Overture to The School for Scandal
Samuel Barber (1910-1981)
Samuel Barber spent the years 1924-1932 as one of the first students at the Curtis Institute. He worked in voice (a baritone), in piano, and in composition. Barber showed early potential as a composer, and the works of his student years — the Serenade, Dover Beach, the Violin and Cello Sonatas, and the Overture to The School for Scandal — are not at all apprentice pieces. They are the youthful flowering of a prodigious creative talent that have become part of the standard repertoire.
The School for Scandal Overture was not composed for any particular production of Sheridan’s 18th-century comedy. It was Barber’s senior composition project at Curtis in 1931, and as a note in the score indicates, it was “suggested” by Sheridan’s play. In 1933, the overture was premiered in Philadelphia and won a Bearns Prize for Barber. It was hailed as a phenomenal first orchestral work.
Following a semi-serious introduction, the overture’s true nature is revealed as a rollicking quick-tempo section full of wit and humor. This gaiety is briefly interrupted by a lyrical theme featuring the oboe. A jolly clarinet theme rounds out the first part of the overture. Soon all the earlier music returns, telescoped and varied, to drive the overture to a bubbly finish.
Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Analyst Donald Tovey has remarked that Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto “is one of the works in which we most clearly see the style of his first period preparing to develop into that of his second.” The chronology of the composition also forms a bridge between those two style periods. Ludwig van Beethoven) began sketching the concerto as early as 1797 but did most of the work during 1800. However, he did not add the finishing touches until he was preparing for a concert in April 1803 (with himself as soloist), and the piano part was not even completely written out for that performance! The composer improvised a cadenza that evening but wrote one out in 1808 or later.
Certain aspects of this concerto, especially the first movement, hark back to earlier music. Strong comparisons have been drawn between Beethoven’s first movement and that of Mozart’s C Minor Piano Concerto, K. 491. Beethoven’s form is nearly identical to Mozart’s, and the first theme of each work bears more than a coincidental resemblance. However, Beethoven’s mood is more of an extension of his own stormy Pathétique Sonata. Predictably, Beethoven uses his themes in a novel way, and following the piano’s solo near the end, the instrument is integrated into the conclusion, adding a particularly Beethovenian power to the movement’s ending.
The Largo, on the other hand, is forward-looking. Even its first chord comes as a shock, as we sense that Beethoven has jumped to a remote key. However, this lovely, contemplative movement has a Romantic flavor. The central section even anticipates the Romantic practice of having the solo instrument accompany instruments of the orchestra, here the flute and bassoon. To soften the shock of moving back to the original key, Beethoven engineers the first three notes of the finale so they are common to both keys. The most striking feature of this lively, tight-knit music comes well into the movement. Here, the main theme moves into a brief statement that is a fleeting, sunlit recollection of the slow movement. Soon, Beethoven changes keys again for the Presto final section, which calls for some pyrotechnics in the piano and a tumbling finish in the orchestra.
Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73
Johannes Brahms (1833- 1897)
Creating two works in the same genre simultaneously was not uncommon for composers of the Classic-Romantic era, and often the nature of the two contrasted sharply. One case was Beethoven’s labor over his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, which premiered on the same concert. The Fifth, tragic-heroic in character, is the complementary opposite of the “Pastoral” Sixth, idyllic and reflective.
Another example is Brahms’s First and Second Symphonies. Johannes Brahms devoted more than 15 years to the completion of his first symphonic effort. Of course, during that time he worked on other projects, one of them being the sketching of his Second Symphony. This bore a relationship to his First that is remarkably similar to that between Beethoven’s “Pastoral” and Fifth Symphonies. In fact, later writers have characterized Brahms’s First as “tragic” and have given the idyllic Second Symphony the “Pastoral” nickname.
Although Brahms had frequent and severe misgivings about his First Symphony, he apparently knew from the start that the Second was destined for success. His confidence took the form of “putting on” his friends and publishers about the character of the work, especially the sunlit, optimistic first movement. He had Clara Schumann convinced that the first movement was “quite elegiac in character,” and he instructed his publisher, Simrock, “You must put a black border around the score to give an outward show of grief.” Brahms completed the symphony during the summer of 1877 in the bucolic setting of Pörtschach by the Wörthersee. It premiered in Vienna on December 30 of that year.
The Viennese at once took the work to their hearts. Some have attributed this immediate success to the first movement being supposedly waltz-like. However, the moderate tempo and gentle grace of the movement suggest more the ballet stage than the ballroom. Brahms also shows great sophistication in the way he uses the opening three-note idea (called a “motto”) as a springboard to generate later themes in this and the final movement. In the orchestra, a delicate balance between the general feeling of lightness and the uncommon heaviness of the brass section results from the use of three trombones and tuba, something very unusual for Brahms.
The long line of the Adagio’s opening theme reveals the character of the movement as songlike. Quicker rhythmic motion in the middle section gives contrast before the return of the opening material, heard now in a varied form.
Next Brahms presents a graceful movement in place of the more classic type. Yet its outer sections are as noble and classical as any minuet. The quick Trio section is very different rhythmically, yet Brahms has derived its theme from the main theme of the movement.
The opening three notes of the climactic finale recall the “motto” at the opening of the symphony, but the spirit of this movement is entirely different: rhythm, not tone, is the dominant element. Through rhythmic impulse, Brahms pushes the listener constantly forward, even through the more relaxed middle section. An abbreviated reprise of themes leads to the ending, which biographer Karl Geiringer has described as finishing “in a burst of Dionysiac jubilation.”
