Russell Steinberg—Concert and Film Music: Calendar

Russell, what wonderful afternoon with the youth orchestras. What a rewarding experience. I was especially delighted and overwhelmed by the finale. Your composition made the perfect conclusion to the whole event. Thanks so much!  
Ed Waterhouse

Link to PODCAST of KUSC Interview

Link to UCTV broadcast of the interview:

Mendelssohn Bio Continued

RUSSELL STEINBERG UPBEAT LIVE TALK ON

Friday May 22 , Saturday May 23, 2009, 7:00 PM and Sunday May 24 1PM
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Los Angeles Philharmonic
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
PROGRAM:
Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini
Prokofiev: Symphony No. 5

INTRODUCTION
Before the cancellation of the Shostakovich Violin concerto, I was prepared to embark on the fascinating contrast between Shostakovich and Prokofiev. I’ve noticed an interesting rivalry in popularity through the years between the two composers, especially in concert programming here in Los Angeles. When I was in high school, Prokofiev was all the rage. Now Shostakovich is going through a period of elevation and reevaluation. I wanted to talk about harmony, because Shostakovich and Prokofiev, while both supremely lyrical, use chords in completely different ways. Prokofiev extends and obscures the patterns and progressions of Romantic music. Shostakovich largely ignores them, using all the familiar chords but jumping around them in unpredictable and novel ways. When he does adopt traditional chord progressions, it is often in the manner of a quotation or reference to “genre” music like a march or a waltz.

Tchaikovsky: Francesca da Rimini
Prokofiev, for all his modernism, actually has more in common with Tchaikovsky. And that’s where we begin with this concert: Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, a tone poem composed in 1876. Tchaikovsky had been considering an opera on the subject of the lovers Francesca and Paolo from Dante’s “Inferno.” In the northern Italian town of Rimini, young Francesca is led to believe she will wed Paolo, when instead she is wed to Paolo’s older brother Giovanni. Giovanni discovers the two lovers in flagrante delicto soon after his marriage and kills them. This was an historical incident. In the Divine Comedy, Dante discovers their souls in the second circle of hell, caught in a violent storm twisted eternally away from each other.

Tchaikovsky abandoned plans for the opera, but his brother persuaded him to compose a tone poem on the subject. This 25 minute work is said to owe much to the music of Franz Liszt, who himself composed a Dante Symphony. This is undoubtedly true. The music has a decidedly gothic tone and is obsessed with diminished 7th chords and other chromatic harmonies, not to mention special effects like the raging winds of storm. But I think the piece has an even earlier precedent: the Witch’s Sabbath from Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique. Equally similar in sound is the opening of Death and Transfiguration by Richard Strauss, who clearly knew both the Berlioz and Tchaikovsky! What’s the point of all this? Just that we can trace a direct path and common harmonic aesthetic through 60 years between Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Strauss.

So there is a lot of depression, storm, and fury in this tone poem. Tchaikovsky gets to show off his orchestrational prowess. The howling winds will surely sound spectacular in Disney Hall. But those effects for us are now all pretty cliché. And I think even for Tchaikovsky, all that storm and stress was just an excuse to frame one of his truly great melodies. That’s why the piece is so memorable. But let’s first look at his depiction of hell.

The opening of the piece we heard earlier is continual splashes of diminished 7th chords. Tchaikovsky goes to town with this chord exploiting textural effects, including a creepy wailing texture with rising diminished 7ths. In another passage, tremolo strings alternate with swirling woodwinds to create raging winds.And upping the ante, we get a full mother-of-all-storms with rising and falling chromatic scales, yet another device lifted from Berlioz.

These are all thrilling special effects, to be sure. But like special effects in movies from the 70s, it kind of makes us smile now. They’re dated. This was the kind of writing that I suspect drove Johannes Brahms absolutely bonkers about composers like Tchaikovsky, what he would probably call cheap thrills.

The lyricism in the central portion of the tone poem is another thing entirely. The orchestra dwindles down to a single clarinet, perhaps Francesca’s narration of her tragedy. The clarinet solo introduces this achingly melancholy theme, accompanied simply by plucked strings. Like many of Tchaikovsky’s melodies, this is a complicated affair, built of many phrases and essentially a complete entity in itself. The second half of the theme is a different world entirely. Over a pedal point, the strings sing in yearning phrases over the most gorgeous harmonic progression. These chords are why we fall in love with Tchaikovsky’s music.

After this emotional essay, the music enters the mystical world of Liszt and Wagner, including the augmented chord Liszt made so famous in his Faust symphony.

Tchaikovsky’s compositional brilliance is evident in the imaginative accompaniments and variations he constructs for his gorgeous themes. When the cellos take over the tune, they are beneath a new dancing accompaniment of flutes, simultaneously presenting two entirely contrasting moods.

The climax of this central lyrical section in Francesca da Rimini is classic Tchaikovsky. He prepares a climactic moment with a blunt chromatic ascent in the bass. That’s an old trick for him. When he wants to arrive at some particular harmony, he just climbs up the scale till he hits the right note, in this case E. Once he arrives, the entire orchestra comes alive independently. The brass burst forth with a variation of Francesca’s theme. At the same time, both the strings and woodwinds compete for our attention with extremely active accompaniments. The effect is of an enormous careening tapestry, pulsing with emotion and life.



Prokofiev Symphony No. 5

A fascinating item about Sergei Prokofiev is that while he challenged the Romantic Era aesthetic of cantabile with his percussive piano playing and raw primal rhythms, his true inner nature seemed most inclined to a lyrical gift that rivaled all the past masters like Schubert and Tchaikovsky. In fact he composed some of the most hummable and truly lyric music of the 20th century. Think of his Romeo and Juliet, Lt. Kije, the Classical Symphony, etc. This fifth symphony is a prime example of that lyricism.

But there is quite a bit unusual in this piece from what we normally associate in a symphony. The opening of each movement is quiet and melodic, scored for small forces, belying the full orchestra seated on the stage. Also, the first and last movement begin particularly slow for what we usually associate with outer symphonic movements. And in fact, the beginnings of all the movements except for the second movement scherzo are rather similar in feel.


These engaging themes give us plenty to look forward to, but creeping around all this measured lyricism is some heavyduty orchestral writing that lends a depth and complexity to these relatively simple openings. In other words, the candid simplicity that begins each movement belies the emotional depths of the journey ahead.

MVT. 1
The first movement is actually a conventional sonata in B flat major. Prokofiev is incredibly elastic with his melodies. In the recapitulation, the opening theme becomes a true brass fanfare. The coda summarizes the emotional complexity of this theme. It assumes gargantuan proportion and is rather horrific, but then contracts into intimate expression momentarily, only to explode again to complete the movement:
The second theme has two parts. The first is characteristically lyrical. Not till the second part of the second theme does the piece begin to sound “symphonic.” The closing theme sticks out because it is the only quick rhythmic pattern in the movement. In the development section, Prokofiev manages to combine all these themes and ideas together. It makes for a complex tapestry, but one that mysteriously fits nonetheless.

MVT. 2
The second movement, the dance movement of the symphony, is simply “catchy.” Its ostinato eighth notes get your toes tapping to the syncopated theme.

The trio section begins with a gentle and strongly tonal theme. But then things change and Prokofiev seems to enter simultaneously the worlds of jazz and Aaron Copland. Under an ostinato bass rising up four notes and back down in a loop, a new syncopated theme appears. As it builds, Prokofiev adds the woodblock and other percussion—it seems we’re almost at an American sounding hoedown!

The way the opening scherzo theme returns is just remarkable composing. Prokofiev begins with a fascinating color combination of muted brass punctuated by plucked strings—a Stravinskyian effect to be sure. The tune gradually grows before our ears in a slow tempo. Eventually the music accelerates back to the original tempo and return of the opening catchy theme.

MVT. 3
The third movement is the slow movement in the symphony. It begins disarmingly lyrically with a calm floating accompaniment. But that accompaniment is an ostinato (or repeated figure) that intimates the movement’s darkness to come. For one thing, the first chord we hear is minor, even though the piece is in a major key. The second chord is a tritone distant from the first. That also lends a dark dissonance coloring the otherwise sweet-natured theme. The second phrase morphs into a dramatically different character, almost as if the theme becomes twisted. As the first violins leap to the stratosphere, the second violins follow them up high with a triplet accompaniment. Deep below these two lines the harmony changes to minor and slides down chromatically. This “other side” of the theme is one of dark anguish.

A particularly haunting moment is a duet between oboe and bassoon in parallel fourths. The two instruments together sound hollow and empty, perhaps funereal, especially after the fullness of the orchestra.

The middle section of the movement sounds definitely more elegiac. How far the mood has evolved from the opening! The climax reveals the torture that’s “underneath” this seemingly placid theme. The gates of hell with the full power of the symphonic orchestra are unleashed only to subside into the most delicious return of the opening theme. This contrast makes for the real goosebumps in the symphony!

MVT. 4
As previously noted, the introduction to the finale recalls the opening tune from the symphony, but in a bluesy chordal version played by a divided cello section.

This dreamy opening gives way to the most memorable theme of the symphony, one you might be whistling in the car on your way back from the concert. Just a couple of weeks ago I was conducting John William’s wonderful concert suite to the film E.T. and I was struck by the inventiveness of how he uses French horns in repeated pulsing chords to accompany the soaring E.T. theme. Then here I am looking at the score to this finale to Prokofiev’s 5th symphony and lo and behold: the identical orchestration—horns quickly tonguing repeated chords under an equally inspired theme, here first played by the clarinet, and later by the soaring violins. Also similar is the modal basis for the melody—both E.T. and the Prokofiev finale use the Lydian mode.

At the end of the tune, you notice that the violins play a very fast short tag that sounds like circus music. This motif plays a large role as the piece develops. But back first to the tune itself…

The harmony of this infectious tune is a good example of the “Prokofiev-ization” of harmony. What Prokofiev does—and he does this all the time—is to keep the beginning and ending chords conventional. But in between, he makes all kinds of surprising chord substitutions. The normal realization of this melody would probably be the progression I-ii-V-I. Instead, Prokofiev substitutes the two interior chords with a major VI7 and a flat 7th chord: I-VImajor7-bVII4/3-I. Even if you have no idea about what all this jargon means, you can see that the Prokofiev has made the chord progression more complex in tonal terms.

This movement is in rondo form. The flute introduces the B theme. Notice the laid-back, almost pop-music style of this tune. In contrast, the central C theme has a chorale texture realized contrapuntally in the string section.

The coda of the movement combines everything we’ve heard under an ostinato of pulsing chords all in the tonic key of B flat. The circus music aspect is most prominent. But you’ll hear the main theme, the violin repeated note tag, the chorale theme, and much more. It’s Prokofiev brings bringing all these ideas under one big raucous tent.

A big thank you to the many friends that came to this concert! This "birth" of my song cycle Brim a Brew was an exciting premiere for me. Juliana Gondek sang with passion and angelic presence. Most people were moved most by the 3rd song, Lullaby, but I think the whole cycle of 5 worked well. The acoustics of Schoenberg seemed particularly kind to the delicate piano plucking in the first song, Clear Glass Bottles. A first performance is always frustrating because we performers are immersed in the details more than the larger shape. I hope we get a chance to do this again soon.

The other pieces on the concert were fascinating--a work for solo flute by James Newton that involved the flutist both singing and speaking, a work for solo vibraphone by Münir Beken, an engaging conversational quartet for four, count them, four celli by Roger Bourland, a delightful Machaut and Leonin transcription/composition by David Lefkowitz for cello and piano, and a lushious song cycle on poems by Rumi by Mark Carlson.

This first lecture featured a fabulous group of about 30 eager music listeners! We had a great time and I'm really looking forward to hearing how they progress in the next 5 evenings. Watch out, LA Phil! These people are going to be listening to your performances with a whole new set of musical expectations! :-)

Aired:
Cello Tropes by Russell Steinberg
Universality from Strange Attractors by Russell Steinberg

11am: The Ukester (Three Years Old Today!) + AUDIOMAPS for Classical Music
10. Daniel Ho, “Polani,” Polani, www.danielho.com
11. Daniel Ho, “Living in Paradise,” (LIVE)

12. Daniel Ho (with Ali Lexa), “Pineapple Mango,” (LIVE)

13. Daniel Ho, “Slack Tides,” 2 to Three Feet, Ukuleles in Paradise 3, www.danielho.com
14. Klemperer, "Symphony #1, I ", Beethoven Symphonies 1 & 2, emi

15. Russell Steinberg, Beethoven Sympony #1:"Minuet", AUDIOMAPS To The Beethoven Symponies, Vol.1, www.russellsteinberg.com 16. RS + LA Youth Symphony, "Beethoven Symphony #7 III", private recording

17. Richard Slavich, Steinberg:"Cello Tropes", private recording

18. Russell Steinberg, "Universality" from Strange Attractors, private recording
Dr. Russell Steinberg will be presenting,

RUSSELL STEINBERG UPBEAT LIVE TALK ON

Monday January 26, 2009, 7:00 PM
Walt Disney Concert Hall
San Francisco Symphony
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor

Thomas: Street Song
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 5
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

Thomas: Street Song
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 5
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5

Thomas Street Song
This gorgeous piece in three movements without pause was originally written for the Empire Brass Quintet and later expanded to a larger brass ensemble. It displays a beautiful sense of harmony and counterpoint, and great feel for the American style made so popular by Copland and Bernstein.
Michael Tilson Thomas notes:
“Street Song is in three continuous parts—an interweaving of three "songs." The first song opens with a jagged downward scale suspending in the air a sweetly dissonant harmony that very slowly resolves. This moment of resolution is followed by responses of various kinds. The harmonies move between the world of the Middle Ages and the present, between East and West, and always, of course, from the perspective of twentieth-century America. Overall, the movement is about starting and stopping, the moments of suspension always leading somewhere else.

The second song is introduced by a singsong horn solo. It is followed by a simple trumpet duet, which was first written around 1972. It is folklike in character and also cadences with suspended moments of slowly resolving dissonance.

The third song is really more of a dance. It begins when the trombone slides a step higher, bringing the work into the key of F-sharp and into a jazzier swing. The harmonies here are the stacked-up moments of suspension from the first two parts of the piece. By now, I hope these "dissonant" sounds actually begin to sound "consonant." There is a resolution, but it is the world of a musician who after many after-hour gigs, greets the dawn. Finally, the three songs are brought together and the work moves toward a quiet close.”


PROKOFIEV PIANO CONCERTO #5
PROKOFIEV PIANO CONCERTO #5
Written in 1931-32, the fifth concerto is in five movements, the most ambitious of all his concerti. It’s not what we normally think of as a concerto—a soloist accompanied by an orchestra waiting for an opportunity to perform a cadenza. No, Prokofiev was trying something different. It also isn’t a “disguised” symphony like the Brahms piano concerti. Instead, it is more like a fusion of orchestral suite and concerto. And don’t be put off by the five movements—four of them go pretty fast! The first three movements are short and get increasingly fast. The third is a virtuoso toccata for piano and orchestra. The fourth movement is a genuine slow lyrical expansive movement. And the finale goes back to a quick tempo.

Prokofiev was a modern composer who rejected the idea that tonality was exhausted. He loved adventurous harmonies that expanded the tonal system to the edge of comprehension, but unlike Schoenberg, he felt going over the brink and throwing out the tonal system was a mistake. He was hardly alone in this conclusion, but he came to it many years before his compatriot Igor Stravinsky. I think a great way to grasp Prokofiev’s harmonic language is to hear the theme from Peter and the Wolf first WITHOUT its extended harmonies.
It sounds not so interesting and pretty conventional. This is the tune without having been “Prokofiev-ized.” So what does it mean to “Prokofiev-ize” a tune? It means to make the harmonic motion BACK to the home key an adventure of surprise. He adds chords that have no business in the key and in fact threaten to erase the home key entirely. Then when we think we have lost it, he finds a backdoor that pops us suddenly back to the tonic.
But to be a tonal composer in a world of modernism was to walk a fine edge. The danger of being dated or becoming ensnared in older formulas and conventions was ever-present. And in fact, so many of the marvelous musical languages we adore in 20th century composers—Bartok, Berg, Shostakovich, Copland, and yes Prokofiev’s—were developed not intuitively but after struggle, self-doubt, and conscious working out of aesthetic ideas. The Prokofiev we all know and love—Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, Lt. Kije—was an accumulation of experiments to find a simple style of writing that presented tonality in a modern way. The 5th Piano Concerto was a conscious attempt at creating this style and Prokofiev wrote explicitly about how he succeeded and failed in this vein:


“When you become infatuated with the search for a new melodic style and for a new simplicity, you can begin to forget how far you have drifted from shore. If we discount the Fourth Concerto for left hand, more than ten years had passed since I had written a piano concerto. Since then my conception of the treatment of this form had changed somewhat, some new ideas had occurred to me (a passage running across the entire keyboard, with the left hand overtaking the right; chords in the piano and orchestra interrupting one another, etc.) and finally I had accumulated a good number of vigorous major themes in my notebook. I had not intended the concerto to be difficult and at first had even contemplated calling it “Music for Piano and Orchestra,” partly to avoid confusing the concerto numbers. But in the end it turned out to be complicated, as indeed was the case with a good many other compositions of this period. What was the explanation? In my desire for simplicity I was hampered by the fear of repeating old formulas, of reverting to ‘old simplicity,’ which is something all modern composers seek to avoid. I searched for ‘new simplicity’ only to discover that this new simplicity, with its novel forms and, chiefly, new tonal structure, was not understood. The fact that here and there my efforts to write simply were not successful is beside the point. I did not give up, hoping that the bulk of my music would in time prove to be quite simple when the ear grew accustomed to the new melodies, that is, when these melodies became the accepted idiom.”
The opening of the first movement is a fine example of how Prokofiev fuses the old with the new. It’s practically a waltz in G major, but intrusions by chords and scales outside the key (like Ab major) muddy the key. Yet the first and last chords are “textbook” tonality. The brilliant rapid scales and glissandi in the piano also throw us off. These glissandi become a major idea in the concerto.

The second movement scherzo is a comical march. The piano amplifies its harp role, glissandi rampaging up and down the instrument. The march contrasts with a tarantella section.

The third movement toccata is a 2 minute tour de force lasting 2 minutes in breath-taking perpetual motion. If it sounds familiar, it’s because it is the same material as the opening movement! Essentially, Prokofiev has expanded his first movement into three movements—creating a large ABA structure. And THAT is the reason the concerto is 5 instead of 3 movements.

The fourth movement is the first genuinely lyrical moment in the piece with the famous Prokofiev long stretching melodies. It also has the only extended piano cadenza, a sprawling chordal interlude with rolled chords spanning the entire instrument.


The finale is a strange piece. It begins like a toccata and acquires a catchy theme that repeats elusively in different keys throughout the orchestra. But scales have an important role too in this movement. Halfway through the music quiets suddenly and the piano plays an ostinato of two different speeds of ascending scales. This pedal point continues for awhile until the energy of the piece is brought literally to a halt! A lyrical march begins with a syncopated variation of the catchy theme. The remainder of the piece is a gradual acceleration of this tune to a bravura finish with the orchestra ascending by scale.


Tchaikovsky Symphony #5

Tchaikovsky even more than Schubert turned the symphony into songs for orchestra. The profusion of truly great melodies is one reason Tchaikovsky is still the most popular composer for classical audiences. The other reason is that those melodies create a narrative that everyone can follow, even through more than three quarters of an hour of instrumental music.

Tchaikovsky wrote this piece 10 years after the 4th symphony. Indeed, there were rumors that he was “written out” and only after a successful tour of Europe did he feel ready to tackle a major symphonic work again.

Like the 4th, this symphony uses a central motto theme. His notebooks suggest the idea of “resignation before fate,” but other than that, there is no program or story specifically for the piece.

I don’t think it needs one because the melodic ideas are so clear. The motto theme appears in each movement. It has a march quality, but whether that is to ultimately be a funeral march or a heroic march of victory is not clear at first. It seems clear to me that this piece is Tchaikovsky’s reference to Beethoven’s 5th symphony—another piece famous for its motto. And if you pay attention to the last notes of this Tchaikovsky symphony, there can be no mistake about the connection.

But the first movement is more like Mozart in that it has an unbelievable profusion of melodies, all of them great. Unlike classical composers, Tchaikovsky does not build a symphony out of fragments, but instead out of fully conceived themes. And that is what we hear with the opening clarinet theme, playing in its lowest register accompanied by somber strings.
The primary area is another song (or march), again beginning with clarinet.
The transition, secondary area, and closing—another three great tunes.
These four great melodies comprise the narrative of the movement and they intertwine in ways simple to hear. Two wonderful moments I want to point out:
1) in the recapitulation, the march theme has the most exquisite accompaniment of arabesque scales in the winds

2) the very end of the movement is both a surprise and a harbinger of the Pathetique symphony. After seeming to conclude in glorious major mode with full orchestral tutti, the music quiets down in the coda back to its somber beginnings with the clarinet, but now gets downright lugubrious. The basses and celli conclude with low thick E minor chords—foreshadowing the sonic miracle end of Tchaikovsky’s 6th symphony.


The second movement continues the dark and deep sound of low strings in a chorale introduction to that most famous of horn melodies. As beautiful as is the shape of the melody, the multitude of harmonies makes for the color and emotion that we love so much in Tchaikovsky.
One would expect that the contrasting theme to such an extraordinary melody would be something of different character, certainly not ANOTHER lyrical theme. But that is precisely what Tchaikovsky gives us. Its beauty is partly due to the exquisite harmony resulting from its echoing phrases:

The motto theme makes its appearance now not as a funeral march, but as a dramatic fanfare in the brass
The third movement is a waltz. In his dance movements, Tchaikovsky shows virtuoso skill in handling the woodwinds, and this piece is no exception.
The recurrence of the motto theme appears as a hollow echo at the end of the movement in clarinets and bassoons.

The fourth movement opens with an introduction: the strings play the motto theme as a grand march in major mode. The brass take over and this introduction becomes its own little piece. It lasts 3 minutes—longer than the Toccata movement of the preceding Prokovief concerto.

The allegro that follows is fast and unrelenting. The Transition theme and its consequent phrase are particularly beguiling and lyrical. But the pace continues with a second theme that has a pounding slow trill. Tchaikovsky even tunes the timpani a second apart so they can hammer out the accompaniment too. The motto theme reappears in the brass, bridging into the development section. You’ll notice that the slow trill accompaniment colors the whole section, even at the end where the violins play a slow trill diminuendo.

The coda of this finale is a regal triumph. The motto theme in the brass ends the recapitulation with full force and a cadence on the dominant occurs with such force and lingering that it to the uninitiated the piece might sound over. But then comes the coda, a fully “tricked out” march of Wagnerian pomp like in the March of the Meistersingers. A final operatic presto hurls the piece to a frenzied triumphant conclusion.

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RUSSELL STEINBERG UPBEAT LIVE TALK ON

Friday, Saturday, Sunday,October 4,5,6, 2008, 7:00 PM
Walt Disney Concert Hall
SALONEN CONDUCTS DE FALLA AND RAVEL
Falla: Three Dances from El amor brujo
Debussy: La mer
Ravel: Mother Goose (Complete)
Ravel: Bolero

INTRODUCTION
The impressionists changed the way we think of orchestras. It’s not that all music before the French Impressionists was Germanic and heavy, but that it was built in vertical blocks. A bass line supports chords that support a melody. Lower strings and brass support upper strings and woodwinds. Each section of the orchestra—strings, winds, percussion—was largely a unified block of sound. Strings dominated, winds colored, and percussion added spice. Debussy and Ravel just deconstructed that whole notion. When we imagine Debussy's orchestration, we think of delicate shimmering strings, harp, subtle woodwinds and sudden splashes of color. Every element merges seamlessly into the other so that we are never sure of beginnings and endings of the music or even when one instrument ends and another begins. The ensemble becomes both individuated and multicellular. The woodwinds particularly come to the foreground as a complex and richly colored section, often dominant to the strings.

Much as Mahler described his relationship to Strauss as two miners working from opposite sides of a mountain, Ravel and Debussy also pursued similar ideals with different approaches. While both were uncomfortable with the term "impressionism," they valued sonority as a primary pursuit. Both were pioneers in unconventional scales, textures, and instrumental colors.

Both were particularly interested in new harmonic directions using the old Church modes. This led them to create progressions that have been widely adopted by popular music. He was also fascinated with large thick chords and created a harmonic vocabulary that directly influenced Jazz musicians.

Ravel Bolero and Mother Goose
Ravel is reputed to have lamented that he would be best remembered for an orchestral "exercise" that was not music at all—namely, Bolero. History has proven him correct, but that does not diminish his other masterpieces such as the Mother Goose Suite, La Valse, and Daphnis et Chloé. And it shouldn’t diminish the accomplishment of Bolero, either. For us, it is a textbook case for the new approach to the orchestra pioneered in the early 20th century.

BOLERO
The game is of continual crescendo by increasing the number of instruments and sections playing a melody played over a bolero rhythm that continuously repeats for about 16 minutes. That description completely belies the ingenuity of the piece and Ravel the magician, pulling sounds we’ve never imagined out of his orchestration hat.

For one thing, this is no pedantic exercise introducing the instruments one by one. Rather, we are introduced to color in a carefully modulated spectrum.
The first measures introduce the bolero rhythm with the snare drum and pizzicato strings. It is so quiet a beginning that often it is barely heard.

One absolutely remarkable orchestra coup in this piece is how Ravel relegates the strings to the role of percussion, plucking their instruments like a guitar. Finally two thirds of the way through, the violins get to play the melody! The long wait makes their melodic entrance dramatic, almost like a special effect!

Melody entrances:
Flute
Clarinet
bassoon (2nd part of melody)
oboe d’amore
flute/trumpet
tenor sax (2nd part of melody)
soprano sax (2nd part of melody)
2 piccolos/horn/celesta (1st flute in E maj, 2nd flute in G maj, horn and celesta in C) harp entrance
oboe/oboe d’amore/English horn/clarinets/ (rolled plucked chords in the strings)
solo trombone (2nd part of melody)
flutes/oboes/clarinets (2nd part of melody)
flutes/oboes/clarinets/ 1st VIOLINS
flutes/oboes/clarinets/1st and 2nd Violins (block parallel triads)
flutes/oboes/SOLO TRUMPET/1st and 2nd Violins (2nd part of melody)
flutes/oboes/clarinets/trombone/sax/1st and 2nd Violins, Violas, Cellos (2nd part melody)
piccolo/flutes/trumpets/saxes/1st violins (whole accompaniment in bolero rhythm)
(entire melody with this combo)

Perhaps the most famous “magic trick” in Bolero is fairly early in the piece, when the melody appears with the piccolos, horn, and celesta. Each of these instruments plays the melody in a different key, so that we are actually hearing three keys simultaneously!

But that is not at all what our ears perceive. Instead, we hear a single melody in a single key played with a color never before heard. Ravel has literally created a new instrument, a single entity more than the sum of its flute/horn/celesta parts.

How did he do this? By exploiting the sonic property of all instruments known as the harmonic series. He instructs the piccolos to play their tunes in the other keys very lightly so that they are not so much heard but felt as a shimmer above the horn. This is actually a common property of organ stops. To create the effect of a different instrument, the organ doubles its melody a 5th higher to create a new color. Here Ravel does this by having the piccolos play quietly along with the French horn.


RAVEL: MOTHER GOOSE

Ravel’s Mother Goose has a crystalline quality so fragile, so perfectly evocative of the wonder in childhood, one is almost afraid to really talk about it lest by breathing too heavily its delicate harmonies will quietly disintegrate. I think of all of Ravel’s works, this is his most beautiful. In the spirit of the greatest art, it says the most with the simplest means. Tonight you will hear it in its complete ballet form, which includes some extra pieces and interludes added to the five gems Ravel originally composed for two pianos.

You can read the plot of the ballet based on Sleeping Beauty in your program notes. I am far more interested in the fabric of the music itself. The two piano version was originally written for 10 year old prodigies and it is exquisite. The orchestral version is just almost too well crafted to believe. And it looks so easy on the page compared to Debussy. The notes all line up geometrically simple, almost like Vivaldi. But that belies the acoustic consideration given to every moment.

The brief Pavane is a great example of this concern. The piano version opens simply with simple 2 voice counterpoint. We would assume Ravel would orchestrate it for two different instruments. Well, he sort of does that, but not with instruments you would guess. He uses a solo flute and a muted French horn. That alone is imaginative. But then he has the violas very quietly pluck the same notes the horn plays to create a unique glow. After four measures, this counterpoint moves into a higher register accompanied by one low bass note in the piano version. Ravel’s orchestration shows on one hand the greatest restraint, and on another, the most inventive choice in colors. He continues the counterpoint with just two flutes, no horn. But he adds a harp intoning a single pitch to mark the pulse. For the one low bass note, he combines no less than four ingredients: muted cellos, one clarinet, half the basses plucking the note, and the other half of the basses bowing the note as a harmonic. The effect is transparent but other-worldly. With the skill of the greatest culinary chef, Ravel picks just the right ingredients out of the millions available to etch his fairy tale world.

Tom Thumb lost in the forest is a tableaux of scales in continuously wandering thirds. A simple lamenting melody emerges and then winds along with the thirds. We fall in love with this little fellow as the color of his melody changes from oboe, to English horn, to flute, and then swells expressively with a combination of all of those instruments plus violins, violas, and celli. Listen especially to the end of this movement where Ravel adds an astonishing special effect of bird calls with the violins playing high harmonics with their left hands quickly swooping up the fingerboard.

The Chinese pentatonic language of the Empress of the Pagodas is made fantastic and sparkly with Ravel’s magical use of percussion: harp, celesta, xylophone, glockenspiel, and gong. So many layers of color! The middle section is a quiet slow chant complete with gong. As it progresses, echoes of the opening infectious theme superimpose themselves over this chant almost like a mist moving into a valley—an eerie and original effect.

The Conversation Between Beauty and the Beast is one of Ravel’s most graceful waltzes. The beast makes a memorable entrance as a contrabassoon solo. The ensuing duets between the contrabassoon and the upper woodwinds are perhaps the strangest in classical music. Yet Ravel combines them in a way that is always sonically elegant.

What can I say about the final movement, the Fairy Garden, without getting downright maudlin? Perhaps it’s a piece you either get or don’t. I can only say that if there is a more perfectly written progression of harmonies in the repertoire, I haven’t heard it. The piece is essentially a chorale of chords. The first 24 measures are almost all just the white notes of the keyboard. The chords themselves have al the color variety of Ravel’s orchestration. They range from simple triads to lush seventh and ninth chords—the stuff we now identify with jazz.

This piece is like a Bolero of a higher sphere. Like Bolero, it is a gradual crescendo and addition of color. But unlike Bolero, it uses changing harmony as well as orchestration to achieve its end so that it is never static. The first harmonic shift—and it is amazing—comes after those 24 measures of white notes with a color change to F# minor and three black notes. Ravel orchestrates this change of harmonic world with harp, celesta, and a lonely solo violin and it is truly an intimate fairy garden world. The harmony slides further into four black notes with C# minor but then a shift again returns us back to all white notes. These transformations are the stuff of—please, please forgive me—mother-goose-bumps.
So what next? With the return to white notes, the chorale returns and begins a steady crescendo over the subdominant of just six measures. But what happens in these six measures with the gradual entrance of the entire orchestra is equivalent to what happened in the hundreds of measures in Bolero—a glorious climax in C major with jubilant glissandi in the harp and celesta, and sparkle with string tremolos, xylophone, and triangle. The sound is just huge. And that is amazing because Ravel did not even include the loudest instruments of the orchestra in this piece—the trumpets, trombones, and tuba.



DE FALLA: THREE DANCES FROM EL AMOR BRUJO
De Falla’s famous ballet Love the Magician is steeped in flamenco and cante jondo, the deep song of Andalusia. De Falla manages to conjure this style authentically while still having it serve his own musical voice, heard particularly in his exquisite harmony. His orchestration and use of color, on the other hand, are clearly influenced by Debussy and Ravel whom he learned from in Paris.

The story of the ballet is of a young widowed gypsy haunted by the ghost of her jealous husband. She and her new lover must exchange a kiss of perfect love to be free. The ghost frightens her in the Dance of Fear. She tries exorcism in the Ritual Fire Dance. Finally she has a friend seduce the ghost while she and her lover exchange their true kiss and then mock the ghost in their Game of Love dance.

The Dance of Fear opens with a Ravel and Debussy-like splash of color. The strings pluck with guitar-like percussion. The woodwinds have colorful trills over a muted trumpet playing repeated notes in a duet with the oboe. Colorful glissandi in the flutes and piano punctuate this aural commotion.

The Ritual Fire Dance occurs over constant trills representing the flames of the exorcism. The powerfully ornamented melody captures the passion of the Andalusian spirit. A most memorable moment is the blaring of the horns over a quiet but insistent pulse in the orchestra.

Debussy La Mer

1905. La Mer is Debussy’s advanced conception to translate into music the way color and light create the landscapes of J.W. Turner and Claude Monet. La Mer is Debussy’s nearly complete rethinking of the orchestra. Melodies and motives seem to be just tools for instruments to highlight their various colors. Their structure is amorphous. Debussy usually repeats them directly to give them more weight. But despite their restatement, they still kind of float away over the ever-changing musical textures.

Not only are wind sonorities explored as he did so brilliantly in earlier works (like Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun), but now even the strings are reinvented. They don’t simply play as a single section, but divide at various times into different groups. At one point, the cellos divide into six different parts and make a kind of cello orchestra. Mutes, different kinds of bowing, different wind articulations are all part of Debussy’s exciting new palette of color. The instruments of the orchestra all become free individuals in Debussy’s mind, each with something unique to contribute. The tuba, for instance, has a handful of notes in the first movement. Yet its unique color and power are indispensable for the mystery and fullness of the piece.

It seems like I’ve stated melody is just not that important in Debussy. Not so. It may be submerged, it may be fragmented, it may be fleeting, it may be chromatic and difficult to sing, but Debussy’s music is song at heart and the melodic motives seek in their own way, not substantially different than in Brahms, to germinate an entire sonic tapestry. The difference is that they are so much more plastic—they stretch out, they compress, and they dramatically change color.

FROM DAWN TO NOON IN THE SEA
The introduction just as in Brahms sets up the piece: we hear the sonic extremes—the low bass and timpani, the high tremolo of the violins. The quiet rising pentatonic scale in the orchestra establishes the water world from which everything in the piece will emerge and subside. And…we get a submerged fragment in the muted trumpet that will become one of two principal themes in this movement. Debussy, like Mahler, treats melody like salt water taffy—he can stretch it or compress it into new rhythms and shapes while still retaining its essence.

The second theme is just as mysterious and submerged as the first. But it also continues to reappear and take on greater significance as the movement unfolds.

The climax of this movement is the famous sonic “wave” which Debussy envisioned as a translation of the Japanese artist Hokusai’s famous painting—an image Debussy had engraved on the cover of his score. I find it interesting that the great modern discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot, cites this painting as a great example of fractal dimensions—that is, having objects at various scales that are similar. Debussy does precisely the same things in his music. Tiny brief motives have the same shape as larger scale melodies and even larger scale structure. The crashing wave that ends this movement superimposes all the elements we’ve been hearing in the piece: the pentatonic system, the two note oboe fragments, the shape of both themes, and all the exquisite color shifting.

WAVE PLAY
As an essay in sheer color, this second movement is unsurpassed in the orchestral repertoire. The opening alone is a kaleidoscope that swiftly transforms tremolo strings to the bells of the glockenspiel, to a harp, then to a sinuous flute duet that becomes a mysterious clarinet duet that dissolves to the quick ratatat of a muted trumpet. That’s just the first few seconds!

A little later, Debussy even exceeds the opening dynamic color changes with mysterious harp whole tone glissandos. In one memorable moment, the strings and winds challenge each other in an aural image of waves climbing into each other.

Motives in this movement are extremely slippery to hold on to. The movement ends in a luminous passage that recalls both the fragile quality of the opening and the gentle pentatonic world that began the first movement.

DIALOGUE OF THE WIND AND THE WAVES
This last movement is like the first movement in that two themes continually emerge and intertwine. In fact, the first theme is the very same theme fragment from the first movement. The second theme is actually a conventional tune in terms of length, structure, and development. Debussy states it in full several times through the movement. Yet even this theme is very slippery in terms of chromaticism and tempo. It alternately slows and accelerates as an intrinsic part of its character and that alone makes it fascinating.

The climax of this movement is also like the climactic wave of the first movement. It combines both themes and propels them forward in waves of harmony, texture, and color that have permeated all the previous music.
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I want to let you in on a Brahms secret. (opening of Brahms intermezzo op. 119 #1). When all was said and done, Brahms’ inner compulsion was not to be another Beethoven, making bold symphonic shouts to the world. Rather, similar to the other great Romanticists—Schubert, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Schumann—his innermost predilection was to craft exquisite musical miniatures. His late works—the songs, the piano intermezzi, and the clarinet sonatas and quintet—are all music condensed into small spaces, rich with concise lyrical statements.
As we discussed at the first concert, Brahms started out his dazzling career with expectations, at least from the Schumanns, to become the next Beethoven. Brahms did his darnedest to satisfy their desire. We talked about how so many of his massive chamber works and concerti were originally intended to be symphonies. Finally in his forties, Brahms had the confidence to express himself with the symphony orchestra. He wrote four symphonies, all recognized as masterworks and worthy successors to Beethoven. There are many other massive works—the B flat Piano Concerto, the German Requiem, etc. Much of this music is fiery and dramatic, responding to the Beethovenian idea of struggle.

But as Brahms gets older and can pretty much write whatever he wants, things change. The music becomes ever sweeter and gentler. There is less a struggle like shaking fists at God, but rather a dense lyric intensity to his writing. Not that his music is epigrammatic, but, like Schubert and Schumann, its essence is song. Brahms’ music also becomes increasingly nostalgic. There is a sense of culmination and the imminent passing of an age. Those feelings are evident in some of the pieces on tonight’s concert—particularly, the heavenly chamber songs for voice, viola, and piano, and the late clarinet sonata, tonight played on viola. The first piece on the program, the Variations on a Theme of Haydn, was an earlier exercise Brahms gave himself before committing to finishing his first symphony. He wanted confidence that he could handle the full orchestra. He succeeded. This work is so successful that it appears on programs by orchestras every year. Like most of Brahms’ orchestral journeys, he first crafted the piece for 2 pianos— and tonight we hear it in the two piano version.


NOTES ON THE MUSIC
Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Opus 56b
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna
This piece is one of the most popular set of orchestral variations, but its rhythmic and contrapuntal excitement make it also a treat to hear it played on two pianos. Brahms and Clara Schumann first performed it that way. The theme that attracted Brahms is remarkable in itself. It feels absolutely symmetrical. You can swear it is just a conventional eight measures. But when you count it, the numbers are strange. The full phrase comes out to 10 measures (5+5). That type of seamlessness clearly fascinated Brahms. Altogether there are 8 variations plus a finale, definitely creating a symphonic feel.

Already in the first variation, we hear a rich texture of invertible counterpoint. That means we hear two different melodies at the same time—that’s counterpoint—and when they repeat, the melody on the bottom now is on the top and vice-versa. It is a little tricky to compose the music so that the harmony still sounds good when you flip the melodies. That was Bach’s mastery, and here Brahms shows “the right stuff.” The string lines also happen to be a gorgeous example of Brahms’ favorite rhythmic device—2 against 3. Supporting the two part counterpoint is a third part, an accompaniment that continues the repeated notes that ended the theme. All this in the first variation!

The second variation is a vivace with the quality of a scherzo that already changes mode to minor. The third variation, still in minor, transforms the theme into an expressive melody. It’s beautiful to hum on its own. But careful listening reveals that like the first variation, there are actually two melodies at the same time and they too flip position—invertible counterpoint. This variation is in fact Brahms’ most famous contrapuntal passage.

The fourth variation is a graceful elaboration of the theme with a return to major mode. The fifth variation is another scherzo. Brahms orchestrates brilliantly for the woodwinds. The sixth variation features the brass and woodwinds. Both of these variations make the orchestra sound like a symphonic band. The seventh variation is the prettiest, a pastoral essay with the harmonic nostalgia that would later become the hallmark of Brahms’ late style. The eighth variation is all delicate mystery with fast scurrying lines in the woodwinds and strings. The finale is a passacaglia, using the same device Brahms made famous in his fourth symphony. The theme is turned into a 5 bar bass riff that keeps repeating while Brahms accompanies it each time with variations of more grandeur in the orchestra. It’s fun to silently hum the bass melody while listening to the variations above it. The finale itself is a large set of variations capping off the entire piece in one of Brahms’ most jubilant moments.


Sonata in E-flat Major for Viola and Piano, Opus 120, No. 2
JOHANNES BRAHMS
I had the privilege of participating in a masterclass of guitarist Andres Segovia shortly before he died. He lamented to us all, with almost visible pain, that the one tragedy for the classical guitar was that it came to ascendancy too late to capture the attention of the Impressionist composers. He told us that the guitar’s greatest strength was its ability to create intimate colors and that Debussy or Ravel could have taken the instrument in an entirely new direction. Segovia in his 90s was directly blaming his predecessors for not seeking out and commissioning Debussy and Ravel. Instead, all the guitar has is a remarkable single page of music written by Manuel de Falla in memory of Debussy.
That story is a preface to the fortunate collision of Brahms and clarinet virtuoso Richard Mühlfield. Brahms had finished the second String Quintet and announced that he was retiring—nothing left to say! But then he heard Mühlfield and caught inspiration—suddenly an instrument with relatively few masterworks composed for it received a trio, a quintet, and two sonatas with piano. These works literally altered the future for the clarinet. Brahms also arranged the sonatas for viola. That helps to place in perspective that Brahms was really championing not an instrument, but a register! He always had a special affinity for middle voices. In these late delicate works, he was able to explore this register and imbue it with all the autumnal feelings weighing on his spirit.
The first movement portrays the clarinet clearly singing a love song. The texture for both the clarinet and piano is much simpler and cleaner than we are used to hearing in Brahms’ music, not his characteristic thickness. The second movement is a melancholy scherzo.
The third and fourth movements constitute an original solution for a sonata. The fourth movement is actually a final variation in quick tempo of the third slow movement’s theme and variations. What an inspiring reduction for a composer whose entire approach is variation! Instead of constructing another entire movement that subtly varies previous material, Brahms simply continues the process he was already doing and simply extends its ending. The effect is deliciously ambiguous. We hear the same ideas continuing, but at the same time the music seems to have seamlessly become another movement.
Two Songs for Alto, Viola, and Piano, Opus 91
JOHANNES BRAHMS
The Geistliches Wiegenlied or Holy Lullaby is Brahms’ “other” lullaby. Let the rest of the world sing that other cradle song; for us music lovers, we have this incredibly more intimate and emotional one. The scoring for voice, viola, and piano makes it chamber music with the scope of all the other chamber masterworks we’ve enjoyed in this series. This piece was more than a gift to his friend Joachim and his singer wife Amalie on the birth of their child—it was a personal vehicle for them to perform together.
The emphasis on the deep middle register is apparent in the treatment of all three parts: the viola and alto voice part by definition, but even the piano sits in its lower middle register. This imbues the piece almost automatically with a suffused aura. I say “almost automatically” because it is Brahms’ harmonies, so folk-like and yet adventuring to so many un-folk-like places, that make the piece glow.
One thing that elevates this lullaby from a song into chamber music is that the agitated middle section is essentially a development section as carefully worked out as those in Brahms’ piano trios.
Twenty years after composing this, Brahms wrote a companion piece every bit as beautiful. In that intervening time, Brahms and Joachim were bitterly estranged. The cause was Joachim’s divorce from Amalie in which Brahms took up Amalie’s part. Now Brahms tried to use his music to effect a reconciliation. Gestille Sehnsucht is a Rückert poem in search of inner peace. This time it didn’t work. Joachim never went back to his wife who he suspected of adultery and only later made up with Brahms.
String Quintet in F Major, Opus 88
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Brahms’ first string quintet is experimental structurally in the way that Beethoven experimented in his early cello sonatas. It has three movements instead of four. The middle movement is kind of a “two-fer”—it contrasts a slow movement with faster more scherzo-like passages, so essentially Brahms has compacted two inner movements into one. The third movement starts as a fugue, but in fact is actually variations on a fugal subject, all in sonata form! The harmony that begins this finale surprises us because it is a straightforward tonic and dominant contrast. The reason it’s surprising is that the rest of the quintet features some bold juxtapositions of harmony we associate more with Wagner and Liszt than Brahms. The first movement contrasts F major with A major (instead of the C major we expect). The end of the second movement has a remarkable moment where C sharp major and A major chords softly and dramatically alternate. This has a technical name—mediant or common chord harmony—but the effect to our ears is a magical harmonic coloring of the top melodic note.

Brahms Life Pt. 2
Brahms made a living in Vienna at first not through his music, but by concertizing and teaching. He called this his “amphibian” existence. His two most virtuosic piano pieces come from this time—the Paganini Variations and the Handel Variations. An early review of his music by the pre-eminent critic in Vienna, Eduard Hanslick, revealed the difficulties the public had. He described their “esoteric character, disdainful of popular effect, combined with the great technical difficulties, makes their popularization a much slower process than one had been led to expect from the delightful prophecy Schumann gave his favorite as a parting blessing...Will the natural freshness and youthfulnesss continue to bloom untroubled in the costly vase that he has now created for them? ...Does that veil of brooding reflection which so frequently clouds his newest works presage a sudden burst of sunlight, or a thicker, less hospitable twilight?”

Nevertheless, Brahms received increasing respect. He even ventured into the Wagnerian circle. Friends were able to persuade Wagner to attend one of Brahms’ concerts where he was impressed with the Handel variations, writing that he could tell Brahms was “no joker.” An actual meeting between the two was arranged. Brahms said he told Wagner himself that he, Brahms, was “the best of the Wagnerians.”

Amusing Wagner-Brahms anecdote: Tausig gave Brahms a manuscript from Tannhaüser, which enraged Wagner. Brahms slyly tries to be conciliatory, offering to return the Tannhaüser if Wagner will send him a manuscript score of Der Meistersinger (Brahms’ favorite). Wagner’s response: “If a lawyer wrote to me like that--so what? But an artist!”. Finally Brahms returned it and Wagner sent a deluxe printed copy of Das Rheingold, “To Herr Johannes Brahms, a well-conditioned substitute for a sloppy manuscript.” Brahms: “Your enclosure has given me such extraordinary pleasure that I can hardly manage with these few words to express to you my heartfelt thanks for the splendid gift that I owe to your generosity.”

He had respect for Wagner’s music his entire life, especially for Der Meistersinger. Wagner did not return the favor much, writing vicious innuendoes at different times, once even labeling him Jewish! Animosity became so great that at concerts, the Brahmsian and Wagnerian camps would sit on different sides of the room. At stake for many was a sense that the future of music would be decided by which camp gained ascendancy. In a large measure, this turned out to be true. The Wagnerian camp successfully led future artists to the avante garde of the 20th century, while the Brahms camp successfully led future audiences into the concert halls of the 20th century. The divide between the two exists to this day.

Brahms had his first appointment in Vienna conducting the Singakademie where they called him “the Savior.” He especially revived the works of Bach, and after gaining a reputation for concerts of sobriety, earned the local joke, “When Brahms is feeling real frisky, he sings “The Grave is My Joy.”

His infatuations continued. He fell in love with the singer Ottilie Hauer and it is to her possibly, that he composed his song Eternal Love (Ewiger Liebe). It was she who he with heavy heart resolved to marry, only to knock on the door and discover that just that very morning she had accepted the engagement to someone else! Brahms spoke of this incident with relief. Yet not much later he fell in love with Elisabeth von Stockhausen, a brilliant and beautiful pianist. In fear (!), Brahms refused to teach her any more. She eventually married another composer, Heinrich von Herzogenberg and later she became Brahms’ most trusted confidante in musical matters.

On the home front in Hamburg, his family had disintegrated. The large gap of years between his parents took its toll and his father finally moved out of the house. His brother Fritz, called the “wrong” Brahms, made a good living teaching piano but also divorced himself from family affairs. His sister remained practically an invalid because of health problems. And his mother became increasingly frail. Her death sparked in Brahms first the elegaic Horn Trio with its dark, rocking Adagio, and later the piece that rocketed him to worldwide recognition, the German Requiem.

The German Requiem was premiered in 1868 at the Bremen Cathedral with a chorus of 200 and a large orchestra. The performance was a great triumph and vindication for Brahms. Everyone present was deeply moved. The experience gave Brahms the license to go forward and pursue symphonic realms.

What was truly remarkable about Brahms’ career was that he made a handsome living from publications. This money did not come so much from his most intense works, but from deliberately lighter material: the Hungarian Dances, the Lullaby, and the Waltzes. Unlike Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart, he was not dependent either on royalty or commissions for his livelihood. This had to do with the growing number of pianos in bourgeois parlors and appetite for classical music.

Brahms’ Lullaby was a gift for his friend Bertha Faber on the birth of her child. It is based on a folk song Bertha used to sing to him. He described them as “perhaps the most practical pieces so impractical a man as myself can supply.”

The popularity of this song soon spawned a variety of arrangements. Brahms wrote sarcastically to his publisher Simrock: “Why not make a new edition in a minor key for naughty or sick children? That would be still another way to move copies.”

When he wanted to publish the Hungarian Dances, his regular publisher would have nothing of such trivial stuff. That’s how he forged the relationship with Simrock. Those dances made Simrock’s fortune. Brahms only took a single fee for each edition, letting Simrock claim the complete royalties.

Brahms’ piano playing deteriorated to the point that later in life Clara described it as: “thump, bang, and scrabble.”

Famous anecdote of the time: In the home of a friend in Koblenz the host materialized with a bottle of wine which he presented to everyone saying, “What Brahms is among composers, so is this Rauenthaler among wines!” Immediately Brahms piped up, “Ah, well let’s have a bottle of Bach, then.”

Brahms was appointed Music Director for Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. In that capacity, he emphasized historical performances and changed the concept of classical concerts.

His first symphony is one of his most original works. It took awhile to catch on with audiences. But by now, Brahms was secure and knew the worth of this decades long fruition.
From Hanslick’s review of the Vienna performance in 1876:
“Seldom, if ever, has the entire musical world awaited a composer’s first symphony with such tense anticipation...But the greater the public expectation and the more importunate the demand for a new symphony, the more deliberate and scrupulous was Brahms...The new symphony is so earnest and complex, so utterly unconcerned with common effects, that it hardly lends itself to quick understanding...Even the layman will immediately recognize it as one of the most distinctive and magnificent works of the symphonic literature...Brahms recalls Beethoven’s symphonic style not only in his individual spiritual and suprasensual expression, the beautiful breadth of his melodies...but also—and above all—in the manly and noble seriousness of the whole.”

Brahms grew his full beard in 1878 and took great delight in becoming unrecognizable, even to friends. He introduced himself solemnly as “Kapellmeister Müller from Braunschweig.” His friend Gustav Nottebohm, the Beethoven scholar, was engaged in fascinating conversation for an entire evening with “Kapellmeister Müller,” never suspecting it was Brahms!

After finishing the huge 2nd Piano Concerto, Hans van Bülow offered to premiere it with his Meiningen Hofkapelle Orchestra. He had built this orchestra into one of the finest in Europe under the patronage of Georg II. Bülow basically ‘converted’ from being a passionate Wagnerite to a champion of Brahms (scholars are quick to note that Wagner’s affair with van Bülow’s wife Cosima probably had something to do with this!). He placed his orchestra at Brahms’s disposal from that point on. Bülow also coined the term ‘the three B’s.” Like all his relationships, Brahms seriously damaged this one when years later he upstaged Bülow by performing his 4th symphony just days before Bülow was to conduct it himself. Bülow in fury resigned from the Meiningen orchestra!

Brahms began to call himself an exile in his 50s. He became increasingly convinced too that Western culture was falling apart. In a letter to Simrock, he wrote, “In a ...land where everything not rolls, but tumbles downhill, you can’t expect music to fare better. Really it’s a pity and a crying shame, not only for music but for the whole beautiful land and the beautiful, marvelous people. I still think catastrophe is coming.”
One of the signs of this downfall was the political rise of Georg von Schönerer, whose nationalistic and anti-semitic rhetoric inspired Hitler.

After Clara’s death, Brahms said “now I have nobody left to lose.” He himself died less than a year later from liver cancer on April 3, 1897. Vienna honored him with a huge funeral procession.

LA JOLLA MUSIC FESTIVAL

BEETHOVEN PRE-CONCERT LECTURES

Brahms II: Unrequited Love

Tuesday, August 12 · 7:30 pm · MCASD Sherwood Auditorium

Prelude at 6:30 pm

Joachim Romance in C Major for Violin and Piano
R. Schumann Intermezzo in A Minor from “FAE Sonata”
Brahms Scherzo in C Minor for Violin and Piano
C. Schumann Piano Trio in G Minor, op. 17
Brahms String Quintet in G Major, op. 111

Introduction
This concert recreates the quintessential Brahms inner circle—Robert Schumann, Brahms’ friend and early champion; Clara Schumann, his lover and life-long friend, and Joseph Joachim, the great violinist with whom Brahms toured and later on for whom he wrote his Violin Concerto. These friends were among the finest artists of their time. Each of them were gifted composers. Clara Schumann began composing early on and had a tremendous lyric gift. Joachim was initially as earnest about composition as Brahms was about being a concert pianist. Of course, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms were geniuses of the rarest order.

Here at this La Jolla SummerFest we get to commune with some of the finest performers of our time. You all know the special electricity feel in the air that we get at many of these concerts. Imagine what that would be like listening in the company of Joachim, the Schumann’s, and Brahms.

Something should probably be said about the relationship between Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. Their relationship is far more complex than to describe it as unrequited love. The love story between Robert and Clara is a full tale in itself. Clara’s devotion to Robert was absolute during his life and after. Because Brahms and Clara Schumann both burned many of their letters, much is left to conjecture. But this much is true. After Robert’s attempted suicide in the Rhine and departure for the asylum, Brahms and Joachim rushed to Düsseldorf to help Clara. But it was Brahms who devoted himself to helping Clara, who was 5 months pregnant, manage her household with all her children. She began teaching piano students again for income. Brahms put his career on hold. The two grew very close in this time of waiting to see if Robert would recover. This period lasted well over over two years. Clara was under strict orders not to visit Robert, and in fact did not see him again until just days before he died.

In a letter to Joachim, Brahms wrote: “I think I can no longer love an unmarried girl—at least, I have quite forgotten about them. They only promise heaven while Clara shows it revealed to us.”

Brahms had fallen in love. But Robert would always be between them, first as they waited for his recovery, and later after his death, as a symbolic purity ever entwined in Clara’s heart. Clara eventually went back to touring; Brahms went back home to Hamburg, waiting for Clara’s concert appearances. Clara met Brahms’ whole family. Eventually Clara moved her family to a new place in Düsseldorf and Brahms took a room above, frequently caring for the children when Clara was away on tour. Robert’s clarity would improve and then deteriorate. Brahms reached a crisis in his writing and began to work through his feelings about Clara and the full implications of their life after Robert.
Clara was not only considerably older, but she had many children and the ambition to continue as a touring concert pianist. And of course, the memory of Robert would always claim her innermost affection.

The doctors finally saw Robert’s end was near and Clara went to visit and finally saw her husband the first time in two and a half years. By all reports, it was a tender meeting, Robert died days later. After his death, Brahms and Clara vacationed in Switzerland and probably named all their unspoken feelings. We can conjecture that Brahms, who had probably hitherto been quite ardent, was now cooler about their future. After this trip, he moved away from Düsseldorf, leaving Clara doubly abandoned. Clara’s daughter Eugenie wrote about Brahms’ cruelty. Clara went through a despondent period with considerable jealousy when later Brahms pursued other women.

Nevertheless, their friendship prevailed with some strange and rocky moments and Brahms took special care throughout his life to preserve what was to become a lifelong friendship for Clara. She was a tireless promoter of his music, as she had been for Robert, and he helped her financially when she was in need later on. The most awkward moment perhaps was when Clara discovered years later that Brahms was in love with her daughter Julie. That discovery happened as soon as Brahms was told Julie was engaged. He literally broke down. Clara, rather than being furious, was actually gentle and understanding. Suddenly Brahms’ irritable moods and cruelties in the past few years became clear. Brahms composed for Julie the Alto Rhapsody, but he called it his own bridal piece (ostensibly meaning his fantasy of marrying Julie, to whom he had never confessed his feelings).

A serious falling out between Brahms and Clara happened much later in life over Robert’s legacy—the authoritative edition of his complete works. Specifically, Brahms preferred Robert’s original version of his first symphony and had it published alongside the revised version. Clara was furious and this caused a rift for some time. Brahms eventually wrote to her:
“After forty years of faithful service (or whatever you wish to call my relationship to you) it is very hard to be merely “another unhappy experience.” But after all this can be borne. I am accustomed to loneliness and will need to be with the prospect of this great void before me. But let me repeat to you today that you and your husband constitute the most beautiful experience of my life, and represent all that is richest and most noble in it.”

Brahms’ outpouring healed the rift and their friendship resumed. Near the end of Brahms’life, his most beautiful piano pieces, the late intermezzi, were sent as gifts to Clara. She wrote in her journal: “In these pieces I at last feel musical life stir again in my soul…How they make one forget much of the suffering he has caused one.”

After Clara’s death, Brahms said “now I have nobody left to lose.” He himself died less than a year later from liver cancer on April 3, 1897.







Romance in C Major
JOSEPH JOACHIM
Born June 28, 1831, Pressburg
Died August 15, 1907, Berlin
Joachim had an integrity similar to Brahms, in that he too shunned the “dark side” of easy theatricality and showmanship. Despite being a prodigy and touring when quite young, his instincts always led him away from the superficial. Like Brahms, he too lost his infatuation with the Liszt-Wagner School.
This Romance is an epitome of deep lyricism and fine taste in the Romantic style. It makes an effective encore piece. But I ask you to listen for what is not there, in terms of our focus on Brahms in this series. For instance, the rhythm remains at three beats to the measure; it never varies. Few hemiolas or unusual phrase lengths break the monotony. There is no developmental variation of a central melodic cell like we hear all the time in Brahms, though Joachim does repeatedly voice his central motive. None of these absences deter from Joachim’s work, but they do help to understand why we keep coming back to Brahms’ music, and why it always seems there is something more to hear.
Intermezzo from "F.A.E Sonata"
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau
Died July 29, 1856, Endenich
Schumann suggested this collaborative sonata between him, Brahms, and Albert Dietrich (whose music we no longer know). The piece was written for Joachim when he was scheduled to premiere Schumann’s violin fantasy in Düsseldorf and the composers based it on Joachim’s personal musical motto, the notes F-A-E. Those letters serve as an abbreviation for the German phrase “free, but lonely” (frei aber einsam). That was Joachim’s personal Romantic manifesto. Brahms later famously punned on this in his 3rd symphony based on the notes F-A-F, an abbreviation for “free, but happy” ( frei aber froh).
Schumann composed the finale and the slow movement for the sonata, this lovely lyrical intermezzo. Joachim read the sonata through with Clara. Soon after, Schumann ditched the other composer’s movements and completed the piece as his third violin sonata.
This intermezzo clearly embodies both Joachim’s motto and its lonely intent. It opens with the notes F-A-E in the bass of the piano and then as the notes of the violin entrance. In fact, those three notes are developed subtly throughout this short piece. Especially imaginative is Schumann’s harmony which always takes delicious unexpected turns, despite the fairly constant accompaniment pattern.
Scherzo in C Minor for from "F.A.E Sonata"
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna
Brahms composed the third movement scherzo for this Joachim tribute sonata. While Brahms didn’t regard it highly, Joachim did and had it published after Brahms’s death. Musically, it is a precursor of the powerful scherzo from the Piano Quintet in F minor, with its strong triple rhythms and Beethovenian drama. It also bears similarity in musical ideas with the scherzo from last week’s Piano Quartet in C minor. Unlike Schumann, Brahms treats Joachim’s F-A-E motto more subtly. We don’t really hear it as a melody, but instead as a combination of chords and melody. And what chords! All the thick pedal tones under diminished 7ths that makes for the characteristic Brahms sound. The Trio of this Scherzo has a memorable soaring lyrical tune in major.











Piano Trio in G Minor, Opus 17
CLARA SCHUMANN
Born September 13, 1819, Leipzig
Died May 20, 1896, Frankfurt am Main
Clara Schumann’s Piano Trio in G minor is one impressive piece. It has the tightness, craft, and lyricism of Mendelssohn in the outer movements and the subtle elegance of Robert in the inner movements. There are even interesting surprises, such as a fugal passage in the final movement. The writing for the cello and violin is first rate and the three instruments balance nicely.
The second movement scherzo has a delicacy and elegance very close to the genius of Clara’s husband. The scherzo makes deft use of chromaticism and imitation with a delightful clipped tune (short-long, short-long). The trio full of Romantic longing, with yearning solo lines from all the instruments. This movement is really a perfect example of the Romantic Era miniature.
The third movement is as lyric as one might expect, perhaps a little too consistently so. The finale is superb piece of graceful Romantic harmony and counterpoint, The theme is not unlike the folk-like themes Brahms creates for his finales. Clara gives it a convincing fugal treatment that sounds very much part of the piece, and not a learned addition.
The entire trio is extremely attractive to the ear and makes a moving listening experience. Robert wrote about his wife soon after their marriage:
“Clara has written a number of smaller pieces which show musicianship and a tenderness of invention such as she has never before attained. But children and a husband who is always living in the realms of imagination do not go well with composition. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many tender ideas are lost because she cannot work them out.


String Quintet in G Major, Opus 111
JOHANNES BRAHMS
The G major string quintet is an embrace of the world not so unlike the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra. Both pieces seem to evoke all kinds of folk music and conjure a type of world music voice while still maintaining their own identity and integrity. And what energy is in this quintet! The musical texture has all the drama and electricity of Bach’s Brandenburg concerti with each instrument contributing to the animation. The opening cello theme quite possibly was originally sketched as a symphonic opening. The old joke about Brahms was that when he was feeling especially “frisky,” he would perform “The Grave is My Joy.” None of that heaviness occurs in this ebullient quintet.

The opening cello theme is a dilemma. Despite its force and drama, the upper string accompaniment of tremolos actually makes it difficult to be heard. Joachim and others asked him to change it, but Brahms was resolute. The lighter second theme is quite a contrast. It is reminiscent of a waltz or even a café song.
An expressive theme dominates the second movement, very much in the Eastern European folk style that Dvorak made so famous. The third movement develops a wistful, melancholy tune in minor that turns sunny in the trio.
The last movement is a peasant dance with all kinds of complex rhythmic syncopations and hemiolas. Its energetic and ebullient writing lends the quintet an orchestral sound, again also recalling the vibrancy of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti.

After Brahms died, Joachim wrote, “I often think sadly of the last pleasure it was in our power to give him...I have never heard him express his gratitude so warmly as after listening to his G Major Quintet; he seemed almost satisfied with his work. We still have his words--as an individual I counted for little with him during the last years of his life.”

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Here are my full lecture notes!

Brahms I : Friendship Among Masters

Tuesday, August 5 · 7:30 pm · MCASD Sherwood Auditorium

Prelude at 6:30 pm
Composer Russell Steinberg inaugurates a three-lecture exploration of Beethoven’s life and music

Brahms String Quartet in B flat Major op. 67
Schumann Andante and Variations for 2 pianos, 2 cellos, Horn
Brahms Piano Quartet in C minor, op. 60

Introduction
These three concerts focus not only on Brahms, but also on his personal social and musical world. We’ll hear music by his early friend who he accompanied through Europe, the great violinist Joseph Joachim. Joachim provided him an introduction to Robert Schumann who changed Brahms’ life in a single day. Schumann after hearing Brahms’ music instantly became his champion and friend in the last three years of Schumann’s life. We’ll also hear music by Clara Schumann, Robert’s wife, Brahms’ once lover and life-long friend, and major pianist of the 19th century. All three of these individuals were among the finest musicians of their time, all great performers, and all among the most gifted composers of their day, two of them happening to be geniuses of the rarest order.

They also shared a similar aesthetic, that of the artist as first a poet, second a craftsman with virtuosic technique, and third, the living continuation of a deep well of Western music tradition. Their love for Bach was as great as our regard for Bach today. Chopin and Mendelssohn and many others shared their aesthetic. But there was an even stronger force in their day pushing an aesthetic that would ultimately push the world to Modernism. Wagner became the leader of this progressive movement, but it also included spellbinding virtuosos of the day like Franz Liszt and composers of great spectacle like Berlioz. They called their movement Music of the Future and there was no place in this movement for the likes of introspective Robert Schumann or elegant and sophisticated Mendelssohn.

Early on, Brahms had to make a choice between these two musical camps. Wagner’s music heavily influenced his early works. You can hear the marvelous colors and unusual harmonic sequences in his early piano works, such as the Ballades. Even late into his life, Brahms revered Wagner’s genius. But at age 20, Brahms was specifically wooed by Liszt to join the “Wagnerian” group. There is a very funny anecdote about this meeting in Weimar where Brahms shyly defers to play his own compositions before the large audience of acolytes, whereupon Liszt plucks up the scores and plays them perfectly at first sight. Then later, Liszt plays his own great B minor sonata for the gathering and he turns towards Brahms in an expressive passage, only to notice Brahms is fast asleep!

What really happened though was that Brahms realized his aesthetic leanings were not in the Liszt-Wagner progressive movement. Their emphasis of sound, color, and spectacle for its own sake was too superficial for Brahms, who perhaps more than any other composer since Bach, was a great musical architect, obsessed with creating sturdy and, to use his great word, “unassailable” foundations for musical articulations.

So when Brahms’ friend, the great violinist Joseph Joachim, provided an introduction not much later to meet Robert and Clara Schumann, Brahms went to them not only for musical approval and career help, but hoping for a viable alternative to the superficial glamour and theatricality of the Liszt-Wagner world. The day of their meeting was momentous not only for their three lives, but for music history. The Schumann’s were enthralled with Brahms’ force and originality, but also his absolute technical command of composition. Schumann, who earlier had championed a young Frederic Chopin with the famous phrase “Hats off, gentlemen. A Genius!” now wrote an article proclaiming young Brahms the first legitimate successor to Beethoven.

This proclamation carried political overtones. Wagner viewed himself as the logical successor to Beethoven. But Robert Schumann’s keen ear knew that Brahms carried the structural and gestural power of Beethoven in a way that Wagner’s sprawling operas did not. In a word, Brahms could write symphonies! Robert had certainly tried his hand at that, under Clara’s strong prodding. But Robert’s works belied his deep affection for the music of Schubert— they never strayed far from the lyricism of songs. This Brahms was something different. He, like Beethoven, was obsessed with developing ideas. The Schumann’s didn’t hesitate to encourage Brahms to start a symphony.

This is important for us to know because while we know Brahms didn’t complete his first symphony until the relatively mature age of 41, he in fact was at work writing symphonies every since his early 20s. The incredible pressure to somehow compose Beethoven’s “10th symphony” could not have been far from his mind. And you see, Brahms really knew the difference between Beethoven and a very gifted composer. He truly knew. And he refused to settle. We’re lucky it didn’t drive him insane. Instead, failed attempt followed failed attempt And those failures were recast into some of the best chamber music ever written. The great F minor piano quintet was a good case in point. It started as a symphony, then was reduced to a work for two pianos, and finally recast a third time as a piece for piano and string quartet. The D minor piano concerto also began life as a symphony. The great piano quartet we hear tonight, the C minor, had an even more tortured history that lasted some 20 years until it reached its final form.

Chamber music was a safer forum for Brahms to continue musical experiments in that it drew no immediate comparison to Beethoven. So maybe it is no accident that Brahms’ greatest legacy was in this genre: chamber music. Of course, he extended his compositional tentacles to all other genres with great success—except for opera! A direct rivalry with Wagner was something he tenaciously avoided.


NOTES ON TONIGHT’S PIECES

String Quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 67
JOHANNES BRAHMS
Born May 7, 1833, Hamburg
Died April 3, 1897, Vienna
Brahms stated that twenty quartets had been discarded before he allowed his first set of quartets to survive.

Brahms’ third quartet has a rustic folk quality similar to Beethoven’s 7th symphony. The opening movement is marked a brisk Vivace in 6/8 with a rousing motive that sounds like hunting horn calls. The meter frequently shifts back and forth between 6/8 and 2/4, a folk technique that Brahms used effectively in his Hungarian Dances. The playful theme makes a surprise reappearance past the middle of the last movement, which is a set of variations. In effect, we discover that the theme from this movement is tightly related to the theme that began the quartet. Again, this is Brahms with his beloved Developmental Variation. In a real sense, all of Brahms’ music evolves from its opening kernel.
The slow movement has a richness that recalls late Beethoven, especially in the connecting phrases, or even the two measure introduction and ending. Here we revel in the deep sound of the strings. But otherwise, this movement is a lyrical expressive Brahms song.
The third movement Scherzo has one orchestral master brushstroke. Brahms instructs all the players to put on their mutes, except for the viola! This not only allows the viola the fairly unusual experience of being heard, but it lends a marvelous dark and mysterious color to the agitated music. It heightens its restlessness and urgency.




Andante and Variations for Two Pianos, Two Cellos and Horn
ROBERT SCHUMANN
Born June 8, 1810, Zwickau
Died July 29, 1856, Endenich
Schumann composed this unusually scored work during a tremendous burst of creativity that included many other great chamber works. The two piano parts for this Andante and Variations was performed for Schumann by his wife Clara and good friend Felix Mendelssohn. It is a variations show piece for two pianos with accompaniment by two cellos and horn. Mendelssohn liked the piece very much but suggested the cellos and horn were a bit superfluous. Schumann took his comment very seriously and recast the piece for just two pianos. Only later long after his death did Brahms receive permission from Clara to have the piece published in its original version, undoubtedly from his fascination with its sonic colors.
The accompaniment with two cellos and horn is an uneven partnership. They set up a beautiful color in the opening that in many ways remains unfulfilled as the two pianos take the main stage and rarely relinquish it for the duration of the piece. Nevertheless, there are quite wonderful moments where the horn or cellos emerge and provide their own lyric contrast to the pianos.
The theme itself is pure Schumann—a complex and subtle chromatic texture hanging on a rather simple diatonic framework.








Piano Quartet in C Minor, Opus 60
JOHANNES BRAHMS
The great C minor Piano Quartet, op. 60 shows the art of a lion tamer and is easily one of Brahms’ finest achievements. He began the piece while living with Clara Schumann and helping run the Schumann household while Robert was in the mental asylum. Brahms was candid that the brooding quality of the piece was a direct reference to Werther, Goethe’s Romantic hero of unrequited love who eventually commits suicide. To his publisher he wrote, “On the cover you must hve a picture, namely a head with a pistol to it. Now you can form some conception of the music! I’ll send you my photograph for the purpose. Since you seem to like color printing, you can use blue coat, yellow breeches, and top-boots.” That was the exact description of Werther and 20 years later Brahms was able to joke about his hyper-passionate feelings.
The piece was originally in C# minor, the key used by E.T.A. Hoffman’s famous character, the hypersensitive composer Kreisler (on whom Schumann wrote his famous piano suite Kreisleriana). So it is transparent that Brahms was embroiled working out his growing feelings for Clara amid the tragedy of Robert.
The name of Clara appears immediately in the musical notes, based on Schumann’s own musical motto for Clara—C#-B-A-G#-A, which Brahms in his revisions transposed in C minor to: Eb-D-C-B-C. A discerning ear will hear this motto and variations of it throughout the piece.
But for us this is significant mostly in that it took Brahms 20 years to sort this all out in a piece of such ambitious Beethovenian grandeur. Changing the key of the piece to C minor itself is a Beethovenian move, and the quartet certainly recalls the drama and fate motives of Beethoven’s C minor pieces. The finale deliberately recalls Beethoven’s stormier piano sonatas (op. 2#1 last movement particularly) as well as quotes of the 5th symphony motto. And placing the slow movement after the Scherzo can’t help but recall Beethoven’s similar decision in the 9th symphony.
But the two overriding compositional ideas in the quartet are the sigh figure and the octave. The sigh’s two descending notes imbue gloom and expression, while the octave lends a power and drama. Frequently these ideas are bound together. The piece begins with octaves in the piano followed by the sigh figure in the strings. The second phrase begins a full step lower, as if the piece has literally fallen, and thereby creating a sigh figure on a longer structural level between phrases. The opening of the Scherzo is an octave followed by the sigh figure inverted (going upwards). The slow movement descends in an arpeggio down an octave followed by an inverted sigh. With Brahms’ technique of developing variation, it is not an exaggeration to say all four movements are a continual evolution of these two ideas bound tightly together.


Life of Brahms Part 1

He was born in Hamburg in very modest lodgings to his father Johann Jakob, an aspiring street musician, and to his mother Christiane, a previously widowed seamstress 18 years older than his father. How interesting that the most important relationship in Brahms’ life was with Clara Schumann, also roughly that much older than he.

Johann Jakob wished for his son to play an orchestral instrument, so that someday he could join the Hamburg Philharmonic. But Johannes took a far more keen interest in piano to Johann Jakob’s dismay. Brahms was precocious from the beginning. He quickly outpaced his teacher and there was talk of him going on a tour to America. His teacher panicked at this idea, fearful that Brahms would end up yet another exploited and doomed prodigy, so he used this fear as a lever to convince his own teacher, Eduard Marxsen, to agree to teach the boy.

Marxsen was the finest piano teacher in Hamburg. He both saved Johannes from premature touring and satisfied the boy’s hunger for compositional training and study of the great German masters. Brahms’ life as a boy oscillated between very serious musical study during the day and something quite different during the night. His father felt that the boy should be earning his keep even at age 10, and had him playing in local taverns.
Brahms was a very fair looking child with golden long hair. He himself hinted darkly about his experiences playing in the taverns and they certainly had a profound influence in his relations with women.

Brahms’ first big break was touring with the Hungarian violinist Remenyi. Remenyi introduced Brahms to Joseph Joachim, the equally young towering violin virtuoso. Joachim was immediately taken with Brahms’ music and spoke highly of him to both Franz Liszt and Robert Schumann (Joachim’s talent was such that he could transcend the icy distance of these two different camps!).

After the Liszt meeting, Brahms and Remenyi went separate ways. Remenyi was enthralled with Liszt, and Brahms went on the way to his momentous meeting with the Schumann’s. The effect of Robert Schumann’s support was to immediately catapult Brahms to worldwide fame at age 20, and to place a heavy yoke on him to live up to Schumann’s lofty visions. The first was helpful financially. Brahms, unlike any other major composer, never had to write works for commission because his wealth was sufficient to allow him to compose as he pleased. The second—dealing with the heavy yoke to become a composer equal to the greats (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven)—was to be Brahms’ lifelong burden. It was a burden that kept him from marriage and truly close friendships. It was a burden that kept him from completing a symphony until he was over forty. It was a burden that stressed to him that the world would compare every piece he published to the expectations of Schumann, to the caliber of the next great composer succeeding Beethoven and Schubert. It is often remarked that the overall quality of Brahms’ output exceeds that of any other major composer. In other words, there are very few clunkers or trifles, despite Brahms’ self-sarcasm about all his works being trifles. The reason for this consistent high quality was that Brahms ruthlessly destroyed much of his music and all of his sketches.

Jeri and Mary Beth gave a terrific performance of my piano/violin duo version of Heart of the World. The violin cadenza was particularly beautiful and the piano rhythms so clear.

This was probably the most fun I've ever had conducting. The energy of the concert was phenomenal. The orchestra just came alive with the Mozart Jupiter Symphony. One violinist told me she kept finding herself bouncing up and down in her seat while playing the last movement! I was able to pull off some pretty brisk tempi. In the slow movement, we had some beautifully lyrical moments--God what a piece! In the third movement, the orchestra followed me with a strange idea I had to give the minuet a kind of slipping sensation with its falling chromatic lines.
Luke Santonastaso did a splendid job with his solo on my new piece, "Heart of the World." Our concert orchestra clearly had a blast with Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours. What a pleasure it was to conduct these talented students in an evening that elevated us all.