Wicked Winds
November 25, 2007 — 3 pm, Sanders Theatre
Markand Thakar, Guest Conductor
Richard Strauss,
Suite in B-flat Major, Opus 4
1. Praeludium: Allegretto
2. Romanze: Andante
3. Gavotte: Allegro
4. Introduction and Fugue: Andante cantabile — Allegro con brio
Igor Stravinsky,
Octet
1. Sinfonia: Lento — Allegro moderato
2. Tema: (Andantino) con variazioni
3. Finale: Tempo guisto
Intermission
Johannes Brahms,
Serenade No. 2 in A Major, Opus 16
1. Allegro moderato
2. Scherzo: Vivace
3. Adagio non troppo
4. Quasi menuetto
5. Rondo: allegro
Richard Strauss
Suite in B-flat Major for 13 Wind Instruments, Opus 4
Richard Georg Strauss was born in Munich, Bavaria, on June 11, 1864 and died in Garmisch, Bavaria, on September 8, 1949. Strauss composed the Suite in B-flat at the suggestion of Hans von Bülow during the winter of 1883. The first performance was of the second movement only, which Strauss conducted in a private concert in the winter of 1884. The score calls for pairs of flutes, oboes, clarinets, and bassoons, four horns, and doublebass.
Richard Strauss's maturity is always pegged to his discovery of Wagner and Liszt, which preceded (by only a short time) the composition of Don Juan in 1887-88. Before that time, his father — a brilliant horn player, but musically conservative — made sure that his education followed the strictest classical guidelines, particularly emphasizing Mozart (a lifelong passion of the composer's). By about 1883, Strauss had made the acquaintance of the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow, who had left his Wagnerian views behind him (after Wagner stole his wife Cosima) and turned fully to the Brahms camp. Bülow had been impressed by the boy's evident talent as revealed in his E-flat wind serenade, Opus 7, and he invited him to write another, larger, piece for the same wind ensemble.
This turned out to be his Suite in B-flat, confusingly numbered Opus 4 when it belatedly appeared in print nearly thirty years after it was composed. Bülow had particular ideas of how he wanted Strauss to cast the piece, but the young man was so eager that he had already finished the first two movements before Bülow could explain his ideas. But the Gavotte and the Fugue that ends the work were his ideas, and Strauss graciously tried hard to suit the views of the important contact while completing the work.
The Praeludium begins with a cheerful growling in the bass, answered by a more lyrical response above. The shapes of the thematic ideas in the Romanze show the melodic language of the mature Strauss developing quickly. Both movements are cast in an abbreviated sonata form. The Gavotte never quite catches the mood and rhythm of the 18th-century dance step, but it is a lively and witty movement. From the introduction to the finale, Strauss reworks some material from the Romanze, then takes off with a strong fugue subject, though Strauss's counterpoint is still more academic than brilliantly imaginative.
Still, the rarely-heard Suite provides a very attractive glimpse into the workshop of the rapidly developing composer, who would go on to set the world on its ear in just a few more years.
Igor Stravinsky
Octet for wind instruments
Igor Stravinsky was born at Oranienbaum, Russia, on June 17, 1882, and died in New York on April 6, 1971. He began his Octet in Biarritz late in 1922, completing it in Paris on May 20 of the following year. The first performance took place at the Koussevitzky Concerts in the Paris Opéra on October 18, 1923, Stravinsky conducting. The score calls for flute, clarinet, two bassoons, two trumpets, and two trombones.
Stravinsky related once that the Octet was inspired by a dream he had of a group of instruments playing "some attractive music" which he was unable to recognize or remember the next day. He did, however, note how many instruments were playing and what they were.
"I awoke from this little concert in a state of great delight and anticipation and the next morning I began to compose the Octuor, which I had had no thought of the day before, though for some time I had wanted to write an ensemble piece not incidental music like the Histoire du Soldat, but an instrumental sonata."
In fact, the Octet marks Stravinsky's return to sonata form for the first time since his maturity as a composer; it is thus seen as one of the landmarks of his neo-Classical style. But of course, he does not simply imitate eighteenth century practice. His music had always involved such elements of sonata practice as repetition and contrast of passages for symmetry and balance, but they had not before made extensive use of modulation and key changes to signal the form, nor was he particularly interested in a dialectic of conversation between "first themes" and "second themes" that might (as in the standard view of sonata form) generate a climactic synthesis. In short, the sonata that he wrote, however much it might have hinted at older music, remains pure Stravinsky.
The composer was apparently nervous about the reception of the piece, especially after the debacle of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, which Koussevitzky had conducted at the end of a romantic program for full orchestra, thereby intensifying the work's austerity and making it seem ludicrous (or at least incomprehensible) by comparison. Stravinsky chose to conduct the premiere of the Octet himself, though again the sight of eight instrumentalists against the huge auditorium of the Paris Opéra must have been a strange one to an audience hearing the new piece for the first time. It was also one of the first times that Stravinsky had conducted in public. To the sympathetic Jean Cocteau, the composer's gesticulations, which were a far cry from the silken gestures of an experienced conductor, suggested "an astronomer engaged in working out a magnificent instrumental calculation in figures of silver."
For Stravinsky, the choice of wind instruments perfectly captured his vision of a music that would be crisp, dry, of crystal clarity, avoiding all sentimental or "expressive" excess, such as he feared the stringed instruments might be prone to. The first movement suggests the traditional pattern of sonata form, but without the dramatization of the harmony that occurs in, say, Beethoven. Stravinsky's interest is almost always in the interplay of melodies and rhythms in a contrapuntal texture.
The second movement is a set of variations on a theme stated at first in the flute and clarinet against offbeat punctuations in the other instruments. Melody is the nearly constant element of the variations, with the theme appearing in recognizable guise (though transposed or slightly decorated throughout), while the accompaniment changes character from one variation to the next. The first variation, featuring running scale passages in the upper parts over the theme melody in the trombones, recurs twice, making a little rondo of the movement. The variations lead straight on into the finale, which begins with a leaping theme in the first bassoon against eighth note scales in the second. The overall contrapuntal character is maintained almost to the end, when the instruments begin a breathless chordal passage that divides the eighth notes of two 2/4 measures into a pattern of 3+3+2, bringing the work to a close on one last sharp, dry chord.
One of the very first pieces of prose that Stravinsky ever wrote about his music was an article for The Arts in January 1924 dealing specifically with the Octet. There he maintained:
"This sort of music has no other aim than to be sufficient in itself. In general I consider that music is only able to solve musical problems; and nothing else, neither the literary nor the picturesque, can be in music of any real interest. The play of the musical elements is the thing."
Johannes Brahms
Serenade No. 2 in A, Opus 16
Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany, on May 7, 1833, and died in Vienna on April 3, 1897. He composed the Opus 16 serenade in Detmold in 1858-9. The score calls for two flutes and piccolo (the latter in the fifth movement only), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, and strings without violins. Duration is about 29 minutes.
It is well known that Brahms delayed bringing out a symphony until he was in his forties. But he was by no means unpracticed in orchestral writing before that time. His earliest orchestral works were the two serenades, Opera 11 and 16. He composed the latter in Detmold in 1858-59, revising it slightly in 1875. When played by the New York Philharmonic Society in February 1862, it became the first orchestral work of Brahms to be heard outside his own personal circle of acquaintance.
In contrast to the sunny D-major Serenade, Brahms chose to give this work a darker color by omitting the violins entirely. He sent the first movement for criticism to Clara Schumann just before Christmas 1858. She was encouraging, and he worked on the remainder of the piece in the new year, finishing it just before Clara's birthday in September.
Brahms took pains in this piece to avoid any intimation that he was composing a symphony under another name. Though the term "serenade" suggests a lighter sort of work, Brahms's constructive powers are very much present, and he leads the first movement's development to distant harmonic realms. But he purposely undercut the force of the recapitulation by landing on a tonic pedal-point some twenty-six measures earlier, to create the gentlest of returns, not some heaven-shattering (i.e., Beethovenian) imitation.
The Scherzo plays on typically Brahmsian cross-rhythms throughout, and the great Adagio is an expressive high point, built with masterful contrapuntal skill over a modulating ostinato bass pattern. A quasi-minuet in D already evokes the lyricism of the Second Symphony and the Violin Concerto — future works in the same key. The finale is a delightful and high-spirited rondo, which may have seemed difficult and odd to early listeners; today it provides unalloyed delight.
© Copyright 2007. Steven Ledbetter (www.stevenledbetter.com)