{ program notes
This morning , yes , this morning ,
I kneel down on the green grass — And I notice your presence . Flowers , that speak to me in silence . The message of love and understanding has indeed come .”
With mutes deadening the sound of their strings , the musicians open with a poignant four-note motive drooping downward . This expression of grief gradually becomes more elaborate and passionate as the instruments collide against each other . Ultimately , there is a crisis of pain , and the music is reduced to the unyielding drone of the double bass while above , the others offer only choked cries . Five minutes before the end , even this dissolves into silence . Then the music is miraculously reborn and becomes more consonant and melodic , reaching outward and upward .
Instrumentation : Six violins , three violas , three cellos , three basses .
Symphony No . 3 in E-flat Major , “ Rhenish ”
Robert Schumann
Born in Zwickau , Germany , June 8 , 1810 ; died in Endenich , near Bonn , Germany , July 29 , 1856
On September 2 , 1850 , Robert and Clara Schumann , full of optimism , arrived in the city of Düsseldorf on the Rhine River . Through the kindness of their friend Ferdinand Hiller , Robert had been appointed to succeed him as municipal music director of Düsseldorf , with responsibilities that included directing a 40-member orchestra and a 120-voice chorus .
The first months in the Rhineland were like a second honeymoon . Mental instability had plagued the composer throughout the 1840s , yet in 1850 and 1851 , he experienced a prolonged creative high . Works poured from his pen : in October 1850 , his Cello Concerto and between November and December , the “ Rhenish ” Symphony . ( Though numbered as his Third , this was actually Schumann ’ s last symphony to be completed .)
Meanwhile , his public duties faltered . Schumann was an artist who , while creating , completely withdrew from the world . Tongue-tied on the podium , he made his musicians rehearse passages over and over without ever giving them a clue about what he wanted . Not surprisingly , the city fathers soon lost patience with a leader who could not lead , and in October 1852 , they asked for his resignation . Schumann managed to hold on for another year , but he fell apart on the podium the next fall , and a complete mental breakdown soon followed . On February 20 , 1854 , he attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge into the icy waters of the Rhine . Rescued by fishermen , he died two and a half years later in an asylum near Bonn .
The waters of the Rhine sparkled when Schumann wrote his Third Symphony , full of the joy of living .
But the waters of the Rhine sparkled when the composer wrote his Third Symphony , full of the joy of living . The expansive first theme of the sonata-form first movement is like an open-armed embrace of the castle-studded Rhineland , home of Germany ’ s proudest legends and traditions . Schumann intensifies the theme ’ s grandeur by syncopating its beats across the opening measures so that what we first hear sounds as though the tempo — marked Lebhaft or “ Lively ”— is twice as slow as it actually is . A gentle second theme in the woodwinds flows like the river itself . In his lengthy development section , Schumann tantalizes us by withholding the return to the home key with numerous false starts of the principal theme that keep landing in the wrong key .
The middle two movements are light in tone . Movement two is marked as a scherzo , but has the character of a rather heavy-footed ländler folk dance , featuring the warm glow of the four horns .
The third movement is a moderatetempo intermezzo , a movement type that Schumann invented and Brahms later adopted . It has the loose , improvisatory feeling of Schumann ’ s piano music .
The slow fourth movement in E-flat minor is the work ’ s most remarkable . In 1850 , the Schumanns traveled to Cologne Cathedral to witness the installation of a new cardinal . Protestant himself , Schumann was overwhelmed by the grandeur of the cathedral and the ceremony , and this is his musical portrait of the occasion . For the first time in the work , the trombones , partnered by horns , enter with a stately rising theme . With this subject Schumann builds his own mighty cathedral in the contrapuntal manner of his idol Bach . Toward the end , two mighty brass fanfares are softly echoed by strings and winds — surely a memory of the echoing sounds in the cathedral ’ s vast spaces .
After all this splendor , the brief , lively finale seems a little anti-climatic . But Donald Francis Tovey has proposed an interesting solution : that the fourth and fifth movements are really a two-part finale , with this music “ as the natural … reaction from the awe inspired by the Cathedral .” Indeed , after a brass fanfare , Schumann briefly reprises his contrapuntal cathedral music , recalling a glorious memory .
Instrumentation : Two flutes , two oboes , two clarinets , two bassoons , four horns , two trumpets , three trombones , timpani , strings .
Piano Concerto No . 2 in B-flat Major
Johannes Brahms
Born in Hamburg , Germany , May 7 , 1833 ; died in Vienna , Austria , April 13 , 1897
In April 1878 , Johannes Brahms decided to treat himself to a vacation in Italy . He fell in love with this land of sunshine , good living and even greater art , and would return there eight more times . This rich multi-sensory stimulation inspired a new work , which would eventually become his Second Piano Concerto . In July 1881 , he announced the Concerto ’ s birth in a series of teasing letters to several friends . To his
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