Season 20102010----20112011

The Philadelphia Orchestra

Friday, October 151515,15 , at 888:008:00:00:00 Saturday, October 161616,16 , at 8:00 Sunday, October 1717,, at 2:00

Christoph von Dohnányi Conductor

Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 I. Allegro non troppo II. Andante moderato III. Allegro giocoso—Poco meno presto—Tempo I IV. Allegro energico e passionato—Più allegro

Intermission

Brahms Symphony No. 2 in D major Op. 73 I. Allegro non troppo II. Adagio non troppo—L’istesso tempo, ma grazioso III. Allegretto grazioso (quasi andantino)—Presto, ma non assai—Tempo I—Presto, ma non assai—Tempo I IV. Allegro con spirito

This program runs approximately 1 hour, 45 minutes. In addition to guest engagements with the major opera houses and orchestras of Europe and North America, Christoph vovonn DohnányiDohnányi’s appointments have included opera directorships in Frankfurt and Hamburg; principal orchestral conducting posts in Germany, London, and Paris; as well as his 20-year tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, with which he led 1,000 concerts and 15 international tours. He made his Philadelphia Orchestra debut in 1988.

In North America this season, Mr. von Dohnányi returns to lead subscription concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Boston Symphony. In the summer of 2010, he also conducted the Boston Symphony in a series of concerts at Tanglewood and was the music director for the Tanglewood Music Center’s production of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Internationally this season, Mr. von Dohnányi leads concerts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Israel Philharmonic, among many others.

Mr. von Dohnányi’s recent season highlights include international tours with London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, where he is honorary conductor for life; concerts with the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and a tour to China with the NDR Symphony, where he held the position of chief conductor from 2004 to 2010.

Mr. von Dohnányi regularly conducts at the Royal Opera Covent Garden, La Scala, and the Vienna State Opera, as well as the opera houses of Berlin and Paris. He has also been a frequent guest conductor with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival.

Mr. von Dohnányi has made many recordings for London/Decca with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic, including Beethoven's Fidelio, Berg's Wozzeck and Lulu, Schoenberg's Erwartung, Strauss's Salome, and Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. His Cleveland Orchestra discography includes recordings of Wagner’s Die Walküre and Das Rheingold; the complete symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms, and Schumann; and symphonies by Bruckner, Dvořák, Mahler, Mozart, Schubert, and Tchaikovsky, among many others.

FRAMING THE PROGRAM

Brahms’s symphonies are now so central to the genre that it is surprising to discover how intimidated the composer initially was to write one. Beethoven’s legacy loomed large and despite the symphonies of Mendelssohn and Schumann (important models for Brahms), composers in the mid-19th century were more inclined to produce programmatic symphonies (like Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique ) or symphonic poems (such as those by Liszt). Rarer, and usually less successful, was a traditional “Symphony No. 1.”

With expectations running high, Brahms kept delaying the completion of a symphony, although he started several. It took until 1876, at age 43, for the triumphant unveiling of his First Symphony. The Second, which concludes today’s concert, followed the next year. His final Fourth Symphony seemed to many of his contemporaries the culmination of the great 19th-century orchestral tradition.

Parallel Events 1877 Brahms Symphony No. 2 Music Saint-Saëns Samson and Delilah Literature James The American Art Homer The Cotton Pickers History Edison invents the phonograph

1885 Brahms Symphony No. 4 Music Franck Symphonic Variations Literature Haggard King Solomon’s Mines Art Van Gogh The Potato Eaters History Galton proves individuality of fingerprints

Symphony No. 4

Johannes Brahms Born in Hamburg, MMayay 7, 1833 Died in Vienna, April 3, 1897

“A storm of applause broke out at the end of the first movement, not to be quieted until the composer, coming to the front of the artists’ box in which he was seated, showed himself to the audience.” Thus Brahms’s friend Florence May described a Viennese performance of the composer’s Fourth Symphony in March 1897, in an emotional concert conducted by the great Hans Richter the month before the composer’s death. “An extraordinary scene followed the conclusion of the work. The applauding, shouting audience, its gaze riveted on the figure standing in the balcony, so familiar and yet in present aspect so strange, seemed unable to let him go. Tears ran down his cheeks as he stood there shrunken in form, with lined countenance, a strained expression, white hair hanging lank; and through the audience there was a feeling as of a stifled sob, for they knew that they were saying farewell.”

Symphonic Pairs From the beginning Brahms knew that his Fourth Symphony was different from the other three, and he apparently entertained fears that it might not be received as warmly. Composed in 1884 and 1885, on the heels of the Third Symphony of 1883, the Fourth was at once the composer’s most passionate and his most abstract symphonic outpouring. His whimsical declaration, in a letter of 1884, that the new piece consisted of “a few entr’actes and polkas that I happened to have lying around,” seems to suggest an ironic self-consciousness about the untraveled path the work had taken.

His first two symphonies—the serious First and the cheerful Second—had also been completed within a year of each other, during the mid-1870s, and like the earlier symphonies, the Third and the Fourth form a pair, one clear-eyed and direct, the other gray and troubled. The critic Donald Francis Tovey heard tragedy in the Fourth, calling the piece “one of the rarest things in classical music, a symphony which ends tragically.” Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that the source of this attraction to high drama stemmed not from personal crisis, but from Brahms’s interest during the 1880s in the Greek tragedies of Sophocles and others.

A Work Declared “un“un----Brahmsian”Brahmsian” The friendship Brahms had established in 1881 with the conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow was also important for the Fourth Symphony, for several reasons. Von Bülow, who had just been named director of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, offered Brahms a first-class ensemble with which the composer could “try out” the Fourth and other works. Additionally, von Bülow became a primary promoter of Brahms’s works, establishing with the Third and Fourth symphonies a long tradition of Brahms performance by the Meiningen musicians. Finally, von Bülow’s awe-inspiring performances of Beethoven’s late piano sonatas in early 1881 endeared him to Brahms, and might have had a bearing, however indirect, on the last movement of the Fourth Symphony.

Von Bülow prepared the Meiningen Orchestra’s first performance of the Symphony, which Brahms conducted on October 25, 1885. The composer then took the piece on tour with the Orchestra, performing it throughout northern Germany and the Netherlands, before allowing Hans Richter to present it to the Viennese public in January 1886. The initial response was surprisingly cool, considering the extent to which the city had lionized Brahms throughout the 1870s and early ’80s; the Fourth was declared “un-Brahmsian.” The composer had already had some inkling of this sort of reaction, when he and pianist Ignaz Brüll had performed a four-hand piano version of the Symphony for a private gathering in the fall of 1885. Present were von Bülow, the critic Eduard Hanslick, the surgeon Theodor Billroth, and the writer Max Kalbeck. All were dismayed at the piece; Kalbeck went so far as to suggest that the fourth movement be omitted.

Brahms did not lay a finger on the work. As the testimony mentioned above by his early biographer Florence May indicates, at the end of the composer’s life Vienna had gained a deep appreciation not only for the Fourth Symphony but for a whole career of symphonic music that it seemed to sum up. Small wonder that hordes of admirers turned out for the composer’s funeral, four weeks after the triumphant Viennese concert of March 1897.

A Closer Look “The first movement (AllegrAllegrAllegroo non troppotroppo),” writes Tovey, “acts its tragedy with unsurpassable variety of expression and power of climax. The slow movement (AndanteAndante moderatomoderato) ... has an eventful tale to tell. The third movement (AllegroAllegro giocosogiocoso), functionally the scherzo, has all the features of such a blend of sonata form and rondo as is common in finales; yet with all its bacchanalian energy it is evidently no finale. After three movements so full of dramatic incident, what finale is possible?”

The finale Brahms devised for the Fourth (AllegroAllegro energicoenergico e passionatopassionato) was the chief point of controversy when the Symphony was introduced; it was perhaps also the work’s chief point of contact with the late Beethoven piano sonatas, and with the Renaissance and Baroque music that had recently occupied Brahms the scholar.

Brahms’s movement is a set of variations on the ground bass from Bach’s Cantata No. 150, “Nach Dir, Herr, verlanget mich” (For Thee, Lord, Do I Long), which Brahms inflects with a tiny, “Romanticizing” chromatic alteration. This ground, which forms the basis of the variations, is not always heard in the bass line, and is gradually reduced to a vague, schematized scaffolding that calls to mind not only Baroque works such as Bach’s D-minor Chaconne for solo violin, but more to the point, late Beethoven. The Op. 111 Sonata, Beethoven’s last, also ends with an ethereal set of variations whose theme is slowly reduced, bit by bit, to little more than an abstract harmonic skeleton. In retrospect the orchestral variations were perhaps the only way Brahms could have ended the Fourth Symphony—with a conservative twist that set musical limits, by evoking Baroque harmonic ideals, while at the same time creating a symphonic conclusion through rich, subtle thematic reminiscences and a reduction to harmonic essentials.

—Paul J. Horsley

Brahms composed his Symphony No. 4 from 1884 to 1885.

Brahms’s Fourth has been a favorite piece of Philadelphia Orchestra conductors from its first appearance, in January 1902 with Fritz Scheel. The work last appeared on subscription concerts in January 2009, when Donald Runnicles led the work.

The Orchestra has recorded the piece four times: in 1931 and 1933 with Leopold Stokowski for RCA; in 1944 with Eugene Ormandy for CBS; and in 1988 with Riccardo Muti for Philips.

The Symphony is scored for two flutes (II doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, triangle, and strings.

The work runs approximately 40 minutes in performance.

Symphony No. 2

Johannes Brahms

Robert Schumann’s prophetic review in 1853 hailing the 20-year-old Johannes Brahms as the savior of Western music is well known. His effusive praise, however, may have had the unintended consequence of delaying a first symphony from the young genius. Schumann and everyone else wondered when Brahms would write a symphony, what it would be like, and how he would answer one of the most pressing aesthetic questions of the day: the best way to write a symphony after the towering achievements of Beethoven. Berlioz, Liszt, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and other composers all came up with their own varying answers. Brahms’s was eagerly awaited.

But he kept delaying. Soon after receiving Schumann’s benediction, he started to write a symphony, but ultimately diverted the music to other pieces. Two orchestral serenades, Opp. 11 and 16, came fairly close to being full-fledged symphonies, and there are comparable aspirations evident in his unusually symphonic First Piano Concerto and the great “Haydn” Variations of 1873, which must have boosted his confidence in proving his orchestral prowess. In the end it took some 23 years before Brahms finished writing his magnificent Symphony No. 1 in C minor, a work immediately hailed as “Beethoven’s Tenth” by the celebrated conductor Hans von Bülow.

Unidentical Twins After all the angst of producing that work, his Second Symphony had no such protracted birth pangs; its labor was relatively quick and easy. Brahms may have felt liberated to some degree from the burden of expectations set up so long ago by Schumann and turned to writing quite a different kind of symphony the second time around. Throughout his career he frequently created works in contrasting pairs. The First and Second symphonies may be considered such an instance of unidentical twins. They present an intriguing juxtaposition of gravity and cheer, which some have interpreted as a glimpse of the two sides of Brahms’s personality. As the composer had said of another pair of works, the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture: “One laughs, the other weeps.”

Brahms wrote the Second Symphony between June and October 1877, while also correcting the proofs of the First Symphony and making a four-hand piano arrangement of that work. His physical surroundings apparently inspired him, as he began composing amidst the breathtaking beauty of the Wörthersee, a lake nestled in the Carinthian Alps of southern Austria (Mahler would later find inspiration there as well) and completed it in Lichtental near Baden-Baden. He informed his friend, the powerful Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick, that the Symphony was “so cheerful and lovely that you will think it especially for you or even your young lady! That’s no great feat, you will say, Brahms is a smart fellow and the Wörthersee virgin soil, with so many melodies flying around that you must be careful not to tread on any.”

The composer eventually sent the work to his good friend Theodor Billroth, a prominent Viennese physician, who responded: “I have already completely immersed myself in this piece, and it has given me many a happy hour. I cannot tell which movement is my favorite; I find each one magnificent in its own way. A cheerful, carefree mood pervades the whole, and everything bears the stamp of perfection and of the untroubled outpouring of serene thoughts and warm sentiments.”

Late Idyll Such descriptions of the Second as sunny, warm, even pastoral (similar therefore to Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, which contrasted so with his famous Fifth, or to Dvořák’s Sixth Symphony) have been attached to the work from the beginning. But the piece also has its more somber moments, specifically in the first two movements. A conductor wrote to Brahms two years after the Symphony was written to inquire about the dark tone that intrudes in the first one with the trombones and timpani. The composer explained that “I would have to confess that I am, by the by, a severely melancholic person, that black wings are constantly flapping above us, that in my works—possibly not entirely without intent—this Symphony is followed by a small essay on the great ‘Why.’ If you do not know it [the motet “Why is the Light of Say Given to the Hard-pressed”] I will send it to you. It throws the necessary sharp shadows across the light-hearted symphony and perhaps explains those trombones and drums.” Musicologist Reinhold Brinkmann has explored what he calls the “Late Idyll” represented in this not-so-straightforward work.

After the popular and critical success of the First Symphony, which had its premiere in the relatively provincial Karlsruhe, Brahms was emboldened to premiere his Second initially in Vienna. Hans Richter was enlisted to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic for the first performance scheduled for early December 1877, but, as Walter Frisch has noted, “in one of those little ironies of music history, it had to be postponed until December 30 because the players were so preoccupied with learning Wagner’s Rheingold. ”

A Closer Look The ear may be drawn, at the beginning of the first movement (AllegroAllegro non troppotroppo), to the musical ideas presented by the woodwinds and brass, but the primary building block of the entire Symphony comes before, with the first four notes intoned in the lower strings: D, C-sharp, D, A. The movement is rich in melodic ideas, including a brief allusion to Brahms’s song from the same time (and in same key) “Es liebt sich so lieblich im Lenze!,” Op. 71, No. 1 (Love Is So Lovely in Spring).

The second movement (AdagioAdagio non troppotroppo) is the least sunny and exhibits the “Brahmsian fog” of which critics commented during the composer’s time, with the dark sonorities of its instrumental palette and the thickness of the orchestration. The third movements of Brahms’s symphonies typically serve as a kind of intermezzo; that of the Second Symphony merges elements of the minuet (AllegrettoAllegretto graziosograzioso) and the scherzo (Presto,Presto, ma nonnon assaiassai). The final movement (AllegroAllegro con spiritospirito) begins with a soft and mysterious theme that suddenly bursts into a fortissimo statement with great energy and forward drive.

—Christopher H. Gibbs

Brahms composed his Second Symphony in 1877.

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s first performance of the Brahms Second Symphony was in December 1900, under Fritz Scheel’s direction. The most recent performances on the Orchestra’s subscription concerts were in April 2009, with Kurt Masur on the podium.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has recorded Brahms’s Second Symphony four times: with Leopold Stokowski in 1929 for RCA Victor; with Eugene Ormandy in 1939 for RCA Victor; with Ormandy in 1953 for CBS; and in 1988 with Riccardo Muti for Philips.

The score calls for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings.

The Symphony runs approximately 40 minutes in performance.

Program notes © 2010. All rights reserved. Program notes may not be reprinted without written permission from The Philadelphia Orchestra Association.

GENERAL TERMS Cadence: The conclusion to a phrase, movement, or piece based on a recognizable melodic formula, harmonic progression, or dissonance resolution Chaconne: Before 1800, a dance that generally used variation techniques; in 19th- and 20th- century music, a set of ground-bass or ostinato variations Chord: The simultaneous sounding of three or more tones Coda: A concluding section or passage added in order to confirm the impression of finality Development: See sonata form Ground bass: A continually repeated bass phrase of 4 or 8 measures Intermezzo: A short movement connecting the main divisions of a symphony Legato: Smooth, even, without any break between notes Minuet: A dance in triple time commonly used up to the beginning of the 19th century as the lightest movement of a symphony Motet: An unaccompanied sacred choral piece Op.: Abbreviation for opus, a term used to indicate the chronological position of a composition within a composer’s output. Opus numbers are not always reliable because they are often applied in the order of publication rather than composition. Ostinato: A steady bass accompaniment, repeated over and over Rondo: A form frequently used in symphonies and concertos for the final movement. It consists of a main section that alternates with a variety of contrasting sections (A-B-A-C-A etc.). Scherzo: Literally “a joke.” Usually the third movement of symphonies and quartets that was introduced by Beethoven to replace the minuet. The scherzo is followed by a gentler section called a trio, after which the scherzo is repeated. Its characteristics are a rapid tempo in triple time, vigorous rhythm, and humorous contrasts. Sonata form: The form in which the first movements (and sometimes others) of symphonies are usually cast. The sections are exposition, development, and recapitulation, the last sometimes followed by a coda. The exposition is the introduction of the musical ideas, which are then “developed.” In the recapitulation, the exposition is repeated with modifications.

THE SPEED OF MUSIC (Tempo) Adagio: Leisurely, slow Allegretto: A tempo between andante and allegro Allegro: Bright, fast Andante: Walking speed Andantino: Slightly quicker than andante Con spirito: With spirit Energico: With vigor, powerfully Giocoso: Humorous Grazioso: Graceful and easy L’istesso tempo: At the same tempo Moderato: A moderate tempo, neither fast nor slow Passionato: Impassioned, very expressive Presto: Very fast

TEMPO MODIFIERS Ma non assai: But not much Meno: Less Non troppo: Not too much Più: More Poco: Little, a bit Quasi: Almost

DYNDYNAMICAMIC MARKS Fortissimo (ff): Very loud