Conductor
Corrick Brown

featuring
Shai Wosner, Piano

BRAHMS: Academic Festival Overture
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3
DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 6

February 10, 11, 12 2007
Wells Fargo Center
$27 - $50

SRS Conductor Emeritus, Corrick Brown graces our podium to present the works of three great masters: Brahms, Beethoven and Dvořák. Israeli-born Shai Wosner, called “a superb pianist” by the New York Times, performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a dynamic work rich in the turbulent emotions for which Beethoven was famous. In his 6th Symphony, Dvořák’s Czech heritage and bohemian spirit come to life with its impetuous folk-dance scherzo contrasting with a dreamy luminous trio that contains the most romantic solo ever written for the piccolo. This special program is a fitting vehicle for our celebration of Corrick Brown’s 50th anniversary.

Johannes Brahms: Academic Festival Overture, Opus 80

Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany, on May 7, 1833, and died in Vienna on April 3, 1897. He composed the Academic Festival Overture after receiving an honorary degree from the University of Breslau in 1879, and the work was premiered at the University on January 4, 1881. The score calls for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and three percussionists, and strings.

The University of Breslau conferred an honorary degree on Brahms in 1879. It was quite the normal thing for a composer to respond to such an honor with a suitable composition. The rectors of the University no doubt expected a large, serious piece fitting the Latin citation that came with his degree: “the foremost composer of serious music in Germany today.” Perhaps it would be a darkly somber symphony or an immensely complicated choral work, showing off all the contrapuntal techniques.

They could hardly have expected what they got—a potpourri of German student songs celebrating the less intellectual aspects of college life: wenching, wining, and freshman initiation! The various tunes include Wir haben gebauet ein stattliches Haus (“We have built a stately house”) in the trumpets, followed by the noble Landesvater (“Father of his country”) melody in the strings. Then comes the lively tune of the freshman-initiation “fox-ride” Was kommt dort von der Höh? (“What comes from there on high?”) in which initiates were made to carry upper classmen on their backs as they galloped around the room as if in a fox hunt. All of these tunes parade past once again before Brahms brings in the oldest and most famous of German student songs, Gaudeamus igitur: “Let us rejoice while we are still young; after a jolly youth and a burdensome old age, the earth will claim us.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven: Concerto No. 3 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra, Opus 37

Ludwig van Beethoven was baptized in Bonn, Germany, on December 17, 1770, and died in Vienna on March 26, 1827. Sketches for this concerto appear as early as 1796 or 1797, though the principal work of composition came in the summer of 1800. It may have been revised at the end of 1802 for the first performance, which took place in Vienna on April 5, 1803, with the composer as soloist. Some time after completing the concerto—but before 1809—Beethoven wrote a cadenza, possibly for the Archduke Rudolph; most modern soloists play that cadenza. In addition to solo piano, the score calls for two each of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings.
One morning during the summer of 1799, Beethoven was walking through the Augarten, an elegant park on an island in the Danube, with Johann Baptist Cramer, one of the most brilliant pianists of his day.

While strolling along, they heard a performance of Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto, K. 491. Beethoven suddenly stopped and drew Cramer’s attention to a simple but beautiful theme introduced near the end of the concerto and exclaimed, “Cramer, Cramer! We shall never be able to do anything like that!” Opinions may (and do) differ as to exactly what passage affected Beethoven so strongly, but there is no doubt that Mozart’s C minor concerto was one of his favorite works, and echoes of that enthusiasm are clearly to be found in his own C minor concerto, which was already in the works—at least in some preliminary way.

Beethoven composed the concerto around the same time as the Septet, Opus 20, and the First Symphony, Opus 21, but he withheld performance for three years, which explains the unusually high opus number.

When the premiere finally took place, it was part of a lengthy concert that Beethoven produced to introduce several of his newest works. The last rehearsal, on the day of the performance, was a marathon affair running without pause from 8 am until 2:30 pm, when everyone broke for lunch, after which the oratorio Christ on the Mount of Olives was given another run-through. It is a wonder that the performers could manage the actual concert, which began at 6 pm and proved to be so long that some of the shorter pieces were dropped. The fact that Beethoven made the program entirely of his own works—and then charged elevated prices for tickets—clearly indicates the power of his name at the box office.

Critical response to the concerto ranged from lukewarm to cold; in fact, the only thing that really pleased the audience, it seems, was the familiar First Symphony. Still, the concerto quickly established itself in the public favor. By the time of its second performance in July 1804, a leading journal declared it to be “indisputably one of Beethoven’s most beautiful compositions.”

Beethoven lays out all of the thematic material in the longest orchestral statement that he ever wrote for a concerto. The main theme is typically Beethovenian in its pregnant simplicity, outlining a triad of C minor in the first measure, marching down the scale in the second, and closing off the first phrase with a rhythmic “knocking” motive that was surely invented with the timpani in mind (although Beethoven only reveals that fact later). The “knocking” motive gradually becomes more predominant until it appears in a strikingly poetic passage at the movement’s end.

The soloist enters with forthright scales that run directly into the principal theme, whereupon the real forward momentum begins. The piano restates the major ideas and extends the rhythm of the “knocking” motive, which completely dominates the development section, intertwined with other thematic ideas. In the recapitulation, Beethoven does not emphasize the knocking; he is preparing to spring one of his most wonderful ideas. As the cadenza ends, Beethoven has the piano to play through to the end of the movement, rather than simply stopping with the chord that marks the reentry of the orchestra, as happens in most classical concertos. But it is what the soloist plays that marks the great expressive advance in this score: wonderfully hushed arabesques against a pianissimo statement of the original knocking motive now at last in the timpani, the instrument for which it was surely designed from the very start.

The Largo comes from an entirely different expressive world, being in the bright key of E major; its simple song-form is lavish in ornamental detail.

Beethoven invents a clever way to explain the return from the distant E major to the home C minor by inventing a rondo theme that seems to grow right out of the closing chord of the slow movement. Nor does he forget that relationship once he is safely embarked on the rondo. And he has not yet run out of surprises; when we are ready for the coda to bring down the curtain, the pianist takes the lead in turning to the major for a brilliant ending with an unexpected 6/8 transformation of the material.

Antonín Dvorák: Symphony No. 6 in D major, Opus 60

Antonín Dvorák was born in Nelahozeves (Mühlhausen), Bohemia, near Prague, on September 8, 1841, and died in Prague on May 1, 1904. He composed the Sixth between August 27 and October 15, 1880, dedicating it to the conductor Hans Richter. The first performance took place in Prague on March 25, 1881, with Adolf Cech conducting. The score calls for two flutes (second doubling piccolo), pairs of oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, and strings.

Dvorák was a slow developer, though he eventually reached the heights of international fame. His beginnings could hardly have been more unpromising as the son of a village butcher and innkeeper in rural Bohemia. He heard music only from traveling musicians and village bands. He took lessons from the village schoolmaster and played violin locally. Further schooling in the neighboring town of Zlonic¹e brought him a teacher who taught him violin, viola, piano, organ, and practical keyboard harmony.

By this time his musicality was so evident that an uncle supported his education at the Prague Organ School, where he aimed to become a church musician. Dvorák became an ardent Wagnerian for a number of years, and his early music often shows the signs of this enthusiasm. From 1866, the conductor of the orchestra was the most important Czech nationalist composer Bed
Yich Smetana, who opened Dvorák’s ears and mind to the possibility of celebrating his own culture in music.

In July 1874 he submitted fifteen of his compositions to be considered for a governmental stipend offered to “young, poor and talented” artists in the Austrian half of the Hapsburg Empire. This brought Dvorák’s music to the attention of Brahms, who became a mentor and friend until the end of his days. Brahms urged his publisher Simrock to issue Dvorák ten Moravian Duets for two sopranos and piano. Simrock accepted the Moravian Duets and commissioned a set of Slavonic Dances. Both were published in 1878, and Dvorák’s merely local reputation suddenly became international. The duets and the dances were hugely successful, making a great deal of money for the publisher, who asked Dvorák for more and more works of the same kind.

But Dvorák wanted to return to the symphony (he had already composed five) and wanted to write a work for Vienna, where the great Hans Richter promised to perform it after the huge success of one of his Slavonic Rhapsodies there. He composed the Sixth between late August and mid-October 1880. When he played through it (at the piano) for Richter, the conductor was so excited that he kissed the composer after each movement. The performance was to take place in Vienna on December 26, 1880, but the members of the Vienna Philharmonic refused to play a piece by a little-known Czech composer two seasons in a row! So the honor of the premiere went to Adolf Cech, who led a performance in Prague on March 25, 1881.

Dvorák not only learned from his own previous experience in symphonic composition, he also clearly studied closely the music of his mentor Brahms, who had composed a D major symphony (the Second) in 1877. From Brahms, Dvorák learned how to connect his ideas, so that they seem to flow naturally, organically from one to the other. Yet at the same time, the work is without question that of Dvorák, who remains the unspoiled child of nature, always direct and unselfconscious in his directness.

As with the Brahms Second, Dvorák uses the sunny opening theme as a mine from which he extracts a large part of the material—often as little as a motive of two or three notes—from which he builds a sizeable and glorious movement. The richness of the exposition turns mysterious and tense during much of the development section, which carries us to a distant harmonic world, only to tumble headlong back home to the recapitulation.

The Adagio suggests in its opening gestures a reference to the slow movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Dvorák makes the entire movement a remarkable cogitation on a single theme, with interludes that are further considerations of the main material. It flows easily past the listener, but the more often we hear it the more subtle it becomes.
The third movement is formally a Scherzo, but Dvorák notes that his material is in the Czech dance form of the Furiant, in which the triple meter is filled with constant shifts, which are easy enough to imagine if you think a series of beats as follows (moving evenly and rapidly), in which every “1” is strongly accented:

1 - 2 - 1 - 2 - 1 - 2 | 1 - 2 - 3 - 1 -2 - 3

It is a rhythmic feature of much of Dvorák’s music, and it delivers a great rhythmic punch. The Trio is lighter, less rhythmically driven, and almost devoid of the furiant rhythm, which comes back full-force for the return of the opening material.

Possibly in another bow to Brahms, Dvorák begins his finale pianissimo, but it soon grows to a glorious symphonic movement replete with a dance-like character, yet with the thematic material fully developed along the way. The grandiose coda begins with the entire orchestra dropping out to leave the violins madly cascading to a new presentation of the main theme, now fragmented in a Presto tempo. Gradually the full sonority of the orchestra carries the work to its sonorous close.

© Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)