BRAHMS & HAYDN WITH HEYWARD
finale( Allegro spiritoso) brings the proceedings to a buoyant conclusion.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, harpsichord, and strings.
Franz Joseph Haydn
Born March 31, 1732, in Rohrau, Austria Died May 31, 1809, in Vienna, Austria
SYMPHONY NO. 100 IN G MAJOR,“ MILITARY” [ 1794 ]
After almost three decades in the employ of the Esterházy Princes, Franz Joseph Haydn was forced into retirement in 1790 and became free to pursue other professional possibilities. The impresario Johann Peter Salomon, a German expatriate in England, prevailed to secure a Haydn tour in 1791 – 92 and another in 1794 – 95. For these two residencies, he wrote a group of 12 symphonies, his Nos. 93 through 104. Among the initial concerts of the second residency was the one on March 31, 1794( Haydn’ s 62 nd birthday), at the King’ s Theatre in London, where audiences cheered the premiere of his Symphony No. 100.
The subtitle Military was not devised by Haydn, but it became attached practically on the heels of the premiere. During the 1790s, the Reign of Terror in France moved English Royalists to form an anti- French alliance with Austria, Holland, and Spain— this when the business with the former colonies in America was still a fresh wound. Napoleon was on the rise, and Haydn’ s Austria got swept up in the web of warfare through its alliances. Composers adopted a specific sound to signify the military: the music of the Turkish Janissary bands that were attached to political processions of Ottoman officials. Instruments associated with the“ Janissary sound”— triangle, cymbals, bass drum— figure prominently in the second and fourth movements of Haydn’ s Symphony No. 100. Trumpets can also have a military connotation, and Haydn does not fail to insert an authentic trumpet fanfare in the second movement of his symphony.
Reviewing not the premiere but rather the second performance of the symphony, which followed a week later, the Morning Chronicle of April 9 reported:“ The middle movement [ sic; clearly, the second ] was again received with absolute shouts of applause. Encore! Encore! Encore! resounded from every seat: the Ladies themselves could not forbear. It is the advancing to battle; and the march of men, the sounding of the charge, the thundering of the onset, the clash of arms, the groans of the wounded, and what may well be called the hellish roar of war increase to a climax of horrid sublimity! which, if others can conceive, he alone can execute; at least he alone hitherto has effected these wonders.”
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, bass drum, cymbals( pair), triangle, and strings.
Johannes Brahms
Born May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany Died April 3, 1897, in Vienna, Austria
VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR, OP. 77 [ 1878 – 1879 ]
Johannes Brahms was not a violinist himself, but he had worked as piano accompanist to violinists since the earliest years of his career, and among his closest friends( usually) was Joseph Joachim, one of the most eminent violinists of his time. Joachim had championed Beethoven’ s Violin Concerto to a degree that lifted it to the status of repertoire masterwork, and he was the dedicatee of compositions by dozens of composers, including both Robert and Clara Schumann, Franz Liszt, and Antonín Dvořák, in addition to Brahms’ s Violin Concerto and Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. Brahms consulted with him closely while writing the Violin Concerto and there is no question that Joachim’ s influence on the final state of the violin part, and on the work’ s orchestration overall, was substantial. His influence also extended to introducing Brahms to Max Bruch’ s celebrated First Violin Concerto, which so strikingly prefigures passages in Brahms’ concerto that many music-lovers assume that Bruch was copying Brahms. In fact, the influence flowed in the other direction.
Brahms did some of his best work during his summer vacations, which he usually spent at some bucolic getaway in the Austrian countryside. The summer of 1878, during which he wrote most of his Violin Concerto— found him in Pörtschach, on the north shore of the Wörthersee in the southern Austrian province of Carinthia. When he wrote his Second Symphony there the summer before, he had remarked that beautiful melodies so littered the landscape that one merely had to scoop them up. Listeners today agree that he scooped up quite a few for his Violin Concerto, too, but early listeners weren’ t so sure. Critics were at best cool and at worst savage. When it was presented by the Berlin Conservatory Orchestra, one newspaper complained that students should not be subjected to such“ trash,” and Joseph Hellmesberger, Sr., who as one of Vienna’ s leading violinists had much Brahmsian experience, dismissed it as“ a concerto not for, but against the violin.” Brahms was discouraged by the response and, to the regret of posterity, fed to the flames the draft he had already completed for his Violin Concerto No. 2. We can only mourn what must have been lost.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, timpani, and strings, in addition to solo violin.
JAMES M. KELLER has served as the longtime program annotator of the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony, where he recently completed his 25th season. He is the author of Chamber Music: A Listener’ s Guide( Oxford University Press).
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