Program Notes by Dr. Michael Fink

Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.

 March 9, 2012

Piano Forte with Biegel & Zwilich

Brahms, Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a

            Brahms’s entry into the arena of orchestral composition was long and laborious. One reason was the fear that people might compare his symphonies with those of Beethoven. “You have no idea how the likes of us feel when we hear the steps of a giant like him behind us,” he once said. As it turned out, Brahms made his debut as a composer for full orchestra not with a symphony but with a set of variations. The successful premiere of Variations on a Theme by Haydn in 1873 apparently gave him the confidence he needed, for he went on to complete the First Symphony within three years.

            Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) chose for his variations a theme from a Feldparthia (outdoor partita) for wind instruments attributed to Josef Haydn (but now considered spurious). The movement’s title was “Chorale St. Antonii,” based on an Austrian pilgrim hymn. Although Brahms’s conception was decidedly orchestral, he sketched the variations also for two pianos, and the two versions were subsequently published under the same opus number.

            Each variation projects its own special character, but Brahms groups the eight variations and finale in a way that suggests a four-movement symphonic plan. The first three variations have fast tempos (= mvt. ). Then the Andante of Var. 4 explores the minor mode for the first time (= mvt. 2). Three of the next variations (Var. 5, 6, and have the feel of a scherzo, and Brahms’s personal scherzo- substitute, a gracious “intermezzo,” comes as Var. 7 (= mvt. 3). The sumptuous Finale rounds out this quasi-symphonic plan.

            In many ways, Brahms paid tribute through his variations not only to Haydn but also to the entire 18th century. This is most obvious in the work’s instrumentation. Except for two extra horns and a third bassoon (adapted from the original Feldparthia), Brahms generally limits himself to an orchestra not unlike Haydn’s London Symphonies. Only during the final build of excitement in the Finale does Brahms allow himself the luxury of one additional instrument: a triangle.

 Zwilich, Shadows for Piano and Orchestra

There are not many composers in the modern world who possess the lucky combination of writing music of substance and at the same time exercising an immediate appeal to mixed audiences. Ravel was one, and so, in a quite different way, were Bartók and Prokofiev. Zwilich offers this happy combination of purely technical excellence and a distinct power of communication, while a poetic element pervades the melody, harmony and counterpoint of her creations.

(Nicolas Slonimsky)

 Such high praise has now become customary for Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (1939- ). Born and educated in Florida, Zwilich moved to New York City in the early 1960s, where she played violin in the American Symphony Orchestra under Stokowski and studied composition at the Juilliard School. In 1975, she became the first woman to receive a doctorate in composition from Juilliard. By the early 1980s, Zwilich had frequent performances of her works, one of the most important being the 1982 premiere of her First Symphony by Gunther Schuller. In 1983, she won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for that work, becoming the first woman to receive the prestigious award in that category.

Zwilich has now composed five symphonies, and she is so well known as to have appeared in the “Peanuts” comic strip, and to have her name as an answer on TV’s “Jeopardy!” show and in a New York Times crossword puzzle. A constant stream of orchestral commissions, many repeat performances, and an increasingly accessible musical language may account for her supporting herself solely from her compositions. However, she has also striven to make contact with audiences. For example, while occupying Carnegie Hall’s first Composer’s Chair (1995-1999), she designed and hosted the “Making Music” concert-interview series, featuring the music of many living composers in a wide spectrum of styles.

Shadows was commissioned by pianist Jeffrey Biegle and an international consortium of orchestras. Biegle is premiering the work with each of these organizations during the 2011-2012 season. The work is scored for solo piano with flute, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, two horns, percussion, and strings. The composer describes Shadows as evoking the recollection of remnants of the past — the recalling of ancestral, religious, and cultural roots in the constant migration of people around the world. 

 Schubert, Symphony No. 9 in C Major (“The Great”)

            It is well known that the Great C Major Symphony by Franz Schubert (1797-1828) was a late work and his last symphony, composed during 1825-1826. Soon after completion, Schubert presented and dedicated to the Vienna Philharmonic Society a work identified as simply “this, my symphony.” However, the Society refused to perform the work because it was “too long and difficult.” These adjectives sound suspiciously like a reaction to the sumptuous and demanding Great C Major Symphony. On the other hand, the manuscript score bears a nearly illegible date that could be 1828, a marking that Schubert might have added after the Philharmonic Society’s rejection.

            The symphony was completely forgotten by the time of Schubert’s death but was rediscovered by Robert Schumann in the home of Schubert’s brother, Ferdinand, on New Year’s Day of 1839. Schumann immediately set about getting the work played, reviewing it, and proselytizing in general, as was his habit with Schubert’s music. In his review, Schumann had this to say:

Deep down in this symphony there lies more than mere song, more than mere joy and sorrow, already expressed in music in a hundred other instances; it transports us into a world where we cannot recall ever having been before.

             Referring to the symphony’s large scale, Schumann used phrases like “heavenly lengths.” The work’s large proportions remind one of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which Schubert had heard in 1824 and which may have given him ideas for an extended symphony. As Beethoven did in his Ninth, Schubert gave the world a final symphonic utterance in his Ninth, the Great C Major. Also like Beethoven’s Ninth, there is a possible philosophical interpretation to Schubert’s work. Beethoven’s message is quite literal and tied to Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” but Schubert’s is an implicit paean to Nature, made clear only through song texts he was setting around the time of the symphony’s composition. Perhaps the best example is Die Allmacht [Omnipotence], composed in 1825 to a poem by Pyrker:

Great is Jehovah, the Lord! For heaven

And earth proclaim His might.

You hear it in the roaring storm,

In the loud, surging cry of the forest stream;

You hear it in the rustling of the greenwood,

You see it in the golden, waving corn,

In the Glowing luster of the lovely flowers,

In the sparkling, star-strewn heavens;

It echoes terrifyingly in the rolling thunder,

And flames in the lightning’s swiftly flickering flight.

But your beating heart will reveal still more palpably

The power of Jehovah, the eternal God,

If you gaze up in prayer and hop for grace and mercy.

 (transl. Richard Wigmore)

             Schubert biographer John Reed sums up the symphony’s significance this way: “. . . It is the essential Schubert symphony, uniquely expressive of that belief in the unity of man and Nature for which he stood, and the first of the great Romantic symphonies.”