Notes for Classics 4: Sibelius & Brahms Saturday, November 3 & Sunday, November 4 Eckart Preu, conductor — Silver-Garburg Piano Duo • Sibelius – Finlandia, Op. 26 • Brahms – Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 (arr. for piano four hands) • Sibelius – Symphony No. 3 in C major, Op. 52
Jean Sibelius Finlandia, Op. 26
THE VITAL STATS:
Composer: born December 8, 1865, Hämeenlinna, Finland; died September 20, 1957, Järvenpää, Finland
Work composed: 1899, rev. 1900
World premiere: Finland Awakes was first performed on December 14, 1899, in Helsinki, with Sibelius conducting. A year later, Sibelius revised the tone poem and changed its name to Finlandia. The revised version was premiered by Robert Kajanus at the Philharmonic Society in Helsinki on July 2,1900.
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, cymbals, triangle and strings.
Estimated duration: 8 minutes
By November 1899, the citizens of Finland had endured almost a century of heavy-handed rule by Russia, which included severe censorship of the press. That month, a group of artists in Finland’s capital, Helsinki, organized a series of “Press Celebrations,” which were actually political demonstrations on behalf of Finnish independence. Jean Sibelius wrote and conducted Finland Awakes for one of these gatherings. The following year, Sibelius reworked the score and changed its title to Finlandia for the Helsinki Philharmonic to perform on its first major tour of Europe. As music historian Phillip Huscher notes, “Despite the narrow political circumstances of its creation, Finlandia turned out to have universal appeal, and in very little time it made Sibelius the best-known living Finn in the world.” The oppressive Russian presence growls through the low brasses and timpani as Finlandia begins. Sibelius follows this with a gentle statement in the winds, which grows into a defiant, heroic anthem heralded by brasses, horns and strings. Interestingly, the most memorable theme of Finlandia does not make its appearance until more than halfway through the work. This hymn-like melody, inspired by folk tunes but invented by Sibelius, sounds quietly in the winds, and eventually becomes an impassioned cry of freedom as Finlandia comes to its triumphal conclusion.
Johannes Brahms Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 (arr. for piano four hands)
THE VITAL STATS
Composer: born May 7, 1833, Hamburg; died April 3, 1897, Vienna
Work composed: Brahms began envisioning his Op. 25 quartet in 1857, wrote a draft in 1859, and finished it in 1861. It is dedicated to Baron Reinhard von Dalwigk.
World premiere: Op. 25 premiered on November 16, 1861, in Hamburg, with Clara Schumann at the piano.
Estimated duration: 43 minutes
“There are fewer things heavier than the burden of a great potential.” – Linus van Pelt, Peanuts
In 1853, Robert Schumann wrote a laudatory article about a 20-year-old composer from Hamburg named Johannes Brahms, whom, Schumann declared, was the heir to Beethoven’s musical legacy. Schumann wrote, “If [Brahms] directs his magic wand where the massed power in chorus and orchestra might lend him their strength, we can look forward to even more wondrous glimpses into the secret world of the spirits.” The article brought Brahms to the attention of the musical world, but it also dropped a crushing weight of expectation onto his young shoulders. “You have no idea how it feels to hear behind you the tramp of a giant like Beethoven,” Brahms grumbled. Brahms’ music and his style of composition are grounded in the music of his predecessors, and he was mindful of their work. At the same time, he had all the pent-up energy and passion of a young man eager to make his mark. Brahms’ early chamber works, including his Op. 25 Piano Quartet, pay homage to the past, while also showcasing his growing musical understanding of form and content. Op. 25 deftly combines the Romantic melodic and harmonic language of the mid-19th century with the formal structures of Classical music. In this manner, Op. 25 can be heard as a proto-symphony in miniature. The chamber format allowed Brahms to experiment with musical concepts on a small scale, without the intimidating demands of a full orchestra. The rigorous formality of the Allegro announces itself in the strong unadorned melody of the opening bars. In mood, the Allegro belies its tempo marking. The music is tempestuous and somber, evoking the romantic gloom of youth. In the Intermezzo – one of the earliest examples of Brahms’ use of this terminology – Brahms pays homage to his friend and artistic mentor Clara Schumann with a melody based on the letters of her name. (Robert Schumann originated the Clara motif, a five-note descending passage; Brahms’ version is a variation of Schumann’s.) In the Andante, the melody morphs into a rhapsodic love song. This music is shot through with shadowy moments, like the sun’s rays piercing a forest canopy. The music transforms into a vigorous military march before returning to the opening theme. In the closing Rondo alla Zingarese (Gypsy Rondo), Brahms includes Gypsy tunes learned from his violinist friends Joseph Joachim and Ede Reményi. Op. 25 marks the first time Brahms used Gypsy melodies and rhythms in his own music, a characteristic that became a signature of his early works. The vigor of the off-accents and the robust melodies contain both passion and twinkling-eyed humor. Joachim, himself a noted composer who had just finished a Hungarian Gypsy-flavored violin concerto of his own, declared that Brahms had bested him “on his own turf!” Clara Schumann played the piano part at Op. 25’s premiere in Hamburg, but Brahms himself, in his Viennese debut as both composer and pianist, performed the piano part in Op. 25’s Vienna premiere, on November 16, 1862. The notoriously hard-to-please Viennese audience reacted to young Brahms’ music and performance with great enthusiasm.
Jean Sibelius Symphony No. 3 in C major, Op. 52
THE VITAL STATS
Composer: born December 8, 1865, Hämeenlinna, Finland; died September 20, 1957, Järvenpää, Finland
Work composed: Sibelius began working on his third symphony in September 1904 and finished it in 1907. He dedicated it to his contemporary, British conductor Granville Bantock.
World premiere: Sibelius led the Helsinki Philharmonic on September 25, 1907, in Solemnity Hall at Helsinki University.
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani and strings
Estimated duration: 26 minutes
“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” – Sir Isaac Newton, Third Law of Motion
In September 1904, Jean Sibelius began his third symphony with a clear plan. He believed wholeheartedly that “a symphony should be music first and last,” which countered the aesthetic styles of essentially all his contemporaries, including Debussy, Schoenberg, Strauss, Ravel, and, most particularly, Mahler. In 1910, Mahler and Sibelius met and discussed their philosophies of music at length; during this well-documented conversation, Mahler declared, “A symphony is like the world; it must embrace everything.” Sibelius thought otherwise. “Since Beethoven’s time, all so-called symphonies, with the exception of those by Brahms, have been symphonic poems,” he wrote. “In some cases the composers have given us a program or have at least suggested what they had in mind; in other cases it is evident that they were concerned with describing or illustrating something, be it a landscape or a series of pictures. That does not correspond to my symphonic ideal. My symphonies are music – conceived and worked out as musical expression, without any literary basis. I am not a literary musician: For me, music begins where words leave off. … I am particularly pleased to see it explicitly stressed that my [symphonies] are founded on classical symphonic form, and also that wholly misleading speculations about descriptions of nature and about folklore are being gotten rid of.” Sibelius’ determination to write a Classical-style symphony at the tail end of post-Romanticism did not arise from an adolescently defiant assertion of self. In the autumn of 1904, Sibelius was 38 years old. He believed in his musical vision, even though it was at odds with everything he heard in his colleagues’ work. “To my mind, a Mozart Allegro is the most perfect model for a symphonic movement,” Sibelius remarked. “Think of its wonderful unity and homogeneity!” The Third Symphony employs a medium-sized orchestra; its three (rather than four) movements and its stripped-down instrumentation reinforce Sibelius’ need to prove music could exist purely on its own terms. Within these quasi-Classical parameters, however, Sibelius writes music full of Romantic nods: the jollity of the opening celebrating its C major tonality, several transitional melodies that hint at emotional depths unknown in Mozart’s music, and finally, around 8.5 minutes into the Allegro moderato, a statement in winds and brass, just a few measures long, so heroic and aspirational that film composer Howard Shore used it, almost verbatim, as the central theme of his score for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Andantino and the closing Allegro both feature a seemingly unending supply of attractive and interesting melodies. They range in mood from the introspection of the second movement to a quietly confident statement that builds into a full-throated celebration in the finale.
© 2018 Elizabeth Schwartz