Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833 and died in Vienna in 1897. Sketches for this work date back as far as 1862, but Brahms did most of the composing between 1874 and 1876. The first performance took place at Karlsruhe, Baden in 1876 under the direction of Otto Dessoff. The symphony calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, and strings.

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I shall never compose a symphony! You have no conception of how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like him behind us.” So said Brahms to his friend, conductor Hermann Levi; the “giant,” of course, was Beethoven.

Everyone wondered how Brahms could have reached his early forties without writing a symphony. After all, at the same age Beethoven had completed eight of his nine, Haydn half a hundred. When Brahms was only 21 his friend Robert Schumann wrote, “But where is Johannes? Is he flying high or only under the flowers? Is he not yet ready to let drums and trumpets sound? The beginning is the main thing; if only one makes the beginning, then the end comes of itself.”

Brahms did, in fact, make beginnings, but the ends didn’t quite come of themselves. After hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony Brahms was inspired to compose a symphony in the same key of D-minor. He completed three movements before he abandoned the project. The music he produced was good—two of the movements were used later in the D-minor Piano Concerto and one found its way into Ein Deutsches Requiem—but apparently not good enough. “Composing a symphony is no laughing matter,” said Brahms, no doubt hearing the giant’s footsteps behind him.

Brahms knew that his First Symphony would be seen as an artistic manifesto in an age when such things were taken very seriously. Many romantic composers looked upon Beethoven as the Great Liberator, the one who opened the doors to unbridled romanticism. Brahms, on the other hand, was predisposed to believe that much of the strength of Beethoven’s romanticism came largely from his classicism, that the dramatic outbursts were all the more powerful because of the surrounding context of discipline. For Brahms, the heart and mind had to counterbalance each other.

Critical reaction to the First Symphony was mixed. The champions of unfettered romanticism took the symphony as a rebuke to their aesthetic and treated it as such; the fans of Brahms’ style, on the other hand, called it “Beethoven’s Tenth.” Those with greater insight delighted in how Brahms’ passion—as refined by his intellect—led to a work whose impact was greater than either.

Today the First Symphony is a monument familiar to all. There is the pulsing introduction to the turbulent first movement; the melancholy second; the graceful, tune-laden third; and the transcendent Finale, with its startling transformation of a reverent trombone chorale into a bold consummation—all are remembered, yet each encounter with the symphony is a renewal.

The comparisons to Beethoven were inevitable, then as now. In a way, both men approached the same destination from opposite directions: Beethoven had pushed outward on the boundaries of classicism, while Brahms applied discipline to the unrestrained romanticism of his age. Brahms waited to issue his First Symphony until he was a master of his craft, not only able to withstand the comparison but one whose own footsteps would ring in the ears of those who followed.

—Mark Rohr, 2011 Questions or comments?

RUSSIAN ICONS: Saturday, November 19

Modeste Mussorgsky: Prelude to Khovanshchina, (“Dawn on the Moskva River”)

Modest Mussorgsky was born in Karevo, Ukraine, in 1839 and died in St. Petersburg in 1881. He composed his opera Khovanshchina in 1872-1880; he left the work incomplete, and it was not performed in his lifetime. After Mussorgsky’s death, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov completed the work, and his version was first performed in St. Petersburg in 1886. The Prelude is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.

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Mussorgsky was a self-taught composer and proud of it. He considered it his greatest asset: he was untainted by the predominantly European style of his day and free to pursue a true Russian style in its place. That made him the philosophical brother of four other composers (Mili Balakirev, Alexander Borodin, César Cui, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov), who with Mussorgsky made the “Russian Five.” The others welcomed Mussorgsky’s enthusiasm but often despaired of his exuberantly crude techniques.

Because of that, we hear most of Mussorgsky’s orchestral works at second-hand. When the “unruly genius” died from the combined forces of epilepsy, stroke, and chronic alcoholism, his composer-friends wanted to let the public hear his unknown and unpublished works. Alas, they could not resist tidying up his scores, smoothing out the rough edges, and “fixing” the “mistakes.” So the real Mussorgsky is still largely unknown.

It was Rimsky-Korsakov who “fixed” the opera Khovanshchina. It was a monumental task: he began with a disorganized sheaf of manuscripts, some orchestrated and some in piano score, sometimes having to sort through multiple versions of the same scene. Rimsky-Korsakov has been widely criticized for the extent of his “help” to Mussorgsky’s work, for he recomposed nearly every bar of it. This has left great doubts as to how much of Khovanshchina is Mussorgsky and how much is Rimsky. Even worse, Rimsky reordered the final scenes, completely undoing the dramatic emphasis Mussorgsky sought.

Yet it’s worth remembering that Rimsky’s work was a true labor of love. He put aside his own work for extraordinary periods of time, with no hope of remuneration, that his late friend’s music might live. Without his efforts, much of Mussorgsky’s music might still remain unheard.

Khovanshchina (usually translated as The Khovansky Affair) has to do with the ascension of Peter the Great and the resistance of various factions to his Western-style reforms. It is not a recreation of historical events, but rather a view of those events as seen through the eyes of Tsar Peter’s rivals, their followers, and religious traditionalists of the era.

The Prelude to Khovanshchina is often thought of as a light pastorale, a scene-setter of little dramatic import. But though it’s not particularly dramatic, it is ingenious. Music scholars might call it a theme-and-variations on the sublime opening melody. To Mussorgsky, though, it was a way of evoking how Russian folk songs were traditionally sung: with the melody subtly modified from one verse to the next. In this, Mussorgsky underlined the point of the entire opera in a mere few minutes: that the real Russia lay in what he called the “black, unfertilized earth” of its people.


Sergei Prokofiev: Concerto for Violin & Orchestra No. 2 in G minor, Op. 63

Sergei Prokofiev was born in Sontsovka, the Ukraine in 1891 and died near Moscow in 1953. He composed his Second Violin Concerto in 1935, and it was first performed the same year in Madrid, with Robert Soëtens the soloist and Enrique Fernández Arbós conducting. The score calls for solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, percussion, and strings.

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Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto is a transitional work written during a transitional period in the composer’s life. Having fled the Bolsheviks in 1918, he had lived in the west for sixteen years, spending most of his time touring the world as a composer, conductor, and pianist. He was ready to settle down, and at the same time he was also deeply homesick. He knew that repatriation would mean he would have to soften his style: the brashly dissonant works of his youth would never do in a country that enforced its requirement for “Soviet Realism” with threats of the gulag or worse. But it so happened that Prokofiev had been leaning in this musical direction anyway. He had come to believe that music needed to return to lyricism, simplicity, and accessibility. Cynics might say that he was merely saying what he knew the Soviet authorities wanted to hear, but he made his new approach manifest in two scores he began at about the same time: the ballet Romeo and Juliet and the Second Violin Concerto.

Prokofiev’s new approach is obvious from the first few bars of the first movement, as the violin alone plays a theme that—though metrically unstable—is lyrical to the core. Where we might expect something spiky in contrast, the second theme is even broader and more lyrical than the first. It is quite easy to follow these two elements as they interact in the development.

Prokofiev continues in the same vein for his second movement. Here he seems to have traded his usual harmonic dissonance for a kind of rhythmic dissonance, created by the accompaniment adhering to a triple feel while the soloist steadfastly maintains his duples. The contrasting episodes bring increases in tempo, and are deliciously scored. By the end of the movement the roles have reversed, as the orchestra gives out the opening tune while the soloist accompanies in pizzicato triplets.

The Finale brings with it an invitation to dance, as well as some of the vinegar we expect from Prokofiev. This is still primarily melodic music, and though it is possible to hear the composer pulling some of his punches, he still wins in the end. The movement is a masterpiece of rustic rhythm, and just when you suspect the music is about to devolve into a cute little waltz, the foot-stomping revelry returns to close the movement with a bang.


Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphony No. 15 in A major, Op. 141

Dmitri Shostakovich was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in 1906 and died in Moscow in 1975. He composed this symphony, his last, in 1971 and it was first performed the following year in Moscow by the USSR Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of his son, Maxim. The score calls for 3 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, celeste, and strings.

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With his Fifteenth and last symphony Shostakovich left us with an enigma: no one quite knows what it means. Shostakovich usually kept the deepest meanings of his works to himself while remaining silent (even to his friends) or deliberately “revealing” a politically correct program as a false trail. This was, remember, a reliable route to survival for artists in the Soviet Union. Some say the Fifteenth was a valedictory work, yet Shostakovich had several more years to live and was rumored to have begun another symphony. Some say it was autobiographical, but that doesn’t seem to fit the music very well. Shostakovich himself complicated matters by stating that the symphony had something to do with Chekhov’s The Black Monk, but if so the connection isn’t obvious. Above all, people have been puzzled by Shostakovich’s rampant quotations of other music in this work.

These quotations are nearly everywhere you look, sometimes hidden but often out in plain sight. The most obvious ones are the galop from Rossini’s Overture to William Tell heard in the first movement and the “fate” theme from Wagner’s ring cycle at the beginning of the last. But there are many, many more: he quotes Mahler, Tchaikovsky, more Wagner, even a Glinka song. Sometimes he quotes himself: the brass chorale that opens the second movement comes from the “Palace Square” movement of his Eleventh Symphony, and you can hear motives from his Seventh Symphony as well. Why all the quotations? Even the composer couldn’t explain: “I don’t myself quite know why the quotations are there, but I could not, could not, not include them.”

The composer’s son Maxim likened the first movement to the awakening of a toy shop at night. The flute melody that opens the movement is light and playful, and the Rossini interjections often bring a chuckle, but there is a severity to this movement that is anything but child-like.

The vast Adagio that follows is Shostakovich at his most introspective. The passionate cello and violin solos deploy all twelve tones of the scale, but within a tonal context. Eventually the movement becomes what it has threatened to all along: a funeral march with a wild and angry climax. Near the end, a chilly-sounding celeste plays the cello melody upside-down, chastened by that funeral march. The movement fades into perhaps the most bitingly sardonic Scherzo Shostakovich ever wrote. There is little relief from the sheer mockery of this piece—it is short but not sweet.

The Finale begins by weaving multiple quotations together—sometimes in startling ways. These and the symphony’s own themes evolve and combine until they wrench the music into an enormous, doom-laden climax. As this recedes the winds try to begin a dour little Allegretto, but they are foiled by the “fate” theme. The strings try again with the same result. Eventually the orchestra gives up, and the movement gradually dissolves into an evanescent percussion passage; Shostakovich glances back with his wry little smile, turns the corner, and is gone.

—Mark Rohr, 2011 Questions or comments?

ORCHESTRA'S CHOICE: Sunday, January 22

Claude Debussy: Danses sacrée et profane

Claude Achille Debussy was born in St. Germain-en-Laye, France in 1862 and died in Paris in 1918. He composed this work in 1904, and it was first performed in Paris under the direction of Edouard Colonne the same year. The score calls for solo harp and strings.

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In 1903 the venerable Pleyel company, makers of pianos and harps, introduced a new kind of harp. This instrument was a departure from the standard harps of the day, and in order to promote it Pleyel commissioned Debussy to compose music playable on the new instrument.

Debussy responded with his Danses sacrée et profane, a coupling of two short works featuring harp and string orchestra. The Danse sacrée is ethereal and atmospheric; the mood is solemn, but not in the least “churchy.” The violin line is the movement’s center of attention, and much more of a standard melody than we usually hear from Debussy.

The Danse profane follows without pause, the repeated harp notes of the Danse sacrée becoming the rhythmic pulse for the Danse profane’s waltz. This movement is more extroverted than the previous but the two are obviously close relatives. Here the harp is less didactic and more inclined to the sensuous.

Unfortunately for Pleyel, their new harp did not succeed in the marketplace. But to the delight of harpists and music lovers everywhere, its introduction did inspire this unique and ingratiating work.


Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5

Gustav Mahler was born in Kalischt, Bohemia, in 1860 and died in Vienna in 1911. He composed this symphony in 1901-02 and led the first performance with the Gürzenich Orchestra of Cologne in 1904. Mahler revised the orchestration of the work after nearly every performance he conducted; the last revision came in 1909. The score calls for 4 flutes, 2 piccolos, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings.

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“Heavens, what is the public to make of this chaos in which new worlds are forever being engendered, only to crumble into ruin the next moment? What are they to say to this primeval music, this foaming, roaring, raging sea of sound, to these dancing stars, to these breathtaking, iridescent, flashing breakers?”

Well might Mahler ask. With his Fifth Symphony Mahler wiped the slate clean and began anew. Out were
the Wunderhorn texts, the singers to sing them, and his fascination with innocence. In was a return to instrumental music, a more coherent formal design, and a leaner, cleaner orchestral sound. His new style featured a dramatic increase in counterpoint—he had just acquired the complete Bach edition and was inspired by its contents—and Mahler’s counterpoint was devilishly hard to pull off. (While walking at a fair with his dear friend, conductor Bruno Walter, he pointed out the cacophony of noises: military bands, hurdy-gurdys, singing, carnival barkers, shooting galleries. “Do you hear that?” he asked. “That’s polyphony!”)  He saw his job as combining the uncombinable, and the orchestral texture had to be utterly clear. It caused him no end of trouble. Mahler conducted the work many times, and revised the score after nearly every performance. Ultimately he wrote: “I have finished the Fifth. I was forced to re-orchestrate it completely.
I do not understand how I could have composed so much like a beginner. Clearly, the routines I had established with the first four symphonies were inadequate for this one—as though a wholly new style demanded a new technique.”

Mahler divides his symphony into three parts. Part I consists of the first two movements, Part II is the central Scherzo, and Part III the Adagietto and Rondo-Finale. The musical momentum seems to flow towards the Scherzo—which Mahler composed first—and then away from it.

The ominous trumpet call that opens the symphony is one of the most memorable moments in Western music, every bit as distinctive as the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth. The funeral march that follows is a relentless tragedy, harrowing and inconsolable. The faster middle section is even more anguished. The trumpet call returns from time to time until the end, where it fades away as the movement disintegrates.

The second movement is the ferocious musical and emotional reaction to the first: it shares themes with the first movement and feels much like the sonata to which the funeral march was the slow introduction. Somehow, out of all this fury comes a glorious D-major brass chorale, a glimmer of hope amid the crushing despair. It cannot triumph—at least not yet—and it slips away like an apparition.

Part II is the symphony’s Scherzo, and it brings us into another world entirely. It has a sweet and bucolic character suggestive of Mahler’s beloved ländler. “There is nothing romantic or mystical about it,” he said, “It is simply the expression of incredible energy. It is the human being in the full light of day in the prime of his life.” Where the first part had been a march of death, the Scherzo is a dance of life.

The Adagietto that begins Part III has been misinterpreted as being mournful, even funereal music—you often hear it at memorial services. Actually, Mahler wrote it as a love letter to his wife-to-be Alma Schindler. He sent the score to her without so much as a note, and she, a composer herself, grasped its meaning immediately.

The Rondo-Finale is the longest movement of continuous good cheer Mahler had ever written. The second movement’s brass chorale reappears, now fully accepted and expanded as the destination of the entire symphony. From there Mahler gets out right smartly, without the endless leave-taking of some of his other symphonies.

Mahler’s music could express the depths of despair and the exhilaration of joy, often simultaneously. But there doesn’t seem to be a direct connection between the two in the Fifth Symphony. Despair exists; joy exists. The one is not the goal of the other. By the time Mahler wrote his Fifth he had had it with programs—the more he tried to explain his music, the more people misunderstood it. He never divulged a program for his Fifth Symphony. It may well have been impossible. As Bruno Walter said, “It is music—passionate, wild, pathetic, buoyant, solemn, tender, full of all the sentiments of which the human heart is capable—but still ‘only’ music, and no metaphysical questioning, not even from very far off, interferes with its purely musical course.”

—Mark Rohr, 2011 Questions or comments?

CHORAL SPECTACULAR: Sunday, February 26

Igor Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms

Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, Russia in 1882 and died in New York City in 1971. He composed this work in 1930 on a commission from Serge Koussevitzky to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and it was first performed by the Brussels Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra under the direction of Ernest Ansermet the same year. The score calls for mixed chorus, 5 flutes, piccolo, 5 oboes, English horn, 4 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 5 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, 2 pianos, and a string section of cellos and basses only.

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Stravinsky was never one to display conspicuous religiosity, for he was an urbane and worldly man. He was nonetheless a man of strong belief. He had contemplated composing a large work based on the Psalms for some time; when Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra commissioned him to write a piece to celebrate the orchestra’s 50th anniversary in 1930, they left the details up to him. He seized the opportunity to compose a work using the Psalms.

The symphony is in three movements played without pause. “It is not a symphony in which I have included Psalms to be sung,” wrote Stravinsky. “On the contrary, it is the singing of the Psalms that I am symphonizing.” Each movement is based on a single Psalm. The first is based on Psalm 38:13-14 (in the Vulgate; 39:12-13 in the King James), the second on Psalm 39:2-4 (40:1-3 in the King James) and the third on Psalm 150. The order of the texts Stravinsky selected reveals the progression of the work’s musical and spiritual argument: “The juxtaposition of the three Psalms is not fortuitous. The prayer of the sinner for divine pity, the recognition of grace received, and the hymns of praise and glory are the basis of an evolutionary plan.”

For Stravinsky the sonority of a work was as important as its music or its text. The Symphony of Psalms uses an orchestra of both unusual augmentations (five flutes, five oboes, five trumpets, two pianos) and subtractions (no clarinets, violins, or violas). This unique aggregation of instruments produces a sound-world that is as recognizable as the work’s musical themes.

We have all heard an E-minor chord hundreds of times, but the one that opens this symphony has a sound unlike any other. Stravinsky takes something utterly ordinary and by spacing the notes in an unusual way, loading the chord with more Gs than is deemed proper, and applying instrumental color, he makes it extraordinary. This first movement is one long crescendo. The sinewy agitation of the orchestra opposes the tightly-spaced calm of the chorus; the tension between the two builds and builds towards the final, overwhelming release.

The second movement is a double fugue. The first fugue comes with the “cool” sound of the wind instruments, and as it unfolds one imagines the spirit of Bach reincarnated in the 20th century to recompose the Musical Offering. Stravinsky called the chorus fugue the “human fugue, the next and higher stage.” As each of these follows its own pattern, Stravinsky refuses to submit to their harmonic implications until the end is reached in a stunning wave of harmonic brilliance.

The “Alleluia” of Psalm 150 is where most composers would have released the greatest bombast in their arsenal, but Stravinsky’s is like a sigh; the bombast comes later. The final pages are a ravishing hymn of praise. When he completed the work he wrote in the score: “Composed to the glory of God and dedicated to the Boston Symphony Orchestra on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary of its existence.”

Stravinsky bristled when others suggested that the Symphony of Psalms must be an expression of his own faith. To him the work was really a reflection about the concept of faith. He wrote: “One hopes to worship God with a little art, if one has any.”


Franz Joseph Haydn: Missa No. 14 in B-flat major, Hob. XXII:14 “Harmoniemesse”

Franz Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria in 1732 and died in Vienna in 1809. He composed this mass in 1802 on a commission from Prince Nikolaus Esterházy II and led the first performance in Eisenstadt, Hungary (now Austria) the same year. The score calls for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass soloists, chorus, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, organ, and strings.

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We usually think of Haydn as a composer of secular music, his service to the Esterházy court requiring an unending stream of symphonies, operas, and chamber music. Yet Haydn also composed fourteen masses. Two of these were juvenilia, now lost, but his last six found him returning once again to the Esterházy estates.

When Prince Nikolaus Esterházy died and his son Anton took over, the new prince (who had no ear for music) disbanded the court orchestra and freed Haydn to pursue his own interests in Vienna and London. When Prince Anton died, his son (another Nikolaus) reconstituted the orchestra and commissioned Haydn for a very special purpose.

The new Prince Nikolaus made a remarkable gift to his wife Maria, the former Princess of Liechtenstein, every year: a newly-composed mass in honor of her name day. As the world’s greatest living composer, Haydn was the natural choice. Thus did Haydn return to Esterháza, no longer a servant but an international superstar of music.

The six masses Haydn composed for the new Prince Nikolaus came near the end of his life while he was at the height of his creative powers. Each is remarkable in its own way. The last of the six acquired the nickname “harmoniemesse” from the prominence of its wind parts—“harmonie” being the word for “wind-band.”

The Kyrie begins majestically with an orchestral introduction, but in the fifth bar a strong dissonance serves notice that something deep is happening. Likewise with the entrance of the chorus—almost shockingly loud and again above a dissonance. This musical “problem” that Haydn sets for himself finds its “solution”—harmonic certitude—in the movement’s final Kyrie.

As the Gloria begins there are no such ambiguities, but its wide-ranging text bring areas of darkness that make the light shine all the brighter. The alto soloist ushers in a slower tempo and harmoniemusik of great beauty; when the faster music returns it brings a double-fugue of stupendous energy.

The Credo is as certain as the Kyrie was ambiguous. “Et incarnatus est” (“and was made flesh”) deserves its own, slower tempo; it gets this and a sublime serenity. The harmonic clouds of the crucifixion make the resurrection all the more brilliant. The dramatic juxtaposition of “I expect the resurrection of the dead” with “and the life of the world to come” is simply thrilling.

The Sanctus is broad and serious, yet launches a faster and harmonically daring section at “Pleni sunt coeli” (“Heaven and Earth are filled with Thy glory”). The Benedictus is bursting with life and a surprising shift of gears at the “Osanna.” Despite the harmonic intensity of its “miserere” sections the Agnus Dei moves with steadfast inevitability. “Dona nobis pacem” (“grant us peace”) is simply glorious, all the more so for its brief moment of quietude before the end. This mass was Haydn’s last major work—what a heavenly finale.

—Mark Rohr, 2011 Questions or comments?

FESTIVAL FOR GUITAR: Sunday, March 18

Wolfgang Amadè Mozart: Symphony No. 29 in A major, K. 201

Wolfgang Amadè Mozart (he never used “Amadeus” except when making a joke) was born in Salzburg, Austria in 1756 and died in Vienna in 1791. He composed this symphony in 1774 and it was first performed in Salzburg shortly thereafter. The score calls for 2 oboes, 2 horns, and strings.

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Mozart composed this symphony after he and his father returned to Salzburg from a ten-week stay in Vienna. Leopold was still looking for an appropriate post for his teenage son, but Mozart the younger was more interested in hearing the latest from Haydn, the only composer he would ever acknowledge as greater than he.

No post was forthcoming—nor would it be—but Mozart voraciously consumed all the Haydn he could, especially the late quartets. These were a major influence on Mozart’s rapidly-maturing symphonic style, and you can hear it throughout the A-major Symphony. There is more imitative writing, an increase in counterpoint, and a new level of balance and formal coherence—things that were Haydn’s stock in trade.

It is astonishing to realize that at age 18 Mozart was already better than most other composers would ever get. The A-major Symphony may lack the depth and breadth of Mozart’s finest late works, but it seems miraculous that its technical mastery and expressiveness could have come from the pen of a teenager.

The first movement’s main tune, an octave drop followed by an ascending sequence of 8th-notes, is one of the most memorable Mozart ever wrote. He must have thought so, too, for he brings it back again and again. The second movement is an exquisite miniature—one imagines that if a single note were changed its sheer perfection might evaporate. The Menuetto has both gentility and strength, plus a rhythmic horn-and-oboe motto that returns to punctuate the ending. The Finale is full of Mozartean exuberance, and the humor of a furious ascending scale that leads to an unexpected pause. Extraordinary.


Joaquín Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez for Guitar and Orchestra

Joaquín Rodrigo was born in Sagunto in Valencia, Spain in 1901 and died in Madrid in 1999. He composed this work in 1939 and it was first performed the following year in Barcelona by Regino Sainz de la Maza, guitar, with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Barcelona under the direction of César Mendoza Lassalle. The score calls for solo guitar, 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, and strings.

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Joaquín Rodrigo is often called the last of the great Spanish romantic composers. Nevertheless, his music often casts a fond eye back to the Spanish art music that reached its pinnacle in the Renaissance and Baroque. Where more recent Spanish music had carried a heavy Italian influence, Rodrigo seemed eager to acknowledge the gifts of Spain’s more distant past.

The Palacio Real de Aranjuez in Spain is a summer palace built by King Phillip II in the 16th century and later rebuilt by King Ferdinand VI in the 18th century. Rodrigo was inspired to compose his Concierto de Aranjuez in part by the estate’s beautiful gardens, but also to allow himself to re-imagine the great Spanish music the royal court enjoyed there. The work was one of the first virtuoso guitar concertos of the modern era; it was an instant hit and immediately entered the repertoire to stay.

The first movement begins intimately, with guitar alone, strumming out a theme that alternates 2-beat and 3-beat bars—something that manages to sound both off-kilter and suave at the same time. As the movement advances, it consistently trades pyrotechnics for subtlety, with enormously satisfying effect. The Adagio evokes the saeta, a song associated with the annual religious procession through Seville, with the English horn giving its impression of the women singing from their balconies. The last movement Allegro gentile is, as its title suggests, a gentle yet sprightly dance featuring the most virtuosic passages for the guitar. Throughout, Rodrigo provides a delightful glimpse of the past as seen by a 20th century composer who both cherishes and honors it.


Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto for 2 Guitars in G major, RV 532

Antonio Vivaldi was born in Venice in 1678 and died in Vienna in 1741. He originally composed this work for two mandolins. The composition and first performance dates of this work are unknown. The Concerto is scored for 2 solo guitars, strings and continuo.

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History might have neglected Vivaldi entirely had there not been great interest in tracing the influences of J.S. Bach. Vivaldi’s influence on the German master was found to have been considerable, particularly in Bach’s treatment of the concerto form. Bach copied by hand many of Vivaldi’s concertos, simultaneously arranging them for harpsichord or organ (as well as touching up the counterpoint a bit). No doubt Bach perceived the essential “rightness” of their form: Vivaldi, after Torelli and others, had developed the concerto to the point where his way of doing things became the de facto Baroque standard.

Vivaldi wrote several hundred concertos, 220 alone for the violin. This vast catalog has proved almost impossible to put into chronological order with any degree of certainty because so few of them were published. It seems likely, however, that Vivaldi wrote the present work while he was the music master at the Ospedale della Pietà, an orphanage for girls in Venice where most of his concerti were composed and performed.

Vivaldi wrote the Concerto for Two Guitars in the form he himself established: three movements, fast-slow-fast, with the outer movements in ritornello form. (A ritornello is a theme played in the orchestra that returns periodically to punctuate contrasting sections played by the soloists.) These outer movements are light and energetic. Vivaldi preserves the gentle voices of the guitars by thinning the texture of the orchestra or accompanying the soloists with continuo alone. The real gem of the concerto is the minor-key slow movement. Vivaldi reduces the music to three parts: the two soloists and the violins and violas playing pizzicato in unison. The soloists exchange melodic passages, coming together only at points of emphasis. The second part of the binary form is dramatic, harmonically adventurous, and memorable.


Manuel de Falla: El Amor Brujo (Love, the Magician)

Manuel de Falla was born in Cádiz, Spain in 1876 and died in Alta Gracia, Córdoba, Argentina in 1946. He composed his ballet El Amor Brujo in 1914-15 and it was first performed in Madrid in 1915 under the direction of Moreno Ballesteros. Falla substantially revised the score and created both a ballet and an orchestral suite that was first performed in 1916 by the Madrid Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Bartolomé Pérez-Casas. The score calls for solo mezzo-soprano, 2 flutes, piccolo, oboe, optional English horn, 2 clarinets, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, piano, and strings.

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Manuel de Falla was born in Cádiz, Spain, and studied composition and piano in Madrid. During the years 1907-1914 he lived in Paris, where he met and befriended Debussy and Ravel; his music has some of their influence, balanced by his extensive knowledge and love of Spanish folk art. After the Spanish Civil War Falla moved to Argentina, where he composed very little. His last years were spent working on a huge cantata about Columbus called L’Atlántida that he never completed. Today he is best remembered for his works for the stage, including the puppet opera Master Peter’s Puppet Show and the ballets The Three Cornered Hat and El Amor Brujo.

Falla first composed El Amor Brujo as a stage work with singing, dancing, narration and dialog, using a pit orchestra of just fifteen players. He later created a concert suite from the music using an expanded orchestra; he also created a ballet version with the same orchestral forces, compressing the two acts into one while eliminating all of the spoken word and much of the singing. Both of these versions retain a part for mezzo-soprano.

The story of the ballet revolves around Candelas, a young girl whose dead lover has returned to haunt her as a ghost. The ghost, a jealous man in life, seeks to prevent her from taking a new lover. Candelas attempts to break his spell with the Ritual Fire Dance, but to no avail. Eventually she sets a friend out as a decoy for the ghost; when the ghost is thus distracted, Candelas is able to kiss her new lover and break the spell with the magic of love.

El Amor Brujo is a perfect introduction to Falla’s music: whether it sounds extroverted or serene, dance-like or nocturnal, Falla celebrates his Spanish heritage with a Parisian’s sense of refinement. People of Spanish descent have paid Falla’s music their highest compliment, calling it the real music of Spain, as opposed to the flashy imitation that so often passes for it.

musical, Lord of the Dance, his reputation became world-wide. He has since released two of his own CDs
—Mark Rohr, 2011 Questions or comments?

SHOWCASING OUR OWN: Saturday, April 14

Christopher Rouse: Ogoun Badagris

Christopher Rouse was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1949. He composed this work in 1976 for the Ithaca College Percussion ensemble. The work is scored for five percussionists playing a variety of instruments.

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Christopher Rouse graduated from Oberlin Conservatory and Cornell University and studied composition with Richard Hoffmann, George Crumb, and Karel Husa. He has taught at the University of Michigan, the Eastman School of Music, and is currently on the composition faculty of the Julliard School. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, the League of Composers/ISCM prize, and was composer-in-residence for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He has had commissions and performances across America and all over the world, and in 1993 won the Pulitzer Prize for his Trombone Concerto.

Mr. Rouse supplies the following note with his score: “Ogoun Badagris derives its inspiration from Haitian drumming patterns, particularly those of the Juba Dance. Hence, it seemed logical to tie in the work with various aspects of Voodoo ritual. Ogoun Badagris is one of the most terrible and violent of all Voodoo loas (deities) and he can be appeased only by human blood sacrifice. This work thus may be interpreted as a dance of appeasement.

“The work begins with a brief action de grace, a ceremonial call-to-action in which the high priest shakes the giant rattle known as the asson, here replaced by the cabasa. Then the principal dance begins, a grouillère: this is a highly erotic and even brutally sexual ceremonial dance which in turn is succeeded by the Danse Vaudou at the point at which demonic possession occurs. The word “reler”, which the performers must shriek at the conclusion of the work, is the Voodoo equivalent of the Judaeo-Christian amen.”


Aaron Copland:

Antonín Dvorák was born in Mühlhausen, Bohemia in 1841 and died in Prague in 1904. He composed this work in 1878, and it was first performed in Prague under the direction of the composer the same year. The Serenade is scored for 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, optional contrabassoon, 3 horns, cello, and bass.

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The serenade, of course, began as a love song. By Mozart’s time it had become a form of light instrumental music for evening performance in the open air. A serenade (like its cousin the divertimento) usually had a large number of movements including fanfares, marches, minuets, and a notturno or two. Mozart had given the form symphonic length and breadth, and Dvorák took up the pen where Mozart had laid it down.

Dvorák composed his Serenade before he became well known outside of his homeland. Still, all the things you expect from Dvorák are here: the instrumental colors, the romantic harmonies and, above all, his limitless font of melody. The opening movement is a rather stentorian march, somewhat Beethovenish. The Menuetto is pretty and engaging, while the much faster trio brings all sorts of rhythmic fun and games. The Andante con moto is brimming with Bohemian flavor and pungent harmonies. The Finale begins as a furious dance, rather brusque and humorous, while the ending brings a return of the opening march and a noisy coda.


Ernest Bloch: Concerto Grosso for String Orchestra with Piano Obbligato

Ernest Bloch was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1880 and died in Portland, Oregon in 1959. He composed this work in 1924-25 and in 1925 led the first performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music with the Institute String Orchestra and Walter Scott, piano. The score calls for piano and strings.

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Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born internationalist who was rather proud of his American citizenship. He was a master of many styles: his music could be religious or secular, modernist or romantic, but through it all he most wanted to express its emotional core.

Bloch began his musical career as a violinist, good enough to have studied with the virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe; in turn it was Ysaÿe who encouraged him to compose. He took his studies from Switzerland to Belgium, Munich, and Paris, where his opera Macbeth was produced at the Opéra Comique in 1910. While on tour in America as the conductor of a dance troupe he became stranded in Ohio when the group ran out of money. He found himself in a country that was receptive to both him and his music; after teaching at the Mannes School in New York he became Director of the Cleveland Institute of Music and later the Director of the San Francisco Conservatory. Although he continued to travel the world over, he made his home in Agate Beach, Oregon for the last twenty years of his life.

Bloch composed his Concerto Grosso No. 1 while at the Cleveland Institute, in part to challenge his students. When they expressed their doubts that traditional forms could be compatible with modern music, he composed the Prelude to his Concerto Grosso No. 1. When the Institute’s student orchestra performed the piece with obvious relish, he said, “What do you think now? It has just old-fashioned notes!” Bloch went on to compose the rest of the work in the same vein.

It is just the sort of piece for which the term “neoclassical” was coined. In the spiky Prelude Bloch seems to appropriate the gestures and conventions of a Baroque piece while giving it modern harmonic sensibilities and fresh textures. The Dirge overcomes its title with bracing harmonies and sheer beauty, moving into the Pastorale and Rustic Dances without pause. Perhaps as another lesson to his students, the last movement is a Fugue; Bloch proves that no form is too archaic to be brought alive again.


Benjamin Britten: Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, Op. 34 (The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra)

Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England in 1913, and died in Aldeburgh, Suffolk in 1976. He composed this work in 1945-1946, originally as the film score to The Instruments of the Orchestra, produced by England’s Ministry of Education. It was first performed in concert by the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Malcolm Sargent in 1946. The score calls for optional narrator, 3 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, a large percussion battery, harp, and strings.

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Benjamin Britten had trouble getting noticed in his native England even after his Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge brought him world-wide recognition. But at the close of World War II he issued his landmark opera, Peter Grimes, and the critics and the public realized that a master was in their midst. This single work launched an opera revival in England the likes of which had not been seen since Handel’s day, and Britten was on his way to becoming the most influential English composer of his century.

Shortly after Peter Grimes, Britten was asked by the Ministry of Education to compose music for a film called Instruments of the Orchestra, to be narrated by Malcolm Sargent and shown in English schools. As it happened, the 250th anniversary of Henry Purcell’s death had just passed, and Britten hit upon the idea of using a theme of Purcell’s for a set of variations. Thus the work is known by two titles: Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, and The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.

Britten selected for his theme a Hornpipe from Purcell’s incidental music to Abdelazer, or the Moor’s Revenge, composed in 1695. This majestic theme is first presented by the full orchestra, then by the various sections in sequence: woodwinds, brass, strings, and percussion. From this point on, each instrumental section plays its own variation of the theme.

The flutes begin, accompanied by the harp, with flighty and playful passages. The oboe follows with a languorous melody, then the clarinets play at circus music. The bassoons show two sides of their personalities: lyrical and bumptious.

After a gorgeous transition from the horns, the strings begin their variations. The violins play a suitably brilliant dance, the violas show off their rich low register, and the cellos demonstrate their warm tenor voice. The double basses start out characteristically stodgy and forthright, but soon reveal that they can sing, too. Next comes the harp with a variety of effects.

The horns are the first of the brasses, playing both hunting-calls and beautiful soft chordal music. The trumpets are busy and brash. The trombones play a noble tune in unison, later joined by the tuba, followed by a sequence of sumptuous chords.

Only a tiny portion of an orchestral percussion battery can be demonstrated, yet the list is still long: timpani, cymbals, tambourine, triangle, snare drum, wood block, xylophone, castanets, tam-tam, and slapstick. Once each has been played separately they all join together.

The percussion demonstration leads directly to the fugue, itself another variation on Purcell’s theme. This is an Allegro molto that is nearly breathless with excitement. Each instrument enters with its fugue subject in the same order as in the variations. Once all the instruments have entered, the brasses begin a chorale version of the theme—now itself a countersubject to the fugue—and bring the orchestra back to a grand statement of the tune that started it all.

The Variations on a Theme of Purcell succeeds brilliantly as a concert piece—and a real orchestral showcase—without its narration and without regard to the audience’s age or level of musical sophistication. Britten took the job of composing for young people seriously enough not to condescend to them, and they have returned the compliment for generations.

—Mark Rohr, 2011 Questions or comments?