Elgar & His Enigma: Variations as Social Networking

This weekend's Masterworks Concert - Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm at the Forum - opens with Mozart's "Prague" Symphony and features concertmaster Peter Sirotin as soloist in the Violin Concerto by Alexander Glazunov, but concludes with the ultimate Facebook piece, Edward Elgar's collection of musical portraits of his friends (including a selfie) – one was even photobombed by a particularly rambunctious bulldog (#been there/done that).

It's known as “The Enigma Variations” because there's not one but several mysteries about the piece.

The piece consists of a theme and 14 variations and while it can be enjoyed simply as music without any of the mystery, it makes it a little more interesting than just being another set of variations. How Elgar manipulates the opening theme into these various character sketches is fascinating enough. If a composer can (indirectly) tell a story in music - a symphonic poem - why can't a composer (indirectly) show listeners a portrait gallery of his friends?

And since none of these friends are likely to be on your friend-list, we'll give away that part of the enigma so you can appreciate the composer's musical ingenuity.

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Elgar & his bike

Edward Elgar began his “Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36,” as an evening's diversion in October, 1898, a kind of late-Victorian whimsy, playing a theme that caught his wife's attention which prompted him, then, to improvise several variations on it, each one in the manner of a particular friend. But by the time he completed it on February 18th, 1899, it had turned into a major orchestral work – and a far more serious one – over a half-hour long.

Premiered in June, 1899, it was well-received though critics, praising the content of the music, seemed irritated by the layers of mystification – the “secret identity” of the friends' portraits in the variations and the overall mystery of the theme's origins.

You see, Elgar figured, beyond his circle of friends, who would know these friends “pictured within” or even care? Eventually, he added initials or nicknames to all but one of the variations – the “Romance” with its mysterious asterisks (aha!) thereby heightening the mystery (some secret affair?) – to better identify the portraits, but he never did explain the mystery of the theme.

Some believe the theme is based on some musical melody with a special emotional meaning to the composer; others think it's inspired by a poetic theme; others who've given up trying to guess just pass it off as being something Elgar associated with the idea (and substance) of friendship.

“The Enigma,” the composer later wrote, “I will not explain – its 'dark saying' must be left unguessed, and I warn you that the connexion between the Variations and the Theme is often of the slightest texture; further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme 'goes', but is not played... So the principal Theme never appears...”

So, since he never did divulge its origin and no one has found any direct proof to explain it, the subsequent title given the piece by the composer – The Enigma Variations – still stands.

This video “suite” of the entire piece (broken into three segments) may not identify the recording (or the typically British paintings attached to them), it allows me to break it down into more manageable portions so you can read about each variation as you listen to them.

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Part 1 (Theme & Var 1-7)

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Original Theme marked Enigma, a hesitant and certainly enigmatic theme (or one broken down into little fragments like a mosaic). It unfolds in the minor key with a secondary rising, even hopeful line in the woodwinds before the opening of the theme is restated.

Page 1 of Elgar's MS

In 1912, at the premiere of his setting of Arthur O'Shaughnnessy's Ode, “The Music Makers” (for alto, chorus and orchestra) where Elgar quotes several of his own earlier themes, including from the Enigma Variations, the composer wrote this theme “expressed when [originally] written my sense of the loneliness of the artist as described in the first six lines of the Ode, and to me, it still embodies that sense.”

We are the music makers, 
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers, 
And sitting by desolate streams, –
World-losers and world-forsakers, 
On whom the pale moon gleams:...

Dropping clues if not hints like bread-crumbs here and there, the composer also mentioned (or at least sanctioned a biographer who'd mentioned), given the theme's strange rhythmic phrasing with no strong downbeat, that the “theme is a counterpoint [to] some well-known melody which is never heard.”

One conductor I'd heard decided to play the violin line (what would seem to be the melody) more as an accompaniment to this “unheard theme” – not that anything I'm familiar with ever popped out as a likely solution.

CAE

The theme blends directly into the first variation:

Variation I – C.A.E. (beginning at 1:32 into the clip), Caroline Alice Elgar, the composer's wife (usually known as Alice), who was a constant source of encouragement and inspiration. Apparently, one might guess she also liked Brahms (there are shades of the 4th Symphony in the way the theme is treated). One fragment (a four-note accompaniment) was supposedly a bit Elgar would whistle when he returned home, a kind of musical “honey, I'm home” signature.

Variation II. H.D.S-P. (allegro; at 3:15), Hew David Steuart-Powell, one of Elgar's chamber-music friends, a pianist, who was ever-active, what today we might call “a bit hyper.” He's also Dora Penny's uncle (see Var. X).

Variation III. R.B.T. (allegretto, at 4:06), Richard Baxter Townsend, an amateur actor, referencing his representation of an old man in some amateur theatricals ‒ the low voice flying off occasionally into 'soprano' range. He was a "step-uncle" of Dora Penny's, btw.

Variation IV. W.M.B. (allegro di molto; 5:25), William Meath Baker, Townsend's brother-in-law, who “expressed himself somewhat energetically,” would bark out plans for the day, then leave the room with a vigorous door-slam as fast as he had entered it.

Variation V. R.P.A. (moderato; 5:56), Richard Penrose Arnold, son of the writer Matthew Arnold, an amateur pianist who would punctuate serious discourse with a nervous laugh (note the “serious” strings befitting a son of a serious writer, and the intervening woodwind laughter).

Troyte

Variation VI. Ysobel (andantino; 7:59), Isobel Fitton, a violist who was a viola student of Elgar's, and so the viola section is featured prominently. “It may be noticed,” the composer explained, “that the opening bar, a phrase made use of throughout the variation, is an ‘exercise’ for crossing the strings – a difficulty for beginners.

Variation VII. Troyte (presto; 9:17), Arthur Troyte Griffith, an architect and "raucous pianist." The variation good-naturedly mimics his enthusiastic incompetence on the piano. And it may also refer to the time Griffith and Elgar were out walking and got caught in a thunderstorm, seeking refuge at the house of Winifred and Florence Norbury (see next variation).

Part 2 (Var 8-11)


Variation VIII. W.N. (allegretto; 0:00), Winifred Norbury, a gracious and gentle friend, hence the relatively relaxed atmosphere. The gentle chirping of the flutes, wonderfully contrasted by the plucking of the strings, paints someone who would be a most gracious hostess. At the end of this variation, a single note in the violins is held over into the next variation, the most celebrated of the set.

Nimrod

Variation IX. Nimrod (andante; 1:55), Augustus Jaeger, one of Elgar's closest friends. “Nimrod” is the Old Testament hunter, and Jäger is the German word for “hunter.” Elgar later said how Jaeger had encouraged him as an artist, urging him to continue composing despite setbacks. In 1904 Elgar told Dora Penny (the 'Dorabella' of Variation X) that “Nimrod” wasn't really a portrait, but “the story of something that happened.” Once, when Elgar had been very depressed and was about to give it all up and write no more music, Jaeger referred to Beethoven who certainly had a lot of worries, but continued to write more and more beautiful music. “And that is what you must do,” Jaeger told him, then sang the theme of the second movement of Beethoven's piano sonata, the Pathétique. He also told her the opening bars of “Nimrod” were meant to suggest that theme. “Can’t you hear it at the beginning? Only a hint, not a quotation.”

Variation X. Dorabella (allegretto; 5:57), Dora Penny, already mentioned above in the context of other friends, whose infectious laugh is depicted in a repeated line for the the woodwinds.

Dorabella

She was also the recipient of a strange (if not bizarre) note from the composer in 1897, the year before he began composing the Variations. The Elgar Birthplace Museum preserves four articles from an 1896 magazine entitled Secrets in Cipher along with a wooden box Elgar painted with his solution to a cipher that the fourth article said was insoluble.

Variation XI. G.R.S. (allegro di molto; 8:33), George Robertson Sinclair, an organist. 'The variation, however, has nothing to do with organs or cathedrals,” Elgar later wrote, “or, except remotely, with G.R.S. The first few bars were suggested by his great bulldog, Dan (a well-known character) falling down the steep bank into the River Wye (bar 1); his paddling upstream to find a landing place (bars 2 and 3); and his rejoicing bark on landing (second half of bar 5). G.R.S. said, "Set that to music". I did; here it is.”

Part 3 (Var 12-14)

***? (Lady Mary Lygon)

Variation XII. B.G.N. (andante; 0:00), Basil G. Nevinson, was an accomplished amateur cellist and chamber-music partner of the Elgar's musical evenings. Consequently, the cellos are featured prominently in his variation.

Variation XIII. Romanza *** (moderato; 2:35). This would be the most enigmatic of the Enigma Variations – no nickname or initials, only three asterisks and the word “Romance” – and is that used in the sense of a musical composition (as in Schumann's “Romance in F-sharp Major”?) or in the sense of a loving relationship - possibly even a secret affair? There are two possible candidates since apparently Elgar never specifically identified the subject of this, the “unlucky 13th” variation.

***? (Helen Weaver)

One would be Lady Mary Lygon (above) whom he did identify as a friend who left on an ocean voyage to Australia - there is a quote from Mendelssohn's Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage in the clarinet and the timpanist is directed to play with "hard sticks" (though often coins are placed on the drum-head) to get the effect of a ship's engine.

Several sources suggest a more likely possibility is Helen Weaver (left) who had been Elgar's fiancée in 1884 (Elgar married Alice in 1889). She broke off the engagement, then sailed out of his life forever, emigrating to New Zealand.

This pensive portrait leads to the final variation, a self-portrait:

CAE & Edu in 1897

Variation XIV. E.D.U. (allegro presto; 5:23), Elgar himself, "Edu" being his wife's nickname for him (from the German form, Eduard). An extroverted, even boisterous finale – perhaps, the composer no longer the lonely creative artist but the man surrounded by his friends. There are references to both the CAE Variation (his wife) and “Nimrod” – two of his staunchest supporters – which Elgar later wrote was “entirely fitting to the intention of the piece.”

Whatever that was, of course...

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After the world premiere in London, conducted by the great German conductor Hans Richter, it was Jaeger (“Nimrod”) who suggested Elgar should expand the finale and add an organ part – this version was given its first performance at the Three Choirs Festival, this time with Edu himself conducting.

He had initially included some of his composer-colleagues on this musical friend-list – like Arthur Sullivan (without Gilbert) and Hubert Parry – but felt, “for musical considerations,” his imitating their styles was an unsatisfactory tribute. At least, not including them allowed him to say I “have written what I think [my friends] would have written – if they were asses enough to compose."

One wonders how many of his friends were upset they hadn't been included. Navigating the social network can be so full of risks...

By the way, the composer became Sir Edward Elgar on July 5th, 1904.

While it's one of Elgar's best-known works – aside from the ubiquitous graduation march, “Land of Hope & Glory” from his “Pomp & Circumstance” March (No. 1) – the “Enigma Variations” would go on to become one of the first major works by any English composer (since the days of Henry Purcell in the 17th Century) to gain fame on the Continent. In 1904, a German critic famously called England “the Land without Music,” but when Elgar's “Enigma” was performed in St. Petersburg that same year, both Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov thought highly of the work – and Gustav Mahler conducted it in New York City with what eventually became the New York Philharmonic in 1910.

Oh, and Elgar suggested once if the Variations should ever be turned into a ballet, the "enigma" should be danced by a "veiled dancer," which has prompted others to assume the "enigma" is really another actual friend - and a lady-friend, at that (presumably, men in those days didn't go about "veiled"). Hmmm...

While I wonder what it would've been like if Elgar had Facebook or for that matter, 899 friends, I can't help but think any composer would be lucky to have friends like those Elgar “pictured within.”

Dick Strawser

P.S. Don't forget, you can like the Harrisburg Symphony on Facebook! 

Mozart in Prague: His Symphony No. 38

This weekend is the first Masterworks Concert of the New Year with a program featuring a salute to friendship (wrapped in an enigma) by the English composer, Sir Edward Elgar, the violin concerto by the Russian composer, Alexander Glazunov, with our soloist, our own concertmaster Peter Sirotin, and the symphony Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart presumably composed for his visit to Prague which is why it's always called... the "Prague" Symphony.

While I'll introduce you to Elgar's “Enigma Variations” and the Glazunov Concerto in later posts, this one is about Mozart's Symphony in D Major, which is numbered 38 out of his 41 symphonies and listed in the botanist-turned-musicologist Ludwig Köchel's catalog as K.504.

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Mozart, an idealized portrait

Mozart's Symphony No. 38 (the “Prague”) is in the celebratory key of D Major (most often used because it's a good key for trumpets and drums) but it has only three movements – a grand first movement with an imposing slow introduction (one of Mozart's grandest introductions); a slow movement; and a lively finale – no minuet. This three-movement approach was the standard symphonic form before composers later added a minuet before the finale. And while Mozart usually wrote four-movement symphonies later in his career, for some reason for this one, he did not.

Here's a performance with the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Manfred Honeck in the Estates Theatre of Prague, a building that opened in 1783, four years before Mozart's visit when this symphony was premiered.

One source says the symphony was premiered in the National Theater but the building now known as the National Theater wasn't built until 1844. However, the Estates Theater was later "absorbed" into the National Theater, though it is a separate building. We know Don Giovanni was premiered in this theater so it would be a safe guess this is the very space where, 229 years ago on January 19th, 1787, the world first heard this music.

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While there are a lot of “what if”s in life – “what if I'd taken that job instead?” or “what if I'd married So-and-so?” in a world full of possible parallel universes – classical music lovers often play the game with Mozart: for instance, “what if he hadn't died at the age of 35?”

a more realistic portrait, c.1790

What would classical music be like if Mozart could have been alive when Beethoven died? Beethoven was 56 (young enough) but Mozart would've only been 71 – Haydn, after all, had died when he was 77. If Beethoven had lived to be 77, he would've died in 1847, the year before Wagner began composing Lohengrin... and the game goes on.

So, consider this: first of all, Mozart's “Prague” Symphony wasn't written for Prague. Yes, it was first performed there and the good music lovers of Prague loved it and so it's always been known as “The Prague Symphony.”

Mozart completed his new Symphony in D Major – and duly entered it into his catalogue – on December 6th, 1786. It was premiered in Prague at the National Theater on January 19th, 1787. So the assumption could easily be made it was written in preparation for his visit there. The city was “awash in Figaro Fever” where, as the delighted composer wrote to a friend in Vienna, “Nothing is played, sung, or whistled but Figaro. No opera is drawing [audiences] like Figaro. Nothing, nothing but Figaro. Certainly a great honor for me.”

The Marriage of Figaro had been premiered in Vienna and was successful enough (several encores extended the length of this already long opera to the point the Emperor decreed “no piece for more than a single voice is to be repeated”) but after only 9 or 10 performances, not nearly the financial success Mozart had been hoping for. He earned 450 florins directly from the first production of the opera. How much is that in modern money? I'm not sure how “computable” that is, but read on...

Having spent most of the first half of 1786 – he had just turned 30 – writing Figaro, he now needed to make some money. The previous year he'd earned a total of almost 3,000 florins, half of it from “subscription concerts” and “academies” (in the days before public concerts as we know them, artists gave special single concerts for which tickets were sold or “subscribed;” academies were essentially benefit concerts or “galas” as we might call them today).

According to a letter written on November 17th from Mozart's father Leopold to Mozart's sister Maria Anna (known forever by her family nickname, “Nannerl”), Mozart was trying to make arrangements for a tour of Germany and/or England. But, more critically, Leopold was afraid Mozart and his unwelcome wife would dump their children off with him before leaving and never come back. In fact, Mozart was considering the possibility, if London proved lucrative and since his fame in Vienna was apparently playing itself out, he might indeed stay there (but wouldn't he then send for his children?).

(Incidentally, this letter of Leopold's was written before he'd receive the news that on the 15th, Mozart's third child, Johann Thomas Leopold, not yet a month old, had died of suffocation in his sleep.)

Plans were beginning to develop for a “Lenten Tour” when news arrived from Prague about the success of Figaro in early December. It was said the production was far superior to the one seen in Vienna and that, directly and indirectly, invitations were being issued to the composer to come see it for himself.

This performance was reviewed on December 12th, 1786, which also included rumors that “Mozart himself might come here in person.”

Six days earlier, Mozart had completed a Symphony in D Major – the one we know as the “Prague” Symphony – so it was hardly likely he would have written a symphony like this, a substantial work, when the likelihood of such a visit was not yet in the planning stages. Besides, he completed it on the 6th of December - we have no idea when he started composing it.

On the other hand, if not for Prague, why had he written it?

Since Vienna was not a city interested in symphonies – “too intellectual” for their tastes, at the time – Mozart wrote only six symphonies between his arrival in the Imperial Capital in 1781 and his death ten years later. Of those, the “Haffner” was written for friends in Salzburg, the “Linz” was written during a visit to that city on his way to visit family in Salzburg, and the last three... well, no one knows why he wrote those last three masterpieces which were apparently composed with no immediate performance in mind, but they remain three of the most perfect works in the 18th Century symphonic repertoire.

That leaves the “Prague” Symphony.

More likely is the chance it was written with the possibility of this English tour he was trying to arrange. After all, earlier in 1786, friends of his – the singer Nancy Storace (the original Susanna in Figaro) and his composition student Thomas Attwood, a protege of the Prince of Wales, the future King George IV – were lobbying to have Mozart invited to London for a series of concerts there. Subsequent visits to Vienna by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon ended up with further discussions being postponed for lack of time (by then, Mozart was busier) and so Salomon “fetched” Haydn instead. The argument has been made that, after all, Mozart was in his mid-30s and Haydn, always seemingly the Grand Old Man of Music, was already in his late-50s.

Now consider – speaking of “what if” – that the “Prague” Symphony might really have been the first of maybe a dozen new symphonies written for London as Haydn would produce for his two visits between 1790 and 1795?

But Mozart died in 1791, when Haydn was in London in the midst of his first triumphant season.

Prague

So, on December 6th, 1786, Mozart completes a new symphony. By the 12th, there are rumors he might go to Prague, the capitol of Bohemia and the second largest city in the empire.

Following an invitation duly extended “by the orchestra and a company of distinguished connoisseurs and music-lovers” (note the distinction), Mozart and his entourage – he and his wife Constanze, a servant, his future brother-in-law, a violinist named Franz de Paula Hofer, and a 13-year-old violin prodigy named Marianne Crux – arrive in Prague on January 11th, 1787, and are lodged at the palace of Count Thun who, at 75, happened to be the patriarch of one of the nobler families of the Empire and who, while staying at his palace in Linz had asked Mozart to write him a symphony (not having brought anything with him, he composed his “Linz” Symphony in only a few days). This time, perhaps, Mozart comes prepared with his latest symphony packed in his luggage.

On January 12th, Mozart played one of his piano quartets for Count Thun; on the 17th, he attended a performance of Figaro and on the 19th there was a special “academy” (a benefit concert where he would receive the proceeds from ticket sales) at the National Theater (more likely the “Estates Theater” - see above) where Mozart premiered this new symphony and then, for an additional half-hour, played three improvisations at the keyboard. On the 22nd, then, he conducted a performance of Figaro.

Around February 8th, the Mozart entourage departs Prague for Vienna after it had been reported in the press Mozart “is preparing to travel to London in the coming spring, having the most advantageous offers there.”

But among his Bohemian souvenirs were a commission for a new opera to be premiered in Prague in mid-October – this would become Don Giovanni – and the addition of 1,000 florins to his bank account (or the 18th Century Viennese equivalent of one).

Remember what I'd said earlier about this income from the first production of Figaro bringing in only 450 florins?

According to Maynard Solomon's biography, Mozart was earning about 112 florins for the first quarter of 1781 at the court in Salzburg, the time he was “booted out” of the Archbishop's employ and he moved to Vienna. That would mean his official salary in Salzburg would have been about 450 florins that year. Making 1,000 florins in less than a month might help explain the composer's euphoria during his Prague visit.

That, and the fact the “Pragers” understood him better than the Viennese did: Lorenzo da Ponte, his librettist for both operas, had said “the numbers [arias and ensembles] which are least admired in other countries [at this point, essentially Vienna] are by these people considered divine... the great beauties of the music were perfectly understood by the Bohemians at the first hearing.”

Mozart and da Ponte would return in October for the premiere of their latest collaboration, considered one of the greatest operas in the repertoire.

But the symphony named for their fair city in fact preceded his experience there, even before the news Figaro had been the success he had only dreamed of (and failed to realize) in Vienna.

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Do you remember the old joke (or the stupid question) “Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?”

So, the next time you're at some party, ask someone “Who wrote Mozart's Symphony No. 37?” Why, Mozart, of course! Right...?

Actually, there is no Mozart Symphony No. 37.

After Mozart moved to Vienna in 1781 to leave his sleepy provincial hometown of Salzburg behind and pursue his dreams in the Imperial Capital, Mozart had little reason to write symphonies: his six Viennese Symphonies are among the finest in the repertoire and completely overshadow the earlier ones.

There's the Symphony No. 35 in D, the “Haffner,” K.385 of 1782; the Symphony No. 36 in C, the “Linz,” K.425 of 1783; the Symphony No. 38 in D, the “Prague,” K. 504 of 1786; and the last three masterpieces, the Symphony No. 39 in E-flat, K.543, the Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K.550, and the Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K.551, the “Jupiter,” all composed in the summer of 1788.

So what happened to No. 37?

When Mozart was going to visit family in Salzburg, he stopped off for a few days' visit at the palace of Count Thun in the city of Linz. Now, the Count wanted to hear a new symphony by Mozart but the composer wasn't on tour, wasn't planning on any concerts and, so, hadn't brought anything with him. There wasn't time to send back to Vienna (or to his father in Salzburg) to have a score shipped overnight so instead he wrote one on-the-spot. This became No. 36, the “Linz” Symphony.

But Count Thun also had a score in his library by Michael Haydn (younger brother of Franz Josef) which unfortunately didn't include the usual slow introduction which Count Thun thought a considerable detriment. So Mozart obliged his friend by writing his own slow introduction to “complete” Michael Haydn's G Major Symphony.

When scholars found the manuscript, they saw the handwriting, recognized it as Mozart's and published it as Mozart's Symphony No. 37.

When the real identity of the composer of the rest of the symphony was ascertained only in 1907, it was pulled from the catalogue. But for some reason, no one bothered to renumber the next symphony – the “Prague” Symphony – as No. 37, not No. 38.

So you see, the correct answer to “Who wrote Mozart's Symphony No. 37?” is Michael Haydn. Mozart only supplied a brief introduction to please a persnickety music-lover.

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Speaking of persnickety - while I don't consider myself an expert, my training and experience aside, and while most of my research takes me to what would be considered reputable biographies and scholarly sources, I have to admit frustration when dealing with "facts" on the internet.

Wikipedia is often the butt of jokes about misinformation, but this discovery got my academic blood pressure boiling (if such an image is conceivable).

You might expect Wikipedia to be "spurious" and taken with a grain of cross-referenced salt but something called "Mozart.com" should seem more acceptable, even accurate - or at least better researched. But in their page on Mozart's "Prague" Symphony where the banner photo is of the manuscript of the "PARIS" Symphony, they mention this:

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After he had finished this Mozart symphony [sic], he was invited to Prague to perform the premiere there – hence the title. The premiere was on January 9, 1787 – one day after the premiere of “Figaro”.
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Now, in these two brief sentences, there are only three things wrong: (1) Mozart was not invited to Prague to conduct the premiere of this symphony but to attend and possibly conduct a performance of Figaro; (2) the premiere was January 19th, 1787 not January 9th (okay, possibly a typo) - besides, Mozart didn't even arrive until the 11th; (3) and while Figaro was premiered in Vienna in May, 1786, it was first performed in Prague in early-December, 1786, not January 8th, 1787, as this website would have you believe.

I know, in this day of Fox News, these are hardly major concerns to the world-at-large, but Holy Musicology, Batman...


- Dick Strawser

Sibelius at 150: His 2nd Symphony

Not long after his 78th birthday, Jean Sibelius wrote to his son-in-law, “My second symphony is a confession of the soul.” What could he – or any other composer – mean by that?

This weekend's concerts with the Harrisburg Symphony celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Jean Sibelius with a performance of his great Symphony No. 2, usually considered a masterpiece, a work he was working on when he turned 36. He was just beginning to achieve an international reputation beyond his native Finland.

The program also includes Rossini's incredibly famous William Tell Overture and a recent work by an up-and-coming young American composer Jonathan Leshnoff, the Double Concerto for Violin and Viola which will be played by violinist Alexander Kerr, returning to the HSO, and violist Michael Strauss who will be joining their fellow Curtis alumnus Stuart Malina for their first performance of this work and our first chance to hear a work composed only eight years ago.

The performances are Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm at the Forum in downtown Harrisburg, and the pre-concert talk will be given an hour earlier by the orchestra's music director and conductor, Stuart Malina. (Don't forget to hang around after the concert for the Maestros' Talk-Back Q/A when he and guests from the concert will answer audience members' questions.

You can read more about the concert in David Dunkle's interview with Stuart in the Carlisle Sentinel here, and about the entire program in this previous post, which includes video clips of each complete work on the program.

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One of those commonplace things to say after hearing Sibelius' 2nd Symphony is that it's a depiction of the bleak Finnish landscape, its sound cold and forbidding like the Finnish winter, forgetting there could be any other type of landscape or season in Finland.

Rapallo, Italy

So I begin by pointing out here is where the 2nd Symphony came into being: it was on a visit to Rapallo in Sunny Italy in 1901 that Sibelius jotted down his first ideas to begin sketching what became the second movement, perhaps the bleakest sounds in the entire work. Perhaps, one might argue, he was homesick? Perhaps, another might respond, this was what music sounded like in Sibelius' soul?

After all, another might argue, it was a trip to Italy that produced one of Brahms' most light-hearted moments, the finale of his 2nd Piano Concerto. Why, then, was Sibelius' response so... dreary?

Kajanus & Sibelius, 1894

Sibelius was 35 years old when he began this new symphony in early 1901 – the previous year had not been an easy one. He had married Aino Järnefelt in 1892 and by the turn of the new century they had three daughters, but the youngest, Kirsti, born in 1898, died of typhoid fever in February, 1900, which sent Aino into a period of depression and Sibelius deeper into his drinking problem. Before this, his love of alcohol had been of a more “celebratory” nature, part of the partying lifestyle he had developed as a law student in Helsinki in his 20s. In the mid-1890s, it was part of his “Symposium,” the group that met at a Helsinki hotel cafe where discussions about art would last late into the night and be accompanied by vast quantities of alcohol. But now, after the death of his child, his drinking became darker and more dangerous.

That spring, his friend and fellow drinking buddy, the conductor Robert Kajanus, was taking his orchestra on a European tour of works by Finnish composers that would present 19 concerts in 13 cities, culminating at the Paris Exhibition. On the programs were several of Sibelius' works including his new 1st Symphony, revised after its premiere the previous year, along with the equally new and wildly popular Finlandia, two of the Lemminkainen Legends (including the Swan of Tuonela) written in 1895, and excerpts from the King Christian II Suite, written two years earlier for a friend's play. This would be the first time Sibelius' music would've been heard outside of Finland.

Swedish and Danish critics were enthusiastic, those in Berlin especially where one viewed him as “a composer of great talent, someone who knew how to express his elegiac feelings and pathos, but who went to extremes in his bursts of passion.” Another called him “a formidable talent.” Paris was less enthusiastic but given the successes particularly in Berlin, it was easier to take.

In October, a friend gave him money for a trip to Italy, suggesting it would do them good, so Sibelius took his family first to Berlin where they stayed till January but by that time, however, all of the money had spent and they hadn't even left for Italy. So he borrowed more money and soon arrived in the coastal town of Rapallo on the Italian Riviera where he began work on the slow movement of a new symphony which eventually took precedence over a proposed work inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy.

In the margins, he scratched out comments about the meeting of “Death with Don Juan,” a scene from the original legend comparable to the “Statue Scene” in Mozart's setting, Don Giovanni.

But soon his second daughter, 6-year-old Ruth, became ill with peritonitis and had a fever of 104°. She recovered but the family was grounded so she could convalesce. Sibelius traveled quickly to Rome where he jotted down themes in a notebook that would later be used in Pohjola's Daughter and Night Ride and Sunrise. Returning to his family, they went to Florence once Ruth was well enough to travel, then they returned home in May, stopping off in Prague where Sibelius met Antonin Dvořák.

But he was no sooner home than he was off again to Germany to conduct his music at a June festival in Heidelburg – again, to favorable reviews. Other conductors began performing his works elsewhere – music from King Christian II was the first music by Sibelius to be heard in England that fall.

Sibelius' home in 1901

In the autumn, once back in Finland, he resumed his work on the 2nd Symphony which he completed early the next year in time for him to conduct its March premiere.

A triumph, his newest work – regarded by one influential critic as “an absolute masterpiece, one of the few symphonic creations of our time that point in the same direction as the symphonies of Beethoven" – was viewed as a “heroic” symphony “imbued with a patriotic spirit” by Finns pessimistic over the state of Russian oppression.

(Keep in mind, Finland had been an autonomous Grand Duchy within the Russian Empire since 1809 but only recently had the Russians begun to censor nationalistic views in what was called the “Russification of Finland” – independence would not come until after the 1917 Revolutions toppled the tsar and that, only after a brief but fierce civil war.)

Though Sibelius denied he wrote the symphony in support of nationalism as any kind of outwardly patriotic statement (don't forget, his Finlandia had been an overtly patriotic work written only three years earlier: what would patriotic Finns hope for?) or that he wrote it inspired by his own dark drama ultimately overcoming Fate (if not Beethoven's 3rd, why not Beethoven's 5th?), he did write that one comment years later in which, looking back on his career over a distance of four decades, he described the symphony as “a confession of the soul.”

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In the usual scheme of things, we think of Classical Music Composers as child prodigies like Mozart or Mendelssohn or who, like Schubert, died young. Remembering that Sibelius completed his 2nd Symphony when he was 36, remember that at 36 Schubert had already been dead five years and Mozart, one; Mendelssohn would die at 38. Let's face it, judging from the 19th Century, becoming a composer was not a guarantee of longevity.

Sibelius, 1923 at 57

But Sibelius, born on Dec. 8th, 1865, died on Sept. 20th, 1957, at the age of 91. The only thing was, he had essentially stopped composing around the time he was in his early-60s, living an almost 30 more years as fans waited and hoped for new pieces from a composer who'd risen to become one of the most popular living composers – and then, without anything new to show, fallen quietly into a kind of old-fashioned oblivion.

To many younger musicians today, Sibelius is a music notation software on their computer developed by the Finns (actually, twins Ben and Jonathan Finn who were British students) in the mid-1980s.

But there was a time when Sibelius ruled the concert halls of Europe, especially England, and America. In the fall of 1920 when Sibelius was 54, the Eastman School of Music offered him a professorship which he considered for a long time before turning them down. He had already been to America as part of Yale's commission of a tone-poem that eventually became known as The Oceanides, premiered at Yale's summer music festival in Norfolk in 1914. Sibelius made the ocean journey, finishing the work during the voyage, then stayed to visit Niagara Falls, receiving during his tour an honorary doctorate from Yale, and meeting various American composers (as well as a former President, Howard Taft).

He made plans to return the following year for an extensive American tour which, he wrote home, would solve his financial problems. Unfortunately, by the time he returned from this trip, World War I had already begun which cut him off not only from his American plans but from his Berlin publisher and from the rest of the world.

Then, after the 1930s, when it became clear he was no longer producing new works – the long awaited 8th Symphony appears only to have been a myth, its near-completion and possible premiere a constant tease – his star began to fade. In 1938, the writer Theodore Adorno attacked Sibelius, writing, “If Sibelius is good, this invalidates the standards of musical quality that have persisted from Bach to Schoenberg.” And in 1955, on the occasion of the composer's 90th birthday, French composer and conductor René Liebowitz called Sibelius “the worst composer in the world.”

Sibelius' response, typical of any embattled artist, was to tell his friends not to pay attention to the critics, adding that no one ever raised a statue to a critic.

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Today, Sibelius has his champions and his detractors. It is curious, especially concerning how modern music evolved in the early-20th Century. Sibelius' style is hardly traditional – the 4th Symphony is undoubtedly one of the most austere works by a “romanticist” ever written – but he is not ground-breaking in the sense of Claude Debussy or Igor Stravinsky or Arnold Schoenberg. Perhaps part of that is because of his Finnish roots, outside the usual Western European circuit.

He is not a folklorist despite his reliance on ancient tales from the Kalevala that appear in The Swan of Tuonela of the Lemminkainen Legends or his early symphonic work, Kullervo. His musical language is not inspired by folk music though, for a time, he studied the “ancient runes” of Old Finland and incorporated some of them in his early music (the “Karelia” Suite, for instance) but otherwise, however much it might have shaped his melodies, it had little influence on his style.

Near Sibelius' birthplace

He is best known for seven abstract symphonies and his programmatic tone-poems ranging from Finlandia to Pohjola's Daughter to Tapiola, again, bristling with Nordic references. If anything, much of his music is shaped by the Finnish landscape: Nature was always one of his major influences and one of the typical responses by Westerners is to compare his music to Finland's “bleak wintry landscapes.”

In further posts to celebrate the 150th Anniversary, I'll summarize his biography – check back here for the link – but for now, I'd like to conclude with some quotes from Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Tim Page's 1996 article for the Washington Post about coming to terms with Sibelius at the end of the 20th Century:

“There are two things to be said straightaway about Sibelius. First, he is terribly uneven (much of his chamber music, a lot of his songs and most of his piano music might have been churned out by a second-rate salon composer from the 19th century on an off afternoon). Second, at his very best, he is often weird.

“For example, the Symphony No. 6 (1923) is one of the century's most curious masterpieces – serene, beatific, almost Mozartean in its clarity and grace, suffused with warm winter light. It is rarely played, has little to do with anything else Sibelius ever composed (what to make of the second movement, that long series of musical question marks?), and its interpreters have a habit of trying to turn it into Tchaikovsky or the more traditionally "romantic" Sibelius Symphony No. 5 or something else that they might recognize – trying, in other words, to make it fit into a pattern. And it doesn't fit – which is not at all to say it doesn't work.”

His music, for all its epic grandeur at times – thinking of the 2nd and 5th Symphonies – is also full of dramatic silences, that silence which is a significant part of Nature.

Page goes on to say, “If silence can be defined as an absence of sound, it may be helpful for the novice, when coming to Sibelius, to consider his music a temporary respite from quietude. The image of Sibelius as a brooding poet of the spare, near-motionless, unpeopled North is fairly hackneyed by now, but it is no less true for all that.”

- Dick Strawser

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The portrait of Kajanus & Sibelius is a detail from Akseli Gallen-Kallala's painting depicting the "Symposium" in 1894 which also features the artist and the (face-down) composer-conductor, Oskar Merikanto.

November Masterworks: An Overture, a Concerto & a Symphony, Oh My!

It's time for the Harrisburg Symphony's November Masterworks program this weekend and it includes three works – Rossini's Overture to William Tell, the Double Concerto for Violin and Viola by Jonathan Leshnoff (his Starburst had been performed here a few seasons ago), and the Symphony No. 2 in D Major by Jean Sibelius in honor of the composer's 150th Anniversary.

The concerts are at the Forum in downtown Harrisburg, Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm – and the Music Director and conductor, Stuart Malina, will be giving the Pre-Concert Talk an hour before each performance.


November Masterworks from Harrisburg Symphony Orchestra on Vimeo.

A typical symphonic program consists of an overture, a concerto, and a symphony. Maybe it's a short and lively piece for an opener, not necessarily an overture (a curtain-raiser), or, depending on its size and scope, maybe the concerto will close the concert instead. And instead of a symphony, maybe it's a large-scale orchestral work that's not actually a “symphony.” But however you slice it, it's an old, tried-and-true formula concert-goers are used to, and if the formula works, why not use it?

This weekend's program opens with perhaps one of the most familiar overtures in the repertoire – at least, the ending is, thanks to its being an old-time TV show's theme-song. It's the overture to the last opera Gioacchino Rossini composed, based on the story of the Swiss patriot and folk-hero, William Tell. And while opera overtures typically combine some of the best themes from the opera as a kind of preview (or maybe paint the scene for the curtain raising), this one is a little four-movement tone-poem complete in itself, each part famous on its own.

Rossini when writing "William Tell"

It opens with an evocation of dawn in the Swiss Alps, the setting for the opera: a solo cello is answered by a choir of four other cellos and double basses. This is interrupted by the storm – one of the most famous in classical music – which, after reaching a tremendous climax, gradually subsides into a pastoral scene beginning with a shepherd's call played on the English horn answered by flute and other woodwinds. Both these sections are beloved of cartoons in need of descriptive music for storms and that wonderful sense of relief after a storm.

Then comes the famous finale, a galop in more ways than one. Usually referred to as “The March of Swiss Soldiers,” it comes from the opera's final act, recounting the victory of the Swiss army, liberating their land from Austrian repression. Speaking of cartoons – or films in general – this music is often used to represent galloping horses, the timely arrival of the hero or, especially, the cavalry (though there is no cavalry or even horses in the opera itself). It has become so famous from 1950s TV (and before that, radio), it has been said “an 'intellectual' is someone who can hear Rossini's William Tell Overture without thinking of The Lone Ranger.” (There – I said it...)

And all of this, first heard in 1829.

Here's a more recent performance of the overture with Riccardo Muti conducting the Opera Orchestra of La Scala, Milan – in this case, from a DVD of the complete opera where the orchestra is in the pit.


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Instead of following along in “concert order,” I'm going to skip ahead to the Big Symphony that concludes the program, in this case Jean Sibelius' 2nd Symphony.

Next month will be the official 150th Anniversary of the birth of the great Finnish composer, born in 1865. This symphony was written at the start of the 20th Century, begun in 1901 and premiered the following year.

It's a great symphony by a great symphonist. Sibelius was one of those composers who specialized in symphonies though he only completed seven and of those, perhaps three or four are performed with any regularity. The 2nd is probably his most popular, though the 5th cannot be far behind.

Curiously, the program opens with the overture to Rossini's last opera, an overture that's certainly one of his most popular works but few people – at least in this country – would ever have had the chance to see the opera. He completed the opera in 1829 and then, basically, retired from composing despite the fact he died almost 40 years later. Why did he just stop composing? Especially after having written such a triumphant success as this?

Sibelius is another composer who actually retired from composing and, curiously, his last major work after his 7th Symphony, the tone-poem Tapiola (speaking of musical storms!) was written in 1926, almost a hundred years after Rossini quit composing. By the time he died in 1957 at the age of 91, not having published anything for 30 years, his reputation as a great composer of the 20th Century had declined considerably.

Creativity moves in mysterious ways... Both stories probably deal more with their lack of comfort with the rest of the music world going on around them and their concern about fitting in (such doubts also plagued Rachmaninoff, among others) than with being "written out" or not having anything to say.

But sometimes, the creative spark just dies for whatever reason: it's something all composers fear.

Sibelius in 1907

His 2nd Symphony, however, comes just as his career was taking off – he had just started receiving international recognition after his 1st Symphony was performed on a European tour and his 2nd Symphony, when it was played in Berlin in 1905, marked his arrival as “a composer to watch.”

If William Tell's Switzerland was under the occupation of Austria in the 15th Century, Sibelius' Finland was a semi-autonomous Grand Duchy under the Russian Empire and an independent Finland didn't exist until after the 1917 Revolutions toppled the tsar and Finland, after flirting with a monarchy like its fellow northern countries, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, decided on becoming a Republic in 1919. But that's after this symphony was composed.

It is, however, important to keep this in mind because Sibelius' reputation at home was based on the hymn-like finale he composed for a series of six “historical scenes” for a press celebration in 1899 depicting various elements of Finland's largely sad history. This “celebration” was a covert protest against the increasing censorship of the Russian occupiers. The final movement, called “Finland Awakes!” became such an immediate hit with its hymn-tune – an original theme, by the way – that the Russian authorities forbid its performance, so it was usually performed in a variety of arrangements under a variety of titles like “Happy Feelings,” “Spring Awakes” or “Choral March.” It would eventually become the song of the patriotic resistance and then the unofficial National Anthem.

Also in 1899, Sibelius composed his 1st Symphony. His 2nd followed by about two years.

Many commentators remark on the “pastoral quality” of the opening, the ensuing storminess and tension and, of course, the epic finale with its ultimate triumph, even if it might be overwhelmed by underwelling gloom before it reaches its conclusion.

It is, certainly, a great Romantic symphony in the 19th Century tradition with an original and immediately identifiable voice even if it does not use Finnish folk-songs as a basis of its thematic language (what can be more folk-like than that opening theme in the winds?).

That didn't keep Finns from hearing it as “The Symphony of Finnish Independence” or, in the long run, as their “Heroic” Symphony. It certainly has elements of a heroic nature in it, but there's no indication that was the composer's intent.

While it quickly established Sibelius as a leading composer around the world, it has been recorded many times (in many ways). But in this recording, a modern Finnish conductor, Osmo Vänskä, conducts a Finnish orchestra, the Lahti Symphony and while I normally like to post performances where you can actually watch the orchestra, this performance was too good to pass up just because it lacks originality in its graphic presentation.


In four movements, it opens with an Allegretto (a moderate tempo); the second movement, Andante, ma rubato (a flexible moderately slow tempo – a “walking” tempo, technically) begins around 9:24; the scherzo, Vivacissimo (very fast), begins around 23:54; and the finale, Allegro moderato (a moderately fast tempo) begins around 29:52. This entire performance takes about 45 minutes.

You can read more biographical background about the composer and his symphony in this post, Sibelius at 150: His 2nd Symphony, here. There will be a biographical summary of the composer's life which I will post in early December.

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Jonathan Leshnoff

In between these two giants is a young composer whose career is on the rise. Jonathan Leshnoff's Starburst was played at the HSO concert in May, 2012 (you can read about it, here).

Stuart Malina was telling me before the 2011-2012 season had been announced how excited he'd been when he first heard Leshnoff's music.

Stuart felt Leshnoff’s music is in much the same vein as Jennifer Higdon’s – direct and appealing (without pandering). Pointing out that Higdon (whose Blue Cathedral and "Percussion Concerto" were performed here to considerable popular acclaim) and Kevin Puts (whose 2nd Symphony was well received here a few years ago) have gone on to win Pulitzer Prizes in music since then – and don't forget Higdon's Grammy – he expects similar good things to be happening in Leshnoff’s career. “It’s always nice to know you’re backing a winning horse!”

And things are clearly going well for Leshnoff, a Baltimore-based composer teaching at Towson University. He'll have a new Clarinet Concerto premiered by no less than the Philadelphia Orchestra in April 2016; an oratorio, Zhohar, premiered by the Atlanta Symphony the same week (now, how can even the greatest composer be in two places at once!?); a new Violin Concerto for Gil Shaham to be premiered in the spring of 2016 also; his 2nd Symphony is being premiered in Atlanta this month and next May, his 3rd Symphony is being premiered in Kansas City.

Definitely a busy time for composer Leshnoff – and the kind of success so far that most composers can only dream of!

His “Double Concerto” for Violin and Viola will be performed here by violinist Alexander Kerr and violist Michael Strauss. The title brings to mind a similar kind of work by Brahms (for Violin and Cello) and the instrumentation reminds one of the Symphonie concertante by Mozart for Violin and Viola.

It was composed in 2007 and has been recorded on the Naxos label.

Here is a complete performance of the concerto (again, a less than imaginative YouTube graphic) with violinist Charles Wetherbee, violist Roberto Diaz and the Columbus Symphony Orchestra conducted by Delta David Gier in 2010.



Here are some reviews of the Double Concerto:

“This luscious concerto ended far too soon, with its haunting four-note theme still expanding within my brain... Leshnoff’s concerto was complexly layered, though never dull. The interplay between brass and strings was colorful, even as the two soloists kept attention focused on their technical wizardry.

“In the power of the conclusion, that memorable four-note theme emerged victorious, assuring us that at least some new symphonic music will have a confident future.”
—Samuel Black, Duluth News Tribune, May 5, 2008

“Saturday night, however, a new concerto from the exceptional composer Jonathan Leshnoff found a deservedly warm welcome at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre... His ‘Double Concerto for Violin, Viola and Orchestra’, composed last year, is an elegant creation, beautifully rendered by the orchestra and the two outstanding soloists... Leshnoff’s full embrace of harmony grants accessibility without sacrificing depth or musicality. It is complex but not complicated, exploring a range of emotions... IRIS is one of five organizations that commissioned the work and the orchestra plans more performances from this terrific composer.”
—Jon W. Sparks, The Commercial Appeal, March 31, 2008

We'll see how the Patriot-News and the Carlisle Sentinel like it!

- Dick Strawser

October Masterworks: Morton Gould Meets Ernest Chausson

This weekend's concerts, opening the new season with Stuart Malina and the Harrisburg Symphony, features one very popular work – the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto with Van Cliburn Competition finalist Di Wu – and two relatively unknown symphonies, the 2nd “American Symphonette” by the very American composer Morton Gould from 1938 and the only symphony by a French romanticist from 1890, Ernest Chausson.

The performances are at the Forum Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 3pm with a pre-concert talk an hour before each concert and a post-concert talk-back Q/A immediately afterward.

You can read more about the Tchaikovsky – and see an amazing performance with Van Cliburn recorded in Moscow in 1962 – in this previous post.

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In the case of the program's first piece, it's probably not quite accurate to say “relatively unknown” as I imagine a number of heads will start bopping along once the second movement starts and then, after it ends all too soon, adding a light chuckle.

Morton Gould, 1939

Before the term “cross-over” existed, Morton Gould was combining elements of jazz and the Big Band music of the '20s and '30s into his music that was meant to appeal to both classical and pop music lovers, working as a conductor and arranger at WOR Mutual Radio in New York City. A prodigy whose first published work was a waltz written when he was 6 (I suspect the publisher gave it the title “Just Six”), Gould was 19 when he became a staff pianist at Radio City Music Hall (so named because one of the building's tenants was the Radio Corporation of America) which opened to the public in 1932 with a lavish presentation that included Ray Bolger and Martha Graham, speaking of cross-over. Unfortunately, the production was not a success – too long, with some of the acts “lost in the cavernous hall” which sat nearly 6,000 people. Still, two weeks later, the theater found its successful formula – a film with a live-stage spectacle (complete with the already legendary Rockettes, previously known as the Roxyettes from their stay at the Roxy Theater).

Now, that may seem like a side-bar to a post about this weekend's concert, but consider this fact: Morton Gould composed a piece he called his “American Symphonette” (No. 2, to be exact) in 1938 (though his own website's biography lists it for 1932). At the time, he was working in radio and designed four such “symphonettes” to fit the on-air format with a style that could be appealing to “pop” and “serious” music lovers. Think back to those early days of cross-over at the Radio City Music Hall... and the Rockettes.

Now, in 1925, someone came up with the term “dinette” to indicate a small dining area for informal meals just off the kitchen, separate from the more formal “dining room” with its larger scale, more “serious” furniture. Suddenly, American homes were awash in smaller-than-usual rooms like kitchenettes, even laundrettes (probably for the bachelors of New York) as a way of conserving space. (I suspect we were stuck with the less imaginative half-bath or "powder room" because toilette already meant something else.)

And here was Morton Gould, former child prodigy, being a staff pianist living in New York City, surrounded by the dancing feet and long-legged kicks of the Rockettes writing what a European composer would've called a “sinfonietta.” The idea of a “small symphony” called a symphonette sounded more American even with that French -ette tacked on.

The second movement would go on to become Gould's best-known and most often performed work. He called it a “Pavanne,” not a Pavane, adding the second 'n' ostensibly to distinguish it from Ravel's popular “Pavane for a Dead Princess” but also, as he later explained, because he was concerned the typical listener, seeing the unfamiliar European term, would pronounce it “puh-VAIN,” rhyming with “Main.”

Technically, a pavane is a “stately dance for couples in a courtly procession with music in slow duple time” dating back to the Renaissance.

If you're already familiar with Gould's “Pavanne,” his sense of the dance sounds more saucy than stately and is by no means “slow.” Here's is the composer himself (complete with his own personal orchestra) conducting his own “light orchestra” arrangement of it, recorded in 1942.



Definitely more of an American saunter than a staid Old-World procession – like you're swinging your hips down Broadway.

In this more recent recording with the Albany Symphony conducted by David Allen Miller, it sounds a little more... well, “pavanny.”



As well known as this jazzy little dance became in the '40s, later inspiring numerous jazz legends like John Coultrane and Dizzy Gillespie, there are still two other movements to Gould's little American symphony: while the first movement is marked “Moderately Fast,” the last is “Very Fast – Racy.” How American is that?



If Morton Gould is new to you – beyond his “Pavanne” and his arrangement of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” in his American Salute – you should check out another of his “little symphonies,” the Latin-American Symphonette, the very different ballet for Agnes deMille based on the story of Lizzie Borden, Fall River Legend, as well as his march-filled “West Point” Symphony for Wind Ensemble.

I wish I could locate a link for his 1979 “Burchfield Gallery,” which I've always admired, but can find nothing of it on-line.

Morton Gould

More than “just a cross-over composer,” and once described as a “star of the classical world who got his start in vaudeville,” Gould won a Pulitzer Prize for his “Stringmusic” in 1995; won a Grammy for conducting a recording of Charles Ives' Symphony No. 1 in 1966 (he would receive 12 Grammy nominations during his career plus a lifetime achievement award); was a Kennedy Center honoree in 1994; and served as president of ASCAP for 8 years lobbying for the intellectual rights of performing artists as the internet was becoming a force that would greatly impact ASCAP's members. In 1978, he made some of the first records using the new digital recording technology.

During the witch hunts of the McCarthy Era, Gould was asked to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee which would get another quintessential American composer, Aaron Copland, in political hot water along with many other public figures. Even though he declined, turning down subsequent potential commissions and recording contracts in return for his testimony, he was soon moved “from the 'ask' list to the 'black' list.”

Seems a far cry from the jaunty music on this weekend's program...

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While Morton Gould wrote four symphonettes as well as four symphonies, Ernest Chausson wrote only one symphony, a grand three-movement work in the French late-19th Century tradition, inspired by his teacher Cesar Franck's lone symphony. In fact it was in the summer after hearing Franck's new symphony that Chausson decided to try writing his own.

It's true that Chausson did not write many works – only 39 opus numbers in his catalogue, mostly because he'd gotten a fairly late start as a composer, not writing his first work until he was 22 – unlike Morton Gould's waltz at 6 – and because he was so painstaking with each work, concerned about claims of amateurism since his financial situation meant he didn't need to work for a living. Plus he also died young, killed in a freak bicycling accident at the age of 44, losing control of his bike on a hill and slamming into a wall. By the time Mozart was 22, he had already composed his 31st Symphony and Schubert, at 22, had completed his “Trout” Quintet, the 667th individual work in his catalogue. On the other hand, Chausson also outlived both Mozart (who died at 35) and Schubert (who died at 31) but just barely.

Ernest Chausson, c.1885

As many people will raise their hands when asked “Have you ever heard Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto before,” there probably won't be too many people at the Forum who will have had a chance to hear Chausson's Symphony live before. Though I'd heard the piece through recordings since I was a college student, I've never heard it live, unlike the symphony that inspired it, Franck's D Minor Symphony, which was one of those works that seemed to haunt me on symphony programs wherever I went, hearing it live for the first time in 1964 with the Harrisburg Symphony under Edwin McArthur: it had been performed four times that decade; ten times in 35 years or basically once every 3½ seasons. I must have heard it four times in the two years I lived in New York City on the programs of touring orchestras coming to Carnegie Hall.

The last time it was performed by the Harrisburg Symphony, however, was under Stuart Malina just last season but then, thanks to an unexpected snow storm, it was heard by only a brave few... That was one reason why I regarded the potential appearance of a hurricane during this first concert weekend with some concern.

(You can read more about Franck's Symphony from my blog-post for last season's February performance with the HSO, here.)

Chausson's music appeared only four times on HSO programs between 1930 and 1990, according to my program archives – and that was his most popular work, if anything of his is “frequently performed,” the Poeme for Violin and Orchestra which former concertmaster Odin Rathnam performed with the HSO more recently in 2000 as part of then-conductor-candidate Stuart Malina's “audition concert.”

Curiously, I've heard Chausson's next most popular piece, the Concert for Violin, Piano and String Quartet four times in my life since 1975, three of them here in Harrisburg, one of them again with Odin Rathnam as part of Market Square Concerts' Summermusic in a very hot, very crowded mill.

So, for no other reason, I am looking forward to hearing Chausson's Symphony live for the first time.

Like the Franck that inspired it, Chausson's is a three-movement work using what was a common fingerprint of late-19th Century French style, called the “cyclical form” though it's not really a form. It means themes from earlier parts of a large-scale work are brought back near the end to tie the whole thing together. Not that this is a necessarily French invention – Beethoven used it several times, most notably in his 5th and 9th Symphonies; Bruckner employed it frequently in his symphonies because, hey, Beethoven had used it in his 9th.

Turns out there are few videos of Chausson's Symphony on YouTube as well, but fortunately this one conducted by French master Jean Fournet, here with the NHK Symphony of Japan, would be an excellent introduction if you've never heard it at all.

The first movement opens with a lengthy slow introduction setting up the lively main part of the movement (just as the Franck did):


The second movement is the slow movement, perhaps one of Chausson's most poignant if not outright tragic movements. Like the Franck Symphony, there is also a role for the English Horn though not as pronounced, doubling a solo cello.


The finale gets off to a robust start followed by a chorale-like second theme before climaxing with a majestic sweep that gradually transcends into an unexpectedly reflective conclusion, harking back one more time to the 1st movement's introduction.


After the first rehearsal Thursday night, HSO Assistant Conductor Gregory Woodbridge posted on my Facebook page, "it sounds so huge and lush!! It won't disappoint!"

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When Ernest Chausson arrived at the Paris Conservatoire in 1879 at the age of 24, one of his teachers was Cesar Franck whose own only symphony wasn't premiered until 1889. By then, Franck was hoping to ride his new-found success after a fitful and often disappointing career into a new style-period. Several recent works, going back to the Piano Quintet of 1879 and including the Symphonic Variations for Piano & Orchestra, Psyché for chorus and orchestra, the Violin Sonata, the Symphony and now a new String Quartet he had just completed, pointed toward a new phase in his creative accomplishments when he died from what might have been complications following an accident when his cab was hit by a trolley in July of 1890: he died about four months later at the age of 67.

Ten years later, Franck's student Chausson, a hale and hearty 44-year-old, died while riding his bicycle one spring afternoon when he too was just beginning to realize new directions toward what might be called his “mature style” given the new confidence of his Symphony, the Concert, Poeme and several recent chamber works. Unfortunately, we'll never know.

Chausson is often described as a bridge between the French Romanticism of Franck and the next generation of composers like Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. He had been influenced by Wagner's music but mostly the sensuous music for Kundry in Wagner's final opera, Parsifal (Chausson and his wife spent part of their honeymoon at Bayreuth so the composer could hear its premiere).

Chausson turns pages for Debussy

This familiar photograph could have been taken at Chausson's home where he held frequent salons with guests from every artistic walk in Paris, painters, authors, performers and composers. Here, it is Chausson turning pages for a young Claude Debussy at the piano as other guests listen in.

According to the Grove Dictionary, near the end of his life he’d begun to apply “the rule which corrects emotion... to achieve that supreme [unflagging effort] that renders the thought loftier, the image clearer,” combining in some context a balance between form and content, structure and emotion, classical and romantic, the sort of quest of artists who begin dealing with more mature issues rather than just purely creative ones.

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In his program notes for the Chausson, Dr. Richard Rodda includes quotes from letters I've not seen before which the composer wrote to his brother-in-law (who had suggested he should try his hand at a symphony if he was so impressed by his teacher's): it was during the summer he worked on his new symphony and they give us an interesting insight not only into the creative process in general but how it goes when a composer lacks a certain self-confidence. It's not just dashing it off in fits of inspiration.

After settling in the coastal town of St. Jean-de-Luz just north of the Spanish border in the Basque region of France, a popular resort much loved in the next generation by Maurice Ravel, Chausson picked up the sketches he had begun in Paris for the first movement.

“Your confounded Symphony is throwing me into a fine state indeed. I have at last finished the Andante, or nearly so, but by a difficult means. I went through a torture that you cannot imagine in order to write the middle section with a phrase I did not like but whose general aspect fitted the movement. Then I played the whole thing over, and I saw very clearly that the middle section was not only detestable, which does not amaze me, but also perfectly useless. I shall simply have to cut it out, make a skillful bridge, if I can, and smooth out the ending. You will have made me spend a terrible time. Pray that I find something good for the finale; otherwise I shall insult you by letters, by telegrams, any way I can.”

The finale did not go smoothly, either.

“I have been working like a slave and I am still stuck on one measure! I return to my manuscript as to a vice. I can think of nothing but that one measure! I loathe getting up in the morning, thinking of the frightful day I am going to spend. Most horrible of all, what I am about to write is very good. No doubt about it.... I have an idea, but just can’t write it down. I can’t continue this sort of life.”

He decided to take a break – first, a day-trip to a near-by town, the site where the events of one of the great medieval poems, The Song of Roland, took place. After his return, he “threw himself into” studying Mozart's opera, The Magic Flute. Having cleared his head, the finale gradually “revealed itself” (as inspiration tends to work) and he completed the full score early the following year.

The work was not a success at its premiere the next year, though that could be partly the fault of Chausson's conducting. Six years later, Paris audiences revised their response after hearing it played by the visiting Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of the legendary Artur Nikisch, now regarding it as “Chausson's masterpiece.”

Not quite two years later, Chausson had that fateful outing with a bicycle on a country road, leaving several works incomplete at his writing desk, including plans for a second symphony.

- Dick Strawser

Opening the Season: Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto with Di Wu

This weekend, the Harrisburg Symphony and conductor Stuart Malina open the new season with a masterworks concert that includes a well-known favorite – the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto with pianist Di Wu – an almost unknown but delightfully tuneful jazz-classical cross-over hit from the 1930s by Morton Gould – his “American Symphonette No. 2” with its once very well-known “Pavanne” which many listeners might recognize even if they don't know the piece – and a grand symphony by a late-Romantic French master – Ernest Chausson's only symphony, in fact – which few people in the audience may have had many opportunities to hear live.

The Saturday night concert begins at 8:00; the Sunday afternoon concert, at 3:00. There's a pre-concert talk, as usual, an hour before each performance with a post-concert Q/A “Talk Back” session with Stuart and a guest or two (perhaps the soloist or a member of the orchestra). 

Here is Di Wu playing Franz Liszt's transcription of Gounod's "Waltz from Faust," one of her performances at the Van Cliburn Competition in 2009.


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Several seasons ago, Stuart Malina mentioned, when faced with conducting a ubiquitous favorite like Beethoven's 5th again, a quote he'd heard from conductor Robert Shaw who said something to the effect that every time you perform a work like Beethoven's 5th there's always somebody who is hearing it for the first time – and somebody who is hearing it for the last time.

Tchaikovsky's 1st Piano Concerto is just such a work.

I'm sure there will be people in this weekend's concert audience who've never heard the whole piece before, live or otherwise – beyond its famous opening – and who knows who in the audience we may lose between then and the next time Tchaikovsky's concerto will be performed?

Our soloist for the first concert of the New Season is Di Wu who appeared here a few seasons ago to play another concert favorite, the Grieg Piano Concerto.

And since she was a finalist in the 2009 Van Cliburn Competition, founded by the great American pianist who won the first Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958 at the height of the Cold War and who was even treated to a ticker-tape parade in New York City when he returned – when was the last time a classical musician received a tribute like that? – it seems appropriate to include here a video of the complete concerto recorded from Cliburn's return to Moscow in 1962, again with Kiril Kondrashin conducting the Moscow Philharmonic.



And yes, that is Soviet premier Nikita Krushchev smiling and applauding at the concert's conclusion. In 1958, when the judges had decided on Cliburn as the winner, they felt compelled to ask Krushchev if they could award the first prize of this competition – designed to demonstrate Soviet prowess in the arts the year after they'd launched Sputnik – to an American. Krushchev is reported to have asked “Is he the best? Then give him the prize!”

Incidentally, Cliburn performed two great Russian concertos during that competition. The other was Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano Concerto, a work you can hear when the HSO concludes the 2015-2016 season with Ann Schein in May.

While it's difficult for me to imagine a better performance than Cliburn's, for those of you who might prefer a more “modern” recording of the Tchaikovsky, here is a 2001 Van Cliburn Competition winner born in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, Stanislav Iudenich, with James Conlon conducting the Fort Worth Symphony. This performance is from the actual competition final round, not just a live concert performance (talk about pressure). That year, Iudenich shared the Gold with another Russian pianist, Olga Kern who, incidentally, played the Rachmaninoff 3rd in her concerto competition final.

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But what makes a popular hit like the Tchaikovsky 1st Piano Concerto?

Since it's called the 1st, clearly there must be at least a 2nd, and there's also a 3rd, but since these are little known and rarely heard, it's also clear Tchaikovsky did not have the same luck with the public with these two later works.

Here are some early reviews of one of Tchaikovsky's most beloved works, beginning with the world premiere, Hans von Bülow, the soloist, which took place, of all places, in Boston in October 1875.

“This elaborate work is, in general, as difficult for popular apprehension as the name of the composer... There are long stretches of what seems, on the first hearing at least, formless void, sprinkled only with tinklings of the piano and snatchy obbligatos from all the various wind and string instruments.” – Boston, Evening Transcript, October 25th, 1875.

“Tchaikovsky is unmistakably a disciple of the 'new school' and his work is strongly tinged with the wildness and quaintness of the music of the North. Taken as a whole, his Piano Concerto appeared chiefly as a novelty. It would not soon supplant the massive production of Beethoven, or even the fiery compositions of Liszt, Raff, and Rubinstein.” – Boston Journal, October 25th, 1875.

“This extremely difficult, strange, wild, ultra-modern Russian concerto is the composition of Peter Tchaikovsky... We had the wild Coassack fire and impetus without stint, extremely brilliant and exciting, but could we ever learn to love such music?” – Dwight's Journal of Music, published in November, 1875.

At it's first performance in Russia, a concert in St. Petersburg the following month, the critic of Novoye Vremya was more succinct. “Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, like the first pancake, is a flop.”

Tchaikovsky's said of that same Petersburg performance pianist Gustav Kross had reduced his concerto to “an atrocious cacophony.”

It should also be mentioned that, the Boston critics aside, the audience at that world premiere cheered the concerto enough that the finale had to be encored! George Whitefield Chadwick, a leading composer in Boston, wrote the performance was not well rehearsed and at one point, when the trombones came in early during a passage in the middle of the first movement, the soloist could clearly be heard singing out “the brass may go to hell.”

Anyway, just a few things to keep in mind when you hear a new piece for the first time...

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You can read more about the other works on the program in a subsequent post on this blog.

Over the summer, I was asked to read and review a new book by English author Sheila Seymour, a novel about Tchaikovsky called Sons of Janus. You can read that review, here.

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Tchaikovsky, Early 1875

Tchaikovsky's concerto, which he worked on between November, 1874, and February, 1875, was also not a hit with the composer's own former teacher, mentor and, at the time, boss.

Tchaikovsky, who had always wanted to be a musician though when he was growing up there were no music schools in Russia where he could study, had finally graduated from the recently formed St. Petersburg Conservatory founded by pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein who then sent his younger brother Nikolai (also a pianist and composer) off to Moscow to open a branch there along with Tchaikovsky who would teach theory and composition, though he was just out of school himself, totally inexperienced and not yet successful. 

So far, he had composed a small number of works but the only ones that endure are the song “None but the Lonely Heart” (rarely heard today, but once another ubiquitous favorite); his 2nd Symphony (later to be eclipsed by the popularity – and comparative greatness – of his 4th, 5th and 6th Symphonies); the original version of his Romeo & Juliet though we know it by the 3rd version rewritten 11 years later; and the 1st String Quartet but only because its slow movement became popular as the Andante cantabile.

If you look at the published opus numbers, it would look like the ballet Swan Lake pre-dates the concerto, also, but he didn't begin composing it until after he had completed the concerto. Arguably one of the great ballets in the repertoire, it, too, by the way, was a complete failure at its premiere.

Nikolai Rubinstein

So here's a 34-year-old composer, just finished school (finally, after having finished a law degree and worked for a few years as a law clerk), who hands his teacher a big piano concerto. It was Christmas Eve and Tchaikovsky sat down and played through the first movement for Nikolai Rubinstein – nothing – and then he played through the remaining two movements – still nothing.

And then all hell broke loose.

“It turned out,” Tchaikovsky wrote years later to his friend and patron Nadezhda von Meck, “that my concerto was worthless and unplayable; passages were so fragmented, so clumsy, so badly written that they were beyond rescue; the work itself was bad, vulgar; in places I had stolen from other composers; only two or three pages were worth preserving; the rest must be thrown away or completely rewritten. 'Here, for instance, this—now what's all that?' (he caricatured my music on the piano) 'And this? How can anyone…' etc., etc.”

He continued, “I was not only astounded but outraged by the whole scene. I am no longer a boy trying his hand at composition, and I no longer need lessons from anyone, especially when they are delivered so harshly and unfriendlily [sic]. I need and shall always need friendly criticism, but there was nothing resembling friendly criticism. It was indiscriminate, determined censure, delivered in such a way as to wound me to the quick. I left the room without a word and went upstairs. In my agitation and rage I could not say a thing. Presently R[ubinstein] enjoined me, and seeing how upset I was he asked me into one of the distant rooms. There he repeated that my concerto was impossible, pointed out many places where it would have to be completely revised, and said that if within a limited time I reworked the concerto according to his demands, then he would do me the honor of playing my thing at his concert. 'I shall not alter a single note,' I answered, 'I shall publish the work exactly as it is!' This I did.”

Hoping that Nikolai Rubinstein would premiere the work, instead (somehow) he convinced the German conductor and pianist, Hans von Bülow, a friend and champion of Brahms (who at the time had not completed his 1st Symphony), to take on the first performances even though he quickly dropped it from his repertoire.

But by the Moscow performance in November of that same year, Nikolai Rubinstein had changed his mind about the piece and, even though Tchaikovsky's own student Sergei Taneyev was the soloist, Rubinstein conducted the performance. Later, he would perform the work frequently as soloist, especially on his European tours.

Regardless of the composer's reaction to Rubinstein's suggestions – most of which were about the piano-writing or technical issues of “balance” between soloist and orchestra, as well as concern about the famous Introduction being in “the wrong key” and, beautiful as that theme is, never being heard from again – Tchaikovsky did make slight revisions on three subsequent occasions: in 1876, after a German pianist had given the London premiere; when the work was finally published in 1879, following advice from the Russian pianist Alexander Siloti, one of his own students (who later taught Rachmaninoff); and finally a few more simplifications and adjustments made in 1890, fifteen years after the premiere, the edition we usually hear today.

In the five years after showing his piano concerto to Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky then composed Swan Lake, the opera Eugene Onyegin, the “Rococo Variations” for cello and orchestra, the Violin Concerto, the 4th Symphony and The 1812 Overture.

You could say he was on a roll.


- Dick Strawser