Alderley Edge Symphony Orchestra November 2021
Franz Schubert (1797 – 1828): Rosamunde Overture (1819-20)
For a composer with such a talent for combining text and music, Schubert’s music for stage was surprisingly unsuccessful. Why would a composer capable of such masterpieces as Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin find opera such a challenge? Received wisdom shifts the blame squarely to his librettists and playwrights. When invited in 1823 to produce incidental music to the play Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus, written by his friend Helmina von Chézy, he was characteristically enthusiastic. Helmina was a victim of widespread ridicule in her lifetime, with one of the more complimentary descriptions recording her as ‘Extremely good-natured, a little ridiculous and not particularly distinguished for her cleanliness’. Her libretto to Weber’s opera Euryanthe had been the subject of much derision, and Rosamunde fared little better, managing a run of just two performances before disappearing into obscurity. The shadow of nineteenth century misogyny still hangs over her today, remembered as little more than an excuse for the failure of Schubert’s music.
Schubert hardly covered himself in glory in writing his music for Rosamunde. The 50 minutes of music were hurriedly composed in just over three weeks in December 1823, completed just two days before the premiere and leaving no time for an overture to be written. He therefore turned to his back catalogue of overtures to unsuccessful stage works. His initial choice was the overture to Die Zauberharfe (1820), prior to a last-minute switch to the overture from Alfonso und Estrella (1822).
After just three performances, including the rehearsal, the play was withdrawn and not heard again in Schubert’s lifetime. The music only resurfaced in 1867, when Sir Arthur Sullivan and Sir George Grove found it stashed in a Vienna wardrobe during an expedition in search of lost Schubert works. The same visit yielded the manuscripts to symphonies 1-4 and 6, provoking such delight in the esteemed Victorian gentlemen that they were compelled into a 2am game of leap-frog in the. When the complete incidental music to Rosamunde was finally published in 1891, it was with the Zauberharfe overture, rather than Alfonso, for reasons lost to posterity.
The Zauberharfe overture is an elegant Schubertian gem. After a series of dramatic opening chords, a lyrical melody is given by oboes and clarinet. A lively Allegro follows, passed between strings and woodwinds before accelerating into a galloping rhythm. The oboe makes a brief case for the gentler earlier theme, but this is quickly swept aside, the overture ending in a blaze of brassy hijinks.
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897): Violin Concerto, Opus 77 (1878)
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Allegro non troppo
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Adagio
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Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace - Poco più presto
The typical image of Brahms as the grey-bearded arch-conservative, railing against the decadence of Wagner and Liszt, is a gross misrepresentation of his character, at least in the early years of his career. He was so burdened by the weight of tradition, above all the glare of Beethoven over his shoulder, that his first symphony took over twenty years to write. Following its completion in 1876, however, Brahms’ music flowed more readily. The second symphony and violin concerto followed soon afterwards, each work defining the composer’s distinctive romantic voice while upholding his principle that music must have meaning, rather than indulging in acrobatic virtuosity for the sake of cheap entertainment.
As a pianist rather than violinist, Brahms found himself acutely aware of his limitations as a composer for strings, and so relied heavily on advice from his friend, the Hungarian virtuoso Joseph Joachim, in lengthy written correspondence. The first traces of the concerto arose while Brahms holidayed in Pörtschach am Wörthersee, near Villach. The idyllic lakeside resort had already provided inspiration for the second symphony the previous summer, and in writing to the acerbic critic Eduard Hanslick, Brahms remarked that ‘The melodies fly so thick here that you have to be careful not to step on one’.
The concerto was heavily reworked during its inception, Brahms periodically accepting or rejecting Joachim’s suggestions. The biggest change was the departure from the originally intended symphonic four-movement format to the more conventional three movements. The original inner movements were recycled elsewhere, and replaced by what the composer abashedly described as a ‘Feeble adagio’. The new concerto was eventually premiered in Leipzig in a New Year’s Day concert in 1879, though the newly bearded Brahms was dismayed by the cool reception. His experience was no doubt coloured by forgetting his dress trousers (he had to conduct in casual grey trousers), and by a malfunction of his trouser braces, resulting in no small amount of amusement for the audience. More importantly, the music was seen as ‘difficult’, Hans von Bülow quipping that Brahms had composed a concerto against, rather than for, the violin.
The concerto is characterised by a rich sense of lyricism, above all in the expansive first movement. The music begins with a gentle theme based on a broken chord of D major, similar to the second symphony. The intensity rises for the entrance of the soloist, before the movement pans out with warmth and yearning in turn. The movement’s cadenza, near its end, is typically that written by Joachim for the first performance. The slow movement, a serenade in the contrasting and bucolic key of F-major, gives its most elegant theme to the oboe. The soloist expounds briefly on the oboe theme, though the famous violinist Pablo de Sarasate grumbled that he had to ‘Stand on the rostrum, violin in hand and listen to the oboe playing the only tune’.
The finale is a lively rondo inspired by the Hungarian music to which Brahms was frequently exposed as a boy in Hamburg. He had revelled in the readily hummable folk tunes of travellers en route to America, escaping the revolutions which swept across Europe in 1848, and perhaps also wished to honour his friend Joachim in writing music inspired by his homeland. The movement is full of bounding joy and rhythmic surprises amid violin pyrotechnics.
Robert Schumann (1810 – 1856): Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120 (1841, revised 1851)
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Ziemlich langsam - Lebhaft
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Romanze: Ziemlich langsam
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Scherzo: Lebhaft
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Langsam; Lebhaft
Schumann’s ‘fourth’ symphony was actually the second he wrote, though the fourth (and last) to be published. His first, the ‘Spring’ symphony, was written in three days in the happy aftermath of his marriage to Clara Wieck, following a long and acrimonious legal struggle with her father. The Spring symphony was rapturously received at its premiere in Leipzig under the direction of Mendelssohn, and for understandable reasons: it was full of good cheer, and it followed a conventional structure.
Work soon began on a second symphony, though it would be radically different and strikingly modern in its form. It was originally written as a birthday present for Clara in 1841, and in a sharp departure from the traditions of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, was intended as a symphony in one movement, though divisible into four parts. Along with the absence of Mendelssohn as conductor, the limited rehearsal time, difficulty of orchestral parts and the distraction of the superstar Liszt performing in the same concert, this novel structure made the symphony unappealing to the Leipzig audience.
Stung by the reception in Leipzig and by his publisher declining to publish the second-rate new symphony while sales of the first were still good, Schumann withdrew the work. Ten years later, after completing the more conventional C major and very successful Rhenish symphonies, he returned to it. Major revisions were made; although it was still to be thought of as a single piece of music, there were clearer divisions between movements (much like Mendelssohn’s Scottish symphony of 1842), and much of the orchestration was revised. The new version of the symphony fared much better, was published as No. 4, and proved to be one of Schumann’s last successes. The next year, his hallucinations, variously ascribed to neurosyphilis, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, drove him to throw himself into the Rhine. He was pulled from the water before drowning, but spent the last years of his life in an asylum for the insane at his own request.
The symphony opens in autumnal mist. The introduction is dominated by a brooding figure for strings and bassoon, thought to have originally been written by Clara. The music erupts into a quicker theme, though remains unsettled, and unfolds in the manner of a fantasia. New ideas are added, with several reappearing later in the symphony. The slow movement almost immediately follows the last sounds of the first, featuring a wandering and plaintive theme for duetting cello and oboe. The Clara theme reappears, ultimately embellished by an intricate figure for solo violin.
The scherzo continues in a similarly restless vein, though its dreamy central trio offers some brief respite. It takes a monumental, almost Brucknerian struggle to reach the finale. This has been likened to the struggle between Schumann’s self-professed dual inner personality, conflicted between Florestan the extrovert improviser, and Eusebius the dreamy introvert. When it eventually arrives, the finale is a breathless struggle between the restless angst of the earlier symphony and a more vigorous, joyful demeanour. Ultimately, the symphony bounds into the last pages with scarcely a trace of the earlier shadows.