetting to me.  In no other work have I revealed myself as completely as in En Saga."  He began the work as a chamber octet, rescored it as a septet, then as a ballet, and finally as a full orchestral work.  After premiering the original 1892 version, En Saga sat until Sibelius, by then renowned for “Finlandia,” introduced a revised orchestral version of En Saga.  Fast-forward 100 years, to when Dr. Gregory Barrett, a professor of clarinet and chamber music at Northern Illinois University, decided to reconstruct a chamber version of En Saga.  Barrett’s reconstruction premiered in Vienna in June 2003 and was recorded with the Turku Ensemble of Finland in 2009.  Listeners familiar with the orchestral version “will miss the brass and all the pomp and beauty of orchestral majesty that we associate with Sibelius, but this remarkable chamber version has much to offer and loses little atmosphere” [Steven E. Ritter].

Carl Nielsen (arranged by Rene Orth), Clarinet Concerto, op. 57 for Clarinet, 2 Violins, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Bassoon, Horn & Percussion:  Nielsen (1865-1931) was “Denmark’s most distinguished composer” [Dubal].  He studied at the Copenhagen Conservatory, where he later served as a professor, and he played violin in the Danish Royal Theatre Orchestra, of which he later served as conductor.  He had little formal compositional training, but he had “roots deeply planted in Brahms and other Romantic composers” [Dubal], which led him towards a “strong and original style” [Schonberg] more reflective of late 19^th Century Romanticism than Scandinavian nationalism.  “The most impressive thing about [Nielsen’s music] is its breadth.  Nielsen thought big.  His rhythms are energetic, his melodies are long-breathed, his orchestration is generous” [Schonberg].  Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, composed in 1928 (in one movement with five major tempo changes) is not an easy work to play.  “Nielsen seems to crawl inside of the instrument and stretch its capabilities” [Wayne Gerard Reisig].  The concerto’s difficulty, “as well as the frequently improvisatory quality of the soloist’s part, indicates why such musicians as Benny Goodman ‘crossed lines’ to tackle this concerto” [id.].  The version Brightmusic will play tonight is a 2013 arrangement by Texas composer Rene Orth, who currently serves as composer-in-residence for Opera Philadelphia.  According to Brightmusic’s Co-Artistic Director and clarinetist, Chad Burrow, Nielsen’s original work was “already scored for a very small orchestra with only strings, pairs of bassoons, horns and a snare drum.  The reduction/reconstruction of the work by Rene Orth was a wonderful, even more intimate version of the piece.” 

Johannes Brahms (reconstructed by Alan Boustead), Serenade No. 1 in D Major, op. 11 for Violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Flute, 2 Clarinets, Bassoon & Horn):  The young Brahms (1833-1897) came on the musical scene as a pianist and a composer of piano music.  He first caught the attention of Robert and Clara Schumann  in October 1853, as a 20-year-old.  Four months later, Robert attempted suicide and committed himself to an asylum, where he died two years later.  Before his death, Robert urged Brahms to compose orchestral music, if he wanted to make his mark as a composer.  Serenade No. 1 was Brahms’ first published orchestral work.  It began as an octet and a nonet in 1858.  Brahms revised it the following year for chamber orchestra.  He premiered both the nonet and chamber orchestra versions of the work, although neither score survives.  Given the way Brahms burned manuscripts, his original scores were probably destroyed, rather than lost.  In December 1859 he completed a full-orchestra version, as Clara Schumann and violinist Joseph Joachim had urged him to do.  Joachim premiered it and Brahms published it in 1860.  “To some extent, the D Major Serenade is a miniature symphony.  Brahms actually wrote the words Sinfonie-Serenade on the manuscript before striking the first term” [Lawrence Budmen].  “Posthumous analysts have enumerated the influences of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven – even Schumann – in this sweetly bucolic work.  But its uniquely Brahmsian sound ... renders derivation hypotheses irrelevant” [Roger Dettmer].  In the 1980s composer Alan Boustead undertook to reconstruct the nonet version of the Serenade.  He did not simply transcribe the orchestral version for nine musicians.  If he had done so, he explained, “all nine musicians would play almost entirely without rests.  Rather, the principle of reconstruction has been to discover textures that would have given rise to Brahms orchestrating in the way he did.  Many details of the orchestral version have been discarded as being unquestionably added during recasting; however, at many other points the reconstruction is almost certainly exact.”  The Boustead version Brightmusic offers tonight was published by Josef Weinberger, and is performed by special arrangement with Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.