Mothership (2011)

This energetic opener imagines the orchestra as a mothership that is ‘docked’ by several visiting soloists, who offer brief but virtuosic riffs on the work’s thematic material over action-packed electro-acoustic orchestral figuration.

The piece follows the form of a scherzo with double trio (as found in, for example, the Schumann Symphony No. 2). Symphonic scherzos historically play with dance rhythms in a high-energy and appealing manner, with the ‘trio’ sections temporarily exploring new rhythmic areas. Mothership shares a formal connection with the symphonic scherzo but is brought to life by thrilling sounds of the 21st Century — the rhythms of modern-day techno in place of waltz rhythms, for example.

Recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra under Michael Tilson Thomas, Mothership received its world premiere at the Sydney Opera House and the YouTube Symphony on March 20, 2011, and it was viewed by almost two million people live on YouTube.

Symphony No. 8 in G Major, Op. 88 (1889)

In the 1880s and 1890s, Dvořák was as popular and successful as any living composer, including Brahms, who had helped promote Dvořák’s music early on and had even convinced his own publisher, Simrock, to take on this new composer and to issue his Moravian Duets in 1877. Dvořák proved to be a prudent addition to the catalog, and the Slavonic Dances he wrote the following year at Simrock’s request became one of the firm’s all-time best sellers. Dvořák was then insulted and outraged, when, in 1890, Simrock offered him only a thousand marks for his G major symphony (particularly since the company had paid three thousand marks for the last one), and he gave the rights to the London firm of Novello instead. (At least he did not follow the greedy example set by Beethoven and sell the same score to two different publishers.)

Dvořák’s G major symphony is his most bucolic and idyllic—it is, in effect, his Pastoral—and like Brahms’s Second or Mahler’s Fourth, it stands apart from his other works in the form. Like the subsequent New World Symphony, composed in a tiny town set in the rolling green hills of northeast Iowa, it was written in the seclusion of the countryside. In the summer of 1889, Dvořák retired to his country home at Vysoká, away from the pressures of urban life and far from the demands of performers and publishers. There he realized that he was ready to tackle a new symphony—it had been four years since his last—and that he too was eager to compose something “different from the other symphonies, with individual thoughts worked out in a new way.”

Composition was remarkably untroubled. “Melodies simply pour out of me,” Dvořák said at the time, and both the unashamedly tuneful nature of this score and the timetable of its progress confirm the composer’s boast. He began his new symphony on August 26; the first movement was finished in two weeks, the second a week later, and the remaining two movements in just a few days apiece. The orchestration took only another six weeks.

The first movement is, as Dvořák predicted, put together in a new way. The opening theme—pointedly in G minor, not the G major promised by the key signature—functions as an introduction, although, significantly, it is in the same tempo as the rest of the movement. It appears, like a signpost, at each of the movement’s crucial junctures—here, before the exposition; later, before the start of the development; and finally, to introduce the recapitulation. Dvořák is particularly generous with melodic ideas in this movement. As Leoš Janácek said of this music: “You’ve scarcely got to know one figure before a second one beckons with a friendly nod, so you’re in a state of constant but pleasurable excitement.”

The second movement, an adagio, alternates C major and C minor, somber and gently merry music, as well as passages for strings and winds. It is a masterful example of complexities and contradictions swept together in one great paragraph. The central climax, with trumpet fanfares over a timpani roll, is thrilling.

The third movement is not a conventional scherzo, but a lilting, radiant waltz marked Allegretto grazioso— the same marking Brahms used for the third movements of his second and third symphonies. The main theme of the trio was rescued from Dvořák’s comic opera The Stubborn Lovers, where Toník worries that his love, Lenka, will be married off to his father.

The finale begins with a trumpet fanfare and continues with a theme and several variations. The theme, introduced by the cellos, is a natural subject of such deceptive simplicity that it cost its normally tuneful composer nine drafts before he was satisfied. The variations, which incorporate everything from a sunny flute solo to a determined march in the minor mode, eventually fade to a gentle farewell before Dvořák adds one last rip-roaring page to ensure the audience enthusiasm that, by 1889, he had grown to expect.

Robert Baldwin is Director of Orchestral Activities and professor of music at the University of Utah. He is also Music Director of the Salt Lake Symphony and conductor of “It’s a Grand Night for Singing,” in Lexington, Kentucky. During his tenure at the University of Utah, the orchestral program has grown dramatically in size and quality, with noted performances at the 2007 CMS and NASM Conferences, the 2003 Utah Arts Festival, the 2005 Utah Music Educators’ Association Conference, and a tour of Austria for the 2006 Mozart Orchestra Festival. He has previously held conducting positions with the University of Kentucky, Lexington Philharmonic, New American Symphony, Northern Arizona University, and Flagstaff Symphony orchestras. Also an accomplished violist, Baldwin has held several positions, including professor of viola at Northern Arizona University and principal viola with the Arkansas Symphony, Flagstaff Symphony, and Arizona Opera Orchestras.

In 1998, Dr. Baldwin had his European conducting debut with the Hermitage Camerata in Saint Petersburg, Russia.  Other recent guest conducting appearances include the Kuopio Academy of Music in Finland, Lexington Philharmonic, Flagstaff Festival of the Arts, Colorado State University, the Abilene Tri-Collegiate Opera, and numerous festivals and All-State Orchestras around the country. His performances and ensembles have been featured on National Public Radio’s Performance Today and Weekend Edition, as well as in national publications.

Dr. Baldwin has studied in the United States and in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He holds degrees from the University of Northern Colorado, University of Iowa, and the University of Arizona, where he received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in orchestral conducting in addtion to the Graduate Achievement Award. His conducting teachers have included Mikhail Kukushkin, Alexander Polishuk, James Dixon, Duilio Dobrin, Eugene Corporon, and Gregg Hanson. He has studied viola with Jeffrey Showell, William Preucil, Sr., Ronald Smith and Vernon Ashcraft and has performed in master classes for Gustav Meier, Kenneth Kiesler, the Tokyo String Quartet, Atar Arad, and Alice Preeves, among others.

Dr. Baldwin has been active as a clinician on the local, state and national level. He has served on national committees and panels, written for important publications, and worked as a clinician and adjudicator. Most recently, he contributed to a book on preparing orchestral viola sections in the recently published "Playing the Viola." In 2007 he was awarded the Higher Education Teacher of the Year award by the Utah chapter of the American String Teachers Association.  In 2008 he was honored with the University of Utah's College of Fine Arts Faculty Excellence Award.