Program Notes: October 19, 1997
Wagner: Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) presents a number of difficulties for those who would champion his music. In life, not only was he an unpleasant man who habitually relieved his friends of both their money and the affections of their wives, he was also a self-aggrandizing anti- Semite. In death, his music, and to some extent his world-view, were appropriated by the Nazis, who reveled in his larger-than-life musical visions of a noble racial heritage, while using his music for political ends. As a composer for the orchestra he was unsurpassed, yet he insisted that music without words was inadequate-music, he claimed, was a woman, and required "the poet" (i.e., a man) for completion. The problem this presents to us beyond the sexist metaphor is that an "adequate" hearing of his music may require up to four long, exhausting evenings in the opera house, each devoted exclusively to a single work, rather than what many music-lovers reasonably prefer: a modest evening in a concert hall, with a variety of offerings. Still, concert settings such as Dawn and Siegfried's Rhine Journey should be considered a viable option, for they allow us a delicious taste of Wagner's rich orchestral imagination without reminding us overtly of the pernicious racial politics that permeate his operatic work. In this setting, we may, if we wish, hear Siegfried's horn calls, the magic-fire music, and the waters of the Rhine, while mentally retracing the heroic trajectory Wagner devised to launch Goetterdaemmerung (premiered 1876), the fourth and final opera in his gargantuan Ring cycle-or we may simply enjoy the music as music.
Brahms: Symphony No. 3
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) was unwillingly cast as the savior of German music, the first line of defense against such musical Philistines as Liszt and Wagner. Yet Brahms had enormous respect for Wagner's music, and it is worth remembering, in the centenary year of Brahms's death, that Brahms honored Wagner in the year of his death with two allusions in his Third Symphony (1883): the aching harmonies that precede the dance-like second theme in the first movement (adapted from Tannhaeuser) and the elegiac theme that appears, as if offering benediction from above, near the end of the second movement (from Goetterdaemmerung). From the beginning, Brahms's Third has proven to be the most evocative of his four symphonies. Historically minded critics were reminded of Beethoven's Eroica and Schumann's Rhenish (both were also third symphonies). Various programs were also offered up, many based on well-known stories, including Samson and Delilah in the first movement, Faust in the middle movements, and Leander, the noble swimmer who drowns trying to reach his beloved Hero, in the finale. Of particular interest for tonight's program is the thematic resemblance between the opening themes of the Brahms and Schumann symphonies, for the connection suggests a link, reinforced by the suggestion of watery heroism of the finale, to the same Rhine-based mythology mined by Wagner. Brahms's Third provides other fascinations as well, including a "Minuet" that is considerably more funereal than dance-like, and a quietly mysterious theme heard all too briefly in the second movement, which returns early in the finale and later assumes unexpectedly heroic dimensions.
Mozart: Piano Concerto #24
If Brahms and Wagner were obliged to divide the German musical world of the later nineteenth century between them, the one dominating pure instrumental music, the other opera, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), on the other hand, enjoyed enormous success across the full spectrum of musical genres available to him in the late eighteenth century. In his piano concertos, he had the best of both worlds, offering pure instrumental music, but with a dynamic interaction between the individual and the larger group that is drawn directly from opera. The Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491, a late entry in the long series of successful concertos that ended with his return to opera in 1786, was the second of only two set in a minor mode. Like the more famous D-Minor Concerto (No. 20, K. 466), the C-Minor exerted a profound influence over Beethoven, but the later concerto employs an even larger orchestra, and is conceived more symphonically. Particularly striking are the way Mozart uses wind instruments to convey both tragic and pastoral alternatives in the first movement, and the way that the piano emerges from an initially subdued dynamic to a position of dominance in the first movement, and incites the orchestra to occasional fiery outbursts in the finale, which is for the most part held in check by a benign theme-and-variations framework. In between is one of Mozart's most lyrical slow movements, rivaling even the "Elvira Madigan" movement in K. 467 and providing a soothing respite from the storms of the previous movement.
--- Raymond Knapp
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