program - SVIZ

in the conception of the second theme, which begins with the same interval
sequence (fourth-third) as the first theme, showing that Haydn was engaging
with the idea of monothematicism. If the first movement is explicitly stormy
the second is unusually calm – with its obviously galant quality and its focus
on the strings alone it flirts with older forms. The subsequent minuet returns
to the initial Minor tonality, while the stormy finale re-establishes the expressiveness
of the first movement.
PROGRAM / PROGRAM
The next important tectonic shifts in the development of the symphony
were brought about by the symphonic opus of Beethoven. Above all in the
Third, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies he established entirely new standards:
the symphony became an organically rounded work that demanded to be
understood. It is, therefore, first necessary to break through analytically to the
secrets of its construction, and then it is possible to establish links between
the complex musical technique and phenomena related to a world view. At
first, such an obviously in-depth attitude towards composition perplexed
listeners, and then in spite of the complexity they nonetheless recognised the
far-reaching scope of the composer’s ideas. Thus the audience was almost
somewhat disappointed with the master’s Eighth Symphony. At the concert
at which, along with a number of other works by the composer, Beethoven’s
Seventh and Eighth Symphonies were performed, the audience welcomed
the former with enthusiasm while the response to the latter was rather tepid.
This angered Beethoven, as he was convinced that the Eighth Symphony was
better than the Seventh. Listeners were no doubt surprised by the almost ‘old
fashioned’ tone of the symphony, which flirts with its classical predecessors
by Haydn and Mozart (instead of a scherzo Beethoven placed an ‘out-of-date’
minuet in the third movement). The audience did not recognise the fact that
Beethoven actually establishes a clear, almost ironic, distance towards classicism,
as is demonstrated by the numerous harmonic surprises, the humorous
play with rhythm (syncopation and displaced accents) and the formal surprises
(in the first movement the concluding coda is 72 bars long, and in the finale
the coda has 250 bars, which is almost half of the movement). That which
stirred the audience up most, however, was the humorous second movement,
which, according to anecdotal evidence whose reliability cannot be entirely
confirmed, Beethoven wrote for Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, the inventor of the
metronome. It is true that the movement pulses in a mechanical rhythm that
is reminiscent of the ticking of a clock or metronome, but above this rhythmic
monotony unfolds an attractive tune.
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In spite of the fact that it often seems that the opus of Russian romantic
composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is marked above all by powerful emotion,
it is important to realise that the composer actually admired the music
of Mozart. It was precisely a love of Mozart that inspired Tchaikovsky to
compose works in which one can feel a certain playful classical spirit. This
is true in particular of the pantomime from the opera The Queen of Spades,
the Fourth Orchestral Suite, also known as the ‘Mozartiana’, and not least
of the Variations on a Rococo Theme. The latter was written by Tchaikovsky