Robert Schumann: Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120
Schumann's Fourth Symphony was completed in 1841 soon after his First Symphony, but his 1851 revision of the work resulted in its being placed last, after the other three. Nevertheless, the revision became the official version only many years later, after Clara (Schumann's widow) overcame the strong objections of their mutual friend Brahms, who had argued that Schumann's changes were prompted by the inadequacies of Schumann's orchestra in Duesseldorf. However astute Brahms's observations might have been, Clara occupied the high ground in the dispute: not only did her musical credentials rival those of Brahms, but she also had the advantage of a double claim of proprietorship, as the custodian of her husband's legacy and, according to many, as the person for whom the D-Minor Symphony had originally been written (indeed, some have gone so far as to claim that its principal thematic ideas, which reappear throughout the symphony, were derived from a musical spelling of her name!). Although the symphony is dominated by the minor mode, apart from lyrical episodes in the middle movements, Schumann concludes, a la Beethoven, with a major-mode finale, where he triumphantly revisits themes introduced in the first movement.
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827): Piano Concerto No. 3
For Beethoven, the key of C minor was both tragic and intensely personal, and both descriptions apply to his Third Piano Concerto in C Minor (1800-03), his only minor-mode concerto and his first to move out of the shadow of Mozart. At its premiere in 1803, it shared the program with his first two symphonies and his only oratorio, Christus am Oelberg; among this distinguished group, it is the concerto that emerges, in retrospect, as the most formidable--his first truly symphonic piano concerto and arguably the starting point for his heroic middle period. As in his Fifth Symphony of a few years later, a stormy first movement in C minor yields to an other-worldly slow movement in the major mode, but the C-major conclusion to the concerto is more a youthful refusal of tragedy than the more fully realized triumph that concludes the Fifth Symphony.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) : Overture to Cosi fan tutte
Mozart's masterpiece Cosi fan tutte (1790), ostensibly a comedy, has long made audiences squirm as its two pairs of lovers are manipulated into betrayal, the men through courting the other's beloved in disguise, the women through eventually yielding to temptation. The title, like the male characters, blames the women ("Thus do they all"), but no one is really blameless, and, implicitly, it is human nature that is ultimately condemned. Although much of the opera is genuinely funny, its characters are so deepened by Mozart's music that we cannot laugh wholeheartedly at their agonies, even at their most ridiculous. The Overture is one of Mozart's most tightly written movements, anticipating the opera itself by moving like clockwork to its inevitable conclusion, in which a final admonishment from the orchestra seems to warn us that we, too, are only human.
Donald Crockett (born 1951): Roethke Preludes
Donald Crockett (1951-), a Pasadena native, is composer in residence with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (since 1991) and Professor of Composition at USC. His music has been performed widely, and he has received commissions from the Kronos Quartet, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Stanford String Quartet, Debussy Trio, and the Pasadena Chamber Orchestra. Among the many institutions awarding him grants and prizes are the Kennedy Center (Friedheim Awards), the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Barlow Endowment, BMI, the Aaron Copland Fund, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has also appeared as conductor for many groups in the area, such as the USC Contemporary Music Ensemble (which he directs), the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Green Umbrella series.
The Roethke Preludes (1994), originally written for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, was inspired by the poetry of the American poet Theodore Roethke. Each "prelude" takes a particular poetic fragment and creates a corresponding musical image, finding appropriate textures, tone colors, and forms for each. Thus, the violins are "tethered" to a high register, out of reach, for the first movement; an unusual instrument called a "lion's roar" (more properly called a "string drum") offers a startling representation of musical bones for the second; a series of slow chords is "shepherded" through several variations in the fifth; and the solo piccolo provides the initial "straw" for the fiery fugal finale.
--- Raymond Knapp
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