Overture to Béatrice et Bénedict
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
We do not usually compare Hector Berlioz and Giuseppe Verdi, but they did have one thing in common. After a career of composing music on serious or tragic subjects, the final work from each of these giants was an operatic Shakespearean comedy. Verdi’s famous Falstaff parallels Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénedict.
The idea for Berlioz’s project, however, had been spawned much earlier. In 1833, he conceived a one-act comic opera based on Much Ado About Nothing. Then, in 1852, he picked up the idea again, this time sketching a libretto in the tradition of the French opéra comique, which called for spoken dialogue between the musical numbers. It was not until 1860, during the long wait for Les Troyens to be staged, that Berlioz turned his hand again to the project. Finishing the first version in 1862, Berlioz saw Béatrice et Bénedict staged successfully in Baden-Baden that year and in Weimar the year following. He then expanded it slightly into the two-act version we have today. The composer was well pleased, as he indicated in his Memoirs, “To my mind, it is one of the liveliest and most original things I have done.”
What to listen for: The two main musical ideas in the overture are a high-spirited fast theme and a more leisurely, lyrical theme. Oddly enough, the former comes from a love. The contrasting slow section follows. When the fast music returns, notice how Berlioz turns the music into a whip-snappy march. New ideas occur, but none can vanquish the original high-spirited idea, which drives the overture to a sparkling finish.
We do not usually compare Hector Berlioz and Giuseppe Verdi, but they did have one thing in common. After a career of composing music on serious or tragic subjects, the final work from each of these giants was an operatic Shakespearean comedy. Verdi’s famous Falstaff parallels Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénedict. The idea for Berlioz’s project, however, had been spawned much earlier. In 1833, he conceived a one-act comic opera based on Much Ado About Nothing. Then, in 1852, he picked up the idea again, this time sketching a libretto in the tradition of the French opéra comique, which called for spoken dialogue between the musical numbers. It was not until 1860, during the long wait for Les Troyens to be staged, that Berlioz turned his hand again to the project. Finishing the first version in 1862, Berlioz saw Béatrice et Bénedict staged successfully in Baden-Baden that year and in Weimar the year following. He then expanded it slightly into the two-act version we have today. The composer was well pleased, as he indicated in his Memoirs, “To my mind, it is one of the liveliest and most original things I have done.” What to listen for: The two main musical ideas in the overture are a high-spirited fast theme and a more leisurely, lyrical theme. Oddly enough, the former comes from a love. The contrasting slow section follows. When the fast music returns, notice how Berlioz turns the music into a whip-snappy march. New ideas occur, but none can vanquish the original high-spirited idea, which drives the overture to a sparkling finish.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943)
Following the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony in 1897, Sergei Rachmaninoff went into a state of depression and creative torpor. Yet he was still in demand, and the London Philharmonic was requesting him to perform a concerto of his own. By 1900, nothing was helping his condition, yet he felt that he must provide a new work for London. Finally, Rachmaninoff was persuaded to visit a certain Dr. Nicolai Dahl, who had a reputation for “miracle” cures using hypnosis. The composer explained his dilemma to Dahl, and the treatment began. According to Rachmaninoff’s recollections:
. . . I heard the same hypnotic formula repeated day after day while I lay half asleep in an armchair in Dr. Dahl’s study. “You will begin to write your concerto — You will work with great facility — the concerto will be of an excellent quality.” It was always the same without interruption. Although it may sound incredible, this cure really helped me. Already at the beginning of summer I began again to compose. The material grew in bulk, and new musical ideas began to stir within me — far more than I needed for my concerto. By autumn, I had finished two movements of the concerto — the [Adagio] and the Finale. . . .
Rachmaninoff added the opening movement later that year, and the premiere took place in Moscow in 1901. The audience was puzzled by the concerto’s dedication “to Dr. Dahl.”
The extreme lyrical beauty of the Second Concerto has made it one of Rachmaninoff’s most endearing works, and indeed, one of the most popular piano concertos of this century. Possibly the most striking feature of that lyricism is the inordinate length with which the composer draws out his themes. This is clear right from the beginning. Following introduction by the solo piano resembling the tolling of bells, the strings spin out the lengthy, absorbing first theme. The second theme is shorter but no less lyrical and no less noble. Listen for subsequent recurrences of each theme, containing subtle mood changes and instrumental colors.
The Adagio opens in the original key, but soon changes to a “moonlit.” The long, yearning main theme eventually leads to a quicker middle section. At the return of the slower music, Rachmaninoff introduces a ravishing section for solo piano.
The song-like quality of the concerto is broken for a time by the more energetic opening of the third movement, Allegro scherzando. However, its rhythmic first theme and subsequent bubbly piano solo soon give way to the real substance of the movement, the rich and passionate second theme. (During the 1930s and 1940s, this melody was used many times as a love theme in movies, and words were added in 1945 to make it the popular song, “Full Moon and Empty Arms.”) Later in the movement, after some musical “discussion,” listen for a big, triumphant return of “Full Moon and Empty Arms.” Soon, following a brief piano solo, the mood and tempo brighten in a sudden climactic moment that prepares for the concerto’s sparkling conclusion.
Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Although the First Symphony by Johannes Brahms was not premiered until the composer was middle aged, its genesis dates from 1854, when he was only 21. That was a time of emotional turmoil for Brahms, the year his friend and mentor, Robert Schumann, was interned for the last time. Brahms seems to have been tormented further by his love for Clara Schumann. Musically, the result was passionate, often stormy music that reflected his moods, leading some writers to call this Brahms’s “Storm and Stress Period.” One tempestuous effort of late 1854 was the initial draft of the first movement to the Symphony No. 1. Why, then, did Brahms not complete the symphony immediately? And why did he delay 22 years before allowing it to be premiered? The answers are not easy.
One problem was Brahms’s apostolic self-image and self-effacing, perfectionist attitude. These often caused him to hold back for many years works with which he was not entirely satisfied. Apparently, a significant problem with the symphony was reconciling later movements with the stormy, passionate opening. In any case, after the premiere of the Piano Concerto No. 1 (1859), Brahms released no major orchestral works until the Variations on a Theme of Haydn (1873). By that time, the First Symphony had already been completed except for its slow movement and sostenuto introduction.
Another issue was Brahms’s classicism. At the time, audiences were conditioned to expect free-spirited “programmatic” symphonies (pictorial, scenic, or story-telling). Brahms was an anomaly. He employed objective, classic forms and musical textures quite strictly, showing his reverence for Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven. Therefore, comparisons between his symphony and those of the earlier Viennese masters were sure to be made, and that caused Brahms to be hesitant. When the composer finally overcame all these misgivings, the symphony premiered in 1876 with considerable success. Public acceptance as a symphonic composer gave him the confidence he needed for a period of intense orchestral/concerto writing that continued for another 14 years.
Predictably, the First Symphony of Brahms was compared with Beethoven’s symphonies, especially the Ninth. The Brahms work was long, and, as the composer put it, “Any donkey” could see the resemblance between the hymn-like melody of the fourth movement and Beethoven’s setting of the “Ode to Joy.” (Soon after the premiere, Brahms’s First Symphony was nicknamed “Beethoven’s Tenth.”)
However, the spirit of this symphony is pure Brahms. The composer balances the stormy passion of the opening by making the fourth movement’s slow opening equally intense. However, the themes of those outer movements and their treatment are noble and heroic. By contrast, the inner movements are almost serenade-like with their sweet lyricism. The violin solo near the end of the second movement is especially noteworthy in this regard. The congenial third movement is a fine example of Brahms’s tendency (learned from Schumann) of replacing the traditional quick scherzo with a sweet “intermezzo” of moderate speed.
Unlike Brahms’s later symphonies, the First is exploratory. Yet, perhaps because it evolved slowly, this symphony has a unique and masterful expression that accords it a special place among his orchestral works.
PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. MICHAEL FINK, NOTES, INC.
Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68 (“Pastoral”)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Beethoven despised city life and only put up with it as a necessity of his profession. His happiest hours were those spent in the country, particularly around his beloved retreat, Heiligenstadt. There, he could walk for hours, thinking, reflecting on Nature, and sketching his music. Beethoven viewed nature with a kind of awe and in a spirit of wonder that is easily heard in the Pastoral Symphony.
The Fifth and Sixth Symphonies were completed at almost the same time in the summer of 1808 and were premiered together on December 22 of that year. As disparate in spirit as these two works may seem on the surface, there are a few definite similarities. One is the use of trombones. Another is the continuity between the last two movements, joined without pause. Both techniques were symphonic innovations.
In the program for the first performance, the Pastoral Symphony was subtitled “Recollection of Country Life,” and below that a message read, “More the expression of feelings than painting.” This warning is most applicable to the first movement, “Awakening of Cheerful Feelings on Arriving in the Country.” Here, Beethoven unfolds a movement effectively built on little more than the short, leisurely opening idea Beethoven protested repeatedly that the meaning of the Sixth Symphony was not to be taken too literally. Yet, from the second movement on, there are many musical references to the literal sounds of nature and to the music of the country folk of Beethoven’s time. The second movement is notable for its wildlife sounds (birds, etc.) near the end. Years after composing the Pastoral Symphony, Beethoven took a student to a stream near Heiligenstadt and told him, “Here I composed the ‘Scene by the Brook,’ and the yellowhammers up there, the quails, nightingales, and cuckoos round about, composed with me.”
In the “Merry Gathering of Country Folk,” Beethoven treats the listener to a scene of peasants dancing to a village band. The middle section changes to foot-stamping rhythms. The villagers’ merrymaking is broken off by the “Thunderstorm; Tempest” movement, the most illustrative music in the entire symphony. Gratefully, the storm clears soon, giving way to the “Shepherd’s Song; Happy, Thankful Feelings after the Storm.” This is based on an actual shepherd’s pipe. This final movement is a real hymn of thanksgiving, perhaps Beethoven’s own acknowledgement of the gift of Nature.
Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
The expression “from the sublime to the ridiculous” could have applied to the 1813 concert program on which Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was premiered. It began with the new symphony that the master had touted as “one of my best” (an opinion he later maintained). The concert continued with marches written by Dussek and Pleyel for Mälzel’s “Mechanical Trumpeter.” It concluded with the orchestral version of Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory (the “battle symphony”). Contemporary reports confirm that the event was a great triumph for Beethoven and that the second movement of the Seventh Symphony even had to be encored.
Although the Seventh Symphony has its own unique personality, Beethoven carried over certain aspects of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies into it. From the Fifth came the motor impulse of a single driving rhythm. However, unlike the Fifth, each movement of the Seventh finds its own unique rhythm to generate themes. From the “Pastoral” Symphony, the Seventh inherits a celebration of Nature. In the Sixth, this often took the form of reflection and quiet reverence, but in the Seventh, it is a vibrant, life-affirming paean.
What to listen for: This vibrancy is particularly apparent in the peasant round-dance character of the first movement after a lengthy slow introduction. One repetitive rhythm proves to pervade the entire movement, generating nearly all the ideas Beethoven needs. The second movement is based on one of Beethoven’s famous hymn-like themes, and this one suggests noble tragedy. Later, listen for brighter sections and growing complexity, leading to some of the most thrilling moments in all of Beethoven’s symphonic writing.
The sunny and exhilarating Scherzo movement comes at the right time, with a main section that features a bouncy quality and broad wit. However, a recurring contrast section stops that dance motion for a time, giving the music a magical, time-suspended quality. Beethoven’s rhythmic impulse returns in the dance-like finale. However, it has more wildness than the first movement. Some older critics have found this to be somewhat “irresponsible” in spirit or even “terrifying.” However, Beethoven biographer J.W.N. Sullivan recognizes that here “we are in the region of pure ecstasy, a reckless, headlong ecstasy, a more than Bacchic festival of joy.”
PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. MICHAEL FINK, NOTES, INC.
Adagio for Strings
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
In the years following his graduation from the Curtis Institute, Samuel Barber spent time traveling and composing in Europe under various stipends and grants. Between 1935 and 1937, he won the Prix de Rome and two Pulitzer Travel Scholarships. Barber’s stay in Rome had a far-reaching effect on his career, for it was there in 1935 that met Arturo Toscanini. Three years later, when Toscanini became conductor of the newly formed NBC Symphony Orchestra, he premiered two new works by Barber: the First Essay and the Adagio for Strings.
Originally, the Adagio was the slow movement of Barber’s String Quartet, written in Rome in 1936. For Toscanini, Barber adapted the Adagio for full string orchestra. Its long, mellifluous lines, lyric intensity, and heartfelt sincerity had an immediate impact on audiences and critics alike. Olin Downes wrote of the premiere, “There is an arch of melody and form. The composition is most simple at the climaxes, when it develops that the simplest chord, or figure, is the one most significant.”
Barber’s Adagio has proven durable and popular in the years since it premiered. Though certain critics have grown weary of hearing the work (“an all-purpose cultural theme song” C Martin Bernheimer, Los Angeles Times), it continues to reach an ever-widening audience. It has also become a staple among American funeral music, beginning notably in President Roosevelt’s 1945 memorial service. At the funeral of Princes Grace of Monaco in 1982, the music moved family and friends to tears. The Adagio was also introduced effectively into the film scores of The Elephant Man (1980) and Platoon (1986) and on TV, the music has been heard in episodes of The Simpsons, South Park, and Seinfeld.
Violin Concerto, Op. 14
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Barber worked on the development of his orchestral style during his European residencies beginning in 1935. His First Symphony, completed in Rome, was premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra in 1937. Arturo Toscanini, whom Barber had met in 1935, premiered both his First Essay for orchestra and the Adagio for Strings on a program three years later.
The Violin Concerto also originated in Europe. In the summer of 1939, Barber began work on it in a small Swiss village. Before the end of summer he moved to Paris, where he hoped to finish the work. However, Americans were soon warned to leave the French capital because of the threat of war, so Barber returned to the United States with only the first two movements.
A wealthy patron had commissioned the concerto for a young virtuoso. When the violinist reviewed the two complete movements, reportedly he declared them too simple. Barber promised to give him a more challenging, virtuosic finale. Before that movement was completed, however, a controversy arose between the violinist and Barber concerning the music, possibly placing the commission in jeopardy. The upshot was the violinist’s dismissal from the project. The premiere was given in 1941 by Albert Spalding and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Barber’s Violin Concerto has been termed a pivotal work in his style development. The first two movements could be called the culmination of his “neo-Romantic” period of the 1930s. His gift for flowing lyricism can be heard right from the first theme announced by the violin. The rhythmic second theme, introduced by the clarinet, is picked up and embellished by the violin and orchestra. In place of a big virtuosic violin solo, Barber gives the violin a vocal-style “recitative.” The second movement continues and rhapsodically amplifies the work’s Romantic lyricism and rhythmic vitality. Two themes are heard, then a contrasting middle section, then the two themes return.
The final movement represents a major turning point in Barber’s style. Here the composer’s musical vocabulary becomes much more incisive, in the manner of his post-war “Capricorn” Concerto and Medea Suite. At the opening, a perpetual motion figure is announced by the timpani and is then taken over by the violin. The concerto ends in a dizzying blaze of excitement.
From Here On Out
Nico Muhly (1981- )
Nico Muhly was born in Vermont, Raised in Providence, Rhode Island and is now based in New York City. After earning a degree in English Literature at Columbia University (2004), Muhly continued his studies at the Juilliard School, where he worked with Christopher Rouse and John Corigliano to complete a master’s degree. According to New York Magazine, he has since become a protégé of Philip Glass.
New projects and widespread recognition began coming Muhly’s way about 2006 with orchestra commissions. A steady stream of these along with recordings, film scores (such as “The Reader” in 2008) and ballet music has followed. He seems to have a penchant for titling his music with commonplace expressions, such as Wish You Were Here and It Remains to Be Seen (both orchestral) and From Here On Out (ballet). The last named was a collaboration with Benjamin Millepied commissioned by the American Ballet Theater for a fall 2007 premiere. In her “Dance Moments of the Year” column for 2007, New York Magazine’s Rebecca Milzoff wrote, “Benjamin Millepied’s bright, inventive, geometric choreography, turning from delicate to confrontational, was perfectly mated with Nico Muhly’s alternately sparkling and aggressive score.” Yet it was not that easy. Muhly worked on the score right up to the day of the premiere. In his blog for the next day, he wrote:
Yesterday afternoon . . . I had a dramatic last-minute change of mind about one chord at the end. The structure of the third section of the ballet is essentially fast dark music turning to fast bright music and then, suddenly, getting twice as dark in the last sixty seconds. The “bright” climax of this process is one moment where the brass plays a giant B-flat major chord, and as I listened in rehearsal, I realized that in order to have a great big chord like that, I would have had to have set it up better and spaced it right. Hearing it live, of course, changes everything. It sounded like somebody trying to have an ironic-distance moment – like painting a huge sunrise or a resurrection scene but with bad technique. It’s exactly the kind of thing I actively avoid trying to ever do in my music. So I had to make an on-the-spot change that, while totally subtle, I think saved the moment. . . .
What to listen for: Throughout most sections of this work, we can perceive a deep, low underlying musical platform — sustained music that supports an upper structure. This structure can be quite varied. Much of the time its musical colors sparkle. Other times, you can hear a sustained sound that acts as a counterbalance to the low musical “platform.” Repetition is also a key feature in From Here On Out. Muhly will create some small snippet of music and then manage to hold our attention while he explores its numerous possibilities. About 14 minutes into the work, listen for a long-breathed trombone solo. Soon after, the composer launches into the agitated final section. The composer’s words (above) give us the best guide to the ending.
La Valse
Maurice Ravel (1875- 1937)
The idea for La Valse originated as early as 1906, five years before Maurice Ravel wrote Valses nobles et sentimentales. At first called Wien, the project was then put aside for many years. It was not until Sergei Diaghilev asked Ravel to compose a short work for the Ballets Russes’ summer season of 1920 that the composer revived his idea:
After Le Tombeau de Couperin, the state of my health prevented me from working for some time. When I started to compose again, it was only to write La Valse, a choreographic poem. . . . I had intended this work to be a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, which was associated in my imagination with an impression of a fantastic and inescapable whirlpool of destiny.
Diaghilev liked the music. “But,” he declared, “it is not a ballet, only the portrait of a ballet.” Ravel was crushed, but Diaghilev’s words proved prophetic. La Valse premiered in two- piano form in October 1920 (the composer and Alfredo Casella, pianists), and in orchestral form during December of that year (the Lamoureux Orchestra). It was not staged until 1928 (by Ida Rubinstein) and not for a full ballet company until 1951 (by George Balanchine). Today it remains chiefly a concert piece and a great example of musical surrealism.
Ravel wrote that he had conceived the ballet as “a kind of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, linked in my mind with the impression of a fantastic whirl of destiny.” Indeed, the whirling aspect of the music comes through clearly enough. In fact, at times, it seems to be a musical portrayal of vertigo. The music is also dream-like at times and surrealistic in its relationship to traditional Viennese waltzes. Did Ravel have in mind a dreamy tableau? The composer provided a clue in the score’s prefatory note, which sets the scene: Through whirling clouds, waltzing couples can be glimpsed now and again. The mists gradually disperse, and a huge ballroom is revealed filled with a great crowd of whirling dancers. The stage grows gradually lighter. At the fortissimo the lights in the chandeliers are turned full on. The scene is an imperial palace about 1855.
PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. MICHAEL FINK, NOTES, INC.
Poet and Peasant Overture
Franz von Suppé (1819-1895)
We are accustomed to thinking of composers like Johann Strauss and Franz Lehar as the masters of Viennese operetta. However, the originator of the style was actually Franz von Suppé. While a conductor of operas and Viennese Singspiels, Suppé started by composing musical farces. Then, following the success of a string of Jacques Offenbach’s operettas in Vienna, Suppé decided to combine the most popular features of Offenbach’s work with the congenial spirit of Viennese-flavored music. The first Viennese operetta, Das Pensionat (The Boarding School, 1860) was an immediate hit that led to a long series of equally successful theatrical works. Although nearly all of Suppé’s farces and operettas have been forgotten, the brilliant, witty, and sentimental overtures to many of them have found a permanent place in the orchestral repertoire. The Overture to Poet and Peasant, an 1846 farce, is one of his most popular overtures. It is a potpourri of varied tunes: noble, touching, dramatic, and lilting.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21
Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849)
Chopin’s two piano concertos were works of his youth written together the year before his twentieth birthday. The F Minor Concerto was actually written first, but because Chopin’s publisher came out with it after the E Minor Concerto, The F Minor work was labeled No. 2. Like much of the piano-and-orchestra music of the time, the concertos of Frédéric Chopin are works in the grand virtuoso tradition, intended as vehicles for the composer’s own performances. This is both a fault and a blessing, for the rich piano part occupies a much fuller spotlight than a truly balanced concerto would have allowed.
The opening of the F Minor Concerto’s first movement is for orchestra alone. Then, the piano enters, taking the spotlight in the two chief themes, a dramatic one and a more cheerful song-like one. The dramatic theme dominates the rest of the movement. The piano soloist plays almost ceaselessly after entering.
The Larghetto is a nocturne-like piece. In it, the 19-year-old Chopin seems to picture his idealized love, Constantina Gladkowska. Chopin wrote to a friend, “Six months have elapsed, and I have not yet exchanged a word with her whom I dream of every night — she who was in my mind when I composed the Adagio [sic] of my concerto.”
The finale brings a splash of Polish national flavor to the concerto in the form of a Mazurka, one of Poland’s national dances. Again, the piano soloist dominates and is given a substantial passage to play alone. Listen for the concluding section based on a horn signal.
Chopin’s piano concertos have often been compared unfavorably with those of Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms. The 19th-century writer, Louis Ehlert, put it most colorfully with the words, “It was not consistent with his nature to express himself in broad terms. His lungs were too weak for the pace in seven league boots, so often required in a score.” However, what Chopin may have lacked in orchestral breadth he made up for in personality and originality, striking enough to elicit from Robert Schumann the remark, “. . . a genius like Mozart, were he born today, would write concertos like Chopin and not like Mozart.”
Pictures at an Exhibition
Modeste Mussorgsky (1839-1881)/Ravel
It is difficult to conceive that the piano suite, Pictures at an Exhibition written in 1874 by Modeste Mussorksky had to wait until after the composer’s death to be published, and that it was not until 1922 that anyone thought to orchestrate the work. Maurice Ravel’s brilliant orchestration, which immediately became part of the standard repertoire, was suggested by Serge Koussevitzky, then a popular conductor in Paris. Ravel took the suggestion and made what many consider the most exemplary orchestration of a piano work ever, and Koussevitzky premiered the piece in 1923.
The origin of Pictures at an Exhibition goes back to 1873. That year saw the death of Victor Hartmann, architect and artist, who was a close friend of Mussorgsky’s. The composer expressed his sorrow at the loss to Russian critic Vladimir Stassov, who had first introduced them. The following year Stassov helped to arrange an exhibition of 400 of Hartmann’s watercolors and drawings in St. Petersburg. From this collection Mussorgsky chose eleven works on which to build his suite, introducing some of the movements with a recurring “Promenade” theme.
The “Promenade,” as explained by Stassov, represents the composer “walking now right, now left, now as an idle person, now urged to go near a picture; at times his joyous appearance is dampened as he thinks in sadness of his departed friend. . . .” “The Gnome” is the sketch of a nutcracker in the shape of a deformed gnome. “The Old Castle” (following a “Promenade”) portrays a medieval Italian castle with a singing troubadour in the foreground. The unique sound of an alto saxophone spins out the melody.
“Tuileries” (following another “Promenade”) shows a crowd of children and nursemaids in the famous Parisian park. Mussorgsky’s subtitle reads, “Dispute of the Children after Play.” “Bydlo” portrays a Polish peasant wagon with giant wooden wheels drawn by oxen. “Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells” (after a “Promenade”) was based on a design for a child’s ballet costume, which is a shell from which only the head and limbs protrude. “Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle” contrasts strongly with the previous section and stems from two pictures the artist gave to Mussorgsky (now lost). “Limoges — The Marketplace” shows a group of women gossiping by their pushcarts amid hustle and bustle.
“Catacombs,” a picture of the Paris catacombs, led Mussorgsky to inscribe, “The creative spirit of the dead Hartmann leads me toward skulls, apostrophizes them — the skulls are illuminated gently in the interior.” “Cum mortuis in lingua mortua” (With the Dead in a Dead Language), a continuation of the catacombs motif, reworks the “Promenade” theme into an eerie character piece.
“The Hut on Fowls’ Legs” is a drawing of a clock in the shape of the hut of Baba-Yaga, the Russian witch. Toward the end of the section, Mussorgsky suggests the witch flying. When she lands, it is squarely on the downbeat of the final section: “The Great Gate of Kiev.” This was Hartmann’s design for an ancient-style gate, complete with decorative cupola and a triumphal procession marching through the arches (represented by the “Promenade” theme). The full mass of Ravel’s orchestra (including chimes) comes together here to give Pictures at an Exhibition a majestic conclusion.
PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. MICHAEL FINK, NOTES, INC.
Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin
Richard Wagner (1813- 1883)
Anyone who has heard a Wagnerian work knows that the orchestra is of extreme importance to the composer’s message. In the later “music dramas,” Richard Wagner entrusted entirely to the orchestra what he called the “inner action” — the psychological drama. However, even in his earlier romantic operas, the orchestra played a significant role through overtures and preludes to certain acts. Lohengrin was a transitional work in which Wagner was developing the cornerstones of his new “music drama” idea while shedding whatever vestiges of romantic opera did not suit his purpose. This was also the work in which Wagner first showed his full mastery of the orchestral palette. It is natural, then, that the two major orchestral episodes in the opera, the Preludes to Act I and Act III, have found a permanent and highly respected place in the orchestral concert repertoire.
The Act III Prelude prepares the listener for the wedding scene. Briefly, Lohengrin has appeared incognito and from out of nowhere to become Elsa’s champion and defend her against accusations of murder and treason. After his decisive victory, Lohengrin declares his love for Elsa and asks her to marry him on the condition that she never ask his name or his origin. An evil detractor plants seeds of doubt in Elsa’s mind, but she tries to put these aside as she goes through with the wedding ceremony.
Also Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30
Richard Strauss (1864-1949)
Hardly was the ink dry on the score of Richard Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel in 1895, when he began to sketch a new symphonic poem. Till had been one of Strauss’s most pictorial, illustrative works for orchestra, but the new piece would be inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical writings. Young Germans of Strauss’s generation had avidly read Nietzsche’s poetic-philosophical book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The book’s hero, named after the pre- Christian Persian prophet, seemed to exemplify the fin-de-siècle artistic ideals of the time: a “super-person” who is a free spirit longing after higher aspirations than his world seems to offer.
It came as no surprise that when Richard Strauss (1864-1949) announced the subject of his new symphonic poem, a great outcry went up. Philosophy through music? Ridiculous! Yet, unknown to Strauss or anyone else, Nietzsche had confided to his journal that the nature of Zarathustra belongs “almost among the symphonies.” On the eve of Zarathustra’s premiere in December 1896, Strauss felt it necessary to clarify his position and wrote:
I did not intend to write philosophical music or portray Nietzsche’s great work musically. I meant rather to convey in music an idea of the evolution of the human race from its origin, through the various phases of development, religious as well as scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch [super-person].
As Strauss suggested, the relationship of his work to Nietzsche’s is very general. Of Nietzsche’s 80 chapter headings, Strauss chose only eight for his score, and they come in an order unrelated to Nietzsche’s book.
The famous (“2001: A Space Odyssey”) introductory depiction of dawn has no subheading. Instead, Strauss reprints Zarathustra’s preface, which begins:
When Zarathustra was 30 years old, forsaking his home and the lake by his birthplace, he took to the mountains. There he enjoyed his loneliness, communing with his soul, and did not tire of this for ten years. But at last a change was wrought in his heart, and one morning he arose with the dawn and turned to the sun . . . .
The key of the opening is C, symbolizing the purity and simplicity of Nature. In sharp contrast to this, the first section, “Of the Otherworldsmen,” introduces the key of B (minor and later major), which represents Humankind. This key relationship is symbolically paradoxical, since B is next to C but is very distantly related to it in sound.
The ascending Nature motive from the introduction becomes transformed many times in the course of Zarathustra, but initially it occurs in the second section, “Of the Great Yearning.” The two nervously twisting themes in “Of Joys and Passions” combine in “The Dirge.” In the next section, “Of Science,” Strauss symbolizes learnedness by a fugue with a theme based on the opening theme. The complex emotional content of “The Convalescent” gains relief in the rhythms of “The Dance Song” with its mocking suggestion of the super-person dancing a cabaret waltz. The final section, “Night-Wanderer’s Song,” opens with the tolling of midnight bells. A mood of hushed mystery prevails over the closing pages of the score. In the final measures comes a quiet, subtle return of the original struggle between the tonalities B (Humankind) and C (Nature). “At the end,” remarks Strauss scholar Norman Del Mar, “for all Man’s achievements and hard-won peace of mind, Nature inevitably has the last word, as Nature always will, whatever beings Earth may conjure up to dispute her sovereignty.”
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
The piano concerto that Johannes Brahms completed in 1881 (between his Second and Third Symphonies) is a much more ingratiating one than the one he composed nearly 30 years earlier. The B-flat Major Concerto is also entirely different in concept from the D Minor Concerto, or for that matter from any other Classic-Romantic concerto.
Chief among the unusual features of the work is the absence of formal solo cadenzas. Unaccompanied solo passages are interspersed through the movements. In addition, the very difficult and demanding piano part is heard almost constantly throughout, leading some critics to dub the work a “symphony with piano obbligato.” The symphonic conception must indeed have been in Brahms’s mind, for he cast the concerto in four movements rather than the traditional three.
What to listen for: The nature of the concerto is announced in the rhapsodic but serene introductory exchange between the piano and orchestral instruments. This very tight connection between piano and orchestra will be constant throughout, thus making the work a test of the soloist’s endurance as well as of virtuosity. Another feature of the first movement is its plethora of beautiful melodies, of which Annotator Edward Downes wrote. “They might, in another composer’s hands, have been an embarrassment of riches. But Brahms’s powerful sense of structure is never overwhelmed by detail.” The second movement knits the piano and orchestra even more tightly together.
The enchanting main theme of the Andante, played at first by a solo cello, is song-like. In fact, it is a foreshadowing of Brahms’s later song, “Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer” (Op. 105, no. 2). Here, in the leisurely gestures of the slow movement, is finally relief for the listener from the thunder of the first movement and the passion of the second. The finale of this concerto is possibly the most bubbly and carefree of any by Brahms. The spirit of Hungarian gypsy music animates several themes, providing a sparkling conclusion to one of Brahms’s most endearing works.
PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. MICHAEL FINK, NOTES, INC.
Overture to Così fan tutte
Wolfgang A. Mozart (1756-1791)
It had been a little more than two years since Wolfgang A. Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte had collaborated on Don Giovanni in 1787. That opera had been very successful in Prague, but the often frivolous Viennese audience had not liked it as much as the previous Marriage of Figaro. Whether Mozart set out to give Vienna the perfect Italian comic opera in Così fan tutte, he and his librettist accomplished just that. The story deals with disguise, mistaken identity, and supposed female fickleness (implied in the title: “That’s what they (women) all do”). But in the end love triumphs over all. In the story, there is just the right balance between sincere sentiment and tomfoolery, and the music contains a corresponding balance between noble expression and scintillating comedy.
The overture sets the tone for all of this. It begins with fanfare chords and a slow introduction (possibly a foretaste of The Magic Flute Overture?). The main themes of the Presto are another matter, however. In them, Mozart’s incomparable Italian style comes through in a series of themes that could have become virtually a textbook for Rossini. Full of capricious turns, the rest of the overture is tightly woven out of those brief ideas: a “whispered” theme for strings, a “chattering” theme featuring solo woodwind instruments, and a “hilarious kind of Hallelujah Chorus” (in the words of analyst Donald Tovey) for full orchestra. These are each tested in various keys colored major and minor and in various orders of presentation. The impression the listener gets is one of a constantly revolving musical kaleidoscope in which the three themes are like chips of brilliantly colored glass falling into place in funny, unpredictable patterns.
Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K. 216
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
During the year 1775, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was concertmaster of the Salzburg Prince-Archbishop’s orchestra. This meant that he played violin, led the orchestra, and no doubt was expected to perform occasionally as a soloist. Reflecting his position, the 19-year- old composer’s greatest accomplishments that year were his five concertos for violin and orchestra (K. 207, 211, 216, 218, and 219). Oddly, he never again wrote a major work for violin solo.
The last three concertos came as a group between September and December 1775. Since their keys are G major, D major, and A major, respectively, it is tempting to theorize that Mozart might have also intended a fourth concerto in E major, cleverly symbolizing the four strings of the violin (G-D-A-E).
The G Major Concerto’s first movement is freshness personified. Mozart offers his captivating themes in a compact orchestral segment before bringing in the soloist. The dramatic working out of the themes is appropriately completed by a segment in the style of an opera recitative.
“ . . . Instead of an Andante there is an Adagio that seems to have fallen straight from heaven . . . .” Alfred Einstein’s statement about the second movement speaks for all of us who become breathless at the eloquence and depth of this teenager’s music. Part of the magic of the movement is the result of instrumentation: flutes (instead of the more usual oboes) and muted violins.
The finale is full of peasant-dance merriment and surprises. The central section has unexpected tinges of gypsy spirit. Soon, completely unrelated, slower music seem again to have “fallen straight from heaven.” These may have been humorous musical quotations in the spirit of jolly Salzburg serenades. The work’s surprise ending is for oboes and horns only.
Symphony No. 11, Op. 103 (“The Year 1905”)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Most of us are familiar with the Russian Revolution of 1917. However, one event of 1905 that foreshadowed the great revolt is less well known to Westerners. On January 5, 1905, masses of workers and their families from the outskirts of St. Petersburg gathered outside the Tsar’s Winter Palace. Their purpose was to appeal to him for decent treatment and civil liberties. The meeting on that sunny but frosty Sunday afternoon was an orderly one, as eyewitness Alexandra Kollontai recalled: . . . The people crowded close to the palace and waited. They waited patiently for an hour, then another hour: would the Tsar not come out to them? Who would accept the petition — the workers’ petition to the Tsar?
But the Tsar did not emerge. The entreaties of the unarmed people were answered by a bugle call. . . . Again we waited, tense and with a vague foreboding. Another signal. The troops stirred slightly. . . . There was a third signal, and then an unusual booming sound. What’s that? They’re shooting? . . . People were falling nearby — women, children — the children dropping like wounded sparrows in the snow from the railings of the Alexandrovsk Gardens . . .
The people could not believe what was happening. But the Tsar’s mounted police were already galloping to the attack — to attack the people!
“Bloody Sunday” and its significance in the hearts of the Russian people formed the substance of the Eleventh Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975). It was the fruit of a governmental commission to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the 1917 Revolution. Shostakovich chose to write about 1905 and waited to treat 1917 in a sequel, his Twelfth Symphony. Critics hailed Symphony No. 11 at its first performances in Moscow and St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1957. That year Shostakovich received his country’s highest honor, the Lenin Prize, for his symphony. Later that year, he accepted the International Jan Sibelius Prize.
Analyst Roy Blokker’s comment that the symphony’s program is “less literal than sensual” is especially true of the first movement’s icy opening. The quiet of the palace square is disturbed only by the flutes and later solo trumpet intoning the people’s song, “Listen.” This is the first of several revolutionary songs of the period that provide Shostakovich with most of his themes. Another song, “The Convict,” appears in the basses, and then Shostakovich blends elements of both songs.
The second movement portrays the crowd’s uneasiness, the warning bugle calls, the belligerent soldiers’ confrontation and, finally, the massacre itself. Shostakovich spares us nothing in this powerful passage, which emphasizes an out-of-phase percussion section. The ending bespeaks a stunned awe following the sudden tragedy.
“Eternal Memory,” the third movement is Shostakovich’s requiem to the martyrs. The eloquent violas intone the song, “You Fell As Victims.” Rhythms derived from the second movement remind us of the bloody disaster. Suddenly, the fanfare opening of the fourth movement, “Alarm,” intrudes. The relentless concentration of this finale is unparalleled in Shostakovich. Dramatically, the composer brings back reminders of each of the previous movements — reminders of the human rights cause for which the Russian people would again fight in the Russian Revolution of 1917.
PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. MICHAEL FINK, NOTES, INC.
Overture to The Bartered Bride
Bedřich Smetana (1824-1884)
The word “roots” has come to mean one’s cultural-ethnic roots, implying also a search for those roots and raising one’s consciousness of them. Bedřich Smetana found his roots in the music of his native Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic). Swept up in patriotic revolutions around the mid-19th century, Smetana also crusaded as a political activist. The revolution against German political and cultural tyranny was unsuccessful, but the effort produced a fresh, liberating force in Smetana’s music. He became his country’s first nationalist composer.
Nowhere in Smetana’s music is there a stronger sense of Czech “roots” than in his second opera, The Bartered Bride, which he wrote between 1863 and 1866. Borrowing very little folk music, Smetana created a peasant opera that synthesized elements of Czech melody and dance into a wholly nationalist creation. To the Czechs, The Bartered Bride became synonymous with Czech culture. Created for its 1866 premiere with spoken dialogue and no dance, the opera underwent three revisions in 1869, resulting in continuous music. The overture and three famous dances are often performed in the concert hall.
Summarizing the music in The Bartered Bride’s overture, opera authority the Earl of Harewood writes:
The Overture, written before the rest of the opera, so great was Smetana’s enthusiasm for the subject he was to tackle, is immensely and justifiably popular as a concert piece. Its themes are later used in connection with Kečal and the marriage contract . . . but whatever their associations, their dashing quavers [eighth notes], Mozartian in their gaiety and appropriately marked vivacissimo, give the opera an irresistible start.
Concerto for Orchestra
Witold Lutoslawski (1913-1994)
Since the mid-1950s, Witold Lutoslawski has become an internationally celebrated composer. His list of prizes and honors nearly fills a dictionary column, and they come from such varied sources as UNESCO, Helsinki (Sibelius Prize), and academies of arts in Hamburg, Berlin, London, Sweden, Japan, and the United States. He has been recognized with three honorary doctorates. In his native Poland, Lutoslawski has been a familiar figure as a pianist and conductor as well as a composer.
Lutoslawski has paid heavy dues for his recognition, however. Following the Nazi oppression of Poland during World War II, the country became part of Stalin’s Soviet Bloc. Polish composers thus were subject to the same repressive rules as Russians such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich. It was in that climate that Lutoslawski brought forth his Concerto for Orchestra. Government officials required all concert music to bear some earmark of “social conscience,” usually a folk style of writing or containing actual quotations of folk music. It is a tribute to Lutoslawski’s vast talent that he produced such a vibrant work under those circumstances. Composing the Concerto for Orchestra was the result of a 1950 commission from Witold Rowicki for the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, which Rowicki had founded that year. Lutoslawski wrote: This was to be something not difficult, but which could, however, give the young orchestra an opportunity to show its qualities. I started to work on the new score, not realizing that I was to spend nearly four years on it. Folk music and all that follows with it . . . was to be used in my new work. Folk music has in this work, however, been merely a raw material used to build a large musical form of several movements, which does not in the least originate either from folk songs or from folk dances. A work came into being, which I could not help including among my most important works as a result of my episodic symbiosis with folk music, and in a way that was for me somewhat unexpected.
In procedural matters, Lutoslawski often looked to the music of Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, and that is what he has done with regard to “folk music.” Each of these composers had absorbed the folk music idiom of his native country to such a depth that composing modern music in the flavor of folk music was a natural procedure.
What to listen for: As the first movement begins, notice how the sound builds from low sounds to higher ones, leading to the later sections featuring a variety of instruments. Listen also for the contrast between melodies in these sections — some short and choppy, others long and song-like. In the latter, notice how the orchestral sound often becomes more forceful. Near the end, see if you can identify recurrences of the tune introduced at the beginning of the movement.
In the second movement, notice the hushed scurrying feel of the music during the first section. Can you tell when this changes to the slower middle section with a trumpet call? Notice the difference in mood between the first two sections. Listen for the quick scurrying sounds to return to create a finish.
The last movement is longer than the first two combined. We might call this the “center of gravity” in the Concerto for Orchestra. It starts with a melody played by the double basses and harp. Listen to it closely and try to identify as many of its recurrences (in these and other instruments) as possible. There are 18 in all. Other ideas are pitted against it, so this is not an easy task. This is the “Passacaglia” section. When its music finally dies away, we come to the “Toccata” section. This begins softly but quickly. Notice the sudden change and the growing agitated quality of the “Toccata.” The generic title of the final section, “corale” (chorale) originally meant church hymn. You can hear that idea in the music played softly by brass instruments. Notice how the music repeats but with new ideas etched around it, sometimes taking over the spotlight. Many ideas are reminiscent of folk music. Notice, now, how the pulse of the music gathers momentum as it drives toward a climax, sometimes backing off for an anti-climax. Listen for the full brass section to bring back the “corale” in preparation for the sudden percussive ending.
Violin Concerto in D, Op. 35
Peter I. Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
In certain ways, the year 1878 was one of the worst in the life of Peter I. Tchaikovsky, and in other ways, it was one of the best. The composer spent most of the year in Western Europe (notably Italy and Switzerland) recovering from a shattered marriage and a near breakdown. During January, he finished the depressive Fourth Symphony and soon afterward his operatic masterpiece, Eugene Onegin. Tchaikovsky spent March and April in the Swiss resort town of Clarens, and it was there, in a sudden burst of inspiration, that he wrote one of the most brilliant and cheerful of all his works, the Violin Concerto. For a technical advisor, Tchaikovsky had Iosef Kotek, the young Russian violinist. Within eleven days, the composer had completed sketches for the concerto. In early April, he replaced the second movement with the present Canzonetta and quickly scored the entire work.
Today, it seems incredible that people did not immediately take Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto to their hearts. Nadezhda von Meck, the composer’s patron and ardent admirer, previewed the work and found grievous faults in it. Tchaikovsky dedicated the concerto to Leopold Auer and asked him to play its premiere. However, Auer begged off on the excuse that the soloist=s part was awkward and too difficult to be worth the trouble. When violinist Adolf Brodsky played the premiere in Vienna that December, reviews in the press were scathing. Tchaikovsky was permanently wounded by the diatribe of Vienna’s most influential critic, Eduard Hanslick, who wrote, “Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto brings to us for the first time the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks in the ear.”
After a modest introduction, the first movement presents three ingratiating principal themes. The composer does not work much with these but rather writes music that drives toward the brilliant violin cadenza (unaccompanied music). A majestic reprise of the themes leads to an applause-stirring ending to the movement.
The Canzonetta reveals what Tchaikovsky scholar David Brown terms “Tchaikovsky’s burning love of Russia” and his melancholy yearning to return there. This leads without a break to the final movement, which is even more recognizably Russian. The athletic opening theme is a Trepak, a stamping Cossack dance. Continuing the national flavor, the second theme suggests a peasant or gypsy melody played to the droning accompaniment of bagpipes or a hurdy-gurdy. The third theme is more sentimental but is based on rhythms taken from the second theme. Early on, the violin has a short cadenza, and the rest of the movement exacts from the soloist both violinistic acrobatics and panache in performing style.
PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. MICHAEL FINK, NOTES, INC.
Symphony No. 3
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Boundlessness, the desire to embrace the universe, the love of nature, and Pantheism — these were some of the strongest driving forces in romantic art. And as they merged in the work of Gustav Mahler, they became the inspiration and original substance of his Third Symphony. Mahler composed this, his longest symphony (and one of the longest in the symphonic repertoire), during the summer months of 1895 and 1896. His summer mountain retreat, Steinbach on the Attersee, was a magnificent idyllic setting, which inspired the composer during work on the Third Symphony, and he even remarked to his young protégé Bruno Walter about this landscape, “I’ve already composed it all!” But nature alone was not Mahler’s entire framework. Writing to soprano Anna Bahr-Mildenburg as he put the final touches on the symphony, Mahler declared, “Now, imagine a work of such scope that the whole world actually is reflected in it — one becomes, so to speak, only an instrument upon which the universe plays.”
Mahler was famous for such hyperbole, but it was difficult for him (or anyone) to express in words the vastness of his philosophical subject. Nevertheless, the clearest and most spontaneous explanation of the symphony’s movement-by-movement program appears in a letter the composer wrote to his friend, Max Marschalk, just a few days before completing the work:
First Section:
I. Introduction: The awakening of Pan; Summer marches in (procession of Bacchus).
Second Section:
II. What the flowers of the meadow tell me.
III. What the animals in the forest tell me.
IV. What man tells me.
V. What the angels tell me.
VI. What love tells me.
What to listen for: The enormous first movement is longer than Beethoven’s entire Fifth Symphony. Its march-like opening theme is for horns. Notice that the woodwinds and trumpet continue the fanfare idea but in a more sustained fashion to produce a second theme. A great deal of this movement is based on those two themes, but later a third musical idea emerges, announced by a trumpet. Listen for the return of the original two ideas, now perhaps in a different-sounding context.
The symphony’s first theme transforms itself into the first theme of the Tempo di menuetto. See if you can hear the relationship between these. In this movement, Mahler deliberately employs only a few instruments from his large orchestra. The composer once described this music as “carefree as only flowers can be . . . like flowers bending on their stems and being caressed by the wind.”
In the scherzando third movement, Mahler’s genius for musical color comes to the fore. Listen for the extensively use of a distant “post-horn” (forerunner to the modern French horn). Whatever connection this picturesque instrument may have with “the animals in the forest” in the movement’s title is not clear. However, this movement and the foregoing one relate as a pair dedicated to the Earth’s flora and fauna.
The nocturnal fourth movement calls for an alto soloist singing verses from Nietzsche’s poetic novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Especially impressive are the settings of the recurring word “deep” (tief, tiefe, tiefer, or tiefem)
O man! Give heed!
What does the deep midnight say?
I slept!
From deepest dream I have awakened!
The world is deep!
And deeper than the day had thought!
Deep, deep, deep is its woe!
Ecstasy, deeper still than grief!
Woe cries: pass on!
But all ecstasy seeks eternity!
Seeks deep, deep eternity!
This musical meditation connects with the following movement (No. V) without pause. In dramatic contrast to the philosophical depths of the previous movement, the simple “Bimm, bamm, bimm, bamm” — a vocal imitation of bells — comes as a breath of fresh air. Here the soloist is joined by a women’s and boys’ chorus in poetic settings from Mahler’s favorite folklore collection, Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
Ding, dong, ding, dong.
Three angels sang a sweet song;
Joyfully it sounded through Heaven,
They shouted joyfully the while
That St. Peter was free of sin,
And when the Lord Jesus sat at the board,
For the last supper with his twelve disciples,
The Lord Jesus spoke: what doest thou here?
As I behold thee, thou weepest!
And should I not weep, thou merciful God?
I have broken the Ten Commandments.
I go my way with bitter tears.
Thou shalt not weep!
Ah, come, and have mercy on me!
If thou hast broken the Ten Commandments
Fall on thy knees and pray to God!
Love only God in eternity!
So shalt thou know heavenly joys,
The heavenly city was made ready for Peter
Through Jesus and for the salvation of all.
Ding, dong, ding, dong.
This fifth movement proceeds directly to the concluding movement, which is strictly instrumental — without voices. Mahler wrote about it, “I could almost call the movement ‘What God tells me’ — in the sense that God can only be comprehended as Love.” Mahler, reaching for the heights, creates one of his most ravishingly lyrical yet subtly colorful essays. In the final powerful moments, one can almost feel the words with which Mahler summarized his Third Symphony: “And so my work is a musical poem embracing all stages of development in progressive order. It begins with inanimate Nature and rises to the love of God!”
[Translations by Edward Downs, © 1976]
PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. MICHAEL FINK, NOTES, INC.