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Home , Egmont (Beethoven), Joseph Haydn, Overture, Overture (Bruckner), Program music

SAN DIEGO ’S PASTORAL A JACOBS MASTERWORKS Edo de Waart, conductor

January 24 and 25, 2020

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN to , Op. 84

FRANZ JOSEPH Symphony No. 92 in : Adagio – Allegro spiritoso Adagio cantibile Menuetto: Allegretto Presto

INTERMISSION

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68: Pastoral Erwachen heiterer Empfindungen bei der Ankunft auf dem Lande (Awakening of Cheerful Feelings on Arrival in the Country) Szene am Bach (Scene by the Brook) Lustiges Zusammensein der Landleute (Merry Gathering of the Countryfolk) Gewitter, Sturm (Thunderstorm) Hirtengesang, frohe und dankbare Gefühle nach dem Sturm (Shepherd's Song, Glad and Grateful Feelings After )

Overture to Egmont, Op. 84 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born December 16, 1770, Died March 26, 1827,

In 1809 Beethoven was invited to contribute incidental to a revival of Goethe’s tragedy Egmont at the Vienna Burgtheater. The motives of the theater’s managers were clear: the French occupation of Vienna had just ended, and they wanted to celebrate their own freedom with a production of a play that told of resistance to political oppression. Beethoven had found the French occupation very difficult (he had hid in the basement of his brother’s house with a pillow wrapped around his head during the French bombardment), and he was delighted to write the , which consists of an overture and nine other movements, including songs, entr’actes, a and a concluding victory symphony. But Egmont appealed to Beethoven for reasons deeper than its relevance to the French occupation of his adopted city. Goethe’s tragedy tells of the heroic resistance to the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands by Count Egmont, who is imprisoned by the evil Duke Alva. When a rescue attempt by Egmont’s lover Clärchen fails, she poisons herself, but Egmont goes to the gallows confident of the ultimate triumph of his cause. The themes of an imprisoned hero, a faithful woman willing to make sacrifices for love and political ideals, and the resistance to tyranny are of course those of Beethoven’s , and while the endings of Egmont and Fidelio are quite different, Beethoven must have found Goethe’s play close to his own heart. The complete incidental music is seldom heard today, but the overture has become one of Beethoven’s most famous. It does not, however, attempt to tell the story of the play, and listeners should not search for a musical depiction of events. A powerful slow introduction gives way to a tentative, falling string figure – gradually the strength coiled up in this simple theme-shape is unleashed, and the dramatic overture rushes ahead at the Allegro. This music is full of energy, and at moments Beethoven subtly shifts the pulse of his 3/4 meter to make it feel like 6/8. The ominous chords of the opening return to usher in the brilliant close, where music that will reappear in the Symphony of Victory (the tenth and final movement of the incidental music) symbolizes the ultimate victory of Egmont’s cause.

Symphony No. 92 in G Major: Oxford FRANZ Born March 31, 1732, Rohrau Died May 31, 1809, Vienna

On January 1, 1791, Haydn arrived in England to begin the first of two extended and wonderfully successful visits. After years of isolation in lonely , putting on before the small Esterhazy court, the 59-year-old discovered that he was famous: his public concerts that spring attracted huge and wildly enthusiastic crowds in London. That success brought a singular honor: Oxford University awarded Haydn the degree Doctor of Music, honoris causa, and in July he made the 55-mile trip to the famed university town for his investiture. It was a splendid ceremony: Haydn was required to present some of his own music and to wear – over the ceremony’s three-day span – a white silk academic robe with red sleeves and a black hat. “I feel very silly in my gown,” wrote Haydn to a friend, but he remained immensely proud of this award for the rest of his life. For the grand concert in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre, a building designed by Christopher Wren, Haydn did not write a new symphony but used one that he had written two years earlier to satisfy a commission from the Loge Olympique in Paris. That symphony had already been performed on the continent and in London, and when Haydn wrote it he had almost certainly never heard of Oxford – only with this performance did it earn the nickname by which it has been known for the last two centuries. But what a grand piece it is for such an occasion! This is a splendid symphony, full of strength and beauty. Haydn opens with a slow introduction that hints at the shape of the vigorous main theme, aptly marked Allegro spiritoso. But Haydn springs a surprise here, beginning on C natural, a full step below the expected dominant: not only does the exposition begin with a burst of energy, it at first sounds “wrong,” only to settle firmly into G Major a few measures later as the music erupts with an energetic forte. This two-part opening subject dominates the exposition, and the subordinate theme, an innocent little woodwind tune that chirps above tick-tock accompaniment, arrives only at the close of the exposition. The development is concise, and the real surprise comes in the extended recapitulation, where the themes continue to develop, clashing and changing at just the moment we expect them to be winding down. Fine as the first movement is, it is surpassed by the Adagio, one of Haydn’s most expressive slow movements. In , it opens with a lyric – Haydn takes care to mark it cantabile – that is soon colored by the silvery sound of solo flute. The central episode brings a striking change: this strident outburst in marches along smartly on steady rhythms punctuated by the sound of and , and then – just as suddenly – it melts back into the serenity of the opening. Haydn rounds matters off with an extended coda that features some imaginative writing for woodwinds. The most remarkable part of the comes in its trio section, introduced by horns playing off the beat. Lower strings pick this up – the trio section is unusually long – before the return to the brisk minuet. The finale is in form, rather than the expected , and it is very fast – Haydn specifies Presto. Its opening subject, announced by strings alone, is full of chromatic complexity, and the second subject – which comes gliding gracefully downward – partakes of some of this same coloration. The powerful development focuses on fragments of both themes: Haydn fully exploits the chromatic tensions built into these figures and makes effective use of pauses along the way before the symphony drives to a resounding close. There are – across the – a number of performances one would like to have been present to see and hear. The festive performance of this symphony on July 8, 1791 in Wren’s handsome theater – led by the proud Haydn in his resplendent academic gown – is certainly one of them.

Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Op. 68: Pastoral LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN

After making sketches for several years, Beethoven composed his Sixth Symphony during the summer of 1808, and it was first performed at the on December 22 of that year. The Sixth is unique among Beethoven’s because it appears to be . Beethoven himself gave it the nickname Pastoral and further headed each movement with a descriptive title that seems to tell a “story”: the arrival in the country, impressions beside a brook, a peasants’ dance which is interrupted by a thunderstorm, and a concluding hymn of thanksgiving once the storm has passed. Some have claimed that begins with the Pastoral Symphony – they see it as a precursor of such examples of musical painting as Berlioz’s , Mendelssohn’s fairyland scenes and Liszt’s – while others have even tried to stage this music, complete with characters, costumes and scenery. Beethoven would have been astonished. He had no use for program music or musical portraiture, which he considered cheap trickery. His Sixth Symphony is in classical symphonic forms throughout; even its “extra” movement, the famous thunderstorm, can be understood as a brief transition between the and the rondo-finale. And while this symphony refers to something outside the music itself, Beethoven wanted it understood as “an expression of feelings rather than painting.” The Sixth may lack the stark drama and tension of such predecessors as the Eroica or the Fifth, but it depends on the same use of for its musical argument, and finally it aims for the same feeling of transcendence those earlier works achieved, even if – as Joseph Kerman has wryly noted – all that is being transcended here is the weather. Beethoven liked to get out of Vienna during the stifling summer months and would take rooms in a rural village, where he could combine composing with long walks through the fields and woods. A journal entry from 1815, seven years after the Pastoral, suggests his feelings about these walks: “The Almighty in the woods! I am happy, blessed in the forests.” This symphony seems similarly blessed. Its first movement (“Awakening of Cheerful Feelings on Arrival in the Country”) is built on two completely relaxed themes; these do not offer the contrast that lies at the heart of sonata form, but instead create two complementary “Cheerful” impressions. One of the other unusual features of this movement is Beethoven’s use of the second measure of the opening theme in so many ways: as accompaniment or as motor rhythm, this simple falling figure saturates the movement, and over its ostinato-like repetitions Beethoven works some wonderful harmonic progressions, all aimed at preserving this movement’s sense of calm. The second movement – “Scene by the Brook” – is also in a sonata form built on two themes. The title “Scene” may imply dramatic , but there is none here. Over murmuring lower strings, with their suggestion of bubbling water, the two themes sing gracefully. The movement concludes with three brief bird calls, which Beethoven names specifically in the score: nightingale (flute), quail () and cuckoo (clarinet). Despite the composer’s protests to the contrary, the third and fourth movements do offer pictorial representations in sound. The scherzo (“Merry Gathering of the Countryfolk”) is a portrait of a rural festival; its vigorous trio echoes the heavy stamping of a peasant dance. Beethoven offers a da capo repeat of both scherzo and trio, yet just as the scherzo is about to resume it suddenly veers off in a new direction. Tremulous strings and distant murmurings lead to the wonderful storm, which remains – two centuries after its composition – the best musical depiction ever of a thunderstorm, with great crashes of thunder in the timpani and lightning flashing downward in the . (One desperately literal-minded early critic complained that this was the only storm he had ever heard of where the thunder came before the lightning.) Gradually the storm moves off, and the music proceeds directly into the last movement, where solo clarinet and horn outline the tentative call of a shepherd’s pipe in the aftermath of the storm. Beethoven then magically transforms this call into his serene main theme, given out by the violins. If ever there has been music that deserved to be called radiant, it is this singing theme, which unfolds like a rainbow spread across the still-glistening heavens. The finale is a moderately-paced rondo (Beethoven’s marking is Allegretto). Along the way appear secondary themes that once again complement rather than conflict with the mood of the rondo theme, and at the end a muted French horn sings this noble melody one last time. The petulant young Debussy, enemy of all things German, once sneered that one could learn more about nature from watching the sun rise than from listening to the Pastoral Symphony. This is strange criticism from the man who would go on to write La mer, which sets out to do exactly the same thing as the Pastoral: to evoke the emotions generated by nature rather than trying to depict that same nature literally. Beethoven did not set out to teach or to show his audience anything. Rather, he wrote a symphony in classical form, which he wanted understood as music: “It is left to the listener to discover the situations for himself…Anyone with a notion of country life can imagine the composer’s intentions without the help of titles or headings.” -Program notes by Eric Bromberger

PERFORMANCE HISTORY by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, San Diego Symphony Archivist

The first of the SDSO’s 14 presentations of Beethoven's Egmont Overture was under Fabien Sevitzky during the 1950 summer season. Though Egmont has been heard on these concerts 14 times previously, its two most recent appearances have only been when Yoav Talmi conducted the orchestra during the 1994-95 season and when Jahja Ling led a single performance during the SDSO's most recent Beethoven Festival, near the end of the 2009-10 season. Haydn's wonderful Oxford Symphony was introduced here under the direction of Robert Shaw in 1957. Like so much of Haydn's music, it has unfortunately become less performed by many in recent years. This is the first San Diego Symphony reading of the work since that first Robert Shaw performance. Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony has emerged as probably the most popular of his even-numbered symphonies, perhaps due to its use as part of Walt Disney's Fantasia feature from 1939, when it was given a full-blown Disney cartoon treatment and the Philadelphia Orchestra played the score under . In San Diego, it was introduced when Earl Bernard Murray conducted it in the 1960-61 season. Most recently, it was conducted by Jahja Ling in the 2015-16 season, its ninth outing by this Orchestra.