The Romance of Spring Program Notes
Scott Cuellar, piano soloist
In reviewing 22-year-old pianist Scott Cuellar's performance of the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Oberlin Orchestra, Daniel Hathaway of Cleveland Classical noted that Mr. Cuellar possessed "nerves of steel, a formidable technique, and an architect's understanding of the structure."  He went on that "his performance was consistently thrilling, his touch masterful and his rhythm rock solid, yet responsive to the humor and irony . . . he's a pianist to keep an eye on the in the future." 

Mr. Cuellar holds a bachelor of music in piano performance from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he studied with Alvin Chow.  He is the winner of three of the largest prizes offered to pianists at Oberlin: the Oberlin Concerto Competition, the Arthur Dann Piano Competition and the John Elvin Prize for Juniors. Additionally, he has collected awards from more than fifteen competitions across the country, including eight first-place prizes.  Mr. Cuellar is the winner of the Friends of the Symphony Young Artist Competition in 2009, college piano division.

He has appeared with several orchestras, including the Oberlin Orchestra, both the Minneapolis Orchestra and St. Paul Civic Symphony and the Mississippi Valley Orchestra, and he has upcoming engagements with a number of others.  Mr. Cuellar has been heard in venues nationwide, and in 2011 was invited to give a guest recital at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.  In the summer of 2011, he was a member of the piano faculty at the Rappahannock Summer Music Camp in Fredericksburg, Virginia.  In the summer of 2009, Mr. Cuellar studied at the Banff Centre with Julian Martin in Alberta, Canada, and 2010 was named one of ten pianists for piano study with Jerome Lowenthal at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California. 

Mr. Cuellar is currently a first-year master's student at the Juilliard School, where he studies with Julian Martin, and, based on his entrance audition, he was nominated to compete in the school's Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition.

Overture: Le corsaire, Op. 21
Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz was born in La Côte-Saint-André, France, in 1803 and died in Paris in 1869.  He began this concert overture in 1831 and laid it aside; he completed it in 1844.  He revised the work in 1851 and again in 1855.  The final version was first performed in 1855 in Paris under the direction of the composer.  The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 cornets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpan, and strings.

Many assume that Berlioz’ concert overture Le corsaire has something to do with Lord Byron’s gender-bending poem of the same name, but it seems more likely that Berlioz made the literary connection to his music after it was composed.  He began the work while he was recuperating in Nice after a tempestuous and terrifying sea voyage; at the time he called it La Tour de Nice (The Tower of Nice) after the landmark that was on his daily itinerary there.  When he revised the work years later he called it Le Corsaire rouge, perhaps with James Fenimore Cooper’s Red Rover in mind.  When he revised it again for publication he called it, simply, Le corsaire.  In any case, there is probably—as always—more of Berlioz in the plot than Byron’s Conrad.

Yet there does seem to be  connection in spirit.  Berlioz was quite taken with Conrad’s “inexorable yet tender nature, pitiless yet generous—a strange combination of apparently contradictory feelings.”  In like manner, the overture is a festival of contrasts.  It begins as if it were already in the middle of things; then, rather abruptly, a slow section begins, as if Berlioz has just remembered that an overture ought to begin with a slow introduction.  Where the opening was all fury, this is tender and wistful.

The fiery opening music returns to begin the sonata proper, leading to even more contrasts that seem to come more rapidly as the work unfolds: bombastic brass sections and gentle melodies fly by, all seemingly meant to culminate in a “big tune” that has the spirit of a school fight song.  It might be best to banish the literary allusions from our minds and simply drink in all of these carefree musical delights.

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 43
Sergei Rachmaninov

Sergei Rachmaninov was born in Semyonovo, Russia in 1873 and died in Beverly Hills, California in 1943.  He composed this work in 1934, and it was first performed the same year with the composer as soloist and the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.  The score calls for solo piano, 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp and strings.

Nicolò Paganini (1782-1840) radically changed people’s expectations of what the violin could do and the music that would be written for it.  He was, simply, the best violinist anyone had ever heard.  He had assimilated virtually every known technique into a unified virtuoso style, along with unprecedented speed, accuracy and perfect intonation.  At age sixteen, he composed his 24 Caprices for unaccompanied violin as showpieces for himself; since then they have inspired such composers as Liszt, Schumann, Brahms—and Rachmaninov—to compose variations on their themes.

Paganini’s on-stage persona frequently overwhelmed those who saw him play:  his skeletal figure and demonic intensity reminded people of a man possessed.  His manner prompted rumors, believed by many, that he had sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for his prowess—and perhaps for his lady-love as well.

A silly notion, but one that gave Rachmaninov an idea that would make his variations unique.  There would be twothemes in his work: Paganini’s, and the Dies Irae, the call to judgment from the Mass for the Dead.  Rachmaninov explained in a letter:  “Why not resurrect the legend about Paganini, who, for perfection in his art and for a woman, sold his soul to an evil spirit?  Paganini himself first appears in the theme.  All the variations which have the Dies Irae represent the evil spirit.  The evil spirit appears for the first time in Variation 7, where there is a dialog with Paganini about his own theme and the one of the Dies Irae.  Variations 8-10 are the development of the evil spirit.  Variation 11 is a turning point into the domain of love.  Variation 12—the minuet—portrays the first appearance of the woman.  Variation 13 is the first conversation between the woman and Paganini.  Variation 19 is Paganini's triumph, with his diabolical pizzicato.”

Rachmaninov's own diabolical twists include delaying the theme, heard in the violins, until one of the variations has already been presented, and in using an inversion (upside-down form) of Paganini’s theme as one of the tunes in the love episodes.  In all, a clever tribute to the great virtuoso and a bravura showpiece in its own right.

Symphony No. 1 in B-flat Major, Op. 38 (Spring)
Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann was born in Zwickau, Germany in 1810 and died at Endenich, Germany in 1856.  He composed his Spring Symphony in four days in 1841 and orchestrated it in less than a month.  It was first performed the same year by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under the direction of Felix Mendelssohn.  The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, triangle and strings.

“Within the last few days,” Schumann wrote, “I have completed a labor which has kept me in a state of bliss, but also exhausted me.  Think of it!  A whole symphony—moreover, a Spring Symphony!  I can hardly believe, myself, that it is finished.”  Schumann’s earlier attempts at a symphony had failed, but perhaps his joyous first year of marriage made the difference:  “The symphony has given me many happy hours.  But now, after sleepless nights, comes exhaustion.  My Clara understands this and treats me with double consideration—a kindness which I will repay.  I might have sought through millions without finding anyone who would treat me with such thoughtfulness and understanding.”

Schumann said that his inspiration for a “spring” symphony came from a poem by Adolf Böttger.  In fact, the rhythm of the Symphony’s opening fanfare duplicates exactly the rhythm of the poem’s last line: “Im Tale blüht der Frühling Auf!” (“For the valley blooms in the spring”).  When he wrote to conductor Wilhelm Taubert, Schumann explained what he wanted from the first movement:  “Try to inspire the orchestra with some of the spring longing which chiefly possessed me when I wrote the symphony.  At the very beginning I should like the trumpets to sound as if from on high, like a call to awaken.  In what follows of the introduction there might be a suggestion of the growing green of everything, even of a butterfly flying up, and in the subsequent allegro of the gradual assembling of all that belongs to spring.”

Schumann thought “Evening” would be an apt title for his reverent Larghetto, with its long, spun-out melodic shapes.  Near the end of the movement, there is a trombone passage with a religious tone; this begins a subtle transition that leads, without pause, to the key and the theme of the Scherzo.  Where the Larghetto was relaxed, the Scherzo is vigorous, dashing among two main themes and two contrasting trios.  The Finale is brisk and light, though Schumann said, “I like to think of it as the farewell of spring, and so I shouldn’t want it to be played too frivolously.”

It is commonly held that Schumann was poor orchestrator, or at least an indelicate one; he seems to have thought so, too, for he revised the scoring of this work after nearly every performance he heard.  Since then, musicians such as Mahler and Felix Weingartner have tried their hand at tidying up the score, with mixed results.  Nowadays, however, the symphony is often performed in its original orchestration, though this takes greater vigilance from the conductor and players.

Yet the music itself is glorious:  many are inspired by spring, but few can turn it into music of such vitality.  As the composer said, “I wrote the symphony toward the end of the winter of 1841, and if I may say so, in that flush of spring which carries a man away, even in his old age, and surprises him again each year.  I did not intend to describe or paint, but I firmly believe that the time when it came into being influenced its character and form, and made it what it is.”
                                                                        —Mark Rohr
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                                                                        mrohr@comcast.net