April 24, 2010 Tragic Overture, Op. 81 Johannes Brahms b. Hamburg, Germany / May 7, 1833; d. Vienna, Austria / April 3, 1897
Brahms composed his two concert overtures in the summer of 1880. It would be difficult to imagine two works that are more different from each other. First came Academic Festival, a lively potpourri of traditional German student songs. As if withdrawing in shock from something so frivolous, the generally sober-sided composer moved on immediately to the second piece, the Tragic Overture. Its creation may have been related to a potential commission, one that failed to materialize, for incidental music to accompany a stage production of Goethe’s Faust. Its overwhelming atmosphere is one of turbulent and ultimately unsuccessful emotional struggle.
Concerto for Two Pianos Ralph Vaughan Williams b. Down Ampney, England / October 12, 1872; d. London, England / August 26, 1958
Once Vaughan Williams tapped into his country’s rich vein of folk song and the magnificent heritage of its Tudor-era music, he began developing a personal style, something which had previously eluded him. The warmth, spirituality and humor of these sources played significant roles in many of his subsequent compositions. Other creations, such as the Fourth and Sixth of his nine remarkable symphonies, display darker, more contemporary emotions and colors.
He composed the first two movements of a piano concerto in 1926, but four years passed before he produced a finale that satisfied him. The first performance took place in 1933. The concerto met a largely hostile reception. The challenging of the piano writing, and problems of balance between the piano and the large orchestra, attracted the strongest criticism. Seeking to address these issues, the composer prepared this version featuring two pianos in 1946. He also took the opportunity to revise the concerto in several other respects.
In the toughness that pervades the outer movements, the concerto resembles the Fourth Symphony, which he composed shortly afterwards. The percussive piano writing in those same sections calls to mind the music that Béla Bartók and Sergei Prokofiev were producing at that time. Another influence was the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach, a composer whom Vaughan Williams esteemed highly.
The three movements are performed as a continuous whole. The first is a brisk, powerful toccata, laced with bold, bracing humor. A cadenza for the soloists provides a link with the second movement, a lovely Romanza. The piano writing is more conventional here, and shows the influence of French composers such as Ravel, with whom Vaughan Williams had studied. Flute, oboe and horn take centre stage in the orchestra, delicately supporting the soloists.
The finale begins abruptly and reignites the drive of the first movement. It has two sections: Chromatic Fugue, and Finale in German Style. The pianists introduce the subject of the fugue. The music plunges forward with great energy and builds to a massive orchestral climax. The concluding German waltz emerges from a bold cadenza for the pianos. Based on the same theme as the fugue, it swirls and dances in hearty fashion. The original, single-piano version of the concerto ended sharply and loudly. This two-piano version concludes in a mood of quiet, thoughtful serenity.
Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart b. Salzburg, Austria / January 27, 1756; d. Vienna, Austria / December 5, 1791
Mozart could not have known that the three symphonies he composed between June 26 and August 10, 1788 would be his last. It is fitting that he should complete his career as a symphonist with three such masterpieces. They are quite different from each other: Symphony No. 39 is one of his most elegant creations, its successor among his most pathetic. And appropriately, No. 41 is the grandest and most joyous of all his symphonies.
No commission that would have inspired Mozart to write them has come down to us. Some writers speculate that he composed them strictly for his own pleasure. Others, such as noted scholar Neal Zaslaw feel otherwise: “The very idea that Mozart would have written three such symphonies, unprecedented in length, complexity, and seriousness, merely to please himself or because he was ‘inspired,’ flies in the face of his known attitudes to music and life and the financial straits in which he then found himself.”
Uncertainty also surrounds their performance during Mozart’s lifetime. It has long been assumed that none of them were played before his death. Circumstantial evidence points to one or more of them being performed on several occasions, such as a subscription concert at the Vienna Casino later in 1788, or during tours of Germany in 1788 and 1789.
In the opening movement of Symphony No. 40, an overriding mood of resignation undercuts the music’s plentiful energy. The second theme resembles nothing so much as a series of sighs. The symphony’s sole oasis of repose arrives in the placid second movement. Even here, passages of troubled feelings crop up from time to time. The ensuing minuet lies as far from the ballroom as may be imagined. Its almost menacing outer panels make it perhaps the most disturbing example of its kind. The central trio section offers the barest glimpse of happier times. The forward drive of the first movement returns in the finale, with a more insistent edge added. Considerable momentum is generated, but the atmosphere of gloomy defiance persists to the very last bar, without winning through to any kind of emotional victory. |
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