Concerts & Tickets
Collard Plays Ravel
- Takemitsu
Programme note
Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
How Slow the Wind (1991)"In music I found my raison d'être as a man. After the war, music was the only thing. Choosing to be in music clarified my identity." So began Tōru Takemitsu’s career as a composer and with it his own exploration of the meaning of nationality. Takemitsu was born in Tokyo, Japan, but his relationship with Japanese music was complicated by the onset of war during his teenage years. Western classical music was banned in Japan during this time, and Takemitsu’s only experience of non-Japanese musical traditions came from the illicit gramophone sessions he shared with his colleagues while serving the term of his military service. The ban on Western music only intrigued Takemitsu all the more, and when the war was over he took every opportunity to listen to the music broadcast on the US Armed Forces radio service. But as his love for Western music grew, so too did his regard for Japanese music diminish, becoming tainted by ‘the bitter memories of war’.
As Takemitsu’s career developed, however, and he began to receive the attention and admiration of his contemporaries, his thoughts turned towards his homeland. Looking back at the end of his career he declared: "I must express my deep and sincere gratitude to John Cage… For a long period I struggled to avoid being 'Japanese', to avoid 'Japanese' qualities. It was largely through my contact with John Cage that I came to recognize the value of my own tradition." As his renewed interest in Japanese music took hold, Takemitsu became increasingly interested in exploring the similarities between the two musical cultures, integrating Japanese instruments into the traditional orchestra and combining the tonal language of both traditions. Takemitsu also drew inspiration from the natural world around him and likened the process of listening to music to walking through a Japanese garden: "A garden is composed of various different elements and sophisticated details that converge to form a harmonious whole. Each element does not exert its individuality, but achieves a state of anonymity - and that is the kind of music that I would like to create."
How Slow the Wind was written during the final years of his life and is inspired by a short three-line poem by Emily Dickinson of the same name: "How slow the wind, how slow the sea, how late their feathers be!" The poem’s elegant simplicity is echoed in the musical structure, with the basic melodic material taken up by each of the instruments in mini-variations. The careful placement of these lines creates an organic growth of sound that eventually transforms effortlessly into a simple D-flat major chord. This represents for the composer: "a milk white light in the midst of darkness".
© Jo Kirkbride
- Ravel
Programme note
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Piano Concerto in G majorAllegramente - meno vivo - tempo primo
Adagio assai
PrestoIf any composer found the musical equivalent of the style of the decorative arts of the late ’20s and early ’30s it was Ravel. In fact, his Piano Concerto in G, which was first performed in Paris in 1932, is an essentially art-deco score. Thinking at one point of calling it a divertimento rather than a concerto, Ravel fashioned a work with the ziggurat angularity, bright colours, geometrical wit and jazzy allusions in vogue at the time.
The work begins with a crack of the whip, bright piano figuration and a cheerful piccolo tune which is later taken up by a brave solo trumpet. On the second solo entry the pianist seems uncertain where to go. There is a suggestion here of a Spanish guitar improvisation and it is really the percussion and a drawling clarinet and trumpet which suggest that the blues might make a better second subject. The soloist generously supplies two such melodies. At the appropriate point in the recapitulation, after the breathless toccata of a development section, a harp and then first horn linger lovingly over the first of the two blues tunes. The piano compensates by basing its cadenza on the second.
The Adagio assai is not as far from the world of jazz as it might seem. As Ravel confessed, the apparently effortless linear continuity of its opening theme was developed by studious reference to the Larghetto of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet - but not without making clear allusions to the second blues theme of the preceding Allegramente. Introduced by the piano over even quavers in the left hand and later recapitulated by cor anglais, the main theme dominates all but the brief middle section of the movement.
The final Presto begins with a main theme in a four-note geometric pattern, a piano ostinato, and music-hall interjection in alien keys from clarinet, trombone and piccolo. Disparate thematic elements - a gallop on the piano, a horn call converted into flapper tune by the trumpet - are brilliantly integrated with the others in a non-stop continuity of virtuosity involving not only the tireless soloist but also the hard worked bassoon.
© Gerald Larner
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 4 in B flat major, Op 60 (1806)Adagio – Allegro vivace
Adagio
Allegro vivace
Allegro ma non troppoThe rule of thumb about Beethoven’s symphonies used to be that the odd-numbered ones were masculine, assertive, dramatic, heroic; the even-numbered ones feminine, lyrical, good-tempered, humorous – and, apart from the Pastoral, slightly less popular. Though Schumann hailed the Fourth Symphony as a “slender Grecian maiden”, it was always the Cinderella of the symphonies, never quite glamorous enough to distract attention from Nos 3 and 5, yet notable for its pace and its moments of pungency. To dismiss it as inferior would be a profound mistake. It is a work whose lyricism is constantly threatened by thudding rhythms and by patches of darkness from which the music emerges into sudden sunlight.
Composed in 1806, alongside the Fifth Symphony, it begins very differently with a slow, mysterious, somewhat ominous introduction whose apparent inactivity provoked Weber’s famous jeer about a few notes spread over five minutes. Certainly this veiled, hesitant music, with its probing harmonies and softly stalking tread, must have perplexed more people than Weber among its early listeners. But suddenly, with a series of loud upward thrusts, the pulse quickens and a hammering theme, previously hinted at, is stated boldly by the full orchestra. The Allegro section, filled with perky little woodwind themes and abrupt changes of direction, is at last in action. Though the music is sometimes reduced to the merest thread of tone, an immense crescendo over a drum-roll - one of the most exciting moments in the entire symphony - signals the start of the recapitulation.
In the Adagio, the rocking rhythm heard at the outset forms the movement’s steady heartbeat, sometimes soft, sometimes loud. Much admired by Berlioz, who said it seized him with emotion, the music sings and sighs its way towards a hauntingly nocturnal theme for clarinet with a tender, decoratively muted violin accompaniment.
Swinging cross-rhythms in the third movement show the title menuetto to be a Beethovenian understatement (though Furtwangler conducted it famously slowly). The music, in fact, is a sardonic scherzo, one of Beethoven’s double ones in which the trio section - a sweet pastoral interlude in which the oboe plays a star role - innovatively comes round twice.
Although Beethoven claimed that he learnt little from his composition lessons with Haydn, he provided his Fourth Symphony with a remarkably Haydnesque finale. The main theme and its spirited successors are spun right round the orchestra in exhilaratingly perpetual motion. Even the bassoon is granted a solo spot when, at the start of the recapitulation, it delivers its own whizzing version of the main theme.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- piano
SCO Principal Conductor Robin Ticciati conducts the first of two concerts in Perth Concert Hall this Season. Forming part of the Perth Concert Series (with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra), this concert features Takemitsu's How Slow the Wind and Beethoven romantic Symphony No 4. Acclaimed pianist Jean-Phillipe Collard joins the Orchestra for Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major.
***REGRETFULLY THIS CONCERT HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS***
Collard Plays Ravel
- Takemitsu
Programme note
Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
How Slow the Wind (1991)"In music I found my raison d'être as a man. After the war, music was the only thing. Choosing to be in music clarified my identity." So began Tōru Takemitsu’s career as a composer and with it his own exploration of the meaning of nationality. Takemitsu was born in Tokyo, Japan, but his relationship with Japanese music was complicated by the onset of war during his teenage years. Western classical music was banned in Japan during this time, and Takemitsu’s only experience of non-Japanese musical traditions came from the illicit gramophone sessions he shared with his colleagues while serving the term of his military service. The ban on Western music only intrigued Takemitsu all the more, and when the war was over he took every opportunity to listen to the music broadcast on the US Armed Forces radio service. But as his love for Western music grew, so too did his regard for Japanese music diminish, becoming tainted by ‘the bitter memories of war’.
As Takemitsu’s career developed, however, and he began to receive the attention and admiration of his contemporaries, his thoughts turned towards his homeland. Looking back at the end of his career he declared: "I must express my deep and sincere gratitude to John Cage… For a long period I struggled to avoid being 'Japanese', to avoid 'Japanese' qualities. It was largely through my contact with John Cage that I came to recognize the value of my own tradition." As his renewed interest in Japanese music took hold, Takemitsu became increasingly interested in exploring the similarities between the two musical cultures, integrating Japanese instruments into the traditional orchestra and combining the tonal language of both traditions. Takemitsu also drew inspiration from the natural world around him and likened the process of listening to music to walking through a Japanese garden: "A garden is composed of various different elements and sophisticated details that converge to form a harmonious whole. Each element does not exert its individuality, but achieves a state of anonymity - and that is the kind of music that I would like to create."
How Slow the Wind was written during the final years of his life and is inspired by a short three-line poem by Emily Dickinson of the same name: "How slow the wind, how slow the sea, how late their feathers be!" The poem’s elegant simplicity is echoed in the musical structure, with the basic melodic material taken up by each of the instruments in mini-variations. The careful placement of these lines creates an organic growth of sound that eventually transforms effortlessly into a simple D-flat major chord. This represents for the composer: "a milk white light in the midst of darkness".
© Jo Kirkbride
- Ravel
Programme note
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Piano Concerto in G majorAllegramente - meno vivo - tempo primo
Adagio assai
PrestoIf any composer found the musical equivalent of the style of the decorative arts of the late ’20s and early ’30s it was Ravel. In fact, his Piano Concerto in G, which was first performed in Paris in 1932, is an essentially art-deco score. Thinking at one point of calling it a divertimento rather than a concerto, Ravel fashioned a work with the ziggurat angularity, bright colours, geometrical wit and jazzy allusions in vogue at the time.
The work begins with a crack of the whip, bright piano figuration and a cheerful piccolo tune which is later taken up by a brave solo trumpet. On the second solo entry the pianist seems uncertain where to go. There is a suggestion here of a Spanish guitar improvisation and it is really the percussion and a drawling clarinet and trumpet which suggest that the blues might make a better second subject. The soloist generously supplies two such melodies. At the appropriate point in the recapitulation, after the breathless toccata of a development section, a harp and then first horn linger lovingly over the first of the two blues tunes. The piano compensates by basing its cadenza on the second.
The Adagio assai is not as far from the world of jazz as it might seem. As Ravel confessed, the apparently effortless linear continuity of its opening theme was developed by studious reference to the Larghetto of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet - but not without making clear allusions to the second blues theme of the preceding Allegramente. Introduced by the piano over even quavers in the left hand and later recapitulated by cor anglais, the main theme dominates all but the brief middle section of the movement.
The final Presto begins with a main theme in a four-note geometric pattern, a piano ostinato, and music-hall interjection in alien keys from clarinet, trombone and piccolo. Disparate thematic elements - a gallop on the piano, a horn call converted into flapper tune by the trumpet - are brilliantly integrated with the others in a non-stop continuity of virtuosity involving not only the tireless soloist but also the hard worked bassoon.
© Gerald Larner
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 4 in B flat major, Op 60 (1806)Adagio – Allegro vivace
Adagio
Allegro vivace
Allegro ma non troppoThe rule of thumb about Beethoven’s symphonies used to be that the odd-numbered ones were masculine, assertive, dramatic, heroic; the even-numbered ones feminine, lyrical, good-tempered, humorous – and, apart from the Pastoral, slightly less popular. Though Schumann hailed the Fourth Symphony as a “slender Grecian maiden”, it was always the Cinderella of the symphonies, never quite glamorous enough to distract attention from Nos 3 and 5, yet notable for its pace and its moments of pungency. To dismiss it as inferior would be a profound mistake. It is a work whose lyricism is constantly threatened by thudding rhythms and by patches of darkness from which the music emerges into sudden sunlight.
Composed in 1806, alongside the Fifth Symphony, it begins very differently with a slow, mysterious, somewhat ominous introduction whose apparent inactivity provoked Weber’s famous jeer about a few notes spread over five minutes. Certainly this veiled, hesitant music, with its probing harmonies and softly stalking tread, must have perplexed more people than Weber among its early listeners. But suddenly, with a series of loud upward thrusts, the pulse quickens and a hammering theme, previously hinted at, is stated boldly by the full orchestra. The Allegro section, filled with perky little woodwind themes and abrupt changes of direction, is at last in action. Though the music is sometimes reduced to the merest thread of tone, an immense crescendo over a drum-roll - one of the most exciting moments in the entire symphony - signals the start of the recapitulation.
In the Adagio, the rocking rhythm heard at the outset forms the movement’s steady heartbeat, sometimes soft, sometimes loud. Much admired by Berlioz, who said it seized him with emotion, the music sings and sighs its way towards a hauntingly nocturnal theme for clarinet with a tender, decoratively muted violin accompaniment.
Swinging cross-rhythms in the third movement show the title menuetto to be a Beethovenian understatement (though Furtwangler conducted it famously slowly). The music, in fact, is a sardonic scherzo, one of Beethoven’s double ones in which the trio section - a sweet pastoral interlude in which the oboe plays a star role - innovatively comes round twice.
Although Beethoven claimed that he learnt little from his composition lessons with Haydn, he provided his Fourth Symphony with a remarkably Haydnesque finale. The main theme and its spirited successors are spun right round the orchestra in exhilaratingly perpetual motion. Even the bassoon is granted a solo spot when, at the start of the recapitulation, it delivers its own whizzing version of the main theme.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- piano
Taken together, this and next week’s (Vienna Centuries) concerts make an intriguing pair. Mozart was always on Ravel’s mind, to the point of adulation; Beethoven had a more complicated effect on Brahms who was both fired up and inhibited by him when it came to writing symphonies. Beethoven’s Fourth sings with all the ardour and lyricism of the first Romantics (while Brahms’ Fourth is among the mellow fruits of late Romanticism), and Ravel’s brilliance contrasts beautifully with the elegiac simplicity of Takemitsu’s miniature masterpiece – one of the SCO’s most widely performed commissions.
Collard Plays Ravel
- Takemitsu
Programme note
Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
How Slow the Wind (1991)"In music I found my raison d'être as a man. After the war, music was the only thing. Choosing to be in music clarified my identity." So began Tōru Takemitsu’s career as a composer and with it his own exploration of the meaning of nationality. Takemitsu was born in Tokyo, Japan, but his relationship with Japanese music was complicated by the onset of war during his teenage years. Western classical music was banned in Japan during this time, and Takemitsu’s only experience of non-Japanese musical traditions came from the illicit gramophone sessions he shared with his colleagues while serving the term of his military service. The ban on Western music only intrigued Takemitsu all the more, and when the war was over he took every opportunity to listen to the music broadcast on the US Armed Forces radio service. But as his love for Western music grew, so too did his regard for Japanese music diminish, becoming tainted by ‘the bitter memories of war’.
As Takemitsu’s career developed, however, and he began to receive the attention and admiration of his contemporaries, his thoughts turned towards his homeland. Looking back at the end of his career he declared: "I must express my deep and sincere gratitude to John Cage… For a long period I struggled to avoid being 'Japanese', to avoid 'Japanese' qualities. It was largely through my contact with John Cage that I came to recognize the value of my own tradition." As his renewed interest in Japanese music took hold, Takemitsu became increasingly interested in exploring the similarities between the two musical cultures, integrating Japanese instruments into the traditional orchestra and combining the tonal language of both traditions. Takemitsu also drew inspiration from the natural world around him and likened the process of listening to music to walking through a Japanese garden: "A garden is composed of various different elements and sophisticated details that converge to form a harmonious whole. Each element does not exert its individuality, but achieves a state of anonymity - and that is the kind of music that I would like to create."
How Slow the Wind was written during the final years of his life and is inspired by a short three-line poem by Emily Dickinson of the same name: "How slow the wind, how slow the sea, how late their feathers be!" The poem’s elegant simplicity is echoed in the musical structure, with the basic melodic material taken up by each of the instruments in mini-variations. The careful placement of these lines creates an organic growth of sound that eventually transforms effortlessly into a simple D-flat major chord. This represents for the composer: "a milk white light in the midst of darkness".
© Jo Kirkbride
- Ravel
Programme note
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Piano Concerto in G majorAllegramente - meno vivo - tempo primo
Adagio assai
PrestoIf any composer found the musical equivalent of the style of the decorative arts of the late ’20s and early ’30s it was Ravel. In fact, his Piano Concerto in G, which was first performed in Paris in 1932, is an essentially art-deco score. Thinking at one point of calling it a divertimento rather than a concerto, Ravel fashioned a work with the ziggurat angularity, bright colours, geometrical wit and jazzy allusions in vogue at the time.
The work begins with a crack of the whip, bright piano figuration and a cheerful piccolo tune which is later taken up by a brave solo trumpet. On the second solo entry the pianist seems uncertain where to go. There is a suggestion here of a Spanish guitar improvisation and it is really the percussion and a drawling clarinet and trumpet which suggest that the blues might make a better second subject. The soloist generously supplies two such melodies. At the appropriate point in the recapitulation, after the breathless toccata of a development section, a harp and then first horn linger lovingly over the first of the two blues tunes. The piano compensates by basing its cadenza on the second.
The Adagio assai is not as far from the world of jazz as it might seem. As Ravel confessed, the apparently effortless linear continuity of its opening theme was developed by studious reference to the Larghetto of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet - but not without making clear allusions to the second blues theme of the preceding Allegramente. Introduced by the piano over even quavers in the left hand and later recapitulated by cor anglais, the main theme dominates all but the brief middle section of the movement.
The final Presto begins with a main theme in a four-note geometric pattern, a piano ostinato, and music-hall interjection in alien keys from clarinet, trombone and piccolo. Disparate thematic elements - a gallop on the piano, a horn call converted into flapper tune by the trumpet - are brilliantly integrated with the others in a non-stop continuity of virtuosity involving not only the tireless soloist but also the hard worked bassoon.
© Gerald Larner
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 4 in B flat major, Op 60 (1806)Adagio – Allegro vivace
Adagio
Allegro vivace
Allegro ma non troppoThe rule of thumb about Beethoven’s symphonies used to be that the odd-numbered ones were masculine, assertive, dramatic, heroic; the even-numbered ones feminine, lyrical, good-tempered, humorous – and, apart from the Pastoral, slightly less popular. Though Schumann hailed the Fourth Symphony as a “slender Grecian maiden”, it was always the Cinderella of the symphonies, never quite glamorous enough to distract attention from Nos 3 and 5, yet notable for its pace and its moments of pungency. To dismiss it as inferior would be a profound mistake. It is a work whose lyricism is constantly threatened by thudding rhythms and by patches of darkness from which the music emerges into sudden sunlight.
Composed in 1806, alongside the Fifth Symphony, it begins very differently with a slow, mysterious, somewhat ominous introduction whose apparent inactivity provoked Weber’s famous jeer about a few notes spread over five minutes. Certainly this veiled, hesitant music, with its probing harmonies and softly stalking tread, must have perplexed more people than Weber among its early listeners. But suddenly, with a series of loud upward thrusts, the pulse quickens and a hammering theme, previously hinted at, is stated boldly by the full orchestra. The Allegro section, filled with perky little woodwind themes and abrupt changes of direction, is at last in action. Though the music is sometimes reduced to the merest thread of tone, an immense crescendo over a drum-roll - one of the most exciting moments in the entire symphony - signals the start of the recapitulation.
In the Adagio, the rocking rhythm heard at the outset forms the movement’s steady heartbeat, sometimes soft, sometimes loud. Much admired by Berlioz, who said it seized him with emotion, the music sings and sighs its way towards a hauntingly nocturnal theme for clarinet with a tender, decoratively muted violin accompaniment.
Swinging cross-rhythms in the third movement show the title menuetto to be a Beethovenian understatement (though Furtwangler conducted it famously slowly). The music, in fact, is a sardonic scherzo, one of Beethoven’s double ones in which the trio section - a sweet pastoral interlude in which the oboe plays a star role - innovatively comes round twice.
Although Beethoven claimed that he learnt little from his composition lessons with Haydn, he provided his Fourth Symphony with a remarkably Haydnesque finale. The main theme and its spirited successors are spun right round the orchestra in exhilaratingly perpetual motion. Even the bassoon is granted a solo spot when, at the start of the recapitulation, it delivers its own whizzing version of the main theme.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- piano
Taken together, this and next week’s concerts make an intriguing pair. Mozart was always on Ravel’s mind, to the point of adulation; Beethoven had a more complicated effect on Brahms who was both fired up and inhibited by him when it came to writing symphonies. Beethoven’s Fourth sings with all the ardour and lyricism of the first Romantics (while Brahms’ Fourth is among the mellow fruits of late Romanticism), and Ravel’s brilliance contrasts beautifully with the elegiac simplicity of Takemitsu’s miniature masterpiece – one of the SCO’s most widely performed commissions.
Collard Plays Ravel
- Takemitsu
Programme note
Tōru Takemitsu (1930-1996)
How Slow the Wind (1991)"In music I found my raison d'être as a man. After the war, music was the only thing. Choosing to be in music clarified my identity." So began Tōru Takemitsu’s career as a composer and with it his own exploration of the meaning of nationality. Takemitsu was born in Tokyo, Japan, but his relationship with Japanese music was complicated by the onset of war during his teenage years. Western classical music was banned in Japan during this time, and Takemitsu’s only experience of non-Japanese musical traditions came from the illicit gramophone sessions he shared with his colleagues while serving the term of his military service. The ban on Western music only intrigued Takemitsu all the more, and when the war was over he took every opportunity to listen to the music broadcast on the US Armed Forces radio service. But as his love for Western music grew, so too did his regard for Japanese music diminish, becoming tainted by ‘the bitter memories of war’.
As Takemitsu’s career developed, however, and he began to receive the attention and admiration of his contemporaries, his thoughts turned towards his homeland. Looking back at the end of his career he declared: "I must express my deep and sincere gratitude to John Cage… For a long period I struggled to avoid being 'Japanese', to avoid 'Japanese' qualities. It was largely through my contact with John Cage that I came to recognize the value of my own tradition." As his renewed interest in Japanese music took hold, Takemitsu became increasingly interested in exploring the similarities between the two musical cultures, integrating Japanese instruments into the traditional orchestra and combining the tonal language of both traditions. Takemitsu also drew inspiration from the natural world around him and likened the process of listening to music to walking through a Japanese garden: "A garden is composed of various different elements and sophisticated details that converge to form a harmonious whole. Each element does not exert its individuality, but achieves a state of anonymity - and that is the kind of music that I would like to create."
How Slow the Wind was written during the final years of his life and is inspired by a short three-line poem by Emily Dickinson of the same name: "How slow the wind, how slow the sea, how late their feathers be!" The poem’s elegant simplicity is echoed in the musical structure, with the basic melodic material taken up by each of the instruments in mini-variations. The careful placement of these lines creates an organic growth of sound that eventually transforms effortlessly into a simple D-flat major chord. This represents for the composer: "a milk white light in the midst of darkness".
© Jo Kirkbride
- Ravel
Programme note
Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)
Piano Concerto in G majorAllegramente - meno vivo - tempo primo
Adagio assai
PrestoIf any composer found the musical equivalent of the style of the decorative arts of the late ’20s and early ’30s it was Ravel. In fact, his Piano Concerto in G, which was first performed in Paris in 1932, is an essentially art-deco score. Thinking at one point of calling it a divertimento rather than a concerto, Ravel fashioned a work with the ziggurat angularity, bright colours, geometrical wit and jazzy allusions in vogue at the time.
The work begins with a crack of the whip, bright piano figuration and a cheerful piccolo tune which is later taken up by a brave solo trumpet. On the second solo entry the pianist seems uncertain where to go. There is a suggestion here of a Spanish guitar improvisation and it is really the percussion and a drawling clarinet and trumpet which suggest that the blues might make a better second subject. The soloist generously supplies two such melodies. At the appropriate point in the recapitulation, after the breathless toccata of a development section, a harp and then first horn linger lovingly over the first of the two blues tunes. The piano compensates by basing its cadenza on the second.
The Adagio assai is not as far from the world of jazz as it might seem. As Ravel confessed, the apparently effortless linear continuity of its opening theme was developed by studious reference to the Larghetto of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet - but not without making clear allusions to the second blues theme of the preceding Allegramente. Introduced by the piano over even quavers in the left hand and later recapitulated by cor anglais, the main theme dominates all but the brief middle section of the movement.
The final Presto begins with a main theme in a four-note geometric pattern, a piano ostinato, and music-hall interjection in alien keys from clarinet, trombone and piccolo. Disparate thematic elements - a gallop on the piano, a horn call converted into flapper tune by the trumpet - are brilliantly integrated with the others in a non-stop continuity of virtuosity involving not only the tireless soloist but also the hard worked bassoon.
© Gerald Larner
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 4 in B flat major, Op 60 (1806)Adagio – Allegro vivace
Adagio
Allegro vivace
Allegro ma non troppoThe rule of thumb about Beethoven’s symphonies used to be that the odd-numbered ones were masculine, assertive, dramatic, heroic; the even-numbered ones feminine, lyrical, good-tempered, humorous – and, apart from the Pastoral, slightly less popular. Though Schumann hailed the Fourth Symphony as a “slender Grecian maiden”, it was always the Cinderella of the symphonies, never quite glamorous enough to distract attention from Nos 3 and 5, yet notable for its pace and its moments of pungency. To dismiss it as inferior would be a profound mistake. It is a work whose lyricism is constantly threatened by thudding rhythms and by patches of darkness from which the music emerges into sudden sunlight.
Composed in 1806, alongside the Fifth Symphony, it begins very differently with a slow, mysterious, somewhat ominous introduction whose apparent inactivity provoked Weber’s famous jeer about a few notes spread over five minutes. Certainly this veiled, hesitant music, with its probing harmonies and softly stalking tread, must have perplexed more people than Weber among its early listeners. But suddenly, with a series of loud upward thrusts, the pulse quickens and a hammering theme, previously hinted at, is stated boldly by the full orchestra. The Allegro section, filled with perky little woodwind themes and abrupt changes of direction, is at last in action. Though the music is sometimes reduced to the merest thread of tone, an immense crescendo over a drum-roll - one of the most exciting moments in the entire symphony - signals the start of the recapitulation.
In the Adagio, the rocking rhythm heard at the outset forms the movement’s steady heartbeat, sometimes soft, sometimes loud. Much admired by Berlioz, who said it seized him with emotion, the music sings and sighs its way towards a hauntingly nocturnal theme for clarinet with a tender, decoratively muted violin accompaniment.
Swinging cross-rhythms in the third movement show the title menuetto to be a Beethovenian understatement (though Furtwangler conducted it famously slowly). The music, in fact, is a sardonic scherzo, one of Beethoven’s double ones in which the trio section - a sweet pastoral interlude in which the oboe plays a star role - innovatively comes round twice.
Although Beethoven claimed that he learnt little from his composition lessons with Haydn, he provided his Fourth Symphony with a remarkably Haydnesque finale. The main theme and its spirited successors are spun right round the orchestra in exhilaratingly perpetual motion. Even the bassoon is granted a solo spot when, at the start of the recapitulation, it delivers its own whizzing version of the main theme.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- piano
Principal Conductor Robin Ticciati conducts the first of three concerts this Season. Beethoven’s Fourth sings with all the ardour and lyricism of the first Romantics, and Ravel’s brilliance contrasts beautifully with the elegiac simplicity of Takemitsu’s miniature masterpiece – one of the SCO’s most widely performed commissions.
***Please note this concert has been cancelled***
CL@SIX - Romantic Winds
- Dvořák
Programme note
Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904)
Czech Suite, Op 39 (1879) [arr. Sheen]Preludium (Pastorale): Allegro moderato
Polka: Allegretto grazioso
Sousedska (Minuetto): Allegro giusto
Romance (Romanza): Andante con moto
Finale (Furiant): PrestoAfter the major-key sweetness of his string serenade and minor-key pungency of his wind serenade, Dvořák contemplated a third serenade, scored for wind and strings, which would complete his intended triptych. Failing to make headway on it, he instead produced his Czech Suite in D major, a melange of orchestral dances and other movements culminating in a swinging, ambitiously symphonic Furiant.
More varied in colouring than the other works, it contains material - notably in the central minuet - from the abandoned third serenade, but otherwise goes its own leisurely and idiosyncratic way, incorporating rustic bagpipe imitations as part of the pastoralism of the flowing prelude. The succeeding polka possesses a faintly melancholy Dvořákian charm and the minuet, which he preferred to call a sousedska, is a Czech “neighbours’ dance”, of a sort reputedly aimed at elderly villagers for whom other Czech dances were too lively.
Performed on this occasion in an arrangement for woodwind and horns by Graham Sheen, Principal Bassoonist of the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields, the music acquires an airiness completely in keeping with Dvořák’s original intentions for it. The romantic fourth movement, with its atmospheric interplay of flute and cor anglais, evokes the soft moonlit radiance of Rusalka, before the suite is energised by its finale, filled with rhythmic tension, syncopation, and lusty horns.
Though heard less often than the two popular serenades, the music represents Dvořák at his most engagingly nationalistic. The work established itself in the SCO’s repertoire in the 1970s, when it was vivaciously championed by the Orchestra’s earliest conductor, the late Roderick Brydon.
© Conrad Wilson
- Strauss
Programme note
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Sonatina No 1 in F major for 16 wind instruments, 'From an Invalid’s Workshop' (1943)Allegro moderato
Romanze und Menuett
Finale: Molto allegro - Meno mosso - Tempo primo - PrestoThe Edinburgh Festival, in a spirit of post-war reconciliation, cultivated Richard Strauss while he was still alive and still a politically controversial figure. Though his music was excluded from the pioneering 1947 programme, he was represented the following year by his Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings which, though banned in some countries for its elegiac associations with the destruction of the composer’s native Munich, was performed by the Boyd Neel Orchestra at one of the Festival’s morning concerts. Today we recognise Strauss’s association with Nazi Germany to have been an increasingly uncomfortable one, at times putting his life at risk. His musical lament for Munich was essentially a threnody for the loss of the old Germany in which he had grown up and which was by then reduced to rubble.
It was against this background that, as an octogenarian, he composed his last works, some of them (such as the exquisite Four Last Songs) while in voluntary exile in Switzerland after the war. These were the products of what is now called his Indian summer, where the extreme mellowness of the music suggested an inspired new phase in his output, though this had been perfectly audible as far back as Der Rosenkavalier in 1911.
Among these works were the two lovely, discursive sonatinas for wind instruments, each bearing a descriptive title. The first, From an Invalid’s Workshop, referred to the bouts of illness and depression that had afflicted him from 1943 onwards, though nobody should expect to encounter signs of feebleness or melancholy in this sunny score. The opportunity to write a substantial piece for wind ensemble, something he had not done since his prentice years, must have seemed a suitable act of escapism, enabling him to consider afresh the challenges of balance and timbre, the blending of a full horn section with double woodwind. Like the subsequent Merry Workshop, it was clearly a distraction of the most therapeutic sort, sheltering him from a world that was crumbling around him.
First performed by members of the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Sonatina No 1 endeavours to conceal the fact that its first movement is written in anything as serious as sonata-form. The pleasingly prattling interplay of melodies sounds as if it could flow for ever, without the restriction of a classical structure. The second movement, a slow Romanze with a contrasted minuet as its middle section, certainly has clear-cut structure, but its charm lies in its radiant evocation of some imaginary operatic scene, filled with lovely high oboe tone and clustering clarinets. The finale, energised by leaping horns, brings back the prattle, with a slow interlude for variety and a cock-a-hoop coda in which the pace exhilaratingly accelerates.
© Conrad Wilson
- Director
- -
Writing for wind instruments was in Strauss’ blood. His father was an excellent horn player and the young composer grew up listening to him play with friends at home, and – maybe because of this – a glow of warmth and affection permeates every bar of his Sonatina. Dvořák’s suite, originally for orchestra, loses none of its folksy charm and sheer good spirits in this lovely arrangement.
Vienna Centuries
- Webern
Programme note
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
Concerto for nine instruments, Op 24 (1931-4)Etwas lebhaft (Rather lively)
Sehr langsam (very slow)
Sehr rasch (Very fast)Webern’s works, it has been said, lie in the limbo between the noise of life and the stillness of death. His complete output, in performances directed by Pierre Boulez, can be contained on three CDs, which seems scant space for one of the twentieth century’s acknowledged masters. But when we remember that his mastery lay in the art of unrivalled compression, and that each disc may include forty or fifty pieces, songs or movements of one sort or another, then all becomes clear. Webern’s Symphony, Op 21, says as much in its nine-minute span (if you listen to it closely enough) as does a great romantic symphony of the nineteenth century. The third of his Six Pieces for Orchestra, designed to be played at a “measured” pace, lasts all of fifty seconds.
Though the epigrammatic themes of Webern’s works consist very often of no more than a few notes, what he did with those notes could add up to a pocket music drama or a tiny dirge of profoundly pensive expressiveness. Yet his roots lay in the same Vienna as produced Beethoven’s Eroica and Schubert’s 'Great' C major. Webern himself, as a student, seemed to be following in the footsteps of his predecessors, as his early, rich-textured music, such as the vast Langsamer Satz (“Slow Movement”) for string quartet suggests. By the time he reached his Six Pieces for Orchestra, however, all the big romantic statements, the dramatic changes of mood, the sweetly blossoming high notes, the Wagnerian chromaticism, the Straussian lushness, the erotic tensions and relaxations had been stripped away.
Yet he continued in his later works to employ a large orchestra full of colourful potential, while exploiting what his teacher Arnold Schoenberg described as his ability to “write a novel in a single gesture, a joy in a breath.” The result, as Stravinsky remarked, was the essence of music - and it certainly left its stamp on Stravinsky’s later works. The Concerto, Op 24, is the soul of brevity. Heard in the context of this evening’s programme, it may sound evocative of a Mozart concerto, complete with piano and various Mozartian instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, violin, viola), pared to an irreducible minimum.
Through its process of distillation, the music - written for Schoenberg on his sixtieth birthday - has been called a supreme example of Webern’s strict application of disciplined procedures. It is a work of the tiniest dimensions, the ever-changing three-note motifs of the first movement reappearing in the central adagio, with a topping of flute tone, trumpet shafts and piano chords sounding like a coded version of the slow movement of Mozart’s K467 or one of his other Viennese masterpieces. In the offbeat finale, with its swinging syncopations and rasping trombone, Mozart remains visible through the telescope. The work, interrupted by writer’s block, took more than two years to complete.
© Conrad Wilson
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto in C major, K467 (1785)Allegro maestoso
Andante
Allegro vivace assaiThis is the concerto with the most atmospheric of all Mozart slow movements. What, if anything, the music signified in Mozart's mind when he wrote it we shall never know, for the simple reason that eighteenth-century composers did not treat their works as vehicles for the expression of personal feeling. To imagine that Mozart was any different is to look at him, in the words of one authority, through inappropriately Romantic eyes. There is simply not a shred of evidence - no public statement, no quoted conversation, no private letter - to suggest that he ever linked his music to actual events in his life.
Yet the slow movement of this concerto does sound profoundly evocative. But of what? The film director Bo Widerberg, in his sentimental Swedish tragedy Elvira Madigan, employed it as the most meaningful of background music. And it's true that, to a degree unmatched perhaps by any other Mozart slow movement, a haunting iridescence steals through this andante in a peculiarly palpitating form, whereby the softest, most fine-spun of themes receives the most muted yet most restless of accompaniments.
The nocturnal hush of the string tone, the ascents and descents of the melody, the sudden little stabs of pain, the delayed entry of the piano, the aching modulations, the operatic leaps of the very vocal melodic line, the chromatic poignancy, the disturbing dissonances and the sweetness with which they are resolved all contribute to the strange, dreamlike beauty and trembling rapture of the score - and to what can only be called the mystery that is Mozart.
Every tiny detail makes its point in a way that the printed notes scarcely hint at. Every deft stroke, every phrase length, every change of colour is similarly dumbfounding. The expected interplay between piano and orchestra is largely missing. The piano, once it has made its entry, is there for keeps - or almost for keeps, because there is a brief moment where it is disquietingly absent. Yet the movement, extraordinary though it is, is in no way at odds with the rest of the work, or with Mozart's other concertos of the period, mostly designed for himself to play at one or another of the Viennese subscription concerts whereby he raised money.
The sheer splendour of the opening movement, however, surpasses most of its predecessors in the way a characteristically simple marchlike rhythm is employed as a basis for majestic and spacious development. The repartee between soloist and orchestra, for all its wit, possesses a grander than usual symphonic dimension that was to become still grander in the first movement of the later C major concerto, K503. As for the finale, it springs, after the troubled tranquillity of the andante, into action like some sort of galvanised gavotte, with a main theme whose first six notes propel this classical rondo at one point through the most exhilarating whirl of modulations.
© Conrad Wilson
- Brahms
Programme note
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Symphony No 4 in E minor, Op 98Allegro non troppo
Andante moderato
Allegro giocoso
Allegro energico e passionato - più allegroNo symphony has a more modest, less formal beginning than Brahms's Fourth: it opens, without introduction, on the unaccompanied upbeat of a gently lilting dance tune. ‘Dance’ is, in fact, one of the work’s main concerns, along with ‘fanfare’ and ‘song’ - purely musical topics which are innocent of emotional implications in spite of the ‘tragic’ inspiration so frequently and so unnecessarily attributed to it.
After the lilting opening, ‘fanfare’ is represented at an early stage by a transitional theme on horns and woodwind. ‘Song’ makes its entry with a second-subject melody arching high on the A-string of the cellos. No obvious emotional attitude is adopted until woodwind and first horn introduce a new second-subject melody in B major, which is happy but short. Brahms is so successful in allowing his material to develop freely according to its own nature that the re-entry of the main theme at the beginning of the recapitulation - deprived of its dance rhythm and stretched out in semi-breves in quietly non-committal octaves on woodwind - could be just another of its many variants.
The opening fanfare of the second movement has been described as ‘heroic’ but it might also be an invitation to another dance - an E major sarabande introduced by clarinets, bassoons, and plucked strings. It is not a full-scale slow movement but an Andante moderato proceeding for the most part with a graciously rhythmic step. The lovely B major melody on the cellos is a derivative of the main theme, its counterpart in song.
The same points are at issue in the allegro giocoso movement, a vigorous dance in C major, contrasted with a graceful folk-song second subject. It is the one playful scherzo, as distinct from lyrical intermezzo, in Brahms's four symphonies. Perhaps it was intended as an encouragement to an audience which, he feared, would “not have the patience to sit through” its finale, which the whole work had been designed to accommodate - a passacaglia consisting of thirty or so variations on the theme of the chaconne in Bach's Cantata No.150 Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich.
Originally dances on a ground bass, both the passacaglia and the chaconne had lost their dance associations by Bach's day. But to relieve the regularity of the cycle of eight-bar variations on Bach's theme, Brahms does revert to dance rhythms in the twelfth variation where, with the stark outline of the theme now lost in the curlicues of an elaborate flute solo, he again adopts the graceful step of the sarabande. Song is most impressively represented by a trombone chorale extending over the
next two variations. After that the rigour of the cycle is resumed, relaxing only to allude to the lilting opening theme of the work and then accelerating towards an ending that is neither exultant nor tragic but, like Bach's theme, supremely logical in its own right.
© Gerald Larner
- conductor
- piano
A spring/autumn programme pairing perhaps the most youthful, joyful and uplifting of all Mozart’s piano concertos (a fine showpiece for the superb pianism of Lars Vogt) with Brahms’ deeply felt and richly hued symphony. His music speaks of the regrets and sorrows of old age, but also exudes an all-embracing warmth and consolation. Brahms was one of Webern’s essential inspirations, and if this short piece of his seems to represent everything Brahms is not… how fascinating is that? Especially as the two men lived in the same milieu a matter of years apart.
This performance will be recorded by BBC Radio 3's Performance on 3, for broadcast on Thursday 16 December.
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Vienna Centuries
- Webern
Programme note
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
Concerto for nine instruments, Op 24 (1931-4)Etwas lebhaft (Rather lively)
Sehr langsam (very slow)
Sehr rasch (Very fast)Webern’s works, it has been said, lie in the limbo between the noise of life and the stillness of death. His complete output, in performances directed by Pierre Boulez, can be contained on three CDs, which seems scant space for one of the twentieth century’s acknowledged masters. But when we remember that his mastery lay in the art of unrivalled compression, and that each disc may include forty or fifty pieces, songs or movements of one sort or another, then all becomes clear. Webern’s Symphony, Op 21, says as much in its nine-minute span (if you listen to it closely enough) as does a great romantic symphony of the nineteenth century. The third of his Six Pieces for Orchestra, designed to be played at a “measured” pace, lasts all of fifty seconds.
Though the epigrammatic themes of Webern’s works consist very often of no more than a few notes, what he did with those notes could add up to a pocket music drama or a tiny dirge of profoundly pensive expressiveness. Yet his roots lay in the same Vienna as produced Beethoven’s Eroica and Schubert’s 'Great' C major. Webern himself, as a student, seemed to be following in the footsteps of his predecessors, as his early, rich-textured music, such as the vast Langsamer Satz (“Slow Movement”) for string quartet suggests. By the time he reached his Six Pieces for Orchestra, however, all the big romantic statements, the dramatic changes of mood, the sweetly blossoming high notes, the Wagnerian chromaticism, the Straussian lushness, the erotic tensions and relaxations had been stripped away.
Yet he continued in his later works to employ a large orchestra full of colourful potential, while exploiting what his teacher Arnold Schoenberg described as his ability to “write a novel in a single gesture, a joy in a breath.” The result, as Stravinsky remarked, was the essence of music - and it certainly left its stamp on Stravinsky’s later works. The Concerto, Op 24, is the soul of brevity. Heard in the context of this evening’s programme, it may sound evocative of a Mozart concerto, complete with piano and various Mozartian instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, violin, viola), pared to an irreducible minimum.
Through its process of distillation, the music - written for Schoenberg on his sixtieth birthday - has been called a supreme example of Webern’s strict application of disciplined procedures. It is a work of the tiniest dimensions, the ever-changing three-note motifs of the first movement reappearing in the central adagio, with a topping of flute tone, trumpet shafts and piano chords sounding like a coded version of the slow movement of Mozart’s K467 or one of his other Viennese masterpieces. In the offbeat finale, with its swinging syncopations and rasping trombone, Mozart remains visible through the telescope. The work, interrupted by writer’s block, took more than two years to complete.
© Conrad Wilson
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto in C major, K467 (1785)Allegro maestoso
Andante
Allegro vivace assaiThis is the concerto with the most atmospheric of all Mozart slow movements. What, if anything, the music signified in Mozart's mind when he wrote it we shall never know, for the simple reason that eighteenth-century composers did not treat their works as vehicles for the expression of personal feeling. To imagine that Mozart was any different is to look at him, in the words of one authority, through inappropriately Romantic eyes. There is simply not a shred of evidence - no public statement, no quoted conversation, no private letter - to suggest that he ever linked his music to actual events in his life.
Yet the slow movement of this concerto does sound profoundly evocative. But of what? The film director Bo Widerberg, in his sentimental Swedish tragedy Elvira Madigan, employed it as the most meaningful of background music. And it's true that, to a degree unmatched perhaps by any other Mozart slow movement, a haunting iridescence steals through this andante in a peculiarly palpitating form, whereby the softest, most fine-spun of themes receives the most muted yet most restless of accompaniments.
The nocturnal hush of the string tone, the ascents and descents of the melody, the sudden little stabs of pain, the delayed entry of the piano, the aching modulations, the operatic leaps of the very vocal melodic line, the chromatic poignancy, the disturbing dissonances and the sweetness with which they are resolved all contribute to the strange, dreamlike beauty and trembling rapture of the score - and to what can only be called the mystery that is Mozart.
Every tiny detail makes its point in a way that the printed notes scarcely hint at. Every deft stroke, every phrase length, every change of colour is similarly dumbfounding. The expected interplay between piano and orchestra is largely missing. The piano, once it has made its entry, is there for keeps - or almost for keeps, because there is a brief moment where it is disquietingly absent. Yet the movement, extraordinary though it is, is in no way at odds with the rest of the work, or with Mozart's other concertos of the period, mostly designed for himself to play at one or another of the Viennese subscription concerts whereby he raised money.
The sheer splendour of the opening movement, however, surpasses most of its predecessors in the way a characteristically simple marchlike rhythm is employed as a basis for majestic and spacious development. The repartee between soloist and orchestra, for all its wit, possesses a grander than usual symphonic dimension that was to become still grander in the first movement of the later C major concerto, K503. As for the finale, it springs, after the troubled tranquillity of the andante, into action like some sort of galvanised gavotte, with a main theme whose first six notes propel this classical rondo at one point through the most exhilarating whirl of modulations.
© Conrad Wilson
- Brahms
Programme note
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Symphony No 4 in E minor, Op 98Allegro non troppo
Andante moderato
Allegro giocoso
Allegro energico e passionato - più allegroNo symphony has a more modest, less formal beginning than Brahms's Fourth: it opens, without introduction, on the unaccompanied upbeat of a gently lilting dance tune. ‘Dance’ is, in fact, one of the work’s main concerns, along with ‘fanfare’ and ‘song’ - purely musical topics which are innocent of emotional implications in spite of the ‘tragic’ inspiration so frequently and so unnecessarily attributed to it.
After the lilting opening, ‘fanfare’ is represented at an early stage by a transitional theme on horns and woodwind. ‘Song’ makes its entry with a second-subject melody arching high on the A-string of the cellos. No obvious emotional attitude is adopted until woodwind and first horn introduce a new second-subject melody in B major, which is happy but short. Brahms is so successful in allowing his material to develop freely according to its own nature that the re-entry of the main theme at the beginning of the recapitulation - deprived of its dance rhythm and stretched out in semi-breves in quietly non-committal octaves on woodwind - could be just another of its many variants.
The opening fanfare of the second movement has been described as ‘heroic’ but it might also be an invitation to another dance - an E major sarabande introduced by clarinets, bassoons, and plucked strings. It is not a full-scale slow movement but an Andante moderato proceeding for the most part with a graciously rhythmic step. The lovely B major melody on the cellos is a derivative of the main theme, its counterpart in song.
The same points are at issue in the allegro giocoso movement, a vigorous dance in C major, contrasted with a graceful folk-song second subject. It is the one playful scherzo, as distinct from lyrical intermezzo, in Brahms's four symphonies. Perhaps it was intended as an encouragement to an audience which, he feared, would “not have the patience to sit through” its finale, which the whole work had been designed to accommodate - a passacaglia consisting of thirty or so variations on the theme of the chaconne in Bach's Cantata No.150 Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich.
Originally dances on a ground bass, both the passacaglia and the chaconne had lost their dance associations by Bach's day. But to relieve the regularity of the cycle of eight-bar variations on Bach's theme, Brahms does revert to dance rhythms in the twelfth variation where, with the stark outline of the theme now lost in the curlicues of an elaborate flute solo, he again adopts the graceful step of the sarabande. Song is most impressively represented by a trombone chorale extending over the
next two variations. After that the rigour of the cycle is resumed, relaxing only to allude to the lilting opening theme of the work and then accelerating towards an ending that is neither exultant nor tragic but, like Bach's theme, supremely logical in its own right.
© Gerald Larner
- conductor
- piano
A spring/autumn programme pairing perhaps the most youthful, joyful and uplifting of all Mozart’s piano concertos (a fine showpiece for the superb pianism of Lars Vogt) with Brahms’ deeply felt and richly hued symphony. His music speaks of the regrets and sorrows of old age, but also exudes an all-embracing warmth and consolation. Brahms was one of Webern’s essential inspirations, and if this short piece of his seems to represent everything Brahms is not… how fascinating is that? Especially as the two men lived in the same milieu
a matter of years apart.
Christmas in Paris
- Sibelius
- Saint-Saëns
Programme note
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Cello Concerto No 1 n A minor, Op 33 (1872)Allegro non troppo
Allegretto con moto
Tempo I: Allegro non troppoSaint-Saëns was one of those rare musical geniuses, like Mendelssohn and Mozart, to whom everything seemed to come ever so easily. Child prodigy, virtuoso pianist, overwhelming organist, fine teacher, creator of spectacular symphonies, operatic hits and popular favourites. This facility has counted against him too often: critics have assumed that because he made things look easy, that they were in fact easy. The truth – as with Mendelssohn and Mozart – was quite otherwise, and he found this piece in particular extremely difficult to write, so much so that he vowed he would never write another piece for cello. (He broke that promise.)
In two senses this piece is quintessentially of its time. Throughout the 19th century composers had been experimenting with linking the movements of symphonies or concertos into a single great expanse of music, casting their thoughts over an ever more enormous canvas than before. Beethoven was among the first, in his 5th, 6th and 9th symphonies. Mendelssohn and Schumann both followed suit. By the time Saint-Saëns was writing this concerto in 1870s another major influence was at play especially in France: the work of Franz Liszt. As a noted improviser, developing ideas freely over an extended period was second nature to him. Traditional forms were less important than the fantasy and expressive journey. Saint-Saëns fell under his spell and brought a flavour of Liszt to this piece in the way that themes and ideas are developed across all three movements, and they are performed without a break. The opening, cadenza-like material, in particular, is key.
The central movement reveals a second sense in which this piece reflects its age: its echo of the past. It is hard for us know to imagine a musical world in which the top priority was new work. Few composers were heard much after their death and even the greatest names of the 18th century were lost to the 19th. Saint Saens was one among many who devoted time to musical archaeology; creating new editions of long lost work – in particular the riches of the 17th and 18th century keyboard and operatic composers. Lully, Couperin, Rameau and so on. Their galante style is unmistakable in the touching elegant dance of the middle movement here – like a door opening on a ballroom from a distant age.
© Svend Brown
- Fauré
Programme note
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
ÉlegieAlong with the Sicilienne and Serenade, Élegie belongs to the notable group of small scale works which Fauré wrote for the cello. He had the gift of imbuing these miniature pieces with a classic beauty in which calmness and intensity are perfectly counterbalanced. This facet of his idiom alone raises his Élegie far above the fashionable and mildly sentimental vein of popular melancholy as expressed by Massenet’s work of the same name.
The music of Élegie was originally written for cello and piano in 1883, and, as often with Fauré’s pieces, was only later orchestrated. It opens in C minor with sombre throbbing chords over which the cello sings a passionate yet elegiac melody. This is immediately repeated pianissimo before an emotional outburst leads to the relaxed atmosphere of E flat major and a new haunting and bitter-sweet melody first heard on the orchestra. Gradually, this is built into a fiery climax in which the soloist abandons his cantabile role for a more virtuosic one. This passage acts as a prelude to the impassioned return of C minor and the opening melody played in the cello’s vibrant upper register. After the excitement has subsided, tranquility returns with the coda which recalls the second melody. Now its gentleness seems to give way to a feeling of resignation as the cello sinks to its lowest note for the final brooding C minor chord.
Élegie has always been a popular work, for its elegance and poise, along with its underlying passion, made an immediate appeal, and its is not surprising to find that the organist at Fauré’s funeral in 1924 chose to honour the composer’s memory by playing an improvisation on it.
© Janet Beat
- Ravel
Programme note
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Ballet: Mother Goose (1912)Prelude
Dance of the Spinning Wheel and Scene
Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty
Conversations of Beauty and the Beast
Tom Thumb
Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas
The Enchanted GardenRavel created his fairy tale ballet in 1912 – the third incarnation of this music. It all began with a piano duet for two children, Mimi and Jean Godebski. Ravel wrote the Pavane of Sleeping Beauty for them, and when his publisher heard it he encouraged him to write more. A full suite of pieces followed, though regrettably, it turned out to be too difficult for the youngsters to play – this was child-like (a word that was used to describe Ravel himself) rather than childish music. Subsequently, Ravel orchestrated his suite, and then finally elaborated it further to create a ballet to his own scenario: on the eve of her wedding, Princess Florine (Sleeping Beauty) pricks her finger on a poisoned spinning wheel and falls asleep. The good fairy enchants the whole castle to sleep with her until she is re-awoken by her prince; as she slumbers, she dreams fairy tales which come to life in the foreground.
Many of the tales that feature in the ballet have been told in many languages and ways, but Ravel’s specific inspiration was the 18th century fantasies of Perrault. Like Ravel’s music these were not strictly intended for children. For all their charm they have a bloody and macabre side, and Ravel responded with music that is charming without sentimentality. There is nothing ‘Disneyfied’ about it. The Beast serenades his Beauty with exquisite grace. The image of Beauty and the Beast has been used more than once to describe music (not least Beethoven’s piano sonatas) in which delicacy is juxtaposed with harsher sounds. Ravel is different: his Beast is an altogether courteous creature and Belle a delicate, fragile princess. Tom Thumb walks in the woods, and leaves a trail of crumbs so he can find his way home, but the birds (you can hear them in the orchestration) swoop down and eat them all up. Laideronnette is a lovely princess cursed with ugliness by a wicked fairy. The usual prince has yet to come along and break the spell, so Ravel depicts her bathing while musicians attend − apparently playing a small gamelan. Ravel’s closing section originally evoked a magical garden, but in the ballet it also serves to accompany the awakening of Sleeping Beauty and the transformation of the Beast back into a man.
© Svend Brown
- conductor
- cello
Ravel never lost touch with his inner child, and his music brings an appropriately magical and fantastical flavour to this December concert. Mother Goose, inspired by timeless fairy tales and originally written for some young friends to play at the piano, is recreated here in miraculous orchestral colour.
It is performed alongside the Grand Old Men of Ravel’s Paris: Saint-Saëns and Fauré in a lovely mixed programme.
***Cristian Mandeal replaces Louis Langrée for this concert. There has also been one change to the original programme. Sibelius' Pelléas et Mélisande, replaces Haydn’s Symphony No 86 in D ‘Paris’. ***
Related audio clip
Sibelius Melisande from Pelleas et Melisande - excerpt
Christmas in Paris
- Sibelius
- Saint-Saëns
Programme note
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Cello Concerto No 1 n A minor, Op 33 (1872)Allegro non troppo
Allegretto con moto
Tempo I: Allegro non troppoSaint-Saëns was one of those rare musical geniuses, like Mendelssohn and Mozart, to whom everything seemed to come ever so easily. Child prodigy, virtuoso pianist, overwhelming organist, fine teacher, creator of spectacular symphonies, operatic hits and popular favourites. This facility has counted against him too often: critics have assumed that because he made things look easy, that they were in fact easy. The truth – as with Mendelssohn and Mozart – was quite otherwise, and he found this piece in particular extremely difficult to write, so much so that he vowed he would never write another piece for cello. (He broke that promise.)
In two senses this piece is quintessentially of its time. Throughout the 19th century composers had been experimenting with linking the movements of symphonies or concertos into a single great expanse of music, casting their thoughts over an ever more enormous canvas than before. Beethoven was among the first, in his 5th, 6th and 9th symphonies. Mendelssohn and Schumann both followed suit. By the time Saint-Saëns was writing this concerto in 1870s another major influence was at play especially in France: the work of Franz Liszt. As a noted improviser, developing ideas freely over an extended period was second nature to him. Traditional forms were less important than the fantasy and expressive journey. Saint-Saëns fell under his spell and brought a flavour of Liszt to this piece in the way that themes and ideas are developed across all three movements, and they are performed without a break. The opening, cadenza-like material, in particular, is key.
The central movement reveals a second sense in which this piece reflects its age: its echo of the past. It is hard for us know to imagine a musical world in which the top priority was new work. Few composers were heard much after their death and even the greatest names of the 18th century were lost to the 19th. Saint Saens was one among many who devoted time to musical archaeology; creating new editions of long lost work – in particular the riches of the 17th and 18th century keyboard and operatic composers. Lully, Couperin, Rameau and so on. Their galante style is unmistakable in the touching elegant dance of the middle movement here – like a door opening on a ballroom from a distant age.
© Svend Brown
- Fauré
Programme note
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
ÉlegieAlong with the Sicilienne and Serenade, Élegie belongs to the notable group of small scale works which Fauré wrote for the cello. He had the gift of imbuing these miniature pieces with a classic beauty in which calmness and intensity are perfectly counterbalanced. This facet of his idiom alone raises his Élegie far above the fashionable and mildly sentimental vein of popular melancholy as expressed by Massenet’s work of the same name.
The music of Élegie was originally written for cello and piano in 1883, and, as often with Fauré’s pieces, was only later orchestrated. It opens in C minor with sombre throbbing chords over which the cello sings a passionate yet elegiac melody. This is immediately repeated pianissimo before an emotional outburst leads to the relaxed atmosphere of E flat major and a new haunting and bitter-sweet melody first heard on the orchestra. Gradually, this is built into a fiery climax in which the soloist abandons his cantabile role for a more virtuosic one. This passage acts as a prelude to the impassioned return of C minor and the opening melody played in the cello’s vibrant upper register. After the excitement has subsided, tranquility returns with the coda which recalls the second melody. Now its gentleness seems to give way to a feeling of resignation as the cello sinks to its lowest note for the final brooding C minor chord.
Élegie has always been a popular work, for its elegance and poise, along with its underlying passion, made an immediate appeal, and its is not surprising to find that the organist at Fauré’s funeral in 1924 chose to honour the composer’s memory by playing an improvisation on it.
© Janet Beat
- Ravel
Programme note
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Ballet: Mother Goose (1912)Prelude
Dance of the Spinning Wheel and Scene
Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty
Conversations of Beauty and the Beast
Tom Thumb
Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas
The Enchanted GardenRavel created his fairy tale ballet in 1912 – the third incarnation of this music. It all began with a piano duet for two children, Mimi and Jean Godebski. Ravel wrote the Pavane of Sleeping Beauty for them, and when his publisher heard it he encouraged him to write more. A full suite of pieces followed, though regrettably, it turned out to be too difficult for the youngsters to play – this was child-like (a word that was used to describe Ravel himself) rather than childish music. Subsequently, Ravel orchestrated his suite, and then finally elaborated it further to create a ballet to his own scenario: on the eve of her wedding, Princess Florine (Sleeping Beauty) pricks her finger on a poisoned spinning wheel and falls asleep. The good fairy enchants the whole castle to sleep with her until she is re-awoken by her prince; as she slumbers, she dreams fairy tales which come to life in the foreground.
Many of the tales that feature in the ballet have been told in many languages and ways, but Ravel’s specific inspiration was the 18th century fantasies of Perrault. Like Ravel’s music these were not strictly intended for children. For all their charm they have a bloody and macabre side, and Ravel responded with music that is charming without sentimentality. There is nothing ‘Disneyfied’ about it. The Beast serenades his Beauty with exquisite grace. The image of Beauty and the Beast has been used more than once to describe music (not least Beethoven’s piano sonatas) in which delicacy is juxtaposed with harsher sounds. Ravel is different: his Beast is an altogether courteous creature and Belle a delicate, fragile princess. Tom Thumb walks in the woods, and leaves a trail of crumbs so he can find his way home, but the birds (you can hear them in the orchestration) swoop down and eat them all up. Laideronnette is a lovely princess cursed with ugliness by a wicked fairy. The usual prince has yet to come along and break the spell, so Ravel depicts her bathing while musicians attend − apparently playing a small gamelan. Ravel’s closing section originally evoked a magical garden, but in the ballet it also serves to accompany the awakening of Sleeping Beauty and the transformation of the Beast back into a man.
© Svend Brown
- conductor
- cello
Ravel never lost touch with his inner child, and his music brings an appropriately magical and fantastical flavour to this December concert. Mother Goose, inspired by timeless fairy tales and originally written for some young friends to play at the piano, is recreated here in miraculous orchestral colour.
It is performed alongside the Grand Old Men of Ravel’s Paris: Saint-Saëns and Fauré in a lovely mixed programme.
***Cristian Mandeal replaces Louis Langrée for this concert. There has also been one change to the original programme. Sibelius' Pelléas et Mélisande, replaces Haydn’s Symphony No 86 in D ‘Paris’. ***
Related audio clip
Sibelius Melisande from Pelleas et Melisande - excerpt
Christmas in Paris
- Sibelius
- Saint-Saëns
Programme note
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Cello Concerto No 1 n A minor, Op 33 (1872)Allegro non troppo
Allegretto con moto
Tempo I: Allegro non troppoSaint-Saëns was one of those rare musical geniuses, like Mendelssohn and Mozart, to whom everything seemed to come ever so easily. Child prodigy, virtuoso pianist, overwhelming organist, fine teacher, creator of spectacular symphonies, operatic hits and popular favourites. This facility has counted against him too often: critics have assumed that because he made things look easy, that they were in fact easy. The truth – as with Mendelssohn and Mozart – was quite otherwise, and he found this piece in particular extremely difficult to write, so much so that he vowed he would never write another piece for cello. (He broke that promise.)
In two senses this piece is quintessentially of its time. Throughout the 19th century composers had been experimenting with linking the movements of symphonies or concertos into a single great expanse of music, casting their thoughts over an ever more enormous canvas than before. Beethoven was among the first, in his 5th, 6th and 9th symphonies. Mendelssohn and Schumann both followed suit. By the time Saint-Saëns was writing this concerto in 1870s another major influence was at play especially in France: the work of Franz Liszt. As a noted improviser, developing ideas freely over an extended period was second nature to him. Traditional forms were less important than the fantasy and expressive journey. Saint-Saëns fell under his spell and brought a flavour of Liszt to this piece in the way that themes and ideas are developed across all three movements, and they are performed without a break. The opening, cadenza-like material, in particular, is key.
The central movement reveals a second sense in which this piece reflects its age: its echo of the past. It is hard for us know to imagine a musical world in which the top priority was new work. Few composers were heard much after their death and even the greatest names of the 18th century were lost to the 19th. Saint Saens was one among many who devoted time to musical archaeology; creating new editions of long lost work – in particular the riches of the 17th and 18th century keyboard and operatic composers. Lully, Couperin, Rameau and so on. Their galante style is unmistakable in the touching elegant dance of the middle movement here – like a door opening on a ballroom from a distant age.
© Svend Brown
- Fauré
Programme note
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)
ÉlegieAlong with the Sicilienne and Serenade, Élegie belongs to the notable group of small scale works which Fauré wrote for the cello. He had the gift of imbuing these miniature pieces with a classic beauty in which calmness and intensity are perfectly counterbalanced. This facet of his idiom alone raises his Élegie far above the fashionable and mildly sentimental vein of popular melancholy as expressed by Massenet’s work of the same name.
The music of Élegie was originally written for cello and piano in 1883, and, as often with Fauré’s pieces, was only later orchestrated. It opens in C minor with sombre throbbing chords over which the cello sings a passionate yet elegiac melody. This is immediately repeated pianissimo before an emotional outburst leads to the relaxed atmosphere of E flat major and a new haunting and bitter-sweet melody first heard on the orchestra. Gradually, this is built into a fiery climax in which the soloist abandons his cantabile role for a more virtuosic one. This passage acts as a prelude to the impassioned return of C minor and the opening melody played in the cello’s vibrant upper register. After the excitement has subsided, tranquility returns with the coda which recalls the second melody. Now its gentleness seems to give way to a feeling of resignation as the cello sinks to its lowest note for the final brooding C minor chord.
Élegie has always been a popular work, for its elegance and poise, along with its underlying passion, made an immediate appeal, and its is not surprising to find that the organist at Fauré’s funeral in 1924 chose to honour the composer’s memory by playing an improvisation on it.
© Janet Beat
- Ravel
Programme note
Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Ballet: Mother Goose (1912)Prelude
Dance of the Spinning Wheel and Scene
Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty
Conversations of Beauty and the Beast
Tom Thumb
Laideronnette, Empress of the Pagodas
The Enchanted GardenRavel created his fairy tale ballet in 1912 – the third incarnation of this music. It all began with a piano duet for two children, Mimi and Jean Godebski. Ravel wrote the Pavane of Sleeping Beauty for them, and when his publisher heard it he encouraged him to write more. A full suite of pieces followed, though regrettably, it turned out to be too difficult for the youngsters to play – this was child-like (a word that was used to describe Ravel himself) rather than childish music. Subsequently, Ravel orchestrated his suite, and then finally elaborated it further to create a ballet to his own scenario: on the eve of her wedding, Princess Florine (Sleeping Beauty) pricks her finger on a poisoned spinning wheel and falls asleep. The good fairy enchants the whole castle to sleep with her until she is re-awoken by her prince; as she slumbers, she dreams fairy tales which come to life in the foreground.
Many of the tales that feature in the ballet have been told in many languages and ways, but Ravel’s specific inspiration was the 18th century fantasies of Perrault. Like Ravel’s music these were not strictly intended for children. For all their charm they have a bloody and macabre side, and Ravel responded with music that is charming without sentimentality. There is nothing ‘Disneyfied’ about it. The Beast serenades his Beauty with exquisite grace. The image of Beauty and the Beast has been used more than once to describe music (not least Beethoven’s piano sonatas) in which delicacy is juxtaposed with harsher sounds. Ravel is different: his Beast is an altogether courteous creature and Belle a delicate, fragile princess. Tom Thumb walks in the woods, and leaves a trail of crumbs so he can find his way home, but the birds (you can hear them in the orchestration) swoop down and eat them all up. Laideronnette is a lovely princess cursed with ugliness by a wicked fairy. The usual prince has yet to come along and break the spell, so Ravel depicts her bathing while musicians attend − apparently playing a small gamelan. Ravel’s closing section originally evoked a magical garden, but in the ballet it also serves to accompany the awakening of Sleeping Beauty and the transformation of the Beast back into a man.
© Svend Brown
- conductor
- cello
Ravel never lost touch with his inner child, and his music brings an appropriately magical and fantastical flavour to this December concert. Mother Goose, inspired by timeless fairy tales and originally written for some young friends to play at the piano, is recreated here in miraculous orchestral colour.
It is performed alongside the Grand Old Men of Ravel’s Paris: Saint-Saëns and Fauré in a lovely mixed programme.
***Cristian Mandeal replaces Louis Langrée for this concert. There has also been one change to the original programme. Sibelius' Pelléas et Mélisande, replaces Haydn’s Symphony No 86 in D ‘Paris’. ***
Related audio clip
Sibelius Melisande from Pelleas et Melisande - excerpt
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