Program Notes for Virginia Symphony Orchestra Classics #03 Beethoven & Mahler 7-9 Nov.2014 By Laurie Shulman ©2014 First North American Serial Rights Only Vienna is the common denominator for this weekend’s program. Although neither Beethoven nor Mahler was born there, each man made the Austrian capital his home and both played central roles in the city’s vibrant musical life. The works we hear are relatively early: Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto, featuring French pianist Prisca Benoît in her VSO debut, and Mahler’s First Symphony.
“Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.1 is one of those wonderful pieces that are so much in the shadow of his Fourth and Fifth Concerti,” says JoAnn Falletta. “When you play this music, you realize what a jewel it is. Beethoven wrote with an almost Mozartean fragrance. The structure is very classical.
“Of course he wrote the concerto for himself,” she continues. “At this stage of his career [the mid-1790s], he was earning his living in large part by performing in public. The concerto had to be a crowd pleaser. He invested a lot of shining pianism in the concerto.”
All three movements have marvelous moments. Beethoven’s opening Allegro con brio takes its ceremonial and military character from Mozart’s Concerto No.25, K.503, also in C major. An elaborate solo cadenza contributes to the movement’s remarkable length: a solid 17 minutes. At the time of its first performance in December 1795, that would have been the longest concerto movement Beethoven’s Viennese audience had ever heard.
The slow movement Largo is a lyrical cantilena with rich ornamentation and a tranquil spirit that look forward to the Emperor Concerto. Beethoven’s bubbly finale is among the wittiest movements that he ever composed. The bravura writing that bursts forth in the opening measures is closely related to the most brilliant of his early piano sonatas, and sets a rollicking tone that lasts throughout the movement. “There are plenty of high spirits at the end,” says Ms. Falletta.
Following intermission, she leads the orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No.1 in D major, known as the ‘Titan.’ The nickname comes from a novel by Jean-Paul Richter published in four volumes between 1800 and 1803. The novel was a favorite of Mahler’s. Richter’s tale is a coming of age story, tracking the hero’s adventures and educational experiences as he progresses from brash youth to wiser, mature man. Mahler later abjured the association, but the subtitle has stuck and the autobiographical implications are strong.
“We haven’t performed the First Symphony in a long while,” observes Ms. Falletta, “but we have performed other large works by Mahler – most notably the Eighth Symphony [at the Virginia Arts Festival in 2012]. Going back to this First Symphony puts everything in perspective. We see the beginning of this wonderful journey that Mahler took, finding his way as a symphonist. The First Symphony is rooted in song. It has simplicity and tremendous power, a deep poignancy that he communicates in a very innocent way, especially in the context of the later symphonies.
“Performing this symphony requires endurance, not only physically but also in terms of
emotional content,” she continues. “Mahler is constantly shifting emotional states. Musicians have to be on their toes, connected to every moment of playing.”
She singles out the third movement, which is a minor mode setting of ‘Frère Jacques,’ crossed with references to Jewish klezmer music. “The slow movement shows us Mahler’s Jewish roots,” she says. “He was still clearly in touch with his childhood, and perhaps feeling guilty about having converted to Catholicism simply to be able to work in Vienna. He had a complicated relationship to his religious roots. The distortion of ‘Frère Jacques’ brings that out. He takes something childlike and innocent and turns it into something dark, almost menacing.”
The monumental finale is nearly as long as the previous three movements combined. “Mahler wasn’t focused on symmetry and balance in the way that his predecessors were,” explains Ms. Falletta. “In Haydn, for example, the finale was a jolly way to bid the audience farewell. For Mahler, concluding a symphony meant something much freer, even wilder at the end: a summation of the whole piece.”
Mahler revised the First Symphony repeatedly. His first sketches date from the mid1880s. As late as 1906, he was still tweaking the piece. “As he became busier, he had to let things go,” says Ms. Falletta. “His declining health affected his productivity. But something about this First Symphony made him keep returning to it. It is as if he felt that it summed up who he was as a musician.”
More extended notes by Laurie Shulman are available at www.virginiasymphony.org
Concerto No. 1 in C major for Piano & Orchestra, Op.15 Ludwig van Beethoven Born 16 December, 1770 in Bonn, Germany Died 26 March, 1827 in Vienna, Austria Approximate duration 36 minutes When Beethoven moved from Bonn to Vienna late in 1792, he quickly established himself as a gifted piano virtuoso. Gaining recognition as a composer took a little longer – but not much. By the mid-1790s, the young firebrand from Bonn had acquired several wealthy patrons and enjoyed an enthusiastic following in the imperial capital. Like other composerperformers of the day, he was his own best advertisement for his original compositions. A piano concerto was an essential vehicle for self-promotion. Despite its designation as "first" and early opus number, the C major concerto was not Beethoven's first piano concerto. He tried his hand at concerto writing as a teenager in Bonn with an early work in E-flat. Better known than that youthful effort is the Concerto in B-flat, Op.19, which was composed in 1795 and appeared on Viennese concert programs in the mid1790s. The C major concerto was composed in the late 1790s, possibly as early as 1796 and certainly by 1798. Beethoven played it frequently at this stage of his career, when he had earned a formidable reputation as a pianist. Many critics have noted the strong imprint of the Mozartean piano concerto on this work. In particular the ceremonial/military character, and tonality of Mozart's 25th concerto, K. 503 in C, invite comparison. Less obvious but equally compelling is the parallel in virtuosic figuration patterns with Mozart's D major concerto, K.537 ("Coronation"). Clearly Beethoven had studied Mozart's works carefully. Beethoven expanded significantly on the Mozartean concerto model. The first movement expands to about 17 minutes, in part because of Beethoven's elaborate solo cadenza, but also because of the symphonic treatment of the whole. Despite its unusual length, the Allegro con brio is compact. The characteristic reworking of motivic ideas mingles with some surprisingly singable melodies. The slow movement is a lovely cantilena in the sub-mediant key of A-flat. Both its rich ornamentation and its tranquil spirit look forward to the Emperor concerto. A lovely clarinet solo contributes an intimate, chamber-music like dialogue to this movement. The bubbly finale is among the wittiest movements that Beethoven ever composed. Even its subsidiary themes exude rhythmic vitality, fully realizing the scherzando instruction of Beethoven's subtitle. Beethoven used a relatively large orchestra for this concerto. The score calls for flute, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, solo piano, and strings.
Symphony No.1 in D major, "Titan" Gustav Mahler
Born 7 July, 1860 in Kalischt, Bohemia Died 18 May, 1911 in Vienna, Austria Approximate duration 53 minutes Bruckner and Mahler are so often mentioned in the same breath that music-lovers who probe a little deeper are startled to discover how remarkably different they really were. One similarity holds, however: both composers revised their symphonies, frequently and extensively. The stories and reasons vary, of course, for each man and each of his works. Only rarely was Bruckner or Mahler satisfied with a first effort. Mahler established that pattern even before composing his First Symphony. His early song cycle, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen [Songs of a Wayfarer], occupied him on and off for almost 13 years, from 1883 to 1896. The First Symphony took even longer to bring to final form. His first sketches date from 1884, about a year after completing his initial draft of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, one of whose songs ("Ging heut' morgen übers Feld") figures as the principal theme of the symphony's opening movement. Mahler had completed the first version by spring 1888. After it received a chilly reception at the Budapest premiere in November 1889, he shelved it. Between 1893 and 1896 the symphony underwent extensive revision, and Mahler chose not to publish it until 1899. Discarded movement In Mahler's original conception, the work was a symphonic poem in two parts and five movements. Mahler discarded his original second movement, known as Blumine ["A Chaplet of Flowers"] in the early score, in 1898, shortly before the symphony was published. Blumine was an Andante in C-major that appears to have been adapted from incidental music Mahler composed in 1883 for Joseph Viktor Scheffel's poem, Der Trompeter von Säkkingen. The symphony's autograph manuscript was missing for many years. It turned up in 1967, revealing significant differences in orchestration from the published score. The previously unknown Blumine movement also explained the origin of one of the themes used in the section of the finale that quotes from the preceding movements.
A favorite novel: Mahler’s literary inspiration Jean-Paul Richter's novel "Titan," a personal favorite of Mahler's, was the source of the
symphony's subtitle. In this context, it was intended to connote a "vigorous, heroic man." Later in life, Mahler abjured the subtitle altogether. In 1896, he told a friend that his First Symphony had been inspired by "a passionate love." Most scholars believe he drafted the work while embroiled in an affair with Marion von Weber, wife of Carl Maria von Weber's grandson, but at least two other women -- Johanna Meier and Josephine Moisl -- are associated with the two Gesellen songs he quotes in the symphony. With Mahler, a simple explanation rarely suffices, and there is always more than initially meets the eye or ear. His love interest at the time is only one aspect of the autobiographical aural canvas this symphony paints. Mahler once wrote of his first two symphonies, "My whole life is contained in them."
Mahler's symphony is indeed
cosmic in nature, and addresses weighty topics such as love and life itself.
Morning in the mountains A shimmering slow introduction to the first movement pulsates with the pastoral sounds of a glorious alpine summer morning. Mahler wants us to feel light breezes ruffling our hair and to hear the chirp of birds, the call of shepherds. All these sensations are part of everyday experience in the rural setting that remained dear to Mahler his entire life. Their decisive placement as the opening gesture of this highly gestural symphony reveals much: Mahler put a lot of his cards on the table with this first symphonic hand, and he continued to play them out during his entire career. Equally important from a motivic standpoint is the method of delivery: an insistent falling fourth that develops into a significant building block of the musical structure.
The famous D-major theme of the first movement [Immer sehr gemächlich, or "always comfortable, unrushed"] is identical to that of the second song in the Wayfarer cycle. In that
earlier context, a dejected lover is impervious to the delicious appeal of nature's charm in the early morning hours. No such lovelorn blindness blocks the listener's appreciation of this symphonic movement, which seems to dance with anticipation and untrammeled joy.
The festive atmosphere continues in the second movement, Kräftig bewegt [With vigorous movement], which functions as a scherzo. Mahler borrows both from elegant Viennese ballrooms and country villages; their shared quality is the sheer joy of the dance. Ultimately, the Austrian peasant Ländler prevails over the waltz in this compound gesture of homage to Haydn, Schubert, and Bruckner. This movement is the most traditional in the symphony, and thus it is fitting that Mahler should pay his respects to his distinguished symphonic predecessors. In the trio section in F major, the music calms down considerably, permitting the dancers to catch their breath. One cannot help but wonder whether Richard Strauss had the strains of this distinctly more waltz-like passage in mind two decades later, when he composed the opera Der Rosenkavalier.
Nursery song meets Klezmer music The third movement, which opens with what is arguably the best-known string bass solo in the orchestral repertoire, is vintage Mahler. Accompanied by timpani, the bass solo becomes a funeral march crossed with a nursery song, followed by a Jewish street tune and a fleeting reference (in the G-major trio section) to another of the Songs of a Wayfarer ("Die zwei blauen Augen. . ."). With searing irony and bitter humor, Mahler casts a spell, drawing the listener into a hypnotic, singsong parody by means of a mocking oboe. ridiculous sublime:
In the process, he makes the
Frère Jacques consorting with a vulgar street fiddler in a bizarre
contrapuntal duet.
Anguish, struggle, and triumph The finale is monumental, as long as the two prior movements combined. Mahler likened its opening to the cry of a wounded heart. He makes the listener suffer -- as he presumably did -before he yields to the victorious strains of D major in which the symphony resolves. There are parallels with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (in triumph emerging from struggle) and Ninth Symphony (quotations from each of the preceding movements establishing cyclic unity). All the quotations are prelude to the jubilation of a spectacular climax.
PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE From the standpoint of orchestral size, both in terms of number of players and variety of instruments, Mahler's First Symphony was a landmark work. Other factors make this symphony historically important. Mahler consolidated trends that developed during the second half of the nineteenth century, such as the cross-pollination of themes among various movements (a technique that is particularly evident when the discarded Blumine movement is considered as a part of the whole).
Also, the emphasis on the last movement, rather than the first, completely altered the emotional impact and psychological weight of the symphony. While Mahler was not the first to expand a finale to this extent, he carried it further than anyone had beforehand. More than any of the other movements, this is the one in which we hear most clearly the passionate and personal voice that was to ripen into the rich harvest of the symphonies that lay ahead.
Mahler scored his First Symphony for four flutes (two doubling piccolo), four oboes (one doubling English horn), four clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), three bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), seven horns, five trumpets, three trombones, tuba, four timpani (requiring two players), cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, bass drum, harp and strings.
