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Home , Augustin Hadelich, Overture, Overture (Bruckner)

SAN DIEGO A JACOBS MASTERWORKS CONCERT Markus Stenz, conductor

March 3-5, 2017

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Leonore Overture No. 2, Op. 72

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH No. 1 in A minor, Op. 99 Nocturne Scherzo Passacaglia Burlesque Augustin Hadelich, violin

INTERMISSION

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 Allegro con brio Andante con moto Allegro Allegro

Leonore Overture No. 2, Op. 72 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born December 16, 1770, Bonn Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

Beethoven’s , originally titled Leonore, is doubtless the only opera in history to have four separate overtures. This tale of marital fidelity, political idealism and resistance to tyranny comes to its climax in a dark dungeon when the heroine Leonore prepares to sacrifice her life to protect her imprisoned husband Florestan from the evil Pizarro; the couple is rescued at the last minute by the arrival of the good minister Don Fernando. The opera took Beethoven 11 difficult years to complete, it went through three different versions and even then Beethoven was not completely satisfied. The story of the creation of its four overtures tells us much about his painful progress toward a final version of the opera. What we know today as the Leonore Overture No. 1 was drafted in 1807 for a proposed production of the opera in Prague. That performance never took place, and Beethoven discarded this overture, which was not performed until after his death. (At that point, it was published with the absurdly high opus number of 138, which is Beethoven’s last opus number.) At the premiere of Leonore in Vienna on November 20, 1805, the opera was preceded by the piece we know today as the Leonore Overture No. 2 (the played on the present concert). It is a daringly original piece of music. Rather than writing the expected opera overture in , Beethoven wrote what is in effect a dramatic tone poem: composed of themes from Leonore, this overture offers a sequence of the opera’s most dramatic events. Unexpected in form and difficult for its performers, this overture excited a firestorm of criticism. And so for the revision of the opera performed four months later, Beethoven re-cast that overture: he rounded off some of its rough edges and provided the recapitulation of themes that No. 2 was missing. Now known as the Leonore Overture No. 3 (and now in sonata form), this was the overture that introduced the revised opera on March 29, 1806. But there remained a fatal problem with Beethoven’s Leonore overtures. The beginning of this most serious opera is surprisingly light in tone: the first scene shows the frothy infatuation of the young Marzellina with the new jailer’s assistant. Prefacing such a scene with either No. 2 or No. 3 is deadly. When the Leonore Overture No. 3 is used as the overture to the opera, that overture – in Donald Francis Tovey’s wonderful phrase – “annihilates the first act” of the opera. Long before Tovey made that observation, had seen the same thing. He said that this music “is no longer an overture, it is the most grandiose drama in itself…Far from giving merely a musical introduction to the drama, this overture tells the story more completely and more stirringly than the ensuing, broken theatrical action.” Beethoven came to the same realization. For his third and final (1814) version of the opera, now renamed Fidelio, he gave up on writing an overture that in any way foreshadows the events of the opera and instead wrote an entirely new piece. His brief Fidelio Overture – a conventional curtain-raiser full of thrust and noble sentiment – makes a perfect lead-in to the first scene of the opera. Beethoven’s decision to write the Fidelio Overture has banished the three Leonore Overtures to the concert hall, where they have led varied careers. No. 1 is seldom performed, but No. 3 has become almost too popular: its dramatic music and formal balance have made it a concert favorite. That leaves – somewhat in limbo – the Leonore Overture No. 2, and it should be noted that many people prefer this version to the more familiar No. 3. It is rawer (some would say “bloodier”) than No. 3, and it is also closer to the violent events of the opera. Despite rough edges and formal imbalance, No. 2 offers music of stark power, and – perhaps more effectively than in the popular No. 3 – it brings certain moments of the opera to vivid life. After the powerful opening chords, descending string lines mirror the descent into the dungeon where the hero Florestan is held by Pizarro, and soon woodwinds sing a bit of Florestan’s great at the beginning of Act II, “In des Lebens Frühlingstagen,” a sad account of how far he has fallen from his happy early life. A long transition leads to the Allegro, with its rising-and-falling main theme, first announced here only by cellos. This develops at some length, then is interrupted by the sound of an offstage . In the opera, this signals the arrival of Don Fernando, who rescues Florestan and has Pizarro jailed, and its appearance in the overture was one of the things that bothered early critics. Another thing that bothered those critics was the lack of a recapitulation: in the Leonore Overture No. 2 Beethoven simply ignores classical form and concludes with the heroic music that – in the opera – signals the triumph of good over evil.

Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 99 Born September 25, 1906, St. Petersburg Died August 9, 1975, Moscow

During the summer of 1947, in the icy political atmosphere that followed military victory in World War II, Dmitri Shostakovich began what seemed an entirely “safe” composition. For years he had been an admirer of violinist David Oistrakh, and that summer – in the village of Kellomäki on the Gulf of Finland – he began a violin concerto for his friend. He sketched the first movement that July and completed it in November after returning to his teaching position in Moscow. The second movement, a scherzo, came quickly and was done by the first week in December, while the third movement, a passacaglia, was completed in January 1948. But as Shostakovich continued to work on the concerto, the political and artistic climate around him turned deadly. This was the period of the crackdown on Soviet artists led by Stalin’s ideological pointman, Andrei Zhdanov. At the First All-Union Congress of Soviet in February 1948, Shostakovich – along with Prokofiev, Khachaturian, Miaskovsky and others – were attacked for their “formalistic distortions and anti-democratic tendencies” and for writing “confused, neuropathological combinations which transform music into cacophony,” music that “dwells too much on the dark and fearful aspects of reality.” Forced to read a humiliating apology and to promise to mend his ways, Shostakovich quickly learned that the government’s demand for conformity took more menacing forms: he was dismissed from his teaching positions, his music was effectively banned and there is evidence that the Shostakovich family subsisted during this period on the savings of their housekeeper. Stunned but alert to the dangers before him, the responded in two ways. The public Shostakovich wrote the music demanded by Stalin’s government – film scores and patriotic like Song of the Forests and The Sun Shines over Our Motherland. The private Shostakovich wrote the music he wanted to, but these scores went into his desk, waiting for a safer day. Among the latter was the manuscript for the violin concerto for Oistrakh. Years later, Shostakovich took pleasure in showing friends where he was in the composition of the finale of this concerto when he heard of the Congress’ denunciation of him – it was in the middle of run of sixteenth-notes – and he pointed out that the music before and after that news was exactly the same. The death of Stalin in 1953 seemed to promise a more liberal artistic atmosphere in Russia, but Shostakovich held the concerto back for two more years. It was finally premiered, by Oistrakh and the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeni Mravinsky, on October 29, 1955, eight years after its composition. The concerto had a popular success, though Soviet critics – still fearful of saying the wrong thing in that uncertain atmosphere – were non-committal. Oistrakh, however, loved the concerto and played it with American on his first tour of this country later that fall. From the perspective of a half-century later, it seems extraordinary that this music could have been considered dangerous, either to its audience or its composer. In many respects, the most remarkable feature of this concerto is how old-fashioned it is. It is a big virtuoso piece, conceived with the talents of a specific performer in mind and offering that soloist a so spectacular that it almost becomes a separate movement in itself. The Concerto in A minor has become so much a feature of our musical lives that the fact that Shostakovich had to keep it hidden for so many years speaks volumes about the political and artistic climate in Russia during Stalin’s paranoid final decline. We need not know any of its history, however, to feel the greatness of this music. The concerto has some unusual features. It has two dark slow movements, both of them almost night-music movements (one of them in fact is called Nocturne), and these alternate with two bright fast movements, both of which have titles that imply a degree of play: Scherzo and Burlesque. The scoring is also unusual: Shostakovich does without and trombones, but his use of xylophone, harp and celesta gives this concerto a distinct, sometimes eerie, sound. The opening Nocturne truly is night-music. The lower strings’ rocking opening supplies the shape of the movement’s main theme, and the solo violin ruminates on this shape as it rises above their somber sound. The music builds to a climax marked appassionato, and then Shostakovich mutes the violin and the music turns subdued and dark. Much of the writing for the solo violin is very high here, and eventually the violin comes swirling down out of the dark moonlight. Some aggressive doublestopping leads to the wonderful close, where the muted violin climbs to the top of its range, its high E shimmering above the icy suspension of the orchestra’s final chord. By contrast, the Scherzo is all hard edges, dancing and skittering along its 3/8 meter. While there are episodes on other themes, it is the strident energy of the opening that drives this movement to its unrelenting close. With horn ringing above them, lower strings stamp out the ground bass of the Passacaglia theme, which stretches out over 17 measures, then begins to repeat quietly. A woodwind choir sings a somber variation before the solo violin enters, soaring above the ominous tread of the passacaglia subject far below. Its plaintive opening gives way to more impassioned material, and at the climax the violin stamps out the passacaglia ground in fortissimo doublestops. Gradually this falls away, the orchestra drops out, and – as a bridge between the third and fourth movements – Shostakovich offers his soloist a tremendous cadenza. This begins simply (the marking is “quiet but majestic”) as the violin explores bits of the passacaglia ground, but gradually it gathers speed and accelerates straight into the concluding Burlesque. Shostakovich had originally composed a beginning in which the soloist himself announced the movement’s opening theme, but Oistrakh – coming off that treacherous cadenza – begged for some relief at this point: “Dmitri Dmitryevich, please consider letting the orchestra take over the first eight bars in the Finale so as to give me a break, then at least I can wipe the sweat off my brow.” Realizing that he had a point, the composer quickly re-wrote the beginning to give the soloist 20 seconds to wipe his brow. The title Burlesque implies a mocking or joking character, and this movement is at times almost sneering. The stinging sound of the xylophone colors its jaunty main idea, and this finale, in the general shape of a , does not relax its pace for an instant. At the close, the violin rushes from the bottom of its range to the very top as the music hurtles to its brusque final chords. It is no surprise that Shostakovich kept this music hidden during Stalin’s repressive final years. There is nothing tragic about this concerto, nor is there anything ideologically dangerous about it beyond the fact that it is simply a very serious piece of music. That may have been enough to make it dangerous in those uncertain years. Beautifully written for one of the great violinists, the concerto makes a brilliant impact in live performance, especially in its glittering final movement. But long after the brilliance of the finale has ended, it is the haunting power of the slow movements – the somber Nocturne and the heartfelt Passacaglia – that stays to haunt the memory.

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN Born December 16, 1770, Bonn Died March 26, 1827, Vienna

None of us can remember the first time we heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony – this music is so much a part of us that we seem to be born knowing it. The Fifth surrounds us: as background music for chocolate and motor oil commercials, as the symbol for Victory in World War II, as the stuff of jokes. Even children who know nothing about classical music sing its opening four notes on playgrounds. Those four notes are the most famous in classical music, and Beethoven’s Fifth is certainly the most famous symphony ever written. Music so white-hot in intensity, so universal in appeal, cries out for interpretation, and over the last two centuries many have been ready to tell us what this symphony “means.” To some, it is Fate knocking at the door. To one nineteenth-century critic, it told the story of a failed love affair. Others see it as the triumph of reason over chaos and evil. Still others have advanced quite different explanations. But engaging as such interpretations are, they tell us more about the people who make them than about the music itself. The sad truth is that this music is so over-familiar that we have almost stopped listening to it: the opening rings out, and our minds go on automatic pilot for the next thirty minutes. We have lost the capacity to listen to the Fifth purely as music, to comprehend it as the astonishing and original musical achievement that it is. Beethoven made the first sketches for his Fifth Symphony in 1804, soon after completing the Eroica (Third) Symphony, but did not begin work in earnest until after finishing the Fourth in 1806. Most of the composition took place in the summer of 1807, and the score was completed that fall. The first performance took place on December 22, 1808, six days after Beethoven’s 38th birthday. The stark opening of the Allegro con brio, both very simple and charged with volcanic fury, provides the musical content for the entire movement. That (seemingly) simple figure saturates the first movement, giving it extraordinary unity. Those four notes shape the main theme, generate the rhythms and pulse insistently in the background; they even become the horn that announces the second theme. One of the most impressive features of this movement is how short it is: of Beethoven’s , only the Haydnesque First has a shorter first movement. The power unleashed at the beginning is unrelenting, and this movement hammers to a close with the issues it raises still unresolved. The Andante con moto contrasts two themes. Violas and cellos sing the broad opening melody in A-flat Major; Beethoven reportedly made 11 different versions of this theme before he got the one he wanted. The second subject, in heroic C Major, blazes out in the brass, and Beethoven simply alternates these two themes, varying each as the movement proceeds. The third movement returns to the C minor urgency of the beginning. It seems at first to be in scherzo-and-trio form, with lower strings introducing the sinuous opening idea. But horns quickly sound the symphony’s opening motto, and the movement never quite regains its equilibrium; the trio, with lumbering fugal entries in the strings, subtly incorporates the opening rhythm as well. At just the point where one anticipates a return to the scherzo comes one of the most famous – and original – moments in music. Instead of going back, Beethoven pushes ahead. Bits of the scherzo flit quietly over an ominous pedal, and suddenly the final movement – a triumphant march in C Major – bursts to life; this dramatic moment has invariably been compared to sunlight breaking through dark clouds. Beethoven’s scoring here reminds us of something easy to overlook: his concern with instrumental color. The march theme is announced by a full orchestra that includes three trombones (their first use in a symphony), and Beethoven employs a piccolo and contrabassoon to good effect here as well. Near the middle of this movement, Beethoven brings back some of the scherzo, which briefly – and darkly – slows progress before the triumphant march bursts out again to drive the symphony to its close. The coda itself is extremely long, and the final cadence – extended almost beyond reason – is overpowering. No matter how familiar this symphony is, no matter how overlain it has become with extra-musical associations, the music remains extraordinary. Heard for itself, free of the cultural baggage it has acquired over the years, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is as original and powerful and furious today as it was when it burst upon an unsuspecting audience on a cold winter night in Vienna two centuries ago. -Program notes by Eric Bromberger

PERFORMANCE HISTORY by Dr. Melvin G. Goldzband, Symphony Archivist This represents the third presentation of the Shostakovich First Violin Concerto at these concerts. During the 2008-09 season, Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg introduced the work with our orchestra, and three seasons later Karen Gomyo also played it here. Jahja Ling led both performances. Two major Beethoven works surround the Shostakovich concerto at these performances. The second of Beethoven's frustrating attempts to write an appropriate overture for his opera (now called Fidelio but then known as Leonore), the piece now known as the Leonore Overture No. 2 has never been played at these concerts before. In contrast, the Beethoven Fifth Symphony, the most universally well-known of the composer's symphonic output, was first heard in San Diego when the original San Diego Symphony Orchestra played it in its own inaugural concert, in 1910, in the ballroom of the then-new U. S. Grant Hotel. The conductor of the less than 40 orchestra members was Richard Schliewen. In 1936, Nino Marcelli led a performance of the work by the San Diego Symphony during the 1936 Exhibition season, broadcast across the country by the then-new Columbia Boadcasting System. In more contemporary times, the post-war reorganized SDSO gave its first performance of the Beethoven Fifth in 1950, somewhat surprisingly under the direction of Ferde Grofé, now famous for his own Grand Canyon Suite as well as for his original orchestration of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Many other conductors have led the rest of the 17 San Diego Symphony performances of this work, most recently during the 2013-14 season when Christoph von Dohnanyi conducted it. For the sake of completeness, San Diegans also heard the work played by the short-lived San Diego Philharmonic Orchestra, assembled in 1950 by SDSO musicians in the hope of creating a winter season as well as its summer season. Leslie Hodge was its conductor, and he led Beethoven's Fifth during its 1951-52 season. The orchestra lasted for only one more year. San Diego Symphony winter seasons began in 1959.