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Beethoven Seven
- Mendelssohn
Programme note
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Overture, The Fair Melusine, Op 32 (1833)Mendelssohn thought his Fair Melusine overture “the best” and “most intimate” thing he had ever produced, an opinion shared, as he informed his beloved sister Fanny in a letter, by many of the people who heard him conduct it in Leipzig in 1836. On the other hand, he was irked by an excessively descriptive review of it by a German critic, whose references to red coral, green sea-beasts, magic castles, and deep seas were, he complained, “all rubbish.”
Yet Melusine is undoubtedly a magical piece, sufficiently watery in its imagery to incorporate an unmistakable foretaste of the rippling prelude to Das Rheingold, in which the notoriously anti-semitic Wagner paid direct tribute to a composer he professed to despise. While writing Melusine, Mendelssohn was in fact a resident of the Rhineland, working in Dusseldorf, conducting at the Lower Rhine Festival, developing his talents as a Sunday landscape painter and, on one occasion, bathing naked in the river when the Queen of Bavaria’s boat suddenly sailed round a bend. Well, at least his distinguished musical admirer Queen Victoria was not on board.
The overture’s inspiration lay obliquely in an opera on the same subject by Conradin Kreutzer, which the suave but irritable Mendelssohn had seen and disliked. Annoyed by the fact that Kreutzer’s overture was encored, he swore that he could write a better one, which people would receive “more inwardly.” With his love for musical gossamer, the story of the watersprite Melusine (recognisable relative of Dvořák’s Rusalka and Henze’s Ondine) suited him perfectly. His mellifluous opening theme immediately catches the mood, and the other themes sustain it. Yet there is more than mellowness here. As Edinburgh’s distinguished musical essayist Donald Francis Tovey once put it, the overture has an underlying agitation and sorrow, reflecting what can happen when a watersprite is permitted to marry a mortal on condition that her true nature is concealed.
Though the art of the concert overture, or what eventually became the symphonic poem, had its roots in Beethoven, Mendelssohn developed it into something fresh, in which lyrical and pictorial elements gained new importance without suppressing Beethovenian sonata-form. Into this classical structure, Mendelssohn inserted music suggestive of Melusine’s mysterious beauty and of her spouse’s suspicions. But if there are passing sounds of despair, the ending is calm - which tells us, perhaps, as much about Mendelssohn as about Melusine. As for Beethoven, he once toyed with Grillparzer’s Melusine libretto which Kreutzer eventually set, but the idea failed to grip him.
© Conrad Wilson
- Schumann
Programme note
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Piano Concerto in A minorThis concerto is not for the smash-and-grab school of pianists: there are no flashy arabesques, broken strings or moist brows with this one. Robert Schumann abhorred the emptiness of such ‘show-pieces’ which were all the rage in the mid-nineteenth century. Rather, Schumann composed a musician’s concerto (for his wife Clara), in which the solo part is integral to the musical thought, not merely a spectacular frill vaguely attached to a humdrum orchestral part. His intent becomes particularly apparent in the many chamber music-like passages of dialogue between the piano and the solo woodwinds.
With this concerto, Schumann managed to fulfil his own perceptive comment, published in his famous music journal, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, in 1839: “And so we must await the genius who will show us [in] a newer and more brilliant way, how orchestra and piano may be combined, how the soloist, dominant at the keyboard, may unfold the wealth of his instrument and his art, while the orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may interweave its manifold facets into the scene.”
Yet what appeared in 1841 was a one movement Phantasie in A minor for piano and orchestra. It was not until 1845 that Schumann composed an Intermezzo and Finale to create the concerto as we know it (bar a few, not insignificant, changes in the orchestra parts and a different ending to the first movement cadenza). Given the current familiarity with this most popular concerto, its disjointed history may come as something of a surprise, but Schumann ensured a sense of unity throughout the work by recalling the first movement’s theme in the transition between the second and third movements, and by the obvious relationship of the finale’s main theme to that of the opening Allegro.
The concerto was given its premiere in December 1845 by Clara Schumann, with whom it became closely associated, and through whom it found a popularity with audiences that it has retained ever since.
© David Gardner
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 7 in A major, Op 92 (1813)Poco sostenuto - Vivace
Allegretto
Presto
Allegro con brioWagner, in tribute to the relentless rhythmic vitality of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, hailed it as the "apotheosis of the dance." The same, with more justification, could be said of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, since it was intentionally written as dance music. Separated from each other by exactly a hundred years, each work could be called the rhythmic ne plus ultra of its time. The Rite caused a riot in Paris in 1913. The premiere of the Seventh Symphony in Vienna in 1813 convinced some listeners that Beethoven had gone mad, though its unstoppable verve, exhilarating yet awesome, prompted others to assume that it was inspired (like the Battle Symphony, included in the same programme) by the retreat of Napoleon and the promise of European peace. The concert in which it was first performed, indeed, was for the benefit of Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded at the battle of Hanau.
In itself, the music is never peaceful. There is scarcely a moment when the work is at rest. Even the slow movement proceeds with an inexorable tread, based on a repeated rhythm that shifts from section to section of the orchestra and is never absent. Each of the four movements, in fact, has its own dominating pulse. Unlike the Fifth Symphony, which moves steadily towards final triumph, the Seventh is a study in circling motion.
The big opening chords, followed by repeatedly rising scales for the strings that will ferociously return at top speed towards the end of the finale, create an impression of size and grandeur. Thereafter the swinging rhythm of the vivace section of the first movement acts like a dynamo that is never switched off. It even seethes softly throughout a famously extended passage for cellos and basses, before erupting with renewed force and with whooping horns in the closing bars.
After the major-key brilliance of the first movement, the minor-key melancholy of the succeeding Allegretto, audible in its very opening note, sounds funereal. Yet the pace is too fast for a funeral march, even if the structure is similar to that of the marcia funebre in the Eroica symphony. There is solemnity here, rather than grief. The middle section, with its clarinet melody, is wistful. But the pulse is what matters, and it underpins every change of mood or colour.
In the scherzo, the fast circling motion resumes. Since this is one of Beethoven’s extended scherzos with two contrasted trio sections - and, at the very end, an attempt to launch a third one -repetition is strongly emphasised. The rhythms continue to heave until five whiplash chords sever the continuity. But in the finale, described by Edinburgh's distinguished musical authority Donald Francis Tovey as a "triumph of Bacchic fury," it immediately resumes. Here, in the ceaseless interplay of short motifs and repeated sections, we are made more than ever aware of Beethoven’s obsessiveness, until the music finally seems to hurtle into the abyss.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- piano
Dreams, dance, myths and fantasies pervade this concert, which culminates in Beethoven’s exhilarating powerhouse of a symphony, the Seventh. It is the perfect foil to Schumann’s lyrical concerto, interpreted here by one of the world’s leading pianists: Nelson Goerner is acclaimed as much for his emotional breadth as for the staggering facility and technique that free him to create such brilliant pianism.
Beethoven Symphony No 7
Beethoven Seven
- Mendelssohn
Programme note
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Overture, The Fair Melusine, Op 32 (1833)Mendelssohn thought his Fair Melusine overture “the best” and “most intimate” thing he had ever produced, an opinion shared, as he informed his beloved sister Fanny in a letter, by many of the people who heard him conduct it in Leipzig in 1836. On the other hand, he was irked by an excessively descriptive review of it by a German critic, whose references to red coral, green sea-beasts, magic castles, and deep seas were, he complained, “all rubbish.”
Yet Melusine is undoubtedly a magical piece, sufficiently watery in its imagery to incorporate an unmistakable foretaste of the rippling prelude to Das Rheingold, in which the notoriously anti-semitic Wagner paid direct tribute to a composer he professed to despise. While writing Melusine, Mendelssohn was in fact a resident of the Rhineland, working in Dusseldorf, conducting at the Lower Rhine Festival, developing his talents as a Sunday landscape painter and, on one occasion, bathing naked in the river when the Queen of Bavaria’s boat suddenly sailed round a bend. Well, at least his distinguished musical admirer Queen Victoria was not on board.
The overture’s inspiration lay obliquely in an opera on the same subject by Conradin Kreutzer, which the suave but irritable Mendelssohn had seen and disliked. Annoyed by the fact that Kreutzer’s overture was encored, he swore that he could write a better one, which people would receive “more inwardly.” With his love for musical gossamer, the story of the watersprite Melusine (recognisable relative of Dvořák’s Rusalka and Henze’s Ondine) suited him perfectly. His mellifluous opening theme immediately catches the mood, and the other themes sustain it. Yet there is more than mellowness here. As Edinburgh’s distinguished musical essayist Donald Francis Tovey once put it, the overture has an underlying agitation and sorrow, reflecting what can happen when a watersprite is permitted to marry a mortal on condition that her true nature is concealed.
Though the art of the concert overture, or what eventually became the symphonic poem, had its roots in Beethoven, Mendelssohn developed it into something fresh, in which lyrical and pictorial elements gained new importance without suppressing Beethovenian sonata-form. Into this classical structure, Mendelssohn inserted music suggestive of Melusine’s mysterious beauty and of her spouse’s suspicions. But if there are passing sounds of despair, the ending is calm - which tells us, perhaps, as much about Mendelssohn as about Melusine. As for Beethoven, he once toyed with Grillparzer’s Melusine libretto which Kreutzer eventually set, but the idea failed to grip him.
© Conrad Wilson
- Schumann
Programme note
Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Piano Concerto in A minorThis concerto is not for the smash-and-grab school of pianists: there are no flashy arabesques, broken strings or moist brows with this one. Robert Schumann abhorred the emptiness of such ‘show-pieces’ which were all the rage in the mid-nineteenth century. Rather, Schumann composed a musician’s concerto (for his wife Clara), in which the solo part is integral to the musical thought, not merely a spectacular frill vaguely attached to a humdrum orchestral part. His intent becomes particularly apparent in the many chamber music-like passages of dialogue between the piano and the solo woodwinds.
With this concerto, Schumann managed to fulfil his own perceptive comment, published in his famous music journal, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, in 1839: “And so we must await the genius who will show us [in] a newer and more brilliant way, how orchestra and piano may be combined, how the soloist, dominant at the keyboard, may unfold the wealth of his instrument and his art, while the orchestra, no longer a mere spectator, may interweave its manifold facets into the scene.”
Yet what appeared in 1841 was a one movement Phantasie in A minor for piano and orchestra. It was not until 1845 that Schumann composed an Intermezzo and Finale to create the concerto as we know it (bar a few, not insignificant, changes in the orchestra parts and a different ending to the first movement cadenza). Given the current familiarity with this most popular concerto, its disjointed history may come as something of a surprise, but Schumann ensured a sense of unity throughout the work by recalling the first movement’s theme in the transition between the second and third movements, and by the obvious relationship of the finale’s main theme to that of the opening Allegro.
The concerto was given its premiere in December 1845 by Clara Schumann, with whom it became closely associated, and through whom it found a popularity with audiences that it has retained ever since.
© David Gardner
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 7 in A major, Op 92 (1813)Poco sostenuto - Vivace
Allegretto
Presto
Allegro con brioWagner, in tribute to the relentless rhythmic vitality of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, hailed it as the "apotheosis of the dance." The same, with more justification, could be said of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, since it was intentionally written as dance music. Separated from each other by exactly a hundred years, each work could be called the rhythmic ne plus ultra of its time. The Rite caused a riot in Paris in 1913. The premiere of the Seventh Symphony in Vienna in 1813 convinced some listeners that Beethoven had gone mad, though its unstoppable verve, exhilarating yet awesome, prompted others to assume that it was inspired (like the Battle Symphony, included in the same programme) by the retreat of Napoleon and the promise of European peace. The concert in which it was first performed, indeed, was for the benefit of Austrian and Bavarian soldiers wounded at the battle of Hanau.
In itself, the music is never peaceful. There is scarcely a moment when the work is at rest. Even the slow movement proceeds with an inexorable tread, based on a repeated rhythm that shifts from section to section of the orchestra and is never absent. Each of the four movements, in fact, has its own dominating pulse. Unlike the Fifth Symphony, which moves steadily towards final triumph, the Seventh is a study in circling motion.
The big opening chords, followed by repeatedly rising scales for the strings that will ferociously return at top speed towards the end of the finale, create an impression of size and grandeur. Thereafter the swinging rhythm of the vivace section of the first movement acts like a dynamo that is never switched off. It even seethes softly throughout a famously extended passage for cellos and basses, before erupting with renewed force and with whooping horns in the closing bars.
After the major-key brilliance of the first movement, the minor-key melancholy of the succeeding Allegretto, audible in its very opening note, sounds funereal. Yet the pace is too fast for a funeral march, even if the structure is similar to that of the marcia funebre in the Eroica symphony. There is solemnity here, rather than grief. The middle section, with its clarinet melody, is wistful. But the pulse is what matters, and it underpins every change of mood or colour.
In the scherzo, the fast circling motion resumes. Since this is one of Beethoven’s extended scherzos with two contrasted trio sections - and, at the very end, an attempt to launch a third one -repetition is strongly emphasised. The rhythms continue to heave until five whiplash chords sever the continuity. But in the finale, described by Edinburgh's distinguished musical authority Donald Francis Tovey as a "triumph of Bacchic fury," it immediately resumes. Here, in the ceaseless interplay of short motifs and repeated sections, we are made more than ever aware of Beethoven’s obsessiveness, until the music finally seems to hurtle into the abyss.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- piano
Dreams, dance, myths and fantasies pervade this concert, which culminates in Beethoven’s exhilarating powerhouse of a symphony, the Seventh. It is the perfect foil to Schumann’s lyrical concerto, interpreted here by one of the world’s leading pianists: Nelson Goerner is acclaimed as much for his emotional breadth as for the staggering facility and technique that free him to create such brilliant pianism.
Beethoven Symphony No 7
Pink Martini featuring the SCO
Somewhere between a 1930s Cuban dance orchestra, a classical chamber music ensemble, a Brazilian marching street band and Japanese film noir is the 12-piece Pink Martini.
Part language lesson, part Hollywood musical, the Portland, Oregon-based 'little orchestra' was created in 1994 by Harvard graduate and classically trained pianist Thomas M. Lauderdale. Equally at home performing its romantic, multi-lingual repertoire on concert stages and in smoky bars, Pink Martini draws a wildly diverse crowd.
"Pink Martini are on a mission to bring back romance and beauty." Daily Telegraph
Levin plays Mozart
- Reicha
Programme note
Anton Reicha (1770-1836)
Overture in DAllegro un poco vivo
Anton Reicha was born in Prague in the same year as Beethoven. From the age of nine he sang in the choir in the Prague Church of the Knights of the Cross, and received his early musical education from his uncle, Josef Reicha, cellist in the court orchestra of Count Oettingen-Wallerstein in Bavaria. Through his uncle’s contacts he was engaged as a flutist in the Electoral band and also for the theatre orchestra in Bonn. It was in this latter ensemble that he soon befriended a young viola player – one Ludwig van Beethoven. The two of them enrolled at Bonn University studying philosophy and mathematics, and in his memoirs Reicha wrote that he and Beethoven soon became “inseparable companions”
After the occupation of Bonn by French revolutionary forces, Reicha initially moved to Hamburg. After a six-year stay in Vienna, where he renewed his contact with Beethoven and met Haydn, Salieri and Cherubini, he settled in Paris for good in 1808. On the recommendation of Cherubini he was appointed professor of musical theory and composition at the Paris Conservatoire, where his pupils included Berlioz, Liszt, Frank and Gounod.
Reicha was an extremely prolific composer. His output included ten operas, a great deal of piano music and an equally large volume of chamber music for string and wind instruments, together with symphonies and overtures and concertos. He was also a master of counterpoint, as witnessed by his thirty-six fugues for piano, dedicated to Haydn and held in high regard by Berlioz. Many of his works were stylistically diverse and experimental. As Reicha himself explained: “Once started, my verve and imagination were indefatigable. Ideas came to me so rapidly it was often difficult to set them down without losing some of them. I always had a great penchant for doing the unusual in composition. When writing in an original vein, my creative faculties and spirit seemed keener than when following the precepts of my predecessors.” Berlioz too noted his partiality for the unconventional, described him as having “a taste for abstract permutations and elaborate musical jokes. He loved solving problems, but this kind of thing can be the enemy of art, by diverting it from the main purpose which it should always be striving to achieve.”
Full of Mozartian dash and high spirits, Reicha’s Overture in D is perfectly ordinary except one thing: it steadfastly sticks to having five beats in every bar. This is something that would be considered unusual even now; back then it was almost unthinkable. Seventy years before Tchaikovsky’s famous 5/4 waltz from the Pathétique, Reicha was confirming his position as an innovator.
© Stephen Strugnell
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto in D, K451Allegro assai
Andante
Allegro di moltoBy 1784, Mozart had become Vienna’s most fashionable musician. His early biographer, Franz Niemetschek, described the esteem in which Mozart was held at that time: “In Vienna, especially, his piano-playing was admired; for although Vienna had many great masters of this instrument, which had since become everyone’s favourite, nobody could rival our Mozart. His admirable dexterity, which particularly in the left hand and the bass were considered quite unique, his feeling and delicacy, and beautiful expression were the attractions of his playing, which together with his abundant ideas and his knowledge of composition must have enthralled every listener and made Mozart the greatest pianist of his time.”
According to the date on the score, tonight’s Concerto was completed on 22 March 1784, the second of four concerti that he wrote in a two month period. The timing of such productivity owed less to a burst of spring fever than to the dictates of religion. In Vienna, at the time a very Catholic city, the theatres usually closed during Lent, depriving the Viennese of a favored source of entertainment. Lacking competition from theatres, concert attendance soared, and musicians capitalized on the demand by presenting even more concerts than usual. Mozart’s own letters, as well as contemporary accounts, attest that during Lent he frequently gave three or four concerts each week.
Soon after the premiere, which took place on 31 March 1784, Mozart sent the score to his father and sister in Salzburg, remarking that the piece was certain “to make you sweat.” Nannerl Mozart, however, a gifted pianist in her own right, seems to have thought that the level of sweat was insufficient. She wrote to her brother complaining that something seemed to be missing from the central Andante, and he concurred, admitted that in performance, he had improvised a more decorated version of the written notes. Soon after, Mozart provided his sister with a more ornamented version of the movement, along with cadenzas for the other two movements, an action for which modern pianists have continued to be grateful.
This Concerto was one of only seven to be published during Mozart’s lifetime. Several months after the composer’s death, a German journal wistfully observed: “To every friend and admirer of the Mozartean muse, this composition can be nothing but very precious. The original style of composition, which is unmistakable here, the fullness of the harmony, the striking turns of phrase, the skilled distribution of shade and light, and many other excellent qualities all give us cause to feel very deeply the loss of Mozart, a paragon on his era.”
© Stephen Strugnell
- Schubert
Programme note
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Symphony No 2 in B flat major, D 125We are usually so mesmerized by the vision of Schubert dying at the distressingly early age of 31 (given the depth of his last works) that we tend to overlook the astonishing achievements of his teenage years. Yet astonishing they are. His first completed symphony was written when he was sixteen in 1813. The second and third symphonies were completed in 1815, and the fourth and fifth in 1816. At eighteen it would be surprising if there were not some stylistic influences, given that Schubert was heir to the treasures of Mozart and Haydn,
and he could hardly fail to have been impressed by Beethoven – all of whom lived and worked in his home town of Vienna. Yet, while these influences are not hard to detect, neither is Schubert’s own voice, which is already unmistakable.
The first movement of the second symphony begins with a slow introduction in the grand manner of Haydn’s London symphonies, but as soon as we arrive at the Allegro vivace, the energetic figurations for the violins are clearly ‘Schubertian’. He certainly seems to have taken the notion of vivace to heart, for this movement literally bounces along, while allowing for some very effective, quieter writing for the solo woodwinds in the development section.
The slow movement is a gracious, gentle Andante. It serves as a sorbet after the high energy of the opening movement. Unusually for Schubert, this movement is in variation form. The effect is pastoral, though thunderclouds appear in the fourth variation. The coda wraps things up as at the end of a lovely summer’s day, albeit one with a sudden strong shower! The Minuet is resolutely boisterous – more a Ländler than a Waltz – though at Allegro vivace there is nothing leisurely about it! The Trio is a bucolic contrast – with a rustic oboe supported by gentle quavers from the strings. The finale (a Presto) bounds along using Schubert’s favourite dotted rhythmic device as the propulsive power for the movement. It simply exudes spontaneity and youth – which is also a good way to sum up the entire symphony.
© David Gardner
- conductor/piano
Mozart in 1784 and Schubert in 1814/15 – great years for great composers. Mozart was at the height of his popularity in Vienna, writing a stream of new works to perform at his very own showcase concerts. Schubert found his voice in 1814/15 in masterpieces such as Gretchen am Spinnrade; his second symphony has all the best qualities of youth. To open the concert, Levin introduces an unsung hero of the Romantic age. Reicha was a friend of Beethoven and Haydn, and influential teacher of Berlioz, Liszt and Gounod among others.
Levin plays Mozart
- Reicha
Programme note
Anton Reicha (1770-1836)
Overture in DAllegro un poco vivo
Anton Reicha was born in Prague in the same year as Beethoven. From the age of nine he sang in the choir in the Prague Church of the Knights of the Cross, and received his early musical education from his uncle, Josef Reicha, cellist in the court orchestra of Count Oettingen-Wallerstein in Bavaria. Through his uncle’s contacts he was engaged as a flutist in the Electoral band and also for the theatre orchestra in Bonn. It was in this latter ensemble that he soon befriended a young viola player – one Ludwig van Beethoven. The two of them enrolled at Bonn University studying philosophy and mathematics, and in his memoirs Reicha wrote that he and Beethoven soon became “inseparable companions”
After the occupation of Bonn by French revolutionary forces, Reicha initially moved to Hamburg. After a six-year stay in Vienna, where he renewed his contact with Beethoven and met Haydn, Salieri and Cherubini, he settled in Paris for good in 1808. On the recommendation of Cherubini he was appointed professor of musical theory and composition at the Paris Conservatoire, where his pupils included Berlioz, Liszt, Frank and Gounod.
Reicha was an extremely prolific composer. His output included ten operas, a great deal of piano music and an equally large volume of chamber music for string and wind instruments, together with symphonies and overtures and concertos. He was also a master of counterpoint, as witnessed by his thirty-six fugues for piano, dedicated to Haydn and held in high regard by Berlioz. Many of his works were stylistically diverse and experimental. As Reicha himself explained: “Once started, my verve and imagination were indefatigable. Ideas came to me so rapidly it was often difficult to set them down without losing some of them. I always had a great penchant for doing the unusual in composition. When writing in an original vein, my creative faculties and spirit seemed keener than when following the precepts of my predecessors.” Berlioz too noted his partiality for the unconventional, described him as having “a taste for abstract permutations and elaborate musical jokes. He loved solving problems, but this kind of thing can be the enemy of art, by diverting it from the main purpose which it should always be striving to achieve.”
Full of Mozartian dash and high spirits, Reicha’s Overture in D is perfectly ordinary except one thing: it steadfastly sticks to having five beats in every bar. This is something that would be considered unusual even now; back then it was almost unthinkable. Seventy years before Tchaikovsky’s famous 5/4 waltz from the Pathétique, Reicha was confirming his position as an innovator.
© Stephen Strugnell
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto in D, K451Allegro assai
Andante
Allegro di moltoBy 1784, Mozart had become Vienna’s most fashionable musician. His early biographer, Franz Niemetschek, described the esteem in which Mozart was held at that time: “In Vienna, especially, his piano-playing was admired; for although Vienna had many great masters of this instrument, which had since become everyone’s favourite, nobody could rival our Mozart. His admirable dexterity, which particularly in the left hand and the bass were considered quite unique, his feeling and delicacy, and beautiful expression were the attractions of his playing, which together with his abundant ideas and his knowledge of composition must have enthralled every listener and made Mozart the greatest pianist of his time.”
According to the date on the score, tonight’s Concerto was completed on 22 March 1784, the second of four concerti that he wrote in a two month period. The timing of such productivity owed less to a burst of spring fever than to the dictates of religion. In Vienna, at the time a very Catholic city, the theatres usually closed during Lent, depriving the Viennese of a favored source of entertainment. Lacking competition from theatres, concert attendance soared, and musicians capitalized on the demand by presenting even more concerts than usual. Mozart’s own letters, as well as contemporary accounts, attest that during Lent he frequently gave three or four concerts each week.
Soon after the premiere, which took place on 31 March 1784, Mozart sent the score to his father and sister in Salzburg, remarking that the piece was certain “to make you sweat.” Nannerl Mozart, however, a gifted pianist in her own right, seems to have thought that the level of sweat was insufficient. She wrote to her brother complaining that something seemed to be missing from the central Andante, and he concurred, admitted that in performance, he had improvised a more decorated version of the written notes. Soon after, Mozart provided his sister with a more ornamented version of the movement, along with cadenzas for the other two movements, an action for which modern pianists have continued to be grateful.
This Concerto was one of only seven to be published during Mozart’s lifetime. Several months after the composer’s death, a German journal wistfully observed: “To every friend and admirer of the Mozartean muse, this composition can be nothing but very precious. The original style of composition, which is unmistakable here, the fullness of the harmony, the striking turns of phrase, the skilled distribution of shade and light, and many other excellent qualities all give us cause to feel very deeply the loss of Mozart, a paragon on his era.”
© Stephen Strugnell
- Schubert
Programme note
Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
Symphony No 2 in B flat major, D 125We are usually so mesmerized by the vision of Schubert dying at the distressingly early age of 31 (given the depth of his last works) that we tend to overlook the astonishing achievements of his teenage years. Yet astonishing they are. His first completed symphony was written when he was sixteen in 1813. The second and third symphonies were completed in 1815, and the fourth and fifth in 1816. At eighteen it would be surprising if there were not some stylistic influences, given that Schubert was heir to the treasures of Mozart and Haydn,
and he could hardly fail to have been impressed by Beethoven – all of whom lived and worked in his home town of Vienna. Yet, while these influences are not hard to detect, neither is Schubert’s own voice, which is already unmistakable.
The first movement of the second symphony begins with a slow introduction in the grand manner of Haydn’s London symphonies, but as soon as we arrive at the Allegro vivace, the energetic figurations for the violins are clearly ‘Schubertian’. He certainly seems to have taken the notion of vivace to heart, for this movement literally bounces along, while allowing for some very effective, quieter writing for the solo woodwinds in the development section.
The slow movement is a gracious, gentle Andante. It serves as a sorbet after the high energy of the opening movement. Unusually for Schubert, this movement is in variation form. The effect is pastoral, though thunderclouds appear in the fourth variation. The coda wraps things up as at the end of a lovely summer’s day, albeit one with a sudden strong shower! The Minuet is resolutely boisterous – more a Ländler than a Waltz – though at Allegro vivace there is nothing leisurely about it! The Trio is a bucolic contrast – with a rustic oboe supported by gentle quavers from the strings. The finale (a Presto) bounds along using Schubert’s favourite dotted rhythmic device as the propulsive power for the movement. It simply exudes spontaneity and youth – which is also a good way to sum up the entire symphony.
© David Gardner
- conductor/piano
Mozart in 1784 and Schubert in 1814/15 – great years for great composers. Mozart was at the height of his popularity in Vienna, writing a stream of new works to perform at his very own showcase concerts. Schubert found his voice in 1814/15 in masterpieces such as Gretchen am Spinnrade; his second symphony has all the best qualities of youth. To open the concert, Levin introduces an unsung hero of the Romantic age. Reicha was a friend of Beethoven and Haydn, and influential teacher of Berlioz, Liszt and Gounod among others.
Bath International Music Festival: SCO Strings
- Stravinsky
Programme note
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Apollon musagète (1927-8)One of Stravinsky’s earliest so-called ‘neoclassical’ works written in the aftermath of the First World War was the ballet Pulcinella, commissioned by the impresario Sergey Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes, the company that had first brought Stravinsky to international fame with Firebird. Pulcinella was Stravinsky’s discovery of the past, as he later described it, "the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look, of course – the first of many love affairs in that direction – but it was a look in the mirror, too." Despite its dependence on the music of the past, Pulcinella represents an important turning point in Stravinsky’s artistic development. It revealed to him the possibilities of an engagement with all kinds of earlier music in order to renew his own musical language. Crucial, though, for his neoclassical music was not the material he borrowed (which could come from anywhere) but his attitude to it. Everything he touched he made his own.
If Pulcinella was the epiphany, then Apollon musagète must surely be the apogee of Stravinsky’s neoclassicism. Commissioned by the American patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge in 1927, Stravinsky chose, as he explains in his autobiography, "to compose a ballet founded on moments or episodes in Greek mythology plastically interpreted by dancing of the so-called classical school". He wanted to create what he termed a 'ballet blanc’, a score of great purity and unity, in which violent contrasts were avoided and all elements were pared down to their simplest. Hence it is scored for strings alone and makes almost exclusive use of diatonic harmony (the equivalent of the ‘white notes’ on the piano keyboard). For George Balanchine, choreographer of the 1928 European premiere, the work was a revelation: "In its discipline and restraint, in its sustained oneness of tone and feeling… [Apollon] seemed to tell me that I could dare not to use everything, that I, too, could eliminate". The result was the perfect union of music and dance in the expression of pure, classical beauty.
In order to achieve this sense of order as symbolized by the Greek god Apollo, Stravinsky turned to poetry. Each dance explores a basic iambic (short–long) pattern, while the ‘Variation of Calliope’ (the muse of poetry) is headed by two lines from Boileau and takes the twelve-syllable lines of the alexandrine as its rhythmic model. Another means of order was achieved by alluding to the stateliness of French Baroque dances, such as the ouverture style of the opening ‘Birth of Apollo’ or the pavane-like second ‘Variation of Apollo’. The closing ‘Apotheosis’, in which Apollo leads the three Muses towards Parnassus, brings together the various rhythmic elements of the work in music that is not just serenely beautiful but also seems to speak of something deeper and darker, something beyond reason and order. Stravinsky looks back to ancient Greece but is ultimately, perhaps, only able to see the reflection of his own tragic age.
© Jonathan Cross
- PärtFratres
Programme note
- TchaikovskySerenade for Strings
Programme note
- violin/director
- -
Apollon Musagète, Stravinsky’s elegant and neo-classical ballet score was George Balanchine’s first ballet, premiered by the Ballet Russes in 1928. The music draws inspiration from the 17th and 18th century French style, and takes us through the birth of Apollo and his subsequent instruction by the muses Terpsichore, Calliope and Polyhymnia in their respective arts.
The hermetic and mystical Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s works are often deeply spiritual and Fratres dates from 1977 just before his departure from Estonia under the Soviet regime to the greater creative freedom of Austria and Germany. The music is a study in chant-like serenity and fills the air with a ritual and ceremonial contemplative stillness which conjures up bell-like sounds redolent of Gregorian Chant.
The concert culminates with the passionate and romantic splendour of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade, a tour de force for a string orchestra, that the composer described as being “from the heart”.
Bath International Music Festival
- Mendelssohn
- Mozart
- Mozart
- Stravinsky
Programme note
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Pulcinella SuiteSinfonia (Overture): Allegro moderato
Serenata: Larghetto -
Scherzino - Allegro - Andantino -
Tarantella -
Toccata: Allegro
Gavotta con due variazioni: Allegro moderato
Vivo
Minuetto: molto moderato -
Finale: allegro assaiThe most significant developments in musical history are not necessarily inspired by the most significant composers - or even by composers at all. The neo-classical taste, which had a strong influence on music for twenty years or more, was formed as much by Diaghilev, ballet impresario and no musician, as any one else. It was he who sensed how public taste would change after the first world war, and it was he who commissioned Tommasini to arrange Scarlatti's music for The Good-Humoured Ladies, Respighi to arrange Rossini's for La Boutique Fantasque, and Stravinsky to arrange Pergolesi's for Pulcinella. With choreography by Massine for all three ballets and designs by (respectively) Baskt, Derain, and Picasso they could scarcely fail to arouse the interest of the public.
As for Stravinsky, he would surely not have thought of creating a ballet score from music by (or attributed to) Pergolesi if Diaghilev had not asked him. He provided Stravinsky with the Pegolesi scores and with an early eighteenth-century comic libretto, based on the commedia dell'arte character of Pulcinella, to go with them. The several months of concentrated work on Pergolesi in 1919 and 1920 had a profound influence on Stravinsky and on the development of his music up to The Rake's Progress and beyond. Pulcinella was, he said, "my discovery of the past". The instrumentation of the ballet is an indication of how much he had absorbed even at this stage - no clarinets, not one of the percus¬sion instruments so prominent in his wartime scores, the strings divided in concerto grosso style into concertino and ripieno groups. The sound he wanted is no pastiche, however, even if some of his methods are characteristically eighteenth-century. The Overture is a delightful example of Stravinsky's use of the neo¬classical orchestra, with blocks of tutti sound alternating with a series of differently coloured solo groups.
In the ballet the curtain rises on a Neapolitan serenade from Pergolesi's II Flamino, sung by a tenor in the orchestra pit. In the suite, the principal vocalists are solo oboe and violin, set against a remarkably delicate and nocturnal texture of strings and wind harmonics, trills, and repeated notes. The Scherzino accompanies a scuffle on the stage between the two unwelcome serenaders, Florindo and Coviello, and the father of one of the ladies. It leads directly into the Allegro, to which Pulcinella enters playing a virtuoso violin. The violin solo, which is Stravinsky's addition to the Pergolesi original, succeeds where the serenade failed and attracts the two ladies (Prudenza and Rosetta) out into the street where, in the Andantino, they make amorous advances to Pulcinella.
The middle part of the ballet, in which Pulcinella is apparently killed by his two rivals, is omitted from the suite. The next movement, the Tarantella, in which the apparently dead Pulcinella is brought back to life, must have been comparatively easy for Stravinsky to arrange, since it comes from a work for string orchestra. The Toccata, on the other hand, is a brilliant realisation of a harpsichord piece. Similarly, the Gavotte and the two variations, in which the two ladies dance with the two lovers only because both the latter are disguised as Pulcinella, is a highly imaginative and attractive rescoring for wind instruments of what was originally harpsichord music. The section marked vivo is from a sinfonia for cello and double bass. Stravinsky retains the solo double bass but pairs it with a loud trombone, which is both witty and dramatically effective - for this is the scene in which Pulcinella gets his own back on Florindo and Coviella by ducking them in the fountain.
However, all the problems are settled in the Minuetto, which comes from the opera Lo Frate Innamorato and is obviously a song rather than a dance. Florindo and Coviello are united with Prudenza and Rosetta, and Pulcinella is reunited with his own Pimpinella - to the general rejoicing indicated in the racy Finale.
© Gerald Larner
- violin/director
- piano
Led by guest director Alexander Janiczek, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra presents a magical evening of music ranging from the darkness of Don Giovanni to the Commedia dell’Arte antics of Pulcinella and friends.
Christian Ihle Hadland, the fine young Norwegian pianist, BBC Radio 3 New Generation artist and a specialist in the classical period repertoire gives the first of two performances at the Festival with one of Mozart’s most popular piano concertos.
In this concert we hear the overture to Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, in which the eponymous ‘hero’ is finally dragged down into the flames of hell after a life of wild debauchery. In contrast, Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream conjures up the magical world of Shakespeare’s play and the effervescent lightness of a midsummer evening. Finally, Stravinky’s Suite from Pulcinella; a neo-classical period ballet score that draws on the music of the 18th century Italian composer, Pergolesi.
South of Scotland Tour 2013
- Mozart
- Haydn
- Weber
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 1 in C major, Op 21 (1800)Adagio molto - Allegro con brio
Andante cantabile con moto
Menuetto: Allegro molto, e vivace
Adagio - Allegro molto e vivaceMendelssohn was just sixteen when he composed his sensational String Octet and Mozart nineteen when he transcended boyhood felicity in his G major Violin Concerto, K216, suddenly producing one of his first real masterpieces. Beethoven, however, waited until he was almost thirty before unveiling his First Symphony, which holds a similar position in his output. It was a work that changed the face of music. Eight years earlier, his benefactor Count Waldstein had persuaded him to leave his native Bonn and settle in Vienna, where he would "receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn". The phrase was nicely turned, even if what Beethoven received from Haydn's hands was no more than a bit of tuition which seemed not to have greatly pleased either of them.
On the other hand, what he received from the city where Haydn still lived and Mozart had recently died was inspirational encouragement of a sort which, within a few years, set him on course to produce the greatest, most vanguard symphonies of his time.
Though much of his Symphony No 1 was clearly modelled on Haydn and Mozart, the unmistakable sounds of Beethoven’s audacity and originality were apparent in the very opening bars, whose disorientating modulations (provocatively side-stepping the symphony’s home key of C major) must have perplexed the audience who attended its Viennese premiere, conducted by the composer in a vast benefit concert in April 1800. Since this was Beethoven’s first public concert in his adopted city, the shock waves were surely all the greater. C major, for Beethoven, was never the simple key it was traditionally thought to be, and as his C major piano concerto of the same period similarly underlined. Both works supply that mixture of robust energy and romantic tenderness, of serenity and explosiveness that were to be the hallmark of all his later music.
So if, as Edinburgh's distinguished musical essayist Sir Donald Tovey suggested, the First Symphony represents "Beethoven’s fitting farewell to the eighteenth century," it is by no means merely retrospective. Though he composed it for the same classical-sized orchestra for which Haydn scored his last symphonies, its novelty value and wealth of ideas - evenly spread through each of the four movements - were immediately recognised.
Thus the first movement’s off-key opening leads to a startlingly punchy allegro, filled with sudden key changes and detached, hammered rhythms. The blend of woodwind and string tone in the andante may sound Mozartian, but the persistent soft tapping of the kettledrums - a sensational effect in 1800 - could only be Beethoven. The taut, urgently syncopated minuet is already a Beethoven scherzo in all but name, with a witty interplay of wind chords and string scales in the concentrated trio section. After this model of brevity, the rondo finale echoes the opening movement with a slow introduction, each phrase groping its way teasingly towards the succeeding allegro, and showing how Beethoven could bring his own sense of humour to a trick of a kind Haydn enjoyed. Scales, so often a feature of this work, play a last special part in the coda to this movement.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- clarinet
Join the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at The Buccleuch Centre, Langholm, for a perfect summer evening’s entertainment. Conductor Christian Baldini makes his SCO debut with a programme of music that includes Mozart operatic overtures and Haydn’s Symphony No 102. SCO Principal Maximiliano Martín performs Weber’s virtuosic Clarinet Concertino, which received rave reviews when recorded by Martín and the SCO in 2012. Not to be missed!
"...the night belonged to principal clarinettist Maximiliano Martin for a genuinely extraordinary performance." The Herald
Tickets available from The Buccleuch Centre, Langholm, 0138 7381 196 and The Midsteeple, High Street, Dumfries, 01387 253383.
South of Scotland Tour 2013
- Mozart
- Haydn
- Weber
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 1 in C major, Op 21 (1800)Adagio molto - Allegro con brio
Andante cantabile con moto
Menuetto: Allegro molto, e vivace
Adagio - Allegro molto e vivaceMendelssohn was just sixteen when he composed his sensational String Octet and Mozart nineteen when he transcended boyhood felicity in his G major Violin Concerto, K216, suddenly producing one of his first real masterpieces. Beethoven, however, waited until he was almost thirty before unveiling his First Symphony, which holds a similar position in his output. It was a work that changed the face of music. Eight years earlier, his benefactor Count Waldstein had persuaded him to leave his native Bonn and settle in Vienna, where he would "receive the spirit of Mozart from the hands of Haydn". The phrase was nicely turned, even if what Beethoven received from Haydn's hands was no more than a bit of tuition which seemed not to have greatly pleased either of them.
On the other hand, what he received from the city where Haydn still lived and Mozart had recently died was inspirational encouragement of a sort which, within a few years, set him on course to produce the greatest, most vanguard symphonies of his time.
Though much of his Symphony No 1 was clearly modelled on Haydn and Mozart, the unmistakable sounds of Beethoven’s audacity and originality were apparent in the very opening bars, whose disorientating modulations (provocatively side-stepping the symphony’s home key of C major) must have perplexed the audience who attended its Viennese premiere, conducted by the composer in a vast benefit concert in April 1800. Since this was Beethoven’s first public concert in his adopted city, the shock waves were surely all the greater. C major, for Beethoven, was never the simple key it was traditionally thought to be, and as his C major piano concerto of the same period similarly underlined. Both works supply that mixture of robust energy and romantic tenderness, of serenity and explosiveness that were to be the hallmark of all his later music.
So if, as Edinburgh's distinguished musical essayist Sir Donald Tovey suggested, the First Symphony represents "Beethoven’s fitting farewell to the eighteenth century," it is by no means merely retrospective. Though he composed it for the same classical-sized orchestra for which Haydn scored his last symphonies, its novelty value and wealth of ideas - evenly spread through each of the four movements - were immediately recognised.
Thus the first movement’s off-key opening leads to a startlingly punchy allegro, filled with sudden key changes and detached, hammered rhythms. The blend of woodwind and string tone in the andante may sound Mozartian, but the persistent soft tapping of the kettledrums - a sensational effect in 1800 - could only be Beethoven. The taut, urgently syncopated minuet is already a Beethoven scherzo in all but name, with a witty interplay of wind chords and string scales in the concentrated trio section. After this model of brevity, the rondo finale echoes the opening movement with a slow introduction, each phrase groping its way teasingly towards the succeeding allegro, and showing how Beethoven could bring his own sense of humour to a trick of a kind Haydn enjoyed. Scales, so often a feature of this work, play a last special part in the coda to this movement.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- clarinet
Join the Scottish Chamber Orchestra at St Mary's Church in Haddington for a perfect summer evening’s entertainment. Conductor Christian Baldini makes his SCO debut with a programme of music that includes Mozart operatic overtures and Haydn’s Symphony No 102. SCO Principal Maximiliano Martín performs Weber’s virtuosic Clarinet Concertino, which received rave reviews when recorded by Martín and the SCO in 2012. Not to be missed!
"...the night belonged to principal clarinettist Maximiliano Martin for a genuinely extraordinary performance." The Herald
Tickets available Kesley's Bookshop, 29 Market Street, Haddington or The Queen's Hall, Clerk Street, Edinburgh tel. 0131 668 2019.
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