PROGRAM NOTES FOR RICHARDSON SYMPHONY
4 October 2008 Classical Subscription Concert
By Laurie Shulman ©2008
Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes by Carl Maria von Weber
Paul Hindemith
Born 16 November, 1895 in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Germany
Died 28 December, 1963 in Frankfurt
Hindemith's most famous composition has one of the longest titles in all classical music: Symphonic Metamorphosis on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber. Weber (1786-1826) was the first great German romantic composer. Today he is best remembered for his operas, particularly Der Freischütz (1821), Euryanthe (1823), and Oberon (1826). His concertos for piano and clarinet are occasionally revived. Weber was also a brilliant pianist who composed prolifically for the keyboard.
Hindemith left Germany for Switzerland in 1938, and came to the United States in 1940. He composed the Symphonic Metamorphosis in 1943, while teaching at Yale University. The piece was originally intended to be a ballet for the legendary choreographer Leonid Massine, with whom Hindemith had collaborated in 1938. Massine asked for an orchestration of Weber's music. Because of artistic disagreements between composer and choreographer, however, the original project never came to fruition. Instead, Hindemith wrote to his wife in March 1940 that he had changed his mind, and perhaps would compose a "free paraphrase" on Weber's music.
The sketches lay dormant until 1943, when Hindemith dusted off the score and completed the new piece. It evolved into a virtuoso exercise in variation technique. Symphonic Metamorphosis is as much of an orchestral showpiece as Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra. The compositional premise, however, is quite different. Hindemith's metamorphosis of Weber's music relates his piece to Tchaikovsky's Mozartiana Suite, Stravinsky's Pulcinella, Peter Warlock's Capriol Suite, Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, and Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. In each case, the more modern composer adapted music of an earlier master by imprinting his own distinct personality on the new work.
Hindemith used several pieces by Weber. The first was an overture written in 1809 as incidental music to Friedrich Schiller's Turandot. Its theme, which dominates Hindemith's second movement, is actually taken from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 1768 Dictionary of Music, where it is cited as an example of a Chinese melody. Weber's overture simply restates the "Chinese" theme with slight variation. Hindemith's treatment is more elaborate, incorporating a jazzy fugato and a dizzying array of orchestral color.
The other three movements of Symphonic Metamorphosis are based on various works Weber wrote for one piano, four hands. As Ian Kemp has observed, "Weber is treated neither with reverence nor with condescension." The music has an upbeat, outgoing flavor that is surely related to the positive spirit Hindemith encountered when he settled in this country. Free of the pedantry sometimes associated with Hindemith's music, the Symphonic Metamorphosis shows him at his best: spontaneous, concise, brilliantly orchestrated, and above all exciting.
Hindemith scored Symphonic Metamorphosis for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, and strings.
Symphony No.1 in D major, D.82
Franz Peter Schubert
Born January 31, 1797 in Liechtenthal, Vienna, Austria
Died November 19, 1828 in Vienna
Young Franz Schubert matriculated at Vienna’s Stadtkonvikt [City Seminary] in 1808, when he was eleven. Music-making was an integral part of daily life, in the Schubert family home and at the school. The boy played chamber music with his father and brothers, writing his first string quartets for domestic use. At school, the student orchestra rehearsed most evenings. Customarily these rehearsals entailed reading through one symphony and several overtures. In this manner, Schubert became acquainted with the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and music by many of their lesser-known contemporaries.
Members of the Schubert family anticipated that Franz would become a schoolteacher like his father. With that goal in mind, he withdrew from the Stadtkonvikt in November 1813 to enroll in a ten-month course at the Normalhauptschule St. Anna, the imperial teacher’s training college. He could have remained at the Stadtkonvikt and would have been eligible for a scholarship; however, that path would have led to compulsory military conscription. Schoolteachers, on the other hand, were exempt from military service. The Normalhauptschule program would preclude conscription and allow Schubert to begin earning a living as an assistant elementary schoolmaster in a year’s time.
The D major symphony, which Schubert completed on 28 October 1813, was his farewell gift to the Stadtkonvikt. Schubert dedicated it to the headmaster, Dr. Franz Innocenz Lang. The student orchestra gave the first performance in Dr. Lang’s honor. It was his first completed symphony; however, its structure and flow belie the tender years of its composer, who was only sixteen. He already had experience writing for orchestra. Fragments of earlier symphonies survive, and by 1813 Schubert had also composed several overtures.
All those evenings of rehearsing Haydn and Mozart served Schubert well in this First Symphony. The orchestra size (including clarinets) is identical to late Haydn. Movement forms are traditional, with a slow introduction to the first movement in dotted rhythm, reminiscent of a French overture. The third movement is a minuet/trio rather than a scherzo, which links this symphony more to Haydn and Mozart than to Beethoven.
The most remarkable aspect of this symphony is its technical security. Violins tend to bear the melodic weight, but the woodwinds are used with a deft touch, particularly in the lovely slow movement and the trio section of the Menuetto. Schubert’s lyrical, vocal themes charm the ear from beginning to end. With the exception of some shadows in the episodes of the slow movement, this music intended for entertainment and pleasure.
Salutes to Schubert’s distinguished models abound in the D major symphony. Listeners familiar with Mozart’s Linz Symphony may detect a similarity to that work in Schubert’s slow introduction. Schubert brings back that music briefly at the start of his recapitulation, a technique that recalls the first movement of Beethoven’s Pathétique Piano Sonata. (Haydn also interpolates a few measures of his slow introduction in his Drumroll Symphony.)
The second theme in the opening movement is often compared to the familiar Creatures of Prometheus theme, which Beethoven re-used in the Eroica Symphony’s finale. Schubert’s treatment of the tune, balanced and foursquare, emulates Haydn and has the natural lilt of an Austrian folk song. This First Symphony breaks no new ground, but it still announces a young master flexing his musical muscles, showing the promise of masterpieces to follow.
Schubert’s score calls for flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, Op.83
Johannes Brahms
Born 7 May, 1833 in Hamburg, Germany
Died 3 April, 1897 in Vienna, Austria
If anyone needed convincing that French horn was Brahms's favorite orchestral instrument, the opening to the Second Piano Concerto would clinch the argument persuasively. Dreamy and effortlessly beautiful, the unsupported horn melody sets the stage for one of the nineteenth century's greatest musical dramas, with simplicity and majesty. Much of this first movement is a paean to the horn, which returns with its transcendent theme at key points in this monumental first act of the drama. Its poetic interaction with the piano floats into our consciousness, providing us with faith that clear skies will ultimately prevail over the tempests that follow. Brahms's writing for the horn is both loving and knowledgeable. As Bernard Jacobson has written:
Brahms's use of a single instrument [horn] places all the emphasis on the intensely personal poetry of unsupported horn tone, and this is borne out by the continued association of the theme with the instrument later on at two of the most magical moments in the movement.
No less remarkable is the obbligato role that Brahms provided for principal cello in the third movement, Andante. Again, the idea of poetry in sound leaps to mind. For this intimate, private music Brahms features the most human-sounding and the warmest of the string instruments, endowing it with a part that is prized as one of the choicest cello solos in the entire orchestral literature.
Where does the piano fit into this? Isn't this supposed to be a piano concerto, after all? What was Brahms up to? For one thing, he treasured his orchestra. By 1881 he was in his late forties, an experienced orchestral composer who fully understood his players and their potential. Second, he conceived of the piano as an integral and closely-woven component of the orchestral fabric. Third, he had a gift for capturing an unexpected chamber-like moment, a brief subplot, amid the complex larger drama of this very large, decidedly symphonic composition. Horn and cello are merely the most outstanding examples of his orchestral favoritism and glorious attention to detail in the Second Concerto; there is also, for example, a delicious chamber-like role for the two clarinets in the slow movement.
Brahms began sketches for the Concerto in 1878 after his first Italian journey. It grew to such enormous proportions that he did not complete it for another three years, until the summer of 1881 in Pressbaum, not far from Vienna. Although perhaps less dramatic and passionate than the earlier Piano Concerto in D-minor (1854-58) and less transcendently tranquil than the Violin Concerto of 1878, the B-flat Concerto has a majesty and struggle that place it in a category all its own. Serenity reigns in this work, despite Olympian drama that rages fiercely through the first two movements.
The piece requires a major piano virtuoso with stamina, physical strength, and mature metaphysical insight. Its technical challenges are formidable, with huge chords, a variety of demanding passage work in octaves, thirds and sixths, a complex musical texture and highly sophisticated rhythmic patterns, especially in the finale. Brahms draws upon all the formidable technical arsenal of his "Handel" Variations for solo piano, and then some. He combines the musical sophistication of his mature chamber music with the orchestral mastery of the symphonies and the virtuosic power display of the youthful piano compositions. It hardly comes as a surprise that Brahms -- himself the first soloist in 1881 at Meiningen -- referred rather wryly to this concerto as "the long terror."
The day he completed the manuscript, 7 July 1881, Brahms wrote to his friend Elisabeth von Herzogenberg of his most recent accomplishment: "a tiny, tiny piano concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo." The massive first movement -- so peaceably introduced by solo horn -- is followed by a tempestuous scherzo that breaks from concerto tradition and emphasizes the symphonic character of this concerto. Where the opening movement expands sonata form to its very limits, the scherzo compresses it. Explosive fury propels this movement, whose tempo marking, Allegro appassionato, recalls the romantic passion of Brahms's youthful compositions. The central Trio, in D-major, bursts through the thunderous stormclouds like a joyous ray of sunlight; ultimately the storm returns.
After the spiritual Andante, surely among the finest moments for cello in all Brahms, the concerto closes with a lilting rondo tinged with Hungarian flavor. Witty and graceful, the finale is a maze of rhythmic games. Brahms toys with cross-rhythms and phrases that regularly travel across bar-lines, resulting in an ongoing ambivalence between duple and triple meter. He dispenses with trumpets and drums, which have no place in this gracious movement. As Peter Latham has observed, "for the sustained lightness and brilliance of this music there is only one model -- Mozart."
Brahms's score calls for woodwinds in pairs plus four horns, two trumpets, timpani, solo piano and strings.