Welcome to Music for Life, enhancing the Armstrong concert experience. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. In today's episode, we will spotlight cellist Julian Schwartz and the two concerti he will be performing with the Mozart Orchestra of New York at Armstrong Auditorium on Tuesday, March 24th. Julian Schwartz is the son of the legendary conductor Gerard Schwartz. Maestro Schwartz will be at the helm of the Mozart Orchestra of New York as his son plays the Cello Concerto No. 1 by Franz Josef Haydn. Also featured on the program will be the rarely performed Double Cello Concerto by Antonio Vivaldi, which will feature the Schwartzes teaming up with another father-son team. More about all that on today's episode of Music for Life.
We are very excited to have the world-renowned conductor Gerard Schwartz back at Armstrong Auditorium, which will be his third time here. He will again be at the helm of the Mozart Orchestra of New York, and being that they performed here before, we've discussed their accolades in past seasons of music for life. But this time, they are coming with the maestro's son, a consummate artist in his own right, the cellist Julian Schwartz. But first, just to review some of the credentials of the conductor and orchestra, here's a little reminder about them. The Mozart Orchestra of New York is an ensemble of skilled musicians that perform a wide range of repertoire. This orchestra began as a collaborative project between conductor Gerard Schwartz and an ensemble known as...
the New York Chamber soloists. The founder of this ensemble, Melvin Kaplan, had the idea to take the basis of the Chamber soloists, five or six winds, five or six strings, and enlarge it, creating the larger Mozart Orchestra. Maestro Schwartz was tapped as conductor given his history with the Chamber soloists. He performed as their virtuoso trumpeter 30 years ago, involved in such performances as Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, which opened Philharmonic Hall, now the Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. A prolific recording artist, Schwartz's total discography numbers over 350 on more than 11 labels. In his nearly five decades as a respected classical musician and conductor, Schwartz
has received hundreds of honors and accolades, including five Emmy Awards, 14 Grammy nominations, eight ASCAP Awards, and numerous Stereo Review and Ovation Awards. Given the specifics of this particular program, the Mozart Orchestra of New York coming to Armstrong will only require about 26 musicians. And of course, the main feature of this event is cellist Julian Schwartz. Julian Schwartz is already being recognized as a cellist destined to rank among the finest of the 21st century. He made his orchestral debut at the age of 11, playing the Saint-Saëns Concerto No. 1 with the Seattle Symphony with his father Gerard Schwartz on the podium. Since then, he has appeared with the Seattle San Diego
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In August 2013, Julian was awarded first prize in the professional cello division of the inaugural Alice and Eleanor Schoenfeld International String Competition in Hong Kong. At Armstrong Auditorium on Tuesday, March 24th, Julian will be featured in Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major. As we discussed in our previous episode, the orchestra will also be featured by itself in a Haydn symphony, his Symphony No. 22.
These two works make a nice pairing for the first half of the concert at Armstrong. Haydn actually wrote them about the same time in the early years of his employment for the Esterhazy estate. We talked about Haydn's position for this aristocratic family in our previous episode. You can check that out in the program archives. And these early works would have been written during the beginning of his tenure under the Esterhazy family while still considered vice capelmeister or assistant music director.
As such, this early work of Haydn, though distinctly of the classical era in its structure, shares many common characteristics of the previous era, the Baroque era. Now, we don't know much more about this work. There is a popular theory that it was written for a Josef Franz Weigl, a cellist in the Esterhazy Orchestra, but the work itself was lost for nearly 200 years until discovered in the archives of a museum in Prague in 1961. So as far as music history is concerned, although the work was written over a decade before the American Revolution, it was not premiered until 16 years after the end of World War II by the cellist, Mstislav Rostrovich. And for today, we'll be hearing a 1975 Rostropovich recording with the Academy of St. Martin in the fields. Concerti typically have three movements, a moderately fast first movement, a slow second movement, and a fast third movement. This is also true of the Vivaldi double concerto that we'll discuss later. The first movement of this Haydn concerto...
is marked moderato, meaning a moderate tempo. As many concerti of the Baroque and classical era, the concerto starts with the orchestra, displaying the main themes to be presented, then the soloist enters later with the main theme. This concerto also harkens back to the Baroque idea of ritornello form, that is an alternation between just orchestra and then soloist with orchestra, then orchestra, then soloist, and so on. Common among the classical era concerti is the cadenza toward the end of the first movement. Now, as we discussed in episode 17, Music for Virtuosity, again, in our archives, the cadenza is a specific moment in a concerto where the orchestra stops entirely, while the soloist is to play a showy, improvisatory sounding section. Cadenza comes from the Italian word meaning cadence, and back in Baroque music, at the end of vocal arias, the singer would often be asked to improvise or embellish the vocal line on one of the last chords, just before the music came to its final cadence, or its final chord. On one of those chords preceding the final cadence, a chord that was more unstable, the singer would improvise briefly before the aria rested on its final stable chord. Now, by the classical era, it became quite standardized as to when and how this cadenza would be set up and take place in a concerto. So now when we think of a cadenza,
we're talking about that section featured in virtually every concerto, when the soloist plays alone toward the end of the first movement, playing difficult, often heavily ornamented passages, which allows the soloist to demonstrate his or her skill with the instrument. So here is the first movement of the Haydn Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major. So now the cello soloist enters with the main theme. Now we are approaching another orchestra-only section. These sections are called tutti sections, from the Italian for All, or All Together.
Now the cello enters with the main theme, but in a different key than the work began. This will modulate through various keys, some areas a little stormier sounding, until it settles back to the original key, what we call the recapitulation. It's a short tutti as we approach the recapitulation. Recap is one more tutti in a section we call the coda, or the tail end of the movement.
That was the first movement of Franz Josef Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 1 in C Major in a recording by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Iona Brown with cello soloist Mstislav Rostropovich. That's the recording we're exploring as we study this work in the lead-up to its performance on Tuesday, March 24th by cellist Julian Schwartz. He will be playing alongside the Mozart Orchestra of New York with his father conducting, the illustrious Gerard Schwartz. Moving into the second movement, we get an elegant slow movement marked by the Italian word for such, adagio. As with the first movement, the orchestra begins this one to present the main theme to our ears. Then the cello enters with this same theme to feature the beautiful...
It's the beauty of hearing this theme on a solo instrument rather than from a full string section. And I think the cello is unparalleled when it comes in, in contrast to the full orchestra we just heard. Some of the great moments in this is how Haydn has the cello soloist sustain long pitches while the orchestra is playing other things underneath. It's really special. Also worth noting is this movement also has a short cadenza before the final orchestral coda. So let's hear this, and I won't interrupt it with any talking. Its beauty really speaks for itself.
We're hearing Mstislav Rostropovich alongside the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under the direction of Iona Brown. In this recording of Haydn's Cello Concerto No. 1, we just heard the serenely stunning second movement. This concerto ends with a fast movement marked Allegro Molto, or Much Fast, in fact. Again, the orchestra introduces the material to us, sans soloist. The soloist finally enters on a very long, sustained C that crescendos, or gets louder, almost as if the soloist is sneaking in before playing the material. This sprightly movement really shows off more of the acrobatic capability of the cello, and I think this movement needs very little commentary as well, so I'll play this.
without any speaking over top. Enjoy. You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. On today's episode, we are spotlighting the cellist Julian Schwartz and the two concerti he will be performing with the Mozart Orchestra of New York at Armstrong Auditorium on Tuesday, March 24th. Conducting the orchestra will be his father, the legendary Gerard Schwartz. Julian will be featured in the Cello Concerto No. 1 by Franz Josef Haydn, the third movement of which we just heard, and we heard a recording by the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich alongside the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under Iona Brown.
Also of particular excitement to this program is the fact that this famous father-son team will team up with another father-son team to perform the Double Cello Concerto by Antonio Vivaldi. As its title suggests, this work features two cello soloists. Alongside Julian will be my son, Seth Malone, and Maestro Schwartz has requested that I play harpsichord in the orchestra, as Vivaldi's orchestra would have called for this ancient keyboard instrument. I commonly credit Seth Malone for his research help on this program, and this episode is no different. Thank you, Seth. He works for our campus music program part-time while attending here at Herbert W. Armstrong College. Born into our musical family, he began taking piano at a very young age, but he began taking cello lessons when he was eight years old. Among his many honors and awards, he won first place in the Ad Astra String Competition in the high school division and just recently won first place in the collegiate division.
He has also won top prizes in various international competitions sponsored by the Philadelphia Church of God, as well as other online contests. He held the principal cello chair of the state's top youth orchestra and has performed with members of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic on multiple occasions. He has performed for multiple international formal events, including one honoring an Israeli ambassador and other frequent performances at Armstrong Auditorium. He was also recently featured on cellist Tess Remy Schumacher's 2018 album on the Zolo label, recording a Baroque work on a period instrument. As a student working part-time in the college's work-study program, he also arranges, teaches, and performs regularly on our campus.
Again, the piece Julian and Seth will do together is the concerto for two cellos in G minor by Antonio Vivaldi. Vivaldi is one of the great composers of the Baroque era, and his most prolific contributions to the standard repertoire were the hundreds of concerti he wrote, many of them violin concerti, as that's the instrument he played, the most famous set of these being the Four Seasons, four violin concerti, each to depict a season of the year. Little is known about the history surrounding Vivaldi's double cello concerto, but it has come to be one of the more well-known Vivaldi concerti, especially among cellists. Regardless, this work is quintessential Vivaldi, with moments similar to that of one of Vivaldi's more famous concerti, Summer, from the Four Seasons. I think you'll hear that when we listen to especially this first movement. The work was most likely written during his position teaching promising orphan musicians at the Ospedale della Pieta in Venice. The first movement is a great example of the dialogue that not only occurs between the soloists and orchestra, but between the two soloists themselves. I think you can imagine how this would look even more captivating if you could see...
See the cellists performing. But listen for this conversation. Two cellos having a conversation among themselves, but then both of them having a conversation with the larger orchestra behind them. Today we'll be hearing a recording of Yo-Yo Ma and Jonathan Manson as cello soloists with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under Ton Kopman. That was the driving first movement of the Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor by Antonio Vivaldi. We're hearing a recording of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under Ton Kopman with cello soloists Yo-Yo Ma and Jonathan Manson.
This will be the work to begin the second half of an upcoming concert at Armstrong Auditorium on Tuesday, March 24th, when we feature cellist Julian Schwartz. This concerto has three movements, and the middle movement, the second movement, is slow, as we'd expect. It highlights the conversational aspects of the two cellos, just in a slower and more melancholy context. This movement is not even accompanied by the full orchestra, only the continuo section, which means the bass instruments of the orchestra along with the harpsichord, which is providing the chordal underpinning to the various harmonies. It's a yummy movement, and we'll hear it now.
You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. On today's episode, we have been spotlighting the cellist Julian Schwartz and the two concerti he will be performing with the Mozart Orchestra of New York at Armstrong Auditorium on Tuesday, March 24th. Conducting the orchestra will be his father, the legendary Gerard Schwartz. Julian will be featured in the Cello Concerto No. 1 by Franz Josef Haydn, as well as the concerto for two cellos in G minor by Antonio Vivaldi, for which we just heard the second movement. We're hearing a recording of Yo-Yo Ma and Jonathan Manson as cello soloists with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under Ton Kopman. Julian will team up with our own Seth Malone to perform this double cello concerto, and yours...
I also made several references to our program archives in today's episode. If you want to go back and hear last week's episode about the two symphonies that the Mozart Orchestra of New York will do at Armstrong on March 24th, those archives can be found at kpcg.fm. All right, so we'll conclude today's program with the exciting third and final movement from Vivaldi's Double Cello Concerto. Again, I think a movement like this will be a lot more gratifying to see rather than just hear, so you can tell which cello is being featured as they converse back and forth. But this is an exciting movement even without the visual. I hope you enjoy this finale to Antonio Vivaldi's Concerto for two cellos in G minor, and I hope to see you soon at Armstrong. You have been listening to Music for Life, a production of KPCG 101.3 on the FM dial in Edmond, Oklahoma. From the Herbert W. Armstrong College campus, I'm Ryan Malone. Thanks for joining me.