Program Notes: Concert  #5, March 13, 2004    Overdue - "Great Classics"

By Composer In Residence Bruce Brown

Musical Romanticism was at its height when the last quarter of the nineteenth century began.  America was struggling to recover from its devastating civil war, Wagner had just finished his epic Ring Cycle, and Verdi’s new opera Aïda was becoming a fixture as he was writing his dramatic Requiem. 

The April 24th concert by the JSO takes us to the years 1877 and 1878 when Johannes Brahms, the man often considered Wagner’s antithesis, helped bring his young Czech colleague Antonín Dvorák to the world’s attention, and the high-strung but talented Russian Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote a passionate violin concerto.

Slavonic Dance in C Major, Op. 46, No. 1        

In 1877 the little-known Antonín Dvorák (1841-1904) was working as a violist in the provincial theater in Prague.   Fortunately, his compositions had made a deep impression on Brahms, who was one of the most important musicians of his day, On December 12 of 1877 Brahms wrote a fateful letter to his publisher, Fritz Simrock of Berlin, telling him that he had “been receiving a lot of pleasure for several years past from the work of Anton Dvorák of Prague.”

Simrock was intrigued and asked Dvorák to write some dances for piano four-hands, hoping they would be as popular as the Hungarian Dances by Brahms that he had published in 1860.  Dvorák started working on a series of eight Slavonic Dances in March of 1878.  They proved enormously popular and made Dvorák famous almost overnight, prompting him to quickly score them for orchestra and to write a second series eight years later. 

            Dvorák’s melodies for the Slavonic Dances are all original, but they celebrate the traditions of his native Bohemia, Slovakia, Moravia, Silesia, Serbia, Poland, and Ukraine. Dvorák always felt that his work should have its roots in folk music, and this was a political statement as well as an artistic one, since the region was controlled by the powerful Austrian Empire.

The popular first dance is a fast, bustling furiant, which in Czech tradition is a parody of “a proud, swaggering, conceited man.” 

 Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35

On July 18^th of 1877 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) married Antonini Ivanova Milioukov.  This seemingly happy event proved to be a disaster, and within days Tchaikovsky was desperate to escape.  After a feeble suicide attempt he realized he had to divorce her, and he and his brother Anatoly embarked on a series of travels.  In March of 1878 they settled in Clarens on Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

            As he often did, Tchiakovsky sought solace in his work.  He started work a new violin concerto on March 17^th and worked at a feverish pace, finishing a full sketch of the piece in only eleven days.  The slow movement was written in a single day after he decided to abandon an earlier draft, and the concerto was finished by the end of April.

Tchaikovsky excitedly sent the music to his friend Leopold Auer of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and he was shocked when Auer returned the score saying that it was unplayable.  After three frustrating years Adolf Brodsky, a former colleague from the Moscow Conservatory, agreed to play the concerto and convinced Hans Richter to perform it with the Vienna Philharmonic on December 4^th of 1881.

The performance was an ill-prepared disaster, prompting the critic Eduard Hanslick to describe the music as a “stink to the ears.”  Even Brodsky complained that the composer had “crammed too many ideas into it,” but he doggedly championed the piece and performed it throughout Europe.  The concerto steadily gained in popularity and it soon came to be regarded as one of the most glorious in the repertoire. 

As Abraham Veinus later wrote: “It makes its appeal not only on the basis of its ingratiating melodies, but quite frankly on the enjoyment of watching a superlative violinist at work.”

Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Opus 73

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) wrote his second symphony in the summer of 1877, just a few months before writing his letter recommending Dvorák.  He had toiled for two decades before releasing his first symphony in 1876, but the second emerged quickly on a summer holiday in his favorite lakeside resort, Pörtschach, in southern Austria.  The first performance was given by the Vienna Philharmonic on December 30^th  under the baton of Hans Richter.

The two symphonies contrast dramatically in style and tone.  While the first is driven and tense, the second evokes the sounds of nature and has often been dubbed “Brahms’ Pastorale.”  The setting isn’t completely serene, though, and in a letter Brahms spoke of melancholy as the symphony’s signature element.  This quality emerges mostly in the first two movements, which are longer and weightier, while the final two are shorter and more unreservedly joyful.

The second movement is especially striking.  The cello section comes to the fore in an expansive adagio that seems calm on the surface, but in fact is one of Brahms most original and complicated creations.  There are four distinct groups of melodic themes and the overall harmonic plan is very complex.

The light, graceful third movement is the one most loved by the general public. 

When the audience heard it at the premiere they immediately demanded to hear it again.

            The last movement is more of a Haydnesque dance than a dramatic finale. 

This symphony clearly reveals Brahms deep affinity for the musical ideals of classical composers like Mozart and Haydn in contrast to the bold innovations of more daring Romantics like Wagner and Liszt.  Brahms music certainly reflects the innovative spirit of a true creative genius, but it always pays tribute to his musical ancestors.