NOTES ON THE PROGRAM

BACH
Magnificat, BWV 243

In 1723, for his first Christmas as cantor of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Bach presented a newly composed setting of the Magnificat. It was a grand, celebratory work with a five-voice chorus and a colorful variety of instruments, and Bach expanded the Magnificat text itself by interpolating settings of several traditional Christmas songs between movements. This was the original Eb-major version of his Magnificat, and it was Bach's largest such work up to that point.             

About a decade later, he reworked the piece, lowering the key from Eb to the more conventional trumpet key of D major, altering some of the orchestration, and, perhaps most importantly, removing the Christmas inserts, so that the work could be performed at a variety of festivals during the liturgical year.  It is this later D major version of the Magnificat that is normally heard today.

Despite its brilliance and grandeur, Bach's Magnificat is a relatively short work.  Nonetheless, it is filled with countless fascinating details.  The tenor opens his aria Deposuit with a violent descending F# minor scale to depict the text "He hath put down [the mighty]".  At the end of the alto aria Esurientes, Bach illustrates the words "He hath sent the rich away empty" by having the solo flutes omit their final note.  In the movement Suscepit Israel, the oboes play the old plainchant of the Magnificat in long notes against the faster moving vocal parts.  Finally, there is the stirring moment near the end, at the words sicut erat in principio ("thus it was in the beginning"), where Bach brings back the music from the beginning of the work.  -Program Notes by Boston Baroque

MOZART
Vesperae solennes de confessore, K.339

The Vesperae solennes de confessore (Solemn Confessional Vespers) of 1780 was the last sacred work that Mozart wrote for Salzburg and his much disliked employer there, the tyrannical Archbishop Hieronymus von Colloredo. In accordance with the Archbishop’s requirement that the music for liturgical services in Salzburg be relatively simple and brief, Mozart wrote a compact work, full of color and variety. Vespers is an evening service, belonging to a liturgical cycle keyed to the hours of the day and prescribing specific psalm texts that vary according to the church calendar. Here, as the title indicates, Mozart set the psalms for use on the feast day of a confessor, a saint who suffered persecution for the Faith. Thus, this music was composed for use on a particular saint’s day, and undoubtedly Mozart indicated which one, but no specific information still exists about the circumstances surrounding the work’s composition or first performance. Because Archbishop Colloredo required Mozart to write concisely, the psalms and the Magnificat are not set verse by verse with separate arias, ensembles, and choruses, but rather composed in continuous movements. The high points of the work are the fugal Laudate pueri and the beautiful soprano solo in the Laudate Dominum.  —Program notes © Susan Halpern

ASTOR PIAZZOLLA
Aconcagua—Concerto for Bandoneon and Orchestra

Piazzolla's Bandoneón Concerto (also titled "Aconcagua" by the publisher Aldo Pagani, because "this is the peak of Astor's oeuvre, and the [highest mountain] peak in South America is Aconcagua") was composed in 1979. The Concerto is cast in three movements of classical fast-slow-fast disposition. The soloist enters immediately with a fiercely focused tango, goosed by harp and percussion under powerful string chords. The first movement includes a singing central section and two cadenzas before driving to a whooping close.

The lyrical second movement begins with the bandoneón alone, ultimately joined by the harp in an elegantly pensive duet. After building to a more agitated climax, the movement ends with a soft restatement of the opening theme.

The third movement has much in common with "La muerte del ángel" - the initial walking bass line, the rhythmically offset, upward leaps of the solo entry. This finale is based on a very danceable, streetwise tango Piazzolla first used in his soundtrack for the film Con alma y vida. "I didn't know how to finish it," Piazzolla said. "And then I told myself: I give them a tango so the erudite know that when I want I can write like them, and when I want I can do my thing." At the end, Piazzolla adds a section labeled "Melancolico Final," a tenderly tuneful tango that then dissolves into a final fury that is almost pure rhythm. - John Henken of the LA Phil

PIAZZOLLA
Adios Nonino

“Adios Nonino” (Goodbye, Nonino) is one of Astor Piazzolla’s masterpieces. The work was written in October 1959, shortly after Piazzolla learned of his father’s death. The composer was touring in Spanish-speaking Latin America at the time, and after a presentation in Puerto Rico with Juan Carlos Copes and Maria Nieves Rego, word spread that his father, Vicente Piazzolla, nicknamed Nonino, had died in a bicycle accident in his hometown of Mar del Plata. The shocking news, along with the failure of the tour, economic problems and nostalgia, led Piazzolla to a deep depression. Upon learning the terrible news, he composed the work in only about 30 minutes, in honor of his father. Here is what Daniel Piazzolla, the composer’s son, remembers of that night in 1986 …“Dad asked us to leave him alone for a few hours. We went to  the kitchen. First there was absolute silence. After a while we heard our father playing the bandoneon. It was a very sad, terribly sad tune. He had composed “Adiós Nonino” …

Astor Piazzolla was only eight when his father gave him a bandoneon. It is him who helped his son in his search for “his” music and the choice of his own path in art. For Piazzolla, his father was the most important person in his life, in his mind he ranks first after God. The shock of his death was so great that that night the tango artist screamed without tears. But through his art, he bequeathed to the history of Argentine music one of his most beautiful and eternal pages. Nonino is an Argentine variation of the Italian word Nonno (grandfather), which was used as a diminutive. The work is based on “Nonino” – another tango that Astor wrote five years earlier in Paris, also dedicated to Vicente Piazzolla. The composer preserved the rhythmic part of the tango and reworked the rest, making some additions.

At first the tango is intrusive, sobbing, but later the music softens and grows into the theme of a sublime memory of the father. And although Piazzolla’s famous works are many, it is “Goodbye Nonino” that becomes his symbol forever. This is one of the most famous compositions of  Piazzolla, recorded many times in various arrangements and with various instruments. “Adios Nonino” was performed at the royal wedding of Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and his wife Máxima Zorreguieta in honor of her Argentine roots. The music is used by several famous skaters for their programs.

Due to its melancholy melody and the fact that Piazzolla wrote it so far from his homeland while suffering from severe depression, “Adios Nonino” always awakens in listeners a strong sense of nostalgia and has become a symbol of the Argentine diaspora. - Sofia Philharmonic

PIAZZOLLA
Ave Maria

Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla was the most renowned composer of tango music in the 20th century. Throughout his life, he incorporated elements from jazz and Western art music into his compositions to create an entirely new style known as tango nuevo. Prior to the musical innovations Piazzola brought to the genre, tango music had strict forms, structures, and expectations. Many saw Piazzolla’s attempts to revolutionize the style as offensive, but he did not let that stop him. His innovation, creativity, and willingness to break the mold made him and his music famous. 

Ave Maria, originally titled “Tanti Anni Prima,” is a beautiful example of Piazzolla’s flexibility as a composer. In the latter half of his career, in addition to being a world renowned performer, Piazzolla began composing film scores. This gem is from the score to the 1984 movie Enrico IV (Henry IV), a film adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s tragic-comic play about a man who believes he is the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Much of Piazzolla’s music is percussive and rhythmic, but this is the opposite. Piazzolla places a tender and lyrical melody over his signature harmonies, almost as if it was dreamt up while improvising on his bandoneon. -US Marine Band

PIAZZOLLA
Oblivion

Piazzolla lived in Italy periodically during the Argentine dictatorship of the 1970’s and 1980’s, and in 1984 composed Oblivion as music for a film by Mario Bellochio entitled Enrico IV. Oblivion is written in the style of a milonga, a song form that predates the tango. It has become one of Piazzolla’s most popular works, and has been adapted for performance by a variety of solo instruments. - Steve Anthenien