program - SVIZ

in fact, derived from his travels in America, during which he was enthused by
the beauty of the natural reserves Bryce Canyon and Cedar Breaks. Witten
for solo horn, the sixth movement demonstrates a strictly symmetrical form,
as it is constructed from an introduction, a refrain, a central development,
a repetition of the refrain and a coda, which is conceived as a crab canon of
the introduction. We can understand the latter as a kind of demonstration
of various performance possibilities offered by this brass instrument: we can
hear flutter tonguing, trills, microtonal oscillations and glissandi. In contrast to
this are the two refrains, in which the composer treats the horn as a typically
‘romantic’ signal instrument. It is precisely in this combining of the contemporary
and the traditional that we discover the main trait of Messiaen’s late
opus, which is marked by a synthesis of all of the composer’s compositional
searching, as evident in the superposition of rhythms, taken from Indian music,
the use of modes of limited transposition and the exploitation of the melodic
wealth of bird calls (throughout the work we hear the tonal arabesques of
birds that live in the Bryce Canyon and on the Hawaiian islands).
PROGRAM / PROGRAM
In the autumn of 1773, the seventeen-year-old Mozart returned from a nine-week
stint in Vienna and immediately began to compose a series of five
symphonies. The second of them is the so-called ‘Little’ Symphony in G Minor,
the first of the composer’s symphonies in a Minor key. The work is characterised
by a dark, frightening tone, but its ‘more serious’ tone cannot be linked
with some kind of personal crisis of the composer. It is much more likely that in
Vienna the young Mozart heard the ‘sturm und drang’ symphonies of Joseph
Haydn, amongst them most certainly the masterful Symphony No. 39, which,
just like Mozart’s symphony, is composed in G Minor and has four horns. In
fact, Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 represents significant progress relative to his
youthful works: the thematic relationships between the movements become
more thought out, the musical style is denser, three movements are written in
sonata form, the development becomes more extensive, and the symphony
is cyclically connected. The symphony demonstrates a certain shift from the
gallant music making that was predominant at the time, being marked by
syncopated rhythms, relentless repetition of tones, dramatic unisons and
chromatic stringency.
Even the first movement is full of falling and rising syncopations, with the
intensity being carried forward to the second theme of this sonata movement.
The melancholy atmosphere also flows into the second movement, in which
the bassoon stands out from the muted strings with its characteristic sighing
motive. The minuet is also darkly coloured, with the only light being provided
by the short trio, scored for wind alone. The finale commences immediately
with a unison, before a return of the syncopations that marked first movement,
providing the work with a meaningful rounded conclusion.
132
Gregor Pompe
Prevod / Translation: Neville Hall