Concerts & Tickets

Programme note

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto in G major, K453 (1784)

Allegro
Andante
Allegretto – Presto

By the time he composed this concerto, Mozart had lost interest in Paris as a possible domicile and had settled in Vienna, thus depriving himself of foretastes of the French Revolution in 1789. Writing his subversive opera The Marriage of Figaro at long range soon after this evening’s concerto, he managed to sidestep the censor, even although the revolutionary Beaumarchais play was banned in Vienna. Whether he would have been so lucky in Paris was another matter, but in 1784 he had other things on his mind. He was well into the great series of Viennese piano concertos which he had launched in 1782, and was at work on the six string quartets he dedicated to Haydn. In addition he became a Viennese Freemason, moved house twice between January and September, and was ill for three weeks with a fever suspiciously like the one which eventually killed him.

Mozart once said of his piano music that it should ‘flow like oil.’ It is a description which fits some aspects of the G major Piano Concerto, a magnificent large-scale work whose intimacy of tone can make it sound smaller, slighter, and smoother than it really is. Mozart composed it not for himself but for one of his star pupils, Barbara Ployer, known as "Babette," which is one reason why it is sometimes described as a "feminine" work. Such terms, however, should be applied to Mozart with caution. He himself called it a concerto "to make you perspire," and Arthur Hutchings was not the only Mozart authority to point out that Ployer must have had to work very hard at the triplets in the finale, "unless the piece was taken much more slowly than we take it nowadays."

Even the famous music-box analogy, applied to the supposedly "tinkling" themes of the first movement and finale, is only half true. It would require a very special music-box to deal with the subtle modulations of the first movement’s opening theme, which cause the music to sigh as well as tinkle. In fact this movement is an astounding study in thematic interplay, and one of the first great landmarks of Mozart’s mature Viennese style. Not only does it employ a multiplicity of keyboard devices, but its sound-world is distinctly operatic, with some strange, disturbing foretastes of Don Giovanni planted amid the filigree detail.

The slow movement is similarly vocal, but perhaps more chaste and churchlike than operatically emotional. Yet its calm beauty is constantly threatened, in very Mozartian fashion, by the number of troubled modulations the music undergoes and by the nocturnal shadows in which it is often cloaked. Again the world of Don Giovanni seems not far distant.

But a different opera pervades the finale, which is a theme and variations supposedly inspired by the song of a pet starling – though more probably it was Mozart who taught his starling to sing it. From starling to birdman clearly required no great stretch of his imagination, and the music anticipated here is conspicuously Papageno’s in The Magic Flute. Yet the five variations are not just decorated versions of the theme but real creative feats of the imagination, comic, touching, and true to the whole nature of the piano concerto as Mozart envisaged it.

Nor does the increase of speed from allegretto to presto in the course of the finale imply that the movement has reached its coda. What it has reached is tantamount to a second finale – Mozart actually added the inscription "finale" at this point – making the music seem like the concerto equivalent of one of his operatic multiple finales, in which the pace increases step by step, with exhilarating comic effect.

© Conrad Wilson

Programme note

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto in G major, K453 (1784)

Allegro
Andante
Allegretto – Presto

By the time he composed this concerto, Mozart had lost interest in Paris as a possible domicile and had settled in Vienna, thus depriving himself of foretastes of the French Revolution in 1789. Writing his subversive opera The Marriage of Figaro at long range soon after this evening’s concerto, he managed to sidestep the censor, even although the revolutionary Beaumarchais play was banned in Vienna. Whether he would have been so lucky in Paris was another matter, but in 1784 he had other things on his mind. He was well into the great series of Viennese piano concertos which he had launched in 1782, and was at work on the six string quartets he dedicated to Haydn. In addition he became a Viennese Freemason, moved house twice between January and September, and was ill for three weeks with a fever suspiciously like the one which eventually killed him.

Mozart once said of his piano music that it should ‘flow like oil.’ It is a description which fits some aspects of the G major Piano Concerto, a magnificent large-scale work whose intimacy of tone can make it sound smaller, slighter, and smoother than it really is. Mozart composed it not for himself but for one of his star pupils, Barbara Ployer, known as "Babette," which is one reason why it is sometimes described as a "feminine" work. Such terms, however, should be applied to Mozart with caution. He himself called it a concerto "to make you perspire," and Arthur Hutchings was not the only Mozart authority to point out that Ployer must have had to work very hard at the triplets in the finale, "unless the piece was taken much more slowly than we take it nowadays."

Even the famous music-box analogy, applied to the supposedly "tinkling" themes of the first movement and finale, is only half true. It would require a very special music-box to deal with the subtle modulations of the first movement’s opening theme, which cause the music to sigh as well as tinkle. In fact this movement is an astounding study in thematic interplay, and one of the first great landmarks of Mozart’s mature Viennese style. Not only does it employ a multiplicity of keyboard devices, but its sound-world is distinctly operatic, with some strange, disturbing foretastes of Don Giovanni planted amid the filigree detail.

The slow movement is similarly vocal, but perhaps more chaste and churchlike than operatically emotional. Yet its calm beauty is constantly threatened, in very Mozartian fashion, by the number of troubled modulations the music undergoes and by the nocturnal shadows in which it is often cloaked. Again the world of Don Giovanni seems not far distant.

But a different opera pervades the finale, which is a theme and variations supposedly inspired by the song of a pet starling – though more probably it was Mozart who taught his starling to sing it. From starling to birdman clearly required no great stretch of his imagination, and the music anticipated here is conspicuously Papageno’s in The Magic Flute. Yet the five variations are not just decorated versions of the theme but real creative feats of the imagination, comic, touching, and true to the whole nature of the piano concerto as Mozart envisaged it.

Nor does the increase of speed from allegretto to presto in the course of the finale imply that the movement has reached its coda. What it has reached is tantamount to a second finale – Mozart actually added the inscription "finale" at this point – making the music seem like the concerto equivalent of one of his operatic multiple finales, in which the pace increases step by step, with exhilarating comic effect.

© Conrad Wilson

Programme note

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto in G major, K453 (1784)

Allegro
Andante
Allegretto – Presto

By the time he composed this concerto, Mozart had lost interest in Paris as a possible domicile and had settled in Vienna, thus depriving himself of foretastes of the French Revolution in 1789. Writing his subversive opera The Marriage of Figaro at long range soon after this evening’s concerto, he managed to sidestep the censor, even although the revolutionary Beaumarchais play was banned in Vienna. Whether he would have been so lucky in Paris was another matter, but in 1784 he had other things on his mind. He was well into the great series of Viennese piano concertos which he had launched in 1782, and was at work on the six string quartets he dedicated to Haydn. In addition he became a Viennese Freemason, moved house twice between January and September, and was ill for three weeks with a fever suspiciously like the one which eventually killed him.

Mozart once said of his piano music that it should ‘flow like oil.’ It is a description which fits some aspects of the G major Piano Concerto, a magnificent large-scale work whose intimacy of tone can make it sound smaller, slighter, and smoother than it really is. Mozart composed it not for himself but for one of his star pupils, Barbara Ployer, known as "Babette," which is one reason why it is sometimes described as a "feminine" work. Such terms, however, should be applied to Mozart with caution. He himself called it a concerto "to make you perspire," and Arthur Hutchings was not the only Mozart authority to point out that Ployer must have had to work very hard at the triplets in the finale, "unless the piece was taken much more slowly than we take it nowadays."

Even the famous music-box analogy, applied to the supposedly "tinkling" themes of the first movement and finale, is only half true. It would require a very special music-box to deal with the subtle modulations of the first movement’s opening theme, which cause the music to sigh as well as tinkle. In fact this movement is an astounding study in thematic interplay, and one of the first great landmarks of Mozart’s mature Viennese style. Not only does it employ a multiplicity of keyboard devices, but its sound-world is distinctly operatic, with some strange, disturbing foretastes of Don Giovanni planted amid the filigree detail.

The slow movement is similarly vocal, but perhaps more chaste and churchlike than operatically emotional. Yet its calm beauty is constantly threatened, in very Mozartian fashion, by the number of troubled modulations the music undergoes and by the nocturnal shadows in which it is often cloaked. Again the world of Don Giovanni seems not far distant.

But a different opera pervades the finale, which is a theme and variations supposedly inspired by the song of a pet starling – though more probably it was Mozart who taught his starling to sing it. From starling to birdman clearly required no great stretch of his imagination, and the music anticipated here is conspicuously Papageno’s in The Magic Flute. Yet the five variations are not just decorated versions of the theme but real creative feats of the imagination, comic, touching, and true to the whole nature of the piano concerto as Mozart envisaged it.

Nor does the increase of speed from allegretto to presto in the course of the finale imply that the movement has reached its coda. What it has reached is tantamount to a second finale – Mozart actually added the inscription "finale" at this point – making the music seem like the concerto equivalent of one of his operatic multiple finales, in which the pace increases step by step, with exhilarating comic effect.

© Conrad Wilson

Programme note

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto in G major, K453 (1784)

Allegro
Andante
Allegretto – Presto

By the time he composed this concerto, Mozart had lost interest in Paris as a possible domicile and had settled in Vienna, thus depriving himself of foretastes of the French Revolution in 1789. Writing his subversive opera The Marriage of Figaro at long range soon after this evening’s concerto, he managed to sidestep the censor, even although the revolutionary Beaumarchais play was banned in Vienna. Whether he would have been so lucky in Paris was another matter, but in 1784 he had other things on his mind. He was well into the great series of Viennese piano concertos which he had launched in 1782, and was at work on the six string quartets he dedicated to Haydn. In addition he became a Viennese Freemason, moved house twice between January and September, and was ill for three weeks with a fever suspiciously like the one which eventually killed him.

Mozart once said of his piano music that it should ‘flow like oil.’ It is a description which fits some aspects of the G major Piano Concerto, a magnificent large-scale work whose intimacy of tone can make it sound smaller, slighter, and smoother than it really is. Mozart composed it not for himself but for one of his star pupils, Barbara Ployer, known as "Babette," which is one reason why it is sometimes described as a "feminine" work. Such terms, however, should be applied to Mozart with caution. He himself called it a concerto "to make you perspire," and Arthur Hutchings was not the only Mozart authority to point out that Ployer must have had to work very hard at the triplets in the finale, "unless the piece was taken much more slowly than we take it nowadays."

Even the famous music-box analogy, applied to the supposedly "tinkling" themes of the first movement and finale, is only half true. It would require a very special music-box to deal with the subtle modulations of the first movement’s opening theme, which cause the music to sigh as well as tinkle. In fact this movement is an astounding study in thematic interplay, and one of the first great landmarks of Mozart’s mature Viennese style. Not only does it employ a multiplicity of keyboard devices, but its sound-world is distinctly operatic, with some strange, disturbing foretastes of Don Giovanni planted amid the filigree detail.

The slow movement is similarly vocal, but perhaps more chaste and churchlike than operatically emotional. Yet its calm beauty is constantly threatened, in very Mozartian fashion, by the number of troubled modulations the music undergoes and by the nocturnal shadows in which it is often cloaked. Again the world of Don Giovanni seems not far distant.

But a different opera pervades the finale, which is a theme and variations supposedly inspired by the song of a pet starling – though more probably it was Mozart who taught his starling to sing it. From starling to birdman clearly required no great stretch of his imagination, and the music anticipated here is conspicuously Papageno’s in The Magic Flute. Yet the five variations are not just decorated versions of the theme but real creative feats of the imagination, comic, touching, and true to the whole nature of the piano concerto as Mozart envisaged it.

Nor does the increase of speed from allegretto to presto in the course of the finale imply that the movement has reached its coda. What it has reached is tantamount to a second finale – Mozart actually added the inscription "finale" at this point – making the music seem like the concerto equivalent of one of his operatic multiple finales, in which the pace increases step by step, with exhilarating comic effect.

© Conrad Wilson

Programme note

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
Piano Concerto in G major, K453 (1784)

Allegro
Andante
Allegretto – Presto

By the time he composed this concerto, Mozart had lost interest in Paris as a possible domicile and had settled in Vienna, thus depriving himself of foretastes of the French Revolution in 1789. Writing his subversive opera The Marriage of Figaro at long range soon after this evening’s concerto, he managed to sidestep the censor, even although the revolutionary Beaumarchais play was banned in Vienna. Whether he would have been so lucky in Paris was another matter, but in 1784 he had other things on his mind. He was well into the great series of Viennese piano concertos which he had launched in 1782, and was at work on the six string quartets he dedicated to Haydn. In addition he became a Viennese Freemason, moved house twice between January and September, and was ill for three weeks with a fever suspiciously like the one which eventually killed him.

Mozart once said of his piano music that it should ‘flow like oil.’ It is a description which fits some aspects of the G major Piano Concerto, a magnificent large-scale work whose intimacy of tone can make it sound smaller, slighter, and smoother than it really is. Mozart composed it not for himself but for one of his star pupils, Barbara Ployer, known as "Babette," which is one reason why it is sometimes described as a "feminine" work. Such terms, however, should be applied to Mozart with caution. He himself called it a concerto "to make you perspire," and Arthur Hutchings was not the only Mozart authority to point out that Ployer must have had to work very hard at the triplets in the finale, "unless the piece was taken much more slowly than we take it nowadays."

Even the famous music-box analogy, applied to the supposedly "tinkling" themes of the first movement and finale, is only half true. It would require a very special music-box to deal with the subtle modulations of the first movement’s opening theme, which cause the music to sigh as well as tinkle. In fact this movement is an astounding study in thematic interplay, and one of the first great landmarks of Mozart’s mature Viennese style. Not only does it employ a multiplicity of keyboard devices, but its sound-world is distinctly operatic, with some strange, disturbing foretastes of Don Giovanni planted amid the filigree detail.

The slow movement is similarly vocal, but perhaps more chaste and churchlike than operatically emotional. Yet its calm beauty is constantly threatened, in very Mozartian fashion, by the number of troubled modulations the music undergoes and by the nocturnal shadows in which it is often cloaked. Again the world of Don Giovanni seems not far distant.

But a different opera pervades the finale, which is a theme and variations supposedly inspired by the song of a pet starling – though more probably it was Mozart who taught his starling to sing it. From starling to birdman clearly required no great stretch of his imagination, and the music anticipated here is conspicuously Papageno’s in The Magic Flute. Yet the five variations are not just decorated versions of the theme but real creative feats of the imagination, comic, touching, and true to the whole nature of the piano concerto as Mozart envisaged it.

Nor does the increase of speed from allegretto to presto in the course of the finale imply that the movement has reached its coda. What it has reached is tantamount to a second finale – Mozart actually added the inscription "finale" at this point – making the music seem like the concerto equivalent of one of his operatic multiple finales, in which the pace increases step by step, with exhilarating comic effect.

© Conrad Wilson

Programme note

Mátyás Seiber (1905-1960)
Serenade for six wind instruments (1925)

Allegro moderato
Lento
Allegro vivace

It is difficult to think of another nation that forged such a distinctive musical identity in the early twentieth century as the Hungarian empire. Unlike Russian nationalism or the revival of the English folksong tradition, the strength of the Hungarian musical character was founded on an inward-looking sense of national pride. Stravinsky’s Russian period was designed to address – and impress – a foreign audience, while the Hungarian concern with identity was determined by the internal politics of its empire, and had much less to do with the merchandising of exoticism. The magyar nóta (‘Hungarian tune’) had long been regarded as a stylistic emblem of nationalism in music cultivated by the Hungrian nobility, known aborad as the ‘Gypsy style’. Even as early as 1795, Haydn wrote a ‘Rondo in Hungarian style’, incorporating dotted rhythms, syncopations, augmented seconds and distinctive folk-like repetition. But throughout the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, a more robust and authentic Hungarian style was projected to the wider world, founded on the transcriptions and arrangements of indigenous folksong. With Bartók and Kodály leading the way, a whole host of young Hungarian composers followed in their footsteps.

Among this new generation was Mátyás Seiber, a pupil of Kodály and a student of the Budapest Academy, who had a particular interest in languages and in making vocal transcriptions of the nation’s folksongs. Seiber would become famous for his eclectic projects, which included the film scores for Animal Farm and A Town Like Alice, as well as collaborations with guitarist John Williams, percussionist Jimmy Blades, and jazz pioneer John Dankworth. He was also a respected teacher of some renown, as composer Francis Routh writes: ‘He was a complete teacher equally at home in the disciplines of Bach or Schoenberg. He particularly loved Bach. His teaching methods encouraged students to realise the reasons for every note that they wrote and every harmony that they produced. He was a genuine inspiration.’

But not all of Seiber’s forays into composition were met with such enthusiasm. When he entered his Serenade for six wind instruments into a composition in Budapest in 1927, for which both Bartók and Kodály were serving on jury, he was denied first prize. Disgusted, Bartók resigned from the jury in protest. It is not difficult to understand Bartók’s position: the Serenade is an elegant work that shows a composer mature beyond his years. Scored for two clarinets, two horns and two bassoons, its three movements present Seiber’s own renderings of different Hungarian folksongs – authentic in their origin, but transformed anew as the subject of this suite of dances. Here, the hallmarks of the ‘Gypsy style’ – such as the florid, improvisatory solo for clarinet in the first movement and the traditional dotted rhythms and syncopations of the opening dance – are given a neoclassical twist, with canonic imitation, rhythmic interplay and sharp textures. A melancholic central movement gives way to an energetic finale – a traditional march that becomes increasingly intricate and syncopated as the movement progresses, eventually bursting out into a triumphant conclusion.

© Jo Kirkbride

Programme note

Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Adagio and Rondo (1808)

A close contemporary of Beethoven and important figure in the emerging Romantic era, Weber’s works often receive far less attention than those of his contemporaries, despite his popularity during his lifetime. Like Mozart, he died relatively young – at the age of 39, from tuberculosis – and although his works do not match Mozart’s in number, his music left a legacy that was later acknowledged by the likes of Wagner, Debussy and Mahler. He is perhaps best known for his opera, Der Freischütz, considered by many to be the first ‘Romantic’ opera and held up as a masterpiece of dramatic representation, orchestration, and sublime melody that would influence opera composers for many years to come.

Alongside his vocal music, Weber also wrote a large number of instrumental works, including several seminal concertos for solo wind instruments and a wealth of chamber music, most of which is also for wind. This predilection for wind writing had much to do with the virtuoso clarinettist Heinrich Bärmann, who inspired Weber to write his two concertos for clarinet, Opp. 73 and 74, the wind quintet, Op. 34 and the Concertino, Op. 26. Yet, his two surviving scores for wind ensemble pre-date his collaborations with Bärmann, suggesting that he had a gift for wind writing even before they met. His Adagio in E flat major and Rondo in B flat major for two clarinets, two horns and two bassoons were written at separate times and on separate leaves of manuscript, so it is possible that Weber never intended them to form a cohesive work. But their closely-related keys and identical scoring suggests otherwise, and together they form a well-balanced pair of musical miniatures, each only a little over two minutes long.

In 1808, Weber was employed by the Duke of Württemberg, serving as his private secretary with no other musical duties. This left him free to pursue projects that pleased him and to take on private commissions, though it is not clear for which occasion – if any – the Adagio and Rondo were composed. The sinuous, elegant lines of the Adagio are in stark contrast with the playfulness of the Rondo that follows. While the former has echoes of Mozart in its calm, contemplative melodic writing, the Rondo is entirely Weber’s own, coloured with the same wit and humour that would characterise his clarinet concertos just two years later. Sadly, Weber’s employment with the Duke did not end well: after falling into debt, he and his father were accused of misappropriating a large amount of the Duke’s money and while Weber was in the midst of a rehearsal for a new opera, the two were arrested and thrown into jail. Nevertheless, the episode had its advantages: when they were later released and banished from Württemberg, Weber was at last able to concentrate on composing full-time, producing some of his most notable works in the years that followed – the clarinet concertos included.

© Jo Kirkbride

Programme note

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
4 Präludien und Ernste Gesange (4 Preludes and Serious Songs) (after Brahms Four Serious Songs, Op 121)
[arr Detlev Glanert (b. 1960)]

1. Prelude. Agitato;
2. Denn es gehet dem Menschen;
3. Prelude. Andante;
4. Ich wandte mich;
5. Prelude: Quasi allegretto;
6. O Tod, wie bitter bist du;
7. Prelude: Adagio;
8. Wenn ich mit Menschen- und mit Engelszungen redete;
9. Postlude: Andante.

Brahms’s Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs) comprise his last major work. Ostensibly they are a response to the stroke that Clara Schumann suffered in May 1896, and which heralded her last illness. As he wrote to her daughter, Marie, “Some such words as these have long been in my mind", and he may well have begun mulling over a work on these lines sometime before Clara became ill. He was losing a number of other friends as well, and as his biographer Jan Swafford has tersely commented, he was “getting very experienced with letters of consolation.”

He chose his title carefully. As Jan Swafford has pointed out, it was typical of him to call them Serious (not Sacred) Songs. Brahms’s basic outlook was ethical rather than religious, and he articulates this view in these songs just as he had in the Requiem and his choral motets. Behind all these stands the Renaissance and baroque music from which he had drawn so much creative strength, Schütz and JS Bach particularly.

The first two songs set texts from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, writer and composer joining in stoical fortitude to face disillusion regarding the human condition. The third song, drawing on the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, confronts the contradictory views of death as a bitter blow in prosperity and a welcome release from adversity. The last song sets parts of the well-known passage on Love from St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. To begin with, they draw from Brahms the kind of energy - jaunty, verging on the defiant – that characterises parts of Schubert’s great song-cycle Winterreise. With his lyrical setting of the final words, culminating in “...but the greatest of these is Love”, Brahms closes the last work he published with an affirmation all the more touching for being so gently understated.

Detlev Glanert (born in Brahms’s own home city, Hamburg) made his expanded orchestral version of the songs in 2004 and 2005. He has suggested that the original piano part is “nearly out of the reach of a pianist’s fingers, and thus beyond the world of piano sound alone”, and has pointed out that Brahms himself considered the possibility of orchestrating them, and of linking them in some way, even making some sketches to this end. He has said that the material of his preludes and postlude comes mostly from Brahms, which he he has used to move between Brahms’s world and ours. The “angry waltz” of the third prelude refers “to the Hamburg Baroque tradition of the Totentanz (death dance), which Brahms knew very well”. He finally comments: “The best way to gain an understanding of what I tried to do in the Preludes is to have in mind the texts of the preceding and following song.”

1. Denn es gehet dem Menschen wie dem Vieh;
wie dies stirbt, so stirbt er auch;
und haben alle einerlei Odem;
und der Mensch hat nichts mehr denn das Vieh:
denn es ist alles eitel.

Es fährt alles an einem Ort;
es ist alles von Staub gemacht,
und wird wieder zu Staub.

Wer weiß, ob der Geist des Menschen
aufwärts fahre,
und der Odem des Viehes unterwärts unter
die Erde fahre?

Darum sahe ich, daß nichts bessers ist,
denn daß der Mensch fröhlich sei in seiner Arbeit,
denn das ist sein Teil.
Denn wer will ihn dahin bringen,
daß er sehe, was nach ihm geschehen wird?

Ecclesiastes iii.19–22
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts;
even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so
dieth the other;
yea, they have all one breath;
so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

All go unto one place;
all are of the dust,
and all turn to dust again.

Who knoweth the spirit of man
that goeth upward,
and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to
the earth?

Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own works;
for that is his portion:
for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?

2. Ich wandte mich und sahe an Alle, die Unrecht leiden unter der Sonne;
Und siehe, da waren Tränen derer,
Die Unrecht litten und hatten keinen Tröster;
Und die ihnen Unrecht täten, waren zu mächtig,
Daß sie keinen Tröster haben konnten.

Da lobte ich die Toten,
Die schon gestorben waren
Mehr als die Lebendigen,
Die noch das Leben hatten;

Und der noch nicht ist, ist besser, als alle beide,
Und des Bösen nicht inne wird,
Das unter der Sonne geschieht.

Ecclesiastes iv.1–3
So I returned, and considered all the oppressions
that are done under the sun:
and behold the tears of such
as were oppressed, and they had no comforter;
and on the side of their oppressors there was
power; but they had no comforter.

Wherefore I praised the dead
which are already dead
more than the living
which are yet alive.

Yea, better is he than both they,
which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the
evil work that is done under the sun.

3. O Tod, wie bitter bist du,
Wenn an dich gedenket ein Mensch,
Der gute Tage und genug hat
Und ohne Sorge lebet;
Und dem es wohl geht in allen Dingen
Und noch wohl essen mag!
O Tod, wie bitter bist du.
O Tod, wie wohl tust du dem Dürftigen,
Der da schwach und alt ist,
Der in allen Sorgen steckt,
Und nichts Bessers zu hoffen,
Noch zu erwarten hat!
O Tod, wie wohl tust du!

after Ecclesiasticus xli.1–2
O death, how bitter art thou,
When a man thinks on thee
that liveth at rest in his possessions,
and hath nothing to vex him,
and that hath prosperity in all things:
yea, unto him that is yet able to receive meat!
O death, how bitter art thou.
O death, how well thou doest unto the needy,
whose strength faileth, that is now in the last age, and is vexed with all things,
and to him that despaireth,
and hath lost patience!
O death, how well thou doest!

4. Wenn ich mit Menschen und mit Engelszungen redete,
Und hätte der Liebe nicht,
So wär’ ich ein tönend Erz,
Oder eine klingende Schelle.

Und wenn ich weissagen könnte,
Und wüßte alle Geheimnisse
Und alle Erkenntnis,
Und hätte allen Glauben, also
Daß ich Berge versetzte,
Und hätte der Liebe nicht,
So wäre ich nichts.

Und wenn ich alle meine Habe den Armen gäbe,
Und ließe meinen Leib brennen,
Und hätte der Liebe nicht,
So wäre mir’s nichts nütze.

Wir sehen jetzt durch einen Spiegel
In einem dunkeln Worte;
Dann aber von Angesicht zu Angesichte.
Jetzt erkenne ich’s stückweise,
Dann aber werd ich’s erkennen,
Gleich wie ich erkennet bin.
Nun aber bleibet Glaube, Hoffnung, Liebe,Diese drei;
Aber die Liebe ist die größeste unter ihnen.

1 Corinthians xiii.1–4, 12–13 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of
angels,
and have not charity,
I am become as sounding brass,
or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge;
and though I have all faith, so
that I could remove mountains,
and have not charity,
I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,
and have not charity,
it profiteth me nothing.

For now we see through a glass,
darkly;
but then face to face:
now I know in part;
but then shall I know
even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity,
these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.

© Mike Wheeler

Programme note

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
Overture, Scherzo and Finale, Op 52

Overture, Scherzo and Finale was completed in 1841, a year which saw Schumann focus in an unusually concentrated way on composing orchestral music, just as the previous year had seen a torrent of song-writing, and as 1842 would be his ‘chamber-music year’. It is a lighter-weight work than any of his four symphonies. He tried a number of titles – ‘Suite’, ‘Symphonette’, even ‘Second Symphony’ – before settling on the precise and unassuming title by which it is now known. He stressed the work’s “light, friendly character”, describing it to Clara as “tender, merry… siren-like”, and even suggested that the movements could be played separately.

If this suggests a degree of indecision on Schumann’s part as to how to approach the work, then it was an uncertainty shared by the audience at the first performance, given by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in December 1841. Schumann put their reaction down to the difficulty of absorbing so much of his music in one evening – the premiere of the D minor Symphony was also on the programme – together with their missing Mendelssohn’s firm conducting.

In fact they were simply bemused by what appeared to be an attempt at a symphony, but one which seemed to disregard so many symphonic conventions, not least because it did not have a slow movement.

The Overture opens with a short introduction which contrasts a lyrical arching phrase for the upper strings with a stern descending one for lower strings and bassoons. These two ideas also take their place in the Allegro, which sets off at a brisk trot. The quicker final section introduces a new idea which, with a change of rhythm, becomes the main theme of the Scherzo. This delightfully light and airy piece is twice interrupted by a smoother trio section, and it ends by looking back briefly to the Overture. Schumann’s concern for the overall unity of a multi-movement work, which became almost an obsession in the second version of the D minor Symphony, is already evident.

The fugue which opens the Finale is cut short for a more song-like melody for the violins, and these two themes drive the music forward, broadening out towards the end to provide a celebratory ending to one of Schumann’s most attractive orchestral works.

© Mike Wheeler

Programme note

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Liebeslieder: Nine waltzes from Op 52 and Op 65

Brahms’s musical personality had its relaxed, fun-loving side. He soaked up the music of the gypsy bands he heard in Vienna’s cafés and restaurants, and he greatly admired Johann Strauss II (when Strauss’s step-daughter asked him to sign her fan he wrote the opening bars of the main theme of his ‘Blue Danube’ waltz, adding “unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms”).

The eighteen Liebeslieder (Love Songs; 1868-69) and the fifteen songs that comprise the follow-up Neue Liebeslieder (New Love Songs; 1869-74) were conceived in that spirit. They are scored for four solo voices (soprano, alto, tenor and bass), and piano duet, though they are occasionally sung by a chorus. They were composed between 1868 and 1869, towards the end of the decade in which he made his first visit to Vienna and found himself increasingly involved in the city’s musical life. The first complete performance was given in Vienna the following January, with Brahms and Clara Schumann playing the piano duet part.

The texts are by one of Brahms’s favourite poets, Georg Friedrich Daumer, from his collection Polydora, published in 1855, which he designated a ‘song-book of world poetry’. Based on Russian, Polish and Hungarian originals, they deal with stock situations of happiness, longing and dejection, combined with appropriate nature imagery.

The eighteen Liebeslieder may well be a reflection of his feelings for Clara Schumann’s daughter, Julie. These were probably no more than romantic fantasies, and Julie does not seem to have felt the same towards him. All the same, the announcement of her engagement to an Italian count in the summer of 1869 came as a considerable shock to him, prompting the anguished, gloomy work generally known as the Alto rhapsody, the score of which Brahms presented to Clara either on the day of Julie’s wedding or shortly after (authorities differ as to precisely when). He later claimed that it was an epilogue to the Liebeslieder.

As a work conceived primarily for domestic performance, the songs have an element of play-acting, or charades, about them. The waltz rhythms, and the extraordinary range and variety – expressive as well as rhythmic – that Brahms draws out of them, add a lightly ironic tone to these vignettes of treacherous or loving eyes, despondent, entreating or contented lovers, and ambivalent feelings. Brahms uses them to explore the poems’ world while keeping it at arm’s length.

In the winter of 1869-70 Brahms responded to a request from his friend, the conductor Ernst Rudorff by making a selection of nine songs which he scored for voices and small orchestra. It consists of eight numbers from the Liebeslieder plus one, No 6 in the selection, which became the ninth song of the Neue Liebeslieder. Rudorff conducted the first performance of this version in Berlin in May 1870.

© Mike Wheeler