Beethoven composed his Symphony No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op. 60 in the summer and the fall of 1806. 1806 was one of the most productive years of Beethoven’s entire life. During this year, he completed his Piano Concerto No. 4, the Violin Concerto, Leonore Overture No. 3, Coriolan Overture, the Three Rasumovsky String Quartets, the Piano Sonata No. 23 “Apassionata” and the 32 Variations on a Original Theme in C minor.
Beethoven conducted the first private performance of the symphony at the home of Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz in Vienna in 1807, and the first public performance in April 1808, in Vienna’s Burgtheater.
Although not as popular and not as frequently performed as the Third and the Fifth, the Fourth Symphony has a unique place in Beethoven’s catalogue. Today’s audiences, perhaps swept away by the works’ tragic and heroic power, tend to prefer the odd-numbered symphonies. However, Beethoven’s even-numbered symphonies show equally profound and beautiful aspects of his genius. In a critical study of Beethoven’s symphonies, Berlioz said of the Fourth Symphony: “The general character of this score is either lively, alert and gay or of a celestial sweetness.” Robert Schumann compared the work to “a slender Grecian maiden between two Nordic giants,” having in mind the sequence of the Third, Fourth and the Fifth symphonies.
The first movement of the Fourth Symphony opens with a slow introduction (Adagio) in which we have the feeling that the time is standing still. The cold and motionless music from the introduction is “detonated” by the flamboyant chords of the sonata allegro (Allegro vivace) giving energy to a joyous and Haydnesque movement almost entirely based on the opening staccato notes of the first theme.
The second movement (Adagio) brought Berlioz to exaltation — “Its form is so pure and the expression of its melody so angelic and of such irresistible tenderness that the prodigious art by which this perfection is attained disappears completely.”
The third movement (another Allegro vivace) is based on the constant juxtaposition between duple and triple pulse. The entire movement is repeated twice, thus becoming a model for Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh symphonies.
The fourth movement (Allegro ma non troppo) returns to the sparkling and playful mood of the first movement. Here sudden dynamic contrasts and furious passages in sixteenths become the moving forces. At the end of the movement, Beethoven again pays homage to his teacher Haydn by lulling the listener to repose before the final outburst.
Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande tells the story of Golaud who encounters the mysterious Mélisande in the forest, and marries her. But very soon, Mélisande finds her true love in the person of Pelléas, Golaud’s half-brother. Golaud becomes suspicious of the lovers, killing Pelléas and wounding Mélisande. Mélisande dies in childbirth, and Golaud continues his descent into madness.
In the twelve years following the play’s 1893 premiere in Paris, four great composers wrote music inspired by Maeterlinck’s masterpiece – Claude Debussy (opera), Gabriel Faure (incidental music), Arnold Schoenberg (symphonic poem) and Jean Sibelius (incidental music).
After Debussy completed an early version of his opera in 1895, British actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell (soon to play the role of Mélisande in London), requested Debussy to excerpt a symphonic suite from the opera to accompany the play’s London production. Debussy refused. Mrs. Campbell then asked Faure to write incidental music to Maeterlinck’s play. Faure agreed. After a one-month collaboration with orchestrator Charles Koechlin, the score of the Incidental Music to Pelléas et Mélisande, Op. 80 was ready. Maeterlinck, present at the 1898 London premiere of the translated play — accompanied by Faure’s incidental music — wrote to Mrs. Campbell, “In a few words, you filled me with an emotion of beauty the most complete, the most harmonious, the sweetest that I have ever felt to this day.”
The orchestral suite consists of four numbers — Prelude (the prelude to Act I in Faure’s complete orchestral score), La Fileuse (Mélisande at the spinning wheel), Sicilienne (the actual prelude to Act II with one of the most famous flute solos in the symphonic repertoire) and La Mort de Mélisande (the Prelude to Act III).
The third of the “Three B’s” (along with Bach and Beethoven), Brahms adhered to the use of classical forms in his works but dramatically altered the musical landscape in terms of harmony and expressiveness. Included among Brahms’s masterpieces are four symphonies, two orchestral serenades and two overtures, much great chamber music and many pieces for piano, assorted concertos, the Hungarian Dances, the German Requiem and other choral works.
Given the preeminence that Brahms holds today as an orchestral composer, it is somewhat surprising to find that he did not have a single work in the orchestral repertory until he was nearly 40, and it was the brilliantly crafted “Haydn Variations” that helped secure his reputation as a symphonist. Brahms produced two separate versions of the work: the present one for orchestra and a second one for two pianos. Although the pieces are effectively identical, Brahms considered them two independent works rather than viewing one or the other as a transcription. Brahms himself premiered the piano composition in August 1873 with Clara Schumann. The orchestral composition had its premiere in November of the same year.
Tchaikovsky composed the Variations on a Rococo Theme in December of 1876, amidst the turmoil of a failed opera production in St. Petersburg and a particularly nasty review in Vienna from the feared critic Eduard Hanslick. Prone to insecurity even at the best of times, Tchaikovsky asked for advice from the new work’s intended cello soloist, Wilhelm Fitzenhagen. Just 28, Fitzenhagen was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory and principal cellist for the Imperial Russian Music Society. He also fancied himself a composer, and his “corrections” to the work of his well-established colleague show surprising aplomb. Fitzenhagen rearranged the order of the variations,
removing one entirely, and rewrote most of the solo part. Tchaikovsky accepted the changes, and the hybridized version entered the popular canon, thanks to Fitzenhagen’s numerous concert appearances and an 1889 publication. 20th-century scholarship (aided by X-rays) revealed Tchaikovsky’s original music under Fitzenhagen’s emendations, and a reconstructed version debuted in Moscow in 1941. By then, Fitzenhagen’s edition had cemented its reputation among cellists and audiences, and it continues to be the customary choice for performances.
The Variations on a Rococo Theme reference the 18th Century — especially Mozart, whom Tchaikovsky adored. The theme is Tchaikovsky’s own invention, and it has little relation to the ornate Rococo style that emerged in France under Louis XIV, a movement that produced gilded palaces and the trill-happy music of Couperin. Following a stately orchestral introduction, the cello introduces the light-stepping “rococo” theme, balanced into two repeated sections. The theme ends with a harmonically adventurous codetta, first in the winds alone and then shifting to the strings. That material returns various times to link the connected variations, and it brings Tchaikovsky’s rich Romantic voice into dialogue with the lean Classical ideals explored elsewhere in the work.
The first two variations maintain the theme’s flavor and pulse, adding increasing decoration and commentary. The third variation breaks away to a singing melody, one of those heartbreaking tunes that Tchaikovsky unfurled with such ease. The fourth and fifth variations return to an outgoing, virtuosic character, culminating in an extended cadenza. The sixth variation, a minor-key andante, bookends the earlier slow section, and trails off in an ascent of ethereal harmonics. The final variation follows the work’s only pause, and enters with a rustic, throbbing intensity. It intensifies through quick call-and-response phrases and breathless figurations, linking directly to the energetic coda and a rousing conclusion.
Dvořák composed this work as part of his cycle of “Gypsy Songs” for voice and piano. This song, with its wistful and longing melody, has become famous in its own right. It has been performed in many arrangements, both by singers and instrumentalists. The words were originally set in Czech (sung in our performance today) and German. Here is the English translation (by Natalia Macfarren):
Songs my mother taught me, in the days long vanished;
Seldom from her eyelids were the teardrops banished.
Now I teach my children each melodious measure;
Oft the tears are flowing, oft they flow from my memory’s treasure.
The Czech Suite was one of several works Dvořák composed for small orchestra between 1875 and 1879 (the others being his masterful string and wind serenades). While scored for a Mozart-sized orchestra (much smaller than his symphonies), it has the beauty, sweep and grandeur of Dvořák’s larger works.
The Suite is in five movements, several of which are based on Czech dance forms. A tranquil Pastorale opens this work, essentially a prelude based on a simple descending theme passed around various string and wind sections. Next come two specifically Czech dance movements — a Polka, featuring a rising graceful theme in the violins, with a lively trio; and then a country minuet (“Sousedská”), opening with a decisive statement from clarinets and bassoons.
A short lyrical romance follows, featuring upper winds (flutes, oboes, English horn) and charming wind and string dialogues.
The finale is based on a boisterous Czech dance form, the “Furiant” (also used by Dvořák in other instrumental works), full of drive, syncopation and rhythmic flourishes, and ending in a fiery dash.
Rimsky-Korsakov is best known for large-scale works – operas and symphonies, as well as chamber works, which are staples of Russian romantic music. Less-well known, however, is that he initially embarked on a career with the Russian navy.
After retiring from the service, he was appointed Inspector of Music Bands of the Navy in 1873 and held that post until 1884. During that time he familiarized himself extensively with wind and brass instruments, and composed a number of concert pieces to elevate the musical level of navy band performances. One of the pieces he wrote was the concerto for trombone and military band, a 3-movement work first performed in 1878.
The concerto shows off both the lyrical and technical aspects of the trombone. It opens right away with a heroic solo theme; moves to an introspective and lyrical middle movement; and ends in a rousing last movement heralded by trumpets and snare drum.
Instantly recognizable, this work is taken from Wagner’s opera “The Valkyries,” his second opera in the Ring cycle. The “Ride” is a musical tone poem in which the Valkyries – warrior daughters of Wotan, king of the gods – ride through the air bringing back the souls of dead heroes to Valhalla, the home of the gods. The scenery is foreboding – towering, craggy mountains, a stormy thundering sky. All of this is brought to life in Wagner’s electrifying and dramatic orchestration.
César Franck was 66 when he completed the Symphony in D minor, his only symphony.
It premiered the next year, on February 17, 1889, nine months before the composer’s death. Performed by the orchestra of the Paris Conservatory under the direction of Vincent d’Indy, it was a complete catastrophe. Only now, more than 130 years later, can we see that the features which caused the negative turmoil at the premiere are precisely what cause our admiration today: the symphony’s then atypical three-movement structure, its extremely dense (at times almost Wagnerian) texture, and its organ-like overall sound.
The symphony is in three movements with the first having probably the most peculiar structure of the three. It is a richly modified sonata movement in which, not the themes, but the two tempos (Lento and Allegro non troppo) define the development. The heavy and dark introduction sets the main question of the symphony and a quick answer follows at the beginning of the Allegro. The symphony’s first surprise occurs when, in the middle of the allegro exposition, Franck returns us to the very beginning of the story by reintroducing the entire introduction, this time not in D minor, but in F minor. A second Allegro non troppo takes over leading us successfully out of the darkness. The final appearance of the Lento at the very end of the first movement brings a bright apotheosis.
The second movement is a unique hybrid of an old ballad and a scherzo that is directly derived from the ballad material. The scherzo starts as a harmless tremolo in the strings and grows monumentally toward the end of the movement. The expressive solo of the English horn at the very beginning of the movement was only one of the specific reasons for the conservative audience of Paris rejecting the work — in those days an English horn solo would be expected in an opera but not in a symphony.
The third movement begins with a stormy tremolo in the strings that is quickly interrupted by five short and powerful chords leading us to a movement that is simply a triumph of thematic richness and formal fantasy. This is also the movement in which the global plan of the symphony is revealed to us in the form of the reappearing ballad, but now heroic and with full-pipe organ volume.
Beethoven was a great admirer of Shakespeare’s plays, and according to the composer’s secretary, Anton Schindler, planned to compose an opera based on Macbeth. Unfortunately, such a plan never materialized and aside from Schindler’s unreliable testimony, there is no evidence of any Shakespearean influence on this work. When Beethoven chose the story of Coriolanus as a subject for his overture, he turned instead to the play of his contemporary, Heinrich Joseph von Collin.
The overture was written in 1807 and premiered the same year in the residence of Prince Lobkowsky in Vienna. The overture depicts a specific moment from the tragic story of the Roman general Coriolanus — the moment when his mother tries to convince him to return to Rome, even though the city has cast him out as a traitor.
The overture begins with powerful and decisive unison in the strings, followed, in the third measure, by an explosive eruption of the entire orchestra. This motive is repeated many times during the course of the overture, clearly symbolizing the heroic nature of the protagonist. After the heroic first subject, Beethoven introduces a theme closely associated with the image of the young general’s mother.
While the first subject of Coriolan is in C minor (Beethoven’s most tragic key), the second subject is in E-flat major, picturing the inner world of a loving mother. This C minor/E-flat major key relation is one that Beethoven had used a few years earlier in his Symphony No. 3 “Eroica”. There, the second movement is a funeral march in C minor, and is surrounded by three movements in E-flat major.
A striking similarity between the ending of the “Eroica’s” funeral march and the Coriolan’s ending is the way in which the musical texture breaks apart. It seems as if there is no gravity anymore or, according to the tragedy, no point in living anymore. Thus, Coriolan stabs himself to death as the only way to reconcile honor, false betrayal and a son’s love.
