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Autumn 2017 Season: Programme Notes

13th September 2017

Antonín Dvorák
Carnival Overture, Op. 92


Born: 8th September 1841 in Nelahozeves, Czech Republic
Died: 1st May 1904 in Prague, Czech Republic
Composed: 1891
Premiere: 28th April 1892 in Prague and performed by the National Theatre Orchestra conducted by the composer
Orchestration: 2 flutes, 1 piccolo, 2 oboes, 1 English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, timpani, tambourine, triangle, cymbals, harp, and strings
Approximate duration: 9 minutes
 
Like almost every musician of the late 19th century, Dvorák had to come to grips with the astounding phenomenon of Richard Wagner and his music dramas. Around 1890, he undertook a study of this grandiloquent music, as well as that of Wagner’s stylistic ally (and father-in-law) Franz Liszt, and was rewarded with a heightened awareness of the expressive possibilities of orchestral program music. Several important scores from Dvorák’s last years seem to bear the influence of his study of this so-called “Music of the Future”: the five tone poems of 1896-1897 (The Water GoblinThe Noon WitchThe Golden Spinning WheelThe Wild Dove, and Heroic Song), Silent Woods for Cello and Orchestra, Poetic Tone Pictures for Solo Piano, and the 1892 cycle of three concert overtures originally titled Nature, Love and Life.
In his study of the composer, John Clapham indicated that Dvorák intended the triptych of overtures to represent “three aspects of the life-force’s manifestations, a force that the composer designated ‘Nature,’ and which not only served to create and sustain life, but also, in its negative phase, could destroy it.” More specifically, Otakar Šourek noted that they depicted “the solemn silence of a summer night, a gay whirl of life and living, and the passion of great love.” Dvo?ák linked the three works by employing a motto theme representing Nature that appears in all of them, and he further pointed up their relationship by, at first, giving them a common opus number. He had difficulty settling on titles for the individual movements, however, arriving at the names In Nature’s RealmCarnival, and Othello (and three separate opus numbers) only after much consideration. The cycle was written between March 1891 and January 1892 in Prague and at the composer’s country home in Vysoká; Carnival was sketched during July and August, and completed on September 12th.
Dvo?ák said that the Carnival Overture was meant to depict “a lonely, contemplative wanderer reaching at twilight a city where a festival is in full swing. On every side is heard the clangor of instruments, mingled with shouts of joy and the unrestrained hilarity of the people giving vent to their feelings in songs and dances.” Dvorák evoked this scene with brilliant music given in the most rousing sonorities of the orchestra. Into the basic sonata plan of the piece, he inserted, at the beginning of the development section, a haunting and wistful paragraph led by the English horn and flute to portray, he said, “a pair of straying lovers,” the wanderer apparently having found a companion. Following this tender, contrasting episode, the festive music returns and mounts to a spirited coda to conclude this joyous, evergreen work.
 
© 2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda


Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104
Antonín Dvorák


Born: 8th September 1841 in Nelahozeves, Czech Republic
Died: 1st May 1904 in Prague, Czech Republic
Composed: 1894-1895
Premiere: 19th March 1896 in London, conducted by the composer with Leo Stern as soloist
Orchestration: 2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 3 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, timpani, triangle, strings, and solo cello
Approximate duration: 40 minutes

During the three years that Dvorák was teaching at the National Conservatory of Music in New York City, he was subject to the same emotions as most other travelers away from home for a long time: invigoration and homesickness. America served to stir his creative energies, and during his stay from 1892 to 1895 he composed some of his greatest scores: the “New World” Symphony, Op. 96 String Quartet (“American”), E-flat major String Quintet, and the Cello Concerto. He was keenly aware of the new musical experiences to be discovered in the land far from his beloved Bohemian home when he wrote, “The musician must prick up his ears for music. When he walks he should listen to every whistling boy, every street singer or organ grinder. I myself am often so fascinated by these people that I can scarcely tear myself away.” But he missed his home and while he was composing the Cello Concerto looked eagerly forward to returning. He opened his heart in a letter to a friend in Prague: “Now I am finishing the finale of the Violoncello Concerto. If I could work as free from cares as at Vysoká [site of his country home], it would have been finished long ago. Oh, if only I were in Vysoká again!” The Concerto might just as well have been written in a Czech café as in an East 17th Street apartment.
Elements of both Dvorák’s American experiences and his longing for home found their way into the Cello Concerto, the last of his works composed in the United States. The inspiration to begin what became one of the greatest concertos in the literature was a performance by the New York Philharmonic in March 1894 at which Victor Herbert (the Victor Herbert of operetta fame, who was then also teaching at the National Conservatory) played his own Second Cello Concerto. That work convinced Dvo?ák that the cello was a viable solo instrument, something about which he had been unsure despite the assurances of Hanuš Wihan, cello professor at the Prague Conservatory, who had long been urging his fellow faculty member to write a piece for the instrument. (Apparently Johannes Brahms, Dvorák’s friend and mentor, had a similar mistrust of the cello as a solo instrument. When he first saw Dvorák’s score he wondered, “Why on earth didn’t I know that one can write a violoncello concerto like this? If I had only known, I would have written one long ago!”) Dvorák had tried to mollify Wihan in 1891 with two recital numbers — the Rondo in G minor and Silent Woods, an arrangement of a piano piece from 1884 — but the cellist continued to pester him for a full-scale concerto until his request finally bore fruit four years later. Dvo?ák asked Wihan for his comments on the score (which Dvorák largely ignored) and they read through the piece together privately in September 1895, soon after Dvorák had returned home, but Wihan, despite the composer’s pleading, was unable to give either the work’s world or Prague premiere because of already-scheduled conflicts. Those privileges fell instead to the young English virtuoso Leo Stern, who introduced the work on March 19, 1896 with the London Philharmonic and gave its first performance in Dvorák’s home city three weeks later with the Czech Philharmonic, both conducted by the composer. Wihan first played the Concerto publicly at The Hague in January 1899 and regularly thereafter, including a performance in Budapest under the composer’s direction on December 20, 1899.
The opening movement is in sonata form, with both themes presented by the orchestra before the entry of the soloist. The first theme is heard immediately in the clarinets. “One of the most beautiful melodies ever composed for the horn” is how the esteemed English musicologist Sir Donald Tovey described the major-key second theme.
Otakar Šourek, the composer’s biographer, described the second movement as a “hymn of deepest spirituality and amazing beauty.” It is in three-part form (A–B–A). A touching bit of autobiography is attached to the composition of this movement. While working on its middle section, Dvo?ák learned that his sister-in-law, Josefina Kaunitzová, who had aroused in him a secret passion early in his life, was seriously ill. He showed his concern by using one of her favorite pieces in the central portion of this Adagio — his own song, Let Me Wander Alone with My Dreams, Op. 82, No. 1. She died a month after he returned to Prague in April 1895, so he revised the finale to include another reference to the same song to produce the autumnal slow section just before the end of the work.
The finale is a rondo of dance-like nature. Following the second reprise of the theme, the Andante section recalls both the first theme of the opening movement and Josefina’s melody from the second. A brief and rousing restatement of the rondo theme led by the brass closes this majestic Concerto.
 
© 2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda


Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36

 
Born: 7th May 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia
Died: 6th November 1893 in Saint Petersburg, Russia
Composed: 1877-1878
Premiere: 22nd February 1878 in Moscow, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein
Orchestration: 2 flutes, one piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, timpani, triangle, bass drum, cymbals, and strings
Approximate duration: 44 minutes
 
The Fourth Symphony was a product of the most crucial and turbulent time of Tchaikovsky’s life — 1877, when he met two women who forced him to evaluate himself as he never had before. The first was the sensitive, music-loving widow of a wealthy Russian railroad baron, Nadezhda von Meck, who became not only the financial backer who allowed him to quit his irksome teaching job at the Moscow Conservatory to devote himself entirely to composition, but also the sympathetic sounding-board for reports on the whole range of his activities — emotional, musical, personal. Though they never met, her place in Tchaikovsky’s life was enormous and beneficial.
The second woman to enter Tchaikovsky’s life in 1877 was Antonina Miliukova, an unnoticed student in one of his large lecture classes at the Conservatory who had worked herself into a passion over her professor. Tchaikovsky paid her no special attention, and had quite forgotten her when he received an ardent love letter professing her flaming and unquenchable desire to meet him. Tchaikovsky (age 37), who should have burned the thing, answered the letter of the 28-year-old Antonina in a polite, cool fashion, but did not include an outright rejection of her advances. He had been considering marriage for almost a year in the hope that it would give him both the stable home life that he had not enjoyed in the twenty years since his mother died, as well as to help dispel the all-too-true rumors of his homosexuality. He believed he might achieve both those goals with Antonina. He could not see the situation clearly enough to realize that what he hoped for was impossible — a pure, platonic marriage without its physical and emotional realities. Further letters from Antonina implored Tchaikovsky to meet her, and threatened suicide out of desperation if he refused. What a welter of emotions must have gripped his heart when, just a few weeks later, he proposed marriage to her! Inevitably, the marriage crumbled within days of the wedding amid Tchaikovsky’s searing self-deprecation.
It was during May and June that Tchaikovsky sketched the Fourth Symphony, finishing the first three movements before Antonina began her siege. The finale was completed by the time he proposed. Because of this chronology, the program of the Symphony was not a direct result of his marital disaster. All that — the July wedding, the mere eighteen days of bitter conjugal farce, the two separations — postdated the actual composition of the Symphony by a few months. What Tchaikovsky found in his relationship with this woman (who by 1877 already showed signs of approaching the door of the mental ward in which, still legally married to him, she died in 1917) was a confirmation of his belief in the inexorable workings of Fate in human destiny.
After the premiere, Tchaikovsky explained to Mme. von Meck the emotional content of the Fourth Symphony: “The introduction [blaring brasses heard immediately in a motto theme that recurs throughout the Symphony] is the kernel of the whole Symphony. This is Fate, which hinders one in the pursuit of happiness. There is nothing to do but to submit and vainly complain [the melancholy, syncopated shadow-waltz of the main theme, heard in the strings]. Would it not be better to turn away from reality and lull one’s self in dreams? [The second theme is begun by the clarinet.] But no — these are but dreams: roughly we are awakened by Fate. [The blaring brass fanfare over a wave of timpani begins the development section.] Thus we see that life is only an everlasting alternation of somber reality and fugitive dreams of happiness. The second movement shows another phase of sadness. How sad it is that so much has already been and gone! And yet it is a pleasure to think of the early years. It is sad, yet sweet, to lose one’s self in the past. In the third movement are capricious arabesques, vague figures which slip into the imagination when one has taken wine and is slightly intoxicated. Military music is heard in the distance. As to the finale, if you find no pleasure in yourself, go to the people. The picture of a folk holiday. [The finale employs the folk song A Birch Stood in the Meadow.] Hardly have we had time to forget ourselves in the happiness of others when indefatigable Fate reminds us once more of its presence. Yet there still is happiness — simple, naive happiness. Rejoice in the happiness of others — and you can still live.”
 
©2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda
 
Read More... 17th September 2017

Erich Wolgang Korngold
Violin Concerto

Born: 29th May 1897 in Brno, in the Margraviate of Moravia 
Died: 29th November 1957 in Los Angeles, California, United States
Composed: 1937, revised in 1945
Premiere: 15th February 1947 by Jascha Heifetz and the St. Louis Symphony under conductor Vladimir Golschmann
Orchestration: 2 flutes (1 doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (1 doubling English horn), 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 1 trombones, timpani, glockenspiel, xylophone, vibraphone, cymbals, bass drum, harp, celesta, strings, and solo violin
Approximate duration: 24 minutes
 
A clear understanding of Erich Korngold comes magically into focus when one acknowledges the profound similarities with Gustav Mahler. This prolific prodigy, composer, arranger, and conductor, like Mahler before him, did it all. Korngold was born in Brno, in modern day Czech Republic - a German influenced city of the Austro-Hapsburg empire, much like nearby Iglau had been for Mahler. Both of them were born into Jewish families, struggling with their familial roots and the confusing national identity of the region. The two are inextricably linked to this formative soil, and in the very rich artistic environment of 1875-1925. Though not exact contemporaries, they did meet – a young Erich was introduced by his father to Gustav in 1906 – the latter at his zenith within Viennese music circles and the former being heralded as the next genius. The adopted Viennese pedigree of both composers permeates their world view and their music, but Korngold’s acceptance in Vienna was much less complicated than Mahler’s.

Dr. Julius Korngold, Erich’s father had stepped into the shoes of the fabled Edouard Hanslick, the great critic of the Neue Freie Press (New Free Press). The ins and outs of Viennese musical circles were not a closed door at all – as they had been for Mahler. After being duly impressed with the young boy, Mahler suggested that Alexander von Zemlinsky be Korngold’s teacher. Though there were other influences, this remained the only official teacher/pupil relationship, and it didn’t last very long. Julius, in his connected position was also able to privately publish three very early works in 1909, with Erich at the ripe old age of 12. These works, a ballet called Der Schneeman (The Snowman), a sketch on Don Quixote and a D-minor Piano Sonata, were sent around to several musical luminaries including the great conductor Arthur Nikisch, the great choral conductor and academic Hermann Kretzschmarr, and the composers Engelbert Humperdinck and Richard Strauss. All of them found the works far advanced for a boy of twelve and Strauss commented on the bold use of harmony and assurance of style.

This kind of endorsement led, as one might think, to early and richly deserved glory. The Snowman was extremely successful and was produced by 1910. Arthur Nickisch had taken up the supportive mantle, conducting Korngold’s Schauspiel Overture , and his Sinfonietta with the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and his newly written Piano Trio was making the rounds and wildly impressing heavy weights like Arthur Schnabel, who also began to champion his music. By his 19th birthday in 1916 he had established himself as a fine opera composer, with two enormously successful one-act operas, The Ring of Polycrates and Violanta. Shortly after he turned his hand to a Shakespearian adaptation, Much Ado About Nothing, and followed it with one of his great triumphs, Die Tote Stadt.

Korngold became General Musikdirektor at the Stadttheater in Hamburg. Interestingly, Mahler had a spent a very formative stint in the same position, and both men gain immensely in their musical perspectives; their business and management sense of running a theatre; and immersing themselves in musical performances that could be stamped with their own personalities. In 1927 his Wunder der Heliane, considered one of his most important works, didn’t receive the usual accolades from the Viennese public. Despite a stellar cast with Lotte Lehmann and Jan Kiepura in leading roles, the Viennese, fickle and searching for the newer fad, were opting for a different style which they found in the music of Krenek. Undaunted, Korngold continued on, establishing himself as a professor in Vienna, and in 1929 collaborated on a new production of Die Fledermaus for Berlin, with none other than Max Reinhardt. This was to usher in an entirely new period in Korngold’s life, and perhaps the one for which he is fe?ted and remembered the most, for it was Max Reinhardt who invited him to Hollywood to score A Midsummer Night’s Dream, launching a spectacular association with Hollywood.

His original score for Captain Blood in 1935 helped launch the career of Errol Flynn, and 1936 brought an Oscar win for his score Anthony Adverse. The Nazi occupation of Austria took even the Viennese by surprise, but luckily for the Korngolds, the family was able to move to California, escaping the terror that was to ensue in Europe for prominent Jewish families. Korngold refused to write any major works or operas in this period, vowing to continue his self-imposed moratorium until Hitler was removed from power. For the next decade Korngold continued to write prolifically for the film industry, writing the scores for The Prince and the PauperThe Sea HawkThe Sea WolfThe Kings Row, and Deception. All these scores are similar in nature, in that they reflect not only the composers keen sense of drama, but follow the Wagnerian precept of leitmotifs, often creating the drama in the film and not just supporting it.

At the close of hostilities in 1945 the way was open for Korngold to return to writing, and the two works that emerge from this period are the Violin Concerto and the Cello Concerto. By contractual seal with Warner Bros., Korngold was bound to use motifs that had appeared in his film scores, and both concerti display not only those arching melodies, but are coupled with a sense of descriptive writing that follows on from that genre. The Violin Concerto was premiered by Jascha Heifetz on February 15, 1947 to great public acclaim in St. Louis, and then repeated that year in a recorded performance in Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic. Korngold referred to his Violin Concerto as technically demanding, but also extremely melodic, requiring more of a Caruso touch than a Paganini. Commenting on the Heifetz rendition he wrote: “...needless to say how delighted how I am to have my concerto performed by Caruso and Paganini in one person: Jascha Heifetz.”

Heifetz’s fine performance of the Violin Concerto and the accessibility of all the film scores, make them Korngold’s most popular works to date, but closer review of other major works, show a prolific and masterly composer that deserves more recognition than the Hollywood stigma allows.

© 2013 Zane Dalal


Antonín Dvorák
Symphony No. 7 in D minor


Born: 8th September 1841 in Nelahozeves, Czech Republic
Died: 1st May 1904 in Prague, Czech Republic
Composed: 1884-1885
Premiere: 22nd April 1885 at St James's Hall in London
Orchestration: 2 flutes (one doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings
Approximate duration: 35 minutes
 
Symphonic music was almost exclusively and quite copiously sustained by Germans, from the era of Beethoven to that of Mahler. There is an overall umbrella of perception that has an essentially Germanic core that is audibly sustained, in my view, almost unbroken from the late 1780’s to 1900. It is a common link that, for instance, binds the music of Mozart to that of Wagner, despite the obvious polarity of the two composers. One of the most gifted and luminous exceptions to this extensive German monopoly was the proudly proclaimed Czech Antonin Dvorák.

It was the reception of his Stabat Mater in England in 188 that proved to be the turning point of his international reputation. This success generated return engagements with the Philharmonic Society’s Concerts in London and sparked off tremendous enthusiasm across the ocean which was to culminate nine years later with his appointment as director of the National Conservatory in New York. The immediate practical outcome of the London concerts was the presentation of his 7th symphony*. “I am much preoccupied with my symphony, which must once again be of a sufficient quality to attract the attention of the whole world...” he wrote to a friend. Not least of all was the acknowledgement of his great friend and mentor Johannes Brahms, for whose expectations the symphony had to be perfect.

Their relationship started back in 1874 when Dvorák won a prize of four hundred guldens from the Austrian State Stipendium, adjudicated by Brahms. Brahms took a very keen interest in Dvorák’s career and personal well being, introducing him to his publisher Simrock along with many influential musicians in Germany. He need not have worried about his seventh symphony, even with Brahms looking over his shoulder. It was a wonderful triumph. It’s tragic elements and Brahmsian influences are in abundance - but so are the endearing trade mark of the Bohemian influences. The Seventh Symphony can be better explained with two strands of thought brought together.

In coming upon the conditions that would allow for its composition in 1884, Dvorák made no effort to hide the influences of Brahms. His mentor, and sometime benefactor, had just revealed his great Third Symphony. Here, instantly, was the reason why Dvorák’s symphonies were so Germanic in tendency, sound, and crafting. In the context of Brahms Third and the drama of the soon to come Fourth, Dvorák’s Seventh is a brother more than a cousin. It appeals directly to the same sentiments of ‘Deutches’ greatness shared by Brahms or Schumann.

However, the intent of Dvorák to provide a nationalistic Czech landmark that would stand the test of time, is equally evident. Apparently, the thought of the train station at Prague bringing Czechs from Pest to a dazzling pro Czech rally at the National Theater gave him the sentiment for the first movement. The last movement is supposed to demonstrate the unyielding stubbornness of the Czech spirit under oppression – the ability to triumph against the odds.

There may have been a personal message in this, too. The recent death of his mother and eldest child, he said, turned him to think of salvation of spirit through Czech nationalism. The brooding dark qualities of both bursting out into triumph are exactly what this piece is about. Both essentially Germanic and essentially Czech, Dvorak crosses the divide and truly provides what he set out to achieve. Dvorak’s sentiment as recorded at the time of composition says it all: “What is in my mind is Love, God, and my Fatherland. God grant that this Czech music will move the world!”

*Here is a short note explaining the numbering system that the Dvorák symphonies have employed over the years. Only five of Dvorák’s symphonies were published in his lifetime, but four more are dated from his earlier years, making a total of nine. The well-known five are now numbered as 5-6-7-8-9 corresponding to a former numbering 3-1-2-4-5. This Symphony No. 7 was originally published as Symphony No. 2. The numbering 1- 4 has since been reassigned to his youthful symphonies and, whereas still published, they remain the children who are “seen, but not heard”.

Zane Dalal © 2011 


28th September 2017
 

Ludwig van Beethoven
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, “Emperor”


Born: December 1770 in Bonn, Germany (He was baptized on December 17.)
Died: 26th March 1827 in Vienna, Austria
Composed: 1809
Premiere: 11th November 1811 in Leipzig, conducted by Johann Philipp Schulz with Friedrich Schneider as soloist
Orchestration: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, strings, and solo piano
Approximate duration: 38 minutes
 
 
The year 1809 was a difficult one for Vienna and for Beethoven. In May, Napoleon invaded the city with enough firepower to send the residents scurrying and Beethoven into the basement of his brother’s house. The bombardment was close enough that he covered his sensitive ears with pillows to protect them from the concussion of the blasts. On July 29th, he wrote to the publisher Breitkopf und Härtel, “We have passed through a great deal of misery. I tell you that since May 4th, I have brought into the world little that is connected; only here and there a fragment. The whole course of events has affected me body and soul…. What a disturbing, wild life around me; nothing but drums, cannons, men, misery of all sorts.” He bellowed his frustration at a French officer he chanced to meet: “If I were a general and knew as much about strategy as I do about counterpoint, I’d give you fellows something to think about.” Austria’s finances were in shambles, and the annual stipend Beethoven had been promised by several noblemen who supported his work was considerably reduced in value, placing him in a precarious pecuniary predicament. As a sturdy tree can root in flinty soil, however, a great musical work grew from these unpromising circumstances — by the end of that year, 1809, Beethoven had completed his “Emperor” Concerto.
When conditions finally allowed the Concerto to be performed in Leipzig some two years later, it was hailed by the press as “without doubt one of the most original, imaginative, most effective but also one of the most difficult of all concertos.” (The soloist was Friedrich Schneider, a prominent organist and pianist in Leipzig who was enlisted by the local publisher Breitkopf und Härtel to bring this Concerto by the firm’s most prominent composer to performance.) The Viennese premiere on February 12, 1812, with Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny at the keyboard, fared considerably less well. It was given as part of a benefit party sponsored by the augustly titled “Society of Noble Ladies for Charity for Fostering the Good and Useful.” Beethoven’s Concerto was only one unit in a passing parade of sopranos, tenors, and pianists who dispensed a stream of the most fashionable musical bon-bons for the delectation of the Noble Ladies. Beethoven’s majestic work was out of place among these trifles, and a reviewer for one periodical sniffed, “Beethoven, full of proud self-confidence, refused to write for the crowd. He can be understood and appreciated only by the connoisseurs, and one cannot reckon on their being in the majority at such affairs.” It was not the musical bill that really robbed the attention of the audience from the Concerto, however. It was the re-creation, through living tableaux — in costume and in detail — of paintings by Raphael, Poussin, and Troyes. The Ladies loved that. It was encored. Beethoven left.
The sobriquet “Emperor” attached itself to the E-flat Concerto very early, though it was not of Beethoven’s doing. If anything, he would have objected to the name. “Emperor” equaled “Napoleon” for Beethoven, as for most Europeans of the time, and anyone familiar with the story of the “Eroica” Symphony will remember how that particular ruler had tumbled from the great composer’s esteem. “This man will trample the rights of men underfoot and become a greater tyrant than any other,” he rumbled to his young friend and pupil Ferdinand Ries. The Concerto’s name may have been tacked on by an early publisher or pianist because of the grand character of the work, or it may have originated with the purported exclamation during the premiere by a French officer at one particularly noble passage, “C’est l’Empereur!” The most likely explanation, however, and one ignored with a unanimity rare among musical scholars, was given by Anton Schindler, long-time friend and early biographer of Beethoven. The Viennese premiere, it seems, took place at a celebration of the Emperor’s birthday.
The Concerto opens with broad chords for orchestra answered by piano before the main theme is announced by the violins. The following orchestral tutti embraces a rich variety of secondary themes leading to a repeat of all the material by the piano accompanied by the orchestra. A development ensues with “the fury of a hail-storm,” wrote the eminent English music scholar Sir Donald Tovey. Following a recapitulation of the themes and the sounding of a proper chord on which to launch a cadenza, Beethoven wrote into the piano part, “Do not play a cadenza, but begin immediately what follows.” At this point, he supplied a tiny, written-out solo passage that begins the coda. This being the first of his concertos that Beethoven himself would not play, he wanted to have more control over the finished product, and so he prescribed exactly what the soloist was to do. With this novel device, he initiated the practice of completely writing out all solo passages that was to become the standard method used by most later composers in their concertos.
The second movement begins with a chorale for strings. Sir George Grove dubbed this movement a sequence of “quasi-variations,” with the piano providing a coruscating filigree above the orchestral accompaniment. This Adagio leads directly into the finale, a vast rondo with sonata elements. The bounding ascent of the main theme is heard first from the soloist and then from the orchestra. Developmental episodes separate the returns of the theme. The closing pages include the magical sound of drum-taps accompanying the shimmering piano chords and scales, and a final brief romp to the finish.
 
© 2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda


Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551, “Jupiter”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)


Born: 27th January 1756 in Salzburg, Austria
Died: 5th December 1791 in Vienna, Austria
Composed: 1788
Orchestration: 1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings
Approximate duration: 31 minutes
 
 
Mozart’s life was starting to come apart in 1788 — his money, health, family situation and professional status were all on the decline. The beginning of the year seemed to hold a promise of good things. When Gluck died in November 1787, his position as composer to the court of Emperor Joseph II fell vacant. Mozart had sufficiently ingratiated himself with the aristocracy to win the job, but with the offer came a salary of only 800 florins, less than half the 2,000 florins Gluck had been paid. For that amount, Joseph, who apparently did not care much for Mozart or his music, required only some dances for his grand balls and not the career-advancing operas and symphonies that the composer was hoping to provide. The position at court, so long sought, did little to alleviate Mozart’s financial worries. He was a poor money manager, and the last years of his life saw him sliding progressively deeper into debt. One of his most generous creditors was Michael Puchberg, a brother Mason, to whom Mozart wrote a letter which includes the following pitiable statement: “If you my worthy brother do not help me in this predicament, I shall lose my honor and my credit, which of all things I wish to preserve.”
Other sources of income dried up. His students had dwindled to only two by summer, and he had to sell his new compositions for a pittance to pay the most immediate bills. He hoped that Vienna would receive Don Giovanni as well as had Prague when that opera was premiered there the preceding year, but it was met with a haughty indifference when first heard in the Austrian capital in May 1788. (“The opera is divine, finer perhaps than Figaro, but it is not the meat for my Viennese,” sniffed the Emperor, to which Mozart tartly replied, “We must give them time to chew it.”) He could no longer draw enough subscribers to produce his own concerts, and had to take second billing on the programs of other musicians. His wife, Constanze, was ill from worry and continuous pregnancy, and she spent much time away from her husband taking cures at various mineral spas. On June 29th, their fourth child and only daughter, Theresia, age six months, died.
Yet, astonishingly, from these seemingly debilitating circumstances came one of the greatest miracles in the history of music. In the summer of 1788, in the space of only six weeks, Mozart composed the three greatest symphonies of his life: No. 39, in E-flat (K. 543) was finished on June 26th; the G minor (No. 40, K. 550) on July 25th; and the C major, “Jupiter” (No. 41, K. 551) on August 10th. It is not known why he wrote these last three of his symphonies, a most unusual circumstance at a time when every piece was intended for a specific situation. There is no record that he ever heard the works, nor are they mentioned anywhere in his known correspondence after they were completed. They may have been intended for a series of oft-delayed concerts originally planned for June that never occurred. Or perhaps in these glorious symphonies, as in many other aspects of his art, Mozart looked forward to the Romantic era and its belief in artistic inspiration divorced from practical requirements. Or perhaps he needed, at that stressful time in his life, to prove to himself that he could still compose large-scale instrumental works. Or perhaps, wrote R.L.F. McCombs, “he felt he had, at this point in his life, achieved maturity as an artist and mastery as a craftsman — an occasion at least as worthy of celebration as a twenty-first birthday. These symphonies are the monument with which he commemorated that crisis in his creative life.” Or — perhaps — we are richer for allowing the mysterious creative urge that produced these works to hover, unknown, above them forever, a perceptive point of view espoused by Robert Schumann: “There are things in the world about which nothing can be said, as Mozart’s C major Symphony, much of Shakespeare, and pages of Beethoven.”
The Symphony’s sobriquet, “Jupiter,” did not originate with Mozart. The composer’s son Franz Xavier Wolfgang said that it was the invention of the impresario Salomon, famous as the instigator of Haydn’s London visits. Weightier evidence for author of the subtitle, however, points to John Baptist Cramer, a German musician who moved to London and opened a publishing house. He may have been the first to deify this work when he appended the word “Jupiter” to its title for a concert of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on March 26, 1821. The cognomen has no meaning other than to indicate the Symphony’s grand nobility of style, and Tovey dismissed it as “among the silliest injuries ever inflicted on a great work of art.” Philip Hale even warned that the sobriquet might lead away from the true nature of the music, “[which] is not of an Olympian mood. It is intensely human in its loveliness and its gaiety.” Mozart would probably have agreed.
The “Jupiter” Symphony stands at the pinnacle of 18th-century orchestral art. It is grand in scope, impeccable in form and rich in substance. Mozart, always fecund as a melodist, was absolutely profligate with themes in this Symphony. Three separate motives are successively introduced in the first dozen measures: a brilliant rushing gesture, a sweetly lyrical thought from the strings, and a marching motive played by the winds. The second theme is a simple melody first sung by the violins over a rocking accompaniment. The closing section of the exposition (begun immediately after a falling figure in the violins and a silence) introduces a jolly little tune that Mozart had originally written a few weeks earlier as a buffa aria for bass voice to be interpolated into Le Gelosie Fortunate (The Fortunate Jealousy), an opera by Pasquale Anfossi. Much of the development is devoted to an amazing exploration of the musical possibilities of this simple ditty. The thematic material is heard again in the recapitulation, but, as so often with Mozart, in a richer orchestral and harmonic setting.
The ravishing Andante is spread across a fully realized sonata form, with a compact but emotionally charged development section. The third movement (Minuet) is a perfect blend of the lighthearted rhythms of popular Viennese dances and Mozart’s deeply expressive chromatic harmony.
The finale of this Symphony has been the focus of many a musicological assault. It is demonstrable that there are as many as five different themes played simultaneously at certain places in the movement, making this one of the most masterful displays of technical accomplishment in the entire orchestral repertory. But the listener need not be subjected to any numbing pedantry to realize that this music is really something special. Mozart was the greatest genius in the history of music, and he never surpassed this movement.
 
© 2017 Dr. Richard E. Rodda