European Doctors' Orchestra May 2022 (Olomouc, Czech Republic)
Antonín Dvořák 1841 – 1904): The Water Goblin (Vodník), opus 107 (1896)
After the successful premiere of the New World symphony in 1893, Dvořák returned to Prague to resume his professorship at the Conservatory, where he mainly worked on operas and a cycle of symphonic poems. He had harboured a career-long fascination in Czech folk music, though this was never expressed more clearly than in his set of works inspired by the poet Karel Jaromír Erben. Dvořák wrote 5 symphonic poems from 1896-98, namely the Water Goblin, The Noon Witch, The Golden Spinning Wheel, The Wild Dove, and The Hero’s Song. Of these, the first 4 come from Erben’s Kytice collection.
Dvořák’s perceived shift from the ‘absolute’ music of his earlier career to programmatic music of his later years caused some consternation in the high-minded circles of Western Europe. The acerbic critic Eduard Hanslick, standard bearer for the ‘old world’ of Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann, was particularly appalled, writing ‘With this detailed programmatic music, Dvořák has stepped onto a slippery slope which… leads directly to Richard Strauss’. Nonetheless, the symphonic poems have become a much-loved aspect of Dvořák’s output.
The Water Goblin tells the story of the gleefully diabolical spirit who traps drowning souls in his upturned teacup. Dvořák is religiously faithful to Erben’s poetry, graphically painting the story with music which fits the cadence of the text immaculately. Broadly, the work is in seven sections, with the Goblin’s three-note theme heralding the odd-numbered sections:
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The Water Goblin [flutes] sings to the moon by his lake, while sewing himself a green coat and red boots for his wedding.
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Meanwhile, in a nearby village, a young woman [clarinet, with triangle representing her twinkling eyes] is warned by her mother [violin] to stay away from the Goblin’s lake following a premonitory dream.
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The daughter, having ignored her mother’s warning, is pulled into the lake by the Goblin; he marries her in his ethereal, watery lair.
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The daughter sings a soft lullaby [flute and oboe] for her new baby and longs to see her mother again.
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The Goblin flies into a rage at the lullaby and they quarrel. He ultimately agrees to her request to see her mother, on the conditions that she leave the baby behind as a hostage and that she return by the bells of evening vespers.
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The mother and daughter are reunited [cello and trombones], though when nightfall comes, the mother cannot bear to part with her daughter.
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Church bells are heard amid a terrible storm as the Goblin hammers on the door, demanding that the daughter return to cook his dinner, make his bed and feed the baby. When she refuses, the Goblin rages back to his lair. A sudden crash is heard, and when the mother and daughter open the front door, they find the baby, decapitated, on the doorstep. A dark epilogue follows, portraying the mother’s distress and the Goblin’s murky disappearance into his lake.
Édouard Lalo (1823 – 1892): Cello Concerto in D minor (1876)
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Prélude: Lento – Allegro maestoso
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Intermezzo: Andantino con moto – Allegro presto – Andantino
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Introduction: Andante – Allegro vivace
Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo was born in Lille, the son of a soldier of Spanish heritage who disapproved of the idea of music as a profession. After early studies on the violin and cello, he left home for Paris, where he became acquainted with the likes of Gounod and Offenbach. Although he achieved some success as a prominent quartet violinist and violist, composition remained his first love, and he laboured for many years as a writer of chamber music, songs, orchestral works and opera. His efforts in opera were perhaps too forward-looking for a conservative Parisian audience, and remain seldom performed. He was strongly encouraged instead towards orchestral music by the violinist Pablo de Sarasate, and his first real success came relatively late in life with the Symphonie Espagnole for solo violin and orchestra.
As a cellist himself, Lalo must have been conscious of the lack of modern concertos for the instrument and a pervading view that it was not a suitable vessel for the genre. His compatriot Saint-Saëns and his idol Robert Schumann had both written popular cello concertos, and so three years after the success of the Symphonie Espagnole he set his attentions to writing his own. In seeking inspiration, he drew inspiration from the contemporary vogue for all things Iberian (Bizet’s Carmen was premiered a short time later) as well as his own Spanish ancestry.
The concerto is in compact three-movement form, with performances running to around 22 minutes in duration. Lalo provides an abundance of Romantic themes and keeps the soloist in the foreground for the majority of the time. The first movement begins with a slow introduction in the style of an operatic recitative, before an aspirationally rising theme emerges. This impassioned theme, punctuated by orchestral chords, gives way to a more lyrical second subject, though ultimately it is the terse, darkly brooding music which has the last word.
The second movement combines both slow movement and scherzo into one neat interlude, the songful slower theme contrasting with a lively dance for cello and flute. The finale continues in high spirits, after another slow and thoughtful introduction. The soloist retains the limelight for much of the movement, though boisterous horn calls and woodwind figures provide ample colour as the music dashes to a heady close.
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897): Symphony No 3 in F major, opus 90 (1883-84)
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Allegro con brio
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Andante
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Poco allegretto
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Allegro – Un poco sostenuto
The most famous image of Brahms as the rotund, grey-bearded elder statesman of symphonic music belies the second most famous image of the German composer, in which a fresher-face stares wistfully into the distance. This duality between conservative and progressive is a repeated theme in biographies of Brahms, though the former remains the most popular image, writing symphonies in the mould of Beethoven and railing against the likes of Liszt and Wagner. Despite this, Brahms was not wholly opposed to ‘new’ music. He was conflicted in his opposition to and simultaneous admiration of Wagner, and treasured his manuscript score of Tannhäuser.
Similarly, for all his third symphony is on the surface an unassuming and traditional symphony, it is unique in combining rhythmic uncertainty, an epic struggle between major and minor and a sense of autumnal contentment in such concise form. The score was prepared over just six months while staying in Wiesbaden in 1883, a genesis substantially shorter than the famously slow gestation of the first symphony. The previous six years had been a productive period for Brahms, having seen the publishing of his second symphony, the violin and second piano concertos, the Tragic and Academic Festival overtures and a couple of sets of Hungarian Dances. The proximity of Wiesbaden to the Rhein is also significant; Brahms had spent much of his formative years with his friends Robert and Clara Schumann in Dusseldorf, where Robert would eventually attempt suicide by drowning. Brahms even uses a direct quotation from the first movement of Schumann’s third symphony, the Rhenish, as the main theme for his own third symphony, as well as imitating its rhythmic ambiguity.
The new symphony’s premiere was an immediate success. The conductor Hans Richter proclaimed it Brahms’ Eroica, and Clara Schumann recorded that “All the movements seem to be of one piece, one beat of the heart, each one a jewel! From start to finish one is wrapped about with the mysterious charm of the woods and forests.” Dvořák went further: “I say without exaggerating that this work surpasses his first two symphonies; if not, perhaps, in grandeur and powerful conception—then certainly in—beauty.”
The symphony is by some distance Brahms’ shortest, with each movement closely related to the others. From the very first bars, a key recurring theme is a rising F-A-F figure, shorthand for Brahms’ motto Frei aber froh (free but happy, in reference to his bachelor status, and contradictory to his friend Joseph Joachim’s motto Frei aber einsam). This F-A-F motto recurs frequently, though the A is frequently switched to an A-flat, thus transforming the music from F-major to F-minor. After this opening call to attention comes a turbulently surging statement of the motif from Schumann’s Rhenish. The second theme murmurs more gently, though the struggle between major and minor is never far away. The development section seems to lose itself in a densely tangled thicket until a horn solo eventually seems to find some space to breathe, heralding the recapitulation before a serene close.
The two inner movements are much more introspective, with no work to do for trumpets or timpani. The bucolic second opens with a gentle woodwind chorale. Although momentary unease appears in exchanges between winds and strings, sunny optimism is never far away. The third is more wistful, described by Clara Schumann as ‘A pearl, but … a grey one dipped in a tear of woe’, and the soft tread of its famous rising and falling theme never quite reaches resolution.
The finale begins with an uneasy, unison line for low strings before exploding into life with seemingly unstoppable tragedy. Brief major key episodes fail to gain a foothold, and as the music plunges through a grander retelling of the Andante’s uneasy string/wind theme, it feels as though the symphony is heading for catastrophe. Ultimately, though, the storm burns itself out, leaving us with the golden glow of sunset as the opening theme of the first movement is restated in radiant autumnal colour.