Leonore Overture No. 3 . . . Ludwig van Beethoven
(Born December 16, 1770, in Bonn; died March 26, 1827, in Vienna)

Beethoven considered writing operas on several subjects but he actually wrote only one opera, now known as Fidelio. The source of his subject was the libretto of Leonore, or Conjugal Love, an opera by a minor French composer. In Beethoven’s opera, the dual themes are political freedom and marital love, exemplified in a simple story to which his music gives great power.

The opera failed at its first performance in 1805, and again in a revision in 1806. In 1814, a third version changed the title from Leonore to Fidelio. Over time, Beethoven wrote four different overtures for the opera. The one now usually played to introduce the opera, Overture to Fidelio, is a brief, brisk dramatic composition that gathers the audience’s attention for the events to be represented on stage.

The three Leonore Overtures have become separated from the opera but now figure in symphonic concert repertory. Altogether, these three make up a remarkable group of quite different compositions devoted to the same subject, all using the same materials. However, Beethoven organized the musical elements into somewhat dissimilar musical structures, with varying emphasis. The most popular of the versions is Leonore Overture No. 3, which, as an orchestral masterpiece, is comparable to his symphonies.

Beethoven revised the opera for its 1806 performances, substituting a new overture, Leonore No. 3, a dramatically rewritten version of Leonore No. 2. (Beethoven also composed another version of the overture known by the misleading title Leonore No.1, a year later (1807) for a performance of the opera that never actually occurred.) Critics contemporary with Beethoven suggested that the powerful Leonore Overture No. 3 overshadowed the opera’s first act, and consequently contributed to the failure of the 1806 Fidelio. Beethoven replaced it in 1814 with the terse Fidelio Overture.

Beethoven used the same themes in No. 3 and No. 2, but treated them more concisely and compellingly in No. 3. Leonore No. 3 has a slow introduction foreshadowing Florestan's lament in Act II. The slow music of Florestan's dungeon aria is actually used in the introductory sections of both. Since No. 3 was published as a separate work in 1828, it is probably from it that later Romantics derived the idea of the descriptive concert overture that eventually became the symphonic poem.

One of the overture’s themes derives from Florestan’s Act II aria, in which he sings of his imprisonment, “In the springtime of my life, my happiness has fled. I rashly dared speak the truth and chains are my reward.” The overture’s second theme is love, illustrated by Florestan’s singing of his feelings for his wife, Leonore. The third is freedom that the trumpet call represents when it announces the arrival of the Minister who will liberate Florestan.

No. 3 is now sometimes played as an entr'acte during performances of the opera.


Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3, in D minor, Op. 30. . . Sergei Rachmaninoff

(Born April 1, 1873, in Oneg, Russia; died March 28, 1943, in Beverly Hills, California)


Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 makes intense demands on the pianist’s stamina and is recognized as one of the most difficult works in the piano repertoire. Rachmaninoff composed it in 1909 for his first tour of America, a trip motivated amusingly enough, by the composer’s desire to make enough money to buy a popular new item of his day, a car. He was charmed by the idea of driving through the countryside and enchanted by the novelty of the new technology. Rachmaninoff resisted pressures to give the first performance of the work in Russia and sailed for New York even before he had learned to play the work thoroughly himself. He practiced it at sea on a mute keyboard, and after appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra, he gave the first performance of the new work on November 28, 1909, with the New York Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Walter Damrosch. About two months later, he played it again, with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Gustav Mahler. It was published in 1910, with a dedication to the great pianist Josef Hofmann.

The concerto is a large but concise work whose movements are tightly integrated by their use of related themes. In the first, Allegro ma non tanto, the piano’s entrance with the melancholy and lyrical main subject is preceded by a throbbing accompaniment figure. Then the piano introduces a lengthy calm theme that has an important role in all of the movements. Even the playful second theme of this movement is a variant of the first. A musicologist friend of the composer, Joseph Yasser, felt that this dark, pessimistic Russian sounding melody derived from an old Russian Orthodox chant, The Tomb, O Savior, Soldiers Guarding, sung in the Monastery of the Cross near Kiev. Rachmaninoff denied the source and told Yasser the theme had written itself and had come to him ready-made. Yasser persisted, hypothesizing that Rachmaninoff may have heard the melody many years before and subconsciously remembered it. Of course, there is no way to know. The first movement involves the piano more and more, and it ends in an extensive cadenza, which also briefly features solo wind players.

The second movement, a rhapsodic and tender Intermezzo Adagio, has a little scherzando waltz as a contrasting middle section. The theme of both the pensive introduction and the scherzo are transformations of the main theme of the preceding movement. The piano does not dominate this movement as it did the prior one. The poignant, plaintive Adagio theme returns and after a fierce cadenza, leads into the driving propulsive Finale, Alla breve, without a pause, overflowing into brilliant, soaring melodies, most of them again derived from the first movement. This movement shows the solo piano in many guises, all variations of the piano’s potential textures. The concerto ends with the tempo increasing and the excitement building until the climax.

The concerto is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals and strings.


The Pines of Rome, Symphonic Poem . . . Ottorino Respighi
(Born July 9, 1879, in Bologna; died April 18, 1936, in Rome)

The Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, known for his creation of brilliant orchestral color, studied with the best teachers in his own country, then with Rimsky Korsakov in St. Petersburg and with Max Bruch in Berlin. He was a violinist, a conductor, an educator, and a composer who wrote chamber music and songs like a German, colorful orchestral music like a Russian, and operas like an Italian. Now principally he is known because of his tone poems based on the pines, the fountains and the festivals of Rome, but in his time much more of his music was known and valued.

The Pines of Rome is the second of three works that Respighi composed as a Roman series, each one celebrating some aspect of the Eternal City. The first is The Fountains of Rome, composed in 1916, followed by this work, composed in 1924, which was in turn followed by Roman Festivals, completed in 1928. Respighi once said that in The Pines of Rome he had used “nature as a point of departure, in order to recall memories and visions. The century old trees that so characteristically dominate the Roman landscape become testimony for the principal events in Roman life.” In very colorful style, Respighi depicts four contrasting aspects of a characteristic Roman sight, thus the score has four connected sections in which Respighi creates sonic and visual images. The composer provided the following description:

1. The Pines of the Villa Borghese (Allegretto vivace). Children are at play in the pine grove of the Villa Borghese, dancing the Italian equivalent of Ring Around A Rosy, mimicking marching soldiers and battles, twittering and shrieking like swallows at evening, and they disappear. Suddenly the scene changes to:

2. The Pines Near a Catacomb (Lento). We see the shadows of the pines, which overhang the entrance to a catacomb. From the depths rises a chant which re echoes solemnly, sonorously, like a hymn, and is then mysteriously silenced.

3. The Pines of the Janiculum (Lento). There is a thrill in the air. The full moon reveals the profile of the pines of Giannicolo Hill. A nightingale sings.

4. The Pines of the Appian Way (Tempo di marcia). Misty dawn on the Appian Way. The tragic country is guarded by solitary pines. Indistinctly, incessantly, the rhythm of innumerable steps is heard. To the poet's fantasy appears a vision of past glories; trumpets blare, and the army of the consul advances brilliantly in the grandeur of a newly risen sun toward the sacred way, mounting in triumph the Capitoline Hill.

Respighi composed The Pines of Rome in 1924, and it received its premiere under the direction of Bernardino Molinari in Rome in the year of its composition.

Frequently, in the third movement, the nightingale’s song is provided by a recording of a nightingale singing.

Copyright Susan Halpern, halpernprogramnotes.com

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