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| gpmf.org
Friday, July 3, 2015
With the outbreak of World War II, Diamond returned to the United States, living for
a time at the artists’ colony at Yaddo, near Saratoga Springs, New York. He composed
steadily during the war years, and received important commissions, performances
and awards. He returned to Europe on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1951, and settled in
Florence for the next 14 years. After attending a concert of his music in honor of his
fiftieth birthday at the Aspen Festival in Colorado in 1965, he remained in this country,
teaching at the Manhattan School of Music for two years before moving to Rochester to
devote himself entirely to composition until 1973, when he joined the Juilliard faculty.
He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1966, and appointed
its vice-president in 1974. In 1995, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts at a
ceremony held at the White House. He died in Rochester in 2005.
The composer wrote of his
Rounds for StringOrchestra
, commissioned by conductor
Dimitri Mitropoulos and composed in 1944, “The two outer
Allegro
movements enclose
a slow movement of lyric intensity. Canonic and fugal devices of imitation control the
three movements, which are played without pause.”
CELLO CONCERTO IN D MINOR (1876)
Édouard Lalo (1823-1892)
Lalo’s Cello Concerto is scored for pairs of woodwinds, four
horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani and strings. The
performance time is 26 minutes. The Grant Park Orchestra first
performed this work on July 15, 1959, with Leo Kopp conducting
and Leopold Teraspulsky was the soloist.
Edouard Lalo’s early musical training was at the conservatory
in Lille, where he was born in 1823; he later transferred to the Paris Conservatoire to
study composition and violin. He started composing in the 1840s, but, discouraged
by the lack of performances and publications of his music, he abandoned his creative
work for almost a decade to play viola (and later second violin) in the Armingaud-
Jacquard Quartet. His muse was rekindled in 1865 upon his marriage to Julie Bernier
de Maligny, a gifted contralto who performed many of his songs in recital and who
also inspired his first opera,
Fiesque
. The
Divertissement
for orchestra (1872), based on
ballet music from
Fiesque
, was his first important success as a composer. Encouraged
by the formation of the Société Nationale de Musique in 1871 and the support of
such conductors as Pasdeloup, Lamoureux and Colonne, Lalo produced a succession
of instrumental works that brought him to the forefront of French music, including
the Violin Concerto (1874) and
Symphonie Espagnole
(1875), both premiered by the
celebrated Spanish virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate. His eminent position in French music
was confirmed when he was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1888.
Lalo’s Cello Concerto (1876) opens with a slow introduction (headed “Prélude” in
the score) that previews the thematic material of the movement. The main body of the
movement is disposed in a strict sonata form: opening theme built on a quick ascent
through the tonic arpeggio; second theme almost dreamy in its Romantic lyricism; an
extended development section based on the main and introduction themes; and a full
recapitulation. The second movement (“Intermezzo”) juxtaposes a sweetly swaying song
(the entire Concerto uses only 6/8, 9/8 or 12/8 meters) with contrasting pixie-ish music in
the nature of a scherzo. (Lalo’s melodic facility seems to have inspired by his concerted
works for strings. He produced so much thematic material for the
Symphonie Espagnole
that it fills five movements.) The finale opens with a slow introduction before launching
into a vivacious, dance-like rondo which turns to bright D major to close the work.
