Program Notes for November 12 by Dr. Bruce Brown

Program Notes

November 12, 2011

By Composer in Residence

Bruce Brown

The JSO’s “New Horizons” seasons will continue with two masterworks of the Romantic era that are eternally fresh in the variety and depth of their emotional expression.  Pianist Arthur Green will join the orchestra for Brahms expansive second piano concerto, and the evening will conclude with Tchaikovsky’s thrilling fifth symphony.

Both of these works broke significant new ground when they were written, and the “new horizons” that Brahms and Tchaikovsky explored in these landmark compositions were part of a rich climate of change at the height of the era we now call the Romantic period.

Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Opus 83

            Johannes Brahms (1883-1897) was always a very deliberate composer.  He toiled on his first symphony for over twenty years before he was satisfied with it.  He hesitated for a similar period – almost twenty years – before writing a second piano concerto after his first one received a rocky reception in 1859. 

            He started work on the second concerto in 1878, and toiled on it over the next three years, along with several other projects including his monumental violin concerto.  He dedicated the new piano concerto to his teacher, Eduard Marxsen.

            Brahms was the soloist for the premiere performance in Budapest on November 9, 1881, and he soon played the concerto throughout Europe.  This second concerto, unlike the first, was a resounding success, both with critics and with audiences.

            The English musicologist Jeremy Siepmann penned a very apt description of Brahms second concerto:

There is perhaps no great piano concerto grander than the Brahms B flat. With the spaciousness of a symphony, the drama of an opera, the intimacy of a lullaby and the intertwining raptures of the greatest love songs, it touches on almost every emotion with extraordinary immediacy and power. Its virtuosity is spellbinding, yet always substantial.

            The last sentence above refers to the fact that Brahms’ music is never a flowery display of technical skill for its own sake.  There is always musical depth and meaning, but the technical demands can also be very daunting!

            Brahms broke new ground in several significant ways in his new concerto.  He wrote it in four movements, more like a symphony than the customary three-movement design of a concerto.  The music begins with a very striking departure from tradition, a long French horn solo.  The slow third movement also contains an extended solo for cello. Brahms later transformed this passage into a song, Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer (“My Slumber Grows Ever More Peaceful”) incorporating lyrics by Hermann Van Ling. 

Brahms jokingly wrote to his friend Elisabeth von Herzogenberg that the second movement was a “little wisp of a scherzo.”  Most scherzos are light, playful pieces and are relatively short.  This movement is written on a much grander scale and contains some very dark and stormy music!

Throughout the concerto the orchestra and soloist share in the musical dialog to a remarkable degree.  They are clearly equal partners, rather than one accompanying the other.

Symphony #5 in E Minor, Opus 64

            The fifth symphony of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) was also a bold work for its time - much too bold for some!

            William Foster Apthorp, writing for the Boston Evening Transcript, wrote a particularly scathing review: “In the Finale we have all the untamed fury of the Cossack, whetting itself for deeds of atrocity, against all the sterility of the Russian Steppes. The furious peroration sounds like nothing so much as a horde of demons struggling in a torrent of brandy, the music growing drunker and drunker. Pandemonium, delirium tremens, raving, and above all, noise worse confounded!”

            In the ten years since the composition of his fourth symphony, Tchaikovsky’s international reputation had grown considerably, but the composer was plagued by professional and personal turmoil and self-doubt.

            He started to work on a new symphony in May of 1888 at his summer retreat in Frolovskoe, but he vacillated between hope that his new symphony would be a success and dread that it would be a dismal failure.

            On June 22nd, Tchaikovsky wrote to his long-time patron Nadezhda von Meck: "I want so much to show not only to others, but to myself, that I still haven't expired... I don't know whether I wrote to you that I had decided to write a symphony.  At first it was fairly difficult; now inspiration seems to have deserted me completely."

            On August 26th, the symphony was finished.  Tchaikovsky dedicated the score to the influential German musician Theodore Avé-Lallemant, who had been very kind and encouraging to him when he visited Germany.

            Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere on November 17 in St. Petersburg, and the symphony was performed several times in the coming months.  Still, Tchaikovsky remained uncertain about the piece until a triumphant performance in Hamburg in March of 1889.  "The Fifth Symphony was again performed magnificently,” he wrote, “and I have started to love it again; my earlier judgment was undeservedly harsh..."

            In the years that followed it became one of his best loved and most performed works.

            Tchaikovsky’s fifth was extremely popular during World War II.  One of the most memorable performances took place on October 20, 1941, when the Leningrad Symphony was ordered by city officials to continue with a planned concert to lift morale, even though the city was under siege.  The concert broadcast was being heard as far away as London.  Bombs began to fall near Philharmonic Hall as the second movement began, but the orchestra continued playing until the last, triumphant notes of the finale.