November–December 2012 - Baltimore magazine

{ Program notes
Brahms had persuaded his Viennese
publisher Simrock to take on Dvořák’s music
in the 1870s. But by the late 1880s, when the
Eighth Symphony was written, relations between
Dvořák and Simrock were becoming
strained. The firm urged him to keep writing
his popular Slavonic Dances and other
shorter, lighter pieces, which they claimed
were more lucrative than his symphonies and
concertos. For his Eighth Symphony, they
offered an insultingly low price, one-third
of the fee for his Seventh Symphony. By
then hugely popular in England, however,
Dvořák was able to sell his new symphony
to the London publisher Novello for a more
attractive fee.
Composed between August and November
1889 and premiered on February 2, 1890
under the composer’s baton in Prague, the
Eighth Symphony reflects the world of
Vysoká and of Czech folk song and dance.
After his rather Germanic Seventh, Dvořák
wrote that he wanted to create something
“different from the other symphonies, with
individual thoughts worked out in a new
way.” In the first, second, and fourth movements
of the Eighth, he used freer forms and
a flexible mixing of major and minor modes
to produce marvelous shadows and nuances
in a fundamentally happy work. The Eighth
is also the most melodious of his symphonies
and wonderfully orchestrated, with the
woodwind and string sections used throughout
as contrasting color families.
The first movement begins with a short
introduction. Cellos, reinforced by clarinets,
bassoons and horns, sing a gently melancholy
theme in the minor. Then a piping-birdsong
flute idea opens the main Allegro section in G
major, and the orchestra gathers its forces in
an exciting crescendo. Divided violas and cellos
introduce a stately repeated-note theme,
and the orchestra bursts into vivacious life.
This unconventional yet highly effective
opening could be a portrait of daybreak in
the Czech countryside, with the flute-bird
greeting the first rays of the sun and then
daylight flooding the landscape as man and
beast awaken to bustling activity. A second,
more lyrical group of themes opens with a
rocking melody in the violins, followed by an
upward-leaping tune for woodwinds.
The development section, launched by the
flute birdcall, is full of rustic atmosphere and
wit, rather than heavy-breathing dramatics.
At its close, trumpets blaze forth the opening
cello theme, giving it an altogether new character.
The much-compressed recapitulation
flows into an exuberant closing coda.
20 Overture | WWW.bSomuSIc.org
An atmospheric mood piece, the Adagio
second movement weaves between minor
and major, lightheartedness and a sense of
sadness, even tragedy. It opens in C minor
with a dark, yearning melody in the strings,
punctuated by more woodwind birdcalls.
Then the picture brightens to C major, and
solo oboe and flute sing a soaring, idyllic
tune above delicate down-rushing strings;
this section gradually grows weightier and
more passionate. After a reprise of the opening
music, horns introduce a tragic mood to
funeral-march-like blows on the timpani. An
airy coda gathers together all the contrasting
emotional colors of this subtle movement.
A delicately soaring waltz in G minor
forms the third movement, surrounding
a bucolic trio section in G major led by the
woodwinds. So fertile are his powers of melodic
invention that Dvořák even throws in a
brand-new folk dance in duple meter to wrap
up the movement.
A trumpet fanfare opens the finale, which
is, in Michael Steinberg’s words, a series of
“footloose variations” on a warm, folksy
theme introduced by the cellos. The most
striking variations come in an exotic, earthy
section in C minor, reminiscent of some of
Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances. Toward the end,
the tempo keeps accelerating as the whole
orchestra—but the whooping horns most of
all—cut loose in an uninhibited dance of joy.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, piccolo, two oboes,
english horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, four
horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba,
timpani and strings.
Piano Concerto No. 2
in B-flat Major
Johannes Brahms
born in Hamburg, germany, may 7, 1833;
died in vienna, Austria, April 13, 1897
In April 1878, Johannes Brahms decided to
treat himself to a vacation in Italy. And, like
many travelers before and since, he fell in love
with this land of sunshine, good living, and
even greater art and would return there eight
more times. To his longtime friend, the celebrated
pianist Clara Schumann, he penned
a “wish-you-were-here” letter:
“How often do I not think of you, and
wish that your eye and heart might know
the delight which the eye and heart experiences
here! If you stood for only one
hour in front of the facade of the Cathe-
dral of Siena, you would be overjoyed…
On the following day, in Orvieto, you
would be forced to acknowledge that the
cathedral there was even more beautiful;
and after all this to plunge into Rome is a
joy beyond words…”
Though his eyes were dazzled by what he
saw in Italy, the composer found little in
Italian music to please his German ears. But
the rich visual stimulation did indeed inspire
a new work, which would eventually become
his Second Piano Concerto.
The Second concerto is a
truly symphonic conception
in the manner of Beethoven’s
concertos, with orchestra and
pianist equal participants in
the musical journey.
In July 1881, he announced the concerto’s
birth in a series of teasing letters to
several friends. To Dr. Theodor Billroth,
the companion of his Italian sightseeing, he
sent a copy of the bulky score with a note
identifying it as “a couple of little piano
pieces.” To his current muse, the lovely and
safely married Elizabeth von Herzogenberg,
he revealed: “I have written a tiny little piano
concerto with a tiny wisp of a scherzo.”
More appropriately, the composer revealed
the true nature of his newest creation to von
Herzogenberg when he described it as “the
long Terror.”
For the Second Piano Concerto is long
indeed: with four substantial movements lasting
approximately 50 minutes, it is the size of
two ordinary concertos put together. And it
is monumental in its architecture, emotional
scope, and the demands it places on the pianist
(for many, this is a more difficult work to
pull off successfully than the notorious Rachmaninoff
Third). Brahms scholar Malcolm
MacDonald describes its technical challenges
well: “In its massive chording, wide [finger]
stretches, vigor, richness and textural variety,
the piano writing is the most elaborate result
of his lifelong fascination with virtuoso
technique. …Above all, the role of the soloist
is fluid …he or she must …dominate with
the utmost power at certain junctures, but
other moments call for extreme delicacy and
limpidity of touch, the reticence and self-