Concerts & Tickets
Unfinished Masterpieces
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
The Magic Flute, overture (1791)Trombones add terror to Don Giovanni, announcing through their dark, other-worldly sonorities that Mozart’s opera has reached its supernatural climax. Before it was written, only Gluck, along with Mozart himself in his richly scored Idomeneo, had fully recognised the theatrical potential of these traditionally ecclesiastical instruments. But Mozart’s use of them in these works was not his last. In 1791, just before he died, he would employ trombone tone again, first to convey the solemn Masonic side of The Magic Flute and then the death-consciousness of his unfinished Requiem.
Having been a Freemason since 1784, Mozart knew exactly what he wanted his trombones to express in The Magic Flute. Right at the start of the Overture, they symbolise in slow, sonorous chords the three knocks at the temple door which form part of Masonic ritual. It is perhaps worth mentioning however, that the short upbeats before two of the chords actually increase the quantity to five, representing, according to one authority, female Freemasonry and thus the presence of women in Mozart’s opera.
But three is the number which recurs obsessively throughout The Magic Flute. The cast-list includes Three Ladies, Three Boys, Three Priests and Three Slaves. The comical Papageno counts to three before attempting suicide. Even the key of the overture, E-flat major, has three flats as its signature. But the music reveals further Masonic connections. The slow introduction is associated with the weighty masculine pronouncements of Sarastro and his priests, while the succeeding Allegro, in spite of its strictly fugal structure, belongs more to the lighter, jollier, more humble and nimble world of Papageno and Papagena.
Halfway through the Overture, the solemn chords return. Then the fugue resumes, now sounding more agitated and harmonically unstable, but cheerfulness is retrieved before the music reaches its close and the curtain goes up on Mozart’s last sublime comedy.
© Conrad Wilson
- Schubert
Programme note
Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828)
Symphony No 8 in B minor, D759, Unfinished (1822)Allegro moderato
Andante con motoThere is no great mystery about why Schubert left his 'Unfinished' symphony unfinished. He did not lose or destroy the missing movements, but simply lost interest in completing them. Schubert abandoned many works. He was a prolific and prodigal genius, quick to turn his attention from one manuscript to another, and posterity can count itself lucky that he finished as many masterpieces as he did. Having written two movements and sketched a scherzo, he cast the work aside and never returned to it, though he lived for a further six years and composed a great deal more music.
Not necessarily more relevant (though recently at least more fascinating) is the much-disputed American musicological theory that the harmonies of the 'Unfinished' reveal Schubert to have been gay. Whether his feelings of 'alienation', as displayed in his music, were the outcome of a homosexual nature or derived from illness, depression or failure to win the acclaim he deserved remains, of course, debatable.
The harmonies of the 'Unfinished' are undoubtedly among its most notable features, along with the choice of B minor as key. Symphonies, in Schubert’s time, were seldom written in B minor, though Tchaikovsky was later to compose his 'Pathetique' in that key. But since Schubert considered B minor (and its B major counterpart) to possess a peculiar, and perhaps private, emotional intensity – he chose it also for some of his most despairing songs – then clearly his personal identification with it was strong enough to persuade him to override symphonic tradition.
Its special colouring, at any rate, casts its shadow immediately over the sepulchral theme on the cellos and basses with which it begins, and over the rustling violins and wailing woodwind that sustain the mood. Not until the sudden arrival of the famously 'consoling' G major second subject is there any hint of respite, but a sort of heroic despondency soon returns, and is extended, much more violently, into the movement's central development section, where rasping trombones, pounding kettledrums and shuddering tremoli add a demonic element to the claustrophobic gloom.
The E major Andante is the first movement’s obverse, transforming the symphony’s two completed movements into an unintentional but perfectly balanced entity. The similarity of pace and pulse makes the second movement, indeed, seem like an extension of the first. Whether it is really possible to find what is often described as “calm serenity” in this movement, or simply a different sort of Schubertian desolation, is the type of question this darkly Viennese, pre-Mahler symphony increasingly raises. The soft ending brings us safely back to the movement's opening key of E major – or so it seems – but the closing notes are surely as ambiguous as anything else in this beautiful, mysterious music.
© Conrad Wilson
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Mass in C minor, K427 (1783)
For some listeners, Mozart’s unfinished Mass in C minor is the only significant choral work composed between Bach’s B minor Mass and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. To be so categorical about it, however, is to ignore not only Mozart’s similarly unfinished Requiem but also Haydn’s Creation and the sublime stream of masses he produced in the aftermath of his London symphonies. The reputation of Mozart’s K427, often referred to as the Great Mass, is nevertheless understandable. It is a work of conspicuous power and beauty, in which choruses – some dark-toned and solemn, others forthright and vigorous – mingle with sumptuous solo arias and ensembles of ornate, operatic radiance. Its Bachian grandeur of scale, even as a torso lasting less than an hour, speaks for itself.
Written in gratitude not so much to God as to his young wife Constanze after the birth of their first child, the C minor Mass occupies a very personal place in Mozart’s output. Tradition has it that the first performance took place in the lovely Peterskirche in his native Salzburg a year after his marriage, with Constanze herself as first soprano soloist. By that time (1783) he was resident in Vienna, and the trip to his old home was a difficult one. His father and sister, meeting Constanze for the first time, failed to appreciate her. Baby Raimund, left behind in Vienna, died in their absence. Only the Mass, or the portions of it ready for performance, was a success.
In a filmed study of the composer, the Mozart authority Robbins Landon once memorably evoked the music’s biographical background. While the camera depicted the countryside through which the Mozarts journeyed, the trudging opening of the Kyrie suddenly stole into the soundtrack, its gloomy progress intensified by chorus, baleful wind tone and pounding drums. From these sombre strains, the soprano prayer emerged like a ray of hope. Though the musical effect of this passage has often been described as inappropriately operatic, it must have seemed wholly appropriate to Mozart, whose church music is often profoundly theatrical.
Thereafter the Gloria opens with a swing, its shouts of joy shot through with Handelian hallelujahs (Mozart’s arrangement of Messiah followed six years later). The Laudamus Te is a charming, ornate soprano aria, the Domine Deus a soprano duet, the Quoniam a trio for two sopranos and tenor, and the Et Incarnatus Est an exquisitely lilting, intricate, taxing ensemble for soprano, flute, oboe, and bassoon. But though the sound of opera may seem to be everywhere, the choral interjections are another matter, as the strangely disturbing Gratias and the great minor-key sweep of the Qui Tollis, with its inspired shift to the major at the end, amply confirm.Why, as a composer who completed many Masses, did Mozart leave his C minor masterpiece without an Agnus Dei, to name one glaring omission? In the case of the valedictory Requiem, at least, we know the answer. But until someone (the indefatigable Sir Charles Mackerras perhaps?) discovers the truth, all we can say of the Great Mass is that something happened at the time of writing it which stopped the music in its tracks.
© Conrad Wilson
KYRIE
Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
GLORIA
Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te.
Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.
Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens, Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe, Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris.
Qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis, suscipe deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis.
Quoniam tu solus Dominus, quoniam tu solus Sanctus, tu solus Altissimus.
Jesu Christe, Cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris, Amen.
CREDO
Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omni-potentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. Et in unum Dominum, Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula.
Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum non factum, con substantialem Patri, per quem omnia facta sunt, qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis.
Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine et homo factus est.
SANCTUS
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua. Osanna in excelsis.
BENEDICTUS
Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domini. Osanna in excelsis.
KYRIE
Lord have mercy upon us.
Christ have mercy upon us.
Lord have mercy upon us.
GLORIA
Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.
We praise Thee, we bless Thee,
we worship Thee, we glorify Thee.
We give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory.
O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty, O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father.
Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us.
For Thou only art the Lord,
Thou only art holy,
Thou only art most high.
Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost, in the Glory of the Father, Amen.
CREDO
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds.
God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven.
And was made incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man.
SANCTUS
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest.
BENEDICTUS
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
- conductor
- Zerlina
- soprano
- tenor
- bass
- -
There is something deeply fascinating about unfinished works, especially those as great as this mass and this symphony. Louis Langrée directs the SCO in a sublime programme with top-notch soloists – guaranteed to be a memorable evening.
Unfinished Masterpieces
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
The Magic Flute, overture (1791)Trombones add terror to Don Giovanni, announcing through their dark, other-worldly sonorities that Mozart’s opera has reached its supernatural climax. Before it was written, only Gluck, along with Mozart himself in his richly scored Idomeneo, had fully recognised the theatrical potential of these traditionally ecclesiastical instruments. But Mozart’s use of them in these works was not his last. In 1791, just before he died, he would employ trombone tone again, first to convey the solemn Masonic side of The Magic Flute and then the death-consciousness of his unfinished Requiem.
Having been a Freemason since 1784, Mozart knew exactly what he wanted his trombones to express in The Magic Flute. Right at the start of the Overture, they symbolise in slow, sonorous chords the three knocks at the temple door which form part of Masonic ritual. It is perhaps worth mentioning however, that the short upbeats before two of the chords actually increase the quantity to five, representing, according to one authority, female Freemasonry and thus the presence of women in Mozart’s opera.
But three is the number which recurs obsessively throughout The Magic Flute. The cast-list includes Three Ladies, Three Boys, Three Priests and Three Slaves. The comical Papageno counts to three before attempting suicide. Even the key of the overture, E-flat major, has three flats as its signature. But the music reveals further Masonic connections. The slow introduction is associated with the weighty masculine pronouncements of Sarastro and his priests, while the succeeding Allegro, in spite of its strictly fugal structure, belongs more to the lighter, jollier, more humble and nimble world of Papageno and Papagena.
Halfway through the Overture, the solemn chords return. Then the fugue resumes, now sounding more agitated and harmonically unstable, but cheerfulness is retrieved before the music reaches its close and the curtain goes up on Mozart’s last sublime comedy.
© Conrad Wilson
- Schubert
Programme note
Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828)
Symphony No 8 in B minor, D759, Unfinished (1822)Allegro moderato
Andante con motoThere is no great mystery about why Schubert left his 'Unfinished' symphony unfinished. He did not lose or destroy the missing movements, but simply lost interest in completing them. Schubert abandoned many works. He was a prolific and prodigal genius, quick to turn his attention from one manuscript to another, and posterity can count itself lucky that he finished as many masterpieces as he did. Having written two movements and sketched a scherzo, he cast the work aside and never returned to it, though he lived for a further six years and composed a great deal more music.
Not necessarily more relevant (though recently at least more fascinating) is the much-disputed American musicological theory that the harmonies of the 'Unfinished' reveal Schubert to have been gay. Whether his feelings of 'alienation', as displayed in his music, were the outcome of a homosexual nature or derived from illness, depression or failure to win the acclaim he deserved remains, of course, debatable.
The harmonies of the 'Unfinished' are undoubtedly among its most notable features, along with the choice of B minor as key. Symphonies, in Schubert’s time, were seldom written in B minor, though Tchaikovsky was later to compose his 'Pathetique' in that key. But since Schubert considered B minor (and its B major counterpart) to possess a peculiar, and perhaps private, emotional intensity – he chose it also for some of his most despairing songs – then clearly his personal identification with it was strong enough to persuade him to override symphonic tradition.
Its special colouring, at any rate, casts its shadow immediately over the sepulchral theme on the cellos and basses with which it begins, and over the rustling violins and wailing woodwind that sustain the mood. Not until the sudden arrival of the famously 'consoling' G major second subject is there any hint of respite, but a sort of heroic despondency soon returns, and is extended, much more violently, into the movement's central development section, where rasping trombones, pounding kettledrums and shuddering tremoli add a demonic element to the claustrophobic gloom.
The E major Andante is the first movement’s obverse, transforming the symphony’s two completed movements into an unintentional but perfectly balanced entity. The similarity of pace and pulse makes the second movement, indeed, seem like an extension of the first. Whether it is really possible to find what is often described as “calm serenity” in this movement, or simply a different sort of Schubertian desolation, is the type of question this darkly Viennese, pre-Mahler symphony increasingly raises. The soft ending brings us safely back to the movement's opening key of E major – or so it seems – but the closing notes are surely as ambiguous as anything else in this beautiful, mysterious music.
© Conrad Wilson
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Mass in C minor, K427 (1783)
For some listeners, Mozart’s unfinished Mass in C minor is the only significant choral work composed between Bach’s B minor Mass and Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. To be so categorical about it, however, is to ignore not only Mozart’s similarly unfinished Requiem but also Haydn’s Creation and the sublime stream of masses he produced in the aftermath of his London symphonies. The reputation of Mozart’s K427, often referred to as the Great Mass, is nevertheless understandable. It is a work of conspicuous power and beauty, in which choruses – some dark-toned and solemn, others forthright and vigorous – mingle with sumptuous solo arias and ensembles of ornate, operatic radiance. Its Bachian grandeur of scale, even as a torso lasting less than an hour, speaks for itself.
Written in gratitude not so much to God as to his young wife Constanze after the birth of their first child, the C minor Mass occupies a very personal place in Mozart’s output. Tradition has it that the first performance took place in the lovely Peterskirche in his native Salzburg a year after his marriage, with Constanze herself as first soprano soloist. By that time (1783) he was resident in Vienna, and the trip to his old home was a difficult one. His father and sister, meeting Constanze for the first time, failed to appreciate her. Baby Raimund, left behind in Vienna, died in their absence. Only the Mass, or the portions of it ready for performance, was a success.
In a filmed study of the composer, the Mozart authority Robbins Landon once memorably evoked the music’s biographical background. While the camera depicted the countryside through which the Mozarts journeyed, the trudging opening of the Kyrie suddenly stole into the soundtrack, its gloomy progress intensified by chorus, baleful wind tone and pounding drums. From these sombre strains, the soprano prayer emerged like a ray of hope. Though the musical effect of this passage has often been described as inappropriately operatic, it must have seemed wholly appropriate to Mozart, whose church music is often profoundly theatrical.
Thereafter the Gloria opens with a swing, its shouts of joy shot through with Handelian hallelujahs (Mozart’s arrangement of Messiah followed six years later). The Laudamus Te is a charming, ornate soprano aria, the Domine Deus a soprano duet, the Quoniam a trio for two sopranos and tenor, and the Et Incarnatus Est an exquisitely lilting, intricate, taxing ensemble for soprano, flute, oboe, and bassoon. But though the sound of opera may seem to be everywhere, the choral interjections are another matter, as the strangely disturbing Gratias and the great minor-key sweep of the Qui Tollis, with its inspired shift to the major at the end, amply confirm.Why, as a composer who completed many Masses, did Mozart leave his C minor masterpiece without an Agnus Dei, to name one glaring omission? In the case of the valedictory Requiem, at least, we know the answer. But until someone (the indefatigable Sir Charles Mackerras perhaps?) discovers the truth, all we can say of the Great Mass is that something happened at the time of writing it which stopped the music in its tracks.
© Conrad Wilson
KYRIE
Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
GLORIA
Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
Laudamus te, benedicimus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te.
Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam gloriam tuam.
Domine Deus, Rex caelestis, Deus Pater omnipotens, Domine Fili unigenite, Jesu Christe, Domine Deus, Agnus Dei, Filius Patris.
Qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis, suscipe deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis.
Quoniam tu solus Dominus, quoniam tu solus Sanctus, tu solus Altissimus.
Jesu Christe, Cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris, Amen.
CREDO
Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omni-potentem, factorem caeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. Et in unum Dominum, Jesum Christum, Filium Dei unigenitum, et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula.
Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine, Deum verum de Deo vero, genitum non factum, con substantialem Patri, per quem omnia facta sunt, qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de caelis.
Et incarnatus est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine et homo factus est.
SANCTUS
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua. Osanna in excelsis.
BENEDICTUS
Benedictus, qui venit in nomine Domini. Osanna in excelsis.
KYRIE
Lord have mercy upon us.
Christ have mercy upon us.
Lord have mercy upon us.
GLORIA
Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.
We praise Thee, we bless Thee,
we worship Thee, we glorify Thee.
We give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory.
O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty, O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father.
Thou that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us.
For Thou only art the Lord,
Thou only art holy,
Thou only art most high.
Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost, in the Glory of the Father, Amen.
CREDO
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds.
God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven.
And was made incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man.
SANCTUS
Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest.
BENEDICTUS
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
- conductor
- Zerlina
- soprano
- tenor
- bass
- -
There is something deeply fascinating about unfinished works, especially those as great as this mass and this symphony. Louis Langrée directs the SCO in a sublime programme with top-notch soloists – guaranteed to be a memorable evening.
Beethoven Five
- Borodin
Programme note
Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880)When is an amateur not an amateur? It is a tough question to answer with respect to Borodin. ‘By day’ he was an internationally respected chemist specializing in valerian aldehydes. ‘By night’ he became one of the most well-known of the St. Petersburg School of Russian nationalist composers from the latter half of the nineteenth century. In the end, Borodin’s status as an amateur (or not) is beside the point – he wrote great music which has endured. In the Steppes of Central Asia was written in 1880 as one of twelve pieces commissioned from various Russian composers to accompany a series of tableaux vivants illustrating events in the first quarter century of the reign of Tsar Alexander II.
Borodin described In the Steppes as: “In the silence of the steppes of Central Asia is heard the refrain of a peaceful Russian song. One also hears the melancholy sound of oriental song, and with it the steps of approaching horses and camels. A caravan, escorted by Russian soldiers, traverses the immense desert, and continues its long journey, trusting confidently in the protection of the Russian soldiery. The caravan steadily advances. The song of the Russians and that of the natives mingle in one and the same harmony. The refrains are heard for a long time in the desert, and at last are lost in the distance.”
In the Steppes of Central Asia is a tone-poem. There are two main themes – one Russian sounding (introduced by the clarinet, and then the horn), the other more oriental (sung by the cor anglais), all over a glittering high E in octaves from the violins (initially just two players, but eventually embracing the entire first violin section). These themes are echt-Borodin, though ‘appearing’ to be true folksongs. The themes are cleverly conceived, as Borodin hints in his note, to create interesting contrapuntal possibilities when combined. In the Steppes is in arch form, emerging quietly from nowhere and, with time (just listen to the camels padding persistently across the landscape in the pizzicato off-beat lower strings), disappearing quietly over the horizon.
The essence of the score is not about thematic development – there is none – but about orchestral colour and atmosphere; it is an evocation of an exotic, distant place. The magician Borodin succeeds brilliantly – as if, like the great English painter, Turner, who was ever-ready with his sketch book, he had ‘buzzed’ the caravan on his flying carpet and had made notes as the sun cast and eliminated shadows on the travellers below. At high noon, the Russian theme is thundered out by the full orchestra, the only tutti in the entire work.
Valerian aldehydes must be potent stirrers of the imagination!
© David Gardner - Sibelius
Programme note
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Violin Concerto (1903)
Allegro Moderato
Adagio di molto
Allegro, ma non tanto
How many pieces did Sibelius write for solo violin? One, many would think. The better-informed might put it at around ten. In fact the total is over sixty! Salon miniatures at first (up to about 1894) then, from 1914, a glorious ‘late’ flowering of miniature masterpieces for violin and orchestra. Bang in the middle between those two periods, lies this concerto. Written between 1902-1905, it is a great peak of a piece; moreover, it is his only concerto. Might all this go some way to explaining its unusual combination of caution and mastery?
In its general shape and character, Sibelius modeled his concerto after the 19th century masters. Its three movements, each shorter than the one before, fall in a familiar pattern. The Allegro Moderato offers the most thoroughgoing musical argument while the Allegro ma non tanto closes the piece with a dance and flourish. Between those extremes lies the spiritual and lyrical heart of the piece, the Adagio. Change the movement titles and that description could apply equally well to Brahms’s or Beethoven’s violin concertos. But while Sibelius is content to follow his musical ancestors thus far, he shows a highly personal mastery of all other aspects of the concerto. His affinity with the violin is no surprise - after all he had played it from an early age. Even so, the dialogue between solo and orchestra is handled with rare and idiosyncratic skill. His concerto also shares those marvelous qualities of just proportion and deep musical thought with the great orchestral works that had already made his name: his first three symphonies, Kullervo, En Saga, the Lemminkaïnen Legends.
The truth is that those qualities were hard won. Sibelius did not strike gold first time, but withdrew his first version of the concerto immediately after its premiere in 1903. He declared that it needed two years of revision. He put it away for the first year, then subjected it to a radical re-write, editing out around 10% of its original material. Having streamlined it, and toned down the showiness of the solo part (deleting one whole cadenza) he revealed the piece anew to an expectant musical world. In the audience was the man who had inspired Brahms’s concerto: Joseph Joachim. His verdict was damning – and shared by others: ‘boring.’ This time, however, Sibelius himself had no doubts. He knew that he had expressed exactly what he wanted in the Concerto and he stood by it. It took some time, decades in fact, but slowly the rest of the world came to share his high opinion of it.
© Svend Brown - Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 5 in C minor, Op 67 (1808)Allegro con brio
Andante con moto
Allegro
Allegro
"Three G's and an E flat. Simple. Baby simple. Anybody could do it. Maybe." Leonard Bernstein's laconic comment on the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony spotlit the astounding effect in this work of a motif the composer had already employed, to quite different effect, in his third and fourth piano concertos. Beethoven's own comment, as quoted by his unreliable friend Schindler, was that in the Fifth Symphony the notes represented Fate rapping at the door. The description went down in history, though it prompted the Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker to ask whether the same motif in the fourth piano concerto therefore represented Fate rapping at a different door or whether someone else was doing the rapping. In fact the motif was a regular Beethoven fingerprint during a certain period in his career, though he never used it to more potent effect than in the Fifth Symphony, where it pervades the opening movement and returns in both the scherzo and finale. It is a motif which, in any case, had already been employed by Cherubini in his Hymne du Pantheon, as Beethoven surely knew.The thematic unity of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony is nevertheless one of its strongest features, transcending not only Cherubini's but Beethoven's own previous use of it. Hurled at us at start of the work, it makes its point unequivocally and goes on making it. Not even the plaintive little oboe cadenza which quietly intrudes at the height of the action can impede its progress for long. But whether, as has often been claimed, the music's inexorably marching motion represents Austria expelling the French is hard to say. Certainly, though some listeners are unwilling to see it that way, this is a profoundly militaristic work, and the brassy fanfares in the slow movement, the screeching piccolo and braying trombones in the finale, are in themselves enough to demonstrate this. Not for nothing did a member of the Napoleonic guard, on hearing it for the first time, feel impelled to spring to his feet at the start of the finale crying: "C'est l'empereur." Though that would suggest he had got the wrong end of the stick, it was for the right reasons. The music is ceremonial, victorious, exultant, even brutal in a way that the composer did not always feel to be necessary.
Beethoven, who had once contemplated settling in Paris rather than Vienna, held famously self-conflicting views on Napoleon, as well as possessing a considerable admiration for French music. It was Berlioz, a Frenchman, who said that Beethoven's ability to sustain such a height of effect in this work was prodigious. Yet it took a long time - four years, from 1804 until 1808 - for him to shape the work to his satisfaction. The slow movement, originally conceived as a sort of lumbering minuet, eventually became a theme and variations through whose notes a hint of minuet motion remained discernible. The scherzo, originally an extended movement on the lines of those of the fourth and seventh symphonies, eventually grew shorter. The finale, linked to the scherzo by ghostly drum taps and stealthy strings, announces itself with the most famous burst of C major in musical history, but later refers back to the ghostly passage already heard.
Yet the work as a whole is not purely about progress from the darkness of C minor to the sunshine of the major key. The four notes with which it opens - those three G's and and an E flat - are not specifically in the key of C minor at all. Nor are they played by the full orchestra, though that is the effect which their initial statement on strings and clarinets manages to convey. Beethoven's Fifth may be the most often performed of all his symphonies, but it still has the power to surprise.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- violin
SCO Conductor Emeritus and Honorary Graduate of the University of St Andrews, Joseph Swensen sweeps through more than a century of Romanticism from the triumph of Beethoven’s Fifth, to Borodin’s epic and exotic landscape and Sibelius’ arresting concerto.
Related audio clip
Beethoven Symphony No 5 in C minor Op 67: Allegro con brio
The Orchestra performed Beethoven's Symphonies Nos 1-8 at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival, under Sir Charles Mackerras. The performances were recorded by Hyperion and released as a 5-disc CD box set. The Philarmonia Orchestra perform Symphony No 9.
Beethoven Five
- Borodin
Programme note
Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880)When is an amateur not an amateur? It is a tough question to answer with respect to Borodin. ‘By day’ he was an internationally respected chemist specializing in valerian aldehydes. ‘By night’ he became one of the most well-known of the St. Petersburg School of Russian nationalist composers from the latter half of the nineteenth century. In the end, Borodin’s status as an amateur (or not) is beside the point – he wrote great music which has endured. In the Steppes of Central Asia was written in 1880 as one of twelve pieces commissioned from various Russian composers to accompany a series of tableaux vivants illustrating events in the first quarter century of the reign of Tsar Alexander II.
Borodin described In the Steppes as: “In the silence of the steppes of Central Asia is heard the refrain of a peaceful Russian song. One also hears the melancholy sound of oriental song, and with it the steps of approaching horses and camels. A caravan, escorted by Russian soldiers, traverses the immense desert, and continues its long journey, trusting confidently in the protection of the Russian soldiery. The caravan steadily advances. The song of the Russians and that of the natives mingle in one and the same harmony. The refrains are heard for a long time in the desert, and at last are lost in the distance.”
In the Steppes of Central Asia is a tone-poem. There are two main themes – one Russian sounding (introduced by the clarinet, and then the horn), the other more oriental (sung by the cor anglais), all over a glittering high E in octaves from the violins (initially just two players, but eventually embracing the entire first violin section). These themes are echt-Borodin, though ‘appearing’ to be true folksongs. The themes are cleverly conceived, as Borodin hints in his note, to create interesting contrapuntal possibilities when combined. In the Steppes is in arch form, emerging quietly from nowhere and, with time (just listen to the camels padding persistently across the landscape in the pizzicato off-beat lower strings), disappearing quietly over the horizon.
The essence of the score is not about thematic development – there is none – but about orchestral colour and atmosphere; it is an evocation of an exotic, distant place. The magician Borodin succeeds brilliantly – as if, like the great English painter, Turner, who was ever-ready with his sketch book, he had ‘buzzed’ the caravan on his flying carpet and had made notes as the sun cast and eliminated shadows on the travellers below. At high noon, the Russian theme is thundered out by the full orchestra, the only tutti in the entire work.
Valerian aldehydes must be potent stirrers of the imagination!
© David Gardner - Sibelius
Programme note
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Violin Concerto (1903)
Allegro Moderato
Adagio di molto
Allegro, ma non tanto
How many pieces did Sibelius write for solo violin? One, many would think. The better-informed might put it at around ten. In fact the total is over sixty! Salon miniatures at first (up to about 1894) then, from 1914, a glorious ‘late’ flowering of miniature masterpieces for violin and orchestra. Bang in the middle between those two periods, lies this concerto. Written between 1902-1905, it is a great peak of a piece; moreover, it is his only concerto. Might all this go some way to explaining its unusual combination of caution and mastery?
In its general shape and character, Sibelius modeled his concerto after the 19th century masters. Its three movements, each shorter than the one before, fall in a familiar pattern. The Allegro Moderato offers the most thoroughgoing musical argument while the Allegro ma non tanto closes the piece with a dance and flourish. Between those extremes lies the spiritual and lyrical heart of the piece, the Adagio. Change the movement titles and that description could apply equally well to Brahms’s or Beethoven’s violin concertos. But while Sibelius is content to follow his musical ancestors thus far, he shows a highly personal mastery of all other aspects of the concerto. His affinity with the violin is no surprise - after all he had played it from an early age. Even so, the dialogue between solo and orchestra is handled with rare and idiosyncratic skill. His concerto also shares those marvelous qualities of just proportion and deep musical thought with the great orchestral works that had already made his name: his first three symphonies, Kullervo, En Saga, the Lemminkaïnen Legends.
The truth is that those qualities were hard won. Sibelius did not strike gold first time, but withdrew his first version of the concerto immediately after its premiere in 1903. He declared that it needed two years of revision. He put it away for the first year, then subjected it to a radical re-write, editing out around 10% of its original material. Having streamlined it, and toned down the showiness of the solo part (deleting one whole cadenza) he revealed the piece anew to an expectant musical world. In the audience was the man who had inspired Brahms’s concerto: Joseph Joachim. His verdict was damning – and shared by others: ‘boring.’ This time, however, Sibelius himself had no doubts. He knew that he had expressed exactly what he wanted in the Concerto and he stood by it. It took some time, decades in fact, but slowly the rest of the world came to share his high opinion of it.
© Svend Brown - Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 5 in C minor, Op 67 (1808)Allegro con brio
Andante con moto
Allegro
Allegro
"Three G's and an E flat. Simple. Baby simple. Anybody could do it. Maybe." Leonard Bernstein's laconic comment on the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony spotlit the astounding effect in this work of a motif the composer had already employed, to quite different effect, in his third and fourth piano concertos. Beethoven's own comment, as quoted by his unreliable friend Schindler, was that in the Fifth Symphony the notes represented Fate rapping at the door. The description went down in history, though it prompted the Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker to ask whether the same motif in the fourth piano concerto therefore represented Fate rapping at a different door or whether someone else was doing the rapping. In fact the motif was a regular Beethoven fingerprint during a certain period in his career, though he never used it to more potent effect than in the Fifth Symphony, where it pervades the opening movement and returns in both the scherzo and finale. It is a motif which, in any case, had already been employed by Cherubini in his Hymne du Pantheon, as Beethoven surely knew.The thematic unity of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony is nevertheless one of its strongest features, transcending not only Cherubini's but Beethoven's own previous use of it. Hurled at us at start of the work, it makes its point unequivocally and goes on making it. Not even the plaintive little oboe cadenza which quietly intrudes at the height of the action can impede its progress for long. But whether, as has often been claimed, the music's inexorably marching motion represents Austria expelling the French is hard to say. Certainly, though some listeners are unwilling to see it that way, this is a profoundly militaristic work, and the brassy fanfares in the slow movement, the screeching piccolo and braying trombones in the finale, are in themselves enough to demonstrate this. Not for nothing did a member of the Napoleonic guard, on hearing it for the first time, feel impelled to spring to his feet at the start of the finale crying: "C'est l'empereur." Though that would suggest he had got the wrong end of the stick, it was for the right reasons. The music is ceremonial, victorious, exultant, even brutal in a way that the composer did not always feel to be necessary.
Beethoven, who had once contemplated settling in Paris rather than Vienna, held famously self-conflicting views on Napoleon, as well as possessing a considerable admiration for French music. It was Berlioz, a Frenchman, who said that Beethoven's ability to sustain such a height of effect in this work was prodigious. Yet it took a long time - four years, from 1804 until 1808 - for him to shape the work to his satisfaction. The slow movement, originally conceived as a sort of lumbering minuet, eventually became a theme and variations through whose notes a hint of minuet motion remained discernible. The scherzo, originally an extended movement on the lines of those of the fourth and seventh symphonies, eventually grew shorter. The finale, linked to the scherzo by ghostly drum taps and stealthy strings, announces itself with the most famous burst of C major in musical history, but later refers back to the ghostly passage already heard.
Yet the work as a whole is not purely about progress from the darkness of C minor to the sunshine of the major key. The four notes with which it opens - those three G's and and an E flat - are not specifically in the key of C minor at all. Nor are they played by the full orchestra, though that is the effect which their initial statement on strings and clarinets manages to convey. Beethoven's Fifth may be the most often performed of all his symphonies, but it still has the power to surprise.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- violin
Conductor Emeritus Joseph Swensen sweeps through more than a century of Romanticism in this concert – from the triumph of Beethoven’s Fifth, to Borodin’s epic and exotic landscape and Sibelius’ arresting concerto.
Related audio clip
Beethoven Symphony No 5 in C minor Op 67: Allegro con brio
The Orchestra performed Beethoven's Symphonies Nos 1-8 at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival, under Sir Charles Mackerras. The performances were recorded by Hyperion and released as a 5-disc CD box set. The Philarmonia Orchestra perform Symphony No 9.
Beethoven Five
- Borodin
Programme note
Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880)When is an amateur not an amateur? It is a tough question to answer with respect to Borodin. ‘By day’ he was an internationally respected chemist specializing in valerian aldehydes. ‘By night’ he became one of the most well-known of the St. Petersburg School of Russian nationalist composers from the latter half of the nineteenth century. In the end, Borodin’s status as an amateur (or not) is beside the point – he wrote great music which has endured. In the Steppes of Central Asia was written in 1880 as one of twelve pieces commissioned from various Russian composers to accompany a series of tableaux vivants illustrating events in the first quarter century of the reign of Tsar Alexander II.
Borodin described In the Steppes as: “In the silence of the steppes of Central Asia is heard the refrain of a peaceful Russian song. One also hears the melancholy sound of oriental song, and with it the steps of approaching horses and camels. A caravan, escorted by Russian soldiers, traverses the immense desert, and continues its long journey, trusting confidently in the protection of the Russian soldiery. The caravan steadily advances. The song of the Russians and that of the natives mingle in one and the same harmony. The refrains are heard for a long time in the desert, and at last are lost in the distance.”
In the Steppes of Central Asia is a tone-poem. There are two main themes – one Russian sounding (introduced by the clarinet, and then the horn), the other more oriental (sung by the cor anglais), all over a glittering high E in octaves from the violins (initially just two players, but eventually embracing the entire first violin section). These themes are echt-Borodin, though ‘appearing’ to be true folksongs. The themes are cleverly conceived, as Borodin hints in his note, to create interesting contrapuntal possibilities when combined. In the Steppes is in arch form, emerging quietly from nowhere and, with time (just listen to the camels padding persistently across the landscape in the pizzicato off-beat lower strings), disappearing quietly over the horizon.
The essence of the score is not about thematic development – there is none – but about orchestral colour and atmosphere; it is an evocation of an exotic, distant place. The magician Borodin succeeds brilliantly – as if, like the great English painter, Turner, who was ever-ready with his sketch book, he had ‘buzzed’ the caravan on his flying carpet and had made notes as the sun cast and eliminated shadows on the travellers below. At high noon, the Russian theme is thundered out by the full orchestra, the only tutti in the entire work.
Valerian aldehydes must be potent stirrers of the imagination!
© David Gardner - Sibelius
Programme note
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Violin Concerto (1903)
Allegro Moderato
Adagio di molto
Allegro, ma non tanto
How many pieces did Sibelius write for solo violin? One, many would think. The better-informed might put it at around ten. In fact the total is over sixty! Salon miniatures at first (up to about 1894) then, from 1914, a glorious ‘late’ flowering of miniature masterpieces for violin and orchestra. Bang in the middle between those two periods, lies this concerto. Written between 1902-1905, it is a great peak of a piece; moreover, it is his only concerto. Might all this go some way to explaining its unusual combination of caution and mastery?
In its general shape and character, Sibelius modeled his concerto after the 19th century masters. Its three movements, each shorter than the one before, fall in a familiar pattern. The Allegro Moderato offers the most thoroughgoing musical argument while the Allegro ma non tanto closes the piece with a dance and flourish. Between those extremes lies the spiritual and lyrical heart of the piece, the Adagio. Change the movement titles and that description could apply equally well to Brahms’s or Beethoven’s violin concertos. But while Sibelius is content to follow his musical ancestors thus far, he shows a highly personal mastery of all other aspects of the concerto. His affinity with the violin is no surprise - after all he had played it from an early age. Even so, the dialogue between solo and orchestra is handled with rare and idiosyncratic skill. His concerto also shares those marvelous qualities of just proportion and deep musical thought with the great orchestral works that had already made his name: his first three symphonies, Kullervo, En Saga, the Lemminkaïnen Legends.
The truth is that those qualities were hard won. Sibelius did not strike gold first time, but withdrew his first version of the concerto immediately after its premiere in 1903. He declared that it needed two years of revision. He put it away for the first year, then subjected it to a radical re-write, editing out around 10% of its original material. Having streamlined it, and toned down the showiness of the solo part (deleting one whole cadenza) he revealed the piece anew to an expectant musical world. In the audience was the man who had inspired Brahms’s concerto: Joseph Joachim. His verdict was damning – and shared by others: ‘boring.’ This time, however, Sibelius himself had no doubts. He knew that he had expressed exactly what he wanted in the Concerto and he stood by it. It took some time, decades in fact, but slowly the rest of the world came to share his high opinion of it.
© Svend Brown - Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 5 in C minor, Op 67 (1808)Allegro con brio
Andante con moto
Allegro
Allegro
"Three G's and an E flat. Simple. Baby simple. Anybody could do it. Maybe." Leonard Bernstein's laconic comment on the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony spotlit the astounding effect in this work of a motif the composer had already employed, to quite different effect, in his third and fourth piano concertos. Beethoven's own comment, as quoted by his unreliable friend Schindler, was that in the Fifth Symphony the notes represented Fate rapping at the door. The description went down in history, though it prompted the Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker to ask whether the same motif in the fourth piano concerto therefore represented Fate rapping at a different door or whether someone else was doing the rapping. In fact the motif was a regular Beethoven fingerprint during a certain period in his career, though he never used it to more potent effect than in the Fifth Symphony, where it pervades the opening movement and returns in both the scherzo and finale. It is a motif which, in any case, had already been employed by Cherubini in his Hymne du Pantheon, as Beethoven surely knew.The thematic unity of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony is nevertheless one of its strongest features, transcending not only Cherubini's but Beethoven's own previous use of it. Hurled at us at start of the work, it makes its point unequivocally and goes on making it. Not even the plaintive little oboe cadenza which quietly intrudes at the height of the action can impede its progress for long. But whether, as has often been claimed, the music's inexorably marching motion represents Austria expelling the French is hard to say. Certainly, though some listeners are unwilling to see it that way, this is a profoundly militaristic work, and the brassy fanfares in the slow movement, the screeching piccolo and braying trombones in the finale, are in themselves enough to demonstrate this. Not for nothing did a member of the Napoleonic guard, on hearing it for the first time, feel impelled to spring to his feet at the start of the finale crying: "C'est l'empereur." Though that would suggest he had got the wrong end of the stick, it was for the right reasons. The music is ceremonial, victorious, exultant, even brutal in a way that the composer did not always feel to be necessary.
Beethoven, who had once contemplated settling in Paris rather than Vienna, held famously self-conflicting views on Napoleon, as well as possessing a considerable admiration for French music. It was Berlioz, a Frenchman, who said that Beethoven's ability to sustain such a height of effect in this work was prodigious. Yet it took a long time - four years, from 1804 until 1808 - for him to shape the work to his satisfaction. The slow movement, originally conceived as a sort of lumbering minuet, eventually became a theme and variations through whose notes a hint of minuet motion remained discernible. The scherzo, originally an extended movement on the lines of those of the fourth and seventh symphonies, eventually grew shorter. The finale, linked to the scherzo by ghostly drum taps and stealthy strings, announces itself with the most famous burst of C major in musical history, but later refers back to the ghostly passage already heard.
Yet the work as a whole is not purely about progress from the darkness of C minor to the sunshine of the major key. The four notes with which it opens - those three G's and and an E flat - are not specifically in the key of C minor at all. Nor are they played by the full orchestra, though that is the effect which their initial statement on strings and clarinets manages to convey. Beethoven's Fifth may be the most often performed of all his symphonies, but it still has the power to surprise.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- violin
There is a thread running throughout the 2009/10 season: The Age of Romanticism, from its seed (Mozart and Haydn) to its late flowering (Janáček, Sibelius and Strauss among others). Swensen sweeps through more than a century from the triumph of Beethoven’s Fifth, to Borodin’s epic and exotic landscape and Sibelius’ arresting concerto.
Related audio clip
Beethoven Symphony No 5 in C minor Op 67: Allegro con brio
The Orchestra performed Beethoven's Symphonies Nos 1-8 at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival, under Sir Charles Mackerras. The performances were recorded by Hyperion and released as a 5-disc CD box set. The Philarmonia Orchestra perform Symphony No 9.
Beethoven Five
- Borodin
Programme note
Alexander Borodin (1833-1887)
In the Steppes of Central Asia (1880)When is an amateur not an amateur? It is a tough question to answer with respect to Borodin. ‘By day’ he was an internationally respected chemist specializing in valerian aldehydes. ‘By night’ he became one of the most well-known of the St. Petersburg School of Russian nationalist composers from the latter half of the nineteenth century. In the end, Borodin’s status as an amateur (or not) is beside the point – he wrote great music which has endured. In the Steppes of Central Asia was written in 1880 as one of twelve pieces commissioned from various Russian composers to accompany a series of tableaux vivants illustrating events in the first quarter century of the reign of Tsar Alexander II.
Borodin described In the Steppes as: “In the silence of the steppes of Central Asia is heard the refrain of a peaceful Russian song. One also hears the melancholy sound of oriental song, and with it the steps of approaching horses and camels. A caravan, escorted by Russian soldiers, traverses the immense desert, and continues its long journey, trusting confidently in the protection of the Russian soldiery. The caravan steadily advances. The song of the Russians and that of the natives mingle in one and the same harmony. The refrains are heard for a long time in the desert, and at last are lost in the distance.”
In the Steppes of Central Asia is a tone-poem. There are two main themes – one Russian sounding (introduced by the clarinet, and then the horn), the other more oriental (sung by the cor anglais), all over a glittering high E in octaves from the violins (initially just two players, but eventually embracing the entire first violin section). These themes are echt-Borodin, though ‘appearing’ to be true folksongs. The themes are cleverly conceived, as Borodin hints in his note, to create interesting contrapuntal possibilities when combined. In the Steppes is in arch form, emerging quietly from nowhere and, with time (just listen to the camels padding persistently across the landscape in the pizzicato off-beat lower strings), disappearing quietly over the horizon.
The essence of the score is not about thematic development – there is none – but about orchestral colour and atmosphere; it is an evocation of an exotic, distant place. The magician Borodin succeeds brilliantly – as if, like the great English painter, Turner, who was ever-ready with his sketch book, he had ‘buzzed’ the caravan on his flying carpet and had made notes as the sun cast and eliminated shadows on the travellers below. At high noon, the Russian theme is thundered out by the full orchestra, the only tutti in the entire work.
Valerian aldehydes must be potent stirrers of the imagination!
© David Gardner - Sibelius
Programme note
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Violin Concerto (1903)
Allegro Moderato
Adagio di molto
Allegro, ma non tanto
How many pieces did Sibelius write for solo violin? One, many would think. The better-informed might put it at around ten. In fact the total is over sixty! Salon miniatures at first (up to about 1894) then, from 1914, a glorious ‘late’ flowering of miniature masterpieces for violin and orchestra. Bang in the middle between those two periods, lies this concerto. Written between 1902-1905, it is a great peak of a piece; moreover, it is his only concerto. Might all this go some way to explaining its unusual combination of caution and mastery?
In its general shape and character, Sibelius modeled his concerto after the 19th century masters. Its three movements, each shorter than the one before, fall in a familiar pattern. The Allegro Moderato offers the most thoroughgoing musical argument while the Allegro ma non tanto closes the piece with a dance and flourish. Between those extremes lies the spiritual and lyrical heart of the piece, the Adagio. Change the movement titles and that description could apply equally well to Brahms’s or Beethoven’s violin concertos. But while Sibelius is content to follow his musical ancestors thus far, he shows a highly personal mastery of all other aspects of the concerto. His affinity with the violin is no surprise - after all he had played it from an early age. Even so, the dialogue between solo and orchestra is handled with rare and idiosyncratic skill. His concerto also shares those marvelous qualities of just proportion and deep musical thought with the great orchestral works that had already made his name: his first three symphonies, Kullervo, En Saga, the Lemminkaïnen Legends.
The truth is that those qualities were hard won. Sibelius did not strike gold first time, but withdrew his first version of the concerto immediately after its premiere in 1903. He declared that it needed two years of revision. He put it away for the first year, then subjected it to a radical re-write, editing out around 10% of its original material. Having streamlined it, and toned down the showiness of the solo part (deleting one whole cadenza) he revealed the piece anew to an expectant musical world. In the audience was the man who had inspired Brahms’s concerto: Joseph Joachim. His verdict was damning – and shared by others: ‘boring.’ This time, however, Sibelius himself had no doubts. He knew that he had expressed exactly what he wanted in the Concerto and he stood by it. It took some time, decades in fact, but slowly the rest of the world came to share his high opinion of it.
© Svend Brown - Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 5 in C minor, Op 67 (1808)Allegro con brio
Andante con moto
Allegro
Allegro
"Three G's and an E flat. Simple. Baby simple. Anybody could do it. Maybe." Leonard Bernstein's laconic comment on the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony spotlit the astounding effect in this work of a motif the composer had already employed, to quite different effect, in his third and fourth piano concertos. Beethoven's own comment, as quoted by his unreliable friend Schindler, was that in the Fifth Symphony the notes represented Fate rapping at the door. The description went down in history, though it prompted the Austrian theorist Heinrich Schenker to ask whether the same motif in the fourth piano concerto therefore represented Fate rapping at a different door or whether someone else was doing the rapping. In fact the motif was a regular Beethoven fingerprint during a certain period in his career, though he never used it to more potent effect than in the Fifth Symphony, where it pervades the opening movement and returns in both the scherzo and finale. It is a motif which, in any case, had already been employed by Cherubini in his Hymne du Pantheon, as Beethoven surely knew.The thematic unity of the first movement of the Fifth Symphony is nevertheless one of its strongest features, transcending not only Cherubini's but Beethoven's own previous use of it. Hurled at us at start of the work, it makes its point unequivocally and goes on making it. Not even the plaintive little oboe cadenza which quietly intrudes at the height of the action can impede its progress for long. But whether, as has often been claimed, the music's inexorably marching motion represents Austria expelling the French is hard to say. Certainly, though some listeners are unwilling to see it that way, this is a profoundly militaristic work, and the brassy fanfares in the slow movement, the screeching piccolo and braying trombones in the finale, are in themselves enough to demonstrate this. Not for nothing did a member of the Napoleonic guard, on hearing it for the first time, feel impelled to spring to his feet at the start of the finale crying: "C'est l'empereur." Though that would suggest he had got the wrong end of the stick, it was for the right reasons. The music is ceremonial, victorious, exultant, even brutal in a way that the composer did not always feel to be necessary.
Beethoven, who had once contemplated settling in Paris rather than Vienna, held famously self-conflicting views on Napoleon, as well as possessing a considerable admiration for French music. It was Berlioz, a Frenchman, who said that Beethoven's ability to sustain such a height of effect in this work was prodigious. Yet it took a long time - four years, from 1804 until 1808 - for him to shape the work to his satisfaction. The slow movement, originally conceived as a sort of lumbering minuet, eventually became a theme and variations through whose notes a hint of minuet motion remained discernible. The scherzo, originally an extended movement on the lines of those of the fourth and seventh symphonies, eventually grew shorter. The finale, linked to the scherzo by ghostly drum taps and stealthy strings, announces itself with the most famous burst of C major in musical history, but later refers back to the ghostly passage already heard.
Yet the work as a whole is not purely about progress from the darkness of C minor to the sunshine of the major key. The four notes with which it opens - those three G's and and an E flat - are not specifically in the key of C minor at all. Nor are they played by the full orchestra, though that is the effect which their initial statement on strings and clarinets manages to convey. Beethoven's Fifth may be the most often performed of all his symphonies, but it still has the power to surprise.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- violin
Conductor Emeritus Joseph Swensen sweeps through more than a century of Romanticism in this concert – from the triumph of Beethoven’s Fifth, to Borodin’s epic and exotic landscape and Sibelius’ arresting concerto.
Related audio clip
Beethoven Symphony No 5 in C minor Op 67: Allegro con brio
The Orchestra performed Beethoven's Symphonies Nos 1-8 at the 2006 Edinburgh International Festival, under Sir Charles Mackerras. The performances were recorded by Hyperion and released as a 5-disc CD box set. The Philarmonia Orchestra perform Symphony No 9.
German Romantics
- Spohr
Programme note
Louis Spohr (1784-1859)
Symphony No 2 Op 49 (1820)Louis (or Ludwig) Spohr, one of the giant figures of early 19th century music, has in recent years been unfairly sidelined, like his friends Ries and Mozart’s pupil Hummel, due to the stellar reputations of Beethoven and Schubert.
Born in Brunswick in 1784, Spohr spent 35 years as chief court musician in nearby Kassel. While this might suggest a humdrum, sheltered provincial life, his talents and energies ensured the very opposite was true. A man of liberal beliefs and a positively Goethean range of interests, Spohr established himself, by the age of 20, as a violin virtuoso to be ranked with Fritz Kreisler. His pupils included Ferdinand David, later leader of Mendelssohn’s Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig.
Spohr travelled widely, and was acclaimed as both violinist and conductor. He visited England six times. On his first stay he introduced, to general surprise, the use of the baton (previously, orchestral leaders gave out time from among the violins, or from the keyboard). Later composers, including Wagner, imitated and admired him, just as he himself idolised Mozart. Spohr’s violin concertos, oratorios and to some extent operas (notably Jessonda and Faust) acquired worldwide fame in the 19th century.
The Second Symphony, written quite quickly in early 1820 during that first stay in London, demonstrates his mastery of the genre. He composed eight more symphonies, incorporating programmatic elements that foreshadow Liszt; but some still view the Second as his finest. In instrumentation and texture (notice his imaginative use of the woodwind) Spohr looks forward not just to Schumann, but to Berlioz and even Tchaikovsky.
No 2 is especially appealing for its thematic freshness, beguiling charm and dancing qualities. A few slow bars introduce a theme whose rising melody (in oboes and clarinets) and in 6th span are skilfully reused as the opening movement develops. The more angular first subject, on violins, relates closely to what precedes, as if the outline were broadly the same, but the notes rearranged. This is heard again in the cellos, before a more mysterious, jagged second theme (woodwind over shivering strings) emerges, with a slight Verdi-Donizetti feel. Though chromatic, it too bears a relation to the others, lending the symphony added cohesion and unity while also maling it especially intelligible, approachable and easy on the ear for the informed listener.
These three related mottoes (or bits of them) interplay throughout the movement. There is a glorious shift into major keys halfway through, and some rather grand minor ninths, which hover over a dominant and are in fact equivalent to those initial minor sixths (in the tonic). Both here, and in later movements, also listen out for held notes in brass or timpani, that often signal some new variant coming up.
The slow movement’s two melodies, initially one in B-flat major and one midway in G minor, likewise relate to each other. The latter possibly suggested ideas to Schumann for his Rhenish Symphony. One also senses an almost Bachian serenity: like Mendelssohn, Spohr was a keen champion of Bach’s music. The scherzo’s principal theme, with its snaky intervals, gains unexpected contrasts with some unnerving brassy outbursts, inclining more towards Beethoven. Notice especially a wonderful passage for horn and then cellos later on.
The finale’s striding theme in D major has been compared to Dvorák’s Symphony No 6 in the same key. Wittily relaxed, featuring some superb touches from flute, oboe and bassoon, plus lilting horn as the breezy coda approaches, it builds through shifting keys to a notably assertive climax, before bidding us a cheekily trumpeting farewell.
© Roderic Dunnett
- Weber
Programme note
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Clarinet Concerto No 2 in E-flat (1811)Mozart had his Stadler, Brahms his Mühlfeld – and Weber his Bärmann. Stadler, Mühlfeld and Bärmann? They were the great virtuoso clarinettists of their time. Virtuosos in the broadest and greatest sense. They inspired Mozart, Brahms, and Weber to write some of their very best music for this Johnny-come-lately member of the woodwind family.
By 1810, the developments to the clarinet (now with up to 10 keys) enabled Heinrich Bärmann, as a member of the Bavarian Court Orchestra in Munich, to shine, develop his technique and artistry, and capture the imaginations of the likes of Weber. This relatively new instrument could sing with all the demonic virtuosity demanded of a great soprano in full flood during her mad scene, but could also embrace the warmth and expressiveness of the greatest love aria. The range of the instrument was astonishing. The dark, deep chalumeau register could be directly contrasted with the piercing coloratura of its upper range. And just to increase this variety, the instrument came in a number of sizes from bass (even contra-bass) clarinet, to the short, shrill E-flat clarinet. No wonder early Romantic composers like Weber sat up and paid attention.
Weber arrived at the Bavarian court in 1811 and was swiftly won over by Bärmann’s artistry and virtuosity – a fusion of the incisive style of the French with the rich full-toned sound of the German school. Weber exploited these assets by composing a Concertino. Its premiere so impressed the King that he immediately commissioned Weber to write two full-fledged clarinet concertos.
Both concertos were completed that year. Later, Weber would eschew the classical expectation of an opening movement in sonata form. Indeed in his Konzertstück for piano and orchestra (1821) he abandons the concept of separate movements altogether in favour of a work in which the different sections became part of one continuous whole. But, in 1811, and with a royal commission, Weber decided to stick to the tried and true.
The opening movement of the Second Concert in E-flat is incisive and compact within the expectations of sonata form, while giving room for the soloist to shine. Just as Mozart before him loved to juxtapose the extreme ends of an operatic voice, so Weber makes an immediate impact by juxtaposing the extreme ranges of the instrument: the clarinet’s very first two notes are three octaves apart. It is in the Adagio, however, that Weber is at his most expressive. This is an aria for clarinet equal to any in any opera. There is even recognition of this by the notation of a ‘recitative’ section near the end, where the soloist is encouraged to almost declaim, parlando. The finale is a devil-may-care Polacca- one of Weber’s favourite dance forms. It ends the concerto in a display of virtuoso fireworks that gives modern clarinettists a run for their money, let alone Herr Bärmann and his 10-keyed instrument.
It is clear that Weber responded very personally to the sound of the clarinet – it seemed to be the instrument of the orchestra that most embraced both his own dark romantic longings and his exuberant brilliance. Accordingly, Weber’s music for clarinet ranks among his very best. His fame, however, rests with his determination to change the artifice of Italian opera into something more meaningful for his German public. It was Weber’s pioneering efforts in Oberon and Der Freischütz that galvanised Wagner into his astonishing operatic activity. With that, Western music changed forever.
© David Gardner - Mendelssohn
Programme note
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op 11 (1824)
Allegro molto
Andante
Menuetto, allegro molto
Allegro con fuoco
When Mendelssohn dated the score of his Symphony No.1 in C minor, on 31 March 1824, he was just fifteen years old. In fact, the autograph score bears the number 13, as the young composer had already written a dozen string symphonies. The C minor Symphony was merely the first time he had attempted a work for full orchestra.
After initial performances in Berlin and Leipzig, Mendelssohn took his Symphony with him on his first visit to England in 1829. He began his extensive and influential European travels in London where his friends, Carl Klingemann the diplomat and writer, and the pianist Ignaz Moschels, had arranged a hectic programme, beginning with a visit to the Italian Opera at the Haymarket, a visit to Covent Garden to hear Charles Kemble in Hamlet, and a ball given by the Duke of Devonshire. English society regarded him as a distinguished foreigner and treated him accordingly. His arrival had already been announced in the musical journal Harmonium: “He is the son of a rich banker of Berlin, and, I believe, a grandson of the celebrated Jewish philosopher and elegant writer. He is one of the finest pianoforte players in Europe, and though a very young man, is supposed to be better acquainted with music than most professors of the art.” Mendelssohn made his first London appearance as a composer on 25 May 1829, conducting his C minor Symphony, at a concert given by the Philharmonic Society. For this performance, and for one or two later ones, Mendelssohn substituted an orchestral version of the Scherzo from his Octet of 1825 for the original minuet. “I also added some jolly D-trumpets”, he wrote. “It was very silly, but it sounded very nice.” The symphony was received with tremendous enthusiasm, and although he refused to encore the Andante, he was finally obliged to repeat the Scherzo. Mendelssohn thanked the Society for the excellence of their performance, and he later dedicated the Symphony to them.
For a fifteen-year-old, the C minor Symphony is an astonishing achievement - even if there are moments where there are clear traces of familiar passages from Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Weber. But for all the signs of immaturity, the overriding impression is one of considerable individuality. His was a precocious talent, and this is immediately appealing music.© Stephen Strugnell
- conductor
- clarinet
Martín dazzled audiences with Spohr’s virtuoso concerto in 2008, and Weber’s tour de force makes a fitting sequel. It was inspired by one of the finest clarinettists of his time, and Weber certainly put him through his paces. Spohr himself features here, marking the 150th anniversary of his death with one of two ‘London’ symphonies. He and Mendelssohn both premiered their pieces with the Philharmonic Society of London and both with such success that they had to stop the performance to encore several movements there and then.
German Romantics
- Spohr
Programme note
Louis Spohr (1784-1859)
Symphony No 2 Op 49 (1820)Louis (or Ludwig) Spohr, one of the giant figures of early 19th century music, has in recent years been unfairly sidelined, like his friends Ries and Mozart’s pupil Hummel, due to the stellar reputations of Beethoven and Schubert.
Born in Brunswick in 1784, Spohr spent 35 years as chief court musician in nearby Kassel. While this might suggest a humdrum, sheltered provincial life, his talents and energies ensured the very opposite was true. A man of liberal beliefs and a positively Goethean range of interests, Spohr established himself, by the age of 20, as a violin virtuoso to be ranked with Fritz Kreisler. His pupils included Ferdinand David, later leader of Mendelssohn’s Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig.
Spohr travelled widely, and was acclaimed as both violinist and conductor. He visited England six times. On his first stay he introduced, to general surprise, the use of the baton (previously, orchestral leaders gave out time from among the violins, or from the keyboard). Later composers, including Wagner, imitated and admired him, just as he himself idolised Mozart. Spohr’s violin concertos, oratorios and to some extent operas (notably Jessonda and Faust) acquired worldwide fame in the 19th century.
The Second Symphony, written quite quickly in early 1820 during that first stay in London, demonstrates his mastery of the genre. He composed eight more symphonies, incorporating programmatic elements that foreshadow Liszt; but some still view the Second as his finest. In instrumentation and texture (notice his imaginative use of the woodwind) Spohr looks forward not just to Schumann, but to Berlioz and even Tchaikovsky.
No 2 is especially appealing for its thematic freshness, beguiling charm and dancing qualities. A few slow bars introduce a theme whose rising melody (in oboes and clarinets) and in 6th span are skilfully reused as the opening movement develops. The more angular first subject, on violins, relates closely to what precedes, as if the outline were broadly the same, but the notes rearranged. This is heard again in the cellos, before a more mysterious, jagged second theme (woodwind over shivering strings) emerges, with a slight Verdi-Donizetti feel. Though chromatic, it too bears a relation to the others, lending the symphony added cohesion and unity while also maling it especially intelligible, approachable and easy on the ear for the informed listener.
These three related mottoes (or bits of them) interplay throughout the movement. There is a glorious shift into major keys halfway through, and some rather grand minor ninths, which hover over a dominant and are in fact equivalent to those initial minor sixths (in the tonic). Both here, and in later movements, also listen out for held notes in brass or timpani, that often signal some new variant coming up.
The slow movement’s two melodies, initially one in B-flat major and one midway in G minor, likewise relate to each other. The latter possibly suggested ideas to Schumann for his Rhenish Symphony. One also senses an almost Bachian serenity: like Mendelssohn, Spohr was a keen champion of Bach’s music. The scherzo’s principal theme, with its snaky intervals, gains unexpected contrasts with some unnerving brassy outbursts, inclining more towards Beethoven. Notice especially a wonderful passage for horn and then cellos later on.
The finale’s striding theme in D major has been compared to Dvorák’s Symphony No 6 in the same key. Wittily relaxed, featuring some superb touches from flute, oboe and bassoon, plus lilting horn as the breezy coda approaches, it builds through shifting keys to a notably assertive climax, before bidding us a cheekily trumpeting farewell.
© Roderic Dunnett
- Weber
Programme note
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Clarinet Concerto No 2 in E-flat (1811)Mozart had his Stadler, Brahms his Mühlfeld – and Weber his Bärmann. Stadler, Mühlfeld and Bärmann? They were the great virtuoso clarinettists of their time. Virtuosos in the broadest and greatest sense. They inspired Mozart, Brahms, and Weber to write some of their very best music for this Johnny-come-lately member of the woodwind family.
By 1810, the developments to the clarinet (now with up to 10 keys) enabled Heinrich Bärmann, as a member of the Bavarian Court Orchestra in Munich, to shine, develop his technique and artistry, and capture the imaginations of the likes of Weber. This relatively new instrument could sing with all the demonic virtuosity demanded of a great soprano in full flood during her mad scene, but could also embrace the warmth and expressiveness of the greatest love aria. The range of the instrument was astonishing. The dark, deep chalumeau register could be directly contrasted with the piercing coloratura of its upper range. And just to increase this variety, the instrument came in a number of sizes from bass (even contra-bass) clarinet, to the short, shrill E-flat clarinet. No wonder early Romantic composers like Weber sat up and paid attention.
Weber arrived at the Bavarian court in 1811 and was swiftly won over by Bärmann’s artistry and virtuosity – a fusion of the incisive style of the French with the rich full-toned sound of the German school. Weber exploited these assets by composing a Concertino. Its premiere so impressed the King that he immediately commissioned Weber to write two full-fledged clarinet concertos.
Both concertos were completed that year. Later, Weber would eschew the classical expectation of an opening movement in sonata form. Indeed in his Konzertstück for piano and orchestra (1821) he abandons the concept of separate movements altogether in favour of a work in which the different sections became part of one continuous whole. But, in 1811, and with a royal commission, Weber decided to stick to the tried and true.
The opening movement of the Second Concert in E-flat is incisive and compact within the expectations of sonata form, while giving room for the soloist to shine. Just as Mozart before him loved to juxtapose the extreme ends of an operatic voice, so Weber makes an immediate impact by juxtaposing the extreme ranges of the instrument: the clarinet’s very first two notes are three octaves apart. It is in the Adagio, however, that Weber is at his most expressive. This is an aria for clarinet equal to any in any opera. There is even recognition of this by the notation of a ‘recitative’ section near the end, where the soloist is encouraged to almost declaim, parlando. The finale is a devil-may-care Polacca- one of Weber’s favourite dance forms. It ends the concerto in a display of virtuoso fireworks that gives modern clarinettists a run for their money, let alone Herr Bärmann and his 10-keyed instrument.
It is clear that Weber responded very personally to the sound of the clarinet – it seemed to be the instrument of the orchestra that most embraced both his own dark romantic longings and his exuberant brilliance. Accordingly, Weber’s music for clarinet ranks among his very best. His fame, however, rests with his determination to change the artifice of Italian opera into something more meaningful for his German public. It was Weber’s pioneering efforts in Oberon and Der Freischütz that galvanised Wagner into his astonishing operatic activity. With that, Western music changed forever.
© David Gardner - Mendelssohn
Programme note
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op 11 (1824)
Allegro molto
Andante
Menuetto, allegro molto
Allegro con fuoco
When Mendelssohn dated the score of his Symphony No.1 in C minor, on 31 March 1824, he was just fifteen years old. In fact, the autograph score bears the number 13, as the young composer had already written a dozen string symphonies. The C minor Symphony was merely the first time he had attempted a work for full orchestra.
After initial performances in Berlin and Leipzig, Mendelssohn took his Symphony with him on his first visit to England in 1829. He began his extensive and influential European travels in London where his friends, Carl Klingemann the diplomat and writer, and the pianist Ignaz Moschels, had arranged a hectic programme, beginning with a visit to the Italian Opera at the Haymarket, a visit to Covent Garden to hear Charles Kemble in Hamlet, and a ball given by the Duke of Devonshire. English society regarded him as a distinguished foreigner and treated him accordingly. His arrival had already been announced in the musical journal Harmonium: “He is the son of a rich banker of Berlin, and, I believe, a grandson of the celebrated Jewish philosopher and elegant writer. He is one of the finest pianoforte players in Europe, and though a very young man, is supposed to be better acquainted with music than most professors of the art.” Mendelssohn made his first London appearance as a composer on 25 May 1829, conducting his C minor Symphony, at a concert given by the Philharmonic Society. For this performance, and for one or two later ones, Mendelssohn substituted an orchestral version of the Scherzo from his Octet of 1825 for the original minuet. “I also added some jolly D-trumpets”, he wrote. “It was very silly, but it sounded very nice.” The symphony was received with tremendous enthusiasm, and although he refused to encore the Andante, he was finally obliged to repeat the Scherzo. Mendelssohn thanked the Society for the excellence of their performance, and he later dedicated the Symphony to them.
For a fifteen-year-old, the C minor Symphony is an astonishing achievement - even if there are moments where there are clear traces of familiar passages from Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Weber. But for all the signs of immaturity, the overriding impression is one of considerable individuality. His was a precocious talent, and this is immediately appealing music.© Stephen Strugnell
- conductor
- clarinet
Martín dazzled audiences with Spohr’s virtuoso concerto in 2008, and Weber’s tour de force makes a fitting sequel. It was inspired by one of the finest clarinettists of his time, and Weber certainly put him through his paces. Spohr himself features here, marking the 150th anniversary of his death with one of two ‘London’ symphonies. He and Mendelssohn both premiered their pieces with the Philharmonic Society of London and both with such success that they had to stop the performance to encore several movements there and then.
German Romantics
- Spohr
Programme note
Louis Spohr (1784-1859)
Symphony No 2 Op 49 (1820)Louis (or Ludwig) Spohr, one of the giant figures of early 19th century music, has in recent years been unfairly sidelined, like his friends Ries and Mozart’s pupil Hummel, due to the stellar reputations of Beethoven and Schubert.
Born in Brunswick in 1784, Spohr spent 35 years as chief court musician in nearby Kassel. While this might suggest a humdrum, sheltered provincial life, his talents and energies ensured the very opposite was true. A man of liberal beliefs and a positively Goethean range of interests, Spohr established himself, by the age of 20, as a violin virtuoso to be ranked with Fritz Kreisler. His pupils included Ferdinand David, later leader of Mendelssohn’s Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig.
Spohr travelled widely, and was acclaimed as both violinist and conductor. He visited England six times. On his first stay he introduced, to general surprise, the use of the baton (previously, orchestral leaders gave out time from among the violins, or from the keyboard). Later composers, including Wagner, imitated and admired him, just as he himself idolised Mozart. Spohr’s violin concertos, oratorios and to some extent operas (notably Jessonda and Faust) acquired worldwide fame in the 19th century.
The Second Symphony, written quite quickly in early 1820 during that first stay in London, demonstrates his mastery of the genre. He composed eight more symphonies, incorporating programmatic elements that foreshadow Liszt; but some still view the Second as his finest. In instrumentation and texture (notice his imaginative use of the woodwind) Spohr looks forward not just to Schumann, but to Berlioz and even Tchaikovsky.
No 2 is especially appealing for its thematic freshness, beguiling charm and dancing qualities. A few slow bars introduce a theme whose rising melody (in oboes and clarinets) and in 6th span are skilfully reused as the opening movement develops. The more angular first subject, on violins, relates closely to what precedes, as if the outline were broadly the same, but the notes rearranged. This is heard again in the cellos, before a more mysterious, jagged second theme (woodwind over shivering strings) emerges, with a slight Verdi-Donizetti feel. Though chromatic, it too bears a relation to the others, lending the symphony added cohesion and unity while also maling it especially intelligible, approachable and easy on the ear for the informed listener.
These three related mottoes (or bits of them) interplay throughout the movement. There is a glorious shift into major keys halfway through, and some rather grand minor ninths, which hover over a dominant and are in fact equivalent to those initial minor sixths (in the tonic). Both here, and in later movements, also listen out for held notes in brass or timpani, that often signal some new variant coming up.
The slow movement’s two melodies, initially one in B-flat major and one midway in G minor, likewise relate to each other. The latter possibly suggested ideas to Schumann for his Rhenish Symphony. One also senses an almost Bachian serenity: like Mendelssohn, Spohr was a keen champion of Bach’s music. The scherzo’s principal theme, with its snaky intervals, gains unexpected contrasts with some unnerving brassy outbursts, inclining more towards Beethoven. Notice especially a wonderful passage for horn and then cellos later on.
The finale’s striding theme in D major has been compared to Dvorák’s Symphony No 6 in the same key. Wittily relaxed, featuring some superb touches from flute, oboe and bassoon, plus lilting horn as the breezy coda approaches, it builds through shifting keys to a notably assertive climax, before bidding us a cheekily trumpeting farewell.
© Roderic Dunnett
- Weber
Programme note
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Clarinet Concerto No 2 in E-flat (1811)Mozart had his Stadler, Brahms his Mühlfeld – and Weber his Bärmann. Stadler, Mühlfeld and Bärmann? They were the great virtuoso clarinettists of their time. Virtuosos in the broadest and greatest sense. They inspired Mozart, Brahms, and Weber to write some of their very best music for this Johnny-come-lately member of the woodwind family.
By 1810, the developments to the clarinet (now with up to 10 keys) enabled Heinrich Bärmann, as a member of the Bavarian Court Orchestra in Munich, to shine, develop his technique and artistry, and capture the imaginations of the likes of Weber. This relatively new instrument could sing with all the demonic virtuosity demanded of a great soprano in full flood during her mad scene, but could also embrace the warmth and expressiveness of the greatest love aria. The range of the instrument was astonishing. The dark, deep chalumeau register could be directly contrasted with the piercing coloratura of its upper range. And just to increase this variety, the instrument came in a number of sizes from bass (even contra-bass) clarinet, to the short, shrill E-flat clarinet. No wonder early Romantic composers like Weber sat up and paid attention.
Weber arrived at the Bavarian court in 1811 and was swiftly won over by Bärmann’s artistry and virtuosity – a fusion of the incisive style of the French with the rich full-toned sound of the German school. Weber exploited these assets by composing a Concertino. Its premiere so impressed the King that he immediately commissioned Weber to write two full-fledged clarinet concertos.
Both concertos were completed that year. Later, Weber would eschew the classical expectation of an opening movement in sonata form. Indeed in his Konzertstück for piano and orchestra (1821) he abandons the concept of separate movements altogether in favour of a work in which the different sections became part of one continuous whole. But, in 1811, and with a royal commission, Weber decided to stick to the tried and true.
The opening movement of the Second Concert in E-flat is incisive and compact within the expectations of sonata form, while giving room for the soloist to shine. Just as Mozart before him loved to juxtapose the extreme ends of an operatic voice, so Weber makes an immediate impact by juxtaposing the extreme ranges of the instrument: the clarinet’s very first two notes are three octaves apart. It is in the Adagio, however, that Weber is at his most expressive. This is an aria for clarinet equal to any in any opera. There is even recognition of this by the notation of a ‘recitative’ section near the end, where the soloist is encouraged to almost declaim, parlando. The finale is a devil-may-care Polacca- one of Weber’s favourite dance forms. It ends the concerto in a display of virtuoso fireworks that gives modern clarinettists a run for their money, let alone Herr Bärmann and his 10-keyed instrument.
It is clear that Weber responded very personally to the sound of the clarinet – it seemed to be the instrument of the orchestra that most embraced both his own dark romantic longings and his exuberant brilliance. Accordingly, Weber’s music for clarinet ranks among his very best. His fame, however, rests with his determination to change the artifice of Italian opera into something more meaningful for his German public. It was Weber’s pioneering efforts in Oberon and Der Freischütz that galvanised Wagner into his astonishing operatic activity. With that, Western music changed forever.
© David Gardner - Mendelssohn
Programme note
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Symphony No.1 in C minor, Op 11 (1824)
Allegro molto
Andante
Menuetto, allegro molto
Allegro con fuoco
When Mendelssohn dated the score of his Symphony No.1 in C minor, on 31 March 1824, he was just fifteen years old. In fact, the autograph score bears the number 13, as the young composer had already written a dozen string symphonies. The C minor Symphony was merely the first time he had attempted a work for full orchestra.
After initial performances in Berlin and Leipzig, Mendelssohn took his Symphony with him on his first visit to England in 1829. He began his extensive and influential European travels in London where his friends, Carl Klingemann the diplomat and writer, and the pianist Ignaz Moschels, had arranged a hectic programme, beginning with a visit to the Italian Opera at the Haymarket, a visit to Covent Garden to hear Charles Kemble in Hamlet, and a ball given by the Duke of Devonshire. English society regarded him as a distinguished foreigner and treated him accordingly. His arrival had already been announced in the musical journal Harmonium: “He is the son of a rich banker of Berlin, and, I believe, a grandson of the celebrated Jewish philosopher and elegant writer. He is one of the finest pianoforte players in Europe, and though a very young man, is supposed to be better acquainted with music than most professors of the art.” Mendelssohn made his first London appearance as a composer on 25 May 1829, conducting his C minor Symphony, at a concert given by the Philharmonic Society. For this performance, and for one or two later ones, Mendelssohn substituted an orchestral version of the Scherzo from his Octet of 1825 for the original minuet. “I also added some jolly D-trumpets”, he wrote. “It was very silly, but it sounded very nice.” The symphony was received with tremendous enthusiasm, and although he refused to encore the Andante, he was finally obliged to repeat the Scherzo. Mendelssohn thanked the Society for the excellence of their performance, and he later dedicated the Symphony to them.
For a fifteen-year-old, the C minor Symphony is an astonishing achievement - even if there are moments where there are clear traces of familiar passages from Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Weber. But for all the signs of immaturity, the overriding impression is one of considerable individuality. His was a precocious talent, and this is immediately appealing music.© Stephen Strugnell
- conductor
- clarinet
Martín dazzled audiences with Spohr’s virtuoso concerto in 2008, and Weber’s tour de force makes a fitting sequel. It was inspired by one of the finest clarinettists of his time, and Weber certainly put him through his paces. Spohr himself features here, marking the 150th anniversary of his death with one of two ‘London’ symphonies. He and Mendelssohn both premiered their pieces with the Philharmonic Society of London and both with such success that they had to stop the performance to encore several movements there and then.
CL@SIX - Myths in Music
- Purcell
Programme note
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Suite from King ArthurFirst Music: Overture
Second Music: Aire
Overture
First Act Tune
How blest are the shepherds
Shepherd, shepherd, leave decoying
Hornpipe
Second Act Tune: Aire
Prelude
Dance
Boree
Third Act Tune: Hornpipe
Aire
Forth Act Tune: Trumpet Tune
Symphony
Song Tune
Song Tune
ChaconneThe most popular music-drama genre in London in the 1790s was the 'semi-opera', which combined drama, dance, song and – above all – special effects to tell its tales. Most librettos were bowdlerised plays, and King Arthur was unusual in that its text was both new and written by a distinguished poet: John Dryden. He filled five crowd-pleasing acts with diverting enchantments and scenic treats, but jettisoned most of the Arthurian mythology in the process. There is no Camelot, Lancelot nor Guinevere. Instead, Arthur’s beloved Emmeline is abducted by Oswald, King of Kent, and Arthur spends most of the rest of the plot liberating her. Merlin and Osmond (Oswald’s wizard) trade enchantments, resulting in eye-boggling scene changes designed to keep the audience applauding for hours. Purcell’s music matches Dryden’s caprice superbly. The sequence from ‘How blest are the shepherds' to the 'Hornpipe' is from a performance given by a "Crew of Kentish Lads and Lasses" to divert Emmeline and take her mind off a nearby battle. Fishermen dance during the Symphony (no 36), and so it goes on. Sadly, tonight’s selection omits the biggest hit of the show, the famous ‘Frost Scene’, which really does require voices.
King Arthur was not all fantasy. Just beneath the surface lay an obsequious political message. William of Orange became William III of Britain in 1789. He was King Billy, to many a savior who overcame the Catholic threat presented by his uncle, King James II, to unify the land in Protestant peace. Dryden pays him the ultimate tribute of a direct comparison with King Arthur (by rescuing Emmeline and forgiving his enemies, Arthur unifies Britain and saves the day), a connection made explicit by the reference in the closing chorus to “foreign kings adoptecd here,” for William was Dutch.
© Svend Brown
- Purcell
Programme note
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Chacony in G Minor (c.1678)Purcell lived for just about the same span as Mozart: 36 years. To his contemporaries he was a figure every bit as astonishing and stellar. He turned his hand to a staggeringly wide array of genres, and drew on many traditions in the process. His technical facility was impressive, and he shared with J.S.Bach a penchant for tricky musical puzzles which he resolved effortlessly in music that delighted the ear as much as the mind. Of this little Chacony we know very little. Unlike Rameau, he is actually pretty strict with the form and does not mess around with the chord sequence much. Chaconne à son gout.
© Svend Brown
- Rameau
Programme note
Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)
Suite from Dardanus 1739Ouverture – Lent et majestueux
1er Tambourin
2e Tambourin
Air vif
1er Air – Grave
2e Air – Vivement
Air gai en Rondeau “Les Niaïs de Sologne”
Sommeil – Rondeau tender
ChaconneOpera, in the age of Rameau enjoyed a tribal following like football does today. Dardanus was premiered in 1739, in the midst of heated dispute between Rameau’s supporters and those of Lully. 1,000 ‘Ramistes’ vowed to attend every performance and prolong its opening run – but in the event they could not stretch it beyond 26 nights. This failure was attributed to a weak libretto, and Rameau later produced a second version in 1744 which enjoyed greater success. As a Tragedie Lyrique, Dardanus combined singing and stagecraft with dance and orchestral interludes to tell the story. Orchestral music played a huge part: there are something like 30 dances. The Ouverture is a classic ‘French’ overture of the time in that it opens with broad, grand music full of dotted rhythms then sweeps off into livelier fare. The Chaconne closed the opera with a long formal dance. Strictly it should keep repeating a simple short chord sequence throughout, over which the composer elaborates his thoughts. The simplicity of the basic idea is also the challenge: to keep delighting the audience despite the minimal basic material. In fact, Rameau makes very free with that definition, but does create one of his very finest chaconnes as a result. Between these great book ends, the many movements show Rameau’s great emotional range, and inexhaustibly inventive ear for instrumental textures. Particularly notable is the “Air gai en Rondeau “Les Niaïs de Sologne”’ in which Rameau borrows from his own back catalogue – the original was a keyboard piece.
© Svend Brown
- conductor
Sworn enemies for most of the 17th and 18th centuries, England and France share a stage in this programme. Purcell and Rameau were two of the greatest composers of that or any other age, and this concert features dance music from their great mythological operas. Few composers knew better how to get your toe tapping while delighting your ear.
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