Program Notes: March 9, 2008
In his first three symphonies, Johannes Brahms built directly on Beethoven's Nine, while complaining bitterly of the "Giant" who trod behind him. With his Fourth Symphony in E Minor (1885), however, Brahms appears--at first--to have shaken the Beethoven habit: whereas his formidable predecessor's heroic paradigm traced a path "from darkness into light," especially in his Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, Brahms's Fourth is resolutely a tragedy. But even in creating something of an antithesis to Beethoven's heroic trajectory, Brahms depends on Beethoven for his models, and just as pointedly as in his first three symphonies, if less obviously. His principal model in this case is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Brahms derived his lyrical opening directly from Beethoven's famous opening--its seeming opposite in affect--thus subtly preparing the movement's tug of war between graceful pathos and heroic struggle. A poignant echo of the early clarinet theme from Beethoven's second movement emerges late in Brahms's second movement, where it, again, carries the opposite message, foretelling defeat rather than victory. And Brahms's raucous third movement seems at times to parody the jubilation of Beethoven's finale. Brahms's own finale, while borrowing from Beethoven both thematically and structurally, also reaches back to Bach and even Buxtehude, from whom he borrows the rising ostinato bass that repeats relentlessly throughout the movement to produce its tragic, fate-driven tone. As is often the case, overall tragedy occasions overwhelming beauty along the way, from the rich variation-based textures of the first movement, to the mix of archaic and modern harmonic practices that informs Brahms's second movement--arguably the most gorgeous thing he ever wrote--to the solemn trombone chorale midway through the finale, which offers one last, prayerful moment before the final tragic onslaught.
While it has seemed inexplicable to generations of music history students, Carl Maria von Weber's 1821 opera Der Freischütz was a cornerstone of German life across the nineteenth century and beyond, performed religiously (in both senses of the word) during Advent. The problem for music history students is the connection their textbooks and professors have insisted upon between Weber's famous "Wolf Glen" scene, with its spectral phantasmagoria and stage effects, and the "endless melody" of Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerken--a connection that seems improbable at best. The real explanation for the opera's popularity resides not in its supposed connection to Wagner, but in its sheer entertainment value (operetta and the American musical were after all among its direct descendents); this is based securely in its delivery of both drama and beauty within an atmosphere of moral uplift. And both beauty and drama, if not moral uplift, are indeed amply represented in the Overture, which early on evokes the mystic wonder of the German forest through antiphonal horn choirs (and yes, you can hear the Wolf Glen's diabolical Samiel lurking there, as well), before yielding to a dramatic Allegro.
Antonín Dvořák's Czech Suite (1879, premiered 1881) is a cornucopia of folk idioms and types, including bagpipe melodies in the opening movement's pastorale, a yearning raised fourth degree in the Romance, and a trio of folk dances: the second movement's polka, the third movement's sousedská (related to the Austrian ländler), and the finale's furiant. The piece was part of an early avalanche of Czech works that Dvořák wrote for international consumption as a direct result of Brahms's ardent advocacy, and followed fairly directly on the heels of his immensely popular first set of Slavonic Dances.
-- Raymond Knapp
Allen Gross, conductor
Music Director/Conductor of the Santa Monica Symphony since 1991, Allen Gross continues to delight the public with enthusiastic and well-prepared performances of a challenging and diverse repertory that embraces the new and the old, the familiar and the unfamiliar. A native New Yorker, he studied with Pierre Monteux, Walter Susskind, Sandor Salgo and Hans Swarowsky, beginning at Queens College and UC/Berkeley before earning his doctorate at Stanford and continuing at the Vienna Music Academy and the American Institute of Orchestra Conducting. From 1972-1978, he directed the Heidelberg Castle Festival, also serving as conductor of the Junges Kammerorchester Heidelberg and in the opera houses of Freiburg and Aachen. Back in the United States, Gross directed the orchestra and opera programs at the University of Louisville before joining the music faculty at Occidental College in 1983 to serve as Director of the Occidental-Caltech Symphony Orchestra. He has since served as Music Director/Conductor of the Pasadena Young Musicians Orchestra and the Pasadena Summer Youth Chamber Orchestra and has appeared with the Los Angeles Monday Evening Concerts, the Minnesota Composers Forum, broadcast concerts from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and honors orchestras in California and Nevada. Last Season, Mr. Gross returned from China, where he conducted a concert with the orchestra of the Shenwang Conservatory of Music. The past two summers, he has traveled and concertized in Italy, the Czech Republic and other Eastern European countries with members of the Santa Monica Symphony.
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