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Autumn Classics

Wed 9th Sep

Venue information

19:30, Hamilton Town House

Tickets: £12.50 – Concessions £10 - Students/Children £5

Elgar
Serenade for Strings

Print

Programme note

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Serenade for strings in E minor, Op 20 (1892)

Allegro piacevole
Larghetto
Allegretto

Musical history is littered with pieces of music that for one reason or another were rejected in their own time only to become the most popular of classics later. Listening to this piece, just imagine that its original publisher deemed it ‘unsaleable’, and declined to publish it: that is how it came to pass that the Worcester Ladies’ Orchestral Class premiered it privately with Elgar conducting in 1893; then it had to wait until 1896 for its first public performance, in Antwerp. Now, it is one of Elgar’s most best known scores. It is also perhaps the earliest of his works to be heard regularly.

Late in life, Elgar singled the Serenade out as his favourite work. One thing that especially pleased him about it is that it is ‘really stringy.’ He was a very able violinist, and throughout his life wrote superb works for string instruments: celebrated concertos for both violin and cello; a sonata for violin; a piano quintet and of course the Introduction and Allegro for string quartet and string orchestra among other pieces. The way he wrote for these instruments is one of the things that gives his music its distinctive musical accent. Hard to pin down exactly what he was doing, but the minute you hear it you can tell who is speaking - even in a piece as early as this.

The Serenade as we know it was completed in 1892, but Alice Elgar left a clue that suggests that it is actually a re-working of the (now lost) Three Pieces for String Orchestra premiered by the Worcestershire Musical Union in 1888. After that performance, Alice wrote a rather intense pastoral poem inspired by its three movements. For example, the opening Allegro piacevole (‘pleasingly lively’) suggested ‘rivers fringed with wavering reeds” to her; the Larghetto is full of “…love and pain Now mingle in the strain again’. Fanciful as her images are, they do suit the music’s tone and make you wonder whether the Serenade mightn’t be a reincarnation of that earlier piece.

© Svend Brown 2008
Dvořák
Czech Suite

Print

Programme note

Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)
Czech Suite, Op 39 (1879)

Preludium (Pastorale): Allegro moderato
Polka: Allegretto grazioso
Sousedska (Minuetto): Allegro giusto
Romanza: Andante con moto
Finale (Furiant): Presto

Dvořák, like his father and grandfather before him, might have become a village butcher. Instead, thanks to his conspicuous musicality, he became a viola player in the orchestra of the Prague National Theatre. What he learned in the pit - with Wagner and Smetana among his conductors - served him in good stead as a composer who merged the folk idioms of his homeland with the symphonic music of Vienna and elsewhere. Music flowed from him with a fecundity soon to be rivalled by that of the young Richard Strauss, and the first of his two serenades, the E major, Op 22, for strings, brims with glowing viola tone.

After the major-key sweetness of that work and minor-key pungency of the succeeding wind serenade, Op 44, Dvořák contemplated a third serenade, scored for wind and strings, which would complete an intended triptych. Failing to make headway on it, he produced instead his Czech Suite in D major, a potpourri of orchestral dances and other movements with a misleadingly early opus number, culminating in a swinging, ambitiously symphonic Furiant.

More varied in colouring than its predecessors, the Czech Suite contains material - notably in the central minuet - from the abandoned third serenade, but otherwise goes its own leisurely and idiosyncratic way, incorporating rustic bagpipe imitations as part of the pastoralism of the prelude. The succeeding polka possesses a faintly melancholy Dvorakian charm and the minuet, which he preferred to call a sousedska, is a Czech “neighbours’ dance,” of a sort reputedly aimed at elderly villagers for whom other Czech dances were deemed too lively.

The romantic fourth movement, with its atmospheric woodwind interplay, evokes the soft moonlit radiance of Rusalka, the water-nymph opera Dvorak wrote two decades later,. Finally the suite is exhilaratingly energised by a Furiant, a type of Czech dance famed for its furious syncopations, filled with rhythmic tension, minor-key leanings, and abruptly braying horns.

Though heard less frequently than the two popular serenades, the music represents Dvořák at his most thoroughly nationalistic. The work established itself in the SCO’s repertoire in the 1970s, when it was vivaciously championed by the orchestra’s earliest conductor Roderick Brydon.

Conrad Wilson
Beethoven
Symphony No 2

Print

Programme note

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 2 in D major, Op 36 (1802)

Adagio - Allegro con brio
Larghetto
Scherzo: Allegro
Allegro molto

Few pieces of music can more directly disprove the notion that the emotional character of a composition reflects the inner moods of the composer while he was writing it than Beethoven’s second symphony. In 1802, Beethoven was facing a personal and artistic crisis brought on by his impending deafness. On the advice of his doctor, who suggested that the rural quiet of a village might improve his hearing, he went to live for several months in Heiligenstadt, northwest of Vienna. But when no improvement was forthcoming, Beethoven fell into a suicidal despair and, in October 1802, gave vent to his emotions by writing what is now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament – a passionate outburst expressing his unhappiness. “What a humiliation when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing. Such occurrences brought me to the verge of despair. As the leaves of Autumn fall and are withered, so too, my hope has dried up. Oh, Providence, let a single day of untroubled joy be granted to me!”

Despite Beethoven’s mental torment, the works sketched and completed at Heiligenstadt that summer – especially the second symphony – remained vigorous and energetic in an unmistakable early Beethoven manner. The second symphony is in the traditionally sunny key of D major and follows classical symphonic form – even beginning with an extended Haydn-like Adagio. And yet for all its harking back to classical models, the music abounds in abrupt dynamic contrasts, unexpected harmonic modulations and propulsive rhythms.

Symphony No 2 was premiered in April 1803, along with Piano Concerto No 3 and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, at a concert in the Theater an der Wein where Beethoven had recently been appointed as one of the resident composers. He made a substantial profit of 1800 florins on the concert, but the critics were somewhat equivocal. The sheer size of the last movement and its extended coda clearly unsettled one critic who wrote: “Beethoven’s second symphony is a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.”

© Stephen Strugnell

Danail Rachev
conductor

The dynamic Bulgarian Danail Rachev conducts a romantic programme spanning the entire 19th century. The evening opens with Elgar's beautiful Serenade, the composer's own favourite among his works. It's followed by Dvorák's Czech Suite, whose characteristic folk dances capture the essence of the composer's homeland, and ends with the glorious rhythms of Beethoven's sunny Second Symphony. A perfect concert for an early autumn evening.

Autumn Classics

Thu 10th Sep

Venue information

19:30, Falkirk Town Hall

Tickets: £12.50 – Concessions £10 - Students/Children £5

Elgar
Serenade for Strings

Print

Programme note

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Serenade for strings in E minor, Op 20 (1892)

Allegro piacevole
Larghetto
Allegretto

Musical history is littered with pieces of music that for one reason or another were rejected in their own time only to become the most popular of classics later. Listening to this piece, just imagine that its original publisher deemed it ‘unsaleable’, and declined to publish it: that is how it came to pass that the Worcester Ladies’ Orchestral Class premiered it privately with Elgar conducting in 1893; then it had to wait until 1896 for its first public performance, in Antwerp. Now, it is one of Elgar’s most best known scores. It is also perhaps the earliest of his works to be heard regularly.

Late in life, Elgar singled the Serenade out as his favourite work. One thing that especially pleased him about it is that it is ‘really stringy.’ He was a very able violinist, and throughout his life wrote superb works for string instruments: celebrated concertos for both violin and cello; a sonata for violin; a piano quintet and of course the Introduction and Allegro for string quartet and string orchestra among other pieces. The way he wrote for these instruments is one of the things that gives his music its distinctive musical accent. Hard to pin down exactly what he was doing, but the minute you hear it you can tell who is speaking - even in a piece as early as this.

The Serenade as we know it was completed in 1892, but Alice Elgar left a clue that suggests that it is actually a re-working of the (now lost) Three Pieces for String Orchestra premiered by the Worcestershire Musical Union in 1888. After that performance, Alice wrote a rather intense pastoral poem inspired by its three movements. For example, the opening Allegro piacevole (‘pleasingly lively’) suggested ‘rivers fringed with wavering reeds” to her; the Larghetto is full of “…love and pain Now mingle in the strain again’. Fanciful as her images are, they do suit the music’s tone and make you wonder whether the Serenade mightn’t be a reincarnation of that earlier piece.

© Svend Brown 2008
Dvořák
Czech Suite

Print

Programme note

Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)
Czech Suite, Op 39 (1879)

Preludium (Pastorale): Allegro moderato
Polka: Allegretto grazioso
Sousedska (Minuetto): Allegro giusto
Romanza: Andante con moto
Finale (Furiant): Presto

Dvořák, like his father and grandfather before him, might have become a village butcher. Instead, thanks to his conspicuous musicality, he became a viola player in the orchestra of the Prague National Theatre. What he learned in the pit - with Wagner and Smetana among his conductors - served him in good stead as a composer who merged the folk idioms of his homeland with the symphonic music of Vienna and elsewhere. Music flowed from him with a fecundity soon to be rivalled by that of the young Richard Strauss, and the first of his two serenades, the E major, Op 22, for strings, brims with glowing viola tone.

After the major-key sweetness of that work and minor-key pungency of the succeeding wind serenade, Op 44, Dvořák contemplated a third serenade, scored for wind and strings, which would complete an intended triptych. Failing to make headway on it, he produced instead his Czech Suite in D major, a potpourri of orchestral dances and other movements with a misleadingly early opus number, culminating in a swinging, ambitiously symphonic Furiant.

More varied in colouring than its predecessors, the Czech Suite contains material - notably in the central minuet - from the abandoned third serenade, but otherwise goes its own leisurely and idiosyncratic way, incorporating rustic bagpipe imitations as part of the pastoralism of the prelude. The succeeding polka possesses a faintly melancholy Dvorakian charm and the minuet, which he preferred to call a sousedska, is a Czech “neighbours’ dance,” of a sort reputedly aimed at elderly villagers for whom other Czech dances were deemed too lively.

The romantic fourth movement, with its atmospheric woodwind interplay, evokes the soft moonlit radiance of Rusalka, the water-nymph opera Dvorak wrote two decades later,. Finally the suite is exhilaratingly energised by a Furiant, a type of Czech dance famed for its furious syncopations, filled with rhythmic tension, minor-key leanings, and abruptly braying horns.

Though heard less frequently than the two popular serenades, the music represents Dvořák at his most thoroughly nationalistic. The work established itself in the SCO’s repertoire in the 1970s, when it was vivaciously championed by the orchestra’s earliest conductor Roderick Brydon.

Conrad Wilson
Beethoven
Symphony No 2

Print

Programme note

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 2 in D major, Op 36 (1802)

Adagio - Allegro con brio
Larghetto
Scherzo: Allegro
Allegro molto

Few pieces of music can more directly disprove the notion that the emotional character of a composition reflects the inner moods of the composer while he was writing it than Beethoven’s second symphony. In 1802, Beethoven was facing a personal and artistic crisis brought on by his impending deafness. On the advice of his doctor, who suggested that the rural quiet of a village might improve his hearing, he went to live for several months in Heiligenstadt, northwest of Vienna. But when no improvement was forthcoming, Beethoven fell into a suicidal despair and, in October 1802, gave vent to his emotions by writing what is now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament – a passionate outburst expressing his unhappiness. “What a humiliation when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing. Such occurrences brought me to the verge of despair. As the leaves of Autumn fall and are withered, so too, my hope has dried up. Oh, Providence, let a single day of untroubled joy be granted to me!”

Despite Beethoven’s mental torment, the works sketched and completed at Heiligenstadt that summer – especially the second symphony – remained vigorous and energetic in an unmistakable early Beethoven manner. The second symphony is in the traditionally sunny key of D major and follows classical symphonic form – even beginning with an extended Haydn-like Adagio. And yet for all its harking back to classical models, the music abounds in abrupt dynamic contrasts, unexpected harmonic modulations and propulsive rhythms.

Symphony No 2 was premiered in April 1803, along with Piano Concerto No 3 and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, at a concert in the Theater an der Wein where Beethoven had recently been appointed as one of the resident composers. He made a substantial profit of 1800 florins on the concert, but the critics were somewhat equivocal. The sheer size of the last movement and its extended coda clearly unsettled one critic who wrote: “Beethoven’s second symphony is a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.”

© Stephen Strugnell

Danail Rachev
conductor

Autumn Classics

Fri 11th Sep

19:30, Helensburgh Victoria Hall

Tickets: £12.50 – Concessions £10 - Students/Children £5

Elgar
Serenade for Strings

Print

Programme note

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Serenade for strings in E minor, Op 20 (1892)

Allegro piacevole
Larghetto
Allegretto

Musical history is littered with pieces of music that for one reason or another were rejected in their own time only to become the most popular of classics later. Listening to this piece, just imagine that its original publisher deemed it ‘unsaleable’, and declined to publish it: that is how it came to pass that the Worcester Ladies’ Orchestral Class premiered it privately with Elgar conducting in 1893; then it had to wait until 1896 for its first public performance, in Antwerp. Now, it is one of Elgar’s most best known scores. It is also perhaps the earliest of his works to be heard regularly.

Late in life, Elgar singled the Serenade out as his favourite work. One thing that especially pleased him about it is that it is ‘really stringy.’ He was a very able violinist, and throughout his life wrote superb works for string instruments: celebrated concertos for both violin and cello; a sonata for violin; a piano quintet and of course the Introduction and Allegro for string quartet and string orchestra among other pieces. The way he wrote for these instruments is one of the things that gives his music its distinctive musical accent. Hard to pin down exactly what he was doing, but the minute you hear it you can tell who is speaking - even in a piece as early as this.

The Serenade as we know it was completed in 1892, but Alice Elgar left a clue that suggests that it is actually a re-working of the (now lost) Three Pieces for String Orchestra premiered by the Worcestershire Musical Union in 1888. After that performance, Alice wrote a rather intense pastoral poem inspired by its three movements. For example, the opening Allegro piacevole (‘pleasingly lively’) suggested ‘rivers fringed with wavering reeds” to her; the Larghetto is full of “…love and pain Now mingle in the strain again’. Fanciful as her images are, they do suit the music’s tone and make you wonder whether the Serenade mightn’t be a reincarnation of that earlier piece.

© Svend Brown 2008
Dvořák
Czech Suite

Print

Programme note

Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)
Czech Suite, Op 39 (1879)

Preludium (Pastorale): Allegro moderato
Polka: Allegretto grazioso
Sousedska (Minuetto): Allegro giusto
Romanza: Andante con moto
Finale (Furiant): Presto

Dvořák, like his father and grandfather before him, might have become a village butcher. Instead, thanks to his conspicuous musicality, he became a viola player in the orchestra of the Prague National Theatre. What he learned in the pit - with Wagner and Smetana among his conductors - served him in good stead as a composer who merged the folk idioms of his homeland with the symphonic music of Vienna and elsewhere. Music flowed from him with a fecundity soon to be rivalled by that of the young Richard Strauss, and the first of his two serenades, the E major, Op 22, for strings, brims with glowing viola tone.

After the major-key sweetness of that work and minor-key pungency of the succeeding wind serenade, Op 44, Dvořák contemplated a third serenade, scored for wind and strings, which would complete an intended triptych. Failing to make headway on it, he produced instead his Czech Suite in D major, a potpourri of orchestral dances and other movements with a misleadingly early opus number, culminating in a swinging, ambitiously symphonic Furiant.

More varied in colouring than its predecessors, the Czech Suite contains material - notably in the central minuet - from the abandoned third serenade, but otherwise goes its own leisurely and idiosyncratic way, incorporating rustic bagpipe imitations as part of the pastoralism of the prelude. The succeeding polka possesses a faintly melancholy Dvorakian charm and the minuet, which he preferred to call a sousedska, is a Czech “neighbours’ dance,” of a sort reputedly aimed at elderly villagers for whom other Czech dances were deemed too lively.

The romantic fourth movement, with its atmospheric woodwind interplay, evokes the soft moonlit radiance of Rusalka, the water-nymph opera Dvorak wrote two decades later,. Finally the suite is exhilaratingly energised by a Furiant, a type of Czech dance famed for its furious syncopations, filled with rhythmic tension, minor-key leanings, and abruptly braying horns.

Though heard less frequently than the two popular serenades, the music represents Dvořák at his most thoroughly nationalistic. The work established itself in the SCO’s repertoire in the 1970s, when it was vivaciously championed by the orchestra’s earliest conductor Roderick Brydon.

Conrad Wilson
Beethoven
Symphony No 2

Print

Programme note

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 2 in D major, Op 36 (1802)

Adagio - Allegro con brio
Larghetto
Scherzo: Allegro
Allegro molto

Few pieces of music can more directly disprove the notion that the emotional character of a composition reflects the inner moods of the composer while he was writing it than Beethoven’s second symphony. In 1802, Beethoven was facing a personal and artistic crisis brought on by his impending deafness. On the advice of his doctor, who suggested that the rural quiet of a village might improve his hearing, he went to live for several months in Heiligenstadt, northwest of Vienna. But when no improvement was forthcoming, Beethoven fell into a suicidal despair and, in October 1802, gave vent to his emotions by writing what is now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament – a passionate outburst expressing his unhappiness. “What a humiliation when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing. Such occurrences brought me to the verge of despair. As the leaves of Autumn fall and are withered, so too, my hope has dried up. Oh, Providence, let a single day of untroubled joy be granted to me!”

Despite Beethoven’s mental torment, the works sketched and completed at Heiligenstadt that summer – especially the second symphony – remained vigorous and energetic in an unmistakable early Beethoven manner. The second symphony is in the traditionally sunny key of D major and follows classical symphonic form – even beginning with an extended Haydn-like Adagio. And yet for all its harking back to classical models, the music abounds in abrupt dynamic contrasts, unexpected harmonic modulations and propulsive rhythms.

Symphony No 2 was premiered in April 1803, along with Piano Concerto No 3 and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, at a concert in the Theater an der Wein where Beethoven had recently been appointed as one of the resident composers. He made a substantial profit of 1800 florins on the concert, but the critics were somewhat equivocal. The sheer size of the last movement and its extended coda clearly unsettled one critic who wrote: “Beethoven’s second symphony is a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.”

© Stephen Strugnell

Danail Rachev
conductor

The dynamic Bulgarian Danail Rachev conducts a romantic programme spanning the entire 19th century. The evening opens with Elgar's beautiful Serenade, the composer's own favourite among his works. It’s followed by Dvořák's Czech Suite, whose characteristic folk dances capture the essence of the composer's homeland, and ends with the glorious rhythms of Beethoven's sunny Second Symphony. A perfect concert for an early autumn evening.

Autumn Classics

Sat 12th Sep

19:30, St Mary's Parish Church, Haddington

Tickets: £12.50 – Concessions £10 - Students/Children £5

Elgar
Serenade for Strings

Print

Programme note

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Serenade for strings in E minor, Op 20 (1892)

Allegro piacevole
Larghetto
Allegretto

Musical history is littered with pieces of music that for one reason or another were rejected in their own time only to become the most popular of classics later. Listening to this piece, just imagine that its original publisher deemed it ‘unsaleable’, and declined to publish it: that is how it came to pass that the Worcester Ladies’ Orchestral Class premiered it privately with Elgar conducting in 1893; then it had to wait until 1896 for its first public performance, in Antwerp. Now, it is one of Elgar’s most best known scores. It is also perhaps the earliest of his works to be heard regularly.

Late in life, Elgar singled the Serenade out as his favourite work. One thing that especially pleased him about it is that it is ‘really stringy.’ He was a very able violinist, and throughout his life wrote superb works for string instruments: celebrated concertos for both violin and cello; a sonata for violin; a piano quintet and of course the Introduction and Allegro for string quartet and string orchestra among other pieces. The way he wrote for these instruments is one of the things that gives his music its distinctive musical accent. Hard to pin down exactly what he was doing, but the minute you hear it you can tell who is speaking - even in a piece as early as this.

The Serenade as we know it was completed in 1892, but Alice Elgar left a clue that suggests that it is actually a re-working of the (now lost) Three Pieces for String Orchestra premiered by the Worcestershire Musical Union in 1888. After that performance, Alice wrote a rather intense pastoral poem inspired by its three movements. For example, the opening Allegro piacevole (‘pleasingly lively’) suggested ‘rivers fringed with wavering reeds” to her; the Larghetto is full of “…love and pain Now mingle in the strain again’. Fanciful as her images are, they do suit the music’s tone and make you wonder whether the Serenade mightn’t be a reincarnation of that earlier piece.

© Svend Brown 2008
Dvořák
Czech Suite

Print

Programme note

Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)
Czech Suite, Op 39 (1879)

Preludium (Pastorale): Allegro moderato
Polka: Allegretto grazioso
Sousedska (Minuetto): Allegro giusto
Romanza: Andante con moto
Finale (Furiant): Presto

Dvořák, like his father and grandfather before him, might have become a village butcher. Instead, thanks to his conspicuous musicality, he became a viola player in the orchestra of the Prague National Theatre. What he learned in the pit - with Wagner and Smetana among his conductors - served him in good stead as a composer who merged the folk idioms of his homeland with the symphonic music of Vienna and elsewhere. Music flowed from him with a fecundity soon to be rivalled by that of the young Richard Strauss, and the first of his two serenades, the E major, Op 22, for strings, brims with glowing viola tone.

After the major-key sweetness of that work and minor-key pungency of the succeeding wind serenade, Op 44, Dvořák contemplated a third serenade, scored for wind and strings, which would complete an intended triptych. Failing to make headway on it, he produced instead his Czech Suite in D major, a potpourri of orchestral dances and other movements with a misleadingly early opus number, culminating in a swinging, ambitiously symphonic Furiant.

More varied in colouring than its predecessors, the Czech Suite contains material - notably in the central minuet - from the abandoned third serenade, but otherwise goes its own leisurely and idiosyncratic way, incorporating rustic bagpipe imitations as part of the pastoralism of the prelude. The succeeding polka possesses a faintly melancholy Dvorakian charm and the minuet, which he preferred to call a sousedska, is a Czech “neighbours’ dance,” of a sort reputedly aimed at elderly villagers for whom other Czech dances were deemed too lively.

The romantic fourth movement, with its atmospheric woodwind interplay, evokes the soft moonlit radiance of Rusalka, the water-nymph opera Dvorak wrote two decades later,. Finally the suite is exhilaratingly energised by a Furiant, a type of Czech dance famed for its furious syncopations, filled with rhythmic tension, minor-key leanings, and abruptly braying horns.

Though heard less frequently than the two popular serenades, the music represents Dvořák at his most thoroughly nationalistic. The work established itself in the SCO’s repertoire in the 1970s, when it was vivaciously championed by the orchestra’s earliest conductor Roderick Brydon.

Conrad Wilson
Beethoven
Symphony No 2

Print

Programme note

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 2 in D major, Op 36 (1802)

Adagio - Allegro con brio
Larghetto
Scherzo: Allegro
Allegro molto

Few pieces of music can more directly disprove the notion that the emotional character of a composition reflects the inner moods of the composer while he was writing it than Beethoven’s second symphony. In 1802, Beethoven was facing a personal and artistic crisis brought on by his impending deafness. On the advice of his doctor, who suggested that the rural quiet of a village might improve his hearing, he went to live for several months in Heiligenstadt, northwest of Vienna. But when no improvement was forthcoming, Beethoven fell into a suicidal despair and, in October 1802, gave vent to his emotions by writing what is now known as the Heiligenstadt Testament – a passionate outburst expressing his unhappiness. “What a humiliation when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing. Such occurrences brought me to the verge of despair. As the leaves of Autumn fall and are withered, so too, my hope has dried up. Oh, Providence, let a single day of untroubled joy be granted to me!”

Despite Beethoven’s mental torment, the works sketched and completed at Heiligenstadt that summer – especially the second symphony – remained vigorous and energetic in an unmistakable early Beethoven manner. The second symphony is in the traditionally sunny key of D major and follows classical symphonic form – even beginning with an extended Haydn-like Adagio. And yet for all its harking back to classical models, the music abounds in abrupt dynamic contrasts, unexpected harmonic modulations and propulsive rhythms.

Symphony No 2 was premiered in April 1803, along with Piano Concerto No 3 and the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives, at a concert in the Theater an der Wein where Beethoven had recently been appointed as one of the resident composers. He made a substantial profit of 1800 florins on the concert, but the critics were somewhat equivocal. The sheer size of the last movement and its extended coda clearly unsettled one critic who wrote: “Beethoven’s second symphony is a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon that refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.”

© Stephen Strugnell

Danail Rachev
conductor

The dynamic Bulgarian Danail Rachev conducts a romantic programme spanning the entire 19th century. The evening opens with Elgar's beautiful Serenade, the composer's own favourite among his works. It's followed by Dvořák's Czech Suite, whose characteristic folk dances capture the essence of the composer's homeland, and ends with the glorious rhythms of Beethoven's sunny Second Symphony. A perfect concert for an early autumn evening.

Masterworks

Mon 28th Sep

19:30, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh

Tickets: Tickets £12 - Senior Citizens £10 - Students/Children/Unemployed £5

MacMillan
Tryst

Print

Programme note

James MacMillan (b. 1959)
Tryst (1989)

When James MacMillan first set William Soutar’s love poem The Tryst, in the style of an old Scottish ballad, in 1984 he little guessed how significant his simple tune would prove to be. Having performed it himself – in folk clubs and bars around Scotland with his group, Broadstone – he was unable to let go of its melodic features and haunting resonances. Aspects of the song have resurfaced and echoed, reworked or transformed, in several subsequent pieces including a congretational mass setting, the slight After the Tryst for violin and piano, and his music-theatre piece Búsqueda. And it provides not only the title, says the composer, but also “the emotional core” of his chamber orchestra version of Tryst (an agreement, as between lovers, to meet at a certain time and place).

The lyrical material inspired by the words in the Scots vernacular (printed below for interest) is firmly associated in the composer’s mind with “commitment, sanctity, intimacy, faith and love”. But, he adds – and this ties in with the gentle quality of illusion in Soutar’s poem, suffused with loneliness and unfulfilled desire – “the music is also saturated with a sadness as if all these things are about to expire.”

Tryst is in one movement which falls into five unbroken sections. The swaggering energetic opening is punctuated by high clarinets screeching like banshees, MacMillan’s imaginative instrumental sonorities hinting at the supernatural world suggested by Soutar’s poem. Sustained wind chords herald the second section, their slow pace rudely interrupted by impatient string flurries. As these interjections become more frequent and expansive, the strings and winds swap roles, the strings taking up the more meditative role, while the winds become the violent intruder.

At the heart of the work is a slow section in which the original Tryst tune is teased out in the strings, sometimes tenderly, sometimes queasily, wind-chimes and bell-tree adding eerie glitter. Trumpets and horns sound a ghostly flourish and, with accelerating tempo, the opening material returns on jogging strings with blasts of brass and an audacious bass clarinet marked “expressive, bluesy”, questioning and answering each other as a verse and refrain. Vehement instrumental lines meet above the dense washes of chorale-like chords recalled from the central section. Finally, high chirruping woodwind suddenly stop as if throttled and the hum of low strings and timpani fades, as Soutar’s summer days did, “like they had never been”.

© Lynne Walker

The Tryst
O luely, luely cam she in
And luely she lay doun:
I kent her be her caller lips
And her breists sae sma’ and roun’.

A’ thru the nicht we spak nae word
Nor sinder’d bane frae bane:
A’ thru the nicht I heard her hert
Gang soundin’ wi’ my ain.

It was about the waukrife hour
Whan cocks begin to craw
That she smool’d saftly thru the mirk
Afore the day wud daw.

Sae luely, luely, cam she in
Sae luely was she gaen
And wi’ her a’ my simmer days
Like they had never been.

William Soutar (1898-1943)

James Lowe
conductor
Paul Rissmann
presenter

There are few things more satisfying than really getting to grips with a piece of music, so that you can listen to it with greater understanding and insight. For years now, the SCO's Masterworks performances have been offering just such an opportunity to schools' audiences all around Scotland – this year, one performance is open to all. Assisted by the full Orchestra, Paul Rissmann takes James MacMillan's terrific score Tryst apart before your very ears and puts it back together in such a way that the full performance that follows is all the more enjoyable and rewarding. Tryst will also be performed as part of the Homecoming programme on 28 November.

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Concerts & Tickets

Autumn Classics

Wed 9th Sep

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Autumn Classics

Thu 10th Sep

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Autumn Classics

Fri 11th Sep

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Autumn Classics

Sat 12th Sep

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Masterworks

Mon 28th Sep

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