BEETHOVEN ’ S FIFTH SYMPHONY & AUGUSTIN HADELICH
lengthy violin cadenza . The texture again quickens , escalating with searing intensity that soon abates . Then , first from the violin then taken up by the orchestra , something wholly unexpected yet uncannily appropriate emerges : the chorale , Es ist genug (“ It is enough ), from J . S . Bach ’ s Cantata No . 60 . Though there is music still to come , it is the Cantata ’ s words ( written by Franz Joachim Burmeister ) that so perfectly capture the Violin Concerto ’ s final minutes : “ I travel to my heavenly home / I travel surely and in peace / My greatest distress remains below ./ It is enough ! It is enough !”
Instrumentation : two flutes ( both doubling piccolo ), two oboes ( one doubling English horn ), three clarinets ( third doubling alto saxophone ) and bass clarinet , two bassoons and contrabassoon , four horns , two trumpets , tenor and bass trombone , bass tuba , timpani , percussion , and strings in addition to the solo violin .
Bohuslav Martinů
Born December 8 , 1890 in Polička , Austria-Hungary Died August 28 , 1959 in Liestal , Switzerland
MEMORIAL TO LIDICE [ 1943 ]
The son of a shoemaker , Bohuslav Martinů was born in 1890 in the small Bohemian town of Polička , present-day Czech Republic . Shy and sickly as a child , he was often forced to piggy-back up the 193 steps leading to his family apartment in the tower of St . Jakub Church , where his father also served as sexton . Martinů composed his first string quartet at age ten and gave his first public performance at 15 , prompting the townsfolk to send him to the Prague Conservatory for further study . There , he shirked his duties as a student — preferring instead to read , attend concerts , or wander the streets — and was twice expelled in 1910 .
For a decade after , Martinů lived and worked in Polička , where he composed the celebrated Czech Rhapsody commemorating the 1919 founding of Czechoslovakia .
In 1920 , he returned again to Prague to play in the Czech Philharmonic , and in 1923 went on to Paris to study composition . An English broadcast of his 1939 Field Mass , which honored Czech volunteers fighting with the French against Nazi occupiers , was picked up by airwaves in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia , and he subsequently fled from France to America . Following World War II and the 1948 communist takeover of Czechoslovakia , Martinů considered returning home , but there his music was condemned by authorities who deemed it formalist , or contrary to the benefit of social order . In 1953 , he resettled in Nice , France . Only after his death in 1979 were his remains at last returned to the country to which he had devoted so much patriotic fervor — loyalty rewarded with decades of exile .
Memorial to Lidice mourns the 1942 annihilation of Lidice , a small village near Prague , by Nazi forces in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich , a high-ranking SS officer . Under direct orders from Adolph Hitler , all men over age 15 were shot ; women and children were sent to nearby concentration camps to be exterminated ( with the exception of only seven children deemed of sufficient racial purity to be rehoused with the families of SS officers ). The massacre claimed 340 lives .
Rather than depicting the horror of the event itself , Memorial instead seems to turn inward towards a place of mourning and profound , enduring love for the victims . Its opening chords recall the memory of horror , but despite this the subsequent music is mostly , albeit not entirely , absent of outward violence . Martinů channels immense emotion through startlingly rich sonorities that often reach incredible levels of saturation . A famous borrower of folk tunes from his homeland , he pointedly evokes a hymn to Bohemia ’ s martyred patron saint , Wenceslaus . As the work nears its apex , brass instruments sound the “ Fate ” motif from Beethoven ’ s Fifth , known also as the “ Victory Symphony ” for its association with
Allied resistance against the encroaching threat of fascism .
Instrumentation : Three flutes , two oboes , English horn , three clarinets , two bassoons , four horns , two trumpets , three trombones , tuba , timpani , percussion , harp , piano , and strings .
Ludwig van Beethoven
Baptized December 17 , 1770 in Bonn , Germany Died March 26 , 1827 in Vienna , Austria
SYMPHONY NO . 5 IN C MINOR , OP . 67 [ 1804 – 1808 ]
So forceful and urgent is Beethoven ’ s Fifth , so insistent its four-note “ motto ,” that , even more than the mighty Ninth or heroic Third , it has become almost synonymous with its composer , evoking for many images of a tortured , scowling hero through whose pen flows a sublime manifestation of passion and pain . The Fifth lays starkly bare , it might seem , something of Beethoven ’ s inner nature .
But Beethoven ’ s inner nature is perhaps not as unsmiling as this caricature would have us believe — nor , for that matter , is his Fifth . Unusually , the symphony begins and ends in different keys : C minor and C major . This is a schema Beethoven would not repeat until his Ninth ( D minor to D major ), but it is one that subsequent composers would later borrow for their own “ tragedy-totriumph ” symphonies , among them Brahms ’ First , Bruckner ’ s Eighth , Tchaikovsky ’ s Fourth , and Mahler ’ s Second . And though the Fifth ’ s opening bars are what most readily spring to mind when thinking of that monumental work , it is the final movements that transform raw tumult into transcendent victory .
Beethoven ’ s biographer , Anton Schindler , claimed ( somewhat dubiously ) that the composer intended the opening motif to represent “ fate knocking at the door .” True ? Probably not . Compelling ? Certainly . In the opening Allegro con brio , following that initial , infamous
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