Page 19 - Phil Nov8th program digital book

Program Notes

all wars and conflicts.” Despite these personal passions, Bartók was best known as
a concert pianist, giving 630 concerts in 22 countries, but refusing engagements
in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. He served as a Professor of Piano from 1907-
1934 in Budapest, then gave it up to travel and collect more folk music, and finally
immigrated to the United States in 1940. Columbia University paid him to transcribe
their collection of Serbo-Croatian folk music.
Regarding the melodies Bartók used in his Romanian Folk Dances, he first heard
dueling violinists play the colorful “Stick Dance” (Bot tánc) when he visited the village
of Mezőszabad: he noted one youth “finishing with a leap so high that [he] can kick
the low ceiling. The circular “Sash Dance” (Brǎul) and third melody (Topogó/Stomping
in One Spot) come from the flute-playing shepherd in the ancient town of Igriș on the
steppes of the Danube River. The fourth and fifth dances come from the Romanian
border region (the slow Bucsumí tánc and Román polka). Directly following the Polka,
which shifts between 2/4 and 3/4 meter, the final section dashes through a tune from
the craggy Apuseni Mountains and another from the riverside village of Palotailva.
Listen for quick shifts of accent, modal melodies, and the striking virtuosity typical of
Bartók’s writing for his own piano recitals.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶
Horn Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major, K. 417 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756 – 1791)
Joannes Chrisostomus Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart, who began to call himself
Wolfgango Amadeo about 1770 and Wolfgang Amadè in 1777 (but Amadeus only in
jest and never in the combination “Wolfgangus Amadeus”), was born in Salzburg on
January 27, 1756, and died in Vienna on December 5, 1791. His fourteen-minute Horn
Concerto No. 2 in E-flat major, KV417 was completed on May 27, 1783.
Eighteenth-century composers often wrote solo concertos, and Mozart composed
five for violin (as a teenager), a few for woodwind soloists in Salzburg, and more
than twenty for keyboard (mostly between 1773-1791). A brilliant virtuoso, he usually
premiered the keyboard parts himself, but he also developed concertos for others.
Examples include flute/oboe and bassoon concertos for Salzburg players, a mysterious
Sinfonia concertante for Winds he claimed to have written for “four friends in Paris”
(K. 297b, 1778), two concertos for his piano student Barbara Ployer (No. 14 and No.
17, 1784), a clarinet concerto for Anton Stadler (1791), a virtuosic duet for double bass
and bass singer (Per questo bella mano, 1791), and four horn concertos. Even composer
Richard Strauss (1864-1949), whose father was a professional horn player, only finished
two horn concertos.
Mozart heard concertos during his youthful travels, including two of the twenty horn
concertos by Antonio Rosetti (1750-1792). Rosetti lived in Oettingen, Bavaria, an
unusual town “split” between the two branches of the Öttingen-Spielberg-Wallerstein
family, who often hosted the Mozarts in their seven separate castles: the eastern,
Baroque side of town was Protestant, with a palace (using the Julian calendar); the

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