Mozart by Candlelight Program Notes
Julia Szabo, vocal soloist
Julia Szabo is from Rockford, Illinois and received her bachelor of music degree from Northern Illinois University.  She was a professional singer in New York City for 25 years leading to numerous solo concert appearances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall.  She has performed opera roles with several distinguished opera companies such as Washington National Opera, Tulsa Opera and Sarasota Opera. For five years, Ms. Szabo performed in abridged operas for school audiences under the education departments of the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera. Her work with early music specialists led to her European debut at the Teatro Poleteamo Garibaldi in Palermo, Sicily, singing the lead role in Alessandro Scarlatti’s opera Gli Equivoci nel Sembiante. As a former member of the New York Choral Artists – the professional chorus for the New York Philharmonic -- she has sung under the baton of Sir Colin Davis, Ricardo Chailly, Zubin Mehta, Eza-Pekka Salonen and Kurt Masur.  Her work in various vocal ensembles led to a spot backing up Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli on “The Late Show with David Letterman.”  Ms. Szabo now lives in Bluffton, Ohio where she is Director of alumni relations and annual giving at Bluffton University. 

Mary Kettering, violin soloist
Mary Kettering grew up in Granville and began playing the violin in her school orchestra at age 10.  It became more than just an enjoyable class when she began taking private lessons at the age of 14 with David Edge of the Columbus Symphony Orchestra.  One year later, she auditioned and was accepted into the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra, where she first fell in love with orchestral music.  During the summer months, she played fiddle music and competed in local contests, often winning top spots.

Having grown up in a musical family, Ms. Kettering was exposed to many different kinds of music.  This has greatly affected her music career in that she is always playing something different.  She is principal second violin in both the Ashland and Lima Symphonies, and she plays fiddle and sings with the bluegrass band Kentucky Border.  She was a member of the Ashland based Faces Made for Radio bluegrass band, has toured with the Celtic rock group Ceili (Kay-lee) Rain, and performed onstage for Ashland University’s production of The Spitfire Grill.  Ms. Kettering often plays in Akron based Ryan Humbert’s Strung Out concerts, (an acoustic version of his rock band with string instruments), and sometimes appears with Hey Mavis.

Ms. Kettering was the featured performer for the Ashland Musical Club annual Scholarship Benefit Recital in 2007.  In 2008, she organized and performed in a benefit concert paying tribute to the late Jim Feldman in Berea.  Other performances include numerous chamber music concerts, fiddle workshops, and school performances.

Ms. Kettering earned her music degrees in violin performance at Baldwin Wallace College in Berea, OH, and Belmont University in Nashville, TN.  She has studied with Elisabeth Small, Julian Ross, and Gary Kosloski.  After finishing school in Nashville, she took fiddle lessons with Grammy nominated Casey Driessen, Daniel Carwile, Brian Wicklund, Megan Lynch and Bobby Hicks.

The release of Mary Kettering’s solo bluegrass album will be in Spring 2012.  She can also be heard on Kentucky Border’s debut album, “Something Old… Something New,” released in 2011.  She now lives in Ashland with her husband, Brian, and daughter, Cecilia.

Wolfgang Amadè Mozart
Overture to Così fan tutte, K. 588

Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (he never used “Amadeus” except when making a joke) was born in Salzburg, Austria in 1756 and died in Vienna in 1791.  He composed his opera Così fan tutte in late 1789 and it was first performed in January of the following year in Vienna.  (It is likely that the composer led the performance from the keyboard.)  The score of the Overture calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.

The title of Così fan tutte has been translated in various ways, but it cannot be rendered, alas, without insulting half of the human race.  Literally it means “Thus Do They All,” which is vague, so we have also seen “All Women Do It,” “All Women are Like That,” and others even more infelicitous.  The theme is female constancy, a motif which has a long history in the theater and literature going back at least as far as Ovid.  It turns out that the title is the motto of one of the opera’s characters, so we may forgive Mozart for the, ah, insensitivity.

Two soldiers make a bet with Don Alfonso that their fiancées would never be unfaithful to them.  Don Alfonso disguises the soldiers, sends each to the other one’s lover and, sure enough, both women succumb.  The sensible reader will have given up all expectations of realism by now, so it will come as no surprise that by the end of the opera all is forgiven, each soldier is reunited with his original partner, and life carries on quite happily.
Those who can’t resist judging 18th-century art with modern sensibilities have a problem with this, and they aren’t the first.  The prudish Beethoven, who adored Mozart’s music, thought Così fan tutte was nearly pornographic, and even Mozart’s most ardent admirers have said that this is an opera with glorious music but saddled with an unfortunate libretto.

Despite all this, there is still ample reason to love Così fan tutte.  Although the plot may be taken as demeaning to women, it should be noted that it is equally demeaning to men: the men of the opera are clearly loutish, immoral and stupid.  Taken at face value, their test of their lovers’ faithfulness is ridiculous.  Further, Mozart (and his librettist Da Ponte) have given one character, the servant Despina, as subversive a role as they thought might make it past the Emperor’s censors.  Mozart took great pains to stress her independence, worldliness and realism about the prevailing social system.

But most importantly, it is the humanity Mozart gave these cardboard-cutout characters in the music that saves the day.  Mozart’s tone of voice gave his characters a depth and richness they didn’t deserve, and they are joined together by some of the most sublime music he ever composed.

The Overture, as you might expect, is an airy soufflé, light on the palate and easy on the ear.  At the beginning, between the oboe phrases and the allegro, and once again near the end, we hear the musical motto of the work, the music that is later sung to the words, “Così fan tutte”—just enough to whet the appetite for the opera that follows.

 “Non piu di fiori” from La Clemenza di Tito, K. 621

Mozart completed La Clemenza di Tito in 1791, and it was first performed in Prague at the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia the same year.

Mozart had little time to compose his last opera, La Clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus), for he was given the commission in mid-July for a performance on September 6th.  Despite the urgency, Mozart seems to have used only one recycled bit of music: the aria Non più di fiori, which had been performed the previous April.

The setting of the opera is Rome in AD 79.  The jealous Vitellia, enraged that the emperor Titus will marry another, persuades Sesto to assassinate Titus.  He fails, yet when the plot is uncovered, Titus grants both of the conspirators clemency.  In Non più di fiori, Vitellia is speaking to herself in torment: does she have the courage to see Sesto alone executed for the crime?  Should she confess to Titus in hopes of reducing Sesto’s sentence?   Vitellia hasn’t found the answers yet: “Unhappy me!  What horror!  What will be said of me?  Who, seeing my sorrow, would ever have pity on me?”

Concerto for Violin & Orchestra No. 4 in D major, K. 218

Mozart composed this concerto in 1775.  It was probably performed in Salzburg soon after it was written, with Mozart himself the soloist, but the details of the first performance are unknown.  Mozart left no cadenzas.  The score calls for solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 horns and strings.

“The violin is hanging up on its nail, I suppose.”  So lamented Leopold Mozart, father of Wolfgang, in a letter to his son.  When the younger Mozart moved to Vienna his career as a violinist had come to an end: he preferred taking the viola part in chamber music and when he died he didn’t even own a violin.

We usually think of Mozart as a piano virtuoso—perhaps the best in the world in his time—but he was also, at least in his youth, equally accomplished on the violin.  This is no surprise:  his father Leopold was a superb violinist whose treatise on violin playing remains one of the most important resources we have on the subject.  “I played as if I were the greatest fiddler in all Europe,” the young Wolfgang once wrote to his father after a particularly good concert.  Leopold, never one to offer false praise, replied, “You yourself do not know how well you play the violin.  If only you would do yourself credit and play with energy, with your whole heart and soul, yes, just as if you were the first violinist in all Europe.”

We have no record of why Mozart composed his five violin concertos (he wrote the first in 1773 and the rest in 1775), though it is all but certain that he himself was the intended soloist.  Some of his colleagues in the Salzburg orchestra are known to have played them, but that seems to have been a year or two after they were composed.  Mozart left no cadenzas; he probably composed them and played them from memory or improvised them on the spot.  (Oh, to have heard Mozart improvise a cadenza!)

The first movement opens with a classic Mozartean two-sided theme, the first part martial and the second lyrical.  The soloist will partake of both, as well as the second theme with its abrupt stops.  The Andante cantabile is songful from start to finish, with delightful touches in the orchestra.  The final Rondo is based upon two themes, each with its own tempo and meter: a graceful andante in duple meter and a spritely allegro in triple.  The slower music gives us a consistent frame of reference, while the fast music is inclined to yield to Mozart’s flights of fancy.  These—along with an unscheduled, rustic interruption—make the movement a constant delight.

“Non so piu cosa son, cosa faccio” from Le Nozze di Figaro, K. 492

Mozart composed Le Nozze di Figaro in 1786, and it was first performed in Vienna the same year.

The Emperor had banned the play The Marriage of Figaro as politically dangerous—dangerous to the aristocracy, that is.  A straight translation from the play to the opera would never do, so Mozart and his librettist da Ponte stripped away the political bits.  What was left was a bedroom farce of high intrigue, low comedy, plots and counter-plots, all set to glorious music.

One of the opera’s most likeable characters is the page-boy Cherubino, who is played by a female soprano.  Cherubino is young and innocent in matters of love, yet consumed by them:  he is at a stage where he swoons for every woman he meets.  In Non so piu cosa son, cosa faccio, he laments that “Now I’m fire, now I’m ice, any woman makes me change color, any woman makes me quiver.”  He speaks of love while awake, while dreaming, to the water, the shade, the hills and the winds.  When there’s nobody to hear him, he speaks of love to himself.

“Non ho colpa, e mi condanni” from Idomeneo K. 366

Mozart composed Idomeneo largely in 1780 in Munich, where it premiered the following year.

Idomeneo is considered to be the first “mature” opera of Mozart; always in a class by himself, he achieved this maturity at the age of 25.  The story concerns the return of Idomeneo, King of Crete, from the Trojan wars.  Nearly shipwrecked by a violent storm on the way, Idomeneo vows to sacrifice the first person he meets upon his return.  That person turns out to be his son, Idamante, and from this point the plot thickens.

Non ho colpa, e mi condanni takes place in Act I before Idomeneo’s return, and again the role of a young man is given to a soprano.  Ilia, daughter of King Priam of Troy, is torn between her love for Idamante and her hatred for his father.  In this aria, Idamante declares his love for Ilia and blames their situation on the gods; he begs her not to blame him for the sins of his father.  He offers to “pierce this breast of mine; I read it in your eyes, it’s true, but at least tell me with your lips, and I will ask no other mercy.”

Symphony No. 40 in G-minor, K. 550

Mozart composed his Symphony No. 40 in 1788, but there is no record of a performance during his lifetime.  The score calls for flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns and strings; the original scoring lacked clarinets, which were added later.

Mozart composed his great final trilogy of symphonies in the summer of 1788 when his popularity and fortunes were at a low ebb.  His commissions were few, and the public had grown indifferent to his subscription concerts.  The Viennese had tired of Mozart’s music—they considered him a pianist who dabbled in composition, anyway—and were more interested in superstars like Salieri and Weigl.

Mozart composed all three symphonies in the span of a few weeks.  Because there is no record of a performance, it has been assumed that Mozart never heard them played, and some have suggested that he wrote them merely to satisfy his creative urge.  Neither is likely true.  As H.C. Robbins-Landon has observed, Mozart almost never wrote “for the desk drawer,” and it is unlikely that he would have revised the scoring of this symphony (as we know he did) without a specific performance in mind.  It may be that they were originally intended for subscription concerts that later fell through or for his long dreamed-of plan to travel to England.  It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that this G-minor symphony was performed at a benefit concert in Vienna, under the direction of Salieri.  These are the things we don’t know.  What we do know is that these three works show Mozart the symphonist to be at the height of his powers, breathing that rarefied air that few others would ever share.

Mozart composed relatively few works in minor keys, and this has tempted some to search his biography for tragic events that correspond with these works.  In most cases the facts stubbornly refuse to support the theory; Mozart’s mood may have influenced his choice of keys, but the “tragic events” are usually not found.  Still, the rareness of this symphony’s key makes it all the more interesting to hear, as Mozart paints from a harmonically richer palette.

The first movement launches directly into the first subject, with an urgent accompaniment in divided violas.  The second subject’s falling-note theme preserves the dark atmosphere, while Mozart takes his opening theme through a wild harmonic ride in one of the most intense developments he ever composed.  The second movement gives some major-key respite, but it too maintains a shadowy overcast, rich with chromatic harmonies and achingly beautiful melodies.  The Minuet is Haydnesque in its rustic sternness, slyly off-balance in its main sections and pastoral in its trio.  The Finale is virtually self-propelled, a headlong rush through innumerable moods and feelings.  The intensity never lets up, and there is no bold transformation or cheaply acquired triumph at the end; yet this restless and unusually introspective Mozart will sing in your heart for a long time to come.
                                                                        —Mark Rohr
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                                                                        mrohr@comcast.net