| To Good Health |  | Béla Bartók
Two Portraits, Op. 5
During the years 1907-08, Béla Bartók was passionately involved with a young Hungarian violinist, Stefi Geyer. In 1908 he wrote a violin concerto for her, which she never performed and he never acknowledged or mentioned among his works. The concerto was discovered only after Geyer’s death in 1956 and was not premiered until 1958, 13 years after the composer’s death.
Unknown to all but Bartók himself, in 1911 he had recycled the first movement of concerto – with minor changes – as the first of the Two Portraits, titled “Une idéale” (An Ideal). It is a dreamy meditation in which the solo violin soars over Debussy-like harmonies. Its main theme is based on an ascending five-note figure  that the composer called “Stefi’s Leitmotiv;” the composer also used it in a number of piano compositions from that period. Listeners familiar with Bartók’s complex rhythms and dissonant harmonies are in for a surprise. Perhaps under the influence of love and ripe late Romanticism, “Une idéale” bears the same relationship to Bartók’s mature compositions as Verklärte Nacht does to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone compositions. Both composers set out on new paths as they reached the limits of tonality.
For the second Portrait, Bartók also recycled earlier music, orchestrating the last of the Fourteen Bagatelles Op. 6 (1908) for piano, titled “She is Dancing.” Into this frenzied waltz he incorporated a bizarre transformation of the Stefi motive, renaming it “Une Grotesque.” Both Portraits were performed together for the first time in 1916.
|
| | |  | | | | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | | | 1756-1791 | | |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467
Mozart composed a total of 28 solo keyboard concertos, most of them for his own use in subscription concerts in Vienna. Consequently, the timing of their composition was influenced by the artistic climate and the economic wellbeing of the city. In the short period between 1782 and 1786, a booming economy created a heyday for musical life in Vienna. Aristocratic families vied with one another to underwrite and sponsor concerts of the latest in musical fashion. During those flush years, Mozart was in great demand both as a composer and a performer on the keyboard, composing 17 concertos, including this one in C major.
In the late 1780s Austria experienced a severe economic slump, the result of rebellions and the war with Turkey, which menaced the Eastern frontier of the Empire. To make matters worse, the revolutionary events in France terrified the Austrian Emperor, who rescinded his earlier liberal reforms and reintroduced various repressive measures. The resultant atmosphere led to a stifling of cultural life and a decline in patronage and public concerts. Consequently, Mozart composed only two piano concertos in the last five years of his life.
The Concerto in C major was composed in early 1785, finished on March 9, and premiered – in true Mozartean procrastination – on March 10, in a subscription concert. The concert, as well as the Concerto, was an artistic and financial success; according to Mozart's father Leopold, the composer took in 559 Gulden – about $2000 in today's money. The Concerto's cheerful and outgoing character is in stark contrast to its predecessor, the Concerto No. 20 in D minor, composed only three weeks earlier. No. 21 utilizes the full classical orchestra of strings with divided violas, a flute and two each oboes, bassoons, horns, trumpets and kettledrums. No cadenza by Mozart has survived.
The first movement is by far the longest, presenting a common opening theme for orchestra and piano, the two parts of which are also used as refrains. Piano and orchestra, however, have a series of different secondary themes, & the piano arriving at the dominant G major via an unusual minor route. & During the development section, the piano adds yet another theme to the pot.
After Ingmar Bergman’s 1967 film Elvira Madigan, which used the second movement of this Concerto as the principal soundtrack, it consistently ranks among classical music’s greatest hits. The beauty of this theme resides in the manner in which Mozart spins it out to great length with poignant internal cadences.
Some listeners find the transition to the final movement like being awakened from a dream. The mood and harmonic language of the Concerto change abruptly into a generally celebratory atmosphere. The movement is not the customary rondo, but rather a sonata form. As a parallel to the first movement, Mozart uses the piano to supply a darker coloring as it moves into the secondary theme in the dominant, as well as within the development section. & |
| | | Franz Schubert
Symphony No. 9 in C major, D. 944
In the half century after Franz Schubert’s death, his reputation rested almost entirely on his wonderful Lieder, while the rest of his music was mostly neglected. None of his orchestral music was published during his lifetime, and many of the major works did not emerge from private hands until decades after his death. The first six symphonies were not published until 1884-85 in the Gesamtausgabe, the complete edition of his works. The manuscript of Symphony No. 8, the so-called “Unfinished,” resurfaced only in 1865 when its owner, Schubert’s friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, a minor composer, used it as bait to get one of his own compositions performed. The Ninth, nicknamed “the Great,” was first performed – albeit severely cut – in 1839 at the instigation of Robert Schumann and under the direction of Felix Mendelssohn.
The C major Symphony is actually Schubert’s seventh and final completed symphony (For a long time, it was believed that there was a seventh “lost” symphony.) Besides the fragment that is the Eighth, Schubert made at least four other aborted attempts at symphonic writing.
Schubert composed the C major Symphony in 1825-26, during a period of relatively good health and rising hopes, when the syphilis, from which he had been suffering since 1822, was quiescent. For years there was confusion about the date because Schubert wrote “March 1828” on the manuscript – perhaps to fool a publisher, unsuccessfully, that the work was new. Analysis of the paper and ink and the deciphering of the correspondence related to the events described below clearly shows the date of composition was two years earlier.
In October 1826 Schubert presented the score to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Austria’s Music Society. In the summer of 1827 its orchestra played through the work in Schubert’s presence but found it too difficult and too long for a public performance. The Finale was performed in Vienna in 1836. Schumann retrieved the manuscript from Schubert’s brother Ferdinand – and with a comment on its “heavenly length” – set the stage for the 1839 premiere.
Three major symphonic works composed within a six-year period served as a transition between the Classical style and full-blown Romanticism: Beethoven’s Ninth (1824), Schubert’s C major (1826) and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (1830). Of the three, Schubert’s is the most conservative when compared to Beethoven’s addition of a chorale finale, and Berlioz’s greatly expanded orchestral forces and literary program. Yet, Schubert’s is by no means a throwback. Taking and developing ideas particularly from Beethoven, whom he idolized, Schubert imbued each movement of the Symphony with creative, even innovative, takes on the Classical symphonic form.
At the time he was writing this Symphony, Schubert was still perfecting his power as a symphonist. Considering that even as late as the 1860s, Johannes Brahms struggled to emerge out of the shadow of Beethoven, think how Schubert must have felt with his idol already a living legend. Schubert possessed, however, a gift for melody and musical form in the service of drama through his hundreds of Lieder, a talent that he put to good use in shaping this Symphony.
The Symphony is characterized throughout by a steadiness of pacing and tempo. Although it opens with a substantial introduction, the composer did not indicate any acceleration in tempo the main part of the movement that begins the formal sonata-allegro structure. The first theme is actually made up of several motives and has been criticized for being harmonically stagnant, based on a repeated cord progression and an upwards C major scale; and, indeed, Schubert concentrates his development more on the second theme group. A closing theme rounds out the melodic repertory of the movement. Schubert re-introduces an important motive from the introduction, working it into the fabric of the development of the second theme. And, although he was not the first composer to do so, he concludes the movement with a twofold restatement of the complete introduction theme.
In most symphonies and concertos, the so-called slow movement is designed to create a contrast in tempo and mood with the other, more animated movements. In this Symphony, however, the second movement march proceeds at a relatively speedy Andante con moto . It is also a complex hybrid of the customary ternary (ABA), rondo and sonata forms. It opens with a famous oboe solo – the entire piece, in fact, is an oboist's ego trip. The middle (B) section belongs to the strings to create a neat ternary structure. But then, Schubert inserts a new theme, one in even legato notes, to contrast with the dotted rhythm march, which becomes the main focus of one of several development sections. Then the oboe and string themes return, creating a larger ABA form. While conductors frequently take cuts in this Symphony, the restatements of the three themes in this movement represent further developments that explore new harmonic territory and -– more importantly – increase the emotional intensity of the movement. All those repeats are not mere padding.
In the broadest sense, the Scherzo adheres to the conventional form of two repeated strains, followed by a trio in the same form. But Schubert expands this simplest of musical structures into the most complex movement in the entire Symphony. The Scherzo section is a hybrid sonata-allegro, in which the main theme, pounded out in the unison strings, is followed by a contrasting middle section, a lilting waltz. There follows a true development and recapitulation of both themes before the Trio begins. The Trio, another waltz for the upper winds, turns suddenly melancholy with the composer’s penchant for drifting between the major and minor modes. The return to the Scherzo also includes a coda based on the second Scherzo theme with continual changes in key, as if it were another development section.
The Finale, with its relentless driving rhythm – a perpetual motion of triplets in the upper strings – is reminiscent of the final movement of Beethoven’s Seventh. It is once again in sonata allegro form and, beginning with the opening fanfare, each theme is independently explored within the exposition. The development’s opening musical allusion to and further expansion of the “Ode to Joy” constitutes Schubert’s ode to Beethoven. A long coda, once again more like a development section, concludes the Symphony.
|
| | | | Copyright © Elizabeth and Joseph Kahn 2010 |
|
