Overture Magazine 2019-20 BSO_Overture_Jan Feb | Page 25

SAINT-SAËNS CELLO CONCERTO
This theme dominates the opening
section, which is like an open-ended
sonata form. Eventually, the cello relaxes
briefly into a lovely stepwise melody,
demonstrating its ability to sing. These
two themes are developed extensively
before Saint-Saëns breaks off into
something very different.
The Allegretto con moto is an exquisite
interlude: a “slow movement” in the style
of a very French minuet. Muted strings
announce its dainty, lightly staccato theme.
Instead of taking up this theme, the cello
offers its own countermelody: a languid,
flowing waltz.
Whirling oboes bring back hints of the
turbulent theme, and soon we are back in
the midst of a delayed “recapitulation” of
the opening section. There are new themes
too: a syncopated, nostalgic melody for
the cello and later a brooding, romantic
excursion that opens at the bottom of the
cello’s range and eventually reaches its high-
soprano top. Interspersed are a host
of brilliant feats displaying all aspects of
the cellist’s technique. An acceleration and
a switch from A minor to brighter A major
bring the Concerto to a fiery conclusion.
Instrumentation: Two flutes, two oboes,
two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns,
two trumpets, timpani and strings.
SYMPHONY NO. 7 IN D MINOR
Antonín Dvořák
Born in Nelahozeves, Czech Republic
September 8, 1841; died in Prague,
Czech Republic, May 1, 1904
The Seventh Symphony was Dvořák’s
bid to make a big noise in the world.
As a young composer, he had been
hampered by living in Bohemia, then a
rural backwater of the mighty Austrian
empire, and for many years his fame
was strictly local. In the mid 1870s,
Brahms discovered him and generously
used his power in the Viennese musical
establishment to promote Dvořák’s career.
By 1883, the Czech composer was finally
poised for international acclaim when his
choral-orchestral Stabat Mater scored a
major success in London.
The next year, Dvořák traveled there
himself to conduct his music, and the
adulation reached fever pitch. The
composer remembered his reception at
one of the British choral festivals: “As soon
as I appeared, I received a tempestuous
welcome from the audience of 12,000.…
I had to bow my thanks again and again,
the orchestra and choir applauding me
with no less fervor.…I am convinced that
England offers me a new and certainly
happier future, and one which I hope may
benefit our entire Czech art.” London’s
Royal Philharmonic Society promptly
requested a new symphony for their
1885 concerts. Thus, his Symphony in
D Minor was born and premiered by the
Royal Philharmonic under the composer’s
baton on April 22, 1885.
Today most commentators rank the
Seventh as Dvořák’s greatest symphony,
if not the greatest piece he ever wrote.
The British musicologist Donald
Francis Tovey linked it with Schubert’s
“Great C Major” Symphony and
Brahms’ four symphonies “as among
the greatest and purest examples of this
art-form since Beethoven.”
Dvořák would have been delighted
to have this work mentioned alongside
Brahms’ symphonies, for Brahms was
his model and mentor. Early in 1884,
he had heard the German’s recently
completed Third Symphony and was
bowled over. But though the Seventh was
inspired by Brahms’ Third, it is no copy.
A more tragic work, it displays the dark
defiance of the Czech underdog. Dvořák
was intensely proud of his nationality
and determined that his music would
stand apart from the dominant Austro-
German school. While striving for a
more universal tone, his Seventh still
proudly flaunts its Czech origins,
especially in its third movement.
The first movement opens with a
darkly murmuring theme in the low
strings, with ominous diminished-
seventh harmonies contributed twice
by woodwinds. Dvořák said this theme
came to him while watching hundreds
of Hungarian patriots demonstrating
against the Austrian imperial regime
disembark at the Prague railroad station;

like the Czechs, the Hungarians suffered
under Austrian domination. Soon the full
orchestra attacks this theme with defiant
force. But flutes and clarinets followed
by violins soon sing a marvelous flowing
melody, temporarily easing the tension.
In a short but powerful development
section, Dvořák probes the mysteries of
his opening conspiratorial theme.
Many have called the second
movement the finest the composer ever
wrote. Its great beauty mingles sorrow
with protest. Dvořák had recently lost his
mother, to whom he was very close, and
the steady slide into insanity of his Czech
colleague Bedrich Smetana also grieved
him. This movement is full of poignant
melodies clothed in gorgeous orchestral
hues. Notable among them are the
opening theme for clarinet and bassoon,
a soft rising-and-falling melody for the
violins and the haunting music for horns
immediately following.
Dvořák scholar Otakar Sourek
describes the third movement as “a wild,
unhappy dance in hard, syncopated…
rhythms and dark orchestral coloring,
in which the expression of wrathful
defiance flares up with no less fury
than in the opening movement.” The
inspiration is the traditional Czech
furiant dance with its provocative cross-
rhythms. Despite its lovely surface,
the woodwind-dominated trio section
also shares in the agitation, its serenity
troubled by “the incessant rumbling of
the basses” (Tovey).
Defiance also drives the finale, with
its baleful opening theme jumping
an octave, then collapsing back by a
dissonant half step. The cellos soon
offer a soaring melody, but it is the
baleful theme that dominates the action.
Miraculously, in the symphony’s final
moments Dvořák transforms it from
dark opposition to the voice of triumph
in his blazing D-major conclusion.

Instrumentation: Two flutes including piccolo,
two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four
horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani
and strings.
Notes by Janet E. Bedell, © 2020

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