Program Notes by Laurie Shulman © 2026. Reproduction of all or part of these notes without explicit written permission from the Jacksonville Symphony is strictly prohibited.
Trances (2022)
Tarik O’Regan
Born 1978 in Croydon, South London, UK · Currently residing in San Francisco
Approximate duration 20 minutes
World premiere: June 20, 2022 in Jacksonville, FL
Tarik O’Regan comes by his name through his multi-national parents. His English father has Irish ancestors, and his mother is Moroccan-born. O’Regan spent several years of his childhood in Algeria and Morocco. His dual Irish-North African heritage has exerted a strong influence on his compositions. In the case of Trances, the North African influence is more direct, as he explains in his composer’s note.
Trances is a three-movement work which takes the title and subject of Ahmed El Maanouni’s vibrant documentary film about the groundbreaking Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane as a springboard from which to jump into a fast-paced, percussive exploration of musical influences in my early life.
This is the third in a series of orchestral pieces, after Raï (2006) and Chaábi (2012), in which I meditate upon North African popular and folk music forms. Rather than being ethnographic studies, in these works I am interested in how I recall the music of my youth, and of my own heritage, through the haze of memory. Specifically, in Trances I am trying to define three textures of reminiscence, one in each movement.
Tarik O’Regan
The three movements share certain qualities that link them together: a clear prominent role for percussion, particularly the four African goblet drums; pedal points that morph into rapid repeated notes that extend those pedal points, but with more urgency and a sense of harmonic stasis that is less important than subtle, constantly shifting rhythmic patterns.
The score calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets (2nd doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons (2nd doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, goblet drums, marimba, glockenspiel, xylophone, suspended cymbal, tambourine, bass drum, vibraphone, triangle, harp, piano (doubling celesta) and strings.
Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C, Op. 56, “Triple”
Ludwig van Beethoven
Born 16 December, 1770 in Bonn Germany · Died 26 March, 1827 in Vienna, Austria
Approximate duration 33 minutes
World premiere: May 10, 1808 in Vienna
Sharing the thematic material: an explanation for Beethoven’s expansive length
Among Beethoven’s great middle-period compositions, the Triple Concerto has been something of a stepchild. Critics have disdained its inordinate length, and raised eyebrows at the supposed lack of inspiration in its themes. Those who listen carefully will understand that length, particularly in the monumental first movement, was necessary in order to distribute the thematic material equably among all three soloists.
Beethoven balances the first movement length with the brevity of his slow movement, which serves as an ethereal introduction to the elegant finale. The cello soloist provides the connecting bridge to the concluding Rondo alla Polacca, which writer Robert Simpson calls “the greatest and most expansive polonaise ever written.” Beethoven must have been pleased with the structural experiment of connecting slow movement to finale, for he repeated it in his Fourth and Fifth Piano Concerti as well as his Violin Concerto. More than any other contemporary work, the Triple Concerto points to Beethoven’s future and the greatness that was still his to achieve.
The score calls for flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, solo violin, solo cello, solo piano and strings.
Beethoven and the concerto
When we think of Beethoven and the concerto, our thoughts go directly either to his five piano concerti or to the Violin Concerto, Op. 61. Beethoven was himself a virtuoso pianist, and the fact that all five of his piano concerti are staples of the repertoire gives them the weight of numbers in addition to the glow of genius. His Violin Concerto is considered by many to be the finest work of its kind in the entire literature. Beethoven composed no other solo concerto, leaving the other members of the orchestra, and particularly the cello, with a gap that has been left to later composers to fill.
The closest Beethoven came to writing for cello and orchestra is his so-called Triple Concerto. This work grew out of the sinfonia concertante tradition in that it featured a solo group rather than an individual soloist. Although the cello shares billing with violin and piano, its role is both more prominent and more difficult than either of the other two instruments’. Cellists view the Triple Concerto with the respect they accord to the most challenging compositions in their solo literature.
An experiment in expanded concerto form
What accounts for this apparent imbalance? And why would Beethoven, who celebrated the solo instrument vs. orchestra with such immense success, devote his attention to such an unusual grouping? Beethoven composed the Triple Concerto between April and August 1804. He was at the height of his powers, having recently completed the “Waldstein” Piano Sonata, Op. 53, and the “Eroica” Symphony, Op. 55. The concerto is contemporary with his revisions on the “Eroica” Symphony and the sketches for the “Appassionata” Sonata, Op. 57. Aside from the fact that these are very great works, what they share in common is enormous scale. Beethoven was a superb musical architect. In the “Eroica,” he expanded the scope of symphonic form to nearly twice the length of Mozart’s and Haydn’s late symphonies. The Triple Concerto was a further experiment, this time with enlarged concerto form.
One student and two colleagues: players guide the composer’s hand
Another challenge Beethoven addressed was the merger of chamber music and concerto. Collectively, his three soloists comprised a traditional piano trio, yet they were also individual players. How might he distribute the musical material equably? The problem was compounded by the specific players he had in mind when he composed the Triple Concerto, for they were not players of equivalent musical stature. The piano part was almost certainly written for the Archduke Rudolph, a preferred student of Beethoven, but only sixteen at the time. The violinist was Carl August Seidler, a competent but not a great violinist.
The cellist, on the other hand, was Anton Kraft (1752-1820), one of the most celebrated virtuosos of his day. Kraft had played under Haydn in Prince Esterházy’s court orchestra; Haydn wrote his D major concerto for him. Later, Kraft was principal cellist of Prince Lobkowitz’s private orchestra. Until 1809, he sometimes played cello in Ignaz Schuppanzigh’s string quartet, who were the first performers of many Beethoven quartets.
Follow the leader
Kraft’s prominence accounts for the imbalance in the level of difficulty among the three solo roles. While the violin and piano parts are certainly not negligible, requiring a high level of musicianship and technique, they are less demanding. Beethoven clearly casts the cello as leader, awarding it the principal thematic material in all three movements. The second movement, a transporting Largo in A-flat major, is written exceptionally high in the cellist’s range, drawing additional attention to the cantabile theme.
Symphony No.4 in E minor, Op. 98
Johannes Brahms
Born 7 May, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany · Died 3 April, 1897 in Vienna, Austria
Approximate duration 39 minutes
World premiere: October 25, 1885 in Meiningen. The composer conducted.
Brahms once remarked that his Fourth Symphony had been written in Mürzzuschlag, in the Styrian alps, a place, he drily pointed out, “where the cherries do not become ripe and sweet.” His oblique observation tells us as much about the composer as it does the work he chose to describe by metaphor. A lifelong believer that music required no literary or descriptive association to make its statement, Brahms also recognized that his compositions demanded more concentration and effort from listeners. In his Fourth Symphony, the most unrelievedly tragic of Brahms’s orchestral compositions, that effort is amply rewarded. It is a disciplined, controlled work, sometimes severe, but always profoundly human.
Brahms began work on his E minor symphony during the summer of 1884. It was his custom in later years to spend the summer months in a restful, idyllic location where the beauty of nature would serve as inspiration for composing. Though Mürzzuschlag—today, a Viennese suburb—was hardly far removed from the buzzing activity of the Austrian capital, it served the purpose that the other summer holiday destinations had, and Brahms was able to concentrate on drafting the first two movements of the E-minor Symphony. He returned to Mürzzuschlag in summer 1885 to complete it.
That September, having arranged the work for two pianos, he assembled a group of his friends in Vienna to hear a read-through. For the most part they were hesitant; Elisabeth von Herzogenberg went so far as to suggest that he withhold the work until extensive revisions were made. Eduard Hanslick, the notable critic who championed Brahms over the Wagnerites, is said to have remarked after hearing the two-piano version, “You know, I had the feeling that two enormously clever people were cudgeling one another.”
Wrestling with a chaconne
It was the finale, consisting of 30 sequential variations on a repeated bass line, that caused the bewilderment and hesitation. Brahms had considered such an idea for almost a decade. Referring to Bach’s Cantata No. 150, which includes a chaconne, he wrote to Clara Schumann in 1877:
The chaconne is, in my opinion, one of the most wonderful and most incomprehensible pieces of music. . . If I could picture myself writing, or even conceiving such a piece, I am certain that the extreme excitement and emotional tension would have driven me mad.
In fact he spent time with two chaconnes of major significance. The first was a transcription of the Chaconne from the Bach D minor Partita for solo violin, which he arranged for piano left hand in 1879 for Clara. (She had developed arthritis in her right hand and required a break during concert performances.) The second instance, of course, was the finale of the Fourth Symphony, in which he altered Bach’s original chaconne melody to make it slightly more chromatic.
We know that Brahms had also looked at passacaglias—a closely related continuous variation form—by Georg Muffat (1653-1704) and François Couperin (1668-1733) before composing the Fourth Symphony. These sources are significant, for they show us that he drew his inspiration not so much from Beethoven and Schumann, but rather from Baroque models. An austere musical character and extensive modal harmonies, particularly in the slow movement and the finale, frequently evoke the earlier era.
Unusual tonality
E minor is an exceptional key for a symphony. Only one major precedent, Haydn’s 1772 Trauersymphonie, exists for Brahms’s Fourth. Trauer means mourning, grief, sorrow; the key associations of E minor are clear enough. Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, also in E minor, followed Brahms’s by only three years; his piece too has that dark, autumnal, tragic character.
Relieving the uncompromising darkness of the outer movements are the E major Andante and the C major scherzo, Allegro giocoso. Despite their apparent release of tension, each is shadowed by constant intimations of something ominous on the horizon. Brahms achieves this by using modal harmonies to imply minor keys. He thereby underscores the faint Baroque flavor that permeates the entire symphony, culminating in his magnificent final variation set. Brahms delighted in the variations form throughout his career. In the eloquent, powerful finale, he gave us his ultimate set of variations, and a world of philosophy upon which to reflect.
The score calls for woodwinds in pairs, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings.
