Titanic Expressions | ||||||||||
 | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
Symphony No. 4 in G major, by Klaus Simon for chamber orchestra Gustav Mahler, one of the last great figures of the late Romantic movement, was at the same time one of the harbingers of twentieth-century music. Despite his conversion to Roman Catholicism, his Jewish birth and volatile, eccentric, hypochondriacal personality made him a social misfit. Most of Mahler’s music expresses his battle against fate and the uncertainty of existence – which may explain how he could have written two of the Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) immediately following the birth of his second daughter. In spite of his difficult personality, his brilliant conducting outweighed his negative qualities and his star rose fast. Born in a small town in what is now the Czech Republic, Mahler showed early musical gifts. He entered the Vienna Conservatory at age 15 and in the summer of 1880, at 20, he landed the first of a series of minor conducting jobs in a summer theater in Austria, an apprenticeship which was essential for advancement in the world of opera. From 1891 to 1897, he was conductor at the Hamburg Opera and in 1894, of the subscription concerts there as well. By 1897 he was named Kapellmeister and then Director of the most prestigious musical organization of the time, the Vienna Hofoper. He left the post in acrimony in 1907, the result of Vienna’s virulent anti-Semitism and Mahler’s abrasive personality. Such a meteoric rise and hectic schedule left little time for composing, usually only during the summer recess. Mahler nevertheless completed nine massive symphonies and numerous songs and song cycles. These works, especially the symphonies, were innovative and challenging; for nearly 50 years they were only occasionally performed. Only in the 1960s did they finally become standard fare in orchestra programs, championed by Leonard Bernstein. As late as 1972, however, Bernstein had to cajole and browbeat the Vienna Philharmonic to take Mahler’s music seriously. Mahler created in his Fourth Symphony a work light in spirit and relatively simple in style, a relief from his usual musical complexity and melancholy philosophical underpinnings. While the extreme mood swings of his other symphonies expose the audience to an emotional roller coaster, the Fourth is easily digested – even charming. It is short for a Mahler symphony (55-60 minutes) and utilizes a more modest orchestra without trombones and tubas, although with extra woodwinds. The symphony is of mixed vintage. Mahler composed the first three movements during the summers of 1899-1900, but he had already composed the fourth movement as a song for soprano solo and piano in 1892, which he immediately orchestrated. He used a fragment of it in the Third Symphony and finally the entire song as the conclusion to the Fourth. The symphony was premiered in Munich in November 1901. Yet despite its relative accessibility, free of grinding dissonances and stormy moods, it was a critical disaster. Both the critics and the public found the work confusing, neither a symphony nor program music – some even suggesting that it was a sick musical joke. Likewise, even admirers of the Symphony have seen it as a hybrid form, using traditional symphonic sonata allegro, scherzo and variation structures, but concluding with an anticlimactic, childish song instead of a proper rondo finale. The central idea of the symphony expresses a child’s view of heaven, with its promise of eternal peace and happiness set against the terror of death. The first movement, with its opening sleigh bell motive, creates a cheerful atmosphere – although it was suitably scorned as inappropriate for a symphony.  In addition to the sleigh-bell melody, Mahler lines up three more, not entirely independent in content and not unlike the kind of themes one might expect from a Beethoven or even Haydn. His delicate orchestration assigns a different soloist or solo ensemble for each of them. & In the development, he introduces yet another melody for the flute, which he will revisit later. And it is here too that he interjects the first hint of darkness, all the more sinister because of its unexpectedness. It becomes the climax of the movement in a fortissimo outburst from the brass followed by a trumpet fanfare that he would later use as the opening of the Fifth Symphony. The Scherzo sets the teeth on edge – as it was intended to do. A horn introduces a solo violin tuned one half-step sharp to be played, as Mahler put it, “Wie eine Fiedel,” like a fiddle. Mahler intended the theme as “…the gruesome dance of death, led by a figure of popular demonology, Freund Hein spielt auf (Goodman Death leads the music). It is the mistuned fiddle of the skeletal figure of death.” Adhering to a tradition dating from the Middle Ages, the violin theme is built around the interval of a diminished fifth, the Diabulus in musica (the devil in music). Despite the fact that the rest of the violins try to lighten up the atmosphere in the second strain, they quickly succumb. The Trio presents a sharp contrast in mood; all dissonances and harmonic progressions are properly resolved. Because the theme contains within it a motive that Mahler has used in the song finale, the Scherzo and Trio sections continue the dialectic between happiness and death. The repeats of both Scherzo and Trio are varied with different orchestration. The “crisis” occurs in the middle of the movement where the horn, appears to do battle with the fiddle. The tension gradually winds down as the movement draws to a close.The Adagio that follows is one of Mahler’s most beautiful, serene creations. It is a theme and set of free variations. The theme recalls the third movement of Beethoven’s Ninth in its flow and expansiveness. Mahler combines the variation scheme with the traditional ABA structure of classical slow movements beginning with an achingly sad melody for solo oboe derived from the principal theme. After the final variation has faded to a whisper, the brass break in with celebratory transition to the Finale, foreshadowing the song. In the final movement the soprano represents a child’s joy and anticipation of the culinary delights and the ethereal music of St. Cecilia (the patron saint of music) and her heavenly musicians. The movement is marked Sehr behaglich (very cozy or comfortable), reflected in the musical themes as well as the text. The soprano’s song – which, like many of Mahler’s songs comes from the anthology of folk poetry Des Knabens Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn) – is the source of musical ideas and some of the programmatic elements in the rest of the work, including the opening sleigh bell motive and Trio from the second movement. & Mahler self-quotes a section of the middle part of the song in the children’s chorus of the Third Symphony. & One critic, in fact, stated the work should actually be played backwards, like the Hebrew Scriptures. Only the fact that the critic was himself Jewish saves this remark from being one of the innumerable anti-Semitic slights aimed at Mahler throughout his career in Germany and Vienna. | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83 When Johannes Brahms premiered his Piano Concerto No. 1 in the 1859, he was a young, rising composer still very unsure of himself, especially in the art of orchestration. By the time he premiered his second concerto in 1881, he was a revered master, considered, as the University of Breslau so stuffily put it (in Latin), "the foremost exponent in Germany of musical art in the more severe style" and sure of his powers. The irony of his self-depreciation in his letter to his close friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg is evident: "...I have written a tiny, tiny piano concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo." This about one of the most gigantic piano concertos ever written with an "extra" fourth movement to boot; Brahms is said to have referred to it jokingly as "The long terror." Sketches of the concerto date back to 1878 when Brahms was at work on his Violin Concerto. A discarded scherzo movement for that concerto became the basis for the second movement Scherzo of the Second Piano Concerto, one of the few in the entire concerto repertory. Brahms premiered the Concerto in Budapest on November 9, 1881. It was to be the last of his works that he prepared to perform in public. In contrast to the stormy First Concerto, the B-flat Concerto is comparatively optimistic in mood, except for the passionate outburst of the Scherzo, perhaps a counterweight to the dignity of the movements that flank it. In all his concerti, Brahms selected solo instruments from the orchestra who were to have a special intimate relationship with the principal soloist. The most notable are the oboe in the Violin Concerto, and the horn and the cello in the Second Piano Concerto. The first movement vacillates between dignified serenity and high drama; The opening theme itself comprises both qualities; the first half opens with a gentle call on a solo French horn, echoed up by the piano, but the piano continues with a series of growls and a grand arch of arpeggios over five and a half octaves and then launches into a cadenza, recalling Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto. There are two important subsidiary themes, in addition to numerous smaller motives that make up the fabric of the huge movement & but it is the horn theme that dominates as it continually appears in a variety of guises, even suddenly emerging from one of the wealth of subsidiary themes. Brahms called the second movement a scherzo, the Italian word for game or joke. But this game is deadly serious. In the key of d minor in contrast to the B flat major of the other three movements. It is passionate, even angry, beginning with a motive on the upbeat charging right into a syncopated theme that creates a driving momentum and becomes a motto for the movement. A quieter second theme introduced by the violins and taken up by the piano calms the restlessness, but only temporarily. The Scherzo cadence almost crashes into the Trio, which returns to the major mode with a fanfare-like theme, temporarily triumphing over the storm of emotions, only to be cut short by the return of the scherzo. The Andante third movement opens with a poignant solo cello melody which is the dream of every orchestral cello player. It is one of those melodies that creates exquisite suspense by delaying resolution at all the expected spots. The piano never takes this theme up in its entirety, but rather embellishes it with delicate filigree. In the middle of the movement, two clarinets, accompanied by the piano, hold a pianissimo gentle conversation. The solo cello returns to close the movement but not before Brahms has spun out his gentle suspense through a handful of unexpected key changes and deceptive cadences. The Allegretto grazioso finale is a high-spirited, playful rondo, laced with occasional gypsy flavor recalling the Hungarian Dances. The jury is out as to whether this lighthearted rondo is an adequate balance to the three weighty movements that precede it. And it certainly has its darker moments. However, it can be viewed as a relief from the intensity of the preceding three movements or, as the great British music critic Sir Donald Francis Tovey, concluded, "We have done our work - let the children play in a world that has been made safer and happier for them." | ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2010 | [buy tickets] | ||||||||||
