Program Notes

Cobb Symphony Orchestra, 2008-2009 Season, Masterworks Concert #3
Program Notes by Michaelene Gorney

Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904) is credited with having one of the freshest and most spontaneous imaginations among composers of his generation.  Born in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic), he began as a violist in the orchestra of the Prague National Theatre, turning to composition and teaching after the success of his Heirs of the White Mountain (1873), a cantata for chorus and orchestra.  Two years later, with the personal recommendation of Johannes Brahms and, through Brahms, the backing of Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, Dvořák was awarded a government grant which allowed him to pursue composition full-time.  He was later awarded a contract with Brahms’ own publisher, Simrock.  Among his works are operas, chamber, choral, and orchestral works, including nine symphonies, the last of these being the well-known Symphony No. 9 in E minor, “From the New World.”

Dvořák’s appeal lies in the Slavic flavor of his music, based on folk tunes, folk tales, and ethnic dance rhythms.  There is no better example of this trait than his Carnival Overture (1891), the middle piece in a trilogy of symphonic poems originally titled “Nature,” “Life (Bohemian Carnival),” and “Love (Othello).”  In Carnival, Dvořák imagines "the lonely, contemplative wanderer reaching the city at nightfall, where a carnival of pleasure reigns supreme.  On every side is heard the clangor of instruments, mingled with shouts of joy and the unrestrained hilarity of people giving vent to their feelings in the songs and dance tunes."  This brilliant and vigorous revelry is interrupted only briefly by an Andantino, with more expansive melodies played by the flute and violin, accompanied by the English horn.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) – People’s Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor, member of the October Revolution, the Order of Lenin, and the Order of the Red Banner, holder of four Stalin Prizes - was one of the most outstanding composers of the 20^th Century, regardless of ideology, nationality, or style.  Born shortly before the Russian Revolution, he came to maturity under the new Soviet state, and rose to international prominence in the company of composers like Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Darius Milhaud, and the Americans Aaron Copland, Virgil Thompson, and Samuel Barber.  It has been suggested that Shostakovich’s fame grew because he was the only composer of merit left after Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky and others had departed their homeland for capitalist pastures.  But the position that his music holds is richly deserved and was justly earned.  He literally risked his life for his art, surviving Stalin’s purges of military and creative intelligentsia during the “Great Terror” of the late 1930s.

That Shostakovich escaped the Stalinist purges was due to the high standing he enjoyed in the West, a position which enraged Stalin and terrified the composer, who viewed glowing notices in the Western press as “coffin nails.”  He and Prokofiev, among others, were censured in 1948 by the Soviet government for “formalistic perversions and anti-democratic tendencies.”  Yet despite such censure, Shostakovich was chosen to represent his country abroad as secretary of the USSR Composers’ Union and as a member of the Supreme Soviet.  One wonders if Shostakovich would have remained the classicist that he was, with music that remained essentially tonal and rhythmically regular, were he not subject to the strictures of politicians unable to understand the desire to push the boundaries of tradition with experiment and atonality.  Though publicly critical of American universities for allowing students to write whatever they wished, his posthumous memoirs revealed him to be very much in favor of artistic freedom of expression. 

Shostakovich wrote his Cello Concerto No.1, Op. 107, in 1959 for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, with whom he toured in recitals as pianist, and for whom he also wrote the Cello Concerto No. 2.  1959 marked the composer’s second visit to the United States (made possible by Stalin’s death in 1953 and the political ”thaw” under Krushchev), during which the Cello Concerto No. 1 received its American premiere by the Philadelphia Orchestra.  Shostakovich was quoted in Sovetskaya Kultura (June 6, 1959) as saying that “an impulse” for the work was provided by Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante of 1954, also dedicated to Rostropovich, and several elements of Prokofiev’s work found their way into the Concerto, among them a prominent timpani part.  The Concerto’s opening movement he called “an ironic march,” its aggressive four-note theme derived from the composer’s musical monogram, D-Eb-C-B, in German D-Es-C-H or D-S-C-H.  Continually reshaped and revised, here and in the fourth movement, this theme resembles that of a 1948 film score for The Young Guard, which illustrates a group of Soviet soldiers being marched to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis.  The first movement also references a folk lullaby used by Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881) in his Songs of Dances and Death, orchestrated by Shostakovich in 1962.  Themes from the introspective second movement - with a stunning and ethereal passage for cello and celesta - are further developed in the extended cadenza, a movement unto itself and a tour de force for the cello (as is the entire work, in which the cello rarely rests!).  A distorted version of “Suliko,” a Russian folksong originating in Georgia which was a favorite of Stalin’s, is heard in the first five notes of the driving finale.  Shostakovich used “Suliko” again in his cantata called Rayok, a ridiculing satire of Soviet officialdom that, understandably, was not publicly performed until 1989 under Rostropovich, then conductor of the United States National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.  Acknowledging Prokofiev’s influence, Shostakovich gives the Concerto’s final notes to the timpani.

Of humble origins and without the aid of a court position or a public appointment, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) succeeded in making a place for himself in the musical life of Hamburg, Germany, as a pianist, as a diligent, inspired, composer, and as founder and conductor of a women's choir.  He was not overwhelmingly accepted by the public of his time, or by his peers, with some of whom he felt uncomfortable and who faulted him for not feigning admiration in order to gain acceptance.  His talent flourished, however, in the relatively simple household of Robert and Clara Schumann, and in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, Robert proclaimed him “a new musical force."  By the time his Requiem, Liebeslieder Walzer, and Rhapsody appeared in close succession during his thirties, the reputation of this outstanding representative of his generation, and his position as Beethoven’s successor, was well established.  Acclaimed for modesty, talent, and gruff plain speaking, Brahms, now considered the epitome of Romanticism, withheld many of his works from publication as imperfect (we will never know how many he really wrote!), declined an honorary degree from Cambridge, and throughout his life favored informal dress, simple restaurants, and, says Nicolas Slonimsky, "a great deal of beer."

According to biographer Joan Chisell, Brahms’ musical style did not so much evolve over his lifetime as become perfected and refined.  As Schumann put it, he arrived “fully armed, like Athena from the head of Zeus.”  A traditionalist who was somewhat of an outsider among Romantics like Berlioz, Dvořák, Liszt and Tchaikovsky, Brahms felt that the world should be perfectly satisfied with the music of Mozart, and that well-crafted music was an end unto itself rather than an expression of emotions, programs, and nationalist sentiment.  Yet stylistically, Brahms did not stand still, and Romanticism did have its influence: Mozart would never have expressed himself in these melodies, so lushly combined strings with lower winds and brasses, or presented with such facile artfulness the rhythmically complex interplay of two (or four) notes against three within the same space of time. 

Having sworn to his publisher, at the age of 49, that he would never again write music, a year later, in 1883, Brahms presented his Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90.  After its premiere under Hans Richter, conductors competed for rights to the Symphony’s second performance, actively undermining each others’ efforts, and Brahms’ reputation as a master symphonist was now unquestioned.  This is Brahms’ only cyclical symphony, in which the opening theme of the first movement appears at the end of the fourth movement, and a theme from the slow movement appears in the finale.  The introductory motive of the symphony, F-Ab-F, is very significant, as it represents Brahms’ motto frie aber froh, “free but happy.”  Though he was often neither, professionally or personally, Brahms was not one to bare his soul at its deepest level, and definitely not in his music.  Nonetheless, this symphony is as much in F minor as it is in F major, and many analysts view these key alternations as manifestations of frie aber froh vs. frie aber einsam (“free but lonely”), representative of Brahms’ bachelor state as well as his standing as a lone Classicist among effusive Romantics.  The frei aber froh theme pervades Symphony No. 3 as a clearly stated motto and, less obviously, as an accompaniment to secondary themes; it also closes the Symphony with a gentle restatement in the violins.  Of special note is the third movement: where other composers might provide here an impulsive scherzo, Brahms presents a subdued Poco allegretto, described by Joseph Machlis as “an impassioned, darkly colored orchestral song.”

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Bibliography:

Nicolas Slonimsky, ed., The Concise Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Music, Schirmer Books, New York, New York, 1994.

Brittanica Online Encyclopedia, Antonin Dvořák, Bohemian Composer, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/174804/Antonin-Dvorak#tab=active~checked%2Citems~checked&title=Anton%C3%ADn%20Dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k%20--%20Britannica%20Online%20Encyclopedia.

Music with Ease, Classical Music Concert Guide, Nationalist Era Music, Trinity Overture by Antonin Dvořák, http://www.musicwithease.com/dvorak-trinity-overture.html.

Jonathan Kramer, Listen to the Music: A Self-Guided Tour through the Orchestral Repertoire, Schirmer Books, A Division of Macmillan, Inc., New York, and Collier Macmillan Publishers, London, 1988.

Stephen Johnson (18 March 2006), Discovering Music: Shostakovich – Cello Concerto No. 1 on BBC Radio 3, as referenced in Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, “Cello Concerto No. 1 (Shostakovich),” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello_Concerto_No._1_(Shostakovich).

Edmund Trafford, various annotations for the Atlanta Chamber Players and the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra.

Music Under Soviet Rule, Ian MacDonald, Site Editor, “Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1 in E Flat major, Op. 107 (1959), Cello Concerto No.2 , Op. 126 (1966),” The London Philharmonic cond. Mariss Jansons, Virgin Classics VC545145-2, http://www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/discrev/shoscc.html.

Thomas F. Pyle, Introduction to Liebeslider Walzer by Johannes Brahms, Lawson-Gould Music Publishers, Inc., 1961.

Charles Osborne, ed., The Dictionary of Composers, Brahms biography by Joan Chisell, Barnes & Noble Books, Inc., 1995.

Joseph Machlis, The Enjoyment of Music, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, New York, 1977.