Program Notes

PROGRAM NOTES by Daniel Maki Concerto No. 2 in Bb Major for Piano and Orchestra, op. 83 by Johannes Brahms (1833- 1897) Duration: Approximately 46 minutes First Performance: November 9, 1881 in Budapest, Hungary Last ESO Performance: April, 1988; James Tocco, piano; Robert Hanson, conductor Despite his well earned reputation for gravitas as an artist, humor was an important component of Brahms’ complex character. The humor was sometimes self-deprecating, often sarcastic, and seemed to function, sometimes almost too well, as an effective defense mechanism. In July of 1881 he wrote to a friend that he had written “a tiny little piano concerto with a tiny little wisp of a scherzo.” When he sent the completed score to another friend he referred to “a bunch of little piano pieces.” The piano music in question was none other than the composer’s hugely proportioned Second Piano Concerto, today considered a kind of heavy-weight champion of piano concertos, easily one of the noblest and most majestic specimens in the entire repertoire. Brahms had begun the concerto in 1878 after the first of what would be a number of trips to Italy. He then then put it aside, but took it up again in 1881 after yet another refreshing Italian journey and quickly finished it. Though the concerto is as German as music can be, it is perhaps not far-fetched to suggest that there are hints of sunny Italy sprinkled throughout. Although he had already tapered off his career as a pianist, it was Brahms himself who appeared as soloist in the premiere in Budapest in November of 1881. Unlike his First Piano Concerto, which was written twenty years earlier and had been poorly received, the new work was an immediate success . If many nineteenth century concertos treated the soloist rather like a circus performer, it should not be surprising that a composer of Brahms’ temperament would take a different approach. As the leading representative of so-called “absolute music”, theatricality for its own sake was foreign to his nature, and indeed Brahms the crusty bachelor was known to joke that he would sooner marry than write an opera. (He, of course, did neither.) The result of his philosophy of absolute musical values and dedication to classical forms is a concerto that has sometimes been called a kind of symphony with piano obbligato, the solo part being carefully integrated into the overall design. That said, the work nevertheless bristles with technical difficulties and stands as one of the supreme tests for any pianist both in terms of digital control as well as maturity of musicianship. The opening movement begins serenely and poetically with a horn solo which elicits an immediate response from the soloist. After a few further comments by woodwinds, the soloist launches into a dramatic cadenza that silences the orchestra as did a similar passage at the beginning of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. The cadenza then propels us into the grand entrance of the full orchestra, which now states the original theme in majestic march style, launching the main body of the movement. Although there are a number of other themes and motives which are greatly enriching, it is this simple theme, beginning with the first three notes of a scale (do-re-mi), that dominates the entire movement. Its quiet restatement by horn will recur at important structural points, including the beginning of the development section (in minor key, this time), the beginning of the recapitulation, as well as the coda, or concluding section. Since its standardization in Italy at the beginning of the eighteenth century by composers such as Vivaldi, the form of the concerto had been a three movement (fast- slow-fast) structure. The addition of an extra movement is thus a striking innovation, something which Brahms had first considered for his violin concerto, premiered just two years earlier. Having decided against it and not being one to waste good material, Brahms rewrote the proposed movement for piano, producing the so-called “tiny, little wisp of a scherzo.” (Scherzo is the Italian word for “joke”.) This particular scherzo is, of course, anything but tiny and is certainly no joke, being a stormy adventure in the dark key of D minor. Scherzos traditionally have a contrasting middle section confusingly known as a “trio”, and Brahms honors that tradition here with a majestic D major section for full orchestra before returning to the dark D minor that began this almost tragic movement. After two movements filled with turbulence, a bit of calm is in order and Brahms presents us with one of his most sublimely lyrical moments. The third movement begins with an eloquent cello solo, a melody that the composer liked so well that he rewrote it some years later as a song. The piano plays its own part in this movement but often as commentator on material already presented. Storminess returns for a spell in the middle of the movement but we know that all is well when the cello solo returns, albeit in the wrong key of F# major. Final resolution is achieved as the music returns to the tonic key of Bb and the movement ends peacefully. From the time of Mozart on, the final movement has been the lightest in character in concertos and Brahms is no exception here. As is the case in many of Mozart’s finales, the form is a kind of rondo, i.e., a movement with a recurring theme that acts as a refrain. Brahms’ main theme is playful and coquettish and alternates with several others. Perhaps the most memorable one is in minor key and might remind some listeners of Richard Rogers’ well known tune, “The Sweetest Sounds I’ve Ever Heard” form the 1962 Broadway musical No Strings. This tune suggests the Roma (Gypsy) style which Brahms dearly loved and used often, even in some of his serious works. And so this “tiny little piano concerto,” which is filled at times with barely contained fury, and at others with sublime lyricism, comes to a close with this delightful finale, showing the playful and even child-like side of a great artist. * * * Symphony No. 2 by Charles Ives (1874 – 1954) Duration: Approximately 37 minutes First Performance: February 22, 1951 in New York Last ESO Performance: These are the first ESO performances of the work According to the biblical maxim, prophets are without honor in their own country, a statement that did accurately describe much of Charles Ives’s musical career. Honor did come eventually, but it was gratification greatly delayed, as the history of his Second Symphony demonstrates. Most of the work on the symphony was done in 1901 and 1902, when the composer was in his late twenties. It would be half a century before he would have the pleasure of hearing this work performed, when Leonard Bernstein programed it with the New York Philharmonic in 1951. With his usual acute sense of theater, Bernstein scheduled the premiere for Washington’s birthday, February 22, presumably as a symbolic reference to his often quoted description of Ives as “our Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson of music.” Despite warm invitations to attend the premiere in Carnegie Hall, the composer declined, being in poor health and in his usual panic stricken state at performances of his music. Mrs. Ives was present in New York while her husband listened on the radio at a neighbor’s house in Connecticut. According to his biographer Jan Swafford, Ives listened quietly and when he heard the cheers break out from the audience, producing the warmest reception that any of his music had ever received, he “got up, spat in the fireplace, and walked into the kitchen without a word.” No one could tell whether he was disgusted at the sound of what he called one of his soft pieces (he had moved on to write far more dissonant works), or whether he was too moved to speak. It was presumably the latter. In a certain sense, the decades - long neglect of Ives’s music had been at least partially of his own making. After graduation from Yale, he had begun what had seemed like a promising career as a professional musician. Suddenly, for reasons that are not clear but which have been endlessly speculated upon, he did an about-face and did what most red-blooded American males of the period were expected to do: he became a business man. While earning a substantial fortune and becoming one of the shapers of the modern insurance industry, he wrote music in his spare time. Such an existence necessarily cut him off from many of the professional associations which would have promoted his musical career. All too soon, his health began to fail as diabetes and heart disease, probably complicated by the work load of his double life, became serious problems. By early middle age he had written a substantial amount of music but would produce little more, spending the rest of his life revising and collecting his output. He had the opportunity to hear very little of his music performed as many organizations considered it too difficult to play and too unusual for listeners to understand. Only gradually did the word get out to important musicians and he began to gain the reputation of an “American original,” a pioneer who had foreseen many of the most advanced new techniques of twentieth century music. As someone who despised “pretty music,” he would experiment with procedures such as polytonality, polyrhythms, quarter tones, and “chance” music. His most famous utterance was: “Don’t be a sissy. Stand up and take your dissonance like a man!” Ives’s First Symphony was written while he was a student at Yale under the supervision of his professor Horatio Parker, one of this country’s most distinguished musicians of the time.

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