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Home , Carl Czerny, Concerto, Louis Spohr, Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Concerto (Copland), Piano Concerto (Salonen)

Notes on the Program By James M. Keller, Program Annotator, The Leni and Peter May Chair

Symphony No. 2 in , Op. 36 No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 Ludwig van t is no longer fashionable, as it was in much playing Mercury, perhaps, to the Jove of the Iof the 19th and 20th centuries, to speak of Eighth, or Puck to its . Beethoven’s as inhabiting con- The Second is the least performed of Bee- flicting camps, with the even-numbered thoven’s symphonies — one of them would ones being conservative and reflective and have to be — but when it is heard it proves ir- the odd-numbered ones being radical and resistibly seductive. The analyst Don- extroverted. It’s probably for the best. None ald Francis Tovey remarked of its marvelous of Beethoven’s nine symphonies are con- Larghetto that “to many a musical child, or servative — at least they weren’t when he composed them — and each embodies both In Short introspection and bravado to some degree. Nonetheless, his symphonies do have Born: probably on December 16, 1770 (he strong characters and each leaves a discern- was baptized on the 17th), in , then an independent electorate of able and specific impression in its wake. Al- though the straitened objectivity of the post- Died: March 26, 1827, in , World War II may temper past excesses, Works composed and premiered: one may still find a kernel of truth in the No. 2, composed 1801–October 1802; dedicated even-odd cliché. The intrepid fortitude of the to the ’s friend and patron Prince Third (Eroica) or the resolute struggle of the Karl von Lichnowsky; premiered April 5, 1803, Fifth do leave a different overall impression at the in Vienna. Piano from, say, the more intimate celebration of Concerto No. 4, composed in early 1806, and nature in the Sixth (the ) or the ele- perhaps somewhat earlier; it was probably completed on March 27, 1806; premiered gant wit of the Fourth. The Symphony No. 2 March 1807, in a private performance at the faintly echoes all of the symphonies the palace of Prince Franz Josef von Lobkowitz; composer would go on to write, but it stands public premiere, , 1808, at the out particularly as a spiritual pair with the Theater an der Wien in Vienna Eighth Symphony. The latter explores relat- premieres and ed emotional terrain following a decade of most recent performances: Symphony intense musical exploration. Both pretend No. 2, premiered April 22, 1843, Alfred Boucher, to be Classical symphonies, although they conductor; most recent performance, April transgress Classical models in important 13, 2013, David Robertson, conductor. Piano ways, and both come across as essentially Concerto No. 4, premiered January 31, 1863, musical arguments rather than Romantic Theodore Thomas, conductor, Sebastian Bach reflections of personal exertions or other “ex- Mills, soloist; most recently played, October 8, ternal” factors. Beethoven’s Second seems 2016, Alan Gilbert, conductor, , an indispensable step along the path to soloist Beethoven’s Eighth, less imposing (despite Estimated durations: Symphony No. 2, ca. 34 its greater length) but fully as delightful, minutes; No. 4, ca. 35 minutes

DECEMBER 2019 | 25 child in musical matters, this movement character of symphonic third movements had has brought about the first awakening to a been changing for some time, but it is in Bee- sense of beauty in music.” He also argued thoven’s Second Symphony that the semantic that, while it does not seem as exorbitantly breakthrough takes place; the movement is radical in its content, Beethoven’s Second called not a but a — literally, Symphony may not have had a lesser effect a joke. on ensuing music than some of his sympho- Those who heard the premiere of the Sec- nies whose surface details make a more im- ond Symphony found the piece to be star- mediate and obvious impact. He considered tling indeed, and the critics were reserved in it one of “certain works which immediately their response. The Zeitung für die Elegante impressed contemporaries as marking a Welt found it wanting in comparison to startling advance in the art without a discon- Beethoven’s First Symphony, its critic ex- certing change in its language.” pressing the opinion that the first symphony Tovey was referring to the symphony’s mu- is better than the later one because it is devel- sical language, to be sure, but here one also oped with a lightness and is less forced, while finds a watershed moment in musical termi- in the second the striving for the new and sur- nology. Beethoven nailed a peg into the cof- prising is already more apparent. fin of the Classical minuet as the predictable That critic was certainly right about the structure for symphonic third movements, Second Symphony’s “striving for the new.” a role it played almost invariably in the sym- The piece is often highly dramatic, from phonies of Haydn and Mozart. In truth, the the long, searching, slow introduction of

A Difficult Birth

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 was premiered in April 1803, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, on a that also included his First Symphony, Piano Concerto No. 3, and the Christus am Ölberge (Christ on the Mount of Olives). It was one of those interminable programs that late 18th- and early 19th-century audiences seem to have endured with patience, curiosity, and sitzfleisch. It was also one that got by on a wing and a prayer. Beethoven’s pupil The Theater an der Wien, where Beethoven resided was summoned to the master’s apart- in the year his Second Symphony was premiered ment at five in the morning on the day of the concert there, at the invitation of impresario Emanuel and found the composer in bed, writing out Schikaneder, who had built it two years earlier parts. The program had yet to be rehearsed for the first time, despite the amount of music to be played, and that much of it was new and complex. “The began at eight o’clock in the morning,” Ries recounted. “It was a terrible rehears- al, and at half past two everybody was exhausted and more or less dissatisfied.” He continued:

Prince Karl Lichnowsky, who attended the rehearsal from the beginning, had sent for bread and butter, cold meat, and wine, in large baskets. He pleasantly asked all to help themselves, and this was done with both hands, the result being that good nature was restored again. ... And so the rehearsal began again. The concert began at six o’clock, but was so long that a few pieces were not performed.

26 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC the opening movement — rich in harmonic his first three piano (not to mention surprises and cunning contrasts of orches- his early “non-canonical” E-flat-major Piano tration — through to the outsize coda of the Concerto of 1784) and his Concerto. finale, which even comes to a halt and creeps Imagine, then, the astonishment with which on in considerable mystery before conclud- listeners, conditioned in this way, must have ing in rambunctious fashion. heard Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto when it was new. Rather than the authoritar- Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 emerges ian sounds of a full , the first notes with unexpected gentleness. In 1807, when they heard were played softly on the piano, this music was first heard, any reasonably the gentle murmuring of a theme based on informed member of a Viennese audience repeated notes and simple . And would have known that a concerto should then — just as surprising — following its begin with a long introduction during which five-measure presentation of the thematic the orchestra presents some of the first move- germ of this movement, the piano simply ment’s principal themes. In the case of a pi- withdraws, not to be heard from again for ano concerto, the soloist might play along, another 69 measures. One might say that the underpinning the orchestral texture; but the silent piano is unusually “present” during featured instrument would not move into the the measures of orchestral introduction, spotlight until the introduction had come to precisely because it made its mark so indel- a resolute conclusion. Beethoven had at least ibly at the outset. Apart from the unortho- respected that aspect of the Classical mold in dox decision to begin with the solo piano,

At the Premiere

In his Autobiography, published in 1865, the composer recounted an anecdote told to him by Ignaz Xaver Seyfried, music di- rector of the Theater an der Wien from 1797 to 1825, about Beethoven’s performance at the premiere of the Fourth Piano Concerto:

Beethoven was playing a new Pianoforte-Concerto of his, but forgot at the firsttutti that he was a solo player, and springing up, began to direct in his usual way. At the firstsforzando he threw out his arms so wide asunder that he knocked both the lights off the piano upon the ground. The audience laughed, and Beethoven was so incensed at this disturbance, that he made the orchestra cease playing, and begin anew. Seyfried, fearing that a repetition of the accident would Beethoven, ca. 1805 occur at the same passage, bade two boys of the chorus place themselves on either side of Beethoven, and hold the lights in their hands. One of the boys innocently approached nearer, and was reading also the notes of the piano-part. When therefore the fatal sforzando came, he received from Beethoven’s outthrown right hand so smart a blow on the mouth, that the poor boy let fall the light from terror. The other boy, more cautious, had followed with anxious eyes every motion of Beethoven, and by stooping suddenly at the eventful moment he avoided the slap on the mouth. If the public were unable to restrain their laughter before, they could now much less, and broke out into a regular bacchanalian roar. Beethoven got into such a rage that at the first chords of the solo, half a dozen strings broke. Every endeavor of the real lovers of music to restore calm and attention were for the moment fruitless. The firstAllegro of the Concerto was therefore lost to the public.

DECEMBER 2019 | 27 the musical material itself is a bombshell. Beethoven unveiled his Fourth Piano Con- The piano’s opening chords are in G major, certo at a private concert in the palace of his but the orchestra’s response is in B-major, patron Prince Franz Josef von Lobkowitz in a key only distantly related to the harmon- March 1807. Then he put it away for nearly two ic region marked by the piano’s theme. The years and performed it only one more time, at a relationship of key regions spaced a third concert at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien on De- apart — such as G and B — would become cember 22, 1808. This all-Beethoven marathon an obsession of as the 19th cen- has gone into the annals as one of the most tury progressed. As usual, Beethoven was at extraordinary events in all of . the forefront. In addition to this concerto, the performance The second movement, too, is extraor- included the premieres of Beethoven’s Sym- dinary, even apart from its uncharacteris- phonies Nos. 5 and 6 as well as of the Choral tic brevity (lasting as it does only about five Fantasy (for piano, , and orchestra), the minutes). The music theorist Adolf Bernhard Vienna premieres of three movements from Marx, in his 1859 biography of Beethoven, the C-major and the concert scena “Ah, suggested that this Andante con moto bore Perfido!”, and a solo keyboard some relationship to Gluck’s Orfeo ed by the composer. To encounter all of these Euridice — specifically, to how Orpheus used revolutionary pieces at one sitting must have music to tame wild beasts. At some point mu- been overwhelming, and to many attendees sic historians began misattributing this ob- the Fourth Piano Concerto must have sounded servation to , who probably would like just more of the same madness — and have been very happy to assign a program- who knows what the all-but-deaf Beethoven matic explanation to this expressive, conver- actually accomplished at the piano. His pupil sational movement, but apparently didn’t. termed Beethoven’s performance (Liszt’s “quotation” can still be found in many on that occasion as “playful,” an odd enough discussions of this concerto, even though his- descriptive, in the event, that one might won- torical research squashed it a few decades der if it should be read as a euphemism. It was ago.) In 1985 the musicologist Owen Jander Beethoven’s last public appearance as a concerto pointed out that Beethoven’s music — in- soloist, although he would continue to perform deed, in the whole concerto, not just the slow in or as an accompanist. movement — seems to follow point by point a popular version of the Orpheus legend that : by Beethoven. was presented as street theater in the Vienna of Beethoven’s day. Such a literal interpreta- Instrumentation: Symphony No. 2 calls tion of text into tones would have been an ex- for two , two , two , two traordinary method for Beethoven to follow, , two horns, two , , and opinions are divided about whether there and strings. Piano Concerto No. 4 employs is much likelihood that this took place; yet , two oboes, two clarinets, two bas- Jander put forth a strong argument, and the soons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, idea does capture the imagination. and strings, in addition to the solo piano.

28 | NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC