Concerts & Tickets

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Sat 1st May

Tickets: £8.50-£26 (concessions available)

Ligeti
Concerto Românesc

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Programme note

György Ligeti (1923-2006)
Concerto Românesc (1951)

What is so fascinating about this rip-roaring early work is that it reveals Ligeti composing in a vein that contrasts starkly with the avant garde processes he was to evolve during the late 1950s and 1960s, and which were to play such an important role in the evolution of new music in the second half of the Twentieth Century. One might compare Lutoslawski’s early Lacrymosa, which is indebted to his Polish predecessor Szymanowski in much the same way that Ligeti here honours the memory of Bela Bartók. Likewise Ligeti’s piano music of the early 1950s pays homage to Bartók's collection Mikrokosmos.

The world Ligeti so vividly evokes here is that of Romanian folk music. The western part of modern Romania (Ligeti was born in Dicsöszentmárton – Romanian Târnäveni - and educated at the Conservatoire in Cluj, or in Hungarian, Kolozsvár), was for centuries a part of the Hungarian empire, while the East (Wallachia, Moldavia and Bessarabia) enjoyed some measure of independence. Indeed, it may be slightly misleading to speak of any single type of ‘folk music’ in this region, for each different aria – Romanian Transylvania, The Hungarian Palic country, Hungary’s northern borderlands abutting Slovakia and the Ukraine, and the Hungarian Puszta (the horse-rearing plains to the south, lying between the rivers Danube and Tisza) all had their own distinctive folk melodies.

Amongst his childhood experiences in his native Transylvania (now north west Romania) Ligeti remembered a wild band of musicians wearing animal masks bursting its way into the family courtyard and playing lively, dissonant folk tunes on violin and bagpipes; and even earlier, as a small boy of three, being fascinated when he encountered, in the Carpathian Mountains, a player of the alpine horn (called a bucium, after the Latin).

Ligeti’s Concert Românesc opens with a reflective Andantino or Larghetto, launched shyly by upper then lower strings, followed by woodwind, whose sad modal harmonies and open fifths suggest a medieval underlay (although there are also surprising affinities with Copland’s treatment of Appalachian folk music!). The bustling Allegro Vivace is very much in the spirit of Bartók’s thrusting Romanian Dances: piccolo and clarinet both have their say, and there’s a cheerful echo of that folk violin Ligeti encountered as a boy. The Adagio, embracing sad horn calls and a plaintive, oriental-hued cor anglais melody, just briefly blossoms, conjuring up memories of Kodály’s full-blooded Hungarian dance suites, before dying away in eerie spirals of intertwining woodwind.

The final movement, Molto vivace, is the longest, and here we find Ligeti at last spreading his composer’s wings and scampering into the more sophisticated world of Bartók’s The Wooden Prince or The Miraculous Mandarin: the dance element is heavily syncopated, with string and woodwind soloists alternately assuming the lead, rather like expressive jazz musicians. But there’s a surprise. Near the close, the dance just won’t let go: there is an exciting and utterly unexpected coda, in which the orchestra fails to muffle the high-riding solo violin, and we hear the music (amid mysterious horn calls) wander off into the distance, almost as if it were evanescing or being reabsorbed into the atmosphere, as electricity - before it is silenced by an abrupt farewell.

© Roderic Dunnett
Tüür
Symphony No 8 (world premiere)

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Programme note

Erkki-Sven Tüür (b.1959)
Symphony No 8 world premiere

SCO commission with funding from the Scottish Government.

I composed the Eighth Symphony at the suggestion of my good friend Olari Elts; it was commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. Considering the instrumentation of the orchestra (double woodwinds, 2 trumpets, two French horns, one percussionist and strings) it almost seems like a chamber symphony. Indeed, there are several chamber-like passages, but the intense tectonic shifts between sound masses are equally important. Thus, I simply added it to the list of my symphonies without granting it a separate “chamber symphony” status.

One of the ideas guiding the internal psychological development logic of this symphony might be the creation of structure and then bringing it to life. In other words, the initial dominating objective and detached observation gradually grows more subjective and, hopefully, more involved and passionate.

As for musical form, the Eighth Symphony is divided into three movements, all of them performed attacca.

The key motif (1-1-1) X, which forms the foundation for musical development throughout the composition, consists of three ascending minor second intervals with a ‘knocking’ rhythm. This is followed by a micro-polyphonic ‘sound cloud’, Y based on the same intervals, which is interrupted by the next ‘knocking’. These two elements are similar in terms of intervals, but opposites in terms of character and rhythm, evolving into contrasting realms of sound. Everything that ensues is an alternation of focus between X and Y. The first movement, in turn, consists of three parts. The first part is fast, intense, and plays with shifts in various types of texture. The interval range gradually expands, introducing the major second, then the minor third, major third, etc. (1—2—3—4 etc).

This so-called ‘expansion’ also becomes a key principle for the development of linear processes throughout the whole symphony. The second part of the first movement is chamber-like music enriched with several intertwining solo passages. This zooms in on the world represented by Y. The third part returns to the motifs originating from X, but much more fiercely.

The second movement begins with a complete standstill, while taking the developments of Y under even greater scrutiny. Unlike the beginning of the first movement, this section is dominated by descending elements. The initially frozen world begins to ‘warm up’ slowly; at some point, the melodic line that evolves from yet another intervallic expansion starts to resemble archaic Estonian folk songs.

The third movement presents somewhat surreal (dance-like!) surprises that culminate into co-functionality between X and Y, whereas the three-note motifs performed by strings have undergone a tremendous expansion compared to their starting point.

The constant sense of ‘being on the road’, organic development and fluidity is crucial for this music. Taking note of the brief description above is optional, not obligatory. Trust your intuition, sharpen your attention and let the energy springing from the music speak to you. The best approach I can recommend is prejudice-free listening. Thus, everyone can create their very own unique story while listening to this music.

Erkki-Sven Tüür

(Translation from Estonian Pirjo Püvi)
Sibelius
Symphony No 3 in C, Op 52

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Programme note

Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Symphony No 3 in C, Op 52 (1907)

Allegro moderato
Andantino con moto, quasi allegretto
Moderato – allegro (ma non tanto) - allegro

With the Third, Sibelius’ symphonic thinking finally turned the corner towards which his music had been moving during the first years of the twentieth century. His Second Symphony, of 1901-2, was a big expansive work in the romantic-nationalist mould. But even here there were signs of a more classical approach to symphonic construction. In its tautness and concision the Third Symphony confirms the new emphasis and lays out the ground for later developments.

It started to take shape in Sibelius’ mind in 1904. He began serious work on it in September, but he then appears to have diverted his attention to other projects. By December 1906 he was fully immersed in the symphony again, writing to his publisher “my whole being is consumed by it.” Even so, he was unable to finish the score in time for the planned first performance, which he was to have conducted in March 1907 in London at the invitation of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Instead, the premiere was given in Helsinki in September. Perhaps by way of compensation, Sibelius recorded a link with this country by dedicating the symphony to the composer Granville Bantock. Bantock had been one of the first British musicians to champion Sibelius’s work, and was his generous host when he made his first visit to this country in 1905.

With its lack of any kind of introduction, the contrast between the Third and the first two symphonies is apparent immediately. It sets off with a crisp, energetic theme on the cellos and basses with no preliminary scene-setting or, to start with, supporting harmonies. Its sharp melodic and rhythmic outline launches the symphony with a confidence and sense of purpose that has no need of attention-grabbing rhetoric. The rather melancholy cello theme that emerges later seems to be constantly turning in on itself, but it eventually gets swept up into the music’s forward-driving energy. Suddenly, a mysterious string passage leads us into a half-lit region of soft horn chords and solo woodwind figures. But the initial energy is still there, mainly in the strings, quietly driving the music forward to the return of the opening theme, which is almost submerged in the movement’s big sonorous climax.

The second movement has the deceptive air of a light-weight intermezzo between the two outer movements. Its gently ruminative, rhythmically ambiguous theme (are there two beats in the bar or three?) is both melancholy and playful at the same time. An accelerating passage for pizzicato strings prompts a brief flurry of more focussed activity, before the opening music returns to close the movement.

It is the third movement, a scherzo that gradually takes on the function and character of a finale, that most clearly points the direction in which Sibelius’ concern for compact structures was to lead. It begins with what seem to be unconnected scraps of material - a brief wisp of a theme for solo oboe, an energised wavy line on the violas, a quiet but trenchant little figure on the cellos and basses. But it is out of these that Sibelius builds this extraordinarily original and impressive movement. Echoes of the second movement on flutes, then oboes, slow the music down briefly, before it picks up speed again, generating the powerful momentum that is to drive the music inexorably forward.

Eventually, hints of a new idea start appearing on the cellos, then violas. This continues to grow, becoming a broad, purposeful, striding theme that dominates the second half of the movement. The conclusion, succinct almost to the point of understatement, is all of a piece with the character of the symphony as a whole. In this connection it is worth remembering that it was in 1907, the year the Third Symphony was premiered, that Sibelius has his famous conversation with Mahler, in which he said that what he admired in symphonic form was “its style and severity...and the profound logic that created an inner connection between all the motifs.” With the Third Symphony Sibelius was firmly engaged in the task of paring his musical style down to its essentials.

© Mike Wheeler

Olari Elts
conductor

“My pieces are abstract dramas in sound, with characters and an extremely dynamic chain of events; they unfold in a space that is constantly shifting, expanding and contracting…” A perfect characterisation of Sibelius’ symphonies? In fact, it is Erkki-Sven Tüür speaking of his own music. What affinities and contrasts may be revealed between symphonies written a century apart, from nations separated by only a thin strip of water – Finland and Estonia?

Pre-concert talk

Schumann 200 - Schumann Mass

Thu 6th May

19:30, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh

Tickets: £8.50-£26 (concessions available)

Brahms
Serenade No 2 in A, Op 16

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Programme note

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Serenade No 2 in A, Op 16

Allegro moderato
Scherzo: Vivace
Adagio non troppo
Quasi menuetto
Rondo: Allegro

As well as four symphonies, Brahms wrote two substantial serenades, each of them symphonic in structure, but with more movements than symphonic tradition dictated and with an open-air quality appropriate to Brahms's choice of title. The first, in D major, was originally an instrumental nonet but was later expanded for full orchestra. The second has remained a chamber-sized work, unusually scored for a mixture of woodwind, horns and lower strings. The resultant colouring, with its conspicuous absence of violin tone, has been described as sombre, though Sir Donald Tovey, Edinburgh's distinguished essayist and Brahmsian, preferred to call it mellow.

Brahms's serenades were written between 1858 and 1860, some sixteen years before the definitive version of the First Symphony. They are therefore early works, though Brahms always retained an affection for them, especially the second, which he referred to as his "beautiful opus" and to which he made a number of small improvements - in phrasing, expression marks and instrumental detail - as late as 1875. No composer knew better than Brahms how to give a composition an arresting opening, not necessarily loud. The A major serenade, more succinct than the D major, starts with a theme which has been considered ecclesiastical, but which, in terms of Brahmsian warmth and serenity, is no mere hymn-tune. A second theme melts into graceful triplets and, in contrast, a third, "swaying indolently over a dance-rhythm", as Tovey vividly remarked, makes use of jerky rhythms.

After this leisurely first movement, Brahms inserts a short scherzo with lively Bohemian cross-rhythms, before reaching the grand central adagio whose counterpoint reminded his friend Clara Schumann of Bach "almost", she said, "it might be an eleison". It is certainly a species of passacaglia, beginning over a ground bass in A minor but soon flowing into other keys. Foretastes of the Fourth Symphony's finale and that of the St Anthony Variations are audible here. Melodically and contrapuntally the movement is very rich, with a climax signposted by a horn theme in A flat. To counterbalance his Bohemian scherzo, Brahms makes the fourth movement a sort of Viennese minuet, with a rocking main theme and a wistful oboe tune in the central trio section. The finale is more robust, again with some Viennese, almost Schubertian touches. To the variety of delightful woodwind detail, a piercing piccolo here adds its exuberant voice.

© Conrad Wilson
Brahms
Four Serious Songs, Op 121

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Programme note

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Vier erneste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), Op 121 (1896)

In 1890, having completed his second String Quintet, and with his close friends beginning to die around him, Brahms declared that he was finished with composing. Then in 1891, he heard the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld perform. The magic of his playing re-inspired Brahms, and out poured four great works (the Clarinet Trio, the Clarinet Quintet, and two Clarinet Sonatas) for which clarinetists have ever since sunk to their knees and given thanks! But the re-awakened Brahms discovered he still had further things to say. He began contemplating the composition of more songs. The stroke of the one person who mattered to him most – Clara Schumann – on March 26^th, 1896, precipitated what we now know as the Four Serious Songs. He finished them on May 7^th (his 63^rd and, as it transpired, final birthday). Clara died on May 20^th. Neither she nor Brahms had any belief in an afterlife but that did not stop him from admiring Luther’s translation of the Bible into German. By 1896 even more of Brahms’s close friends had died, so it is no surprise to discover him in valedictory mood as he contemplates life without Clara. As it turned out, he himself would be dead of liver cancer in early April the next year.

He chose biblical texts from Ecclesiastes for the first two songs (3, 19-22 & 4, 1-3); Ecclesiasticus for the third song (41, 1-2) and, for the last song, the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians (13, 1-3 & 12-13). The result is a song cycle on death that is profoundly moving, though, unlike Bach, Brahms did not come to death with any sense of joy, but with bitter regret at life’s insubstantiality. So Four Serious Songs becomes an elegy to life.

In the opening song the accompaniment is like a funeral march in D minor with a bell tolling relentlessly on the dominant. Although the middle section moves to D major with rapid triplets, it remains starkly pessimistic.

In the next song, the accompaniment descends ominously into the darkness that represents Death. Da lobte ich die Toten, die schon gestorben waren (Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead) says it all.

The magnificent O Tod, wie bitter bist du (O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee) sets bitterness against acceptance (just as Brahms had done in his much earlier German Requiem).

The final song, however, breaks away both biblically and musically from the first three. This is more a pæan to love, even if it is unattainable.

Brahms composed powerful ‘symphonic’ piano parts for the Four Serious Songs that just cry out to be orchestrated. The version you will hear this evening uses the orchestration by Günter Raphael.

© David Gardner
Schumann
Mass in C minor, Op 147

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Programme note

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Mass in C minor, Op 147

Kyrie
Gloria
Credo
Offertorium: Tota pulchra es, Maria
Sanctus
Agnus Dei

In 1850, Schumann moved from Dresden to Düsseldorf – from his native Lutheran region of Saxony, to the predominantly Catholic Rhineland. He succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as the city’s municipal music director, and while this position required him to direct masses at two of Düsseldorf’s churches, on Corpus Christi and the feast day of St Maximilian, it was by no means obligatory for him to provide original music for these occasions. What is certain, however, is that during his time in Düsseldorf, Schumann became increasingly interested, both as a conductor and composer, in cantatas, oratorios and other religious and semi-religious works. Just a few months after arriving in Düsseldorf, Schumann wrote to a friend, “It must remain the artist’s highest ambitious to apply his talents to sacred music. It is only with advancing age that the branches stretch higher, and so I hope that the period of my own higher efforts are at hand.”

Schumann began work on his Mass (and soon after on his Requiem as well) in the early months of 1852, at the same time as he was rehearsing Bach’s B minor Mass and St Mathew Passion. The Mass was sketched over a period of just ten days and orchestrated immediately afterwards, and while the work’s sense of mysticism is unquestionably Romantic, one can also detect a stately simplicity, no doubt reflecting Schumann’s studies of Bach and Palestrina. The following year, Schumann added the more emotionally-charged Offertorium to his Mass. This movement, for soprano soloist and pared-down orchestration, is one of the composer’s most heartfelt lied.

Parts of the Mass were rehearsed with his Singekränzchen, a group of around thirty singers who met every fortnight at the house of one of other of the members, and for whom Schumann had recently composed his cantata Der Rose Pilferfahrt (The Pilgrimage of the Rose). But his hopes of having the Mass ready for performance in the early summer were dashed by ill health, and it was not until the beginning of the next year that he was able to conduct renewed rehearsals, and perform the Kyrie and Gloria sections at the Geissler Hall in March 1853. Schumann did not live to hear his only Mass performed in its entirety, and even after his death in 1856, obstacles stood in the way of its gaining widespread acceptance. Both Brahms and Joachim expressed reservations regarding its publication, but Clara Schumann persisted, and after the Mass’s premiere in 1861 she wrote to Brahms: “You can’t imagine how beautiful it sounds. Certain lines in the Sanctus have such a wonderful effect that cold shivers run down your spine.”

© Stephen Strugnell

John Storgårds
conductor
Rachel Nicholls
soprano
Benjamin Hulett
tenor
Stephan Loges
bass baritone
SCO Chorus
-

Here is a chance to hear a true rarity. Schumann’s Mass is among his very last compositions, and it was almost lost forever. His wife, Clara, was worried that his illness had affected its quality and considered burning it. Of her friends, it was Brahms who convinced her to publish and, on hearing it for the first time, she knew that he had been right.

Schumann 200 - Schumann Mass

Fri 7th May

19:30, City Halls, Glasgow

Tickets: £11-£24 (concessions available)

Brahms
Serenade No 2 in A, Op 16

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Programme note

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Serenade No 2 in A, Op 16

Allegro moderato
Scherzo: Vivace
Adagio non troppo
Quasi menuetto
Rondo: Allegro

As well as four symphonies, Brahms wrote two substantial serenades, each of them symphonic in structure, but with more movements than symphonic tradition dictated and with an open-air quality appropriate to Brahms's choice of title. The first, in D major, was originally an instrumental nonet but was later expanded for full orchestra. The second has remained a chamber-sized work, unusually scored for a mixture of woodwind, horns and lower strings. The resultant colouring, with its conspicuous absence of violin tone, has been described as sombre, though Sir Donald Tovey, Edinburgh's distinguished essayist and Brahmsian, preferred to call it mellow.

Brahms's serenades were written between 1858 and 1860, some sixteen years before the definitive version of the First Symphony. They are therefore early works, though Brahms always retained an affection for them, especially the second, which he referred to as his "beautiful opus" and to which he made a number of small improvements - in phrasing, expression marks and instrumental detail - as late as 1875. No composer knew better than Brahms how to give a composition an arresting opening, not necessarily loud. The A major serenade, more succinct than the D major, starts with a theme which has been considered ecclesiastical, but which, in terms of Brahmsian warmth and serenity, is no mere hymn-tune. A second theme melts into graceful triplets and, in contrast, a third, "swaying indolently over a dance-rhythm", as Tovey vividly remarked, makes use of jerky rhythms.

After this leisurely first movement, Brahms inserts a short scherzo with lively Bohemian cross-rhythms, before reaching the grand central adagio whose counterpoint reminded his friend Clara Schumann of Bach "almost", she said, "it might be an eleison". It is certainly a species of passacaglia, beginning over a ground bass in A minor but soon flowing into other keys. Foretastes of the Fourth Symphony's finale and that of the St Anthony Variations are audible here. Melodically and contrapuntally the movement is very rich, with a climax signposted by a horn theme in A flat. To counterbalance his Bohemian scherzo, Brahms makes the fourth movement a sort of Viennese minuet, with a rocking main theme and a wistful oboe tune in the central trio section. The finale is more robust, again with some Viennese, almost Schubertian touches. To the variety of delightful woodwind detail, a piercing piccolo here adds its exuberant voice.

© Conrad Wilson
Brahms
Four Serious Songs, Op 121

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Programme note

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Vier erneste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), Op 121 (1896)

In 1890, having completed his second String Quintet, and with his close friends beginning to die around him, Brahms declared that he was finished with composing. Then in 1891, he heard the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld perform. The magic of his playing re-inspired Brahms, and out poured four great works (the Clarinet Trio, the Clarinet Quintet, and two Clarinet Sonatas) for which clarinetists have ever since sunk to their knees and given thanks! But the re-awakened Brahms discovered he still had further things to say. He began contemplating the composition of more songs. The stroke of the one person who mattered to him most – Clara Schumann – on March 26^th, 1896, precipitated what we now know as the Four Serious Songs. He finished them on May 7^th (his 63^rd and, as it transpired, final birthday). Clara died on May 20^th. Neither she nor Brahms had any belief in an afterlife but that did not stop him from admiring Luther’s translation of the Bible into German. By 1896 even more of Brahms’s close friends had died, so it is no surprise to discover him in valedictory mood as he contemplates life without Clara. As it turned out, he himself would be dead of liver cancer in early April the next year.

He chose biblical texts from Ecclesiastes for the first two songs (3, 19-22 & 4, 1-3); Ecclesiasticus for the third song (41, 1-2) and, for the last song, the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians (13, 1-3 & 12-13). The result is a song cycle on death that is profoundly moving, though, unlike Bach, Brahms did not come to death with any sense of joy, but with bitter regret at life’s insubstantiality. So Four Serious Songs becomes an elegy to life.

In the opening song the accompaniment is like a funeral march in D minor with a bell tolling relentlessly on the dominant. Although the middle section moves to D major with rapid triplets, it remains starkly pessimistic.

In the next song, the accompaniment descends ominously into the darkness that represents Death. Da lobte ich die Toten, die schon gestorben waren (Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead) says it all.

The magnificent O Tod, wie bitter bist du (O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee) sets bitterness against acceptance (just as Brahms had done in his much earlier German Requiem).

The final song, however, breaks away both biblically and musically from the first three. This is more a pæan to love, even if it is unattainable.

Brahms composed powerful ‘symphonic’ piano parts for the Four Serious Songs that just cry out to be orchestrated. The version you will hear this evening uses the orchestration by Günter Raphael.

© David Gardner
Schumann
Mass in C minor, Op 147

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Programme note

ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810-1856)
Mass in C minor, Op 147

Kyrie
Gloria
Credo
Offertorium: Tota pulchra es, Maria
Sanctus
Agnus Dei

In 1850, Schumann moved from Dresden to Düsseldorf – from his native Lutheran region of Saxony, to the predominantly Catholic Rhineland. He succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as the city’s municipal music director, and while this position required him to direct masses at two of Düsseldorf’s churches, on Corpus Christi and the feast day of St Maximilian, it was by no means obligatory for him to provide original music for these occasions. What is certain, however, is that during his time in Düsseldorf, Schumann became increasingly interested, both as a conductor and composer, in cantatas, oratorios and other religious and semi-religious works. Just a few months after arriving in Düsseldorf, Schumann wrote to a friend, “It must remain the artist’s highest ambitious to apply his talents to sacred music. It is only with advancing age that the branches stretch higher, and so I hope that the period of my own higher efforts are at hand.”

Schumann began work on his Mass (and soon after on his Requiem as well) in the early months of 1852, at the same time as he was rehearsing Bach’s B minor Mass and St Mathew Passion. The Mass was sketched over a period of just ten days and orchestrated immediately afterwards, and while the work’s sense of mysticism is unquestionably Romantic, one can also detect a stately simplicity, no doubt reflecting Schumann’s studies of Bach and Palestrina. The following year, Schumann added the more emotionally-charged Offertorium to his Mass. This movement, for soprano soloist and pared-down orchestration, is one of the composer’s most heartfelt lied.

Parts of the Mass were rehearsed with his Singekränzchen, a group of around thirty singers who met every fortnight at the house of one of other of the members, and for whom Schumann had recently composed his cantata Der Rose Pilferfahrt (The Pilgrimage of the Rose). But his hopes of having the Mass ready for performance in the early summer were dashed by ill health, and it was not until the beginning of the next year that he was able to conduct renewed rehearsals, and perform the Kyrie and Gloria sections at the Geissler Hall in March 1853. Schumann did not live to hear his only Mass performed in its entirety, and even after his death in 1856, obstacles stood in the way of its gaining widespread acceptance. Both Brahms and Joachim expressed reservations regarding its publication, but Clara Schumann persisted, and after the Mass’s premiere in 1861 she wrote to Brahms: “You can’t imagine how beautiful it sounds. Certain lines in the Sanctus have such a wonderful effect that cold shivers run down your spine.”

© Stephen Strugnell

John Storgårds
conductor
Rachel Nicholls
soprano
Benjamin Hulett
tenor
Stephan Loges
bass baritone
SCO Chorus
-

Chamber Concert

Sun 9th May

14:30, Queen's Hall, Edinburgh

Tickets: £12, £10 (concessions)

Wolf
Italian Serenade

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Programme note

Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)
Italian Serenade (1887)

Hugo Wolf was born four months before Gustav Mahler, and for a time-shared a flat with him. Each was an Austrian of musically neurotic intensity; each settled in Vienna in the period of Sigmund Freud. Mahler found his musical destiny in vast symphonies, songs and symphonic song cycles with orchestral accompaniments, Wolf favoured more succinct and intimate songs, mostly with piano accompaniment, on which he worked with fanatical industry, sometimes producing several songs a day.

Mahler studied at the Vienna Conservatory, Wolf was expelled from it. Mahler was a great conductor, Wolf an incompetent one, though for a short time he was a famously ferocious music critic, detesting Brahms but supporting Wagner, Liszt, and Schubert. Mahler was in charge of the Vienna Opera. Wolf fantasised that he had been given the same appointment. Mahler was a husband and father. Wolf (whose liaisons were too complex to achieve even Mahler’s modest degree of marital success) never married. Mahler died of heart trouble in his 51st year. Wolf died at 43 after five years in an asylum.

With the help of incisively poetic texts by Mörike and others, and through his own expressive, imaginative, intricately wrought piano accompaniments, Wolf developed the art of German song to a point beyond which hardly anybody else could go. His Italian Serenade, however, is one of his rare string pieces, a quartettsatz, or quartet movement, which sounds like part of a longer work, but is actually complete in itself.

Though he later arranged it for orchestra, and contemplated extending it with an intermezzo and tarantella, the music is wholly satisfactory as an integer, a piquant song without words, picturesque and fanciful, lithe yet lolloping, melodically engaging, with fleetly flickering rhythms and, at one point, a passage of recitative suggestive of the voice of an ardent lover singing beneath his beloved’s window. Wolf’s own beloved, Melanie Köchert, wife of a prosperous Viennese jeweller, visited him thrice a week in his asylum and flung herself from a fourth-floor window three years after his death.

© Conrad Wilson
Schoenberg
Verklärte Nacht, Op 4

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Programme note

Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951)

Verklärte Nacht, Op 4 (1899)

“Yesterday I heard Verklärte Nacht”, Richard Dehmel wrote to Schoenberg, “and I should consider it a sin of omission if I failed to say a word of thanks to you for your wonderful sextet. I had intended to follow the motives of my text in your composition; but I soon forgot to do so, I was so enthralled by the music.” Dehmel was one of the leading poets of late nineteenth-century Germany, and his poem Verklärte Nacht inspired the young Schoenberg to his first major work. The poem tells of a couple walking through a moonlit wood. The woman confesses that she has been unfaithful, and is pregnant with another's child. The man tells her that he is willing to forgive and forget what has passed, and will accept the child as his own. The two fall rapturously into each other’s arms and resume their walk. Through the man’s compassionate forgiveness, the night is transfigured.

Schoenberg wrote his Verklärte Nacht in the space of just three weeks in September 1899, while on holiday in Payerbach with Alexander von Zemlinsky and Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde - whom Schoenberg married in 1901. It is highly-charged post-Romantic music, in which the influence of Wagner is ever-present. Chromatic in its harmonies and sensuous in melodic content, the music magically captures all the descriptive and emotional nuances of the poem that had inspired it.

Although in one movement, the structure of Verklärte Nacht closely follows the five stanzas of Dehmel’s poem. The first section describes the clear, moonlit night as the couple walk through the wood, the second depicts the woman’s sorrowful confession, and the fourth the man's magnanimous reply. According to Schoenberg, this episode “reflects the mood of a man whose love, in harmony with the splendour and radiance of nature, is capable of ignoring the tragic situation.” The final section acts as an all-encompassing coda, in which the sombre D minor of the opening is transformed into a radiant D major.

At its world première, given in Vienna in 1902 by an augmented Rosè Quartet, Verklärte Nacht was received with incomprehension. “It sounds as if someone had smeared the score of Tristan while it was still wet”, wrote one critic at the time. In 1917, Schoenberg revised the work and arranged it for string orchestra.

© Stephen Strugnell
Brahms
String Sextet No 2 in G major, Op 36

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Programme note

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
String Sextet No 2 in G major, Op 36 (1865)

Allegro non troppo
Scherzo: Allegro non troppo
Poco adagio
Poco allegro

Brahms’s Sextet No 2 sounds, in some ways, so like a continuation of his first that, had it been written by someone else, it could be hailed as a further section of an ongoing narrative or one more episode in the life of an artist. But, coming from a composer who shunned programme music, who never wrote an opera, and whose Tragic Overture depicted a wholly abstract tragedy, it can hardly be expected to tell us anything very specific about what Brahms had on his mind in the year 1865, what books he was reading, what subjects he was attracted to. Brahms never composed a Verklaerte Nacht, though in the slow movement of his earlier sextet he surely came quite close to Schoenberg’s descriptive masterpiece for the same forces. In his second sextet he provided further hints of such capabilities. A narrative thread may be absent, but ciphers of the sort employed by Schumann when he wanted to convey secret messages to his wife are undeniably present. Brahms, too, wanted to convey secret messages to Clara Schumann, and what better way than to employ methods favoured by her husband?

When Brahms started work on his second sextet he was apparently in the same emotional turmoil he had been in while composing his first. Though eternally devoted to Clara Schumann, he had allowed himself to become temporarily engaged to Agathe von Siebold, a young soprano who inspired several of his songs. Enshrined in the music are his memories of Agathe as well as the state of his thoughts about Clara. The letters of Agathe’s name (AGAHE in German musical nomenclature, AGABE in British) form the passionate climax of the first movement’s second subject, though by the time he wrote it their engagement was in the past, even if the music suggests that strong feelings still existed. The composer himself put it strongly enough when he said of this passage: "Here is where I tore myself free from my last love." A work containing not only this but also self-confessed references to Clara – in the rising motif at the start of the same movement, and in the similarly rising motif (written ten years earlier) which yearningly opens the slow movement and reappears in the finale – can only be called autobiographical, however improbable this may seem in music by Brahms.

It is certainly a more complex and cryptic work than the first sextet, reminding us that Karl Geiringer’s famous description of the composer as "Brahms the Ambiguous’" supplied a sharper picture of his contradictory personality than most comments of its kind. The G minor scherzo which forms the second movement is more of an anti-scherzo, rather too slow and rather too serious to justify the title, though its stamping trio section is jovial enough. In the E minor theme and variations which form the adagio the mood is initially restrained and sad, but soon erupts with what sounds almost like anger. As in the previous sextet, the music is both romantic and in manner grandly baroque. The finale goes through its paces with a sort of tremulous vitality which manages to bring the work to its close in what sounds like genuinely happy vein.

© Conrad Wilson

SCO Ensemble
-

An unmissable concert for anyone who loves the ripe emotions, high drama and rich colour of late Romantic music. On the surface, Schoenberg’s dark and turbulent drama contrasts utterly with Brahms’ rather idyllic Sextet. Yet personal, painful and heartfelt love stories lie just beneath the surface of both works.

Pires Plays Beethoven

Thu 13th May

19:30, Usher Hall, Edinburgh

Tickets: £8.50-£26 (concessions available)

Mendelssohn
Overture, The Fair Melusine

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Programme note

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Overture, The Fair Melusine, Op 32 (1833)

Mendelssohn thought his Fair Melusine overture “the best” and “most intimate” thing he had ever produced, an opinion shared, as he informed his beloved sister Fanny in a letter, by many of the people who heard him conduct it in Leipzig in 1836. On the other hand, he was irked by an excessively descriptive review of it by a German critic, whose references to red coral, green sea-beasts, magic castles, and deep seas were, he complained, “all rubbish.”

Yet Melusine is undoubtedly a magical piece, sufficiently watery in its imagery to incorporate an unmistakable foretaste of the rippling prelude to Das Rheingold, in which the notoriously anti-semitic Wagner paid direct tribute to a composer he professed to despise. While writing Melusine, Mendelssohn was in fact a resident of the Rhineland, working in Dusseldorf, conducting at the Lower Rhine Festival, developing his talents as a Sunday landscape painter and, on one occasion, bathing naked in the river when the Queen of Bavaria’s boat suddenly sailed round a bend. Well, at least his distinguished musical admirer Queen Victoria was not on board.

The overture’s inspiration lay obliquely in an opera on the same subject by Conradin Kreutzer, which the suave but irritable Mendelssohn had seen and disliked. Annoyed by the fact that Kreutzer’s overture was encored, he swore that he could write a better one, which people would receive “more inwardly.” With his love for musical gossamer, the story of the watersprite Melusine (recognisable relative of Dvořák’s Rusalka and Henze’s Ondine) suited him perfectly. His mellifluous opening theme immediately catches the mood, and the other themes sustain it. Yet there is more than mellowness here. As Edinburgh’s distinguished musical essayist Donald Francis Tovey once put it, the overture has an underlying agitation and sorrow, reflecting what can happen when a watersprite is permitted to marry a mortal on condition that her true nature is concealed.

Though the art of the concert overture, or what eventually became the symphonic poem, had its roots in Beethoven, Mendelssohn developed it into something fresh, in which lyrical and pictorial elements gained new importance without suppressing Beethovenian sonata-form. Into this classical structure, Mendelssohn inserted music suggestive of Melusine’s mysterious beauty and of her spouse’s suspicions. But if there are passing sounds of despair, the ending is calm - which tells us, perhaps, as much about Mendelssohn as about Melusine. As for Beethoven, he once toyed with Grillparzer’s Melusine libretto which Kreutzer eventually set, but the idea failed to grip him.

© Conrad Wilson
Beethoven
Piano Concerto No 4 in G major, Op 58

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Programme note

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto No 4 in G major, Op 58 (1806)

Allegro moderato
Andante con moto
Rondo: Vivace

Between his third and fourth piano concertos, Beethoven wrestled with his increasing deafness and the intractable first version of Fidelio. The slow movement of the Piano Concerto No 4 symbolises both his patience and impatience at the time, but the entire work is a study in opposites, the gentle opening of the first movement transforming itself, at the start of the recapitulation, into a grand and triumphant statement, the finale serenely vivacious on the one hand, loud and bludgeoning on the other. Too many commentators, in calling this the most feminine of Beethoven’s piano concertos, ignore its more macho side. Beethoven himself was said to play it impulsively, even "roguishly," and at terrific speed, perhaps to the disadvantage of its poetry, though not necessarily to the concerto as a whole, which can all too easily be allowed to lose momentum.

Yet the poetry of the opening bars is not to be gainsaid, even if the rhythm - if not the mood - is reminiscent of the start of the fifth symphony, as must have been noticeable when the two works were paired in a famous concert, packed with premieres, in Vienna on 22 December 1808. The symphony greatly startled its first listeners but the concerto also had its vanguard features, albeit of a less obviously sensational sort. Never before had a leading composer begun a concerto with a piano solo (though Mozart came close to it in his E flat Concerto, K271). The orchestra’s entry in an audibly alien key is no less surprising. Within a few quiet bars, Beethoven destroyed all his audience’s preconceptions about concerto form. The piano’s recently extended keyboard is exploited in music of ethereal sweetness, though the music is also energised by much use of sparkling triplet figures.

The short Andante, an enigmatically baroque dialogue between soloist and stark strings, may represent no more than a soft answer turning away wrath. The music, at any rate, is curiously pictorial, and Orpheus taming the Furies has often been cited as its secret message. The strings start with a scowl, the piano responds with balm. But gradually the strings relent and the piano, with a final eloquent plea, wins the debate. Then, via one of Beethoven’s seemingly perverse modulations, from E minor to C major in the context of a G major concerto, the finale begins without a break. In structure it is one of Beethoven's characteristically idiosyncratic rondos. The main theme starts in one key and ends in another. The humour is sometimes mellow, sometimes pungent, the closing surge of energy sunlit and exhilarating. Yet there is an irascible quality which lies just below the surface of this music, ever ready to erupt and remind you who the composer is.

© Conrad Wilson
Mozart
Symphony No 39 in E-flat, K 543

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Programme note

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)
Symphony No 39 in E-flat, K 543 (1788)

Adagio - Allegro
Andante con moto
Menuetto; Trio
Finale: Allegro

In 1787, Emperor Joseph II took Austria into a war against Turkey in order to support its ally Russia: in all his long reign, few of his actions made him less popular The fighting may have taken place far from home, but its economic impact in Vienna was debilitating. Many of the rich abandoned the city – either because the men were called up to fight, or to avoid being called up in their estates. The resultant surge in unemployment combined with rampant inflation and general anger about the unpopular war to spark social unrest. Two opera companies closed, and the number of concerts, balls and salons taking place in Vienna plummeted. For Mozart this must all have been tryingly bad news – and as the war continued until August 1791 (just 4 month before Mozart himself died) it helps explain some of the struggles that he faced during his last years. It may also go some way to explaining why it was that Mozart found the time and the inclination during the Summer of 1788 to turn his attention to writing three enormous symphonies of a scale and weight that surpassed all but two of his earlier symphonies; and why, having composed them, he then ignored the genre and wrote no more before he died in 1791. It seems unlikely that he hoped for performances – though he was an optimist. Instead, perhaps he hoped to make money through dedications or for publication, rather than performance. The fact that there are three symphonies supports this view as it was common to publish works in threes or sixes.

The year of the symphonies, 1788, is fascinating for Mozart scholars. Cast an eye across the catalogue of works he created in any given year and most of what you find is an astounding number of one-off occasional pieces which Mozart seemed to churn out constantly. Among these, the three major symphonies stand out as does an unusually large number of canons. These were essentially technical exercises undertaken to test his skill in counterpoint and harmony. Again, they may have been a response to enforced leisure, but they show the man inclined to hone technique at this time, to challenge himself. The marvellous hallmark of all three (or even the last four) of the last symphonies is the extent to which Mozart married just such ‘learned’ thinking with the drama that characterises his operas at their most glorious.

This symphony has long had the misfortune to be overshadowed by its fellows: No 40 with its tempestuous minor key drama captivated the Romantics, while the glories of the ‘Jupiter’, together with its status as Mozart’s final symphony, guarantee it a supreme position in the canon. Yet this wonderful piece shows, perhaps more than any other, Mozart the dramatist masterfully building tensions and easing them; moving effortlessly between sunlight and threat. Hear how the splendid opening darkens within a minute to reach a point of crisis, only to find a more equitable bearing once the first movement proper begins. The control and pacing are impeccable. One other feature gives this symphony a special place among Mozart’s symphonies. It was the first in which he opted for clarinets in place of oboes, They step into the limelight in the Trio, which is an actual folk tune (a Ländler) that Mozart adapted. But elsewhere they are ubiquituous, adding a glow to the texture. which gives it what Sir Charles Mackerras called ‘an orchestral colour unique in Mozart’s symphonies’ in his note to his recording of this piece with the SCO.

© Svend Brown

Trevor Pinnock
conductor
Maria João Pires
piano

The season ends on a high with a rare Scottish appearance by Maria João Pires. One of the truly great pianists in the world today, famed for the beauty of her tone and the lyricism and depth of her interpretations, Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto is an ideal work for her. Trevor Pinnock, making a welcome return to the SCO, closes the year as it began – with Mozart at his greatest.

Pires Plays Beethoven

Fri 14th May

19:30, City Halls, Glasgow

Tickets: £11-£24 (concessions available)

Mendelssohn
Overture, The Fair Melusine

Print

Programme note

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Overture, The Fair Melusine, Op 32 (1833)

Mendelssohn thought his Fair Melusine overture “the best” and “most intimate” thing he had ever produced, an opinion shared, as he informed his beloved sister Fanny in a letter, by many of the people who heard him conduct it in Leipzig in 1836. On the other hand, he was irked by an excessively descriptive review of it by a German critic, whose references to red coral, green sea-beasts, magic castles, and deep seas were, he complained, “all rubbish.”

Yet Melusine is undoubtedly a magical piece, sufficiently watery in its imagery to incorporate an unmistakable foretaste of the rippling prelude to Das Rheingold, in which the notoriously anti-semitic Wagner paid direct tribute to a composer he professed to despise. While writing Melusine, Mendelssohn was in fact a resident of the Rhineland, working in Dusseldorf, conducting at the Lower Rhine Festival, developing his talents as a Sunday landscape painter and, on one occasion, bathing naked in the river when the Queen of Bavaria’s boat suddenly sailed round a bend. Well, at least his distinguished musical admirer Queen Victoria was not on board.

The overture’s inspiration lay obliquely in an opera on the same subject by Conradin Kreutzer, which the suave but irritable Mendelssohn had seen and disliked. Annoyed by the fact that Kreutzer’s overture was encored, he swore that he could write a better one, which people would receive “more inwardly.” With his love for musical gossamer, the story of the watersprite Melusine (recognisable relative of Dvořák’s Rusalka and Henze’s Ondine) suited him perfectly. His mellifluous opening theme immediately catches the mood, and the other themes sustain it. Yet there is more than mellowness here. As Edinburgh’s distinguished musical essayist Donald Francis Tovey once put it, the overture has an underlying agitation and sorrow, reflecting what can happen when a watersprite is permitted to marry a mortal on condition that her true nature is concealed.

Though the art of the concert overture, or what eventually became the symphonic poem, had its roots in Beethoven, Mendelssohn developed it into something fresh, in which lyrical and pictorial elements gained new importance without suppressing Beethovenian sonata-form. Into this classical structure, Mendelssohn inserted music suggestive of Melusine’s mysterious beauty and of her spouse’s suspicions. But if there are passing sounds of despair, the ending is calm - which tells us, perhaps, as much about Mendelssohn as about Melusine. As for Beethoven, he once toyed with Grillparzer’s Melusine libretto which Kreutzer eventually set, but the idea failed to grip him.

© Conrad Wilson
Beethoven
Piano Concerto No 4 in G major, Op 58

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Programme note

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto No 4 in G major, Op 58 (1806)

Allegro moderato
Andante con moto
Rondo: Vivace

Between his third and fourth piano concertos, Beethoven wrestled with his increasing deafness and the intractable first version of Fidelio. The slow movement of the Piano Concerto No 4 symbolises both his patience and impatience at the time, but the entire work is a study in opposites, the gentle opening of the first movement transforming itself, at the start of the recapitulation, into a grand and triumphant statement, the finale serenely vivacious on the one hand, loud and bludgeoning on the other. Too many commentators, in calling this the most feminine of Beethoven’s piano concertos, ignore its more macho side. Beethoven himself was said to play it impulsively, even "roguishly," and at terrific speed, perhaps to the disadvantage of its poetry, though not necessarily to the concerto as a whole, which can all too easily be allowed to lose momentum.

Yet the poetry of the opening bars is not to be gainsaid, even if the rhythm - if not the mood - is reminiscent of the start of the fifth symphony, as must have been noticeable when the two works were paired in a famous concert, packed with premieres, in Vienna on 22 December 1808. The symphony greatly startled its first listeners but the concerto also had its vanguard features, albeit of a less obviously sensational sort. Never before had a leading composer begun a concerto with a piano solo (though Mozart came close to it in his E flat Concerto, K271). The orchestra’s entry in an audibly alien key is no less surprising. Within a few quiet bars, Beethoven destroyed all his audience’s preconceptions about concerto form. The piano’s recently extended keyboard is exploited in music of ethereal sweetness, though the music is also energised by much use of sparkling triplet figures.

The short Andante, an enigmatically baroque dialogue between soloist and stark strings, may represent no more than a soft answer turning away wrath. The music, at any rate, is curiously pictorial, and Orpheus taming the Furies has often been cited as its secret message. The strings start with a scowl, the piano responds with balm. But gradually the strings relent and the piano, with a final eloquent plea, wins the debate. Then, via one of Beethoven’s seemingly perverse modulations, from E minor to C major in the context of a G major concerto, the finale begins without a break. In structure it is one of Beethoven's characteristically idiosyncratic rondos. The main theme starts in one key and ends in another. The humour is sometimes mellow, sometimes pungent, the closing surge of energy sunlit and exhilarating. Yet there is an irascible quality which lies just below the surface of this music, ever ready to erupt and remind you who the composer is.

© Conrad Wilson
Mozart
Symphony No 39 in E-flat, K 543

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Programme note

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)
Symphony No 39 in E-flat, K 543 (1788)

Adagio - Allegro
Andante con moto
Menuetto; Trio
Finale: Allegro

In 1787, Emperor Joseph II took Austria into a war against Turkey in order to support its ally Russia: in all his long reign, few of his actions made him less popular The fighting may have taken place far from home, but its economic impact in Vienna was debilitating. Many of the rich abandoned the city – either because the men were called up to fight, or to avoid being called up in their estates. The resultant surge in unemployment combined with rampant inflation and general anger about the unpopular war to spark social unrest. Two opera companies closed, and the number of concerts, balls and salons taking place in Vienna plummeted. For Mozart this must all have been tryingly bad news – and as the war continued until August 1791 (just 4 month before Mozart himself died) it helps explain some of the struggles that he faced during his last years. It may also go some way to explaining why it was that Mozart found the time and the inclination during the Summer of 1788 to turn his attention to writing three enormous symphonies of a scale and weight that surpassed all but two of his earlier symphonies; and why, having composed them, he then ignored the genre and wrote no more before he died in 1791. It seems unlikely that he hoped for performances – though he was an optimist. Instead, perhaps he hoped to make money through dedications or for publication, rather than performance. The fact that there are three symphonies supports this view as it was common to publish works in threes or sixes.

The year of the symphonies, 1788, is fascinating for Mozart scholars. Cast an eye across the catalogue of works he created in any given year and most of what you find is an astounding number of one-off occasional pieces which Mozart seemed to churn out constantly. Among these, the three major symphonies stand out as does an unusually large number of canons. These were essentially technical exercises undertaken to test his skill in counterpoint and harmony. Again, they may have been a response to enforced leisure, but they show the man inclined to hone technique at this time, to challenge himself. The marvellous hallmark of all three (or even the last four) of the last symphonies is the extent to which Mozart married just such ‘learned’ thinking with the drama that characterises his operas at their most glorious.

This symphony has long had the misfortune to be overshadowed by its fellows: No 40 with its tempestuous minor key drama captivated the Romantics, while the glories of the ‘Jupiter’, together with its status as Mozart’s final symphony, guarantee it a supreme position in the canon. Yet this wonderful piece shows, perhaps more than any other, Mozart the dramatist masterfully building tensions and easing them; moving effortlessly between sunlight and threat. Hear how the splendid opening darkens within a minute to reach a point of crisis, only to find a more equitable bearing once the first movement proper begins. The control and pacing are impeccable. One other feature gives this symphony a special place among Mozart’s symphonies. It was the first in which he opted for clarinets in place of oboes, They step into the limelight in the Trio, which is an actual folk tune (a Ländler) that Mozart adapted. But elsewhere they are ubiquituous, adding a glow to the texture. which gives it what Sir Charles Mackerras called ‘an orchestral colour unique in Mozart’s symphonies’ in his note to his recording of this piece with the SCO.

© Svend Brown

Trevor Pinnock
conductor
Maria João Pires
piano

Pires Plays Beethoven

Sat 15th May

19:30, Music Hall, Aberdeen

Tickets: £8.50-£19 (concessions available)

Mendelssohn
Overture, The Fair Melusine

Print

Programme note

Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Overture, The Fair Melusine, Op 32 (1833)

Mendelssohn thought his Fair Melusine overture “the best” and “most intimate” thing he had ever produced, an opinion shared, as he informed his beloved sister Fanny in a letter, by many of the people who heard him conduct it in Leipzig in 1836. On the other hand, he was irked by an excessively descriptive review of it by a German critic, whose references to red coral, green sea-beasts, magic castles, and deep seas were, he complained, “all rubbish.”

Yet Melusine is undoubtedly a magical piece, sufficiently watery in its imagery to incorporate an unmistakable foretaste of the rippling prelude to Das Rheingold, in which the notoriously anti-semitic Wagner paid direct tribute to a composer he professed to despise. While writing Melusine, Mendelssohn was in fact a resident of the Rhineland, working in Dusseldorf, conducting at the Lower Rhine Festival, developing his talents as a Sunday landscape painter and, on one occasion, bathing naked in the river when the Queen of Bavaria’s boat suddenly sailed round a bend. Well, at least his distinguished musical admirer Queen Victoria was not on board.

The overture’s inspiration lay obliquely in an opera on the same subject by Conradin Kreutzer, which the suave but irritable Mendelssohn had seen and disliked. Annoyed by the fact that Kreutzer’s overture was encored, he swore that he could write a better one, which people would receive “more inwardly.” With his love for musical gossamer, the story of the watersprite Melusine (recognisable relative of Dvořák’s Rusalka and Henze’s Ondine) suited him perfectly. His mellifluous opening theme immediately catches the mood, and the other themes sustain it. Yet there is more than mellowness here. As Edinburgh’s distinguished musical essayist Donald Francis Tovey once put it, the overture has an underlying agitation and sorrow, reflecting what can happen when a watersprite is permitted to marry a mortal on condition that her true nature is concealed.

Though the art of the concert overture, or what eventually became the symphonic poem, had its roots in Beethoven, Mendelssohn developed it into something fresh, in which lyrical and pictorial elements gained new importance without suppressing Beethovenian sonata-form. Into this classical structure, Mendelssohn inserted music suggestive of Melusine’s mysterious beauty and of her spouse’s suspicions. But if there are passing sounds of despair, the ending is calm - which tells us, perhaps, as much about Mendelssohn as about Melusine. As for Beethoven, he once toyed with Grillparzer’s Melusine libretto which Kreutzer eventually set, but the idea failed to grip him.

© Conrad Wilson
Beethoven
Piano Concerto No 4 in G major, Op 58

Print

Programme note

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Piano Concerto No 4 in G major, Op 58 (1806)

Allegro moderato
Andante con moto
Rondo: Vivace

Between his third and fourth piano concertos, Beethoven wrestled with his increasing deafness and the intractable first version of Fidelio. The slow movement of the Piano Concerto No 4 symbolises both his patience and impatience at the time, but the entire work is a study in opposites, the gentle opening of the first movement transforming itself, at the start of the recapitulation, into a grand and triumphant statement, the finale serenely vivacious on the one hand, loud and bludgeoning on the other. Too many commentators, in calling this the most feminine of Beethoven’s piano concertos, ignore its more macho side. Beethoven himself was said to play it impulsively, even "roguishly," and at terrific speed, perhaps to the disadvantage of its poetry, though not necessarily to the concerto as a whole, which can all too easily be allowed to lose momentum.

Yet the poetry of the opening bars is not to be gainsaid, even if the rhythm - if not the mood - is reminiscent of the start of the fifth symphony, as must have been noticeable when the two works were paired in a famous concert, packed with premieres, in Vienna on 22 December 1808. The symphony greatly startled its first listeners but the concerto also had its vanguard features, albeit of a less obviously sensational sort. Never before had a leading composer begun a concerto with a piano solo (though Mozart came close to it in his E flat Concerto, K271). The orchestra’s entry in an audibly alien key is no less surprising. Within a few quiet bars, Beethoven destroyed all his audience’s preconceptions about concerto form. The piano’s recently extended keyboard is exploited in music of ethereal sweetness, though the music is also energised by much use of sparkling triplet figures.

The short Andante, an enigmatically baroque dialogue between soloist and stark strings, may represent no more than a soft answer turning away wrath. The music, at any rate, is curiously pictorial, and Orpheus taming the Furies has often been cited as its secret message. The strings start with a scowl, the piano responds with balm. But gradually the strings relent and the piano, with a final eloquent plea, wins the debate. Then, via one of Beethoven’s seemingly perverse modulations, from E minor to C major in the context of a G major concerto, the finale begins without a break. In structure it is one of Beethoven's characteristically idiosyncratic rondos. The main theme starts in one key and ends in another. The humour is sometimes mellow, sometimes pungent, the closing surge of energy sunlit and exhilarating. Yet there is an irascible quality which lies just below the surface of this music, ever ready to erupt and remind you who the composer is.

© Conrad Wilson
Mozart
Symphony No 39 in E-flat, K 543

Print

Programme note

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791)
Symphony No 39 in E-flat, K 543 (1788)

Adagio - Allegro
Andante con moto
Menuetto; Trio
Finale: Allegro

In 1787, Emperor Joseph II took Austria into a war against Turkey in order to support its ally Russia: in all his long reign, few of his actions made him less popular The fighting may have taken place far from home, but its economic impact in Vienna was debilitating. Many of the rich abandoned the city – either because the men were called up to fight, or to avoid being called up in their estates. The resultant surge in unemployment combined with rampant inflation and general anger about the unpopular war to spark social unrest. Two opera companies closed, and the number of concerts, balls and salons taking place in Vienna plummeted. For Mozart this must all have been tryingly bad news – and as the war continued until August 1791 (just 4 month before Mozart himself died) it helps explain some of the struggles that he faced during his last years. It may also go some way to explaining why it was that Mozart found the time and the inclination during the Summer of 1788 to turn his attention to writing three enormous symphonies of a scale and weight that surpassed all but two of his earlier symphonies; and why, having composed them, he then ignored the genre and wrote no more before he died in 1791. It seems unlikely that he hoped for performances – though he was an optimist. Instead, perhaps he hoped to make money through dedications or for publication, rather than performance. The fact that there are three symphonies supports this view as it was common to publish works in threes or sixes.

The year of the symphonies, 1788, is fascinating for Mozart scholars. Cast an eye across the catalogue of works he created in any given year and most of what you find is an astounding number of one-off occasional pieces which Mozart seemed to churn out constantly. Among these, the three major symphonies stand out as does an unusually large number of canons. These were essentially technical exercises undertaken to test his skill in counterpoint and harmony. Again, they may have been a response to enforced leisure, but they show the man inclined to hone technique at this time, to challenge himself. The marvellous hallmark of all three (or even the last four) of the last symphonies is the extent to which Mozart married just such ‘learned’ thinking with the drama that characterises his operas at their most glorious.

This symphony has long had the misfortune to be overshadowed by its fellows: No 40 with its tempestuous minor key drama captivated the Romantics, while the glories of the ‘Jupiter’, together with its status as Mozart’s final symphony, guarantee it a supreme position in the canon. Yet this wonderful piece shows, perhaps more than any other, Mozart the dramatist masterfully building tensions and easing them; moving effortlessly between sunlight and threat. Hear how the splendid opening darkens within a minute to reach a point of crisis, only to find a more equitable bearing once the first movement proper begins. The control and pacing are impeccable. One other feature gives this symphony a special place among Mozart’s symphonies. It was the first in which he opted for clarinets in place of oboes, They step into the limelight in the Trio, which is an actual folk tune (a Ländler) that Mozart adapted. But elsewhere they are ubiquituous, adding a glow to the texture. which gives it what Sir Charles Mackerras called ‘an orchestral colour unique in Mozart’s symphonies’ in his note to his recording of this piece with the SCO.

© Svend Brown

Trevor Pinnock
conductor
Maria João Pires
piano

SCO and Nicola Benedetti

Wed 26th May

19:30, Duns Volunteer Hall

Tickets: £12 adults, £8 senior, £6 disabled/carer, £5 children/student/unemployed

Programme to include:
Music by Rameau, Vivaldi and Haydn

Print

Programme note

Christian Curnyn
director/harpischord
Nicola Benedetti
violin

Glasgow-born Christian Curnyn directs the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in a programme of music by Rameau and Haydn. They are joined by Scottish superstar violinist Nicola Benedetti who, in this short tour across the South of Scotland, celebrates her ancestry performing bravura concertos by Vivaldi, one of the greats of the Italian baroque. Since winning BBC Young Musician of the Year, Benedetti has been one of the country’s most popular instrumentalists, renowned for her musicality and innate ability to enthral audiences.

Tickets are available in person from: Nairns Newsagents, 28 Market Square Duns TD11 3BY and can also be found online at The Booth (booking fee applies)

SCO and Nicola Benedetti

Thu 27th May

19:30, Stranraer Ryan Centre

Tickets: £12 adults, £8 senior, £6 disabled/carer, £5 children/student/unemployed

Programme to include:
Music by Rameau, Vivaldi and Haydn

Print

Programme note

Christian Curnyn
director/harpischord
Nicola Benedetti
violin

SCO and Nicola Benedetti

Fri 28th May

19:30, DG One, Dumfries

Tickets: £16 adults, £12 seniors, £8 disabled/carer, £5 student/children/unemployed

Programme to include:
Music by Rameau, Vivaldi and Haydn

Print

Programme note

Christian Curnyn
director/harpischord
Nicola Benedetti
violin

Tickets are available from DG One Box Office, Hoods Loaning, Dumfries - 01387 243550 and online at www.dgone.co.uk

SCO and Nicola Benedetti

Sat 29th May

19:30, Galashiels Volunteer Hall

Tickets: £12 adults, £8 senior, £6 disabled/carer, £5 children/student/unemployed

Programme to include:
Music by Rameau, Vivaldi and Haydn

Print

Programme note

Christian Curnyn
director/harpischord
Nicola Benedetti
violin

Please note this performance is sold out.

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Company Registration Number: 75079. A charity registered in Scotland No. SC015039.

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