| Beethoven's Fifth October 16 & 17, 2010 [buy tickets] |
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Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25, Classical Prokofiev was a composer caught between two cultures. Born into an affluent musical family, he left the Soviet Union in the summer of 1918, shortly after the 1917 Revolution. For the next 17 years he lived in Paris and toured the United States, returning to his native country in the mid-1930s never to leave again. The year 1917 was a traumatic one for Russia. The February Revolution deposed the Tsar, and the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power. Meanwhile, on the international front, Russia was losing disastrously in its war against the central powers, Germany and Austria. In the spring and summer of that year Prokofiev retired to a village not far from Petrograd (now and formerly St. Petersburg) and, as if oblivious to the earth-shattering turmoil around him, composed at a furious pace. Among the creations of that period was his sunny Symphony No. 1, which he subtitled “The Classical.” The Symphony was an experiment. An accomplished pianist, Prokofiev routinely composed at the piano, although he noticed: “…thematic material composed without the piano was often better in quality…I was intrigued with the idea of writing an entire symphonic piece without the piano…So this was how the project of writing a symphony in the style of Haydn came about…it seemed it would be easier to dive into the deep waters of writing without the piano if I worked in a familiar setting.” This delicate, nostalgic Symphony premiered in Petrograd in April 1918 amidst civil war and social upheaval with the composer on the podium. The overall Classical style of the Symphony makes it easy to forget that it is a twentieth-century creation. The opening Allegro conforms to the standard first movement sonata allegro form, with occasional twentieth-century harmonies.  The second theme is a caricature of the eighteenth-century Rococo style, played on the tips of the violin bows “con eleganza” like a mincing dancing master – but with a less than elegant surprise sforzando at the cadence. The graceful Larghetto theme in the second movement, introduced first by the violins then joined by a flute, shows what a little musical creativity can do with a simple descending scale. A middle section introduced by the solo bassoon and pizzicato strings emphasizes the constant sixteenth-note pulse that pervades the entire movement before the full orchestra joins in, then slowly fades to return to the opening theme. The short Gavotte replaces a traditional minuet/trio movement. Prokofiev’s is a clumsy dance, whose melody contains awkward octave leaps and strange grace notes in the bassoon. The Trio is accompanied by a bagpipe-like drone. Prokofiev loved this movement, recycling and expanding it some 20 years later in Act I of his ballet Romeo and Juliet.The Molto vivace finale is in sonata form, rather than the usual rondo, but has the same persistent dynamic drive as the finales of so many Haydn symphonies. Like the opening of the Symphony, the first theme is certainly accessible but lacks the "singability" of Prokofiev's classical models. The brief second theme, which serves also as a closing theme, provides the sole "tune" in the movement. In composing it, Prokofiev played a game with himself, trying to eliminate all minor chords, a restriction that makes it extremely difficult to do much with a development section. So he didn't. | ||||||||||
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Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 102 It does not pay to get involved in other people’s' marital squabbles. When Brahms's friends of 30 years, the violinist Joseph Joachim and his wife entered into a messy divorce battle, Joachim accused Brahms of taking his wife's side and broke off all contact with his friend. The concerto was Brahms's peace offering; and while it brought the two friends back together, they never resumed the warmth of their original friendship. By adding the cello, Brahms also partially fulfilled a promise to Robert Hausmann, cellist of the Joachim quartet, to write him a cello concerto. The material for the concerto, composed during the summer of 1887, originated as sketches for a fifth symphony that never materialized. But Brahms continued to revise it even after the premiere, which took place in October 1887 with Joachim and Hausmann as soloists. By the time of the writing of the Double Concerto, Brahms considered himself an “elder statesman” of music, looking to the past rather than to the future. It has little of the glitter of most Romantic concertos, including Brahms’ own, being much more introspective and subdued. There are no technical acrobatics for either of the two soloists, only the intensity of the themes and their variations to drive it. Most double concertos feature identical instruments or at least instruments of similar range, in order to insure equality when both soloists are in "opposition" or perfect blending when they are in "accord." The combination of extremes found in this concerto had only some distant precedents in double concertos and symphonies concertantes for violin and cello by Vivaldi, Telemann, J.C. Bach, Carl Stamitz and Louis Spohr. Listeners used to pyrotechnic fiddling will find none of that in this Concerto. For one thing, surprisingly, the cello is the dominant instrument of the two soloists, creating a somber, autumnal cast to the entire work. The presentation of the themes throughout this concerto comes in stages, so that a complete melody emerges often after a considerable length of time. A case in point is the opening of the Concerto, which introduces a motivic unit within the main theme, interrupted by a long cadenza for the cello. The orchestra then presents the beginning of the second theme, after which both soloists engage in another cadenza – the last either soloist will see in this piece. The complete first theme occurs only several minutes into the movement. A mini-development of motivic material from the first theme delays the introduction of the third and final theme for this long movement. After that, the movement becomes a rhapsodic interplay between the soloists and the orchestra in which the three themes are dissected and reconstituted in a myriad of ways, straying into distant keys and exploring the limits of the possible sonorities of the instruments. Formally, the movement strays considerably from the sonata form model. The Andante is a simple ABA form. The two soloists have nothing more that long singing lines that interweave around each other – in a similar manner to the second movement of Bach's Concerto in d minor for two violins. It opens with a four-note motive in the winds. These four notes form the beginning of the main theme of the movement, introduced by the violin and cello playing an octave apart. There is only one new theme, in the B section. In the Finale, Brahms roles out an astonishing number of themes, only some of them separated by the rondo. The clue to why so many themes in this movement rests with its relationship to the dances of the time; waltzes and polkas piled on one melody after another, also periodically punctuated by a reprise of a refrain. Popular – and inauthentic – Gypsy music followed the same pattern, and the rondo theme recalls Brahms Gypsy and Hungarian dances. One of the subsidiary themes harks back to the theme of the Andante, opining with the same four notes. Ralph Vaughan Williams once recalled visiting Berlin in 1897 and hearing the concerto as a piano trio with Joachim and Hausmann as soloists and Karl Barth (not the theologian) as the pianist taking the place of the orchestra. We tend to forget how difficult it was to disseminate orchestral music before the days of sound recording. In those days piano transcriptions were the most popular way to familiarize the public at large with new compositions and were a thriving industry. Brahms' concerto was transcribed as well, probably by Brahms himself, and according to Vaughan Williams it was a strange but memorable experience. | ||||||||||
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Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 The four most clichéd notes in classical music were once the most revolutionary. For the first time a rhythm, rather than a melody, became the main subject of a symphonic movement – and not merely as a first theme to be stated and picked up again for a while in the development and recapitulation sections. Beethoven wove the rhythm into the entire fabric of the first movement, and subsequently into the rest of the Symphony. The motive first appears as a repeated demand, subsequently expanded into a genuine melody in the first theme. It recurs as a throbbing accompaniment in bass and timpani in the second theme, all the way to the final cadence of the exposition. Such an original symphonic structure did not come easily, especially to a composer who lacked the ever-ready melodic genius of a Mozart, Bach or Haydn, who all produced copiously on demand. A collection of the composer’s sketchbooks bears witness to the lengthy and often painful gestation of some of his greatest music. The Fifth Symphony took four years to complete, between 1804 and 1808. But Beethoven also had to eat, and during those four years he also produced the Fourth Symphony, the Fourth Piano Concerto, the three String Quartets Op. 59, the Mass in C and the Violin Concerto. Although Beethoven had already been at work on what was to become the Fifth Symphony, he composed the Fourth in fairly short order in 1806 on commission from Count Franz von Oppersdorff. The Count eventually paid the 500 florins agreed upon for the work and in 1807 commissioned another symphony with a down payment of 200 florins. Beethoven notified Oppersdorff in March 1808 that the Fifth Symphony was ready and that he should send the remaining 300 florins. But the Count sent only another installment of 150 florins, and by November Beethoven, in one of his less than ethical moves, apparently felt justified in selling the score to the publisher Gottfried Härtel. Upon finally paying in full, Oppersdorff received a copy. The Fifth Symphony was premiered at one of those monster public concerts common in the nineteenth century; on the program were premieres of the Sixth Symphony and the Fourth Piano Concerto, the aria "Ah! Perfido, the Choral Fantasia and several movements of the Mass in C. One can only imagine the bewilderment of the audience on their first encounter in a single evening with the "Pastoral" and the Fifth. Because the Fifth Symphony is so familiar it is difficult to think of it as innovative, but it was not only the integration of the four-note rhythmic motif into the first movement that was new. It is the fact that this little rhythm becomes the motto that unifies the entire symphony. In the first movement, the principal theme hammers away at the rhythm in almost every measure. Then, the second theme, which should provide a significant contrast, starts off with the motto in the solo horn, only afterwards becoming somewhat more gentle and legato – although that, too begins to ramp up the emotional tension as it continues. The second movement, marked Andante con moto, involves its own kind of innovation. It is made up of two short juxtaposed, contrasting themes, the first in dotted rhythm, the second a slow almost military theme in the brass. Beethoven produces from the two themes a double set of variations. And it should be noted that the second theme contains within it in augmentation the germinal four-note rhythm of the first movement. After what has been called a "ghostly" opening of the scherzo, Beethoven takes up the motto again prominently in the horns, and it is this segment of the third movement that he chooses to repeat in the finale. Symphony No. 5 has frequently been referred to as a struggle from darkness to light, but it is a commonplace that has palpable grounding in truth. Not only does the symphony begin in C minor and end in C major, but there is also the magnificent transition between the third and fourth movements, a kind of breaking through of sunlight clouds with violins stammering over throbbing timpani towards a cadence. The eruption through to the triumphant finale paved the way for the symphonic writing of the future, including Beethoven's own Ninth. | ||||||||||
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| Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2010 | [buy tickets] | ||||||||||
