Patron HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN The Royal Philharmonic Society Founded 24th January 1813 ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL (General Manager : T. E. Bean, C.B.E.) APRIL 19 1961 ONE SHILLING COLIN DAVIS I49TH SEASON FIFTH CONCERT Programme Overture : Beatrice and Benedict Berlioz Pianoforte Concerto No. I in D minor Brahms ARTUR RUBINSTEIN Sonata f>er Archi Henze (FIRST PUBLIC PERFORMANCE IN GREAT BRITAIN) Scherzo Capriccioso, Op. 66 Dvorak THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA (Leader : Raymond Cohen) COLIN DAVIS PROGRAMME NOTES by JULIAN HERBAGE Overture: Beatrice and Benedict Berlioz (1803-69) Berlioz had long contemplated the idea of writing an operatic version of Much Ado about Nothing. As early as 1833 he had written to his friend Joseph d’Ortigue requesting the loan of his copy of Shakespeare’s comedy, which Berlioz fancied would make a ‘ lively opera,’ but it was not until nearly thirty years later that the project materialised. He had been invited to conduct the annual musical festival at Baden-Baden, and for the opening of the theatre there in 1862 had been commissioned to provide an opera. He had only recent­ ly finished his herculean labours on Les Troy ens and found the comic opera a relief after his exertions. Despite his ill-health music poured out of him. and he frequently began a fresh number before the pre­ vious one was completed. This accounts for the fact that the whole score has a homogeniety which is epitomised both in the themes and in the spirit of the overture. The principal theme with which the overture opens is taken from the final scherzo duettino, marked Tempo di J'alse, in which Benedict and Beatrice comment on the perverse and illogical nature of love. ‘ Man is a giddy thing,’ as Shakespeare wrote, ‘and this is my con­ clusion.’ This is interrupted by a slower section, based on the aria in which Beatrice realises she is a victim of the wiles of Cupid. The remaining themes of the overture do not actually quote from the opera, but prepare for its light-hearted bantering atmosphere. Pianoforte Concerto No. i in D minor Brahms (1833-97) 1. Maestoso 2. Adagio 3. Rondo: Allegro con brio Soloist: ARTUR RUBINSTEIN The year 1853 was an important one in the life of the twentv-vear- old Brahms. In that year he left his native Hamburg for a concert tour with the violinist Remenyi, met Joachim at Göttingen. Liszt, Cornelius and Raft at Weimar, Berlioz at Leipzig and Robert and Clara Schumann at Düsseldorf. Two of these meetings resulted in lasting friendships—with Joachim and Clara Schumann, for her hus­ band Robert was to suffer his mental breakdown in the following year. Such an intense life reflected itself in his creative work, and he began sketches, in two-piano form, of what was probably intended to be his first symphony. How far Schumann’s tragedy is reflected in the music is open to question, but certainly Brahms intended that Clara Schumann should find some consolation for her loss in following the growth of the work. Progress was slow, and revisions were frequent. While the themes themselves were orchestral and symphonic, the young composer naturally thought in terms of pianistic figuration. The outcome was obvious, and the work was finally refashioned as a concerto for piano and orchestra. The original second movement was discarded, event­ ually to become the second movement of the German Requiem, and as Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann at the end of December, 1856, ‘ I am also painting a lovely portrait of you; it is to be the Adagio.' The finale underwent much alteration on the advice of Joachim, to whom Brahms showed each movement as soon as it was sketched, so that it was not until January 1859 that the first performance took place at Hanover, with the composer as soloist and Joachim conducting. It is little wonder that the Hanoverians failed to understand the concerto at first hearing and described it as ‘ a symphony with piano obbligato.’ The power and scope of the first movement was something- new in the literature of the concerto. At the opening, over a drum roll on the tonic note of D, violins and cellos enter with a stormy theme that at first might appear to be in the key of B flat. It is only after twenty-four bars, during which the bass has slowly descended in semitones from D to A that the key is fully established, THE ROYAL PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY LAST CONCERT OF THE SERIES Wednesday, May 17th at 8 p.m. Symphony No. 83 in G minor (The Hen) Haydn Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra Op. 30 (Rewritten by the Composer for Three Hands) LennOX Berkeley Symphony No. 5 (1922) Nielsen SIR JOHN BARBIROLLI THE HALLÉ ORCHESTRA (Leader: Martin Milner) Soloists CYRIL SMITH-PHYLLIS SELLICK ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL 15/- 12/6 10,'- 7/6 5/- Tickets : 21/- may be obtained not earlier than one calendar month before each Concert from the Royal Festival Hall (wATerloo 3191). Chappell & Co. Ltd., 50 New Bond Street, W.i (MAYfair 7600) and usual agencies. and an expressive theme is heard on the violins over a rhythmic figure in the bass derived from the first five notes of Ex. 1. Ex. 2 P espress. A shift of key to B flat minor brings a new melody in thirds and sixths after which Ex. 1 returns more fiercely than before in canon between violins and basses, and a descending figure in repeated quavers leads to the last important theme to be given out by the orchestra. Ex. 4 The orchestral storm dies away to an ostinato bass of D. A, D crotchets which the soloist now takes over, embroidering it with a flowing melody in repeated quavers, and this soon rises in emotional tension to bring back the powerful trills of the opening. The exposi­ tion then follows its course until, in a long solo passage, the piano introduces the broad melody that is the second subject proper. After this has been taken over by the orchestra the horn recalls Ex. 4 and the music sinks to a murmur with memories of Ex. 3. In the development the themes are treated in their original order, but Ex. 3a, altered in note-values, assumes the importance of a theme in its own right, occupying the latter part of the development and leading to the recapitulation. Here, over the pedal D, the soloist enters with Ex. 1, but surprisingly transposed so that the tonalitv appears to be, not B flat, but E major. The themes return in slightlv different order, and the coda, begun by the rhythmically altered version of Ex. 3a, brings the movement to a stormy close. In the manuscript of the slow movement Brahms has written the words Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini over the opening­ phrase of melody, but this inscription was omitted from the printed score. The music, however, gives the feeling of opening and closing with a prayer, while in the middle section, where there is one brief, passionate outburst, the piano meditates on a mournful theme given to the clarinets in thirds and sixths. Tovey has pointed out that the final Rondo owes much to the similar movement in Beethoven’s C minor piano concerto, even to the extent of including a fugal episode. But whereas in Beethoven the episode is based on the main theme, in Brahms it is the metamor­ phosis of a lyrical melody heard earlier in the major into a fugued scherzo of Mendelssohnian lightness. Like Beethoven, though, the movement ends with a lively coda in the major mode. Presentation of the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society awarded to ARTUR RUBINSTEIN presented by SIR THOMAS ARMSTRONG The above reproduction shews the obverse and reverse of the Gold Medal of The Royal Philharmonic Society. INTER VAL ARTUR RUBINSTEIN Sonata per Archi Henze (born 1926) Hans Werner Henze was the first young composer of distinction to appear in post-war Germany. A pupil of René Leibowitz and Wolf­ gang Fortner, he began his musical career as an eclectic, being in­ fluenced largely by Stravinsky and later by the twelve-note methods of that very individually divergent trio of composers, Schönberg, Berg and Webern. His musical outlook might be described as neo-post­ romantic, if such a hybrid word is allowable. The romantic element in his make-up is most noticeable in his choice of subjects for his theatre works. The opera Boulevard Solitude (1952) is a modern version of the Manon story, König Hirsch (1956) is based on Gozzi’s tale of the king who transformed himself into a stag, while the ballet Ondine, written for the Royal Ballet in collaboration with Ashton and Fonteyn, deals with one of the most romantic of nineteenth- centurv ballet themes. Henze, incidentally, has close connections with music-making in this country, for his Chamber Music (1958), dedica­ ted to Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten, was given at an Aldeburgh Festival, and his opera Elegy for Young Lovers, with a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kailman (the team responsible for The Rake’s Progress') will have its première at Glyndebourne during the coming­ season . Since 1952 Henze, like Sir William Walton, has lived in Italy, and has virtually dissociated himself from the avant-garde serialists. This perhaps was not unexpected from a composer primarily interested in musical sonorities rather than musical mathematics. In this, Henze resembles Benjamin Britten, and both, like Mozart, are musical mag­ pies, stealing whatever treasure they may chance to find, but at the same time transmuting it with the fertile inspiration that derives from their acute musical ear.