BREVARD MUSIC CENTER | OVERTURE
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770-1827) Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37
Premiered on April 5, 1803, in Vienna with Beethoven at the piano. We often think of great composers as somehow superhuman. Well, the premiere of his Third Piano Concerto does showcase Beethoven’s extraordinary abilities in ways that have to make us think of him in superlatives. On the day of the premiere, the composer got up before dawn to finish writing out trombone parts for his oratorio, Christ on the Mount of Olives. He then sent Ferdinand Ries to find trombonists for the rehearsal, which began at 8 am and lasted sixand-a-half hours until 2:30. After lunch they ran the oratorio one more time (one hour in length). The four-hour long concert began at 6 pm. It contained (among other things) Beethoven’s First and Second Symphonies, his new oratorio, and his Third Piano Concerto, which he had barely finished. In fact, he had not found the time to write out the piano part, as Ignaz von Seifert explained: I saw almost nothing but empty pages; at the most, on one page or another a few Egyptian hieroglyphs wholly unintelligible to me were scribbled down to serve as clues for him; for he played nearly all the solo parts from memory since, as was so often the case, he had not had time to set it all down on paper. He gave me a secret glance whenever he was at the end of one of the invisible passages, and my scarcely concealable anxiety not to miss the decisive moment amused him greatly and he laughed heartily at the jovial supper which we ate afterwards. Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto shows clear influences of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor. Not only are they in the same key, but the opening themes are also eerily similar. Johann Baptist Cramer recalled hearing Mozart’s Concerto at an outdoor performance together with Beethoven, who was completely entranced by the work stating that, “we shall never be able to do anything like this.” Well, Beethoven did. His pupil Carl Czerny referred to the work as “written in a new way, a new style.” One of the most obvious innovative elements is Beethoven’s use of the extended range of the newest pianos, asking the soloist to play all the way to the high G (the first piece to make use of these newly added keys). Of course, Beethoven did not use these new notes just because he could. Rather, the boldness and intensity of this extraordinary work demanded it. The heightened sense of drama, the interplay between the orchestra and soloist, and the imaginative and constantly changing figurations of the main themes in the piano part are all signs of this new style, paving the way for the age of Romanticism.
Herbert von Karajan’s 1981 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic became one of the first classical CDs ever produced.
72
Overture
RICHARD STRAUSS (1864-1949) Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony), Op. 64
Premiered on October 28, 1915, in Berlin by the Dresden Hofkapelle under the direction of the composer. The inspiration for Strauss’ last tone poem seems simple enough. In 1908 Strauss had built a home in Garmisch with magnificent view of the Alps. And there is of course his recollection of his own hiking adventure as a 15-year old boy: Recently we made a great hiking party to the top of the Heimgarten, on which day we walked for twelve hours. At two in the morning we rode on a handcart to the village, which lies at the foot of the mountain. Then we climbed by the light of lanterns in pitch-dark night and arrived at the peak after a five-hour march. There one has a splendid view [of lakes, mountains, glaciers, and so on]. Then we hiked down the other side to Lake Walchensee, but we took a wrong trail and had to climb around in the midday heat for three hours with no path...Lake Walchensee is a beautiful lake, but makes a melancholy impression since it is enclosed by forests and high mountains...[On the way from there to Lake Kochelsee] a terrible thunderstorm overtook us, which uprooted trees and threw stones in our faces. We hardly had time to find a dry spot before the storm broke. Lake Kochelsee, a very romantic and beautiful lake, made huge waves so that it was impossible to even think about crossing it. After the storm had passed we had to settle for walking all the way around the lake, whether we wanted to or not. On the way the rain came again and that is how we arrived in Schlehdorf, after a breakneck march (we did not rest for a single moment) — tired, soaked to the skin — and spent the night; then the next morning we rode as calm as could be in the hay wagon to Murnau. The hike was interesting, unusual, and original in the highest degree.” This account seems to cover the 22 programmatic titles pretty well. However, during the genesis of the work Strauss hinted at another source of inspiration: Nietzsche’s 1888 essay Der Antichrist. A 1911 diary entry reads: “It is clear to me that the German nation will achieve new creative energy only by liberating itself from Christianity...I shall call my alpine symphony Der Antichrist, since it represents: moral purification through one’s own strength, liberation through work, worship of eternal, magnificent nature.” While Strauss scrapped the Nietzsche allusion in the printed score, the gigantic 125-piece orchestra and the sense of monumentality hints at a deeper meaning beyond an alpine adventure — speaking of things far beyond the adventures of an adolescent. -Siegwart Reichwald