{ Program Notes
to the public, his deafness was too far
advanced for him to risk playing the 1810
premiere in Leipzig.
The length and complexity of the
sonata-form first movement demonstrate
Beethoven’s new symphonic conception
of the concerto. The opening is boldly innovative. First we hear the pianist sweeping
over the keyboard in grand, toccata-like
arpeggios and scales, punctuated by loud
chords from the orchestra. Then the soloist
allows the orchestra to present its long
exposition of themes. The first theme, with
its distinctive turn ornament, is introduced
immediately. The second, a quirky little
march, appears first in halting minor-mode
form in the strings, then is immediately
smoothed out and shifted to the major by
the horns. Over the course of the movement, Beethoven will transform both
these themes in a wondrous range of keys,
moods, and figurations.
After its long absence, the piano begins
its version of the exposition with an ascending chromatic scale ending with a long,
high trill. Throughout, Beethoven uses
this scale as an elegant call-to-attention:
whenever we hear it, we are being given notice that a new section of the movement is
beginning. It will mark the opening of the
development section and later the closing
coda after the recapitulation.
Just before that coda comes the usual
moment for the soloist’s big cadenza. But
here Beethoven has quashed the soloist’s customary right to improvise his or
her own exhibition of virtuosity. Fearing
the jarring improvisations other soloists
might make, the composer wrote in Italian in the score: “Non si fa una Cadenza,
ma s’attaca subito il seguente” (“Don’t
play a cadenza, but attack the following
immediately”). He then carefully wrote
out a brief series of variants on both his
principal themes, the piano soon joined by
the horns to blend the cadenza smoothly
into the movement’s flow.
A complete contrast to the extroverted
first movement, movement two is a
sublime, very inward elegy in B major, a
remote key from the home tonality of Eflat. Two themes receive a quasi-variations
treatment. The first and most important is
the strings’ grave, almost religious theme
14 O v ertur e |
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At the close of the
movement, the pianist
experiments hesitantly with a
new melodic/rhythmic idea.
heard at the opening. The second theme is
the downward cascading music with which
the piano enters.
At the close of the movement, the
pianist experiments hesitantly with a new
melodic/rhythmic idea. Suddenly, the spark
is struck, and the theme explodes into the
exuberant rondo finale. Beethoven stresses
the weak beats of the dancing 6/8-meter,
giving his theme an eccentric, hobbling
gait. An important element is the crisp
dotted rhythm first heard in the horns;
this martial, drum-like motive returns us
to the wartime world of the Concerto’s
birth. Near the end, Beethoven gives this to
the timpani, in eerie duet with the soloist,
before the concerto’s triumphant finish.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes, two
clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and strings.
Symphony No. 12 in D minor,
“The Year 1917”
Dmitri Shostakovich
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia,
September 25, 1906; died in
Moscow, U.S.S. R., August 9, 1975
Last season, the BSO performed Dmitri
Shostakovich’s massive Eleventh Symphony, subtitled “The Year 1905” and inspired
by the massacre of peaceful Russian demonstrators outside St. Petersburg’s Winter
Palace that year, an event that was later
seen as a prelude to the Russian Revolution. This year, Marin Alsop will introduce
us to his Twelfth Symphony, “The Year
1917,” created as the Eleventh’s partner to
memorialize the year in which the Revolution took place and specifically the events
of October when Lenin and the Bolsheviks
came to power. Shostakovich dedicated
the Twelfth “to the memory of Vladimir
Ilyitch Lenin.”
We often think of this composer as a
refusenik who waged an artistic battle
against the worst excesses of Communist
society. But in fact, his relationship with
the regime fluctuated over the course of
his life, and the years 1959 to 1961 when
he composed the Twelfth were a period
when he became more publicly allied with
the Party line. In 1961, he even joined the
Communist Party, a move that mystified
and distressed many of his closest friends.
Nikolai Khrushchev had launched a campaign to bring more members of the Russian intelligentsia into Party membership,
and Shostakovich, as the U.S.S.R.’s