Fidelio Overture by Beethoven
In his book The Interior Beethoven, Irving Kolodin noted, “As tended to be the life-long case with Beethoven, the overriding consideration remained: achievement of the objective. How long it might take or how much effort might be required was not merely incidental — such consideration was all but non-existent.”

The repeated attempts of Beethoven to write an overture to his one and only opera, yield to us not one but four different works that are each remarkable in their own way.  The third attempt—Leonore Overture No. 3—is so ambitious that it is virtually a symphonic movement rather than a preparation for an opera and it is regularly performed at concerts. The Fidelio overture we hear at this concert is the final overture Beethoven composed and is the one that opens the opera when it is performed today.

 Classical overtures are commonly structured as sonatinas—sonatas without development sections. That is the model to which Beethoven returns in the Fidelio Overture, except that the opening is confusing. It begins with a rousing fanfare that seems to set things afoot. But the music immediately quiets and becomes chordal and moody. We realize we are in the midst of a slow introduction. But after awhile this introduction seamlessly becomes the Allegro beginning of the sonata, with the horn now quietly intoning the fanfare as a theme. That isn’t all that is odd about this overture. Far stranger is the secondary area. It’s supposed to be in the dominant—that’s the whole point of a sonata, to contrast two different tonal areas. We only hear the dominant however at the very end of the exposition, so the secondary area really just consists of a short passage of cadential chords instead of a conventional theme. When all this material is recapitulated, Beethoven continues his pun. Here when the secondary area appears, we get the chords we expect—but in a completely wrong key! Beethoven quickly corrects this restating the chords in the correct tonic key, letting us know he is completely aware of what he is doing.  After this structural joke, it is off to the races with a joyous rambunctious coda that propels the exuberance of the opening fanfare into an expectation for the opera to follow.

Piano Concerto in A Minor by Robert Schumann
At the last New West Symphony concert our jaws dropped open watching and hearing George Gao perform the Ziguenerweisen —usually an eye and ear popping piece for any violin virtuoso using his or her 4 strings—on the Chinese 2 string violin, the erhu. In an earlier concert in the fall we heard violin virtuoso Suzanne Hou perform Saint-Saens, also with incredible bravura and technique. The thrill of hearing a true virtuoso conquer their instrument and audience is akin to the thrill of watching any great athlete. We revel in the sense of the impossible and a headiness in the sheer achievement. The adrenaline trip for us with virtuosos is naturally a big draw for all concert goers. That kind of trip, though, is precisely not what the Schumann Piano Concerto is about or for what Robert Schumann had any interest. He knew all about it of course. His own piano music has plenty for the virtuoso. And he lived during the time of one of the greatest virtuosos in history—Franz Liszt, who apparently slighted the Schumann concerto by calling it a “concerto without piano.”

But Schumann was out for larger game. He knew that virtuoso piano concerti are a dime a dozen and easily forgotten. He wanted to create lasting poetry, to find a way to take the spiritual achievements of Beethoven in his concerti to this new era of Romanticism. That meant wrestling with all kinds of structural questions. What would be the relationship between the piano and the orchestra? How could a cadenza be part of the structure of the piece instead of just a moment of bravura?

Schumann’s answers to these and other problems have produced one of the most original of concerti. It is one that pianists themselves especially adore. As it is piece that is about growth of a single idea, the falling scale of 3 notes, it is remarkable how the piece grows into itself as it continues, and how we listeners become increasingly infatuated as we become familiar with it. The opening itself is not so remarkable, but by the time we hit the development section where the piano goes as deep and attractive as any Chopin Nocturne, we are completely hooked.

The obsession with the falling scale of three notes—C-B-A—informs most of the material in the first movement. Both “themes” share this same idea, as well as the transition. But the mood change between them is poetic and striking. The primary group is reflective, while the secondary group is restless. Schumann also makes an interesting structural innovation by dispensing with separate expositions for the orchestra first and then the piano. Instead the piano introduces the piece with a fanfare, then the orchestra only introduces the first theme. The piano then follows and both orchestra and piano continue the piece. The development is bipolar—first deeply poetic (Schumann’s Eusebius persona), and then energetic and typically developmental (Schumann’s Florestan persona).

The cadenza occurs in the conventional location, but here it is really a coda in itself, the summation of the entire movement, only played by the piano alone. It is full of technical difficulty, yet we listen not for acrobatics, but for the re-energizing of music that already captivates us. That is what Schumann was going for—our focus being on the music rather than the performer.

The second movement is a beautifully constructed bridge between the two outer movements. It begins with the same scale idea, only now going up instead of down, and in quiet tiptoes echoed between the piano and orchestra. The music is lyrical but lighthearted. That’s why the middle section with its romantic cello lines takes us so by surprise. We don’t expect sublimity, but then it is suddenly there. The cellos sing in their richest tone, engaging in a call and response with the piano.

A brief transition recalling the first movement of the concerto in major sets off the finale, a dance movement that unleashes the piano in nearly a perpetual motion of arabesque patterns, concluding with a fast waltz.

Symphony No. 8 in G Major by Antonin Dvorak
The folk themes are so abundant and fabulous in Dvorak’s 8^th Symphony that the music is not only a pleasure to hear, but is rather easy to follow. If all classical music had such direct thematic instruction, apprehending structure would be less problematic. However, this does injustice to Dvorak. His symphony is far more than a bunch of pretty tunes. And in a way, the thematic clarity and abundance belies some very interesting structural experiments. One of these is the question of beginnings. Symphonies usually begin in one of two ways: either they start with a slow introduction, or they start with a main thematic idea in a fast tempo. Dvorak does both and neither. Instead he sets up an interesting duality. The piece begins with a theme in G minor that could be a slow introduction. That gives way to a bird call theme by the flute in G major. That also could be part of a slow introduction. And indeed, the music builds as one would expect to a big statement and we get a third theme in G major. But it is rather short lived to the point that we begin to realize all three of these themes are part of one primary group and that the symphony didn’t really begin with a slow introduction at all.

The secondary group pulls a similar stunt. We hear first a march theme in B minor followed by an exuberant theme in B major. Clear cadences in this new key give way to the music that began the symphony in G minor followed by the G major bird call theme. So are we hearing a repeat of the exposition? That’s something we might expect. But the tonality of G major becomes unstable and we realize we are in the middle of a typically exploratory development section. There is a brief moment in the development section by the way that is orchestrated very unusually—for just woodwinds and French horn. It has the quality of chamber music more than orchestral music, and is a device that would become a hallmark of Mahler’s music just a few years later!

The recapitulation sets things straight as it is supposed to do. The sad G minor theme comes back as a full-blown fast dramatic theme accompanied by strings climbing up and down in scales. Now we are sure that it was never a slow introduction but instead the true beginning of the symphony.

The second movement is even more remarkable. Its first theme presents an ambiguous harmony. It begins in E flat major, then moves to C minor. The second theme has a decidedly East European folk harmony. It starts out in C major but it’s harmonies instead suggest a fourth key, F minor. Why should you care, especially if you don’t have perfect pitch? Well, this harmonic ambiguity helps explain why the themes seem to be fighting one another. For instance, when the first theme returns, the second theme interrupts. The middle of the piece is a gorgeous trio with delicate descending C major scales accompanying a lyrical melody that itself is mostly a scale. A solo violin repeats this theme. But not much later the beautiful trio theme combines and fuses with the first theme itself. So what is fascinating about all of these themes is that they actually all centered around C major, but we only discover this after the fact. This is very unusual structural idea for classical music. Contrast is always achieved by placing different musical sections in different tonal centers. Here Dvorak manages to have all his themes in one tonal center, but he creates contrast by making the first two extremely ambiguous. The extremes of mood also contribute greatly to this effect. The opening chorale is spiritual and gloomy, the second theme is like a sad klezmer tune, and the trio section is delicate, fleet, and soulful.

 The great tunes keep coming in the third movement. This is heavy humming material. An opening waltz in g minor recollects the tonality beginning the symphony. The trio melody in G major with its folk leanings to B and E minor, is among Dvorak’s most lyrical melodies. It too is a waltz. The finale of the movement, though, reformulates the trio into a fast delicate duple theme. The movement ends in delicious quiet.

A trumpet fanfare ushers in the finale. This last movement again is simple to hear, but complex in structure. It is both a rondo and accelerating theme and variations put together. The theme is reminiscent to me of Elgar’s music—it has an English baroque character. But Dvorak “fixes” that especially in a rousing bacchanalian variation in quick time, a virile dose of Czechoslovakian folk music, that thrills with a virtuoso horn ascending scale and trill.  The theme and variation process is interrupted by a minor Turkish sounding theme that constitutes a central trio section. Particularly remarkable is a passage of descending harmonies by half step. This section with a new theme begins to incorporate elements of the main theme of the piece, sounding like a development section. And indeed it is a retransition that culminates in a victorious statement of the opening trumpet fanfare, this time accompanied harmonically. That dies down and the main theme reappears and the accelerated variation process begins again, pushing into a quick coda that ends the symphony with more than proper enthusiasm.

May 1, 2010

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Overture to Egmont, Op. 84

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37

INTERMISSION

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58

Yefim Bronfman, Pianist

 INTRODUCTION

The three works on tonight’s program are prime examples of Beethoven’s heroic Middle Period of composition. It was this mature style that helped to establish Romanticism, expanding the forms and styles of Mozart and Haydn into larger proportions and, especially, using a more complex structure of harmony to support this architecture. On the surface of Beethoven’s Middle Period music, we often hear military rhythms, percussive banging textures, and even repeated loops that we today call grooves. But underpinning everything is the concern to develop a musical idea and discover all its possibilities.

 One powerful example of a Beethoven musical idea is the repercussions of abrupt shifts of harmony. The fourth piano concerto is a famous example because the piano begins it in one key, G major, but then the orchestra takes it up in a very different key, one quite far away, B major. In a sense the entire piece reels from this rupture of space. Frequent moments in that first movement suddenly find themselves suspended in foreign keys. On a deeper level, the entire second movement—a kind of spoken-sung dialogue between orchestra and piano unique in the literature—takes us abruptly to an inner deep place.

 NOTES

Egmont Overture

This music was part of Beethoven’s incidental music for Goethe’s play Egmont with its theme of victory of tyranny, here with Dutch Count Egmont trying to free the Netherlands from Spain. The overture begins in minor with a dramatic slow introduction followed by a fast sonata style movement. The overture concludes with a rip-dazzling finale in triumphant major.

Beethoven can tell an entire story with one note. He does so with the opening F played by the entire orchestra. It portends “fate” in its opening strength and dying away. Then the slow introduction is on its way with strong violent string chords that contrast with the most tender woodwind lines.

 The transition to the fast sonata is a famous example of a musical technique called hemiola, which means changing the accents in a musical pattern to give the effect of speeding up. Here Beethoven takes a pattern in two beats and accelerates it over a larger pattern of three beats. By doing this, different notes get the accent each time and kind of throw us “off” the meter. This acceleration propels the theme of the sonata, which is not really a melody, but a plunging arpeggio in the lower strings that creates more tension than tune.\

The acceleration into the fast sonata goes “nuclear” with the transition to the finale that begins in a fast pattern of two beats and explodes in a triumphant major key. This passage features virtuoso writing especially for the strings who have to practice the heck of it. But it’s so much fun to play!

 Piano Concerto #3

There is a great story of someone turning pages for Beethoven at a performance of this concerto where he was the soloist. Apparently, Beethoven did not write out the solo score, but just had notes and scribblings—what the page turner called Egyptian hieroglyphics. He had to wait for Beethoven to vigorously nod and then turn the page, a very stressful situation which Beethoven laughed about at their dinner afterwards.

The third piano concerto is a defining piece for Beethoven’s heroic Middle Period. It is his quintessential “C minor” piece–the same key as his 5^th symphony and many other dramatic works. The opening theme has the military-march feel that characterizes much of his music from this period, and would eventually develop into the Eroica symphony and beyond. It also takes both the role of the orchestra and the pianist to new heights. The opening 3 minute orchestral exposition is more a satisfying opening for a symphony than an introduction for a soloist. But when the piano enters, it does so with a dazzling array of virtuoso techniques—scales, arpeggios, double thirds, trills, etc. There is a new physicality, a new muscularity to the piano part that sets it apart from earlier works by Haydn, Mozart, and even Beethoven’s earlier two concerti. It propels the genre into brand new territory and depth. A favorite moment to many is the orchestral entrance after the piano cadenza. Traditionally this is a barnstorming moment when the orchestra brings everything to a loud close. Instead Beethoven follows the pianos concluding trills with pianissimo chords in the strings decorated with descending arpeggios in the piano that give you goosebumps!

The slow movement imparts this depth. It is an extremely soulful lyric work, but made even more so by its choice of key—E major which is a very remote key from C minor. In this way, Beethoven really puts this heartfelt song in a distant special place using harmonic context. He emphasizes this distance also by having the strings play with their mutes.

This move to the distant keys continues to resonate in the third movement where at one moment Beethoven states his rondo theme in E major—that very distant key of the slow movement, effectively recalling that moment and its distance.

 Piano Concerto #4

In a sense, the fourth piano concerto begins from the slow movement of the third piano concerto. The pace even feels the same. But what really establishes the connection, is that both pieces established a distant relationship with a key 3 steps away (from C minor to E major in the 3^rd concerto and G major to B major in the 4^th concerto). And this distant relationship and its ramifications become an important idea for the entire concerto.

 Pianists love to play this concerto of Beethoven’s more than any other. One reason may be that the piano has a special independence from the orchestra. It begins the piece for the orchestra rather than the other way around—which was certainly innovative at the time. But too, when it does finally begin its own exposition, it starts with new material we haven’t heard and a wonderful sense of expectation as to what new worlds it will open.

 The slow movement is among Beethoven’s most emotional utterances. The orchestra declaims forcefully and fatefully as if speaking, or as if this is recitative in an operatic moment. The piano plays in the simplest and most tender of chorales, eventually taming the strident strings. While this piece is without question abstract music, it’s difficult not to imagine this dialogue occurring in a special spiritual space. Whether between God and man, or between a person’s inner states, it is music that inspires philosophy, and that is a particular triumph of Beethoven’s Middle Period style that became a goal for much of the important music that followed his time, from Brahms and Wagner, to Mahler and Schoenberg.

 NOTES

 Ravel Mother Goose

You can read in your program notes the delightful storytelling in this piece from Mother Goose. There’s the sleeping beauty of the opening pavane, the lost Little Tom Thumb whose breadcrumbs were eaten by birds, the dance of the Pagodas in the bathtub, beauty and the beast, and the fairy garden. But I think that is all less interesting and important than the magical world of sound Ravel has created especially for this work. Many remark that Ravel seems to have tapped into the wonderment of childhood usually lost for adults. That seems true to me, but it doesn’t happen by accident. Stravinsky called Ravel the “Swiss Watchmaker” because of his extreme precision and craftsmanship in orchestration. And that precision and imagination is evident in every page of this score. Ravel has such command of instrumental techniques that it's difficult to realize he originally wrote this piece for two pianos! Yet the two piano version is also absolutely convincing. I think that's because, when you get to the bottom of it, Ravel's harmonic language is where the real magic lies. He moves between chords with a delicacy and imagination that conjures the unique fragrance of the world of fairy tales.

 Pavane
Ravel opens with a sparse piece of only 20 measures! But it’s pure haiku in density. The ingenuity of combining harp and double bass pizzicatos and harmonics as an accompaniment to the flute melody instantly creates an unworldly fragile fuzziness. But the opening 2 part counterpoint is also unique—one flute against a muted horn doubled by muted plucked violas. Weird and wonderful! The use of modal harmony (which he employs in the rest of the work) also conjures an ancient world of magic.

 Tom Thumb
Again, Ravel’s simple but carefully modulating harmonies make a chord progression that just feels perfect on every beat. Here he uses an ancient technique from Renaissance music—fauxbordon—the triple layering of a melody to form a series of parallel chords. Here those rising and falling chords impart lost wandering in the forest.

Empress of the Pagodas
The harmonic language here is appropriately pentatonic to impart Chinese music. But what really catches our ear in this piece is the exquisite combination of instruments—harp, celesta, and xylophone, all colored with muted and plucked strings and accompanying the woodwinds.

 Beauty and the Beast
A supremely beautiful and elegant waltz. Ravel again dazzles us with his command of harmony. But there are other delights, such as the way the melody “kisses” the accompaniment at the end of its phrase (its last note leads to the opening note of the accompaniment) and the imaginative contrabassoon solo that represents the beast.

The Fairy Garden
On one hand, one wants to say little of this piece in case talking about it obliterates it, because it indeed is so beautiful and fragile with its slow chorale procession of chords. It’s as if harmony itself is making a procession. In fact, the fairy garden reveals the secret of Western Harmony. Within C major are the hidden overtones. These frequencies are very high and very soft so we don’t actually hear them. But they are present and Ravel reveals them as magic in this piece when the harmony shifts from C major to E major (actually E mixolydian) in the highest register of the orchestra. In this way, Ravel makes apparent chords that are already there but are “invisible” to us in the conventional world. The emotional effect of laying them bare with the harp, celeste, and high strings uncannily transports us to the world of childhood, that special world invisible to us as adults but that in special moments we recall in which the world is a place of magic, vivid color, and exquisite beauty. Yet also a place that is very fragile and needs protection to endure. All this Ravel communicates abstractly in this exquisite miniature of a finale.

 Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 2

It’s called the “Little Russian” because that is the nickname for the Ukraine and Tchaikovsky uses 3 Ukrainian folk songs in the piece.

 The first movement is encased and dominated by the Russian song Down by Mother Volga. An extensive slow introduction introduces this song with first solo horn and bassoon, then other instruments elaborately accompanied in the orchestra. What’s strange is that this opening tune is so central to the work, that after the slow introduction the two new themes that constitute the sonata seem far less important! Even the connecting material so important to sonata form falls by the wayside because the introduction is so extensive. Instead of the conventional transition section between the primary and secondary themes, Tchaikovsky just immediately jumps from one to the other!

 The song reappears in the development and again in the extensive coda that balances the long introduction, ending the movement plaintively again first with the horn, then with the bassoon. In every way, the “symphonic” material of the sonata and its very form is swallowed whole by this song.

The inner movements are straightforward in that they have great tunes but no real surprises. The second movement Tchaikovsky adapted from his opera Undine. The hummable march tune is treated to Tchaikovsky’s usual genius for florid accompaniment. The 3^rd movement scherzo moves forward in an infectious perpetual motion.

 The finale is conventionally admired for its clever continuous variations of the first theme. But far more interesting and inventive is the way he weaves the first and second themes together in the development. The second theme appears there unmoored from a central tone center. It keeps slipping and sliding from key to key. Then elements of the first theme appear and the second theme adapts the rhythm of the first theme. The tussle continues and eventually the first theme takes over but plays spasmodically in the syncopated rhythm of the second theme. This fascinating genetic interplay becomes increasingly involved until we find ourselves spilled out back into the tonic key and the recapitulation. An incredible ride!

Berliner Philharmoniker
Tuesday, November 24
Russell Steinberg, composer, conductor and performer. Mr. Steinberg is the Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra, and is on the faculty at UCLA.

Berliner Philharmoniker
Monday, November 23
Russell Steinberg, composer, conductor and performer. Mr. Steinberg is the Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra.

Watts Plays Brahms
FEATURED ARTISTS:Los Angeles Philharmonic Bramwell Tovey, conductor André Watts, piano PROGRAM:Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 2, "London"  Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2

Russell Steinberg Lecture Notes

Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2—The —Piano as a Magical Variation Machine
Despite its length and majesty, the Brahms 2nd piano concerto is in some ways more a chamber work than a concerto. The opening establishes this intimacy with the dialogue between French horn and the piano. But the conversational approach continues with a woodwind phrase answered by the strings. This is a preface, of course, to the symphonic orchestral music that follows, yet it establishes a personal relationship with the piano and the orchestra that blossoms in all kinds of surprises—most notably in the extended cello solo that is such an intrinsic part of the slow movement. Name another concerto where the soloist willingly gives up so much control! ☺
Another important point is that the piano and orchestra are equal partners in this piece, and I don’t just mean that they share the material equally, but that Brahms writes for the piano in a way that makes it sound orchestral, more than “virtuoso solo.” For one thing, his phrases often encompass the entire register of the piano—the opening arpeggio being a prime example. Also, he writes very thickly for the piano—thick chords, thick counterpoint—which also gives the instrument an orchestral sound.
But there is something more to this than just friendly banter between the piano and its orchestral friends. Brahms uses this conversational approach as a compositional idea to evolve the music as a continuous set of variations. There seem to be two structural planes unfolding simultaneously. one is the familiar way we know from other concertos: sonata form with all the trimmings—themes galore in the primary and secondary areas, interesting transition sections, a marvelous development section that combines the themes in fragments like a good sonata is supposed to, ending with a marvelous retransition back to the main theme. All that stuff is there. But at the same time there is a continual unifying process whereby it seems every new section of music is just an embellishment and fantasy of the preceding section. This process is so continuous and involved that we sense the entire work—and I mean all four movements, not just the first—is a web of variations based on the opening kernel of notes that the horn plays in the first two measures.
Maybe that’s why we often hear the comment that while the Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto has moments of titanic force, it largely holds this force at bay and in fact tends much more often towards a relaxed state. The reason is that instead of the Beethovenian evolution of one note inexorably leading to the next, this piece grows by phrases that are variations of each other. So while a phrase itself may build in tension, that tension relaxes as the music regroups with a new variation that builds all over again. 
A great example of this process is the transition section in the first movement. We first hear it in the orchestra as a brief passage—just a few wisps of notes in groups of three, rising in half step. But when the piano gets hold of the transition in its own exposition, it expands into a miniature complete piece in itself, not so unlike Brahms’ intermezzi. A simple idea becomes increasingly elaborate as both piano and orchestra circle it and add embellishments, lengthening one part, shortening another, enriching the harmony here, adding rhythmic complexity there. This transition has maybe 5 continuous variations, the last one revisiting the simple ascending notes that began the whole process. 
As we listen to more and more of this piece, we begin to sense that even something as basic as those wispy three notes of the transition section come from something earlier. In fact, they are themselves a compressed variation of the opening three ascending notes of the piece that the horn plays. And that’s how it goes all through this first movement.
The variation process was there from the beginning where I first mentioned the entwined relationship of the piano and orchestra. After the piano serves as a sort of reverberating echo for the horn and the winds answer with the second part of the theme, the piano takes off in a fantasy that again is like a mini-series of variations—the first compressing the opening arpeggios and fragmenting the theme to just two notes, the second a chordal hymn, the third an ostinato of the theme over a dominant pedal point. In a substantial way, these flights of fanasy into a world of variations are the piano’s cadenzas. So instead of the idea of a section to show off piano technique, Brahms spotlights the piano as a kind of magical variation machine.
Brahms clearly prided himself on the seamlessness of his craft. Ideas just seem to melt into each other. One glorious moment in the first movement is the way he prepares the recapitulation. The piano ripples arpeggios, playing with the two note motive that has been its material for most of the piece. Underneath, the bass rumbles a motive from the first theme on a pedal tone. The whole texture is similar to passages Rachmaninoff liked to meditate on in his own piano concerti. But then the piano begins slow trills that climb in register while the strings subtly change harmony to prepare the return of the home key. The horn and strings enter with the theme almost unnoticed as the piano winds down this intricate passagework smoothly into the same arpeggios it used at the beginning of the piece. And we’re back.

2nd Mvt.Brahms plays around with form in the scherzo in such an interesting way. Usually the scherzo is a dance in two parts: the scherzo, which is a speeded-up minuet and a trio. But here, Brahms combines this all into a sonata form, placing the trio inside the development section. Very clever and almost so seamless to be undetectable!
The 3 note Do-Re-Mi motive of the first movement continues in the scherzo—first up in the piano, and then down in the strings. The tune is characterized by an opening trill that gives energy to the whole piece. The second theme is also consumed with this trill played elongated and regular speed, in the foreground and the accompaniment.
This elongation forms the accompaniment of the trio section, itself embedded in the development section. The second part of the trio section is whirling vortex of piano chromatic passagework—all a greatly accelerated variation of the trill motive that dominates the piece.
The relation of piano and orchestra is a completely integrated partnership in this movement. The opening material features the piano in the foreground and the orchestra in accompaniment. In the recapitulation, these roles are reversed and the music fits equally well. One reason is that Brahms writes for the piano in its full register, essentially making it an “orchestra.”
3rd MovementThe luscious cello solo opening this movement is probably the most anticipated moment for lovers of this concerto. Again, it sounds so reminiscent of the themes from the first movement. But its really all about descending scales. [Of course, the accumulation of scales, both ascending (finale) and descending (here) share as common ancestor the Do-Re-Mi opening of the concerto]Underneath the solo cello, the cello section accompanies with a descending scale in the home key of Bb. In the second phrase, the violins sound a beautiful high Bb and then descend over the cello’s second phrase, forming the most gorgeous counterpoint. Then listen how the cello takes over this descent near the end of its solo. And typical of Brahms, the cello doesn’t conclude in a way that calls attention to itself. Instead, it just kind of dissolves back into the orchestra.
The piano entrance sounds from the depths in a slow motion version of its arpeggios with the horn in the first movement. Then it plays alone for an extended time in a fantasy that recalls the beautiful solos in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. As you would guess, it is varying the gorgeous descending lines that the violins and cello played earlier.
In the middle section, the trills from the earlier movements re-enter and the theme undergoes far more dramatic variation. The pianist’s left and right hands play chords in syncopation for much of this section.
The retransition is the golden moment of this concerto. The piano contrasts long slow arpeggios in the bass and center register with isolated fragments in the extreme treble of the instrument—here it is a complete but delicate orchestra in itself, accompanied as quietly as possible first by clarinet, then strings. We are in distant harmonic regions here. And when the cello theme returns, it is in this very distant key of F# major, not the Bb major of the opening. This is a false return. As the first phase concludes, the cello and strings play a subtle, delicious, and ever-so-smooth modulation back to the home key and the cello begins the theme proper. 
The love-fest continues with the coda. The cello’s slow descent is in duet with the piano’s sublime rising arpeggios. The piano breaks out with ascending scale in trills. At its peak, the cello re-enters for one final descent. The piano answers in a rising chordal arpeggio that spans the entire register of the instrument. The movement ends in the tonic chord played by the orchestra.
Mvt. 4By now, the piano and orchestra are so cozy, they are even finishing each other’s phrases (the Hungarian folk-sounding second theme). All the energy of trills and arpeggios that have characterized the concerto come to the fore here not as any dramatic terror, rather as the lightest most scrumptious soufflé. The jaunty opening piano theme is light as it goes, but the magic really happens after the piano finishes the theme. It quiets down on the dominant, and then the surprise—a lightning fast but delicate rising scale of thirds sails right up near the very top of the instrument in a trill which ushers in the full orchestra playing the theme. This unexpected swoosh happens so fast it almost has the effect of tickling our ears. We definitely want to hear it again!
But we are easily and decadently diverted with the second theme, which has the character of a Hungarian folk-tune, with all its chromatic melancholy. The contrasting melodies, first one played by the clarinet, and then another by the piano, quickly lighten the mood again. When the Hungarian tune re-enters, this time it is in a playful manner with the orchestra and piano finishing each other’s phrases! Ralph Vaughan WilliamsA London Symphony (Symphony No. 2)
Is it just me, or is it strange that a wonderful 20th composer who was NOT Shostakovich wrote 9 symphonies that we don’t know that well? And this is gorgeous music.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was an enthusiastic collector of English folk songs and hymns. The extremely lyric nature of his music clearly shows this influence. Later in life he became president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. 
This “London Symphony” was composed in 1912-1913 and premiered in 1914, a year after the infamous premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. But Vaughan William’s piece has little interest in revolution. Instead it reveals its composer on as intimate a footing with his country’s folk music as Dvorak was with his. It is difficult to tell Vaughan William’s original tunes from his quotations, so wedded are they in style and melodic beauty. One  interesting and strange thing, though, is that for all its “Englishness,” the second symphony is also very French influenced. Many moments recall Ravel and Debussy—particularly the development section of the first movement and the third movement scherzo—and that’s probably in part because Vaughan Williams studied orchestration with Ravel for a short time.
Shortly after the successful premiere, the score was unfortunately sent to a conductor in Germany just before the outbreak of World War !; the score to the symphony was lost Vaughan Williams reconstructed the score with friends of his from the orchestral parts. Years later while working on his fourth symphony, he worked out a major revision of the piece and that is what is performed today. It is 20 minutes shorter than the original. 
There is a program to this symphony that draws attention to various parks and squares around London as its inspiration. While that was a successful point of entry for his contemporary listeners, Vaughan Williams melodic strains communicate its narrative with sufficient clarity to not really need an intermediary. And that was his preference as well—like many late Romantic composers, he was uncomfortable with audiences relying on a narrative program to follow music.
The opening introduction in the first movement is quite extended—over 3 minutes—and it is especially sublime with the double basses filling a deep canyon of pentatonic sound that gradually unfolds in a string chorale of slow gorgeous harmonies leading to the Big Ben chimes quotation in harp and brass. The first movement is a conventional sonata. It really shines in Vaughan-Williams exuberant invented folk materials in the transition section and second theme. The development fragments all of this as expected, but then dissolves in an expressive passage for strings and harp. Here at the heart of the movement, the texture becomes contrapuntal and very Ravel-like with the addition of winds.The recapitulation begins with the first group material very mysterious. The second theme is treated contrapuntally in a way not dissimilar to the way Aaron Copland does with American folk tunes in many of his pieces. 
Conductor Bramwell Tovey made the interesting point that with this symphony Vaughan Williams, along with Elgar and Holst, initiated a renaissance in English concert music, the likes of which hadn't been heard since Henry Purcell. I note that we Americans don't know this music very well,and I surmise that the commotion from Stavinsky, Schoenberg, and Bartok from this time may have been responsible for this wonderful English music not cutting through "the noise." But listen to the slow movement of this Vaughan Williams symphony and you can't help but notice its language of 1913 fits like a glove to the musical language of epic American films circa 2000! Clearly, some composers have taken note!

Tuesday, November 24, 2009, 7:00 PM”¨Walt Disney Concert Hall
Berlin Philharmonic
Simon Rattle, Conductor

Wagner: Meistersinger Overture
Schoenberg: Chamber Symphony No. 1
Brahms: Symphony No. 2

INTRODUCTION
The Brahms vs. Wagner controversy that dominated the latter 19^th century made for a fierce divide in the musical world. However, Brahms once told Wagner he was actually the greatest Wagnerian. By that, I think he meant that his musical understanding was deeper than other adherents so that he could actually understand the depths of Wagner’s genius. And early music of Brahms leans strongly towards Wagner’s color and thematic devices. In his twenties, he in fact first flirted with joining the futurist school of Liszt and Wagner, but then decidedly refuted it as too superficial for his own path. But that was not a flippant choice. Brahms once said that if he looked at the score of Tristan in the morning, the whole rest of his day was ruined. Any of you who have fallen under the spell of Tristan know what her was talking about—Tristan’s obsessive harmonic sequences and leitmotives are hard to get out of your head. It is music of hedonism and excess. The Brahms aesthetic, on the other hand, is an onion, evolving layer upon layer of motivic development. Beneath its sunny pastoral landscape is a network of roots that go to the center of the earth. Its emotional intensity comes not from the surface of its harmonies and melodies, but from the power of its total narrative.

Schoenberg was the greatest student of both Brahms and Wagner. His command of orchestration, harmony, color, and counterpoint took Wagner’s vision to its next evolutionary step. But his passion for musical structure and developing variation—a passion that consumed him his entire life and led to innovations such as his twelve tone method, among many others—that passion marks him even more as the composer most continuing the legacy of Brahms.

Wagner Meistersinger Overture
Wagner’s opera Meistersinger was much admired by Brahms and Schoenberg. It is a fitting connection between these two composers as well. It has the solid bass lines and command of classical harmony characteristic of Brahms combined with the abundance of leitmotives that so informed Schoenberg’s compositional approach. It begins with two celebratory marches.  Notice the active bass line in the first one.

In the middle section, Wagner employs considerable counterpoint as he depicts the various apprentices practicing their music. There are even modernistic moments such as the climax where many themes occur simultaneously, but controlled and overpowered by the march theme in the brass.This contrapuntal music provides a splendid transition for us to discuss Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony.

Schoenberg Chamber Symphony
My piano teacher Earle Voorhies often told me about attending a lecture where Schoenberg said if people wanted to understand his music, they needed to listen to it at least a hundred times. Mr. Voorhies pointed out that music shouldn’t need 100 listenings to be comprehensible. And folks, that in a nutshell, is our dilemma…

Schoenberg’s music is highly concentrated. To make a ridiculous analogy, the first time you hear a Schoenberg piece it’s a little bit like drinking Coca Cola syrup—not the drink, but the concentrated syrup—straight up! The music is just too rich, there is too much going on, to comprehend it all. And when you try, it’s like spraining your brain.

But for all that, Schoenberg was right. Once you listen repeatedly, all those melodies he presents simultaneously start to sort themselves out and the music not only begins to make marvelous sense, but communicates intense expression. This was why Schoenberg couldn’t understand why his music was so hated during his lifetime. He was writing still in the spirit of Brahms and Richard Strauss, but his content is so thick and quick changing, that people had and still have a hard time digesting it.

 This Chamber Symphony No. 1 with its concentrated musical ideas was part of a breakthrough in Schoenberg’s writing around 1905 and 1906 that led to atonal music. This piece stretches the limits of tonality. It has many different kinds of musics, ranging from lush sounds of Strauss and Mahler, to very futuristic sonorities that for us today recall Hindemith and Bartok.

The opening is itself a challenge to tonality because it defines a new harmonic world—one built on the interval of fourths instead of the interval of thirds that characterize all the major and minor chords we know so well. The very next harmonies are also strange—augmented chords. These are built on thirds all right, but the wrong kind of thirds! They are too big and build an exotic whole tone scale instead of major and minor.

But if we untangle things for a moment, we can recognize an opening not dissimilar to Richard Strauss’s famous orchestral tone poem Don Juan. The opening horn rising fourths has the same swoop as Don Juan—as does the main theme.

 In fact, Schoenberg is really doing the same thing Richard Strauss was doing—creating an instrumental opera narrative using leitmotives. That is, the themes become characters and ideas that interact as they do in Wagner’s operas. Strauss too, incidentally, gets very contrapuntally complex at times for the same reason as Schoenberg: too many characters speaking simultaneously!

There are several moments in the Chamber Symphony where the two ideas we’ve discussed—the rising fourths and the “Don Juan-like” main theme engage in complex conversation. Strauss’s Tone Poems merge this Wagnerian leitmotive style with symphonic sonata structure—the stuff that fuels the music of Beethoven and Brahms. And essentially, Schoenberg is doing the same thing. Only in this piece, he borrows a trick he learned from Franz Liszt’s groundbreaking B minor piano sonata where Liszt bunches all 4 movements together into one continuous movement.

That’s what Schoenberg does here in this chamber symphony. The first movement does the sonata form thing—exposition and development. But then it has an underplayed recap that is truncated with a remarkable passage, one that both recalls the strange fourth harmony from the opening and heralds the new music of the 20^th century.

After this transition, we hear a slow movement. Schoenberg uses the fourths to make a transition again to a quasi scherzo movement, and again to a finale that functions as a recapitulation of the entire piece. The coda is particularly stirring because the heroic main Don Juan-like theme finally rises to the surface and overpowers the texture, asserting first its augmented harmonies, and finally resolving to a tonic E major chord to finish the piece.

Brahms Symphony No. 2
This is a symphony about the evolution of ideas. Everything germinates from the opening bud and the piece develops and grows like a living thing. This aesthetic concept Brahms refined from his deep understanding of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. If we try to understand why he expressed distaste for Tchaikovsky’s music, part of the reason might be that Tchaikovsky made melody the supreme control in his symphonies, rather than the servant for underlying smaller motives. For Brahms, this was to confuse the prime motivator in music. And today, I think we can safely say that Tchaikovsky’s aesthetic won hands down. The music written today, whether pop or classical, is usually not in the least concerned with the germination of a single idea. Today we live in a culture dedicated to distraction and the moment, hoping for something spectacular with little regard to its connection with what preceded.

Those of you here recognize the problem with this, especially listening to great music. What you want is a listening handle to help you connect in this case 40 some odd minutes of unfolding music.

That the Brahms 2^nd is about germination is pretty apparent comparing the beginning, say, of the first and last movement. Both begin with the same D-C#-D motive. It seems that this rocking back and forth idea is an important generator of ideas in this music. Ernst Toch in his wonderful book on form called The Shaping Forces of Music gives a penetrating analysis of the Brahms 2^nd which I heartily recommend reading. He is fascinated by two aspects of Brahms’ craft: the way subterranean elements control the larger form and the way Brahms knits ideas together so intricately that they fuse into a single entity, no longer being separate ideas.

Mvt. 1
Sing the opening melody of the symphony. This melody is what we hang on to and remember. But strangely, it doesn’t appear very often as a complete tune. Instead, something underneath and more subtle calls the shots: the rocking back and forth idea mentioned previously. Let’s trace the germination of this motive. First it is an accompaniment to the main theme. Then Brahms stretches out the motive, and as if stretching out a coil, the motive then rebounds with greater energy and spins out the transition theme. The transition section gains drama as our rocking motive fragments and erupts into the foreground. Now it has all of our attention. But Toch points out something very interesting. If we play the accompaniment to this transition theme rocking motive very slowly, we notice something familiar: this accompaniment is in fact just an accelerated version of the opening Horn theme. Brahms is showing how elastic his ideas can be. He can transform something from being a main character to becoming a subordinate character, or even just part of the landscape.

Perhaps the most beautiful tune in the first movement is the sad minor theme. The way Brahms harmonizes this tune is one reason we adore his music. It is bittersweet: in other words, it fuses major and minor together in a way that combines the chords into one complex feeling.

Notice that again we hear rocking back and forth motion like a lullaby in this theme. But a most fascinating discovery is that the accompaniment to this tune is also an accelerated version of the Horn theme. Again what was foreground is now distant background. 

The closing section transforms the rocking idea into a dramatic jumping character. You get the idea. Brahms has taken a subterranean element and through germination, shown it to be the hidden DNA of the piece, controlling its growth and eventually “taking over” the whole show.

To hear how organically subtle Brahms can get, listen to the recapitulation. At first it seems something is missing—the main theme returns, but without the three rocking bass notes that introduce it—those same notes that have been dominating the entire movement. But listen closer and you can hear those notes hidden, stretched out in one of the trombones harmonizing the chords we hear just before the main theme returns.

Mvt. 2
The intense expression from the outset is due to a melody of extraordinary complexity. To understand what makes this melody so complex, keep in mind that most melodies have two parts. Sometimes this is called question-answer, antecedent-consequent, or sometimes just A and B. That has to do with our intense need for a combination of repetition and contrast. So the design we most often hear is question-question, answer-answer, or question-answer question-answer.

Well, this opening melody of the Brahms 2^nd movement has not two, but 6 different parts, and these six parts are interwoven tightly with such ingenuity, that it is difficult to deconstruct them. Brahms contorts these six parts ingeniously. He begins some of them a beat early or a beat late, he stretches and compresses them, then weaves them together so tightly that the result is one great extended super phrase of high expression.

Mvt. 3
The third movement provides a delightful example of developing variation, where one motive spills into various transformations of itself, so strikingly different that at first we’re not sure how they are related.

The movement begins with bucolic gentle rocking motive. Brahms then makes it a fast dance with repeated notes. Then he turn it upside down, gives it a syncopated rhythm and it becomes a rousing group peasant dance. By this point, it doesn’t sound a bit like the beginning, though it uses precisely the same material.

Mvt. 4
The same turning motive from the first movement introduces both principal themes in the finale—literally it begins the first theme and in inversion in the second theme. By now, we might recognize that this motive is simply a stretched out trill. Brahms makes this obvious later in the movement where the strings first harmonize a slow trill. At the conclusion of the piece, the trill creates a momentum that finishes the work not only with bravura, but with a strong reminiscence of the ending of Beethoven’s 9^th symphony—whose Ode To Joe tune is also structured around a turning-trill figure! As you continue to listen to this symphony, discover for yourself the full evolution of this motive.

BRAHMS: Piano Qt. 1
BRAHMS  Symphony No. 1

BRAHMS: Piano Qt. 1
Schoenberg orchestrated the work in 1937, and it was premiered and commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of then-Music Director Otto Klemperer at one of the Orchestra’s Saturday Evening Concerts. Schoenberg explained the rationale behind his orchestration in a letter to Alfred Frankenstein, the music critic of the San Francisco Chronicle:”¨ 

“1. I like the piece
2. It is seldom played
3. It is always very badly played, because the better the pianist, the louder he plays, and you hear nothing from the strings. I wanted once to hear everything, and this I achieved.”

One way Schoenberg did this, incidentally, was to give the piano part largely to the woodwinds! Their lighter sound certainly changes the balance of the piece from the kind of titanic piano writing with deep bass chords Brahms used in the piano quartet version.

Schoenberg at this time, having emigrated from Vienna to Los Angeles, was in a period of reflection on the relationship of his music with that of the masters preceding him. His American students were surprised that lessons with him did not include discussion of his twelve tone method, but instead involved intense discussions of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms. Klemperer commented at the premiere about Schoenberg’s arrangement of this Brahms piano quartet: “You can’t even hear the original quartet, so beautiful is the arrangement.” By that he meant Schoenberg had made the work truly symphonic.

DEVELOPING VARIATION
The first movement provides a strong example of Brahms’s famous technique developing variation—a technique that obsessed Schoenberg in his own music. Developing variation is a musical analog to germination in organic evolution, where the essence of a single cell multiplies continuously with incredible diversity to create an entire organism. For Brahms, the opening musical ideas in his music contain these “stem” cells that then multiply and mutate with extraordinary imagination. He still composes in the same sonata style of the classical masters—Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, but this developing variation process permeates the music from the very first notes into a continuing saga that transcends the classical structure. This process of course is also evident in Haydn and even more in Beethoven, but Brahms emphasized it to the point that every subsequent idea is a kind of hide-and-seek game to discover the relationship with the original melodic germ. This process extends throughout all the movements of the work. You can hear the opening of all four movements as a variation of a single idea that binds together the whole piano quartet!

 MVT 1
The opening tune:
The opening augmented triad hints at the contrast of major and minor with the F#, F natural shifts

The curling tail of thirds that descends (C-Eb-D; G-Bb-A) becomes a running commentary throughout the piece

The outline of a descending scale with chromatic notes—

The second theme: reverses this process with an ascending scale that uses chromatic notes. The hint of major mode in this minor surfaces at the third statement of this tune, which breaks through into major in a over a quicker expressive texture.

The overall impression of this movement is of a theme that is twisted upside down and backwards and forwards. Its contrapuntal dimension surely delighted Schoenberg, who had taken these ideas and placed them as the organizing foundation for his own musical breakthrough with his twelve tone system.

 MVT 4
The inner movements are a scherzo and Andante, with the delight and depth of expression we associate with Brahms. But I want to cut to the chase with the finale, a fiery Hungarian-style rondo. Here is where Schoenberg’s orchestration brings Brahms to a whole new level of color with a whole battery of percussion that includes a xylophone, glockenspiel, tambourine, triangle, cymbals, and drums. The vigor and virtuosity of this movement vies with Tchaikovsky and all the other 19^th century Russian colorists. And that’s probably something Schoenberg wanted to make apparent with his orchestration. Brahms could outdo them in splash and bling, yet still within his strong structural foundation.

The finale is actually preceded by a cadenza. And here Schoenberg goes to town, not being limited by the 4 instruments of the quartet. The first soloist is a clarinet, perhaps a nod to Brahms’ concentration on the clarinet late in his life. Then a violin takes over, and introduces a string quartet! Winds and the other strings gradually join in and increase the tempo. A huge snake of an ascending scale in the strings brings back the main Hungarian theme and the piece accumulates a blazingly fast pace racing to the end.

 BRAHMS  Symphony No. 1
The expectation that Brahms compose a symphony that would essentially be Beethoven’s 10^th became a burden difficult to imagine today. But it was a very real burden to Brahms. The Schumann’s expected it and fervently hoped Brahms could counter the Wagnerian fever they felt was destroying the legacy of Beethoven and Schubert. Robert Schumann wrote that Brahms was Beethoven’s true successor. And with that gargantuan testimonial, the rest of the musical world too waited to hear Brahms prove it with a symphony.

Brahms got earnestly to work and immediately suffered major crises in trying to measure up to Beethoven. Those “symphonic failures” eventually became some of the greatest chamber music and concerti in the repertoire. One early attempt was recast as the F minor Piano Quintet. Another became the first piano concerto in D minor. Both these works conjure the drama and motivic development of Beethoven, but in Brahms’ original style. Even late into his thirties, Brahms didn’t have the confidence to write a large scale orchestral work. Finally, he came up with the notion of writing a series of variations, a more confined structure that would free him to experiment with orchestration. This work was the Variations on a Theme by Haydn. It’s tremendous success finally persuaded him he was ready for a full symphony and by age 40, he released the Symphony No. 1 for public performance.

This piece has everything in it—everything he thought his audience might demand of a Beethoven “10th.” It’s in the proper Beethoven key of C minor. It has all the darkness and drama of Beethoven’s heroic period. But it also references later Beethoven, particularly the ninth symphony, in that this piece too is a cumulative journey. Where the Beethoven 9^th accumulates into Schiller’s Ode to Joy and the entrance of vocal soloists and full choir, the Brahms 1^st culminates first into an alpine Sheperd hymn (played by the horn) and then into a glorious instrumental melody that clearly references Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Like the Beethoven, the entrance of this melody is felt and is intended as a spiritual moment.

The ideas of the entire symphony are condensed in the opening introduction. The timpani drums incessantly on the tonic—and indeed the timpani will have a larger role in this work than almost any other symphony. One can’t help recalling the famous timpani pedal point before the finale of Beethoven’s 5^th symphony. I’m sure this was intentional.

Above the timpani are two soaring contrapuntal lines—one going up, the other down. The effect is of incredible tension, as if they are stretching the piece apart to some titanic breaking point—harmonically especially, with all kinds of clashing dissonance, but also rhythmically. The rest of the piece wrestles with these ideas.

This powerful introduction, incidentally, was composed after Brahms had already written the rest of the movement. The opening Allegro quickly summarizes the rising-falling tension and then is off with a theme of muscular rising and falling leaps.

Brahms develops music continually. So in a sense, his development “section” begins immediately in his music. This piece has that same feeling. Everything refers back to the opening.  The Second Theme is very similar to the First Theme, only more relaxed and in a major key.

 The beginning of the lyrical second movement always sounds a little awkward with the orchestra to me. I think that’s because it feels so much like a piano piece. But we can experience the depth of Brahms’ imagination with the way he elaborates and orchestrates this tune when it returns later on. Here it is so full, so magnificent and noble with the new opening line the violins play, and so varied in color, that only an orchestra could realize it.

The third movement is a gentle pastoral dance in duple meter that begins with the clarinet. This theme develops in variations. The contrasting trio has a triple “hunting song” feel. Discerning ears will notice that this new tune is also a variation of the opening clarinet theme.

The finale is nearly a 20 minute journey—definitely an ‘E’ ticket. It begins tragically, recalling the stretching apart from the beginning of the symphony. Then something truly strange occurs. The strings continue this tension in an extended passage plucking their strings. This tension accumulates in a passionate outburst of bowed strings and comes to a crashing halt with the rolling timpani. And then….a beam of sunlight! The horn plays this Shepherd tune and dispels the gloom. The strings play luminous tremolos above the horn, very much creating the magic that Wagner conjured in his operas.

When this shepherd tune returns in the recapitulation, it is accompanied by the incessant banging of the timpani—a clear reference to the sound that started the whole symphony. But now it’s sound is not foreboding or funereal. It’s clearly joyful—even though it’s playing the same note and just as loud as before!

With this exquisite preparation, the song of joy unfolds. Note that its second phrase is very similar to the second phrase of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. But because the opening phrase is different, we have a hard time placing just why it’s the same at first. I think the careful construction of this theme displays Brahms’ deviousness, both to us the public, and to the idea of having to measure up to Beethoven.

He retired from Harvard rather bitter. After decades of passionate teaching, he had little support from colleagues and lamented the time lost from composition. But in the years that followed, he entered a golden period of writing and received a growing number of world class performances. I particularly remember the triumph he had when Yo Yo Ma performed his cello concerto with the New York Philharmonic. The recording of that work went on to receive a Grammy. But as we walked together in Lincoln Center, what pleased him most was that he was being cheered in the same place that jeered him decades ago at the premiere of his opera Lily, an event that continued to haunt him.

Even in the last wonderful afternoon I spent with him this July, he talked about wanting to have the energy to rewrite the entire opera. We spent that day listening to the recording of his special 90^th birthday concert at Columbia University. I hope this gets published—he coached all the performances and they are transcendent.

That day he talked a great deal about his experiences with Schoenberg and Shostakovich. I particularly loved his phrase for Shostakovich, whom he said “came fully equipped.” By “fully equipped,” Kirchner meant that Shostakovich played piano on a world class level, conducted more than competently, could read the most complex scores in total comprehension possibly faster than anyone, and, oh yeah, write music on a level maybe a few hundred people achieved in Western history. That was what it took in Kirchner’s mind to be “fully equipped.” 

Kirchner inspired and instructed many generations of students. Cellist Yo Yo Ma and Composer John Adams are probably the most famous, but he had an impact on innumerable important artists working today. For instance, Alan Gilbert, the new music director of the New York Philharmonic, was a student in Kirchner’s famous Music 180 class. I still stay in contact and have enormous respect for many of my own “Kirchner” colleagues, such as pianists Lisa Weiss and Joel Fan, bassoonist/violist/music historian Derek Katz, and composers Roger Bourland, Noam Elkies, and Gary Noland.

For his students and friends, Leon was both an inspiring and terrifying figure. His powerful comments could lift you to the heights or send you into deep depression. His ego was formidable and he could be a bully. Yo Yo Ma really got it right when he told me he called Kirchner his “boulder.” You couldn’t resist or fight the boulder; you had to discover a way to go around it, or else get run over!

But that all dissolved when Kirchner talked about music. He became then the most truly humble spirit imaginable. And that was the main thing: whenever he talked about music, nothing else in the universe seemed more important. It brought all of us to a sense of high purpose, to a sense that we were participants in this beautiful musical dialogue across the centuries.

Next year the University of Rochester Press will publish Leon Kirchner’s authorized biography, written by Robert Riggs, another marvelous Kirchner student. Look forward to that. But in the meantime, check out his recordings!

--Russell

He also invited leading soloists around Europe to perform with the orchestra, worked to secure better financial terms for the musicians, and kept a very high level of performance. The orchestra became Mendelssohn’s orchestra! He also performed as soloist himself on piano and organ. All this was a huge innovation and achievement, and all of us are indebted to Mendelssohn for this service.

For all this, he received a large salary and permission to be away from Leipzig for half the year. Doesn’t that sound similar to today’s conductors? Gustavo Dudamel, for instance, will only be conducting our LA Philharmonic for less than 3 months this next year. Mendelssohn spent his summers composing and performing at music festivals such as this one where we gather. Some of his were the Lower Rhein Music Festival and the Cologne Choral Festival.

In an interesting aside, Richard Wagner submitted his first symphony to Mendelssohn for performance, which Mendelssohn apparently mislaid. That anecdote probably bears relevance in Wagner’s later horrible diatribe against Mendelssohn in his infamous essay “Judaism in Music.”

Later in Leipzig, 1839, a lawyer left a large bequest to create an arts institute and Mendelssohn successfully petitioned to have this money go to the creation of a music academy. Thus Mendelssohn founded the Leipzig Conservatory. He became its first director and included Robert Schumann and Joseph Joachim, among others, on its faculty. His innovations included requirements for students to participate in chamber music and orchestras, regular exams, and student evening recitals—pretty much the hallmarks of our present day conservatories. The Leipzig Conservatory is the oldest continuing music school in Germany, but was renamed the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy School of Music and Theater in 1972. You’ve heard of some of its alumni, I believe—Sir Arthur Sullivan, Edvard Grieg, Isaac Albeniz, Miklos Rosza, Klauss Tennstedt, Kurt Masur, to name a few!

His duties with the Leipzig orchestra and conservatory were only half his work. He also toured regularly. In 1844 he made his eighth visit to England conducting six concerts of his own works and Bach and Beethoven. He was a welcome guest of Queen Victoria. He composed rapidly in the summer and other holidays. The famous violin concerto and the string quintet in B flat major came from these holidays. Many comment that his health failed because he was simply working himself to death. By 1845, his doctors were advising him to cut back, but performance commitments in Germany and England made that difficult.

Mendelssohn married Cecile Jeanrenaud, the daughter of a French Protestant clergyman, when he was 28 and had five children with her. In his mid-thirties, just four years before his death, he reputedly had an affair with the famous Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. The Mendelssohn Scholarship Foundation, founded by Lind after his death, reportedly has an affidavit from Lind’s husband that it will not release. It reportedly describes Felix’s request to Lind in 1847 that they elope and travel to America. What is certain is that Mendelssohn and Lind were very close in his last years.

In 1846, he composed the oratorio Elijah  in his “time off” on a spring and summer break . His tenth visit to England was centered around the huge success of Elijah. But on returning home to Germany, he heard about Fanny’s death. He went to several places to recover from the news—Baden-Baden, and later Interlaken where he composed his F minor string quartet as a requiem for his sister. Returning finally to Leipzig, friends commented on how frail he looked. He visited his sister’s grave finally in Berlin and became seriously ill, not being able to conduct his Gewandhaus concerts. In October he suffered a stroke and then had a series of strokes, finally dying in November. He was buried near his sister in Berlin, but memorial concerts were given throughout Germany and England.

Mendelssohn Aesthetics

Mendelssohn’s aesthetic outlook is regularly called conservative; not just conservative in the sense of appreciation for the older music of Bach, but in an aversion to the excesses of Romanticism. He particularly disliked the French composers, such as Berlioz or Meyerbeer (to whom he was distantly related). He was also not a fan of Liszt or Wagner. Wagner lead an army of detractors after Mendelssohn’s death aimed at reducing his achievements. The Nazis banned all performances of his music. And what I notice is that the true remaining champions of Mendelssohn’s music in our time are those of us who love chamber music. Chamber music lovers seem immune to political rhetoric. For them (us), it seems less important that music be important than that it be beautiful. And Mendelssohn never fails us on that account.

Want to know why the wedding march from Midsummer Night’s Dream is played at all weddings? Queen Victoria ordered it played for her daughter’s wedding in 1858.Hark the Herald Angels Sing, one of the most celebrated Christmas carols,  is a tune from Mendelssohn’s secular canata Festgesang adapted and set to words by Charles Wesley.

 ON WINGS OF SONG, Op. 34

This became one of Mendelssohn’s most popular songs. As always, his lyrical gift is unerring. Unlike Schubert and later lied composers, Mendelssohn tends to let the music reign supreme over the words. Most of his songs are strophic-that is, the music stays the same through the different poetic stanzas. This particular piece has inspired arrangements for other instruments.

BERLIOZ LA NUITS D’ETÉ (Summer Nights)

Mendelssohn and Berlioz
Mendelssohn and Berlioz met first in Rome in 1831. They met again after the first performance of Mendelssohn’s revised cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht which Berlioz attended and apparently liked very much. Berlioz was in Germany touring and having difficulty making an impression. Mendelssohn came to his aid and helped prepare his Leipzig performances, bringing Berlioz his first recognition in Germany.

Berlioz’s song cycle “Summer Nights” has the distinction of being the first orchestral set of songs. Tonight we hear them in their original version for voice and piano. That Mendelssohn supported Berlioz is surprising because their aesthetic is so markedly different. This music, unlike Mendelssohn’s, is not “Bach bound.” It is not ruled by a bass line and clearly functional harmonic progression. Instead it takes surprising harmonic leaps and dramatic textural changes. Its figuration is especially fresh and original, sometimes even harsh and abrupt. Whereas Mendelssohn sets his music strophically, Berlioz lets the text waft the music to surprising realms.

 MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80
If it hasn’t already been written, there is a great doctoral thesis waiting to be created on the differing influence of Beethoven on Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn. Both of them were on fire for Beethoven’s dramatic music. Felix absorbed Beethoven’s dramatic harmonies and textures, but he kept them rooted in his Bachian aesthetic of a continuing moving bass line and consistent motoric rhythmic patterns, all over an essentially lyrical framework. Fanny strayed further than Felix, clearly enticed by Beethoven’s experimental harmonies and textural juxtapositions. In her music she hints at letting the bass line go for awhile and letting the musical motives dominate. Fanny died May 1847, and that summer in July Mendelssohn vacationed in Interlaken and composed his last string quartet as a requiem for his sister. I gather that he was celebration Fanny’s adoration of Beethoven and this quartet has all kind of Beethovenian references. It has in fact the feel of Beethoven’s early f minor piano sonata as well as the later Appassionata sonata and his string quartets. The second movement uses the rhythmic games that Beethoven loved to use in his scherzi and the slow movement opens similarly to the great cavatina from Beethoven’s op. 130 quartet.

Mendelssohn’s music is always finely knit, something learned from his careful study of J.S.Bach. The seams where events begin and end are often invisible. The opening of this quartet is a case in point. It opens with dramatic tremolos and stormy scales. But this opening might not really be the beginning! What sticks in our memory is the phrase after these scales with its dramatic dotted rhythms and imitation. That might have us conclude that the opening was an introduction to this other phrase. However, then the process repeats with the tremolos and scales returning. We expect the dotted rhythm to return as well, and it does. But now it is less dramatic and has a true melody. Could this be the real theme of the movement? We only learn the answer at the recapitulation after the development section. The retransition is an extension of those opening tremolos and scales. And the return to the home key only happens with the quieter dotted rhythm theme. Now, finally, we know that this quieter theme is the true “beginning” and the true first theme of the movement.

A similar game, but far more expressive, is the opening of the adagio third movement. The cello plays a solo low turning phrase before the violin begins the theme. But the end of the theme uses those very same turning notes. So in retrospect, we realize that the opening of the piece was the end of the phrase, not its beginning. Mendelssohn focuses increasingly on this turn as the piece unfolds, increasing its length and drama as an extended upbeat to the theme.

The second movement uses a splendid metrical game called hemiola. The lower strings play a fast rhythm in threes while the first violin plays a rhythm in threes twice as slow above it. This push and pull is a often used, but powerful technique from Beethoven’s arsenal. It creates confusion and excitement until the faster rhythm in threes “wins out.”

MENDELSSOHN Concerto in D Minor for Violin, Piano and Strings
In the "olden" days, before widespread publishing, composers learned their craft by literally copying music. There is a legend of young Sebastian Bach’s uncle not allowing the boy to use the organ book, which was stashed in a cabinet under lock and key. Sebastian got hold of the key, took the book late at night, and by candlelight, copied the entire thing. The other tried and true method for learning composition is to model the structure and ideas of a piece of music or a particular composer using original material.

Mendelssohn apparently did that to a considerable degree. One reason he undoubtedly matured so fast, was that he wrote an incredible amount of music that shows him methodically absorbing the music of Bach and Mozart. Just try to imagine yourself writing 12 string symphonies between ages 12 and 14. Doing that, you have to learn a thing or two. At age 14, he composed this concerto for violin and piano. It is evidence of exquisite craftsmanship. Nevertheless, it’s a funny thing.  Let me demonstrate.

Listen to the opening. That could be music from any of a number of baroque composers, the way it begins imitating a short subject in d minor. But now listen to the second theme— it sounds like a student imitating Mozart—a style of music about 50 years later than the opening. And that’s how this piece goes. The second movement has a piano solo very much in the style of early Beethoven. The third movement extends clearly into the Romantic Era with a brisk wild folk music. And of course, many moments in the concerto reveal what will eventually become Mendelssohn’s personal style. But that’s how this concerto goes. It mashes all these different kinds of music and styles together and somehow it all works! The level of virtuosity is also astonishing, especially in the fireworks of the third movement. Young Mendelssohn clearly wrote the piece with his own technical proficiency in mind.

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