Thursday Evening, March 26, 2015, at 8:00 Isaac Stern Auditorium/Ronald O. Perelman Stage Conductor’s Notes Q&A with Leon Botstein at 7:00 presents Opus Posthumous LEON BOTSTEIN, Conductor FRANZ SCHUBERT Overture from Claudine von Villa Bella, D. 239 ANTON BRUCKNER Symphony No. 00 (“Study Symphony in F minor”) Allegro molto vivace Andante molto Scherzo: Schnell / Trio: Langsamer Finale: Allegro Intermission ANTONÍN DVORÁKˇ Symphony No. 1 in C minor (“The Bells of Zlonice”) Allegro Adagio di molto Allegretto Finale: Allegro animato This evening’s concert will run approximately two hours and 10 minutes including one 20-minute intermission. American Symphony Orchestra welcomes the many organizations who participate in our Community Access Program, which provides free and low-cost tickets to underserved groups in New York’s five boroughs. For information on how you can support this program, please call (212) 868-9276. PLEASE SWITCH OFF YOUR CELL PHONES AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES. FROM THE Music Director Reception and Reputation Schubert was undiscovered, lonely and by Leon Botstein penniless, during his life has to be set side by side with the success and satis- This concert explores shifts in the repu- faction acknowledged and experienced tation and characterization of com- by Haydn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, posers during their lifetime and after and Stravinsky in their lifetimes. Mozart their deaths, generated by posthumous was hardly obscure and his burial had discoveries. As in the history of the to do with the rituals and mores of visual arts (contrary to public opinion, 1791 Vienna, and Schubert was famous the highest prices were paid for work and well-loved in his lifetime. What is during the artists’ lifetimes, not after), more likely the case in music history is in music, composers have been best not the discovery of an overlooked known and best understood while they genius but the forgetting of those once were living, not after their death. The justifiably famous and the recalibration myth of the unappreciated and unrec- of the reputation of permanently well- ognized genius is just that—a later known composers. romantic invention. The popularity of the image of the misunderstood artist It is this last process that this concert gains momentum with Wagner, who, examines. Schubert, for example was despite astonishing success, seemed to famous at the time of his death for the revel in spreading the idea that he was lieder, choral, and dance music he the victim of philistine taste, that he wrote. “The Great” C major sym- was held back and misunderstood. The phony came to light only a decade after advantage in doing so was that it his death, and the most famous of all enhanced his sense of self, reinforcing Schubert works—the so-called “unfin- his belief that he was a visionary ished” symphony—was first heard prophet of the future—a threat. nearly 40 years after the death of the composer. The C major Quintet came Wagner’s fame coincided with the to light in the 1850s (Schubert died in spread of the practice of the arts during 1828). Schubert harbored ambitions to the 19th century; in a parallel fashion succeed in the theater—but in that he the affectations and mannerisms of the did indeed fail; most of his operatic artistic temperament, and a growing work remained unperformed. The over- affection for the notion of the great ture that begins the concert points to a artist as “ahead of his time,” an out- radical shift in the way posterity has sider and an outcast, flourished. No understood Schubert, a shift made pos- one made more of this sensibility than sible by the discovery of unknown Gustav Mahler, who despite great suc- large-scale works for the stage and con- cess and acknowledgment, felt unap- cert hall. Schubert’s fame was redi- preciated and predicted that “his time” rected in the second half of the 19th would come, but after his demise. century by the encounter with new works that came to light. After 1870 he The idea that Mozart had been buried became an icon of late 19th-century in an unmarked grave presumably romanticism more than a proponent of because no one cared and he was the early Biedermeier aesthetic of the impoverished and obscure, or that years between 1815 and 1828. Bruckner is best known for his sym- “unfinished” it came to light only phonies. But Bruckner is seen as a com- decades after the composer’s death. It poser in the thrall of the Wagnerian—a required a renumbering of the Dvořák Viennese figure opposed to a sterile clas- symphonies and a reconsideration of sicism associated with Brahms. Bruckner the composer’s aesthetic trajectory. is understood as having transformed Dvořák revised many of his early the symphony into a monumental sonic works; we therefore rarely get a chance drama. He was a world-famous man at to hear what the young composer the time of his death. Much as Brahms thought to do, unhampered by the wis- and Bruckner shared a mutual antipa- dom of experience. This symphony is a thy during the more than 30 years they case in point since the composer con- both lived and worked in Vienna, they sidered it lost. (One is reminded in how both shared a deep debt to and love for privileged a condition we live now. Schubert. The link between Brahms and Imagine writing an entire symphony Schubert is more familiar to classical and having only one copy). music lovers. But as the “Study” sym- phony on this program makes evident, In the 20th century each of these three Bruckner’s reputation as a link to works became important as scholars Mahler and major figure in the post- and audiences revisited the life, career, Wagnerian world becomes tempered and reputation of three famous com- when we encounter the early works and posers, all widely honored and acknowl- recognize affinities between Bruckner edged in their lifetimes, but all too and Schubert. quickly categorized in too simplified and reductive a manner by posterity. It is The most astonishing posthumous discov- unfortunate that these posthumously dis- ery on today’s program is doubtlessly the covered works have not yet gained the Dvořák first symphony. Like Schubert’s place in the repertory that they deserve. THE Program by Christopher H. Gibbs Franz Schubert Born January 31, 1797, in Vienna Died November 19, 1828, in Vienna Overture from Claudine von Villa Bella, D. 239 Composed from July 26, 1815, to September 1815 Premiered on April 26, 1913, at the Gemeindehaus Wieden in Vienna Performance Time: Approximately 8 minutes Instruments for this performance: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 French horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, 22 violins, 8 violas, 8 cellos, and 6 double basses The teenage Schubert tried his hand at small-scale domestic music to masses, all genres current at the time, from symphonies, and operas. Most of these early pieces were meant to be played at Schubert composed Claudine von Villa home, at his school, or in community Bella, a three-act Singspiel, in the summer settings—they were projects through of 1815, the most prolific period of his which he hoped to hone his craft (among short life. He was immersed, at the time, his teachers was the formidable Antonio in the poetry of Goethe, which inspired his Salieri) and were not intended to gener- first masterpieces: Gretchen am Spinnrade ate public fame. He seems rarely to (Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel) the pre- have looked back at these works as his vious October and Erlkönig later that ambitions became ever grander. year. Like most of his early large works, Claudine was never presented in public Although his lieder, keyboard and during his lifetime, although there were chamber music, and symphonies eventu- plans for performances of the overture in ally won a central place in the repertoire, 1818. Schubert’s older brother Ferdinand Schubert’s name is rarely associated with informed him that the piece “comes in for dramatic music even though he wrote it much criticism….The wind parts are said over the entire course of his brief career. to be so difficult as to be unplayable, He composed his first operas and particularly those for the oboes and bas- Singspiels (operas with spoken German soon.” The first documented public per- dialogue) in his teens, and in 1820 Die formance of the first act of Claudine had Zwillingsbruder (The Twin Brothers) to wait until the 20th century as most of had a run of performances at a presti- the opera had been destroyed. Schubert gious theater in Vienna. His incidental had given the manuscript to his friend music for Rosamunde proved more Josef Hüttenbrenner, whose housekeeper popular than the dreary play it accom- burned the second and third acts during panied at its 1823 premiere in Vienna. the 1848 revolution. The charming over- In addition to short works and various ture is scored for an orchestra of Classical unrealized projects, he completed two proportions and begins with an intense major operas: Alfonso und Estrella Adagio introduction followed by an Ital- (1821–22) and Fierabras (1823). ianate Allegro vivace. Anton Bruckner Born September 4, 1824, in Ansfelden, Austria Died October 11, 1896, in Vienna Symphony No. 00 (“Study Symphony in F minor”) Composed in 1863 Second movement premiered on October 31, 1913, in Vienna First and fourth movements premiered on March 18, 1923, in Klosterneuburg, Austria Third movement premiered on October 12, 1924, in Klosterneuburg, Austria Performance Time: Approximately 41 minutes Instruments for this performance: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 French horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, 22 violins, 8 violas, 8 cellos, and 6 double basses Anton Bruckner was a late bloomer Tom Lehrer song: by that age Schubert among eminent composers.