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Queens, Heroines and Ladykillers: Curtain Raisers and High Drama Friday 8 March 2013
Programme notes
Robert Schumann
(1810–1856)
Symphony No. 2 in
C major, Op. 61
(i) Sostenuto assai – Allegro, ma
non troppo
(ii) Scherzo: Allegro vivace
(iii) Adagio espressivo
(iv) Allegro molto vivace
18
Three of Schumann’s four
symphonies date from two
extraordinary bursts of creativity a
decade apart, in 1841 and 1851,
though he’d previously toyed with
the medium in the early 1830s. So
what prompted him to write
symphonies? Like his
contemporaries, he experienced
the burden of Beethoven’s legacy,
but it’s clear from his writings that
he also felt that the symphony had
to find its way into the modern age.
He was also encouraged by his
wife, Clara, who felt that
symphonies were an essential
ingredient in any self-respecting
composer’s CV.
Schumann had sketched his
First in a mere four days in 1841.
But the Second was a very different
animal, not least because in the
four years that separate the two
works he claimed to have begun
writing in a completely new style.
Counterpoint became increasingly
important in his musical workingout
and plays a significant part in
the Second Symphony. This is
particularly evident in the finale,
where he combines variations on a
hymn tune with a chorale melody
that opened the symphony and
played a prominent role
throughout the first movement.
Tautness of working-out is, as ever
with this composer, an essential
way of building coherence into a
large-scale structure. The work’s
Scherzo* has all the scorching
energy of Mendelssohn, but
harmonically and melodically it
could be by no one but Schumann,
while his ear for colour, particularly
in the more chamber-musical
moments of scoring, is unfailingly
effective. There’s an instance of
Schumann weaving into the music
his own secret message too: before
the midpoint of the finale he
introduces a melody (first heard on
the oboe) that makes reference to
both Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ and
his own Piano Fantasie, which
itself included a quotation from
Beethoven’s An die ferne Geliebte
song-cycle, as a message of love to
Clara).
The work’s inherently uplifting
character belies the traumatic time
that Schumann had been having.
He began sketching the piece
(again with extreme rapidity) late
in 1845, the year after a bad
breakdown, orchestrating it over
the following months.
Mendelssohn conducted the
premiere but it was not particularly
well received and Schumann
fretted to his publisher that his
illness might have been all too
apparent: ‘I began to feel more
myself when I wrote the last
movement, and was assuredly
better when I finished the whole
work. Still, it reminds me of dark
days.’ And perhaps it is that sense
of overcoming adversity that
helped to create such a striking
amalgam, at once stirring and
profoundly moving.
Programme notes by
Harriet Smith © 2013