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Italian Serenade
- Brahms
Programme note
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Variations on the St Antoni Chorale, Op 56aThroughout his career, Brahms was deeply conscious of the weight of tradition behind him: not only the intimidating shadow of Beethoven (“You don't know what it is like to be dogged by his footsteps” he once told the conductor Hermann Levi), but also the music of earlier periods, particularly that of Handel and Bach. Nevertheless his study of earlier music was a stimulus to his own compositions, giving him a profound insight into compositional techniques which tended to be neglected by the more progressively-minded composers of his day, but which he was able to adapt to his own purposes.
Dating from 1873, the ‘St. Antoni’ Variations appeared simultaneously in versions for orchestra and for two pianos. It is the culmination of a number of variation sets Brahms composed during the preceding years, and which benefited from his mastery of baroque contrapuntal techniques; they include sets of variations for solo piano on themes by Handel, Schumann and Paganini.
The theme comes from a partita for wind instruments discovered by the Haydn scholar Carl Pohl, but which is now believed not to be by Haydn (the theme, in any case, is thought to be an anonymous pilgrims’ chant). Many of the variations are built on little more than a few notes from the theme, or simply follow its harmonic outline. The overall shape of the work depends to a large extent on the contrast between one variation and the next. The slow, melancholy fourth variation, for example, is followed by a pair of rollicking scherzos, and the veiled, mysterious eighth leads to the majestic finale. Here Brahms revives the baroque form of the passacaglia, in which a repeating phrase in the bass provides the foundation for an increasingly elaborate structure which is itself a miniature set of variations. The return of the theme in something like its original form rounds off in imposing style Brahms’ first purely orchestral work since the D minor Piano Concerto of over ten years before.
© Mike Wheeler
- Haydn
Programme note
Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
Cello Concerto in C majorModerato
Adagio
Allegro moltoThere are so many mysteries in music (just who did write all those anonymous medieval pieces?), that it is a relief to find one puzzle that was solved.
This concerto was lost for 200 years, and it is due to Haydn’s own cautiousness and good business sense that it was eventually identified as his work at all. Its existence was known to Haydn scholars only because of an entry and a scrap of melody in the personal catalogue he kept of all his works. This was partly an attempt to protect himself from publishing pirates: in it, he asserts his authorship of works by noting titles, dates and also fragments of the principal themes of all the works he wrote. So, when an impressive but anonymous concerto was discovered in the National Museum in Prague in 1961, it was a relatively simple matter to match it up with Haydn’s book, and ascertain its authenticity. The opening theme matched with the catalogue and that was that: the first performance in modern times was conducted by none other than Sir Charles Mackerras and performed by the cellist Milos Sadlo.
To anyone raised on the Romantic cello repertoire – the lofty, autumnal melancholy of Elgar and Dvorák or the embittered heroic suffering of Shostakovich – the revelation of this piece must be that Haydn writes ebullient, sunny and dignified music for the instrument. It is tempting to think that its sunny atmosphere and general brilliance of owes something to Haydn’s Italian forebears: Vivaldi wrote over 30 fine concertos for the instrument, but as the cello was a relative newcomer to the solo spotlight, they were not published in his lifetime. Like Vivaldi, Haydn imagined the cello in an almost operatic light– and it is more of a light baritone than a basso profundo that he has in mind The slow movement is no tortured, introspective wail, but a dignified and spacious, elegant aria which unfolds at a stately pace. Its restraint and mellowness contrast beautifully with the first and third movements. Their themes are full of confident optimism, and stomping dances: there is a hint of fanfare to the cello’s opening flourish – this is truly music of the Age of Enlightenment.
© Svend Brown
- Wolf
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
- Mendelssohn
Programme note
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Symphony No 4 in A major, Op 90, 'Italian' (1833)Allegro vivace
Andante con moto
Con moto moderato
Saltarello: PrestoMendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ symphony was the major product of his second ‘grand tour’ of Europe, undertaken at the age of 21. Savouring, as he put it, the “supreme delight in life” displayed by the Italians, he vowed to pay symphonic homage to their vivacity. The result, he declared, was the most cheerful piece of music he had yet composed, though he insisted that it was far from being a piece of nineteenth-century musical landscape painting.
Be that as it may, its Italian features are unmistakable and remain part of its charm. Though the theory that his ‘Scotch’ symphony was interchangeable with his ‘Italian’ no longer cuts much ice, there seems no doubt that the slow movement has nothing to do with Italy but was intended to commemorate Goethe and Zelter (Mendelssohn’s teacher, whose Goethe-inspired Konig in Thule it quotes), both of whom had recently died. What the ‘Scotch’ and ‘Italian’ symphonies do quite strikingly have in common are aspects of the key of A, the ‘Scotch’ beginning in A minor and ending in A major, the ‘Italian’ beginning in A major and ending in A minor. In this respect the one could be called the obverse of the other, though whether this was intentional is hard to say.
What is easier to identify is the instant sunshine of the first movement of the ‘Italian’ and the southern swirl of the finale, which Mendelssohn took pains to entitle Saltarello, in tribute to the leaping Italian dance it relentlessly evokes. In comparison, the source of the slow movement is surely the allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, another study in the relationship between A minor and major. As for the elfin grace of the third movement – a Mendelssohnian evocation of a classical minuet – its poetic trio section, filled with magical horn calls, could easily come from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Strangely, Mendelssohn never really liked his Italian symphony and substantially revised three of its four movements, changing the colouring of the andante, adding fresh touches of poetry to the third movement, and considerably extending the finale. But if these were his last thoughts, they were never acted upon and have only recently been issued in an optional performing version. Though they seem unlikely to replace the original – which, as usual, is what we shall hear tonight – they shed interesting light on a masterpiece which Mendelssohn himself, because of his incomprehensible lack of faith in it, conducted only once.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- cello
- viola
Many concerts this Season take a pair of ideas and play them off against each other to achieve as satisfying a musical menu as you could wish for. Here, Brahms plays Haydn – the grand master of variation form – at his own game before we hear Haydn’s long lost cello concerto. Then two great German composers travel south for a taste of Italian song and dance.
Italian Serenade
- Brahms
Programme note
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Variations on the St Antoni Chorale, Op 56aThroughout his career, Brahms was deeply conscious of the weight of tradition behind him: not only the intimidating shadow of Beethoven (“You don't know what it is like to be dogged by his footsteps” he once told the conductor Hermann Levi), but also the music of earlier periods, particularly that of Handel and Bach. Nevertheless his study of earlier music was a stimulus to his own compositions, giving him a profound insight into compositional techniques which tended to be neglected by the more progressively-minded composers of his day, but which he was able to adapt to his own purposes.
Dating from 1873, the ‘St. Antoni’ Variations appeared simultaneously in versions for orchestra and for two pianos. It is the culmination of a number of variation sets Brahms composed during the preceding years, and which benefited from his mastery of baroque contrapuntal techniques; they include sets of variations for solo piano on themes by Handel, Schumann and Paganini.
The theme comes from a partita for wind instruments discovered by the Haydn scholar Carl Pohl, but which is now believed not to be by Haydn (the theme, in any case, is thought to be an anonymous pilgrims’ chant). Many of the variations are built on little more than a few notes from the theme, or simply follow its harmonic outline. The overall shape of the work depends to a large extent on the contrast between one variation and the next. The slow, melancholy fourth variation, for example, is followed by a pair of rollicking scherzos, and the veiled, mysterious eighth leads to the majestic finale. Here Brahms revives the baroque form of the passacaglia, in which a repeating phrase in the bass provides the foundation for an increasingly elaborate structure which is itself a miniature set of variations. The return of the theme in something like its original form rounds off in imposing style Brahms’ first purely orchestral work since the D minor Piano Concerto of over ten years before.
© Mike Wheeler
- Haydn
Programme note
Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
Cello Concerto in C majorModerato
Adagio
Allegro moltoThere are so many mysteries in music (just who did write all those anonymous medieval pieces?), that it is a relief to find one puzzle that was solved.
This concerto was lost for 200 years, and it is due to Haydn’s own cautiousness and good business sense that it was eventually identified as his work at all. Its existence was known to Haydn scholars only because of an entry and a scrap of melody in the personal catalogue he kept of all his works. This was partly an attempt to protect himself from publishing pirates: in it, he asserts his authorship of works by noting titles, dates and also fragments of the principal themes of all the works he wrote. So, when an impressive but anonymous concerto was discovered in the National Museum in Prague in 1961, it was a relatively simple matter to match it up with Haydn’s book, and ascertain its authenticity. The opening theme matched with the catalogue and that was that: the first performance in modern times was conducted by none other than Sir Charles Mackerras and performed by the cellist Milos Sadlo.
To anyone raised on the Romantic cello repertoire – the lofty, autumnal melancholy of Elgar and Dvorák or the embittered heroic suffering of Shostakovich – the revelation of this piece must be that Haydn writes ebullient, sunny and dignified music for the instrument. It is tempting to think that its sunny atmosphere and general brilliance of owes something to Haydn’s Italian forebears: Vivaldi wrote over 30 fine concertos for the instrument, but as the cello was a relative newcomer to the solo spotlight, they were not published in his lifetime. Like Vivaldi, Haydn imagined the cello in an almost operatic light– and it is more of a light baritone than a basso profundo that he has in mind The slow movement is no tortured, introspective wail, but a dignified and spacious, elegant aria which unfolds at a stately pace. Its restraint and mellowness contrast beautifully with the first and third movements. Their themes are full of confident optimism, and stomping dances: there is a hint of fanfare to the cello’s opening flourish – this is truly music of the Age of Enlightenment.
© Svend Brown
- Wolf
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
- Mendelssohn
Programme note
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Symphony No 4 in A major, Op 90, 'Italian' (1833)Allegro vivace
Andante con moto
Con moto moderato
Saltarello: PrestoMendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ symphony was the major product of his second ‘grand tour’ of Europe, undertaken at the age of 21. Savouring, as he put it, the “supreme delight in life” displayed by the Italians, he vowed to pay symphonic homage to their vivacity. The result, he declared, was the most cheerful piece of music he had yet composed, though he insisted that it was far from being a piece of nineteenth-century musical landscape painting.
Be that as it may, its Italian features are unmistakable and remain part of its charm. Though the theory that his ‘Scotch’ symphony was interchangeable with his ‘Italian’ no longer cuts much ice, there seems no doubt that the slow movement has nothing to do with Italy but was intended to commemorate Goethe and Zelter (Mendelssohn’s teacher, whose Goethe-inspired Konig in Thule it quotes), both of whom had recently died. What the ‘Scotch’ and ‘Italian’ symphonies do quite strikingly have in common are aspects of the key of A, the ‘Scotch’ beginning in A minor and ending in A major, the ‘Italian’ beginning in A major and ending in A minor. In this respect the one could be called the obverse of the other, though whether this was intentional is hard to say.
What is easier to identify is the instant sunshine of the first movement of the ‘Italian’ and the southern swirl of the finale, which Mendelssohn took pains to entitle Saltarello, in tribute to the leaping Italian dance it relentlessly evokes. In comparison, the source of the slow movement is surely the allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, another study in the relationship between A minor and major. As for the elfin grace of the third movement – a Mendelssohnian evocation of a classical minuet – its poetic trio section, filled with magical horn calls, could easily come from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Strangely, Mendelssohn never really liked his Italian symphony and substantially revised three of its four movements, changing the colouring of the andante, adding fresh touches of poetry to the third movement, and considerably extending the finale. But if these were his last thoughts, they were never acted upon and have only recently been issued in an optional performing version. Though they seem unlikely to replace the original – which, as usual, is what we shall hear tonight – they shed interesting light on a masterpiece which Mendelssohn himself, because of his incomprehensible lack of faith in it, conducted only once.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- cello
- viola
Many concerts this season take a pair of ideas and play them off against each other to achieve as satisfying a musical menu as you could wish for. Here, Brahms plays Haydn – the grand master of variation form – at his own game before we hear Haydn’s long lost cello concerto. Then two great German composers travel south for a taste of Italian song and dance.
Italian Serenade
- Brahms
Programme note
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Variations on the St Antoni Chorale, Op 56aThroughout his career, Brahms was deeply conscious of the weight of tradition behind him: not only the intimidating shadow of Beethoven (“You don't know what it is like to be dogged by his footsteps” he once told the conductor Hermann Levi), but also the music of earlier periods, particularly that of Handel and Bach. Nevertheless his study of earlier music was a stimulus to his own compositions, giving him a profound insight into compositional techniques which tended to be neglected by the more progressively-minded composers of his day, but which he was able to adapt to his own purposes.
Dating from 1873, the ‘St. Antoni’ Variations appeared simultaneously in versions for orchestra and for two pianos. It is the culmination of a number of variation sets Brahms composed during the preceding years, and which benefited from his mastery of baroque contrapuntal techniques; they include sets of variations for solo piano on themes by Handel, Schumann and Paganini.
The theme comes from a partita for wind instruments discovered by the Haydn scholar Carl Pohl, but which is now believed not to be by Haydn (the theme, in any case, is thought to be an anonymous pilgrims’ chant). Many of the variations are built on little more than a few notes from the theme, or simply follow its harmonic outline. The overall shape of the work depends to a large extent on the contrast between one variation and the next. The slow, melancholy fourth variation, for example, is followed by a pair of rollicking scherzos, and the veiled, mysterious eighth leads to the majestic finale. Here Brahms revives the baroque form of the passacaglia, in which a repeating phrase in the bass provides the foundation for an increasingly elaborate structure which is itself a miniature set of variations. The return of the theme in something like its original form rounds off in imposing style Brahms’ first purely orchestral work since the D minor Piano Concerto of over ten years before.
© Mike Wheeler
- Haydn
Programme note
Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
Cello Concerto in C majorModerato
Adagio
Allegro moltoThere are so many mysteries in music (just who did write all those anonymous medieval pieces?), that it is a relief to find one puzzle that was solved.
This concerto was lost for 200 years, and it is due to Haydn’s own cautiousness and good business sense that it was eventually identified as his work at all. Its existence was known to Haydn scholars only because of an entry and a scrap of melody in the personal catalogue he kept of all his works. This was partly an attempt to protect himself from publishing pirates: in it, he asserts his authorship of works by noting titles, dates and also fragments of the principal themes of all the works he wrote. So, when an impressive but anonymous concerto was discovered in the National Museum in Prague in 1961, it was a relatively simple matter to match it up with Haydn’s book, and ascertain its authenticity. The opening theme matched with the catalogue and that was that: the first performance in modern times was conducted by none other than Sir Charles Mackerras and performed by the cellist Milos Sadlo.
To anyone raised on the Romantic cello repertoire – the lofty, autumnal melancholy of Elgar and Dvorák or the embittered heroic suffering of Shostakovich – the revelation of this piece must be that Haydn writes ebullient, sunny and dignified music for the instrument. It is tempting to think that its sunny atmosphere and general brilliance of owes something to Haydn’s Italian forebears: Vivaldi wrote over 30 fine concertos for the instrument, but as the cello was a relative newcomer to the solo spotlight, they were not published in his lifetime. Like Vivaldi, Haydn imagined the cello in an almost operatic light– and it is more of a light baritone than a basso profundo that he has in mind The slow movement is no tortured, introspective wail, but a dignified and spacious, elegant aria which unfolds at a stately pace. Its restraint and mellowness contrast beautifully with the first and third movements. Their themes are full of confident optimism, and stomping dances: there is a hint of fanfare to the cello’s opening flourish – this is truly music of the Age of Enlightenment.
© Svend Brown
- Wolf
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
- Mendelssohn
Programme note
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Symphony No 4 in A major, Op 90, 'Italian' (1833)Allegro vivace
Andante con moto
Con moto moderato
Saltarello: PrestoMendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ symphony was the major product of his second ‘grand tour’ of Europe, undertaken at the age of 21. Savouring, as he put it, the “supreme delight in life” displayed by the Italians, he vowed to pay symphonic homage to their vivacity. The result, he declared, was the most cheerful piece of music he had yet composed, though he insisted that it was far from being a piece of nineteenth-century musical landscape painting.
Be that as it may, its Italian features are unmistakable and remain part of its charm. Though the theory that his ‘Scotch’ symphony was interchangeable with his ‘Italian’ no longer cuts much ice, there seems no doubt that the slow movement has nothing to do with Italy but was intended to commemorate Goethe and Zelter (Mendelssohn’s teacher, whose Goethe-inspired Konig in Thule it quotes), both of whom had recently died. What the ‘Scotch’ and ‘Italian’ symphonies do quite strikingly have in common are aspects of the key of A, the ‘Scotch’ beginning in A minor and ending in A major, the ‘Italian’ beginning in A major and ending in A minor. In this respect the one could be called the obverse of the other, though whether this was intentional is hard to say.
What is easier to identify is the instant sunshine of the first movement of the ‘Italian’ and the southern swirl of the finale, which Mendelssohn took pains to entitle Saltarello, in tribute to the leaping Italian dance it relentlessly evokes. In comparison, the source of the slow movement is surely the allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, another study in the relationship between A minor and major. As for the elfin grace of the third movement – a Mendelssohnian evocation of a classical minuet – its poetic trio section, filled with magical horn calls, could easily come from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Strangely, Mendelssohn never really liked his Italian symphony and substantially revised three of its four movements, changing the colouring of the andante, adding fresh touches of poetry to the third movement, and considerably extending the finale. But if these were his last thoughts, they were never acted upon and have only recently been issued in an optional performing version. Though they seem unlikely to replace the original – which, as usual, is what we shall hear tonight – they shed interesting light on a masterpiece which Mendelssohn himself, because of his incomprehensible lack of faith in it, conducted only once.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- cello
- viola
Playing a pair of ideas off against each other can achieve as satisfying a musical menu as you could wish for. Here, Brahms plays Haydn – the grand master of variation form – at his own game before we hear Haydn’s long lost cello concerto. Then two great German composers travel south for a taste of Italian song and dance.
Italian Serenade
- Brahms
Programme note
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Variations on the St Antoni Chorale, Op 56aThroughout his career, Brahms was deeply conscious of the weight of tradition behind him: not only the intimidating shadow of Beethoven (“You don't know what it is like to be dogged by his footsteps” he once told the conductor Hermann Levi), but also the music of earlier periods, particularly that of Handel and Bach. Nevertheless his study of earlier music was a stimulus to his own compositions, giving him a profound insight into compositional techniques which tended to be neglected by the more progressively-minded composers of his day, but which he was able to adapt to his own purposes.
Dating from 1873, the ‘St. Antoni’ Variations appeared simultaneously in versions for orchestra and for two pianos. It is the culmination of a number of variation sets Brahms composed during the preceding years, and which benefited from his mastery of baroque contrapuntal techniques; they include sets of variations for solo piano on themes by Handel, Schumann and Paganini.
The theme comes from a partita for wind instruments discovered by the Haydn scholar Carl Pohl, but which is now believed not to be by Haydn (the theme, in any case, is thought to be an anonymous pilgrims’ chant). Many of the variations are built on little more than a few notes from the theme, or simply follow its harmonic outline. The overall shape of the work depends to a large extent on the contrast between one variation and the next. The slow, melancholy fourth variation, for example, is followed by a pair of rollicking scherzos, and the veiled, mysterious eighth leads to the majestic finale. Here Brahms revives the baroque form of the passacaglia, in which a repeating phrase in the bass provides the foundation for an increasingly elaborate structure which is itself a miniature set of variations. The return of the theme in something like its original form rounds off in imposing style Brahms’ first purely orchestral work since the D minor Piano Concerto of over ten years before.
© Mike Wheeler
- Haydn
Programme note
Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
Cello Concerto in C majorModerato
Adagio
Allegro moltoThere are so many mysteries in music (just who did write all those anonymous medieval pieces?), that it is a relief to find one puzzle that was solved.
This concerto was lost for 200 years, and it is due to Haydn’s own cautiousness and good business sense that it was eventually identified as his work at all. Its existence was known to Haydn scholars only because of an entry and a scrap of melody in the personal catalogue he kept of all his works. This was partly an attempt to protect himself from publishing pirates: in it, he asserts his authorship of works by noting titles, dates and also fragments of the principal themes of all the works he wrote. So, when an impressive but anonymous concerto was discovered in the National Museum in Prague in 1961, it was a relatively simple matter to match it up with Haydn’s book, and ascertain its authenticity. The opening theme matched with the catalogue and that was that: the first performance in modern times was conducted by none other than Sir Charles Mackerras and performed by the cellist Milos Sadlo.
To anyone raised on the Romantic cello repertoire – the lofty, autumnal melancholy of Elgar and Dvorák or the embittered heroic suffering of Shostakovich – the revelation of this piece must be that Haydn writes ebullient, sunny and dignified music for the instrument. It is tempting to think that its sunny atmosphere and general brilliance of owes something to Haydn’s Italian forebears: Vivaldi wrote over 30 fine concertos for the instrument, but as the cello was a relative newcomer to the solo spotlight, they were not published in his lifetime. Like Vivaldi, Haydn imagined the cello in an almost operatic light– and it is more of a light baritone than a basso profundo that he has in mind The slow movement is no tortured, introspective wail, but a dignified and spacious, elegant aria which unfolds at a stately pace. Its restraint and mellowness contrast beautifully with the first and third movements. Their themes are full of confident optimism, and stomping dances: there is a hint of fanfare to the cello’s opening flourish – this is truly music of the Age of Enlightenment.
© Svend Brown
- Wolf
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
- Mendelssohn
Programme note
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Symphony No 4 in A major, Op 90, 'Italian' (1833)Allegro vivace
Andante con moto
Con moto moderato
Saltarello: PrestoMendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ symphony was the major product of his second ‘grand tour’ of Europe, undertaken at the age of 21. Savouring, as he put it, the “supreme delight in life” displayed by the Italians, he vowed to pay symphonic homage to their vivacity. The result, he declared, was the most cheerful piece of music he had yet composed, though he insisted that it was far from being a piece of nineteenth-century musical landscape painting.
Be that as it may, its Italian features are unmistakable and remain part of its charm. Though the theory that his ‘Scotch’ symphony was interchangeable with his ‘Italian’ no longer cuts much ice, there seems no doubt that the slow movement has nothing to do with Italy but was intended to commemorate Goethe and Zelter (Mendelssohn’s teacher, whose Goethe-inspired Konig in Thule it quotes), both of whom had recently died. What the ‘Scotch’ and ‘Italian’ symphonies do quite strikingly have in common are aspects of the key of A, the ‘Scotch’ beginning in A minor and ending in A major, the ‘Italian’ beginning in A major and ending in A minor. In this respect the one could be called the obverse of the other, though whether this was intentional is hard to say.
What is easier to identify is the instant sunshine of the first movement of the ‘Italian’ and the southern swirl of the finale, which Mendelssohn took pains to entitle Saltarello, in tribute to the leaping Italian dance it relentlessly evokes. In comparison, the source of the slow movement is surely the allegretto of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, another study in the relationship between A minor and major. As for the elfin grace of the third movement – a Mendelssohnian evocation of a classical minuet – its poetic trio section, filled with magical horn calls, could easily come from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Strangely, Mendelssohn never really liked his Italian symphony and substantially revised three of its four movements, changing the colouring of the andante, adding fresh touches of poetry to the third movement, and considerably extending the finale. But if these were his last thoughts, they were never acted upon and have only recently been issued in an optional performing version. Though they seem unlikely to replace the original – which, as usual, is what we shall hear tonight – they shed interesting light on a masterpiece which Mendelssohn himself, because of his incomprehensible lack of faith in it, conducted only once.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- cello
- viola
Playing a pair of ideas off against each other can achieve as satisfying a musical menu as you could wish for. Here, Brahms plays Haydn - the grand master of variations form - at his own game before we hear Haydn's long lost cello concerto. Then two great German composers travel south for a taste of Italian song and dance.
Mozart Requiem
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
The Magic Flute, overture (1791)Trombones add terror to Don Giovanni, announcing through their dark, other-worldly sonorities that Act Two of Mozart’s comic drama has reached its supernatural climax. Before it was written, only Gluck, as well as Mozart himself in his richly-scored opera seria Idomeneo, had fully recognised the theatrical potential of these traditionally ecclesiastical instruments. But Mozart’s use of them in these two works was not his last. In 1791, just before he died, he would employ trombone tone again, first to convey the solemn Masonic side of The Magic Flute and then the death-consciousness of his unfinished Requiem.
Having been a Freemason since 1784, Mozart knew exactly what he wanted his trombones to express in The Magic Flute. Right at the start of the overture, they symbolise in slow, sonorous chords the three knocks at the temple door which form part of Masonic ritual. It is perhaps worth mentioning, however, that the short upbeats before two of the chords actually increase the quantity to five, representing, according to one authority, female Freemasonry and thus the presence of women in Mozart’s opera.
But three is the number which recurs obsessively throughout The Magic Flute. The cast-list includes Three Ladies, Three Boys, Three Priests, and Three Slaves. The comical Papageno counts to three before attempting suicide. Even the key of the overture, E flat major, has three flats as its signature. But the music reveals further Masonic connections. The slow introduction is associated with the weighty masculine pronouncements of Sarastro and his priests, while the succeeding Allegro, in spite of its strictly fugal structure, belongs more to the lighter, jollier, more humble and nimble world of Papageno and Papagena.
Halfway through the overture, the solemn chords return. Then the fugue resumes, now sounding more agitated and harmonically unstable, but cheerfulness is retrieved before the music reaches its close and the curtain goes up on Mozart’s last sublime comedy.
© Conrad Wilson
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Symphony No 41 in C major, K551, Jupiter (1788)Allegro vivace
Andante cantabile
Menuetto: Allegro
Molto allegroC major is Mozart’s Olympian key, nowhere more so than in the last and most dazzling of his symphonies, K551, traditionally known as the Jupiter. Though the title was not Mozart’s – the astute Johann Salomon, Haydn’s London impresario, is said to have thought of it – it is thoroughly in keeping with a work which progresses from a seemingly simple opening flourish to a finale which is an unsurpassed example of sustained polyphonic panache.
During the summer of 1788, when it was written, all was not well with Mozart. For financial reasons, he had moved house to the Viennese suburbs, though he could still, as he said, afford a cab into town. However, in spite of what he called "black thoughts," inspiration was running high. The superb symphonic triptych of which the Jupiter forms the completion was composed - for no obvious reason - between June and August, though some of the music was probably already in his head, along with the great C minor Adagio and Fugue for strings and two of his finest piano trios.
But if the use of conventional eighteenth-century odds and ends in the Jupiter Symphony – the first movement’s initial call to attention and the four notes which launch and propel the finale – suggest that it was written in haste, what Mozart does with these sounds anything but rushed. Everything, indeed, seems fashioned with the utmost poise, and with the most precise sense of timing. The way the first movement’s opening phrase returns, after a mere twenty bars, in counterpoint with a chirpy woodwind overlay and a glowing horn part is an example of how classical formality in this symphony becomes witty and sublime. Even the insertion, at one point in the movement, of what sounds like a merry little afterthought of a melody - it was written earlier that year for a baritone friend (the first Viennese Don Giovanni) to sing in different composer’s opera - is transformed into a stroke of genius.
The nocturnal slow movement, with its atmospherically muted strings, exquisite wind parts, and moods gradually less calm than they seem to begin with, maintains the inspiration. Even the silky opening theme proves subject to disruption. The idiosyncratic minuet, too, has something unstable about its stomping dance-beat, puncturing the suavity of the violin line. The central trio section is notable for its preliminary use of the four-note motif which will serve as the finale's launching-pad. But it is in the finale itself - a contrapuntal juggling act in which more and more balls are tossed into the air and effortlessly spun - that the symphony conspicuously reaches its exhilaratingly relentless apotheosis.
© Conrad Wilson
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Requiem in D minor, K626 (1791) [arr. Sussmayr]Introit
Kyrie
Dies irae
Tuba mirum
Rex tremendae
Recordare
Confutatis
Lacrimosa
Amen
Domine Jesu
Hostias
Sanctus
Benedictus
Agnus Dei
Lux aeternaD minor was Mozart’s demoniac key, the one he employed for the supernatural side of Don Giovanni, for the sulphurous first movement of his D minor Piano Concerto, K466, for the shadowy Kyrie, K341, and for the last of all his works, the unfinished Requiem, K626. The story of how he came to write it, and failed to complete it, is famous, though less mysterious than it has been made to seem. No vengeful Salieri - the composer reputed, slanderously, to be Mozart’s murderous Viennese enemy - was responsible for the disturbing nature of the commission, which reached Mozart via a supposedly sinister stranger in the summer of 1791. The stranger, sinister or otherwise, was merely the lackey of a certain Count Walsegg-Stuppach, a would-be composer who commissioned music from other people and passed it off as his own.
Walsegg’s wife having recently died, he wanted someone special to write a requiem in her memory. Mozart was his choice, but was extremely busy at the time, with two operas to finish by September, and his Clarinet Concerto for Anton Stadler in October. Nevertheless, being one of Europe’s first freelance composers and invariably short of cash, he accepted the commission (50% in advance), though he understandably delayed fulfilling it. This, no doubt, helped to account for the theory that the whole idea “distressed” him and ultimately made him fear that he was writing his own Requiem.
But, as death approached, myths surrounding Mozart were accumulating, and some of them continue to stick. Of his funeral in Vienna on 7 December 1791, it still needs to be asserted that - in the words of the most recent edition of the New Grove - “The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.” The true facts of Mozart’s burial are as unsensational as those concerning the unfinished Requiem. His body did not end up in a pauper’s grave, but - by an important nicety of detail - in a common grave “in accordance with Viennese burial customs at the time.” The lack of mourners was equally customary. As for the Requiem, there is ample evidence to suggest that Mozart was greatly stimulated by the project (he had written, after all, many inserts for operas by other people), that Walsegg-Stuppach’s identity was no secret (he shared a villa with Mozart’s close friend and Masonic benefactor Michael Puchberg), and that Anton Stadler was earmarked to perform the principal basset-horn part, once he had unveiled the Clarinet Concerto and played both these instruments in La Clemenza di Tito.
What finally threw Mozart’s timing askew was the rheumatic inflammatory fever - not the first of its kind he had suffered - which hit him in November, slowed his progress, brought him out in boils, and killed him at bar eight of the Lacrimosa. The old belief that Salieri had poisoned him, supported in recent years by Peter Shaffer’s play and film Amadeus, was just another of the Mozart myths that continue to circulate. But his sudden death placed his widow in a quandary. Since Walsegg-Stuppach was still awaiting the Requiem, Constanze Mozart adopted the count’s own tactics and got someone else - in this case the composer’s pupil Franz Xaver Sussmayr - to complete it.
Sussmayr, who had already been acting as the dying composer’s amanuensis, did a resourceful job, using Mozart’s surviving sketches and his own memories of discussions with which to eke out the music. Though the result was not authentic Mozart, it was unquestionably a musical entity, good enough to fool most listeners, even today, into accepting it at face value, and to establish it as an inspired combination of the traditional Austrian Catholic aspect of Mozart’s output and his new Masonic enthusiasm, complete with the special sound-world he had invented to portray it.
The burnished beauty of orchestral tone, with basset-horns and bassoons, backed up by trumpets and pounding kettledrums and, in the Tuba Mirum, the uncanny timbre of an obbligato trombone, is highlighted by the deliberate absence of flutes, oboes, and horns, which would normally have been present. There are hints, not unexpectedly, of the serious side of The Magic Flute, and in the Rex tremendae and Confutatis the orchestra becomes, as the New Grove puts it, a character in its own right.
All Mozart’s previous works in D minor - even the stealthily brooding Fantasy for solo piano in that key - here seem to converge and intensify, not least in Sussmayr’s closing masterstroke (though Mozart himself had set him the precedent) whereby the Kyrie music from the start of the work returns with renewed vehemence at the end. Mere expedience? Perhaps so, but undeniably potent in its effect.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- mezzo-soprano
- soprano
- tenor
- bass
- -
The SCO closes the 2010/11 Season with a feast of 'late' Masterworks by Mozart.
***James Gaffigan replaces the late Sir Charles Mackerras in this performance***
Mozart Requiem
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
The Magic Flute, overture (1791)Trombones add terror to Don Giovanni, announcing through their dark, other-worldly sonorities that Mozart’s opera has reached its supernatural climax. Before it was written, only Gluck, along with Mozart himself in his richly scored Idomeneo, had fully recognised the theatrical potential of these traditionally ecclesiastical instruments. But Mozart’s use of them in these works was not his last. In 1791, just before he died, he would employ trombone tone again, first to convey the solemn Masonic side of The Magic Flute and then the death-consciousness of his unfinished Requiem.
Having been a Freemason since 1784, Mozart knew exactly what he wanted his trombones to express in The Magic Flute. Right at the start of the Overture, they symbolise in slow, sonorous chords the three knocks at the temple door which form part of Masonic ritual. It is perhaps worth mentioning however, that the short upbeats before two of the chords actually increase the quantity to five, representing, according to one authority, female Freemasonry and thus the presence of women in Mozart’s opera.
But three is the number which recurs obsessively throughout The Magic Flute. The cast-list includes Three Ladies, Three Boys, Three Priests and Three Slaves. The comical Papageno counts to three before attempting suicide. Even the key of the overture, E-flat major, has three flats as its signature. But the music reveals further Masonic connections. The slow introduction is associated with the weighty masculine pronouncements of Sarastro and his priests, while the succeeding Allegro, in spite of its strictly fugal structure, belongs more to the lighter, jollier, more humble and nimble world of Papageno and Papagena.
Halfway through the Overture, the solemn chords return. Then the fugue resumes, now sounding more agitated and harmonically unstable, but cheerfulness is retrieved before the music reaches its close and the curtain goes up on Mozart’s last sublime comedy.
© Conrad Wilson
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Symphony No 41 in C major, K551, Jupiter (1788)Allegro vivace
Andante cantabile
Menuetto: Allegro
Molto allegroC major is Mozart’s Olympian key, nowhere more so than in the last and most dazzling of his symphonies, K551, traditionally known as the Jupiter. Though the title was not Mozart’s – the astute Johann Salomon, Haydn’s London impresario, is said to have thought of it – it is thoroughly in keeping with a work which progresses from a seemingly simple opening flourish to a finale which is an unsurpassed example of sustained polyphonic panache.
During the summer of 1788, when it was written, all was not well with Mozart. For financial reasons, he had moved house to the Viennese suburbs, though he could still, as he said, afford a cab into town. However, in spite of what he called "black thoughts," inspiration was running high. The superb symphonic triptych of which the Jupiter forms the completion was composed - for no obvious reason - between June and August, though some of the music was probably already in his head, along with the great C minor Adagio and Fugue for strings and two of his finest piano trios.
But if the use of conventional eighteenth-century odds and ends in the Jupiter Symphony – the first movement’s initial call to attention and the four notes which launch and propel the finale – suggest that it was written in haste, what Mozart does with these sounds anything but rushed. Everything, indeed, seems fashioned with the utmost poise, and with the most precise sense of timing. The way the first movement’s opening phrase returns, after a mere twenty bars, in counterpoint with a chirpy woodwind overlay and a glowing horn part is an example of how classical formality in this symphony becomes witty and sublime. Even the insertion, at one point in the movement, of what sounds like a merry little afterthought of a melody - it was written earlier that year for a baritone friend (the first Viennese Don Giovanni) to sing in different composer’s opera - is transformed into a stroke of genius.
The nocturnal slow movement, with its atmospherically muted strings, exquisite wind parts, and moods gradually less calm than they seem to begin with, maintains the inspiration. Even the silky opening theme proves subject to disruption. The idiosyncratic minuet, too, has something unstable about its stomping dance-beat, puncturing the suavity of the violin line. The central trio section is notable for its preliminary use of the four-note motif which will serve as the finale's launching-pad. But it is in the finale itself - a contrapuntal juggling act in which more and more balls are tossed into the air and effortlessly spun - that the symphony conspicuously reaches its exhilaratingly relentless apotheosis.
© Conrad Wilson
- Mozart
Programme note
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Requiem in D minor, K626 (1791) [arr. Sussmayr]Introit
Kyrie
Dies irae
Tuba mirum
Rex tremendae
Recordare
Confutatis
Lacrimosa
Amen
Domine Jesu
Hostias
Sanctus
Benedictus
Agnus Dei
Lux aeternaD minor was Mozart’s demoniac key, the one he employed for the supernatural side of Don Giovanni, for the sulphurous first movement of his D minor Piano Concerto, K466, for the shadowy Kyrie, K341, and for the last of all his works, the unfinished Requiem, K626. The story of how he came to write it, and failed to complete it, is famous, though less mysterious than it has been made to seem. No vengeful Salieri - the composer reputed, slanderously, to be Mozart’s murderous Viennese enemy - was responsible for the disturbing nature of the commission, which reached Mozart via a supposedly sinister stranger in the summer of 1791. The stranger, sinister or otherwise, was merely the lackey of a certain Count Walsegg-Stuppach, a would-be composer who commissioned music from other people and passed it off as his own.
Walsegg’s wife having recently died, he wanted someone special to write a requiem in her memory. Mozart was his choice, but was extremely busy at the time, with two operas to finish by September, and his Clarinet Concerto for Anton Stadler in October. Nevertheless, being one of Europe’s first freelance composers and invariably short of cash, he accepted the commission (50% in advance), though he understandably delayed fulfilling it. This, no doubt, helped to account for the theory that the whole idea “distressed” him and ultimately made him fear that he was writing his own Requiem.
But, as death approached, myths surrounding Mozart were accumulating, and some of them continue to stick. Of his funeral in Vienna on 7 December 1791, it still needs to be asserted that - in the words of the most recent edition of the New Grove - “The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.” The true facts of Mozart’s burial are as unsensational as those concerning the unfinished Requiem. His body did not end up in a pauper’s grave, but - by an important nicety of detail - in a common grave “in accordance with Viennese burial customs at the time.” The lack of mourners was equally customary. As for the Requiem, there is ample evidence to suggest that Mozart was greatly stimulated by the project (he had written, after all, many inserts for operas by other people), that Walsegg-Stuppach’s identity was no secret (he shared a villa with Mozart’s close friend and Masonic benefactor Michael Puchberg), and that Anton Stadler was earmarked to perform the principal basset-horn part, once he had unveiled the Clarinet Concerto and played both these instruments in La Clemenza di Tito.
What finally threw Mozart’s timing askew was the rheumatic inflammatory fever - not the first of its kind he had suffered - which hit him in November, slowed his progress, brought him out in boils, and killed him at bar eight of the Lacrimosa. The old belief that Salieri had poisoned him, supported in recent years by Peter Shaffer’s play and film Amadeus, was just another of the Mozart myths that continue to circulate. But his sudden death placed his widow in a quandary. Since Walsegg-Stuppach was still awaiting the Requiem, Constanze Mozart adopted the count’s own tactics and got someone else - in this case the composer’s pupil Franz Xaver Sussmayr - to complete it.
Sussmayr, who had already been acting as the dying composer’s amanuensis, did a resourceful job, using Mozart’s surviving sketches and his own memories of discussions with which to eke out the music. Though the result was not authentic Mozart, it was unquestionably a musical entity, good enough to fool most listeners, even today, into accepting it at face value, and to establish it as an inspired combination of the traditional Austrian Catholic aspect of Mozart’s output and his new Masonic enthusiasm, complete with the special sound-world he had invented to portray it.
The burnished beauty of orchestral tone, with basset-horns and bassoons, backed up by trumpets and pounding kettledrums and, in the Tuba Mirum, the uncanny timbre of an obbligato trombone, is highlighted by the deliberate absence of flutes, oboes, and horns, which would normally have been present. There are hints, not unexpectedly, of the serious side of The Magic Flute, and in the Rex tremendae and Confutatis the orchestra becomes, as the New Grove puts it, a character in its own right.
All Mozart’s previous works in D minor - even the stealthily brooding Fantasy for solo piano in that key - here seem to converge and intensify, not least in Sussmayr’s closing masterstroke (though Mozart himself had set him the precedent) whereby the Kyrie music from the start of the work returns with renewed vehemence at the end. Mere expedience? Perhaps so, but undeniably potent in its effect.
© Conrad Wilson
- conductor
- soprano
- mezzo-soprano
- tenor
- bass
- -
The SCO closes the 2010/11 Season with a feast of 'late' Masterworks by Mozart.
***James Gaffigan replaces the late Sir Charles Mackerras in this performance***
South of Scotland Tour 2011
- Haydn
Programme note
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Symphony No 70 in D major (1779)Vivace con brio
Andante (Specie d’un canone in contrapunto doppio)
Menuet & Trio: Allegretto
Finale: Allegro con brioTo make their way in a musical world which continues to prefer Mozart, Haydn’s symphonies depend as much as ever on their nicknames as a way of attracting an audience’s attention. 'The Clock', the 'Surprise', the 'Drum Roll', the 'Oxford', the 'London', the 'Farewell', the 'Hen', the 'Bear' are the popular masterpieces, easily recognised, full of interest, renowned for their vivid, sometimes humorous, descriptive effects, their greatness never in doubt. But what of Symphony No 70? Without a memorable title, does it stand out sufficiently among the many other Haydn symphonies of the same period which are likewise identified only by number and key? The answer would seem to be no. How often – if ever – have you heard it in a concert hall?
Yet to claim that this work is not just a masterpiece but one of Haydn’s supreme, brilliantly succinct achievements in symphonic form is no overstatement. To say that it dates from what must have been a dramatic moment in his life as musical director at Esterhaza - the year (1779) that the opera house in the palace grounds burned down – throws some light perhaps on what could be described as the heat of the music. But Haydn had already written a Fire symphony, and the merits of the present work in any case lie in its more abstract aspects, such as the special tension that arises between the keys of D major and D minor, the emphasis on contrapuntal devices, the conspicuous abruptness that had been a feature of the symphonies of his so-called Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period, when humour was not necessarily something that listeners expected to find in a Haydn symphony.
At the start, there is none of the mystery of one of Haydn’s slow introductions to hold the listener in suspense. The instant swinging energy of the first movement leaves scant scope for dallying, or for the insertion of pretty tunes. This is Haydn at his most hard-driven, with a loud kettledrum part which he added later for emphasis. The stealthily marching slow movement in the minor replaces the first movement’s rhythmic animation with contrapuntal ingenuity. The music, with its elaborate subtitle, is not only a set of variations but "a species of canon in double counterpoint," whereby the top line is an inversion of the bottom line, or vice versa. The sound is serious, somewhat teasing, sometimes plaintive, especially when oboe and horn tone infiltrates the strings. A lovely episode in the major provides an inspired moment of contrast.
The minuet is robust, with charming echo effects and the sweetest, most surprising of trio sections, filled with the strains of lilting reed pipes. But if this is not the symphony’s first surprise, it is certainly not the last. The minor-key finale, with its hammering five-note rhythm and sudden silences, strides off in a new direction, this time into a triple fugue with a symphonic vitality and splendour prophetic of the finale of Mozart’s Jupiter symphony. The radiant switch from D minor to D major, the symphony’s home key, is one of its moments of glory. The last notes – is the work about to end or is it not? - form another, a Haydn stroke of genius par excellence.
© Conrad Wilson
- Weber
Programme note
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Clarinet Concerto No 1 in F minor, Op 73 (1811)Allegro
Adagio ma non troppo
Rondo: AllegrettoLike Mozart before him and Brahms after him, Weber loved the clarinet and wrote with maximum eloquence for what at the time was still a fairly novel single-reed member of the woodwind family. Numerous passages in his operas reveal his responsiveness to its sound, but his enthusiasm went further than that, as his two clarinet concertos, clarinet concertino, and sublime Mozart-inspired clarinet quintet all confirm.
As with Mozart, and indeed with Brahms, most of this music was written with one particular player in mind – not Mozart’s gloriously gifted Anton Stadler, who was by then on the brink of death, nor Brahms’s self-taught Richard Muhlfeld, who was not yet born, but Heinrich Baermann, famed as the ‘Rubini of the clarinet’ because he rivalled the great Italian tenor in richness, beauty, and phenomenal compass.
Though Baermann started as a bandsman in the Prussian Life Guards and was captured by Napoleon at the Battle of Jena, he survived to become the leading clarinettist of his day, hailed by Weber for his ‘welcome homogeneity’ from top to bottom of the register. His abilities were exploited by this evening’s concerto, with its brilliant, agile top notes and sudden plunges into shadow. Weber, even in this early work, was a great and natural orchestrator, a quality he shared with Schubert, who lacked Weber’s professional experience as a conductor but possessed a similarly profound feeling for instrumental timbre.
Yet if either of these composers had been just an orchestral colourist, his music would not arrest us today the way it does. In Weber’s case, the individuality of his sound world makes him seem prophetic of Berlioz and Mahler, both of whom adored him. It is a sound which fits his ideas like a glove, as the sombre, jerky, minor-key restlessness of the first movement of this concerto instantly proclaims, before the clarinet makes its poignant entry. The slow movement has as its highpoint a passage for clarinet against an exquisite horn chorale (the horn being another of Weber’s special instruments) and the finale has a piquancy that never degenerates into mere fluency.
© Conrad Wilson
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 3 in E flat, 'Eroica' (1806)Allegro con brio
Marcia funebre: Adagio assai
Scherzo – Allegro vivace
Finale – Allegro molto"I live only in my notes, and with one work barely finished, the other is already started; the way I write now I often find myself working on three, four things at the same time."
— Ludwig van Beethoven
While still writing the Second Symphony, Beethoven started on his Third, another work from that dark Heiligenstadt Testament year (though any connection to Beethoven’s personal struggle with deafness has been utterly eclipsed by the story of its dedication).
For Beethoven, this symphony was Revolutionary as well as revolutionary. The original title page simply read 'Buonaparte' at the top and 'Luigi van Beethoven' at the foot. Beethoven’s admiration for the Corsican was no secret, which must have been a little risky. After all, he lived in the heart of the Hapsburg Empire, whose dominions were deeply threatened by all that Napoleon represented. And, in spite of his 'republican' passions, he was highly dependent on the goodwill of aristocrats. This very symphony had its earliest try-out performances at a private concert in a grand ballroom of a grand palace, in the heart of reactionary Vienna.
Beethoven’s respect for Bonaparte was famously dashed when the Corsican proclaimed himself emperor. Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven’s friend, reports:
"...[Beethoven] flew into a rage and cried out: 'Is he too, then, nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now he, too, will trample on all the rights of man and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others, become a tyrant!' "
Ries goes on to say that Beethoven then ripped the title page of this piece in two and threw it on the floor. Ries, like many of Beethoven’s friends, was apt to dramatise his recollections, but we have further evidence of Beethoven’s disappointment. Writing to the publisher Hoffmeister in 1802, he responded indignantly to a suggestion that he write a "Revolutionary" sonata:
Well, perhaps at the time of the revolutionary fever such a thing might have been possible, but now, when everything is trying to slip back into the old rut, now that Bonaparte has concluded his Concordat with the Pope – to write a sonata of that kind?
Yet Beethoven did not definitively change the symphony’s dedication until 1806, when orchestral parts were finally published. Perhaps a lingering nostalgia for what Bonaparte had once represented stayed his hand.
‘Eroica’ undoubtedly is the most apt title for the piece. It encapsulates not only the spirit of the times and Napoleonic Europe, but also the extent of Beethoven’s musical achievement. The scale and ambition of this piece set it apart from anything he (or anyone else) had previously written. The form of the classical symphony he had inherited from Haydn and Mozart is easily recognisable, but with a drama and sense of conflict that go far beyond their work. He freely embraces ugliness as well as beauty, coarseness as well as great refinement, violence as well as concord, brute force as well as masterly craftsmanship. His instrumental palate – enriched by three horns instead of the usual two – is astounding, full of martial effects and the generous use of timpani and brass. With this work, Beethoven paved the way for Romantic-era composers Schumann, Bruckner and Mahler, and redefined what 'symphony' meant.
Igor Stravinsky, of all people, was flattered to note that some listeners had drawn a parallel between the opening notes of his pivotal 20th-century work, Rite of Spring, and the ‘Eroica’. Few works in the history of music are considered more significant and revolutionary than these two.
© Svend Brown
- conductor
- clarinet
Exciting young American conductor Jonathan Schiffman makes his SCO debut with a thrilling programme. Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony was inspired by Napoleon, whom the composer saw as a benefactor of mankind and a life-enriching hero. His view changed, however, when Napoleon pronounced himself Emperor, causing Beethoven to tear the dedication from his manuscript. Nevertheless, the symphony retains its great heroic power and emotional depth.
The SCO’s virtuoso Principal Clarinet Maximiliano Martín is the soloist in the poetic concerto by Carl Maria von Weber, a composer of glorious music too often overshadowed by his great contemporaries.
"Schiffman has it all: a beautiful and precise technique, stage presence, and a natural authority..."
La Provence, France
"Martín was a virtuosic tour de force" The Scotsman
Tickets are available by calling DG Arts on 01387 253383 and in person at Thomson's Newsagent, 23 Cuthbert Street, Kirkcudbright.
South of Scotland Tour 2011
- Haydn
Programme note
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Symphony No 70 in D major (1779)Vivace con brio
Andante (Specie d’un canone in contrapunto doppio)
Menuet & Trio: Allegretto
Finale: Allegro con brioTo make their way in a musical world which continues to prefer Mozart, Haydn’s symphonies depend as much as ever on their nicknames as a way of attracting an audience’s attention. 'The Clock', the 'Surprise', the 'Drum Roll', the 'Oxford', the 'London', the 'Farewell', the 'Hen', the 'Bear' are the popular masterpieces, easily recognised, full of interest, renowned for their vivid, sometimes humorous, descriptive effects, their greatness never in doubt. But what of Symphony No 70? Without a memorable title, does it stand out sufficiently among the many other Haydn symphonies of the same period which are likewise identified only by number and key? The answer would seem to be no. How often – if ever – have you heard it in a concert hall?
Yet to claim that this work is not just a masterpiece but one of Haydn’s supreme, brilliantly succinct achievements in symphonic form is no overstatement. To say that it dates from what must have been a dramatic moment in his life as musical director at Esterhaza - the year (1779) that the opera house in the palace grounds burned down – throws some light perhaps on what could be described as the heat of the music. But Haydn had already written a Fire symphony, and the merits of the present work in any case lie in its more abstract aspects, such as the special tension that arises between the keys of D major and D minor, the emphasis on contrapuntal devices, the conspicuous abruptness that had been a feature of the symphonies of his so-called Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period, when humour was not necessarily something that listeners expected to find in a Haydn symphony.
At the start, there is none of the mystery of one of Haydn’s slow introductions to hold the listener in suspense. The instant swinging energy of the first movement leaves scant scope for dallying, or for the insertion of pretty tunes. This is Haydn at his most hard-driven, with a loud kettledrum part which he added later for emphasis. The stealthily marching slow movement in the minor replaces the first movement’s rhythmic animation with contrapuntal ingenuity. The music, with its elaborate subtitle, is not only a set of variations but "a species of canon in double counterpoint," whereby the top line is an inversion of the bottom line, or vice versa. The sound is serious, somewhat teasing, sometimes plaintive, especially when oboe and horn tone infiltrates the strings. A lovely episode in the major provides an inspired moment of contrast.
The minuet is robust, with charming echo effects and the sweetest, most surprising of trio sections, filled with the strains of lilting reed pipes. But if this is not the symphony’s first surprise, it is certainly not the last. The minor-key finale, with its hammering five-note rhythm and sudden silences, strides off in a new direction, this time into a triple fugue with a symphonic vitality and splendour prophetic of the finale of Mozart’s Jupiter symphony. The radiant switch from D minor to D major, the symphony’s home key, is one of its moments of glory. The last notes – is the work about to end or is it not? - form another, a Haydn stroke of genius par excellence.
© Conrad Wilson
- Weber
Programme note
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Clarinet Concerto No 1 in F minor, Op 73 (1811)Allegro
Adagio ma non troppo
Rondo: AllegrettoLike Mozart before him and Brahms after him, Weber loved the clarinet and wrote with maximum eloquence for what at the time was still a fairly novel single-reed member of the woodwind family. Numerous passages in his operas reveal his responsiveness to its sound, but his enthusiasm went further than that, as his two clarinet concertos, clarinet concertino, and sublime Mozart-inspired clarinet quintet all confirm.
As with Mozart, and indeed with Brahms, most of this music was written with one particular player in mind – not Mozart’s gloriously gifted Anton Stadler, who was by then on the brink of death, nor Brahms’s self-taught Richard Muhlfeld, who was not yet born, but Heinrich Baermann, famed as the ‘Rubini of the clarinet’ because he rivalled the great Italian tenor in richness, beauty, and phenomenal compass.
Though Baermann started as a bandsman in the Prussian Life Guards and was captured by Napoleon at the Battle of Jena, he survived to become the leading clarinettist of his day, hailed by Weber for his ‘welcome homogeneity’ from top to bottom of the register. His abilities were exploited by this evening’s concerto, with its brilliant, agile top notes and sudden plunges into shadow. Weber, even in this early work, was a great and natural orchestrator, a quality he shared with Schubert, who lacked Weber’s professional experience as a conductor but possessed a similarly profound feeling for instrumental timbre.
Yet if either of these composers had been just an orchestral colourist, his music would not arrest us today the way it does. In Weber’s case, the individuality of his sound world makes him seem prophetic of Berlioz and Mahler, both of whom adored him. It is a sound which fits his ideas like a glove, as the sombre, jerky, minor-key restlessness of the first movement of this concerto instantly proclaims, before the clarinet makes its poignant entry. The slow movement has as its highpoint a passage for clarinet against an exquisite horn chorale (the horn being another of Weber’s special instruments) and the finale has a piquancy that never degenerates into mere fluency.
© Conrad Wilson
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 3 in E flat, 'Eroica' (1806)Allegro con brio
Marcia funebre: Adagio assai
Scherzo – Allegro vivace
Finale – Allegro molto"I live only in my notes, and with one work barely finished, the other is already started; the way I write now I often find myself working on three, four things at the same time."
— Ludwig van Beethoven
While still writing the Second Symphony, Beethoven started on his Third, another work from that dark Heiligenstadt Testament year (though any connection to Beethoven’s personal struggle with deafness has been utterly eclipsed by the story of its dedication).
For Beethoven, this symphony was Revolutionary as well as revolutionary. The original title page simply read 'Buonaparte' at the top and 'Luigi van Beethoven' at the foot. Beethoven’s admiration for the Corsican was no secret, which must have been a little risky. After all, he lived in the heart of the Hapsburg Empire, whose dominions were deeply threatened by all that Napoleon represented. And, in spite of his 'republican' passions, he was highly dependent on the goodwill of aristocrats. This very symphony had its earliest try-out performances at a private concert in a grand ballroom of a grand palace, in the heart of reactionary Vienna.
Beethoven’s respect for Bonaparte was famously dashed when the Corsican proclaimed himself emperor. Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven’s friend, reports:
"...[Beethoven] flew into a rage and cried out: 'Is he too, then, nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now he, too, will trample on all the rights of man and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others, become a tyrant!' "
Ries goes on to say that Beethoven then ripped the title page of this piece in two and threw it on the floor. Ries, like many of Beethoven’s friends, was apt to dramatise his recollections, but we have further evidence of Beethoven’s disappointment. Writing to the publisher Hoffmeister in 1802, he responded indignantly to a suggestion that he write a "Revolutionary" sonata:
Well, perhaps at the time of the revolutionary fever such a thing might have been possible, but now, when everything is trying to slip back into the old rut, now that Bonaparte has concluded his Concordat with the Pope – to write a sonata of that kind?
Yet Beethoven did not definitively change the symphony’s dedication until 1806, when orchestral parts were finally published. Perhaps a lingering nostalgia for what Bonaparte had once represented stayed his hand.
‘Eroica’ undoubtedly is the most apt title for the piece. It encapsulates not only the spirit of the times and Napoleonic Europe, but also the extent of Beethoven’s musical achievement. The scale and ambition of this piece set it apart from anything he (or anyone else) had previously written. The form of the classical symphony he had inherited from Haydn and Mozart is easily recognisable, but with a drama and sense of conflict that go far beyond their work. He freely embraces ugliness as well as beauty, coarseness as well as great refinement, violence as well as concord, brute force as well as masterly craftsmanship. His instrumental palate – enriched by three horns instead of the usual two – is astounding, full of martial effects and the generous use of timpani and brass. With this work, Beethoven paved the way for Romantic-era composers Schumann, Bruckner and Mahler, and redefined what 'symphony' meant.
Igor Stravinsky, of all people, was flattered to note that some listeners had drawn a parallel between the opening notes of his pivotal 20th-century work, Rite of Spring, and the ‘Eroica’. Few works in the history of music are considered more significant and revolutionary than these two.
© Svend Brown
- conductor
- clarinet
Exciting young American conductor Jonathan Schiffman makes his SCO debut with a thrilling programme. Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony was inspired by Napoleon, whom the composer saw as a benefactor of mankind and a life-enriching hero. His view changed, however, when Napoleon pronounced himself Emperor, causing Beethoven to tear the dedication from his manuscript. Nevertheless, the symphony retains its great heroic power and emotional depth.
The SCO’s virtuoso Principal Clarinet Maximiliano Martín is the soloist in the poetic concerto by Carl Maria von Weber, a composer of glorious music too often overshadowed by his great contemporaries.
"Schiffman has it all: a beautiful and precise technique, stage presence, and a natural authority..."
La Provence, France
"Martín was a virtuosic tour de force" The Scotsman
Tickets are available by calling The Buccleuch Centre on 01387 381196, DG Arts on 01387 253383 or online.
South of Scotland Tour 2011
- Haydn
Programme note
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Symphony No 70 in D major (1779)Vivace con brio
Andante (Specie d’un canone in contrapunto doppio)
Menuet & Trio: Allegretto
Finale: Allegro con brioTo make their way in a musical world which continues to prefer Mozart, Haydn’s symphonies depend as much as ever on their nicknames as a way of attracting an audience’s attention. 'The Clock', the 'Surprise', the 'Drum Roll', the 'Oxford', the 'London', the 'Farewell', the 'Hen', the 'Bear' are the popular masterpieces, easily recognised, full of interest, renowned for their vivid, sometimes humorous, descriptive effects, their greatness never in doubt. But what of Symphony No 70? Without a memorable title, does it stand out sufficiently among the many other Haydn symphonies of the same period which are likewise identified only by number and key? The answer would seem to be no. How often – if ever – have you heard it in a concert hall?
Yet to claim that this work is not just a masterpiece but one of Haydn’s supreme, brilliantly succinct achievements in symphonic form is no overstatement. To say that it dates from what must have been a dramatic moment in his life as musical director at Esterhaza - the year (1779) that the opera house in the palace grounds burned down – throws some light perhaps on what could be described as the heat of the music. But Haydn had already written a Fire symphony, and the merits of the present work in any case lie in its more abstract aspects, such as the special tension that arises between the keys of D major and D minor, the emphasis on contrapuntal devices, the conspicuous abruptness that had been a feature of the symphonies of his so-called Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") period, when humour was not necessarily something that listeners expected to find in a Haydn symphony.
At the start, there is none of the mystery of one of Haydn’s slow introductions to hold the listener in suspense. The instant swinging energy of the first movement leaves scant scope for dallying, or for the insertion of pretty tunes. This is Haydn at his most hard-driven, with a loud kettledrum part which he added later for emphasis. The stealthily marching slow movement in the minor replaces the first movement’s rhythmic animation with contrapuntal ingenuity. The music, with its elaborate subtitle, is not only a set of variations but "a species of canon in double counterpoint," whereby the top line is an inversion of the bottom line, or vice versa. The sound is serious, somewhat teasing, sometimes plaintive, especially when oboe and horn tone infiltrates the strings. A lovely episode in the major provides an inspired moment of contrast.
The minuet is robust, with charming echo effects and the sweetest, most surprising of trio sections, filled with the strains of lilting reed pipes. But if this is not the symphony’s first surprise, it is certainly not the last. The minor-key finale, with its hammering five-note rhythm and sudden silences, strides off in a new direction, this time into a triple fugue with a symphonic vitality and splendour prophetic of the finale of Mozart’s Jupiter symphony. The radiant switch from D minor to D major, the symphony’s home key, is one of its moments of glory. The last notes – is the work about to end or is it not? - form another, a Haydn stroke of genius par excellence.
© Conrad Wilson
- Weber
Programme note
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Clarinet Concerto No 1 in F minor, Op 73 (1811)Allegro
Adagio ma non troppo
Rondo: AllegrettoLike Mozart before him and Brahms after him, Weber loved the clarinet and wrote with maximum eloquence for what at the time was still a fairly novel single-reed member of the woodwind family. Numerous passages in his operas reveal his responsiveness to its sound, but his enthusiasm went further than that, as his two clarinet concertos, clarinet concertino, and sublime Mozart-inspired clarinet quintet all confirm.
As with Mozart, and indeed with Brahms, most of this music was written with one particular player in mind – not Mozart’s gloriously gifted Anton Stadler, who was by then on the brink of death, nor Brahms’s self-taught Richard Muhlfeld, who was not yet born, but Heinrich Baermann, famed as the ‘Rubini of the clarinet’ because he rivalled the great Italian tenor in richness, beauty, and phenomenal compass.
Though Baermann started as a bandsman in the Prussian Life Guards and was captured by Napoleon at the Battle of Jena, he survived to become the leading clarinettist of his day, hailed by Weber for his ‘welcome homogeneity’ from top to bottom of the register. His abilities were exploited by this evening’s concerto, with its brilliant, agile top notes and sudden plunges into shadow. Weber, even in this early work, was a great and natural orchestrator, a quality he shared with Schubert, who lacked Weber’s professional experience as a conductor but possessed a similarly profound feeling for instrumental timbre.
Yet if either of these composers had been just an orchestral colourist, his music would not arrest us today the way it does. In Weber’s case, the individuality of his sound world makes him seem prophetic of Berlioz and Mahler, both of whom adored him. It is a sound which fits his ideas like a glove, as the sombre, jerky, minor-key restlessness of the first movement of this concerto instantly proclaims, before the clarinet makes its poignant entry. The slow movement has as its highpoint a passage for clarinet against an exquisite horn chorale (the horn being another of Weber’s special instruments) and the finale has a piquancy that never degenerates into mere fluency.
© Conrad Wilson
- Beethoven
Programme note
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Symphony No 3 in E flat, 'Eroica' (1806)Allegro con brio
Marcia funebre: Adagio assai
Scherzo – Allegro vivace
Finale – Allegro molto"I live only in my notes, and with one work barely finished, the other is already started; the way I write now I often find myself working on three, four things at the same time."
— Ludwig van Beethoven
While still writing the Second Symphony, Beethoven started on his Third, another work from that dark Heiligenstadt Testament year (though any connection to Beethoven’s personal struggle with deafness has been utterly eclipsed by the story of its dedication).
For Beethoven, this symphony was Revolutionary as well as revolutionary. The original title page simply read 'Buonaparte' at the top and 'Luigi van Beethoven' at the foot. Beethoven’s admiration for the Corsican was no secret, which must have been a little risky. After all, he lived in the heart of the Hapsburg Empire, whose dominions were deeply threatened by all that Napoleon represented. And, in spite of his 'republican' passions, he was highly dependent on the goodwill of aristocrats. This very symphony had its earliest try-out performances at a private concert in a grand ballroom of a grand palace, in the heart of reactionary Vienna.
Beethoven’s respect for Bonaparte was famously dashed when the Corsican proclaimed himself emperor. Ferdinand Ries, Beethoven’s friend, reports:
"...[Beethoven] flew into a rage and cried out: 'Is he too, then, nothing more than an ordinary human being? Now he, too, will trample on all the rights of man and indulge only his ambition. He will exalt himself above all others, become a tyrant!' "
Ries goes on to say that Beethoven then ripped the title page of this piece in two and threw it on the floor. Ries, like many of Beethoven’s friends, was apt to dramatise his recollections, but we have further evidence of Beethoven’s disappointment. Writing to the publisher Hoffmeister in 1802, he responded indignantly to a suggestion that he write a "Revolutionary" sonata:
Well, perhaps at the time of the revolutionary fever such a thing might have been possible, but now, when everything is trying to slip back into the old rut, now that Bonaparte has concluded his Concordat with the Pope – to write a sonata of that kind?
Yet Beethoven did not definitively change the symphony’s dedication until 1806, when orchestral parts were finally published. Perhaps a lingering nostalgia for what Bonaparte had once represented stayed his hand.
‘Eroica’ undoubtedly is the most apt title for the piece. It encapsulates not only the spirit of the times and Napoleonic Europe, but also the extent of Beethoven’s musical achievement. The scale and ambition of this piece set it apart from anything he (or anyone else) had previously written. The form of the classical symphony he had inherited from Haydn and Mozart is easily recognisable, but with a drama and sense of conflict that go far beyond their work. He freely embraces ugliness as well as beauty, coarseness as well as great refinement, violence as well as concord, brute force as well as masterly craftsmanship. His instrumental palate – enriched by three horns instead of the usual two – is astounding, full of martial effects and the generous use of timpani and brass. With this work, Beethoven paved the way for Romantic-era composers Schumann, Bruckner and Mahler, and redefined what 'symphony' meant.
Igor Stravinsky, of all people, was flattered to note that some listeners had drawn a parallel between the opening notes of his pivotal 20th-century work, Rite of Spring, and the ‘Eroica’. Few works in the history of music are considered more significant and revolutionary than these two.
© Svend Brown
- conductor
- clarinet
Exciting young American conductor Jonathan Schiffman makes his SCO debut with a thrilling programme. Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony was inspired by Napoleon, whom the composer saw as a benefactor of mankind and a life-enriching hero. His view changed, however, when Napoleon pronounced himself Emperor, causing Beethoven to tear the dedication from his manuscript. Nevertheless, the symphony retains its great heroic power and emotional depth.
The SCO’s virtuoso Principal Clarinet Maximiliano Martín is the soloist in the poetic concerto by Carl Maria von Weber, a composer of glorious music too often overshadowed by his great contemporaries.
"Schiffman has it all: a beautiful and precise technique, stage presence, and a natural authority..."
La Provence, France
"Martín was a virtuosic tour de force" The Scotsman
Tickets are also available from Rodgerson's Newsagent, 6 High Street, Selkirk (in person only)
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