Overture Magazine - 2018-19 Season FINAL_BSO_Overture_May_June | Page 14

TCHAIKOVSKY VIOLIN CONCERTO
for very large orchestra in the repertoire
is beyond dispute. (“Very large” is an
understatement here: with eight horns, five
trumpets, two harps, expanded percussion
and swollen sections of strings and
woodwinds; this is a huge orchestra
even by Strauss’ generous standards.)
Strauss himself was evasive on the
subject. At one point he did write to his
friend, the writer Romain Rolland: “I
do not see why I should not compose a
work about myself. I find myself quite as
interesting as Napoleon or Alexander.”
But he also told his father that he wanted
to express “a more general and free
ideal of great and manly heroism”—a
late-Romantic response to Beethoven’s
“Eroica” Symphony, with which this tone
poem shares the key of E-flat major. As
to its spectacular central battle scene, he
admitted, “I haven’t taken part in any
battles.” Nor did he strike his friends as a
heroic personality, no matter how bold and
extravagant his musical creations. Bland
and mild-tempered, Strauss was easily
manipulated by his strong-willed wife
Pauline throughout their 55-year marriage.
In fact, it is the capricious Pauline who is
faithfully portrayed in Ein Heldenleben in
the guise of a highly virtuosic solo violin.
“She is very complex, very feminine, a
little perverse, a little coquettish,… at
every minute different from how she was
before,” Strauss explained to Rolland. Frau
Strauss’ somewhat maddening—but to
her husband always alluring—personality
can be deduced from the instructions the
composer gives to the soloist: “angry,”
“loving,” “flippant,” “a little sentimental,”
“nagging,” “exuberantly playful.” However,
Ein Heldenleben is a more abstract drama
and less explicitly descriptive than several
of his earlier tone poems. “There is no need
for a program,” said Strauss to Rolland.
“It is enough to know that a hero is battling
his enemies.”
This tone poem is in six sections that
flow together continuously. The eight
horns—they are the hero’s signature
instruments—proclaim “The Hero’s”
principal theme: a great striding melody
surging upward through a three-octave
range. This theme paints an exuberant
picture of a young (Strauss himself was
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only 34), optimistic hero; companion
themes suggest his playful nature while a
pulsing ostinato rhythm demonstrates his
unstoppable resolve.
“The Hero’s Adversaries” respond in
the acid tones of woodwinds and the
fat, complacent drone of tuba. Strauss
didn’t deny that they represented the
carping music critics of the day, and he
doesn’t paint a pretty picture of them.
Strangely, as Strauss biographer Michael
Kennedy points out, Strauss didn’t
receive nearly as much negative press as
most of his contemporaries. But most
artists are thin-skinned, and the hero’s
theme grows dark and depressed, sliding
into the minor mode.
Now we meet “The Hero’s Companion,”
in an extended concerto-like violin solo.
In dark brass tones, we hear the hero’s
somewhat grudging response to her
blandishments, but this soon turns to
ardor in one of Strauss’ most sensuous and
lushly scored love scenes. A tender upward-
climbing melody in the violin expresses
the couple’s devotion.
“The Hero’s Deeds of War”: The
nattering critics and then a chorus of
offstage trumpets summon the hero from
his marital bed. With his signature rising
theme, supported by his wife’s downward-
sliding melody, he strides off to do battle
with his enemies. So violent are its sounds,
so tonally unhinged its harmonies that for
a time this was considered the most daring
passage of orchestral modernism. But
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring soon trumped
it. The adversaries vanquished, and
we hear a reprise of the hero’s opening
music, solidly back in E-flat, as he leaves
the field in triumph.
“The Hero’s Works of Peace”: At the
climax of this music, horns hurl out a
famous heroic theme from Strauss’ first
great success, Don Juan. “The only way I
could express works of peace was through
quoting works of my own,” Strauss wrote
years later. Here he contrapuntally weaves
together a series of themes from earlier
works: Zarathustra, Till Eulenspiegel, Don
Quixote, Death and Transfiguration and
even his first, failed opera, Guntram.
“The Hero’s Retirement”: In this sublime
closing coda, the hero roughly dismisses
his critics and withdraws to a peaceful,
pastoral retirement. The English horn,
yodeling a variant of his theme, prophecies
the rural retreat Strauss would build years
later at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the
Bavarian Alps. The music now enters a
state of serenity and tonal stability, led by
the hero’s solo horn and his companion’s
violin. The last measures, with the violin
rising to its highest E-flat while the horn
descends to a deeper one, is one of Strauss’
most beautiful conclusions.
Instrumentation: Three flutes, piccolo,
four oboes including English horn, two clarinets,
bass clarinet, E-flat clarinet, three bassoons,
contrabassoon, eight horns, five trumpets,
three trombones, two tubas, timpani,
percussion, two harps and strings.
VIOLIN CONCERTO IN D MAJOR
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Born in Votkinsk, Russia, May 7, 1840; died in
St. Petersburg, Russia, November 6, 1893
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto belongs to
that illustrious group of masterpieces that
were savaged by uncomprehending critics
at their premieres. Nearly all the critics
at its first performance —in Vienna on
December 4, 1881 with Russian violinist
Adolf Brodsky as soloist backed by the
Vienna Philharmonic— gave the work
negative reviews, but the one penned by the
notoriously conservative Eduard Hanslick
was so vicious it stung Tchaikovsky for
years after. “Tchaikovsky is surely no
ordinary talent, but rather, an inflated
one…lacking discrimination and taste.…
The same can be said for his new, long and
ambitious Violin Concerto.…The violin is
no longer played; it is tugged about, torn,
beaten black and blue.”
Because of its flamboyant language and
mind-boggling wrong-headedness, this is
the review that has come down to us from
a city that was generally unsympathetic to
Tchaikovsky’s Russian intensity. A much
fairer judgment came from the Wiener
Abendpost: “The first movement with its
splendid, healthy themes, the mysterious,
quiet middle movement…and the wild
peasant dance make up a whole for which