Overture Magazine: 2017-2018 Season March - April 2018 | Page 20

SCHUBERT THE GREAT
breather as he executes relentless sixteenth-
note figurations at an extremely fast
Vivace tempo. Movement three is titled
“Intermezzo,” a term that usually means
a gentle interlude, but not here. The
orchestra establishes a brutal march
beat, with heavy thumps of the bass
drum, harsh blasts from trombones and
trumpets and macabre descending scales
in the clarinets. This is music that is
both menacing and mischievous. Until
this moment, the pianist has always
been the dominant figure, but now the
orchestra seems to be driving him along
on its destructive course.
Marked “Allegro tempestoso,” the finale
opens in a whirlwind of sound with the
soloist introducing a choppy, wide-ranging
theme. Eventually, the tempo eases, and
the mood is transformed as the pianist
presents a strongly contrasting melody,
calm and repetitious in Russian folksong
style. This theme gets an extensive
working out, incorporating yet another
lengthy solo cadenza. But ultimately, the
tempestoso mood engulfs the music again
and carries soloist and orchestra to a
slam-bang finish, capped by the “merciless
dissonances” in the brass that so shocked
its first listeners.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes,
two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two
trumpets, three trombones, tuba, percussion
and strings.
SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN C MAJOR
Franz Schubert
Born in Vienna, Austria, January 31, 1794;
died in Vienna, Austria, November 19, 1828
We tend to think of Schubert as a
Romantic composer of the generation
after Beethoven, but in fact he lived
his entire life in the master’s shadow,
dying just a year and a half after him.
Too shy to attempt to win Beethoven’s
friendship, Schubert worshipped him
from afar, faithfully attending concerts
of his music. He was in the audience
at the first performance of the Ninth
Symphony on May 7, 1824, and it is very
likely that experience strengthened his
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determination to write what he called
“a grand symphony,” worthy of Beethoven’s
achievements in the field. The result was
dubbed the “Great C Major” to distinguish
it from his more modest Sixth Symphony,
the “Little C Major.”
Because the symphony’s manuscript
bears the date March 1828, musicologists
for many years believed it was composed
in that last year of the composer’s life.
But recent evidence suggests it was
drafted in the summer of 1825. Most
likely, Schubert returned to the work
in 1828 to make final changes; the
manuscript shows many scratched-out
and rewritten passages. Sadly, he never
heard a performance of the work now
acknowledged by many as his greatest.
The symphony languished
unperformed until 1839 when Robert
Schumann visited Schubert’s brother
Ferdinand in Vienna and discovered there
a treasure trove of the composer’s works.
Looking through this score, he recognized
an “entirely new world that opens
before us.” Schumann quickly sent it to
Mendelssohn at the Leipzig Gewandhaus
Orchestra, and there on March 21, 1839,
it finally had its first performance.
The “Great C Major” is like no other
symphony before or since in its orchestral
sound, its uniquely Schubertian
combination of dramatic energy with
wistful lyricism and its uncanny ability
to inspire in the listener both awe and
love. The first movement begins with
a lengthy introduction that is a crucial
element of the work, establishing its
mood, color and thematic substance.
Two horns sing a simple but majestic
melody whose first-measure “do-re-mi”
pattern and second-measure dotted
rhythm will be repeated in themes
throughout the work. Variations on
this tune build excitingly to the main
Allegro section. Full of chugging energy,
its first group of themes is propelled by
those dotted rhythms and dominated
by the strings. By contrast, the folk-
like second theme uses smooth, gently
accented rhythms and features oboes
and bassoons. The tug-of-war between
this woodwind poignancy and the
fierce energy of the strings generates
the movement’s complex drama.
Throughout, quiet but insistent horn
and trombone calls remind us of the
majestic opening theme. In an expansive
coda, the whole orchestra blazes forth
that theme.
The tone of mingled pathos and passion
intensifies in the second movement
in A minor. “I feel myself the most
unfortunate, the most miserable being
in the world,” Schubert wrote a friend
in 1824. “Think of a man whose health
will never be right again, and who from
despair over the fact makes it worse
instead of better, think of a man…whose
splendid hopes have come to naught.”